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

that didn’t grow properly on Earth, which is why the ancient colony failed, they become protectors. Protectors are ruthlessly obsessed with protecting their bloodlines and they’re scary smart.”
    “What else,” Ausfaller prompted.
    So am I a schoolboy to be tested on my lessons? Louis wondered. “The Belter was exposed to that Pak plant. Tree-of-life, was it called? He became a protector. Probably to protect his own family, he killed Phssthpok and disappeared. End of story.” Louis paused. “There hasn’t been any Pak War. People would have noticed.”
    Another comm delay, and then Ausfaller smiled wryly. “You think? If you are who I suspect you are, Louis, you grew up on Home.”
    “Yah,” Louis conceded. His parents were less well hidden than they had supposed. Why hadn’t Ausfaller come after them?
    “The first colony on Home failed, didn’t it? A suspected plague.” Ausfaller did not pause for an answer. “Jack Brennan, that Belter turned protector, was responsible.”
    Louis started. Home’s history went back only a few centuries. Of
course
he had studied the lost colony while in school—only the collapse of that first colony was mysterious. Plague was just a guess. No pathogen had ever been found. No human remains of that era had ever been recovered, either, only cremated ashes. It seemed the original colonists had gone mad.
    A later group of settlers, expecting to arrive at an established colony, instead found every building had been blasted or burned to the ground. That was in an era before hyperdrive; the new colonists were on their own. By the time they had established themselves, the charred and weathered ruins were all but beyond study. The plague—or whatever had happened—never recurred.
    That the ARM kept secrets did not surprise Louis. Still, a human protector would
protect
humans, wouldn’t he? And while Brennan attacking Home—if, for some strange reason, he had—might fairly be called a protector war, it would not be a Pak War.
    Louis felt Nessus watching him. Gauging him? “All right, Sigmund. Why would Brennan attack Home colony?”
    Ausfaller grimaced. “The plague was a variation of the virus in tree-of-life root. It’s the virus that triggers the life-stage change in adults. I believe Brennan set loose the virus on Home to raise an army of protectors.”
    Louis remembered something else from that long-ago virtual tour of the Pak exhibit. “Tree-of-life doesn’t affect Pak until they’re old enough. Why did the virus affect the younger colonists on Home? Remember,
no one
was left.”
    “If I’m right,” Ausfaller said, “Brennan engineered his virus to kill everyone too young or too old to change. Without descendants to protect, the new protectors would lose their will to live—or they would adopt a bigger cause. Brennan’s cause. A war against the Pak.”
    A
world
exterminated to build an army. Louis felt sick. “Against a follow-up Pak fleet?”
    “That’s our best information,” Ausfaller said. “If so, it worked. But, as you said, you would have noticed a Pak War. And, no doubt, you would have noticed any survivors of that war, whether Pak or human protectors. That sounds to me like the two sides fought to a draw. And to the death.”
    And a few years later, a colony ship arrived and found no trace of plague. Because Brennan engineered his virus not to survive without hosts?
    Horrific as were Ausfaller’s speculations, Louis found himself believing. “It was bizarre enough that Nessus drafted me to help—”
    “Our business does not concern Sigmund,” Nessus interrupted.
    But Ausfaller’s business must concern Nessus. Every minute spent listening in normal space was a minute that, spent in hyperspace, would have brought
Aegis
about two million kilometers closer to the Fleet.
    How had this started? A New Terran criminal had broken into archives of a Pak War. Why was that an emergency for Nessus? Why was Achilles interested?
    Ausfaller resumed his