by Larry Niven
A grid of superconducting material ran beneath the Ringworld floor. Nessuss flycycles had flown by magnetic levitation. With maglev for lift, thrusters didnt have to be powerful… but these redesigned machines did deliver some serious push. When his velocity relative to the landscape had decreased to something reasonable, Louis eased down into atmosphere until he could hear a thin whine in the sonic fold. He could see a lacework of water vapor around the other flycycle. His own shock waves were barely visible.
Tunesmith spoke suddenly in his earphones. "Your mission is to seek out a crashed ship. Louis, guide them. Report to me at every step. Watch for more than one ship down. The crash grooves they carve would be close together and parallel.
"I want to know the species and what to expect of them. Dont throw your life away to find out. Dont kill any LE if you can avoid it, but if you must, leave no sign. If possible, negotiate. Ill make any guests glad they met me.
"I worry for what I might forget to tell you.
"Louis, remember that information storage is easy. All of human knowledge is probably stored aboard every ARM spacecraft, with blocks to restrict secrets. The right officer will know the right passwords. Acolyte, if you find a Patriarchy ship instead, give up. The knowledge may be there, but no hero will give it to you—"
Louis said, "A telepath might," but Tunesmiths monologue droned on.
I worry for what I might forget to tell you… that its a three hundred million mile walk home, and the stepping disk is orbiting beyond your reach, and the Hindmost will be in the doc. So you cant count on him for an ally, and you cant use the doc to rejuvenate, Louis. In the fullness of time, Ill make you a protector… Not likely that Tunesmith would say any of that. Louis concentrated on flying.
Far behind them was the low wall of fog. The ship they were tracking had skipped across a sea, a river, another river. A ridge showed a glittering notch of bare scrith where the ship must have bounced aloft. The arrow-straight canyon resumed further on, scrith rimmed with splashed lava. Following it was easy. It ran across forest, a white sand beach, a long, long stretch of veldt… there…
So small a thing to have wrought so much damage.
Against another ridge lay an elegantly contoured half-cylinder, flat along one side, no cabins, no windows, no breaks in the reflective surface, except near one end. Louis zoomed his faceplate.
"Is that an ARM ship?" Acolyte asked. "Or Patriarchy? Smooth as it is, it might be puppeteer. But theyd use a General Products hull, wouldnt they?"
Closing now at several mach. The protrusion at one end looked like a bees stinger.
"Its a drop tank," Louis said.
"Explain," Hanuman rapped.
"Its not a spacecraft. Its part of a spacecraft, the part that carries extra fuel, the part you can throw away." He was furious with himself, and then, suddenly, elated. "The ship whapped down in stasis. After the stasis field collapsed, they still had a working spacecraft."
Working spacecraft!
Keep talking. Somehow he held his voice steady. "They drop the tank when they want agility or longer range. Id say they were getting ready for a dogfight."
But a working spacecraft!
Hanuman said, "Flup. We have to find that ship. Were you expecting this?"
"No. Lying Bastard was a different design. After we hit, we were grounded. Now what?"
"Possibilities suggest themselves," Hanuman said. "First, Im linked to Tunesmith. Tunesmith, you have Louiss assessment. Shall we wait for the ship to return for its fuel? Is it ARM or Kzinti or something else? Must we negotiate or challenge?"
Louis said, "ARM." Kzinti would have marked their property. Pierin or Kdat or Trinocs wouldnt challenge Kzinti or men; Kzinti had owned them. Puppeteers wouldnt directly challenge anything. Outsiders wouldnt get this close to a star. "Might be some other human branch, or Kzinti bandits, or Trinocs… but call it ARM.
"Thats a little tank, so were looking for a little ship. A fighter wont carry antimatter fuel. Energy stored in a battery. Water for reaction mass because its easy to store and pump. They might have antimatter weapons. Its surprising that a little ship would have a stasis field. Maybe the UN is getting better at building them."
Any part of a warcraft would have dot-sized cameras all over it. "If theyre not watching us, they might still record us," Louis said. "So what shall we be?"
The little hologram heads of his companions looked blank.
Louis explained. "Were operatives working for a superintelligent protector who used to be an eater of the dead. Thats too scary. Any military LE who heard that might shoot us out of hand. An ARM ship will have records of what a protector is. Thatll scare them too.
"So, what do we want to be? Were a Kzin and a man and a Hanging People protector. We dont want to be Patriarchy. Theyre scary too. We cant show ARM identification—"
"Ah," Hanuman said. "You want to lie."
"Hanuman? A new concept?"
Acolyte rumbled in dissatisfaction. Hanuman said, "My species breeders arent sapient. Ive been able to think and speak for less than a falan. Who would I lie to? Tunesmith?"
A dog will try to lie to its human master, Louis thought, but getting away with it — "Stet, but we do not want to confront them with a protector. Hanuman, do you remember how you behaved as a breeder? Can you do it again?"
"You would make me a pet monkey?"
"Yah."
"Stet. If I cant talk, I cant be caught in a lie. Acolytes pet, I assume. What of you?"
Louis said, "I think Tunesmith saw this coming. Our gear is pretty close to what Nessus brought aboard Lying Bastard. Lets be the Hindmosts new crew. With the puppeteer leading from wayyy behind, as usual. It would explain flycycles. Hanuman, any thoughts?"
"Were telling a story. Better if they do not learn that Louis Wu made a protector and set him in charge of the Ringworld. You would seem too powerful and too undefended. Best if we do not mention an experimental medical system using nanotechnology, either. That was stolen from the United Nations, even if eight hundred falans ago. Theyd want it back."
"I hadnt even thought of that. Stet, lets keep working on this. Acolyte—"
"I am proud of what I am! And I was not taught to lie. We serve a powerful master. Why not simply demand what we want?"
"Maybe this is why Chmeee sent you to me. Acolyte, its only a fighter, but their mother ship would carry antimatter fuel. Hanuman, how many double-X-large plugs does Tunesmith have?"
"One partly completed."
Worse than hed thought. The Ringworld couldnt afford another antimatter explosion! "Acolyte, youre Chmeees son. Stick with the truth, as much as you can. Just dont talk about the Repair Center or Tunesmith or Carlos Wus nanotech autodoc. Your father, Chmeee, rules a chunk of the Map of Earth. The Hindmost made you an offer, and you went off with him rather than fight your father again. Youre his hostage, but you dont know it."
"And how did I meet Louis Wu?" the Kzin demanded.
"I… hadnt got that far."
"Land," ordered Hanuman. "Well fill our kitchen slots while we wait for the ships return. Louis, how long does a dogfight take?"
"Not long. Hours."
They landed among trees like redwood-sized dandelions. Louis had seen these elsewhere.
Light and noise would alert them if a ship returned. Meanwhile they dismounted, stretched, removed their pressure suits. As soon as Acolyte sniffed the air, he bounded away with a howl, hot in pursuit of something the others never saw.
Louis swung his kitchen converter out on its boom. He loaded grass and small plants into the hopper. Hanuman was doing the same. If the kitchen box was based on what theyd used thirty-odd years ago, it would process local vegetation or animal flesh, make handmeal bricks he could eat, and discard the dross. Hed have to catch something meaty, soon.
It extruded a brick.
"Wrong setting," Hanuman said. "Here." He turned a dial on Louiss kitchen. "That was for me. Fruit eater."
Louis broke a chunk off the protectors
brick and tasted it. "Good, though. We eat fruit too."
It hit him without warning, a rush of nostalgia. Hed been here before, on unknown landscape in all this Ringworld hugeness, sharing a handmeal brick with Teela. He turned away from Hanuman as his eyes filled with tears.
He remembered Teela Brown.
She was tall and slender and walked with the confidence of a centenarian, though she was only in her thirties. Hed first seen her wearing silver net on blue skin; hair scarlet and orange and black, like bonfire flames and smoke, streaming upward. Later shed put aside flatlander style. Nordik-pale skin, oval face, big brown eyes, and a small, serious mouth; dark and wavy hair cut short to fit into a pressure suit helmet.
She had never stumbled, never had a bad love affair, never been sick or hurt, never been caught in scandal or a public gaffe, until she attended Louis Wus birthday party. Louis still believed that was a statistical fluke. Among a population in the tens of billions, someone like Teela Brown could surely be found.
But the Experimentalist Party among Piersons puppeteers believed that they had been breeding the human race for luck. Teela was the descendant of six generations of Birthright Lottery winners. Whatever happened to Teela could be interpreted as lucky:
Falling in love with Louis Wu. Following him here.
Losing her way, in a domain three million times the surface area of the Earth. Finding Seeker, the brawny explorer who could show her so much of the Ringworlds secrets.
Finding the Repair Center beneath the Map of Mars. Finding a cache of tree-of-life root. Falling into a coma while her joints and brain case expanded, gender disappeared, gums and lips fused to horseshoes of sharp bone, skin thickened and wrinkled into armor… while she became a protector.
Nessus led us, and I led Teela, to the biggest, gaudiest toy in the universe. How could she not want to make it her own? But only a protectors intelligence could hold the Ringworld safe. And when the Ringworld was endangered, Teela Brown the protector saw that she must die.
Death isnt bad luck to a protector. Its just another tool.
Acolyte returned with his mouth bloody. "Good hunting here. My father is missing another fine adventure."
Hanuman asked, "Louis, can you pass for crew on an ARM ship?"
"Theres a notion." Louis thought about it. Did he really remember enough…? "What I cant pass for is a local. Im Homo sapiens, Earth origin. Why do I want to be a crewman, Hanuman? Crew of what?"
Hanuman said, "We must not be servants of a protector. So, I must be a tree-dwelling animal, and you must be a wanderer unless you serve some greater force. If you serve, it must be some aspect of the Fringe War—"
"The ARM, of course. But I dont know ARM protocol, and Im not in their records."
"Isnt there a way you could have been missed?"
"…No. Lets try something else."
He munched on a handmeal while he thought. Drop the previous story; start over. Tell something simple. Something Louis Wu can keep straight, and Acolyte also.
He said, "Lets try to guess what a random ARM fighter has in its computer records.
"They know that we came home — that Chmeee and Louis Wu came home with Nessus injured and no Teela Brown. Suppose Teela lived? She never finds the Repair Center and tree-of-life.
"They might know that the Hindmost landed on Canyon twenty-three years later, and Louis Wu disappeared then. They might have tracked Chmeee too, from one of the Kzin worlds up to where the Hindmost collected him.
"So the Hindmost brings us both back to the Ringworld as crew. Thats the way it happened, but lets say he planned to rendezvous with Teela. She and Louis Wu have been living together ever since." It could have been that way. Should have been! Even though the Ringworld would have been torn apart a year later. Still daydreaming, Louis said, "They had a child after her implant wore off, and thats me."
Hanuman said, "Hypothesis diverges from ARM records."
Tanj! "How?"
"When would these events take place? Louis Wu returned here thirteen years ago. Does the ARM know that?"
"…Yes, they do. ARM found me on Canyon just before the Hindmost collected me." Louis had killed two agents. "Tanj! That would make Louis Wus son twelve years old at best."
"Can you pass for twelve?" Hanuman asked.
"Hah hah."
"Could you, Louis Eldest, have left Teela with a child? The child would be aged a hundred and sixty falans."
"Almost forty years old. Couldnt happen. Teela must have had her five-year infertility shots. Theyd have had to wear off. We never had the time."
Acolyte asked, "Can you be a child of Teela and Seeker?"
"Hah! No. Different species."
Hanuman and Acolyte waited.
Start over. "At the end of the first expedition, thirty-eight years ago, Chmeee and I came back to known space and the Patriarchy. We turned over Long Shot and some information about the Ringworld. We were debriefed by a joint commission, then the ARM asked me a lot more questions. They didnt learn much, because we didnt explore much. Our second expedition was twenty-three years later. What if there was an expedition in between?"
Hanuman asked, "Who sent it?"
"The Hindmost sent it. Expedition number one-and-a-half. I can fake that. I met a puppeteer named Chiron on the Fleet of Worlds. He was pure white, perfectly coiffed with a wonderful array of classic gems, and a little smaller than Nessus—" His companions had never met Nessus. "Thirty pounds lighter than the Hindmost. He sounded just like the Hindmost; I suppose they all had the same training.
"So now we can all describe him, stet? The Hindmost puts Chiron in charge. Chiron leaves not long after Chmeee, and I came back to human space. That brings him here… mmm… at least thirty years ago. He finds Teela. Her infertility shot has worn off. Teela takes up living with one of Chirons crew. Im the child."
"What is your name, child?"
"Luis." Acolyte might forget, but hed still sound right: Looiss, Luis. "Luis Tamasan," the first Oriental name he could think of, to account for the epicanthic folds in his eyes. "Chiron had his records erased. The ARM already knows that puppeteers meddle with their records. Theres no Fertility Board record either, because my father… mmm. Horace Tamasan was born to a freemother, an illegal birth. Lots of bastards go to space."
Hanuman said, "A consistent tale. Have we the acting knack to tell it?"
Tunesmiths voice broke in without warning. "Hanuman, you surmise that an ARM fighter has dropped its add-on tank and gone off to battle. I scan an area bigger than worlds, and I find nothing to fight. My neutrino scan shows no power sources. Battery-powered ships would not register, I assume. Must I watch until they fire lasers or antimatter bullets?"
Louis said, "That half hour delay is going to drive us nuts sooner or later."
"Small ships might escape Tunesmiths instruments, but he wouldnt miss a weapons laser or antimatter flash," said Hanuman. "Would they fight while refusing to use such weapons? No. I surmise there is no fight at all, Luis."
Louis mulled that. If the ARMs hadnt been expecting a fight, where had the ARM ship gone? Why had they dropped their tank first?
"The tank might be empty," Hanuman suggested. "They wanted greater range. They wont be back."
Louis said, "All right, lets rethink. Spinward of us, theres a lot of fog to hide in. Ships could be hunting each other. Ah, flup, never mind." Both aliens were looking at him. "If theres nothing to fight, theyve gone off to look at the puncture! What else is there? The Ringworld is dying. They need to tell their mother ship whats happening here, and they might want to run away fast, so they dropped their tank."
Hanuman thought it over; nodded. "Don your pressure suits."
CHAPTER 11
The Wounded Land
Most of the Mouse Eaters were dozing underground after a morning meal.
This wasnt Wembleths custom. Wembleth was a traveler; he adapted his behavior to his hosts. Hed been living with these nocturnal hunters for several turns of the sky, sharing thei
r meals and their women, teaching them how to make and use tools hed learned of elsewhere.
Most of the villagers were inside their burrow houses. Older children and elders were cleaning up after the feast, with Wembleths help, while shadow withdrew from the sun. For him it was a good choice; he needed some sunlight to stay healthy. In a minute theyd all go in -
And the day lit up.
Children began screaming.
Mouse Eaters couldnt deal with mere daylight; what would this glare do to them? His own eyes squinted to teary slits. Wembleth scooped up two small children, hugged their faces against his chest, and shouted at the rest. "Get inside!" He darted into the nearest house. The others would have to follow, or find their own houses.
Windows were mere slits in Mouse Eater houses. Wembleth dropped his load of children into the dark, wiggled past more frightened children and out again.
In the horrid light children and elders were running blind. Elder Mouse Eaters tended to lose their sight anyway; it let them move around in daylight. Through squinted eyes Wembleth could still see. They could not. Adults were bigger than he was. Somehow he wrestled them into doorways.
He couldnt guess how much time passed. The light faded. A hot fierce wind blasted across the plaza, scattering coals from the commonfire, and died. Presently a softer wind was blowing the other way. When he couldnt find anyone, couldnt see anyway, he crawled indoors. Indoors was perfect blackness; his night sight had faded, and the horrid light had faded too. Wembleth lay down and gasped for air.
Something would change. Something always did, when things went bad. You had to watch for the opportunity that would follow.
Presently Wembleth realized that he was suffocating.
The blast Spit Snail Darter, in stasis, into a rocky cliff above a vast forest. When time resumed, the ship had become part of an immense landslide of shattered shale.
Far, far to spinward, a sea of mist ran all across the horizon, hiding everything up to the base of the Arch. Worlds away, the mist domed upward. The near edge of the mist was a shock wave still moving sluggishly toward Snail Darter.