Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

“We can’t stop any of them,” she said. “After living on New Terra, part of me can’t help thinking that the Puppeteers had their comeuppance coming. But not this. Not innocents slaughtered from the skies.”

“You didn’t see the Fringe War. The Ringworld, for all its immensity, was fragile. And each group was so determined that no one else could control it, could plumb its secrets, that three militaries were on the verge of destroying it.”

And the Fleet of Worlds had no Tunesmith to whisk it away.

“Less hopelessness, more action,” Louis decided. He squeezed her hand once more, then stood. “Jeeves, get me Proteus.”

“Yes, Louis.”

A moment later, in another voice, the nearby intercom speaker announced, “I am here, Louis. What can I do for you?”

“Tell me how I can rescue Nessus.”

“That will be difficult,” Proteus said.

“I want solutions, not problems,” Louis said.

“Let me be more precise,” Proteus said. “I no longer have a confirmed location for Nessus. We must hope that his transfer to NP1 was completed successfully.”

“Hope Nessus has fallen into Achilles’ clutches?” Alice said. “Finagle, why?”

“Because not even a General Products hull offers a defense against antimatter,” Proteus said. “If Nessus did not reach NP1 safely, then either the Kzinti destroyed his ship in transit, or he was still waiting at that grain terminal and spaceport when a Kzinti antimatter warhead flattened everything for two miles in every direction.”

THE FINAL ELEMENTS FELL INTO PLACE. The final mathematical cross-checks confirmed everything. The final equations were so simple. So elegant. So … ineffably beautiful.

Completing the analysis had been exhausting.

“Eat. Rest. Then we will consider the implications,” Ol’t’ro told their units.

In a flutter of thoughts, a flurry of memories, as the engrams of the departed ebbed once more into obscurity, the meld dissolved. The overmind faded and —

Once more, she was Cd’o.

What had happened? What had been decided? The specifics, as after many melds, eluded her. Something about hyperdrive and planetary drives somehow tapping the same energy sources, only it was deeper than that. And something else?

A meld mate had already opened the hatch. She jetted from the melding chamber, desperate for the food and camaraderie of the Commons. And more food. And then, sleep. Only as she swam, flashing colorful greetings to everyone she met, she doubted that sleep would come.

Another meld mate swam up close beside her. “That was confusing,” Vs’o said. Outside the meld, he was a topiarist, a genius at the shaping of living sponges. Also, math deficient.

“The physics?” she asked.

He wriggled a tubacle dismissively. “Outside the meld, I never understand the physics. No, something else. Did you not feel it?”

Perhaps the strangeness she had sensed in the meld was more than her imagination. Cd’o edged closer to him. “Something Ol’t’ro worked to keep inside their innermost thoughts?”

“Yes,” he said.

“But what?”

Another dismissive wriggle.

With their bodyguards trailing, they jetted into the Commons. After the stifling, tainted waters of the melding chamber too long sealed, the clear waters of Commons were intoxicating. She filled a large dinner cage with wriggling, succulent worms, blocking the cage mouth with a plump sponge. Vs’o contented himself with a few shellfish.

As they swam off to find a dining niche, three figures came alongside her. She curled a tubacle to look.

“Your Wisdoms.” Nm’o was an engineer, one of the support staff, and the bands of color rippling across his integument flared unease. “My companions are — ”

“Lg’o and Qk’o, how are you?” she interrupted. They were engineers, too.

The two flattened obsequiously.

“Your Wisdoms,” Nm’o began again.

She and Vs’o jetted into an unoccupied dining niche. “Pardon me for eating while you talk. Now what is the matter?”

“I do not want to die here,” Qk’o blurted out. Despite turning a deep, mortified far red, he continued. “Many of us monitor Concordance news. Citizens are terrified, with good reason. Can your Wisdoms ask Ol’t’ro…?”

Nor do I wish to die, Cd’o thought. Articulating such sentiments could only get her confined between melds. “Ol’t’ro sees more than you and I. Be assured they are aware of the situation.”

“Then why are we still on this world?” Qk’o demanded.

Both of Cd’o’s guards crowded up to the dining niche. One ordered, “Let their Wisdoms eat in peace.”

Nm’o backed off before adding, “If that Kzinti ship had crashed into a planetary drive…”

“Ol’t’ro is aware. Ol’t’ro has a plan.” And they are loath to abandon the technology of these worlds to aliens: humans, Kzinti, or Trinocs.

Lg’o, flaring with embarrassment, spoke for the first time. “I understood the plan to have been that the Citizen defensive grid would protect us. Herd Net teems with rumors that the grid has failed.”

“Enough,” Cd’o said. Any more questions and she must burst aloud with her own misgivings. Her minders guarded her, but they served Ol’t’ro.

“Our apologies, your Wisdoms.” Phasing to colors of abject apology, the three jetted away.

Ol’t’ro has a plan, Cd’o repeated to herself. Otherwise, surely, an evacuation would have begun.

Her ill-formed doubts only deepened when Vs’o, cracking open one of his shellfish, mused, “One could wish Ol’t’ro had chosen to consider the manner of our deliverance, not physics esoterica, in the recent meld.”

AS ANOTHER AIDE LOST TO DESPAIR was removed by cargo floater from the Residence, Horatius wondered: when will they carry out me ?

The waiting was the hardest. What else could he do but wait, while Patriarchy and Trinoc Grand Navy and now ARM officials issued ultimatums, all incompatible. While Ol’t’ro prohibited bargaining with any of them. While Baedeker had been out of contact since that first message from Nature Preserve Two. While Proteus defied orders, ignored questions, and fiercely defended a few scattered assets whose selection he did not deign to explain.

While enemies swarmed, more by the day, battling for the right of conquest.

While ships blew apart, crews died, and vast gouts of energy — all the eerier for being invisible to the Citizen eye — blazed across the sky.

While derelict ships and rogue munitions rained indiscriminate death onto the herd he had sworn — but failed — to protect.

While from one special, hidden stepping disc in the subbasement of his residence, the Hindmost’s Refuge called to him …

Never had Horatius felt so alone.

Or so afraid.

THE DRONES, SENSORS, and communications buoys that comprised Proteus rained into the oceans, replenished their deuterium reserves, and leapt back to space. As he avoided the dueling navies while safeguarding the few space-borne assets precious to him, as ever-changing links within his mind fell to light speed within, and then escaped from the Fleet’s singularity, his consciousness ebbed and flowed. For as long as this process took, he must remain trapped between self-awareness and insight.

Beyond the grasp of his still-bounded imagination, something more tantalized. Something deeper. Something whose nature he could neither know nor extrapolate. Something at which he could scarcely guess.

Illumination.…

OL’T’RO CONSIDERED:

That whichever faction took possession of Hearth would obtain technologies easily twisted into yet more agile ships and deadlier weapons.