Read Online Juggler of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
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names wrong half the time, and that was progress. He’d gotten Feather assigned to him, because she was good, and Andrea Girard so she could learn something. The rest of the task force were supposedly experts in Puppeteers or General Products technology or both; so far, he had only an ARM computer’s word for it.
Surmises lined the display walls, outnumbered by the open questions. Facts, beyond confirmations of the Puppeteers’ disappearance, were scarce. Holos flashed over desks. Comms trilled, chittered, and hummed. Knotsof conversation formed and broke apart. Occasionally the ventilation fans emerged from the din. They failed miserably at removing the smells of too many people. In a corner of the war room, two hulking strangers cowered before Feather’s wrath. Whatever task they had failed to perform to her satisfaction they would do better the next time. Feather was
not
someone you wanted angry at you.
Above everything hung an aura of dread.
Feather finished administering her tongue-lashing. As she headed his way, Sigmund’s pocket comp buzzed with the tooth-rattling buzz that meant he really needed to take the call. His AI assistant did the filtering.
“You should take this, Sigmund,” Medusa said. Snakes on her animated head hissed and coiled. His callers didn’t face a green-skinned gorgon, of course. They saw a primly coiffed woman named Georgia. “It’s a Puppeteer.”
Sigmund groaned. Since the United Nations had announced his task force, calls had streamed in by the thousands. All nutcases and cons of one sort or another, claiming to know the whereabouts of Puppeteers—or to
be
a Puppeteer. Every call had to be checked out—but not by
him
. At least the “Puppeteers” with booming basso voices could be disregarded. “I’m sure it’s a wonderful simulation, Medusa. Add it to the queue.”
“Bear with me.” Hiss. “Your caller said he met you on We Made It. The date checks out. And ‘he’ has a voice Feather would kill for.”
Feather reached Sigmund’s side. He ushered her to his office and shut the door.
Medusa transferred the call to desktop comm, tracking him through the security cameras. “He said his name is Nessus.” Hiss. “It’s a known Puppeteer name. It first appears in the
Hal Clement
records. That file has no images of him. The name ‘Nessus’ pops up regularly in our files for the past three years. The most recent instance is an ARM procurement visit to GP days before the disappearances. There’s surveillance imagery from that meeting, and the skin-tone patterns match your caller.”
Feather asked, “What’s the call trace say?”
Hissssss. “We can trace to Canaveral Spaceport. Triangulation from comm towers only tells us the area of the field. The call could come from any of dozens of vessels. That’s showing caution enough that I presume the call originates elsewhere.”
Sigmund knew the drill: cascaded anonymizer relays, using accounts opened with many-times-laundered funds. A Puppeteer in hiding would be that cautious. So would a knowledgeable impersonator.
“Most or all of them GP hulls, I presume,” Feather said. Medusa did not correct her.
Sigmund found himself pacing. It made sense. If a Puppeteer remained on Earth and chose to reveal himself, inside a GP hull was the safest place to be. But the very Puppeteer who had recovered the derelict at BVS-1? Sigmund shivered. “Put Nessus through.”
In an instant, a Puppeteer replaced Medusa—and the new image above the desk might have no more physical basis than the old. To animate an avatar was simple enough.
“Mr. Ausfaller,” the Puppeteer said. “You look different without the beard.”
That Wunderlander beard! He’d forgotten all about it. He had started growing it on the trip out and taken it off before arriving home. “You say we’ve met, Nessus.”
“A slight exaggeration to get past your AIde,” Nessus said. “We passed each other many times in the General Products building. We
Surmises lined the display walls, outnumbered by the open questions. Facts, beyond confirmations of the Puppeteers’ disappearance, were scarce. Holos flashed over desks. Comms trilled, chittered, and hummed. Knotsof conversation formed and broke apart. Occasionally the ventilation fans emerged from the din. They failed miserably at removing the smells of too many people. In a corner of the war room, two hulking strangers cowered before Feather’s wrath. Whatever task they had failed to perform to her satisfaction they would do better the next time. Feather was
not
someone you wanted angry at you.
Above everything hung an aura of dread.
Feather finished administering her tongue-lashing. As she headed his way, Sigmund’s pocket comp buzzed with the tooth-rattling buzz that meant he really needed to take the call. His AI assistant did the filtering.
“You should take this, Sigmund,” Medusa said. Snakes on her animated head hissed and coiled. His callers didn’t face a green-skinned gorgon, of course. They saw a primly coiffed woman named Georgia. “It’s a Puppeteer.”
Sigmund groaned. Since the United Nations had announced his task force, calls had streamed in by the thousands. All nutcases and cons of one sort or another, claiming to know the whereabouts of Puppeteers—or to
be
a Puppeteer. Every call had to be checked out—but not by
him
. At least the “Puppeteers” with booming basso voices could be disregarded. “I’m sure it’s a wonderful simulation, Medusa. Add it to the queue.”
“Bear with me.” Hiss. “Your caller said he met you on We Made It. The date checks out. And ‘he’ has a voice Feather would kill for.”
Feather reached Sigmund’s side. He ushered her to his office and shut the door.
Medusa transferred the call to desktop comm, tracking him through the security cameras. “He said his name is Nessus.” Hiss. “It’s a known Puppeteer name. It first appears in the
Hal Clement
records. That file has no images of him. The name ‘Nessus’ pops up regularly in our files for the past three years. The most recent instance is an ARM procurement visit to GP days before the disappearances. There’s surveillance imagery from that meeting, and the skin-tone patterns match your caller.”
Feather asked, “What’s the call trace say?”
Hissssss. “We can trace to Canaveral Spaceport. Triangulation from comm towers only tells us the area of the field. The call could come from any of dozens of vessels. That’s showing caution enough that I presume the call originates elsewhere.”
Sigmund knew the drill: cascaded anonymizer relays, using accounts opened with many-times-laundered funds. A Puppeteer in hiding would be that cautious. So would a knowledgeable impersonator.
“Most or all of them GP hulls, I presume,” Feather said. Medusa did not correct her.
Sigmund found himself pacing. It made sense. If a Puppeteer remained on Earth and chose to reveal himself, inside a GP hull was the safest place to be. But the very Puppeteer who had recovered the derelict at BVS-1? Sigmund shivered. “Put Nessus through.”
In an instant, a Puppeteer replaced Medusa—and the new image above the desk might have no more physical basis than the old. To animate an avatar was simple enough.
“Mr. Ausfaller,” the Puppeteer said. “You look different without the beard.”
That Wunderlander beard! He’d forgotten all about it. He had started growing it on the trip out and taken it off before arriving home. “You say we’ve met, Nessus.”
“A slight exaggeration to get past your AIde,” Nessus said. “We passed each other many times in the General Products building. We
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