by Larry Niven
"Nope. Do you feel lucky? Protectors are—"
"Territorial, yes, Luis. Wembleth, are we close?"
"Go more slow. Go up."
Louis took them up. "Here," Wembleth said when they were flying along the rim of the cliff. "Go left, starboard."
The tilted plain of grass might have been a lawn if it werent so big. Patterns shifted restlessly on its vast expanse. Wind? Louis borrowed Roxannys mag specs. With their aid he could make out thousands of creatures resembling yellow sheep.
Ahead, the rock barrier had fallen. Soil above had spilled after it. "Quake? Wembleth, what makes quakes on the Ringworld?"
Wembleth shrugged. Roxanny said, "Meteors?"
"I dont see a crater."
"Then try this, Junior. We have here a protector stronghold. What if some other protector wanted in?"
"Long, long ago," Louis said. A whole ecology, several varieties of grass and a puffball forest, had invaded the fallen rock and earth. "But that track is new."
It began as a series of scorched craters in the trees below the overgrown slope that had been a wall. The scattered dots became a dashed line of freshly chewed, carbonized earth as it rose up across the lawn and higher, into the curved walls of the Citadel itself.
"We werent wrong about defenses," Louis said. "Something climbed this slope, and weaponry fired on it all the way. Wembleth, how did you find this?"
"Roxanny sent me out to look around. The slope looked dangerous. Something must have done all this damage. I climbed a tree for a better look. Look, it goes all the way through those holes in the wall."
Roxanny said, "Follow that path and well be safe. All the booby traps are already triggered."
"You sure? Good, then I wont turn on the sonic shield."
"Youve got a shield of some kind? Stet, turn it on!"
"I was being sarcastic. Roxanny, its crazy to go in there. Thats a protectors castle. Theres no telling what games hes — what did she call him?"
"Penultimate. The next-to-last protector on this sea of maps. There could be a million years of miracles in there. Louis, we cant turn back now."
Its easy to be a coward when you cant fight and cant run. Louis looked behind him, seeking an ally. Wembleths posture urged him forward, as eager and impatient as Roxanny.
Louis flipped the sonic fold on. He couldnt see it working; they werent moving at anywhere near sonic speed.
Dark animals had been circling the yellow sheep, hidden beneath the grass. Now they streamed straight toward the flycycle, snarling crazily. They looked like dire wolves.
Theyd certainly stop Homo habilis who got this far. Louis skimmed above them, through cratered grass, following the path.
It was a time of surprises after ages of predictability. Proserpina brought the mag ship down at her base, and found:
No flycycle.
Everybody gone.
She found Hanuman among the fruit trees. He hadnt known that the flycycle was missing, but his guess was the same as Proserpinas. They ran for the mag ship and set it floating toward the Penultimates Citadel.
On the path of destruction Louis was following, they found places where the Penultimates own defenses had blasted away thick rock wall and left windows standing or fallen intact. The windows were hexagons about the size of a man. They were stronger than the stone. Diamond?
Louis could feel mechanical senses watching him.
He took the flycycle through a gap the size of a sailing yacht.
Sound struck at them. It was almost speech, a million angry voices yelling incomprehensibly, all muffled by the sonic fold. Light blazed at them, dimmed by the mag specs Louis had forgotten to take off. Behind him Wembleth and Roxanny both had heads bowed, tears running from their eyes. Louis looked for the nearest cover: a melted hole in a second wall. It looked too small for the sonic fold. He turned it off, screamed against the sound, went through, flipped it back on.
The roar eased, the light eased.
They were in a jumble of machinery, in a corridor twenty meters across and much higher. Some of the machines were tall and skeletal, like construction machinery. Many looked half-finished. The place looked like Tunesmiths workshop, or Brams, but more crowded.
Roxanny said, "I was hoping whatever went through here shot out the defenses." She was rubbing her eyes. Wembleth seemed okay. But -
"That stench!" Roxanny said. "Like a circus!"
She was right, though "Luis" would never have seen a circus. Wembleth said, "It smells like Blond Carnivores running a troll drive. I dont understand."
It was bad enough with the sonic fold keeping some of it out. Louis asked, "Pak planet panthers? That might drive away breeders, that and the lights and noise. I wonder what this smells like to a protector? That unwashed crowd stench could be someone elses children, millions of them. Maybe a thousand angry protectors smell like this. Thats it, its a warning for protectors."
Roxanny said, "Us too. Time to q—"
Wembleth jumped from the flycycle, dropped a meter, and landed with bent knees. He ran, weaving between machines and parts of machines, following the dashed line of melted floor. He looked back at the flycycle and happily waved them on.
"I was about to say, Time to quit," Roxanny said. "But lets follow Wembleth. Right behind him, Luis. No short cuts. I think hes right; we shouldnt get high enough to be shot at either. And dont get too close."
"Stet," Louis muttered. "No point in being right there when something cremates the poor bastard."
The scars of blasting led Wembleth around the curve of the corridor, then rose up a wall. He couldnt follow on foot. He waved the flycycle down and climbed up between them. He pointed past Louiss ear. "There, high up."
The blast trail had broken through, high up. Louis looked around Wembleth at Roxanny. She shrugged.
There wasnt any cover. Louis took the flycycle straight up and through and let it fall. A beam — not a laser, a jet of plasma — fired at the hole after theyd dropped below it, and followed them all the way down to cower in a maze of ramps. The wall collapsed under its fury, a dozen meters too high to harm the flycycle.
They were deep inside the faux mountain. This interior cavity was mostly empty space laced with a maze of ramps of Brobdingnagian size. Louis wondered if it had been intended as a training ground for warriors. If that, it was other things too. As Roxanny had guessed, there were wonders. Here was a line of crude machines floating by magnetic or gravitic levitation. There, light rays in a haze of dust bent through a scintillating focus. There were guns or instrument packages mounted where ramps crossed. They all looked ruined by heat.
Louis was tempted to stray off the path of destruction. Roxanny was right, a lot of guns had been shot to pieces here… but he could still feel sensors seeking him. Later?
He floated across a broken ramp to a blackened flight of steps. It was fatuous to suppose that a death trap wouldnt repeat, yet Roxannys optimism seemed to be working. A projectile weapon rained bits of metal on them, but the sonic shield diverted them all until Louis could drift the flycycle under a ramp. He left the path to veer around a fallen wall. Something exploded in a glare of light; the sound barely reached them.
"Wait," Wembleth said. "Whats that?"
It was a war zone lit up like a holoflick ad. Rubble like a stack of pancakes slumped in the glare, soggy but not quite molten. It had been one of Tunesmiths service stacks. An attack laser on a wall high above them bathed the rubble in pearl-white light. As they approached, it burned out.
The stack still glowed white hot, and black at the top. Those float plates wouldnt fly after treatment like that. The stepping disk at its tip -
Hold that thought. "End of the trail," Louis said.
Roxanny said, "Yah. Id say this is what weve been following, and Id say it was armed. Down there — " She pointed at the foot of the stack. "What do you see?"
"More melted machinery." A glitter of lenses. "Laser cannon?"
"A weapons and shield package. It sat like a cap
on that, that tower. It must have shot up everything that attacked it—"
"All but one, Roxanny. That last weapon got it."
"That last weapon just burned out ten seconds ago! Everything thats tried to hurt us is damaged. Luis, Wembleth, we have here a perfect chance to go exploring!"
That seemed a little too fortuitous to be credible. "You say burned out. What if its just sputtering?"
"Your point?"
"Go home now. Stick to the path, but photograph everything. Work our way back. Study what weve got. Show it to Proserpina if we cant solve it ourselves—"
"Luis, what does any of that get us?"
"Might get us another way in," Louis said. "Roxanny, have you got a better idea?"
"Get out and look around. Luis, if were on foot, well look like breeders. We are breeders. I dont think the defenses will fire at a breeder on foot," Roxanny Gauthier said.
"Breeders are naked. Get naked?"
"Youre already naked."
"And youre already schitz." Louis turned the flycycle and started back. That last plasma beam had burned a nice big hole in the wall. It ran to floor level. Theyd be safer leaving than theyd been coming in.
Wembleth gripped his shoulder. "Look. Plants."
Far above their heads, greenery dripped over the edges of a ramp. It did seem a funny place for a garden.
"We know a way out," Louis insisted. "One."
Roxanny too was gripping his arm. Her voice was soothing. "Whats biting you, Luis? Look, this ramp is as wide as a racing freeway. Just take us straight up. If something attacks, we fall back to here, and thats back on the safe path. Stet? Go straight up."
The ramps had no railings. Louis didnt say so. Roxanny saw him as a coward, and somehow he couldnt stand that. He lifted the flycycle straight up.
Nothing fired on them.
A green jungle spilled over both sides of the upper ramp.
Roxanny said, "The guns wont fire on crops either. This was the Penultimates food supply."
"You dont know any of that. Youre betting three lives!"
"ARM detectives do that, Luis. This is our last chance to learn anything without Proserpina learning it too. And Proserpina is not my superior officer! Take us there, Luis."
"The jungle?"
"Yah."
He started to turn, and something found them.
The sonic fold rang like a great bell, and kept ringing. Louis shouted against the sound. He turned off the lift motor, and Roxanny had better be right! The flycycle dropped. In midair he passed out.
From the moment it came in view of the Citadel, the mag ship was observed. Proserpina worked to muffle the wavelengths reflecting from the ship. As they neared the mountain, something got through: projectiles stuttered toward the mag ship, then veered away. Light blasted up at them and also veered. Hanuman kept flying. It was all he could do while Proserpina fought the ship.
His path wasnt in doubt. He hoped Tec Gauthier had followed the chain of chewed landscape. Even if she had, she could still be dead in a hundred ways, and her companions too.
He asked. "Do they live?"
Proserpina didnt answer. Her fields delicately plucked a section of wall away. There was an inner wall, and she plucked that away too. Light flared and was gone. Hanuman was looking at something like a beehive. Proserpina took them in.
There were strong arms around Louis, easing him down to a flat surface. Everything hurt.
He was familiar with this pain: the injuries hed been healing from, plus a whack on his jaw and a ringing in his ears. He opened his eyes. Roxanny was lifting Wembleth into the forward seat. Blood ran from Wembleths nose and ears.
She shouted. "You awake?" He could barely hear her. "Here, help me with this." She lifted him into position. She was trying to hook Wembleth into the medical systems. "We had crash fields," she said, "but he didnt. He might have broken his back or his neck. Look, hes got a nosebleed."
"So do you," he shouted.
She looked at him. "So do you. I guess thats the sonics. Tanj, is he dead?"
Louis, with Roxanny supporting him, finished mating Wembleth to the medical system. Readouts flickered on. "Hes alive," Louis said. "Trauma all the futz over his body. Hell feel like me when he wakes up."
"Its feeding him boosterspice, isnt it?"
That ancient trademark — "Yah. Hes never had boosterspice before. I think hes old, Roxanny. Hell eat up the whole supply."
"Tanj. That would have been my boosterspice supply. All right, Luis, put your hands on the controls."
"We cant fly in this position. We should get into seats."
"I know." She set his hands on the flight stick and the keypad. She turned on the lift. Then she pushed him hard in the chest. He flew backward into space.
He fell two meters onto rock. A sea of pain washed over him. He couldnt breathe. He saw the flycycle lift, and pause.
"Youre Louis Wu," Roxanny said, leaning over from the aft seat to meet his eyes. "Youre a quarter of a thousand years old. You were the servant of a Piersons puppeteer until you changed masters, and what you serve now I wouldnt care to describe—"
Groaning, Louis rolled to his knees, then managed to stand. He stretched up, but the flycycle was floating out of reach. The controls shouldnt have served other hands than his. Maybe Proserpina had hacked the security system so she could use it herself.
Louis asked again. "What is this?"
"I made Proserpina tell me, but I guessed first, Louis. Theres just too much wrong with the way you act. You played me for a fool—"
"No, Roxanny, no. I liked being treated like a kid, being young again. No responsibility! Roxanny—" Louis Wu was fleeing from the ARM. He couldnt tell her that. There were other things she couldnt know and still run loose. He said, "I love you."
She pointed at a mass that was still red hot. "What is that?"
"A service stack. Float plates from… elsewhere on the Ring."
"What about the weapons? Those."
"Dont know." He could guess. Tunesmith must have lost a service stack exploring the Citadel. Hed armed the next one and invaded again, and got this far.
"And that silver cap?"
He couldnt answer.
"Thats a puppeteer stepping disk, isnt it? And its pumping light and bullets and whatever else falls on it into some other space. That means its still working, and thats why its still working—"
"Dangerous! Roxanny, you have no idea where it leads!"
"All the things you lied about! I am not a child." Roxanny studied him. "I didnt believe her. You didnt make love like an older man. So I tried you out, and you do."
"How could you—"
"There was a teacher."
"Roxanny—"
"Well, we seem to be a target here. I think Ill just try it." The flycycle lifted, slid sideways.
The pile of ruined lift plates glowed dull red. The plate at the top was dull silver. Roxanny dropped the flycycle onto it and was gone.
She was upside down and falling. Roxannys breath streamed out in a long silent scream. She fell along smooth, vertical, red rock toward ochre sand a long way down. Past her feet was navy blue sky touched with pink.
Then the flycycle righted itself and began to rise again — but her scream remained. The flycycle had emerged on Mars with the sonic fold off. In a vacuum you scream, or else your lungs rupture.
Mars. Ridiculous. Insane. But she knew this place, shed trained on Mars. Her spinning senses found the Arch, the Ringworld rising over itself. So she wasnt quite crazy, it was the Map of Mars on the Great Ocean halfway round the Ringworld. Even so, she and Wembleth would be dead in minutes, in an atmosphere that would be poison if it werent too thin to matter.
The blood that still streamed from her nose was foaming. Wembleths mouth was open in a long scream; he clutched the flycycle controls as if throttling them.
The flycycle eased up above a single silver plate like the one theyd come through: an inverted stepping disk.
Wembleth reach
ed out, pulling at the umbilicals that attached him to the flycycles doc. He swung a fist at the edge of the stepping disk. The rim popped up on a hardware keyboard. His fist pounded the buttons. He twisted flycycle controls, and the vehicle dropped, twisted, and rose to touch the stepping disks undersurface.
There was air and baby blue sky.
Roxanny sucked air, gasped, gasped. She said, "Perfect," her throat a raw whisper. She hugged Wembleth. "Perfect. You saved us. That thing would have come after us. Proserpina. And Luis. Louis Wu." After a long moment she lifted her head. "You just slammed touch points at random, didnt you? I wonder where we are."
She could see everything there was of it. They were on a tiny island in the midst of a flat, calm sea. Nothing but scrub was growing here. It seemed a safe place to leave a stepping disk and its stack of lift plates.
Roxanny popped the cover and tapped touch points. "There," she said. "Lets see them find us now."
Louis tottered toward the service stack. Hed do better with a walking stick or a crutch. He stopped where the heat was too much. He had to follow her… but he couldnt get close. He sat down to think.
Jump to the stepping disk from a higher ramp? Yah, stet.
The service stack wouldnt be red hot forever… but it would take a long time to cool down. A day, two? Hed have to feed himself while he waited.
In a minute hed start climbing toward the hanging garden.
Sputtering light woke him. Hed dozed, or fainted. He watched without surprise as Proserpinas ship descended. Lasers stuttered from a dozen directions. The sunfish ship flickered. Then all the lasers died in fiery puffballs, and the big sunfish ship hovered above him.
Hanuman, in full pressure gear, emerged from the opening hatch.
"They went through there," Louis called. "I have to catch them, but its too hot. Wait!"
Hanuman jumped. He landed on the stepping disk and was gone.
What had turned it on, anyway? Plasma heat? A random bullet? Must have been something like that. Why would Tunesmith send a service stack in here with the stepping disk running? Louis saw Proserpina in the hatch, wearing a pressure suit. He called, "Watch out, its still going!"