by Larry Niven
"Nobody'll hear, my poor boy. I sent Wembleth to look for anything that flies. Let's see if I can get you interested. Luis, how old are you?"
"Two hundred and--"
"Seriously." She squeezed him intimately. "Sometimes you seem older. You know things you shouldn't." Breast tips brushed against his chest hairs as she hovered above him. "How do you know there are whales in the GreatOcean?"
"My father told me. You can see huge levels of detail underwater from high enough up."
"Oh."
"You've been treating me like a kid, Roxanny. I'm not sure I like it. I'm not sure I don't. But hey, you're definitely in charge now."
"Oh, yah. So let's see how agile I am." With a certain dexterity, she fitted them together. "I'm over fifty, Luis. This 'doc is my boosterspice supply for the foreseeable future."
"Well, don't bounce too hard or you'll wreck it."
She laughed. He felt the ripple in her powerful belly muscles.
"Roxanny. Did you know... boosterspice is made from tree-of-life?"
"What? No! Who told you that?"
"Proserpina. Look at the... implications. If the United Nations was playing with tree-of-life... half a thousand years ago... what else have they done with it? Maybe there's a protector running the ARM."
Her eyes got big. "I don't believe it. Luis, the ARM's top rank is all paranoid schizophrenics! And they don't take their shots! Can't you--"
"Keep moving. I thought that was just rumor."
"Well, everybody says so. They'd never let a protector rule them. It might take over the Earth!"
"But if they did let a protector get loose, he'd run the ARM. And he'd think like a paranoid schizophrenic, wouldn't he? Roxanny, I should stop distracting you."
"Tanj right you should. Thinking about the ARM is no fun at all. This feel good?"
"Yah."
"You're not ticklish?"
"Used to be."
"Not at all?"
He giggled. "No. Nope." He'd got his tickle reflex under control, long ago.
Wrong.
The holoscreen view of Tunesmith matched Proserpina's imagination: elongated jaws, a face bare of beard, knobs at the jaw hinges, flat nostrils, sharp-edged cheekbones: a Ghoul turned protector.
Tunesmith spoke the Ghoul tongue. Proserpina was only confused for a moment. The heliographs had spread a common language. She knew written Ghoulish, and a version spoken near the spill mountains. She had listened to Hanuman while he spoke into the holoscreen. It was only a matter of pronunciation. "Omnivore plains runner? I have long wondered about you. Your species survives on the Map of Earth, but not unaltered--"
Proserpina yowled. Hanuman was up a tree and hidden in its puffball top, before his mind quite caught up. But Proserpina was still at the holoscreen, and Tunesmith was still speaking--
"Local carnivores, transplanted Kzinti, have been selecting among the local hominids for such traits as please them. The exception is an invader who came with the first expedition. Chmeee tends hominids in his little sector of the Map, lets them run wild, and does not eat their meat or allow his servants to harm them. We might solve your problem most easily by giving the Map of Earth to Chmeee. We could deal with him through his son or through his ally Louis Wu.
"The Fringe War is a more difficult problem. I believe we must meet. You must view the RepairCenter, and I must not leave you unwatched.
"What I know of you leads me to believe that you have learned not to act. Such a degree of self-control is rare in one of our kind. I believe I would be safe in your presence if I can offer reasonable guarantees for your own safety.
"A guarantee you might accept is your knowledge of what I am. We evolved as intelligent breeders. My own several species survive as eaters of the dead. Thus we normally see harm to any race as bad. Where other hominids survive well, so do we. Wars are not good for us; a battle is a glut followed by famine. Drought is not good, so we guide locals in water and canal management. Deserts are not good; we guide locals in replanting. We teach flood control and fanning. We keep local religions, but we guide them away from messy practices, jihads and human sacrifice and cremation. We keep track through heliographs managed by the people of the rim walls. We control our numbers.
"If I see no reason to harm you, I will not. If I desire your good will, I will act to your benefit. Learn what you can of me, and decide whether you will come to meet me. I will send a service stack to rendezvous with Hanuman's flycycle."
The face of Tunesmith went away. The picture remained: a background of interstellar space, skeletal black structures in the foreground. Proserpina shouted, "Hanuman!"
Hanuman climbed down.
Proserpina's grip had bent the armrests of the skycycle's forward chair. She said, "My descendants are being eaten by large orange carnivores."
"Did you know before last night?"
"I knew that most of the Ringworld was out of my control and barred to me. This was not nearly the worst of what I imagined, but I knew with my forebrain, Hanuman, not with my glands. Well, what is a 'service stack'?"
"Float plates topped by a stepping disk. I can guide us through the stepping-disk system."
"We should look to our guests first. You take the flycycle. I'll take the mag ship home. I have an errand."
Evening.
"It isn't the same as rishathra," Louis said. "Can't you feel the difference?"
"Kid, you've had more experience than I have at that," Roxanny said, "so you say. What are we doing for dinner?"
"You could go hunting."
"I feel lazy."
"Will this system make dole bricks?"
Roxanny looked it over. "Just soup."
"Draw me a mug."
She dialed for two. "Luis, how would you get into the mountain?"
"I haven't even seen it. My daydreams have mostly involved walking erect, not climbing around in an artificial mountain. What are you thinking?"
Roxanny said, "We'd need transportation. Even on Earth, arcologies are too big to explore on foot. Then I'd worry about security. Protectors were very territorial, it's said."
"This is good stuff."
Roxanny sipped. It was a heavy, grainy soup. "You get tired of it fast."
"Think about breeders."
"What?"
"Breeders. Pak who haven't turned protector. Plains apes, adults, and children. They can run alongside an antelope whacking it on the head with a knobbed bone, and not fall over. Keeping their balance may be what got them the big, complicated brain. But they can still climb. If there are booby traps in that futzy great building, they'll be set to leave breeders alone."
"Well, unless the breeders are kept out by something like, I don't know, a fence?"
"We should look for a fence," he agreed. "Roxanny? Don't go alone, stet?"
"What's that?" Light outside.
"Flycycle riding lights."
Roxanny went out to look. She came back holding hands with Hanuman. "That protector sent the flycycle home on automatic."
"It's got an autopilot. She might have fiddled with it. Where is she?"
Roxanny shrugged. "Nobody was aboard but the Beast."
Chapter 17 -
The Penultimate's Citadel
On the fourth day Roxanny told him to walk.
"It'll be another day yet," he told her.
"I know, but the diagnostics say you're nearly cured. Benefits of youth, I guess. Luis, soldiers turn out of the 'doc when they have to fight, and futz the diagnostics. It doesn't hurt them."
Louis was tempted, but--"What's the hurry, Roxanny?"
"Wembleth says he's found a way in."
>
"Ah."
"We've got a flycycle. It won't fly without you. Proserpina seems to have got it to fly itself, but I can't. Proserpina hasn't come back--"
"Where's Hanuman?"
"Somewhere in the forest gorging on fruit, I think. Why?"
"He needs taking care of."
"No, he doesn't. Luis, I don't know what she's doing, but the joker won't stay away forever!"
So Louis climbed out of the ICC. He limped with one hand on Roxanny's muscular shoulder, out to the flycycle where Wembleth was waiting. There were little sharp pains all through his left leg, hip, ribs.
Roxanny asked, "Will this thing hold three?"
"Sure, Wembleth can perch in the middle. Give me the front seat." Louis took his seat, wriggled carefully into a position of minimum pain. Wembleth crawled up between him and Roxanny. It was crowded, and the native's wild pelt brushed Louis's neck and ears.
He asked, "What did you find, Wembleth?"
"A path into the fortress," the wrinkled man said.
"Stet. Point me." Louis took off.
It wasn't symmetrical, or self-consciously artistic. It looked like a mountain--like the Matterhorn, all tilted planes done in dark stone, with a pervasive glitter from thousands of windows. A broad veldt surrounded the base, ending in a vertical cliff.
The veldt was a tilted plain of gold and black: lines and arcs of black grass on a field of gold. Louis asked, "What do you make of that?"
Wembleth said, "The black is dying back."
"Black isn't unreasonable for a plant," Roxanny said. "Chlorophyll throws away all the green light. What if a plant could use it all? There are some that do, in known space."
"Yah, but Wembleth's right too. This looks like... writing that's been eroded, partly erased. How about this? Genetic engineering. The Penultimate planted it for decoration. It's just not as hardy as the hay, wheat, whatever."
From a height, the cliff did look artificial. Louis steered the flycycle close, then skimmed along the edge.
"This would stop plains apes," Roxanny said. "Not a flycycle."
"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 weren't so big. Patterns shifted restlessly on its vast expanse. Wind? Louis borrowed Roxanny's 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 don't 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 weren't 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 we'll be safe. All the booby traps are already triggered."
"You sure? Good, then I won't turn on the sonic shield."
"You've got a shield of some kind? Stet, turn it on!"
"I was being sarcastic. Roxanny, it's crazy to go in there. That's a protector's castle. There's no telling what games he's--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 can't turn back now."
It's easy to be a coward when you can't fight and can't run. Louis looked behind him, seeking an ally. Wembleth's posture urged him forward, as eager and impatient as Roxanny.
Louis flipped the sonic fold on. He couldn't see it working; they weren't 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.
They'd 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 hadn't known that the flycycle was missing, but his guess was the same as Proserpina's. They ran for the mag ship and set it floating toward the Penultimate's Citadel.
On the path of destruction Louis was following, they found places where the Penultimate's 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 Tunesmith's workshop, or Bram's, 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 don't 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 else's children, millions of them. Maybe a thousand angry protectors smell like this. That's it, it's 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 let's follow Wembleth. Right behind him, Luis. No short cuts. I think he's right; we shouldn't get high enough to be shot at either. And don't 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, th
en rose up a wall. He couldn't follow on foot. He waved the flycycle down and climbed up between them. He pointed past Louis's ear. "There, high up."
The blast trail had broken through, high up. Louis looked around Wembleth at Roxanny. She shrugged.
There wasn't 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 they'd 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 wouldn't repeat, yet Roxanny's 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. "What's 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 Tunesmith's 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 wouldn't fly after treatment like that. The stepping disk at its tip--
Hold that thought. "End of the trail," Louis said.