Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner Page B

brought me here to meddle in Puppeteer politics?” Louis’s eyes flicked to the synthesizer.
    Nessus fought his own self-destructive urge: to hide. “Did you ever wonder why Beowulf Shaeffer undertook such dangerous missions? No, I do not change the subject.”
    Reluctantly: “Sure, I’ve wondered.”
    “The first time, skimming the surface of a neutron star, because a Citizen scientist and scout coerced Beowulf into going. The same scout hired Beowulf for a journey to the galactic core because he had survived the first trip.”
    “
You
are a Citizen scout.”
    Nessus had not been far from the scene, but neither had he been responsible. He certainly was no scientist.
    “He calls himself Achilles.” And Hearth had yet to recover from the chaos unleashed when his second hiring of Shaeffer encountered the galactic-core explosion. “Achilles is a politician now, not a scout. An ambitious politician.”
    “Is there another kind, Nessus?”
    “While Experimentalists rule, the contest for power comes down to a competition among radical ideas.”
    All too often, crazy ideas, for not only scouts were insane. It took a special sort of madness to aspire to responsibility for the herd, rather than to submerge oneself within the herd. And among the few who aspired even to be
the
Hindmost . . .
    Would Louis serve a society whose entire political class—by definition—was crazy?
    The crazy-scariest possibility of all was that Nessus might have failed to find Beowulf Shaeffer because Achilles had found Shaeffer first. Trouble followed Shaeffer and Achilles both.
    Nessus said, “Achilles aspires to guide the Experimentalists, and hence to become Hindmost of us all. As Minister of Science he has the public ear. He campaigns on taking ‘all necessary measures’ to end the Gw’oth threat.”
    With a sigh, Louis looked away from the synthesizer and the drugs he was too proud to request.
    Nessus waited.
    Louis said, “The Gw’oth are too smart
not
to have stealthy ships or probes watching the Fleet. Whatever they overhear they can transmit home by hyperwave radio. And apparently what they’re overhearing is threats.”
    Nessus stood, tottering on trembling legs. Of
course
the Gw’oth secretly followed events on Hearth, just as squadrons of stealthy Concordance probes ringed the Gw’oth worlds. “I fear, Louis, we are giving the Gw’oth a reason to decide they must strike first.”
    “It would still be mad. . . .” Louis paused to gather his thoughts. “What if there is a message in
where
the Gw’oth put their settlement? Ice moons with oceans are common enough.”
    “Of course there is a message! A threat. They put themselves in the Fleet’s path.”
    Louis shook his head. “I suspect that it’s more than that. They could scatter planet-busters into the Fleet’s path from ships. They don’t need to establish, or expose, a colony to make an attack on the Fleet.”
    “Then what are you saying?”
    “If the Gw’oth established colonies as distant from Jm’ho, but in other directions, your people would never have encountered them. So maybe the meaning of the new colony, of this Kl’mo, is that they want the Concordance to know the extent of their capabilities.”
    “Why would they want that?”
    Louis began pacing. “To demonstrate that they are dispersed, that you cannot hope to find all their colonies. That if war should come, some of
them
will survive.”
    “And we, bound to our Fleet of Worlds, will not.” Nessus shuddered, marveling that he did not collapse in terror. Even hindbrains and trembling flesh must know some disasters are too cosmic to flee. “War remains madness, but mutual destruction would no longer be the outcome.
That,
you are telling me, is the message.”
    Louis laughed bitterly. “My entire military career was one skirmish in which I almost got myself killed, and from which I became an addict. Yet somehow you expect me to penetrate the grand strategy of genius aliens I’ve never