by Larry Niven
Then again, what could they do about it?
The chuckle never reached his throat. Louis knew puppeteers. The Hindmost would have had auxiliary controls implanted surgically. Louis knew he should be wondering when to reset the stepping disks. The Hindmost might tolerate his fiddling, but Louis didn't want to face Bram's wrath.
The bread was back.
The cruiser was flying over water. The mountains were to its left now, drifting minutely to spinward. The platform must have turned ... turned by sixty degrees. Louis let a slow grin form.
It was following the superconductor grid!
Superconducting cable lay as a substrate beneath the Ringworld floor, forming hexagons fifty thousand miles across. It guided the magnetic fields by which solar prominences could be manipulated. Evidently the cruiser was riding a magnetic levitation vehicle, possibly something worked up by City Builders, more likely something as old as the Ringworld itself.
Did the Hindmost know?
Reacting, he was still reacting. And the bread was back.
Worth the risk?
Louis stepped on the disk.
***
Pressure suits were missing from the lander bay: one for the Hindmost, Chmeee's spare, and a set meant for Louis. It need not mean that Bram's crew were in vacuum. The protector might be showing caution, using the suits for armor.
Louis stepped off to tuck a pressure suit under his arm, then a cummerbund, helmet, and air pack. Then on to WeaverTown.
***
Louis flicked in off balance. He stumbled and dropped everything he was carrying. Embarrassed, he looked warily about him.
Full daylight. The stepping disk sat on the mud bank of the Weavers' bathing stream, canted at an angle. Nobody was using the pool. Louis listened for children's voices, but he heard nothing.
He'd stooped to examine the disk when a waspish voice spoke close behind him. The fallen helmet said, "Greeting! What species are you?"
Louis stood up. "I am of the Ball People," he said. "Kidada?"
"Yes. Louis Wu's people?" The old Weaver peered at Louis uncertainly.
"Yes. Kidada, how long since Louis Wu left?"
"You're Louis Wu made young!"
"Yes." Kidada's gape and stare made Louis uncomfortable. He said, "Kidada, I have been in a long sleep. Are the Weavers well?"
"We thrive. We trade. Visitors come and go. Sawur took ill and died many days ago. The sky has circled twenty-two times since --"
"*Sawur*?"
"Since the night you vanished with some hairy creature of legend just on your tail, and only a Ghoul child for witness. Yes, Sawur is dead. I nearly died, too, and two children died. Sometimes visitors bring a sickness that kills others but not themselves."
"I hoped to talk to her."
A gaunt smile. "But will she answer?"
"She advised me well." *Don't wait until you're desperate!*
"Sawur told me of your problem, after you vanished."
"I solved it. I hope I solved it. Otherwise I am enslaved."
"Enslaved. But with tens of falans to free yourself." Kidada sounded tired and bitter.
Louis was becoming aware of how much he wanted to talk to Sawur. He would have stayed to mourn, if he had the time.
Time. The sky had circled twenty-two times ... two falans plus. One hundred sixty-five of the Ringworld's thirty-hour days. They'd left him in that tank for more than half an Earth year!
And he now was playing catch-up. "Kidada, who moved our stepping disk?"
"I know not what you mean. *This*? It was here the morning you were gone. We've left it alone."
The rim was muddy. Louis could see big fingerprints and scratch marks left by fingernails. Some visiting hominid -- not Weavers, who had smaller hands -- had been trying to alter the setting.
*Ghouls.* He might have known. He was glad he'd flicked in during daylight. The Night People wouldn't even know he'd been here.
Louis donned his pressure suit. "Say hello to the children for me," he said, and he flicked out.
***
Darkness.
Louis turned on his helmet lamp, and a half-seen skeleton was watching him.
He was in the Meteor Defense room. The screens were dark. His lamp was the only light.
These bones had been mounted for study. They weren't attached at the joints: they barely touched. A frame of thin metal rods held them in place.
The skeleton stood ten inches shorter than Louis Wu. All of the bones had a rounded look: weathered. The ribs were improbably narrow, the fingers nearly gone. Time had turned bone structure to dust. Weather in here couldn't be that erosive! But the knuckles still showed large, and all the joints were massive and greatly swollen. Those eroded projections in the massive jaw weren't teeth. They were later bone growth.
Protector.
Louis let his fingertips play over the face. The bone was gritty with dust, and smooth. Smoothed by time, as surfaces turned gradually to dust.
This wasn't an erosive environment. These bones must be a thousand years dead, at least.
The right hip had been shattered, the pieces mounted separately. And the left shoulder and elbow, and the neck: all fractured or shattered.
He might have died in a fall, or been beaten to death in combat.
***
The Pak had had their origin somewhere in the galactic core. A Pak colony on Earth had failed -- the tree-of-life had failed, leaving the colony with no protectors -- but Pak breeders had spread over the Earth from landing sites in Africa and Asia. Their bones were in museums under names such as Homo habilis. Their descendants had evolved to intelligence: a classic example of neoteny.
There was a mummified Pak protector in the Smithsonian Institute. It had been dug from under a desert on Mars, centuries ago. Louis had never seen it except as a hologram in a General Biology course.
This creature might be a deformed Pak, he thought. But there was that massive jaw.
Protectors lost their teeth. That was a pity, because teeth could have told him a lot. But the jaw was a bone cracker.
The torso was too long for a standard issue Pak.
It was not quite a Pak, and it was also not quite a Ghoul. Louis could guess when it had died, but when had it been born? The protector in the Smithsonian had spent thirty thousand years and more crossing from the galactic core to Earth. Gearing up for the expedition might have taken him that long again. Protectors could live a long time.
Cronus was the oldest of the Greek gods, killer of his children, until some escaped and killed him instead. Call this one Cronus, then.
A vampire horde had killed a protector who must have been Cronus's abandoned servant.
Bram and Anne must have stalked the master for years afterward. Years, centuries, millennia? Pak breeders, Man's ancestors, and the vampires', too, had been cursorial hunters before ever they left the galactic core.
Old Cronus might not have taken vampire protectors quite seriously. Vampires, after all, were mindless animals with disgusting sexual and dietary habits, and Cronus had been a superintelligent being with no distracting sex urge at all.
*And so was Bram.* It might give him a blind spot, Louis thought, if he could find it.
The breaks at the right hip, left arm, and shoulder, and a crack along the skull, had been fresh at death. Louis found old, healed breaks elsewhere. Cronus had broken his spine long before his death. Did a protector's spinal nerves grow back? His right knee, *that* old injury hadn't healed: the knee was fused solid.
Something else was strange about the spine ... but Louis didn't understand until he returned to the skull.
The forehead bulged. Mor
e: the forehead bone and the crest at the top was smoother, younger than the rest of the skull. The jagged ridge of growth from the jawbone still had an appearance of worn teeth. These things were *recent* growth. The spine, too, was recent growth: it had gone through a period of regeneration.
If Cronus had won his last battle, he would have healed again.
*So think of it as a murder investigation. I know the killer, but to get a conviction in court I need every detail, every nuance. Why did Bram put these bones back together? The enemy was dead, there were none to avenge him --*
*Or did Bram and Anne fear others like Cronus?*
A standing skeleton, and a heap of gear in the shadows beyond. Bram hadn't let him near this stuff.
It had seemed scattered, dropped at random. It was and it wasn't. Stuff had been laid out neatly for study; then something had swept through the pattern, like a vampire protector kicking out in rage.
Some of it had simply disintegrated. Some had left clear patterns.
This had been a wonderful fur coat, and a belt to hold it closed. It stank: just a ghost of the stench of old hide, and a Ghoul who hadn't bathed in thousands of years. On the inner surface, the hide surface, Louis could see the traces of a score of leather pockets in a score of shapes, all empty now.
There were weapons: a knife of old metal turned to black rust, slender and a foot long. Two knives made of horn, each no bigger than a forefinger. There were six throwing knives, nearly identical though shaped from stone, as lethal as the day they were made. A slender pole of some durable metal alloy, the ends sharpened to chisels.
Patterns in the dust might once have been wooden shoes with heavy straps. Here were a fancy crossbow and a dozen bolts, each slightly different. This little box ... a firestarter? Louis tried, but he couldn't get a flame started. A stack of paper or parchment: maps?
There was a telescope ... crude, but very finely shaped and polished, and set a little apart. Hello: these next to it were tool-working tools. Pumice, little knives ... Bram and/or Anne had set up shop here to duplicate Cronus's telescope.
A hard black lump the size of his fist. Louis bent low to sniff. Dried meat? A thousand years beyond its date ... but jerky always did smell and taste a bit gamy. Maybe a Ghoul would like that.
How long ago had Cronus died?
*Ask?*
Louis knew he was playing catch-up here. He'd learn more by asking ... but he'd learn what Bram chose to teach. And time was constricting around him.
Louis patted Cronus's shoulder bones. "Trust me," he said, and flicked out.
***
He was glare-blind and way off balance.
He convulsed like a sea anemone, reaching between his knees for anything solid, eyes squinted shut against raw sunlight. His gloved fingers brushed something and closed hard.
The badly tilted stepping disk slid under him by a foot or two. He was gripping the rim of the disk itself, he hoped. He held very still.
His photosensitive faceplate turned smoky gray. Still crouched, gripping the edge of the stepping disk, he looked about him.
The Map of Mars wasn't a very *good* map.
He could see a hundred shades of red without moving, but the sky was the dark blue of high-altitude Earth. The sun was too bright for Mars. Nothing could be done about the gravity either.
Maybe it didn't matter to Martians. They lived safe from sunlight beneath sand fine enough to behave like a viscous fluid. Perhaps the sand would even buoy them against Ringworld gravity.
He'd expected to be at Mons Olympus, and it seemed he was. He was a long way up. The stepping disk rested near the top of a smooth forty-five-degree slope of piled dust, and it was starting to slide again.
What had the Hindmost been *thinking* of, to put it here?
*Yeah, right.* Martians. They'd set a trap.
Sliding faster now, losing all stability. It was a long way down. Miles! Dust must have piled here over millenia [sic -- should be "millennia"] in a prevailing wind ... a GreatOcean stratospheric wind, in a weather pattern huger than worlds. Another flaw in the accuracy of the Map of Mars.
Louis squatted, flattened himself against the stepping disk as it became a sled.
It picked up speed. The disk was trying to bounce him off. His hands had a death-grip and he tried to grip with his boot toes, too. An arcology-sized rock stood in his path. He leaned left, trying to steer. Nope. It was going to swat him hard.
Then he was elsewhere.
***
And his death-grip became something more, because he was falling into a black void.
He chopped off part of a shrill scream. *But I fixed it! I fixed it! I fixed it!*
He was clinging to a stepping disk welded to a gracefully curved cigar shape: the puppeteer's refueling probe. Around him was black sky and a glare of stars.
The stepping disk, the probe's hull, everything glowed. There must be light behind him. Without losing anything of his toe-and-finger grip, Louis twisted to look over his shoulder.
The Ringworld was adrift behind and below him. He could see fine detail: rivers like twisted snakes, undersea landscapes, a straight black thread that might be a Machine People highway.
The naked sun was trying to broil him. No problem: the suit was one he could sweat through. Night would be a greater threat. He hadn't thought he would need an oversuit.
He was level with the top of the rim wall, looking down at half-conical spill mountains and the rivers that ran from their bases. A thousand miles up. Far ahead of him he could make out lacy lines sketching a long double cone.
An attitude jet. He could see the twin toroids that he'd thought made up a Bussard ramjet; but they were tiny, forming the wasp waist of something far larger. The Ringworld attitude jet was made of wire so thin that it kept fading in and out of sight. A cage to guide the flow of the solar wind.
This one wasn't mounted yet: it wasn't pointed right.
Louis hadn't felt fear like this in two hundred years.
*But I got the bread back!*
The probe was coasting ... was motionless, while the Ringworld rotated below at 770 miles per second.
*The system must have reset. I took this one disk out of the link, but it must have reset. I don't understand the Hindmost's programming language. What else have I fouled up?*
The sashimi? That was easy. The plate must have drifted too far from the disk. The bread hadn't: it was still in range when the disks cycled.
He hung on, hung on ...
And the disk bumped against his faceplate.
He clung with his eyes closed. He was in no shape to confront anyone, any creature. In a few seconds he'd be safe and alone aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry.
A great clawed hand took him by the shoulder and rolled him over.
Chapter 23 -
The Running Lesson
HIDDEN PATRIARCH, A.D. 2893
The Kzin pulled him to his feet. Louis was gasping, shivering. Acolyte couldn't talk to him while his helmet was closed, and Louis was glad of that.
He was aboard Hidden Patriarch, near the stern.
Just another goddamn stunning surprise. He had left the mile-long sailing ship on the ShenthyRiver. What was it doing here?
Acolyte was trying to ask him something. The Kzin was holding -- *tanj dammit!* Louis wrenched his helmet open.
Acolyte said, "I was prowling around the stern when this popped up on the stepping disk. Your visiting-gift, Louis? Preserved fish?"
Louis took the sashimi plate. The sliced fish was puffy and crisp to the touch.
"It's been in vacuum," he said. "Did a loaf of bread come by?"
"I let it pass. Louis, you stink of terror."
*What am I doing here?*
In a moment he could be safe aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry, floating between sleeping plates while he got through his shivering, got his mind back, and tried to digest what he had and hadn't learned.
Acolyte had seen him. If the Kzin could be persuaded to shut up, then -- *Yeah, right.* The protector must have been observing Acolyte's body language for half an Earth year. The Kzin couldn't hide anything from him.
Louis said instead, "The *dead* could smell my terror." He dropped his helmet and air pack and began opening zippers. "I thought I had the stepping disk controls figured out. Wrong! Oh, and the Martians set us a death trap. That almost got me, too."
An adolescent's half-bald head popped into view above a hatch. City Builder. The boy's eyes widened in surprise, and he dropped from view.
The Kzin asked, "Martians?"
Louis began stripping off his suit. "Skip it. I've *got* to burn some energy. Can you run?"
The Kzin bristled. "I outran my father after we fought."
"I'll race you to the bow."
Acolyte yowled and bounded away.
Louis's pressure suit was pooled around his ankles. At the Kzin's howl, his every muscle locked and he fell over.
That was a *wonderful* battle cry! Hissing ancient curses, Louis pulled the suit off, rolled to his feet and ran.
Acolyte was still in sight, moving considerably faster than he was. Then the ship structure jogged and he was gone.
Louis had lived aboard this ship for nearly two years. He wasn't likely to get lost. He ran hard, competing only with himself. He had a full mile to cover.
***
"Loueee!"
The voice was faint and strange, coming from high overhead ... from a Pierson's puppeteer perched in the aft crow's nest.
Louis bellowed, "Hellooo!"
"Wait!" the voice called.
"Can't!" He felt *good*.
A squarish shadow descended. Louis ran on. It came alongside, pacing him: a RepairCenter cargo plate with rails welded around it. Louis called, "Stay clear. I'm in a race."