Ringworld's Children (27 page)

"You're guessing."

"I guess good. I'm a protector. Free me, Hindmost, and I'll get off your property."

"What's it like?" the Hindmost asked.

"I feel confined. I'm crippled," Louis said. "I can't fight and can't run. I can think faster than I ever did before. I see more answers. That's confining too, in a way. If I see the right answer every time, there're no choices.

"Tunesmith has a plan. I won't interfere unless he threatens my N-children, but I should talk to him. It's just that there are things I have to do first. What about you? Do you have a plan?"

"Run away when I see a chance."

"Good. Do you remember where Tunesmith worked cm
Needle?
Do you have webeye cameras in there?"

"Beneath Mons Olympus."

"Is
Long Shot
there? Is it functional?"

"He took the ship apart and put it back together. He hasn't tested it since."

"What about Carlos Wu's autodoc?"

"It hasn't been touched."

"It's still spread out across the floor?"

"Yes."

"Watch for me to cause a distraction. Then get the autodoc aboard
Long Shot
in working condition. Can you do it?"

The scream of a demented orchestra. "Why would I even consider committing burglary on a protector's turf!"

"But you'll have a protector on your side. Hindmost, we are under a deadline. Tunesmith will not consider your convenience. He will act as soon as he can, because he can't predict when the Fringe War will go to hell. If we can't get off the Ringworld soon, you'll lose your home forever, and so will I, and worse."

Into the silence that followed, Louis said, "You're thinking you could hold me prisoner until you turn me over to Tunesmith. Buy something with that. Shall I tell you why you can't do that? Do you remember three chairs in the Meteor Defense Room, on booms?"

"I remember."

"Tunesmith only needs one."

The Hindmost understood. He was as quick as some protectors. "Triumvirate."

"He let me see that on purpose. It's a message, a promise. Tunesmith, Proserpina, and me. He extrapolated a surviving Pak protector, and he knew he could feed me tree-of-life. He didn't expect me to be running loose. He probably won't mind finding me crippled like an ancient Greek slave. He needs my input. He can't guess what the Fringe War will do as well as I can.

"See, you can sell me to Tunesmith, but you'll have to deal with me afterward."

"You're free to move about the ship," the Hindmost said.

Louis let himself slump into his more natural twisted pose. "Give me access to the stepping-disk master controls. I need to rewrite some instructions."

"To make yourself hard to find? I can help."

"Me and a couple of others. I don't need help."

After he had finished reprogramming the stepping-disk system, Louis flicked into
Needle's
cargo bay. He extruded a pressure suit. It didn't fit him well in his twisted condition, but it would do. He took some gear: a rope, mag specs, a flashlight-laser.

He tapped at stepping-disk controls and flicked out.

He was in orbit. He'd thought that might happen. The settings he wanted were the most recently deployed, and some of those would match orbiting service stacks.

He spent a few moments looking down at the Ringworld's face. This was a region he'd never seen in detail, partway between the Great Oceans. There were ochre deserts, and tiny pockmarks of impact craters, and three little knots of cloud: eyestorms.

Tunesmith wasn't making repairs unless he had to. Given what he was doing, Tunesmith might be glad to find places where the landscape was ripped down to the scrith.

Aircraft and spacecraft he saw none. That was better than his predictions. By now the Fringe War might have worked its way down to the surface. Louis still had time.

But he would have made this side jaunt despite the Fringe War. A protector didn't often have choices. He tapped in another setting.

Still in orbit, but elsewhere. An ARM camera the size of a gnat was looking at him from two meters away.

That tore it! Now they had a verified protector sighting. Or would the pressure suit and his twisted shape hide his nature for long enough? He tapped and flicked out quick.

Night wasn't particularly dark on the Ringworld. Nothing was here but sand and scrub and Tunesmith's service stack, and the calm surface of a sea. Louis prowled about for a bit, but the sand wouldn't hold footprints.

But it held a trace of a scent.

They'd flicked in here, but they hadn't stayed long. They had a flycycle to play with. Louis walked around the island, using mag specs to study the distant shore. A flycycle ought to stand out.

Nothing. Try again.

Nowhere. He flicked in and was trapped in branches and thorns.

He looked about him, he felt about him, before he tried to move. The thorns didn't do much harm to his leathery skin. Behind his hardshelled face his mind grinned.

Tunesmith had sent a service stack to rendezvous with Louis's flycycle.

Half a year ago. Roxanny, riding the flycycle, might have moved several times before she gave up. Tunesmith's programming would hold: the service stack would follow the flycycle. For all Roxanny knew, it might be covered in sensors and cameras! Finally she must have run it into a jungle and let thorn plants grow over the flycycle and service stack both.

Louis did some careful cutting with the flashlight-laser. The brush started to burn around him. Not a good thing. He crawled down through the thorns, around the edge of the stepping disk, picking up scratches, cutting more brush as he went. Popped the rim and turned off the stepping disk, and lofted the stack of float plates before the fire could roast him.

The forest ran a fair distance, following a river, and he'd been in the middle of it. Now he was above it, with a fine view. Where would a pair of strangers go after abandoning their transportation?

Not far. Wembleth would lead Roxanny to the nearest center of civilization:
he
knew strangers were welcome everywhere. Follow the river downstream and they'd find
something.

What Louis found was a convergence of two rivers and a small village. He drifted toward the conical houses. Somewhere a voice shouted, "Vasneesit!" and Louis thought, "Stet."

A fire was growing in the forest. A pillar of smoke to gather attention, right where Roxanny and Wembleth had left their vehicles. Looking toward the fire, they'd see a stack of float plates limned against smoke. And what then? Would they hide, or flee?

Hide. They couldn't run faster than a service stack.

Louis sniffed. Population of a thousand to fifteen hundred, smelling like meat eaters, not many elders, lots of parasites but little disease. And--

There.

He set the stack down in the village square. Locals gathered. They were short, brawny, wolfish-looking men and women. Eyes faced front from deep sockets. Small sharp jaws protruded a little.

An elder tried to speak to him. Louis couldn't understand the language, but he tried to placate the man with body language. When that didn't work, he nipped the elder's nose, then knocked him down. A brief shoving match and the man was groveling.

Fair enough. Louis followed the scent. The source had changed houses, but it would have been stronger if they'd moved through open air. Were there tunnels under the village?

A young man popped out of a doorway with Roxanny's sonic in his hand.

The buzz just brushed him before Louis's laser beam touched the metal butt.
Carefully!
The man dropped the sonic and ran inside. He wasn't one of the Wolf People. He was only a few centimeters shorter than Louis, curly brown hair around the face and head, bare skin elsewhere. He was clearly human. Louis's nose knew him.

"Wembleth!" Louis limped after him. "I just want to talk." He moved inside, afraid they'd outrun him, but he was limping faster than they could move. His hand caught metal swinging toward his head, turned and had a wrist and metal bar. "Roxanny."

The fight went out of her. She stared at him in fathomless terror. "What are you?"

"Don't you believe in Vashneesht?" She didn't react. Not funny? "I'm Louis Wu," he said. "Your sonic left me twisted, but otherwise I'm a protector. You were lucky. You would have eaten tree-of-life if we'd gone where you pointed me."

"Louis."

He sniffed: she was carrying a child of his own blood.

She could kill him before he harmed her now. He said, "Do you know--?"

"I'm pregnant. It happens." Roxanny looked him in the eye. "You said you were fertile."

"It's Wembleth's child. I can smell."

"Stet.
Why
were you fertile? Most men use up their birthrights. Didn't Louis Wu?"

"Roxanny,
every
life is unlikely."

Her smile was a mere flicker. "And why am
I
fertile? You sure didn't arrange
that."

Louis said, "Someone jiggered your med specs. You all used the same 'doc aboard
Gray Nurse,
didn't you? Someone wanted to get you pregnant so he turned off your sterility patch." It was the most rational answer.

Roxanny said, "Coroner-First Zinna Hendersdatter. She thinks I took Oliver away from her." She had her aplomb back. "So protectors make mistakes?"

"There's never enough data. It's why protectors second-guess each other. Roxanny, I just want to talk and then I'll be gone. Wembleth?"

"Don't hurt her."

Wembleth's head and arms poked out of a hole in the earthen floor. He'd been there for some time. His beard was brown and somewhat curly, tipped with white. Boosterspice had made him young, and in that state he looked something like Teela Brown and quite a lot like a young Louis Wu. He had a crossbow.

"You don't have to come closer," Louis said. He let go of Roxanny, who backed away. He held still, wondering if Wembleth would fire, wondering if he could catch a crossbow bolt. "You've been practicing Interworld speech?"

"Yah, Roxanny wants to join the ARM fleet."

How?
Louis wondered. If he'd seen a way, he'd have had to block it.

"Roxanny," he asked, "where did you leave
Snail Darter's
library?"

"I took it aboard
Gray Nurse,"
she said. "Why?"

"My children, their N-children, one or two might have joined the ARM fleet. I have to see the roster. There'd be a current copy in every ship in the fleet."

She laughed. "There are tens of thousands of men and women in the ARM ships! Are you going to scan them all?"

"Yah."

She shrugged. "Maybe Proserpina picked it up."

"You'll have to leave here," Louis said. "I brought the service stack. I'll reprogram it so it'll stop following the flycycle. It's very important that you can't be found. I got this close to you by just following the programming in the stepping disks. I followed your scent from the forest, Wembleth."

"With a nose like that, I'm not surprised," Wembleth said rudely.

Louis touched his enlarged nose. "Do you know that you're my son?"

Wembleth snorted in disbelief. "I would have thought you might be mine! But you're older than you looked."

"You're younger. I never saw a human being who hadn't used modern medical techniques. No depilators, no tannin pills, never a dental program. I thought you were another species. But Teela Brown was your mother," Louis said.

Roxanny shook her head. "She'd have had a five-year patch."

"She must have decided she wanted my child. She'd have to have had her sterility treatment reversed before we left Earth. It would have taken both of her birthrights. She never told
me."

Wembleth said, "Wait. You mean it?
You're
my father?" He seemed horrified.

"Yah--"

"Why did you leave us?"

"Teela left
me.
I thought then that she left me for Seeker--"

"But what did you
do?"

"I didn't protect her." How could he, against her own luck? "She went into an eyestorm and we lost her. When we found her again, she was with Seeker. She'd have been carrying you when I left them near the Great Ocean, and as for what she did after that, I'd be guessing."

"You are Vashneesht," Wembleth said. "You're good at guessing. I've never understood. Why did mother leave us?"

Louis knew he should be going. Every second might be precious. Once upon a time Proserpina's people had cleaned the Ringworld system of every menacing rock. Now it was infested with ships....

But in the presence of his son and growing grandchild, Louis was inclined to stay; and Wembleth needed reassurance.

He said, "I left Teela near the Great Ocean. There weren't any stepping disks on the Ringworld then. Seeker--the man she left me for--he might have known how to use the transport that runs along the rim wall. It's a magnetic levitation system, Roxanny. They found something to get them there; there's enough Builder technology lying around. They took the maglev system all the way around to the Other Ocean.

"You'd call that crazy unless they were running from something fearsome. Not from me, I think, but maybe it was what she thought I'd bring. The Fringe War. Teela might have been afraid of puppeteers. Nessus meddled in her life, pretty well destroyed it, and she didn't want that to happen again. She knew any of us would look where we last saw her.

"So they found a place halfway around the arc, and she settled down and made a life with Seeker and you. I hope she was happy."

"Mother was happy," Wembleth said, "but restless too. She never had any more children--"

"Course not. Seeker wasn't her species."

"She and--Seeker--my father," with a bit of a glare, "took turns exploring. I never knew what they were looking for. One of them had to stay with me. They did more of that after I was older. I was near eighty falans when she disappeared."