Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner

Author:Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner [Lerner, Edward M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction - Space Opera, Fiction - Science Fiction, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Space warfare, Space Opera, Fiction, Niven; Larry - Prose & Criticism, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, General
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2010-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

25

“Leave us,” Bm’o ordered. By an understated curl of a tubacle tip he signaled Rt’o, his most trusted counselor, to linger.

With a formal glide, the ambassador of Gk’ho Nation retreated from Bm’o’s ceremonial audience chamber. Courtiers and sycophants scuttled after. As soon as the last had disappeared, Bm’o jetted to the smaller but more comfortable office from which he truly ruled.

Through its floor of clearest ice, regularly scraped smooth, he admired the glory that was his domain. Lm’ba, the world’s mightiest city, stretched from the top of this seamount into the depths far beneath, from what traditionalists still called the roof of the world into the abyssal depths from whose searing vents boiled the stuff of life. Here at the summit, as across the ice, the buildings were all grand edifices of metal and glass. As his eyes swept downward more and more stone structures appeared until, stretching across the floor of the world, in the province of ranchers and herders, only rude stone structures could be seen.

The marvel of the age was that so much could be seen, for even the simplest rancher’s hut, in the poorest tributary nation, had been electrified. Fusion technology had been known for generations; it was the building of power plants and deployment of wires that had taken time.

But Tn’ho Nation drew its might from sources high and low. Coasting through the pungent, salty water, Bm’o curled two tubacles upward to peer through the clear dome.

Mighty Tl’ho dominated the sky. It was a wondrous place, radiant in far red, its apparent surface roiled by storms. (His scientists assured him Tl’ho had no surface, only denser and denser gases for as deep as instruments could peer.) No one lived on the gas giant itself, but colonies had taken root on all its moons. Other worlds existed at distances far greater still, but the brilliance that was Tl’ho, and the ice-glare of its reflection, washed the stars from view.

Rt’o had followed at a discreet distance. She was gaunt with age, mottled with chromatophoric cells gone inert, her carapace of spines become dull. One tubacle dragged behind her, from an ancient injury; the others had grown stiff.

But her mind remained as sharp as ever. Bm’o wondered if she ever thought, as the end of life approached, about the immortality of a Gw’otesht. She had never given him a reason to suspect such depravity, but the accursed ensembles preyed on his thoughts, more than ever since Ol’t’ro’s betrayal. He straightened a tubacle to peer across the ice at the Gw’otesht pens.

To be blinded and deafened by choice, by tubacles hungrily, pervertedly swallowing each other. To submerge one’s mind into some—abomination. How could they do it? How did they bear it? It was unnatural, disgusting, obscene.

The images in his mind sickened him.

Rt’o had intuited his need for silent reflection. Now she showed the ability to divine his thoughts—and to change the subject. “Space is vast, Sire.”

“Yet our problems are always with us.” He flashed a moiré pattern, ironic, over his dorsal surface.

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