Ringworld's Children (5 page)

The puppeteer was looking about him. He said, "Downslope, one could survive. Ringworld folk are generally hospitable to strangers. Tunesmith, you never accept my word when you can test it. Why do you involve
me?"

"And for
what?"
Louis demanded.

Tunesmith floated off downslope. Louis and the puppeteer boarded and followed. The protector's voice carried easily. He spoke Interworld with no trace of accent, projecting his voice from deep in his belly, fearing no interruption, like a king.

"The Fringe War grows more intense. The ARM is using antimatter instead of hydrogen fusion to power their motors and weapons. Louis, the Ringworld cannot survive this. Something must be done."

"See if you can describe it!"

"Louis, to shape a
plan
I need to learn more. Did the Hindmost tell you of a courier ship? Of puppeteer manufacture, with an experimental drive--"

"Long Shot.
I've flown it. The warcats have it!" He hadn't called a Kzin a warcat in a very long time.

"We're going to take it back. We have time to recruit Acolyte," Tunesmith said.

They were nearing the edge of the jungle.

"Why would Acolyte join you?"

"I expect you will tell him to. Acolyte's father sent him to you 'to learn wisdom'."

"Joining you on a piracy expedition, is that wisdom?"

The puppeteer asked, "Do you need us? Do you trust us? Could you fight alone?"

The protector said, "I must leave someone to fly
Hot Needle of Inquiry,
or else leave
Needle
abandoned and adrift among the comets."

The Hindmost immediately said, "I can fly
Needle."

"Hindmost, you would run."

"Louis and I will be pleased to--"

"Louis flew
Long Shot
once before. He will again. You and Acolyte will fly
Needle."

"As you will," the Hindmost said.

Tunesmith said, "Louis, you swore an oath. You must protect the Ringworld."

In a mad moment Louis Wu had sworn to
save
the Ringworld. He'd done that, twelve years ago, when the Ringworld had drifted off center... but Louis only said, "I won't force Acolyte."

"Then I must await developments."

There were long-tailed Hanging People in the jungle. They threw sticks and dung. Louis and the Hindmost rose above the treetops, but Tunesmith's float plates dropped near the forest floor. They heard him whoop and saw him flinging missiles. Stones and sticks flew faster and more accurately than Hanging People could dodge. In less than a minute they'd vanished.

Tunesmith rose to join them. "Tell me again why Ringworld species are always hospitable!"

"Tunesmith, those were apes," Louis said. "Hominids aren't always sapient, you know. Is this what you picked to pilot your probe?"

"Yes, made into protectors. Sapience is relative."

Louis wondered if a protector really didn't see the difference between these apes and Louis Wu. A protector's lips and gums hardened into something like a beak; he could not frown, or smile, or sneer, or grin.

It was jungle all the way, trees and vines that Louis couldn't name, and a species of elbow root growing in chains at sixty-degree angles, big enough to match sequoias.

Louis switched his faceplate display to infrared. Now lights on the ground wove about each other, lurked, charged, merged. Thousands of tiny lights above him must be birds. Larger lights in the trees would be sloth and Hanging People and--Louis swerved to dodge a fifty-pound flying squirrel with a head that was all ears and fangs. It cursed luridly as it passed under him.

Nice day for a float.

Tunesmith settled in a circle of elbow trees. The ground was uneven, humped here and there, and overgrown with a tangle of grass. The Hindmost descended and Louis followed, still seeing nothing... and then an abandoned float plate. How had that gotten here?

His own disk settled. Louis stepped off, and they were surrounded. Weird little men stepped out of the elbow trees and women popped out of the ground. All were armed with short blades. They only stood heart-high. Louis, wearing impact armor, did not feel threatened.

Tunesmith hailed them and began talking rapidly. Louis's translator device had never heard this language; it and he could only listen. But he could see through torn grass into a burrow that ran deep underground. The grass was torn just so in fifty places.

He was standing on a city.

Hominids--descended from the Pak who must have built the Ringworld--had occupied every possible ecological niche, starting half a million years ago with a population already in the trillions (though the numbers were pretty much guesswork.) This group were burrowers. They wore only their own straight brown body hair, and carried animal-skin pouches. They had a streamlined look, like ferrets.

They were looking less defensive now. Some were laughing. Tunesmith spoke and more laughed. One stepped to a rise of ground and pointed.

Tunesmith bowed. He said, "Acolyte is hunting a daywalk or three to spin of port. Louis, what shall I tell them? They offer rishathra."

He was tempted for an instant, then embarrassed. "Louis isn't in season."

Tunesmith barked. The Burrowing People laughed hysterically, looking at Louis with myopic eyes.

Louis asked, "What was your excuse?"

"I've been here. They know about protectors. Board your disk."

The smells were
stunningly rich. Hundreds of varieties of plants, scores of animals. Kzinti could survive in style here, until their numbers grew too great. Acolyte, millions of miles from the nearest Kzinti, did not miss their company; but Acolyte resolved to tell his father about this place.

A blotch in infrared, bigger than other blotches, went from perfect stillness to a blur of speed, leapt into a tree, merged with a smaller glow, paused--

Tunesmith yowled.

A returning yowl seemed muffled. Louis's dawdling translator caught up; it said, "Acolyte!" "Here. Wait." Then: "Louis!"

"Hello, Acolyte!" called Louis.

"Louis! I was worried! How are you?"

"Young. Hungry, antsy, not quite sane."

"You were forever in the healing box!"

Tunesmith said, "Acolyte kept bothering me for updates until I had to find work for him elsewhere."

Louis was touched. Acolyte had worried... thinking that Louis remained in the 'doc because there was more to be done for him. More likely Tunesmith was just keeping Louis out of the way; or he might have been refining the rejuvenation process, or using Louis as a test subject to study nanotechnology, tanj him. A twelve-year-old should not be forced to such cynical thinking, even a twelve-year-old Kzin.

The massive cat was halfway up a tree trunk, eating, while Hanging People threw hard fruit from a distance. Tunesmith separated his float plates and hovered one next to Acolyte.

Chmeee was a Kzin chosen by the puppeteer Nessus to join his exploration team, decades ago. Acolyte was Chmeee's eldest son, cast out by his father and sent to "learn wisdom" from Louis Wu. He stood seven feet tall, shorter than his father, furred in orange and dark chocolate: dark ears, dark stripes down his back, a smaller chocolate comma down his tail and leg. Three parallel ridges ran down his belly, possibly his father's legacy; Louis had never asked. On a huge tilted trunk under green-black foliage, he looked utterly at home.

He asked, "Are we finally ready?"

"Yes," said Tunesmith.

Acolyte judged the distance above a drop of fifty feet. He had to make a twisting leap. He hit the disk on all fours. The disk dropped under his weight, and Acolyte slid, scrambled, and had his grip.

A Kzin's hands were good, but with his claws extended his fingers would have slid off. Anger might have killed him. It was a jest, or a test--and Tunesmith had been dropping past him, ready to catch him.

"I should reclaim my float plate," Acolyte said. He dropped toward the forest floor and took off through tilted trunks along a path Louis couldn't find.

A float plate floated above a display of huge, gorgeous orange flowers. Acolyte eased the disk he was riding down over the other float plate, and with a magnetic
click
they locked.

"I left one with the Underpeople, their toy until I need it," the Kzin said. "I mass too much. I have to be too careful when it's just one floater."

The double disk took off, Tunesmith followed, and they were racing.

Louis tried to keep up, but it was a hairy ride. They were leaving the Hindmost far behind. Tunesmith called, "What have you learned?"

The Kzin bellowed, "Nothing since we spoke. Teela's path ends with the Mechanics, two months after she left Louis and my father. I have dwelt among five civilizations, six species--interesting symbiotic culture, Mechanics, and a variety of Hanging People. None tell any tale of Teela Brown, or Seeker, or weapons that throw light, advanced medicine, famine averted, a flycycle--Whatever I thought of, they never heard of it."

"Were you lied to?"

"Who would dare? Who would care? Teela's path is discontinuous. I never tracked her through the sky! I only found places where she and Seeker landed. The Mechanics remember her from two or three falans after a floating building passed over, a hundred and fifty falans ago. Have you sought rumors of flying devices? Or assessed conflicting reports?"

"Yes."

"Louis--" Acolyte looked back, then slowed. Tunesmith slowed too: the race was over.

"Louis, I was asked to track Seeker and Teela Brown. I found little. They disappeared for seventy or eighty falans. Then the Vampire protector Bram tells us they entered the Repair Center as breeders. The man died of tree-of-life--too old--and Teela woke from coma as a protector."

Tunesmith said, "I want to know how breeders could find their way into the Map of Mars. I want to know why Bram let Teela wake. It would have been so easy to study her in her coma, then kill her. They may be trivial questions, but I wonder."

Louis shrugged. He'd wondered too. Bram had had little respect for human life, breeder or protector.

Acolyte asked, "Are you caught up with what's happening?"

"Tanj, no. Tunesmith is driving me crazy with his secrets."

The protector said, "I'll talk as we go.

"Louis, you made me. You saw that a Vampire protector was unfit to decide the Ringworld's fate, or else that Bram himself was unfit. You thought a Ghoul would serve. You lured me into the Repair Center. A tree-of-life garden made me a protector. You expected me to kill Bram, and I did. I assume you considered implications." No anger, no bitterness showed. A protector's face was like hardened leather.

"Consider this implication: no protector ever evolved to stand aside when his descendants are in danger. You saw that a Ghoul's children must benefit where other hominids survive well, but did you see that too? We must act, sensibly or not. The Fringe War was bad enough when you entered the 'doc, Louis. Now the ARM has brought antimatter-powered ships, twenty and counting. Now it seems the Kzinti have stolen the puppeteers' Quantum II hyperdrive ship. To use it for courier service tells us interesting secrets, doesn't it?"

Louis agreed. "They don't dare endanger it. They don't know how to duplicate the drive. There's still only one ship."

Tunesmith asked, "Hindmost, could
you
build another
Long Shot!"

"No. My research team could, but trial and error played a large part, and the cost... broke my power, drove me into exile, as much as any of my other mistakes."

They circled Tunesmith's service stack, then landed. Tunesmith said, "I can't do nothing. If I can understand
Long Shot
--Here, let me reset our destination. Acolyte, this setting would take you to your father. Were you tempted?"

"I have nothing to offer him yet."

"Follow me through." Tunesmith stepped from his float plate and was gone.

They came out underground, where float plates waited. The air smelled of the caverns beneath the Map of Mars. Tunesmith showed off his toys as they drifted through tunnels and caverns. A dozen float plates carried a huge laser cannon at a walking pace. "I made this from specs in the Hindmost's records," the protector said, "with a few improvements. I'll mount it on Mons Olympus. I've heliographed the design to protectors along the rim wall. Soon we won't have to depend on the sun to let us talk. I should mount one on Fist-of-God too.

"Here--" He reached out and down to snatch up a nest of tubing. He put one end to his mouth and wild music emerged. "What do you think?" He blew again, and what the futz, Louis danced on the float plate with an imaginary partner.