Free Juggler of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

were never introduced.”
    Sigmund floated a trial balloon. “I mostly worked with GP’s regional president for We Made It.”
    Nessus made noises like glass breaking. “He was well above me in the company.”
    “One moment.” Sigmund tapped the mute and blind buttons. “I did have a beard on We Made It. And the Puppeteer I worked with had a name like that. This could be real.”
    “Assume it is,” Feather said. “What does he want?”
    “Let’s find out.” Sigmund unfroze the call. “It seemed all Puppeteers left rather abruptly last week. Now you called. I have to wonder why.”
    The Puppeteer took a one-head-high, one-head-low stance. The better to watch for danger? “I called, Sigmund Ausfaller, because you represent the UN’s response to our Exodus.
    “I wish to arrange a private consultation with you.”
    TINY SPYBOTS COVERED SIGMUND; many more lined his pockets. Video, audio, global positioning, environmental—if something could be monitored and recorded in a compact manner, he carried sensors for it. He expected them to be jammed, but occasionally life dealt a pleasant surprise. Better to try and fail than to forever wonder.
    “You don’t need to do this,” Feather said again. She smacked the transfer booth. “Step into a GP hull and you’ll get out only if Nessus permits it.”
    Sigmund hardly needed help finding reasons to worry. “Every Puppeteerin Known Space has withdrawn or gone into hiding. It may well involve a danger to Earth. I can’t imagine it’s all been done so Nessus could harm me personally.” The funny thing was, he meant it. ARM training
had
refocused his paranoia. Before he could have second thoughts, he pressed the transmit button.
    The glow panel in the destination booth switched off faster than he could exit. He was trapped! He stepped into what was clearly a cargo hold aboard a spaceship.
    He had long marveled how expressions survived the centuries.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. Catch-22. My brother’s keeper. Run out of steam
. An overcrowded Earth had long ago eliminated cemeteries, and Sigmund had never seen one—
    But suddenly, his skin crawling, he knew what it must mean to whistle past the graveyard.
    His heart pounded. At ARM HQ it was easy to say the Puppeteers probably weren’t after him personally. It was still him personally here inside an impregnable spaceship, trapped and at the uncertain mercy of a hidden Puppeteer. He remembered Astyanax’s knife.…
    A second transfer booth faced the one Sigmund had just vacated. As he watched, its interior lights activated. An opaque glob masked the address display; he couldn’t budge the dried glue, or whatever it was, to read where this booth would send him. He walked in and pressed transmit.
    Once more: A booth went dark. Dead.
    Behind a transparent partition—GP hull material?—a Puppeteer waited. His skin was cream colored, with a few scattered tan patches. He was one of the scruffier ones Sigmund had ever seen, with little of the mane ornamentation that appeared to denote status. Strikingly, one eye was red, the other yellow. “Nessus, I presume.”
    “Correct, Mr. Ausfaller. Thank you for coming.” The Puppeteer pointed with a briefly straightened neck: a chair. “Please make yourself comfortable.” The chair, the remotely deactivated transfer booth, and a standard synthesizer were the only furnishings.
    “What if I brought a laser pistol?” In truth, he’d considered it. Any wall he could see through a laser pistol would shoot through—even hull material passed visible light. “Or am I talking to another holo, with all this staging to make me believe otherwise?”
    Nessus quivered. “I’m quite real, I assure you. No doubt you carry comm gear. Please take a moment to satisfy yourself it’s been jammed.
    “Although a scanner in the first ship revealed no weapons, you might have fooled it. If so, before you shoot anyone, consider that only I canreactivate your transfer booth. It