Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner

in
English
.
    Baedeker had insisted Nessus take along an AI—no matter that AIs were strictly prohibited by Concordance law. Not even Clandestine Directorate was to know.
    Humans had long used AIs, even back to the old, stolen colony ship from whose embryo banks New Terra had been settled. A copy of Jeeves, the colonists’ primitive AI, was unlikely to go rogue during this trip.
    A most unusual Hindmost, Baedeker.
    The first time he and Nessus met, Baedeker was only an engineer at General Products Corporation. He and Nessus had, in a completely un-Citizen-like manner, almost come to blows. And now they were friends. More than friends. At times it seemed they could become—
    That was another matter that did not bear thinking about so far from home.
    “What is Louis doing?” Nessus asked Voice.
    “Examining the geometry of the situation, sir.” An explanatory holo opened.
    Nessus studied the star map, centered on the Fleet. Suns and worlds were not to scale, of course, or none would have shown. Twenty light-years in the Fleet’s wake: Jm’ho, home world to the Gw’oth. Eleven light-years ahead: Kl’mo, the aliens’ newest colony.
    Predators’ jaws, waiting to close.
    The crooning, chanting, murmuring crowds of Citizens on his cabin wallpaper had lost their power to calm. The redolence of herd pheromones endlessly circulating through the ventilation system no longer eased his loneliness. He pawed at the cabin’s deck, the lure of catatonia stronger than ever. “And what does Louis have to say about that?”
    “He wonders why the Concordance would choose to fly the Fleet into such a dangerous neighborhood.”
    Because every challenge we overcome only reemerges as a newer, even bigger challenge.
That
answer would beget even less welcome questions.
    “I will go speak with him,” Nessus said.
    “Very good, sir.”
    Nessus found Louis in the relax room, nursing a drink bulb, slowly circling another instance of the star map. Half-empty plates covered the small table, waiting to be recycled. The notepad beside the plates showed a doodle of a Gw’o.
    Nessus settled onto his padded bench. “What do you think?”
    “I think your people should reconcile with the Gw’oth.”
    “Assume others are pursuing that course and that they fail. What are the Fleet’s risks?”
    “The Fleet is doing half light speed?”
    That was information Voice would not have divulged. With lots of suppositions, Louis might have reached that conclusion from estimating the red shift of the Nature Preserve worlds’ suns. This was the son of Carlos Wu, all right. “Close enough.”
    “They need only to scatter stealthed objects in the Fleet’s path. At those speeds, even a small mass would become a potential planet-buster.” Louis frowned. “You had to know that.”
    “It is why you are here.” Nessus plucked nervously at his mane. “Your suggestions?”
    “I gather the Fleet passed safely by”—Louis pointed into the holo—“Jm’ho. Why expect trouble when you pass the new Gw’oth colony?”
    Nessus looked himself in the eyes. Because we are cowards, the gesture said. We worry because there
might
be a problem.
    That was an easier answer than the whole truth.
    “Why would they care, Nessus? Here
we
are, breathing the same air, comfortable with the same lighting and room temperature. Hearth must be like Earth or Home. The Gw’oth evolved in frigid water beneath a permanent roof of ice. It’s not as though either species would covet the other’s worlds.” Louis squeezed the last drops from his drink bulb and ordered another. “Unless you’ve given the Gw’oth a reason to distrust . . .”
    “
We
have no reason to trust
them.
The Gw’oth developed hyperdrive in secrecy, inside their water-filled habitat module, while aboard our ship.”
Our
could be misconstrued as Citizen. Louis had no need of the more complicated details. “They took their habitat to hyperspace without warning—from inside our ship. Do you know