by Larry Niven
She dropped onto the stepping disk and was gone.
The sunfish ship turned, questing blindly. It lifted toward the hole in the wall, outside and gone.
Louis wondered how much trouble he was in.
Everyone had left him. He hadnt felt this alone since… he couldnt remember. Roxanny had left him. How would he ever explain… or did she understand too well?
Hed thought of her as his woman, decreed by fate, the only Homo sapiens woman in a vastness of three million worlds.
Shed taken the flycycle. Proserpina had programmed the sunfish ship to take itself home. Louis was on foot. That was good news and bad. It was a futz of a long way to a food source, but it was all downhill. Hunger wouldnt kill him. The Penultimates defenses wouldnt kill him, if he believed Roxannys analysis: he would be seen as a wandering Homo habilis. He was nearly naked already.
But he had to find water sooner than that.
Thered be water to feed that vast green veldt. Even so, there was water closer: not far above his head. His eye could follow ramps around and up and over to the hanging gardens.
Louis began to walk. Nothing shot at him. Maybe Proserpina had shut down the rest of the Penultimates defenses.
He rested more and more frequently. Presently he was crawling. A walking stick sounded really good. Maybe hed find a sapling in the hanging garden. Then, walk home to Proserpinas base. Climb into the ARM doc and finish healing. Figure out what to do next.
He knew that smell.
Hed found the Penultimates tree-of-life supply!
It was a futzy good thing, he thought dizzily, that he hadnt landed the flycycle in the garden. Roxanny would have eaten. She was… maybe past the age, maybe not, given decades of boosterspice. Shed be a protector, or dead. Wembleth might have eaten too, he thought. The natives elegant black-and-white hair could be a sign of age.
Water welled up, pooled on the ramp, and ran into the plants. Louis waded into it on hands and knees. It rose to his belly. He only stopped once, when he realized he was kneeling on bright cloth: on a womans skirt with a hologram running round it. Wild horses ran below Wyoming buttes, around and around.
No telling how long it had been here at the bottom of the pool. Good cloth didnt rot. Teela had owned a skirt like this, bought at a shop in Phoenix. And Louis was crawling again.
He crawled into the garden, dripping, pulling the skirt behind him. There were trees: he could pull himself to his feet. There was more than tree-of-life here. He saw fruit, snap beans, fist-sized ears of corn… He knelt and began to dig.
He pulled up a yellow root, shook off some dirt, and bit into it. It was like chewing wood.
This was twice insane. He was too young. Carlos Wus nanotech doc had made him too young. There was no reason for him to be interested in tree-of-life. It might kill him. He went on eating.
CHAPTER 18
The Ringworld Floor
Hanuman caught the rim of the stepping disk with a hand and a foot. Rocks like rust-colored teeth waited far below him. For millions of falans his kind had known what to do about falling.
Proserpina flicked through. Hanuman caught her belt, but he wasnt needed: she had the rim of the stepping disk. "Trap," she said. She pulled herself onto an ochre rock. "Crude. Aliens?"
Hanuman said, "Tunesmith is careful. Anything might come through from the Penultimates home. Proserpina, we were told to wait. Hes sent us a service stack."
"Follow," said Proserpina. She swung around from the rim and thumped soundly against the stepping disk. Nothing happened. "Gauthiers changed the link."
"I know the protocols." Hanuman popped the controls open, freed a hand, and tapped rapidly. "Well lose Gauthiers link. Do you care where the detective and the native went?"
"Shell change the settings again. Theyre lost in the network. Go."
Hanuman swung himself down and was elsewhere.
Under a hemisphere of artificial sky, a sun burned low, red, and flattened. Veldt stretched out around Hanuman, with a lake and a low forest in the distance.
Proserpina flicked in behind him. She gaped at the lowering sun. "Was there a planet-born protector?"
"Yes. I dont know details," Hanuman said.
"I am suddenly very hungry." Proserpina loped toward the trees.
"I surmise," Hanuman said, "that protectors lose their hunger when they have too little to protect. Were you idle for a very long time?"
They were running through yellow grain, and Hanuman was falling behind. He recognized the trees ahead.
His memories as a breeder were murky. He was old, slowing down, joints starting to hurt. The troop had fought an intruder. Hanuman, fiercest of the males, got close enough to inhale a scent that sparked a rage of hunger. Hed eaten himself stupid, then estivated, then… woke like this, in a pocket of forest transplanted deep underground, with its own wandering sun. His own forest to keep him sane, and puzzles to train his newly expanded mind.
The trees were fruit trees. Lower plants grew at the edges. Ringworld life was Pak life, and all these were edible crops. Proserpinas hands plunged into the dark soil. She tore a yellow root out of the ground and ate, and gave another to Hanuman.
Presently she asked, "Wheres Tunesmith?"
"I cant call him." The pressure suit Proserpina had worked up for him was a quick fix. It didnt fit well, and it didnt have a communication link to Tunesmith. "Hell find us," Hanuman said.
"I was trapped on a single map for more than a million falans," she said. "When my Pak brethren ceased to supervise the Ringworld landscape, I continued to test for protectors in the Repair Center. The Repair Center has remained active, and I have remained passive. Im the last defense. One day I will be needed. Even now that day may not have come, but we must see. I should explore. Where can you take me?"
"Your interest is in the massing of alien craft near our sun, isnt it?"
"Yes."
Hanuman rewrote settings. "Come."
They were in a vast, dark, ellipsoidal space.
Stars glared unimpeded, light-enhanced, in walls and floor and ceiling. Spacecraft were harder to see. Tunesmith had set blinking circles round the ones hed found; he might have missed others. Thousands of ships. Hundreds of thousands of tiny blinking points: probes.
Only Proserpinas head turned.
Three long swinging booms ended in chairs equipped with lap keyboards. All three were empty. Hanuman asked, "Would you like — ?"
"Shush," she said, and continued to take it all in. Stepping disks: one visible. She couldnt see the one she was standing on. Weapons and cameras: she couldnt see those either. The star projections could mask anything.
If Tunesmith attacked, it would be from above, and Hanuman would attack too. She was ready — but that was instinct speaking. Practically speaking, if Tunesmith wanted her life, it was his. She asked, "Do you know these ships?"
"Some of them." Hanuman pointed out a few: Puppeteer, Trinoc, Outsider, Kzinti, ARM, Sheathclaws.
"Some are only observers," Proserpina said. "Some are arrayed for war. Badly. The ARM would win if they struck there and there…" Her voice wandered off. "And wreckage from this ship or this one might strike the Ringworld. That tail design confines antimatter fuel, doesnt it? Has Tunesmith considered destroying all of these fleets?"
"Tunesmith considers everything."
"But I dont know his tools. He must be at work on something! Something besides mere defensive meteor control. I wont know anything until I know what we can fight with. Or run with."
Hanuman said, "Run?"
"I speculate." Proserpina walked around the curve of the glowing wall. Under a glare of light were the bones of an ancient protector, laid out with some of his tools. The joints were swollen into knobs. Vertebrae in the back were fused.
"They had already begun to mutate," she said. "Do you know that we kill mutants? Do you still do that?"
"Of course, if they smell wrong, or behave wrong."
"This one was very good at what he did. Look a
t the state of the bones, the scarring from mere age. He must have survived tens of thousands of falans. Hanuman, should we have loosed our predators?"
"No."
"But these who were our own shape have occupied every ecological niche we didnt fill." She looked hard at Hanuman. Shed almost managed to ignore his mutant smell. "I see your point. Not just scavengers like this one, but brachiators like you. Mutations and evolution are good, if only you can stop it now, always now, so that your own kind need not change."
Hanuman didnt answer. She was only stating the obvious.
But Tunesmith spoke. "Your kind, your original Pak, did not survive. Thats what mutations and evolution are for, Proserpina. Something almost of your shape has multiplied into the tens of trillions. You dont like some of us? When did you ever like all of your neighbors?"
He was standing atop a chair on a boom just above her head. He could have nailed her in an instant. Too clever, too quick.
Proserpina said, "Bet. Even odds well be dead in nineteen falans, if I read these patterns right. Youve studied them longer. Hello, Tunesmith."
Tunesmith leapt down. "Hello, Proserpina, revered ancestor. Are your guests safe?"
"I see this as more urgent than their lives. You have been meddling with our basic design!"
"Yes, but not quickly enough. I need all the help I can get."
"What design changes have you made? What changes do you contemplate?"
"What would be your approach to dealing with the Fringe War?"
"I might have tried… can you give me a way to make pictures?"
Tunesmith set his chair swinging near the elliptical wall. Now the starscape was gone, and the wall was deep blue. Tunesmith waved at the wall: white lines appeared.
Proserpina jumped to another chair. She waved shapes to life. Sun. Shadow squares. Ringworld. They were white lines and curves, and then they were photographically realistic views. Proserpinas arms moved like a concert masters. The sun took on detail: magnetic fields cradled the interior. The fields changed: squeezed. The suns south magnetic pole curdled, churned, then sprayed light.
"I might have tried this," Proserpina said. "When we built the Ringworld, we set a superconductor network within the foundation structure. We can manipulate magnetic fields." The suns south pole jetted X-ray-colored flame. Slowly the sun moved north, leaving the Ringworld behind. Its gravity pulled, faint lines on the blue wall, and the Ringworld followed.
"We use the sun for thrust, up to a few meters per second squared by Interworld measurement. Beyond that—" Streamlines formed. The Ringworld moved on alone, the sun lost. "Flux of interstellar matter through the Ringworld can be steered to the axis to undergo fusion. The jet from the sun gives more fuel. A fusion exhaust confined by magnetic fields replaces the sun, bathes the Ringworld in light, and serves as a ramjet too. The Ringworld survives. We can continue to accelerate."
"Drawbacks?"
"Deceleration would be difficult but not impossible. Fields could be adjusted to thrust forward. Tides would shift."
Tunesmith waited.
"When we stopped, there would be no sun." Proserpina shrugged; the picture distorted. "It doesnt matter. We cant even begin. The sun grows too hot if we try to accelerate it. The shadow-square ring can be pulled almost closed, for shielding, but if the shadow squares fell behind or were pulled ahead, landscape would be charred.
"Worst, its too slow," Proserpina said. "The suns gravitational pull isnt enough. I can manipulate the suns magnetic fields to pull harder on the Ringworld, and it still isnt enough. Alien intruders still follow. I cant think of a way to leave them behind."
"Its the wrong principle," Tunesmith said. "You didnt know. You lack information. Did Louis Wu speak of Carlos Wus medical system? Or the spacecraft we stole from the Kzinti?"
"No."
"Ill give you details when I need to. Meanwhile — those protectors vicious enough to hold the Repair Center have not always been diligent. Theyve allowed meteor impacts, eyestorms, erosion, and sometimes an exposed sea bottom. That fool bloodsucker left thousands of places where the Ringworlds foundation shows through. I need you and your allies and servants to find these places and shake a dust into them. I have been working with others of my own kind, with the Ringworld-wide network of Ghoul species; but I havent been able to reach enough of these breaches. We move too slowly."
"What is this dust? What does it do?"
"You need only know—"
"I must judge for myself!"
"I dont want an equal partner, Proserpina! The dust spreads itself through scrith, but first the scrith must touch it. How can we put more of it in contact with the Ringworld floor?"
"My servants in the spill mountains," Proserpina said, "are useless on the flats. They suffocate. Theyll spread dust along the spill mountain edges, on the rim wall, if you can get the dust to them. Theyll travel by balloon from peak to peak."
"Good. My own spill mountain protectors have been doing that. What else?"
"Water folk," Proserpina said. "Well use them. We need to reach the spill pipe system that circulates sea bottom sediment—"
"Hup."
"Yes, flup. We use that word too. Flup accumulates in the bottoms of the seas. Without our tending, it would stay there. Topsoil all through the Ringworld would be lost under the seas in a few thousand years. Weve set in place a circulation system of spillpipes that runs under the scrith floor and up the outside of the rim wall, to fall over the edge. It becomes spill mountains. Ultimately it replenishes the earth. If your dust can be introduced into the seabottoms, can it spread into the scrith from there?"
"Yes."
"How long will it take?"
"If we begin now, less than two falans."
CHAPTER 19
Wakening
He ate, and he hid.
Louis crawled among the plants, working his way deep into the jungle. He lived on his belly, reaching out of the shadows to dig for the yellow roots. The hanging garden was too exposed. He couldnt do anything about that; he couldnt leave his food source. Every hominid species on Earth and the Ringworld must have kept at least this one trait: a breeder turning into a protector would hide lest other protectors find him.
Shadow and light: days flickered by.
Nothing seemed to be looking for him. He wondered about that. A loose protector ought to be a matter of concern. It suggested that the Ringworlds protectors had other concerns: they were all involved in the Fringe War problem, ignoring the usual lethal dominance games. It must be bad. He should be helping.
Changing body, restless mind. Why was he eating tree-of-life at an effective age of twenty or so? That had an obvious answer, but the implications were serious.
The doc had given him the symptoms, but hadnt really made him an adolescent. Why not?
Tunesmith had opened Carlos Wus experimental autodoc and spread it out like an autopsy patient, to solve all its puzzles. Hed kept Louis Wu in there much longer than Louis needed, to test his notions, and for another reason. The docs nanotechnology had rewritten Louis Wus genetics, possibly over and over, until he was ready to become a protector at any time Tunesmith chose.
If Tunesmith had studied nanotechnology in such detail, by now hed know that subject better than any mind in known space. What was he doing with it?
And that too was obvious, given the theft of Long Shot.
Louiss mind wandered away, fizzing with inspiration, seeking other puzzles.
Where was the Hindmost? Aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry. A ship built like a glass bottle could still be furnished with hidden control rooms. Where was Hot Needle of Inquiry? It didnt matter. Louis could reach the ship by stepping disk, and that was all that mattered, unless — was it flightworthy? Hed have to learn.
Why was Tunesmiths nose so large, when Proserpinas was almost flat?
Did Louis Wu have children or N-children among the ships of the Fringe War?
Where was Long Shot? Tunesmith might be studying the ship where hed worked on Ne
edle and the autodoc, in the Launch Room beneath the Map of Mons Olympus. The Launch Room was roomy enough. It was the first place Louis would look, if he ever got over this… torpor. It felt like he was thinking very fast, but his mind was like ten thousand butterflies in a field, lighting everywhere, going nowhere. His body… he couldnt tell.
He hid, and he ate.
Where had Roxanny taken Wembleth? Shed fled from Louis Wu and his protector allies. Of course she must have burned her bridges behind her: changed settings on the stepping disks, maybe burned out the last one before hiding herself. How would he ever find them?
One hundred and fifty-one days flickered past. Then it was as if hed wakened from a doze.
He stayed where he was, half buried in dirt and plant stalks. His hands moved over his face and his body, finding a new shape. Swollen joints. Vanished testicles, penis shrunken to nothing. His skull had softened, expanded, hardened again, leaving a minor crest of bone. His face was a hard mask, lips fused to gums and ossified. His nose was enlarged. Hed look like a clown. And his sense of smell had become almost magical.
Hah! Hed solved it, the problem of the noses.
A human nose forms a kind of hood: it will hold a bubble of air for a swimmer. Apes dont have the hooded nostrils because they dont swim. Humans have evolved halfway in every direction, including the aquatic: most of their skin is bare, like the smooth skin of a dolphin.
Fate really did intend mankind to swim.
Breeders lose most of their sense of smell because it would drive them crazy. They would kill any stranger who came near their children, even doctors and teachers. They would protect their children from everything, driving them crazy.
Louiss nose told him that the Penultimates arcology-sized refuge was empty of enemies. The only life here was burrowers and insect analogues, and an old scent that went straight to his hindbrain.
He looked at the watch tattooed on the back of his hand. Swollen knuckles and wrist bones distorted the digital display. It was telling Canyon time. He did the math and found that hed been dawdling for two falans. Far too long. But it was right, hed counted one hundred fifty-one thirty-hour days. An old ARM record said that Jack Brennan had changed to a protector much faster than that.