Ringworld's Children

by Larry Niven

  "They'll notice!" In Ghoulish.

  They were over by the hole, looking down along the linear cannon: Proserpina, Tunesmith, and two little protectors either of whom might be Hanuman. Tunesmith bellowed, "They know I'm here. They'll guess I'm active. The ones with brains must have deduced what's under the Map of Mars by now. Some may even rest easier because I'm closing holes in the Ringworld floor."

  "...Risk?"

  "The missiles most of these factions have been using, one antimatter explosion wouldn't tear up much of the RepairCenter. An enemy couldn't know he'd hurt me, and he'd anger me, and I might find him. I admit there's risk. I'm stalling. I don't want the ARM and the rest of them wondering what the Mars protector is up to. So this is what I'm up to, closing holes. Keeps me out of mischief."

  They wouldn't scent him: Louis was in a pressure suit. Louis couldn't smell anything either, so he kept looking around. He saw a few Hanging People protectors. They weren't near him. He saw a webeye camera sprayed on the 'doc's Intensive Care Cavity. He waved at it, Hi, Hindmost! and wondered if Tunesmith was linked into the same cameras.

  "...need the holes?"

  "I'm through with them. We're almost..." Their voices dropped as their hearing came back. Louis wasn't going to learn more this way.

  He saw them cover their ears, so Louis covered his. As lightning roared up the linear cannon, Louis picked up a grippy and flung it at Proserpina's head, sixty meters away.

  Proserpina caught it and sent it whizzing back at him... almost: it would hit the service wall, shatter, and shower him with slivers, Louis danced around the service wall, caught the grippy as it struck, and flung it slantwise at the floor, to ricochet at Proserpina, who caught and returned it. Suddenly other objects were in motion, tools and a random chunk of concrete and a long dead animal as big as Louis. The animal disintegrated in his hand. Louis caught the rest and returned them. He turned a spigot on a tank and was behind the service wall again, popped up and returned the grippy and a block of lava tuff, then threw himself behind the puff of featherweight packing plastic that had emerged from the tank. He kicked it upward and was behind the tank while they looked for him there. The grippy burst through the foam plastic, shattering it--

  But there were too many things moving now, and elements in his torso and hip were trying to tear themselves apart. He caught what missiles he could, juggled them, and presently set them down. He limped toward the protectors.

  Proserpina said, "Funny man--"

  "What makes you feel so safe?" Tunesmith demanded.

  "You left me a chair. You fiddled with my metabolism."

  Tunesmith said, "Louis, everything has happened out of sequence. You ate early and finished your change late. An ARM ship exploded early. We could have taken our sweet time extrapolating the behavior of all these factions in the Fringe War. Now--talk to me. What will they do?"

  "A sanity check first?"

  "Whose?"

  "Have you solved how Long Shot works?"

  "Yes."

  "And embedded the principle in a quintillion nanotech devices? Made from a much-altered experimental autodoc?"

  "The numbers--"

  "And run nanodust into the superconducting network under the Ringworld, so that its structure can be altered?"

  "Yes, with help from Proserpina and our associates."

  "Proserpina, are you with this?"

  "Yes, Louis. There weren't enough holes in the landscape, so we had to drill in spots--"

  "Is it working?"

  Tunesmith said, "I think so."

  "Stet, I'm sane and so are you, or else we're all crazy. Is the system ready to go?"

  "It may be, if my power storage holds. I can't include the shadow squares or the sun. At best I can only run for a little more than two days. But, Louis, I'm not sure the nanosystems have finished infecting the entire grid. I need to know how much time we've got. What will the Fringe War do?"

  Louis's mind was dancing down a new path. "You can build a new day-and-night system. Tunesmith, why not build a real Dyson sphere? Ten million miles diameter with a sun at the center and the Ringworld around it. Make it thin like a solar sail so light pressure will inflate it. Give it windows to let daylight through to the Ringworld. The rest of the material is a photoelectric transformer. You'll be collecting most of the power of a sun."

  Proserpina said, "You're fresh, Louis." In Ghoulish speech that implied meat not ready to eat: unacceptable immaturity. "Protectors can be scatterbrains. You must solve one problem at a time. We're still looking at the Fringe War fleet. When will they strike?"

  "There's another matter--"

  Tunesmith bellowed, "No! Already some faction has destroyed one of my attitude jets. Who? What motive? Was it a deliberate provocation?"

  "Show me the event. Meteor Defense Room."

  They flicked out.

  He absolutely couldn't signal the Hindmost. The puppeteer would have to move now.

  Meteor Defense. Proserpina and Tunesmith took their chairs in a jump. Twisted Louis had to climb to reach the third chair. He looked for where stepping disks ought to be. The one he'd come through was clearly marked. A Hanging People protector, Hanuman, flicked through an unmarked site and awaited orders. Others might be concealed there or there. Bet on three or four, no more. Why were the chairs on these booms so massive?

  The wall displayed the Ringworld system as if viewed from the sun. The Ringworld was a mere outline, white threads against starscape. "I need a pointer," Louis said, and found touchpoints on a knob. "Stet. These are Outsider ships, right? Two. Do you see more?"

  "No."

  "We're not really of interest to anything that different. These," he highlighted lenses and spheres, "are Kzinti, and these are ARM," long levers studded with lesser ships. "I don't see the Sheathclaws' ship."

  "It went away."

  "Probably ordered off, or they might have run from Kzinti. Kzinti use telepaths as slaves. What are you wondering about?"

  "Interactions," Proserpina said.

  He needed a way to use up some time, then send the protectors off on some sort of distraction. Louis drew a net of lines linking various ships, and added vector arrows. "See? Distance and velocity and gravity, you need to take it all into consideration, so it's complicated--"

  Proserpina snapped, "It is not! It's only different. We did this all the way from the galactic core to the Ringworld site! They've arranged a standoff, but it's unstable here--"

  "Yah. And this balance won't hold if--if some dissident faction, say the One Race contingent, is actually running this ship or--"

  "I don't see how it held this long. I don't see how it could hold much longer," Tunesmith said. "But you know them all, Louis."

  "It won't hold. You're missing the effect of the Outsiders. They're more powerful than the other factions and everybody knows it. Just being here, they've made it all more stable until now. Everybody's been wondering what the Outsiders will do. What the Outsiders will do is nothing, and the whole Fringe War is gradually coming to know that."

  He was seeing it now, the disintegrating patterns, strength built up here, bluff here. Two bar-shaped ARM ships poised to destroy one great Kzin lens. Thirty-one ships edged up around one Outsider ship in hope of protection that would vanish like dawn frost on the Moon. Futz, the balance just wasn't there.

  "Tunesmith, this whole house of cards could come down at any second. Don't wait. How fast can you get us moving?"

  "Half a day, with luck."

  Louis turned, shocked. "Why so long?"

  "I need to run all the power in the shadow square system into the superconductor grid. If I did that too early, it would leak--"

  "Can't you get magnetohydrodynamic
power from the rim ramjets?"

  "What a good idea. It would have required a certain amount of redesigning, say twenty to thirty days and a thousand spill mountain protectors. I need half a day, then go, and no more Fringe War."

  "Start now," Louis said.

  Patiently Tunesmith said, "You've only just arrived. We don't even know, you don't even know who attacked us twenty-eight days ago. Where's the danger coming from? Can I just kill it? The superconductor net has been rewiring itself for only two falans, crystallizing into its new configuration. Even if the change is complete, I need to test it."

  Sometimes you just have to gamble, Louis thought. But Tunesmith wouldn't act fast enough without more pressure. "Show me how it happened," he said.

  The sky changed: ships moved, stars didn't. The Ringworld went solid. A frame zoomed on one of the attitude jets, a gauzy glittering net molded magnetically into a hyperboloid of rotation with a line of white fire running down the axis. Suddenly it was bright, bright, dimming--the motor was gone, and a piece was bitten out of the rim wall. Along its foot, spill mountains were burning.

  "Is this all you've got?"

  "Various frequencies."

  Replay, hydrogen alpha light. Louis waved it off. "It's too overt for puppeteers, too restrained for Kzinti. Maybe a Kzinti dissident. There are ARM dissidents too; we could ask Roxanny. Or anyone who'd like to see both sides reduced a little. I've never been sure about Trinocs, or puppeteers."

  "Not much help," Tunesmith agreed.

  "Tell me what you know about Teela Brown."

  Proserpina asked, "Who?"

  "An insane puppeteer scheme," Tunesmith said. "She was a victim. General Products, the merchant arm of Pierson's puppeteers in human space, set up a birthright lottery on Earth. The attempt was to breed for lucky humans. In practice what they got was a few statistical flukes, like Teela Brown. She... Louis! Did you have a child with Teela Brown?"

  Louis said nothing.

  "Where is your child?"

  Louis said nothing. Among protectors, a poker face is easy; body language is hard.

  He waited until he saw motion. Proserpina left her chair in a long jump. Tunesmith jumped in a different direction. Hanuman looked uncertain; he remained at the visible stepping disk, the far one. As soon as the protectors were committed, Louis jumped toward Tunesmith's chair.

  One of these chairs had to be a stepping disk. It was a natural hiding place. Two would be redundant, though all three had been made too thick and too wide--and Tunesmith would have claimed the right one. But other stepping disks in this room had to be guarded. If Louis was right--and he was, because Hanuman instantly launched himself toward the same chair.

  Hanuman got there first. The chair started to swing aside, but Louis was there. Hanuman caught Louis with a powerful kick, but Louis had the mass. He slammed Hanuman into the stepping disk and reached around the dazed hominid to pop the rim and turn the disk on. They both flicked out.

  Heel of the hand, a blow to Hanuman's head. Hanuman went limp. Louis pushed, sent him flying. Grinding pain in his hip: Hanuman's kick had broken something.

  They were underground, somewhere beneath Mars. He popped the disk's rim and tapped controls, fast.

  Louis flicked in, popped the rim. If Tunesmith tracked him to this sandy, barren island--or Hanuman signaled him a minute or two from now--he'd find Louis's footprints, hours old. He might even find scent traces of Wembleth and Roxanny.

  And if Teela's genes were lucky, Wembleth and Roxanny and their child would be well out of Tunesmith's reach by now. But every surviving gene pattern is insanely lucky, and Teela's luck didn't matter a tanj to Tunesmith. What mattered was this:

  Louis Wu could never give a dispassionate, trustworthy answer to Tunesmith's questions while he could shade his answers to favor his bloodline.

  One more move. Louis tapped controls, then hit #, and flicked out.

  In the crew quarters aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry, Louis rapidly typed up a bleu cheese and mushroom omelet and a salad. He stripped off his pressure suit, then his clothes. He dialed up a falling jumper and put it on. He turned on the shower just long enough to wet the bag. He half-expected to hear the Puppeteer's Voice, but it didn't come.

  He flicked into the cargo bay. A flycycle would have been too big, but he typed up a flying belt modified for magnetic lift. He ate most of his salad and omelet while he waited, a hairy four minutes, for the flying belt to be built. Put it on, flicked back to crew quarters.

  Now, where would a puppeteer hide a stepping disk? An escape hatch had to be here: the Hindmost might find himself trapped in crew quarters by a man and a Kzin. The toilet seat? Too small. The shower?

  The shower ceiling. It was the right size. The code would be puppeteer music: Louis could never sing it. Maybe he could hack it, but first--

  He set his hands against the shower ceiling and said, "Hindmost's Voice, put me through."

  He was in the control room. He used the stepping disk there.

  Neither Hanuman nor Louis were where the first flick had taken them. The second flick put Tunesmith and Proserpina on a barren island. They found Hanuman groggy, trying to sit up. Proserpina examined him. He didn't seem badly hurt.

  Tunesmith asked, "How are you?"

  "Injured, not badly. He held my life and released it," Hanuman said.

  "That shows good self-control. Proserpina, see if you can find traces of your escaped guests. Hanuman, rest." Tunesmith went to work on the stepping-disk controls.

  "I find their scent," Proserpina called. "Falans old. In rut."

  "This changes all," Hanuman said. "I must warn my people."

  "Your people are tree dwellers! How can they hide from what must come?"

  "Stet. I know what to do."

  "Do it after we're gone," Tunesmith said. "Then rejoin us in Meteor Defense." He and Proserpina flicked out.

  Launch Room. Little Hanging People protectors were all lying prone about the cavern below Mons Olympus. The Hindmost was working on a laser projector. "How are you doing?" Louis called.

  "I'm still disconnecting instruments. It's hard to tell where it's safe."

  Louis began disconnecting laser and cable attachments, pacifying Tunesmith's instruments where necessary. He wished he could move faster. Something with sharp edges was loose in his hip; the flesh was badly swollen. "You're not safe on the Ringworld," he said. "How are you going to move the 'doc components?"

  "I hadn't decided."

  "I was hoping you'd think of something. Stet. This next part is risky." Louis finished disconnecting sensors. The 'doc's components were still connected to each other. Louis left them that way. "I'll be gone at least an hour. Get this stuff ready to be lifted with magnetic fields. Leave the roof open."

  "Wait. What are you about to do?"

  "No time."

  "Where are the protectors we're robbing? What can I accomplish when death may find me in a moment? Tell me what you've done!"

  Better if he knew, and Louis had already cost himself an hour at least. Give the Hindmost a minute. He said, "I tried to tell Tunesmith that the Fringe War is about to blow up--"

  "Eee!" A raucous chord of dismay.

  "--Just as I'm telling you. If you tuck your heads under you, you will die in that position. Do you believe me?"

  "Yah."

  "I let Tunesmith guess I had a child--yes, a boy with Teela's genes. Congratulations, they survived. Your breeding program is still in force--"

  "What of later inbreeding?"

  "Oh, Hindmost, there must have been other ships crashed on the Ringworld. Wembleth's children will find mates."

  "Stet."

  "I flicked out to a few places, ended wher
e Tunesmith can find traces of Wembleth. Then I used my block on the stepping disk and went to Needle. It won't take Tunesmith long to get around the block. When he does, he'll find out I went to Hot Needle of Inquiry, took my sweet time there, and didn't leave.

  "I must be still aboard. I went to get Wembleth, right? It follows that we're trying to leave the Ringworld. The Fringe War balance must be ready to fall apart right now. No protector would otherwise risk his child's life this way, in a ship that can be shot down by Fringe War ships or blocked as easily as Tunesmith can block Needle.

  "If Tunesmith and Proserpina followed that line of logic, then they're getting ready to end the Fringe War, and they will not disturb us here, as long as you keep these protectors asleep and take care to shut down these cameras. Can do?"

  "Trust me," the Hindmost said.

  Louis took a moment to think that over. The Hindmost knew how to open the roof into Mons Olympus. Long Shot was too big to launch using the linear cannon, so the ship would rise slowly, on fusion jets, making too good a target. The Hindmost wouldn't have the nerve, and it was far too dangerous anyway.

  So he wouldn't launch without Louis, Louis could trust him, and that settled that. Louis flicked out.

  Meteor Defense. "We never did locate the ship," Tunesmith said. "Can you block his takeoff?"

  "Yes. And I can search near space for any ARM ship coining for him. He can't possibly escape me. He must be mad. A failed transition to protector can warp a breeder's brain."

  "Sudden understanding can do that too. Mad with fear?"

  "But is he afraid of the Fringe War, or of what we'll do?"

  Proserpina's eyes half-closed. She looked a little like Hanuman in that pose. She said, "He didn't expect to delay us long. He'd have just enough time to get clear, if we begin now and ignore Louis Wu and his freemother child."

  Tunesmith looked up at the crowded sky. "Begin," he commanded.

  Hanuman flicked in on a ridge of bare scrith. He looked down across miles and miles of forest, reviewing his options.

  Louis Wu was the protector who had no children on the Ringworld--unless he'd had a child by Teela Brown. Louis-protector could have no interest in Teela, who was dead, unless she'd left a child; and that child would be Louis Wu's. The chain of logic was so straightforward that even a Hanging People protector could follow it.