Ringworld's Children

"Sure. What do you make of the shadows, Roxa

"Were too high to tell."

Louis didnt answer. What should "Luis Tamasan" know about this? But shadows just didnt happen in a place where it was always noon, and Louis Wu found it freaky.

Roxa

Louis started to laugh.

Roxa

"Yah. Does the ARM have any idea what the Pak homeworld looked like?"

"A permanent war zone. Every Pak protector wants his gene line to rule the world. Im just repeating the briefings," Roxa

"The joker — she looks like Pak breeder skeletons were still finding in Asia and Africa. So wheres the joker from? The Pak homeworld? But maybe its the Map of Earth. Luis, you said the Map of Earth was originally Pak breeders."

The sunfish ship was descending toward an island cluster near the Other Oceans antispinward shore… fifty thousand miles near, maybe. Any distortion was lost in detail as the land rose up to meet them. There were crescents and pools of shadow on the land… but how could they be shadows, with the sun just overhead? They looked almost like pictograms, or writing. A lone mountain near the continents midpoint glittered. Dwellings? With windows?

The grainy look of the land became interlocking dots of all sizes, circular features, as if the land had been battered by meteors. They skimmed a forest, slowing now. Louis recognized chains of elbow trees and other familiar vegetation.

He said, "Most of whats on the Ringworld must have evolved as Pak plants and animals."

"Good, Luis." A verbal pat on the head.

Something about these patterns -

"Its a garden," Roxa

"Roxa

Still, she was right. The landscape wasnt croplands, but it was just as certainly shaped. Variety and color: rainbow ripples that must be thousands of square miles of flower beds; varied stands of trees in all the colors of autumn and more, still seeming no larger than hairs in a dandys beard. A veldt shadowed with black arcs. Ponds, lakes, seas like silver plates with little central dots of island.

Roxa

Like the Moon, Louis thought. "Like a war?" All circles, all craters. The Pak homeworld.

"Vashneesht," Wembleth said positively.

"Yah, the joker is trying to impress us," Roxa

He glimpsed rectilinear outlines peeping through the wild colors. They dropped. There was a thump. Gravity ceased its flutter.

CHAPTER 15

Proserpina

She brought the mag ship down in the garden, six miles downhill from the Penultimates mainland habitat. As soon as shed safed the motors, Proserpina rolled out of the cabin and ran aft. A sense of order might help the aliens adjust, but shed learn less if she gave them too much time.

Isolated, shorn of her senses, imprisoned in the Isolation Zone for all of these millions of falans — Proserpina had still been able to infer general details of Ringworld history: infighting, dominance games, reshaping of world-sized stretches of topography, shifting alliances, changing genetic patterns…

There was only one Repair Center, set halfway around the Ringworld from this, the Isolation Zone. The Repair Center could be seen as the Ringworlds natural throne room. A Ghoul was in power now, and that was good. He was short of experience, and reckless (not good), and probably male. Males wandered further. Where tree-of-life was scarce, a male would find it first.

Control was what this was all about. In earlier ages she had seen conspiracy after conspiracy, and had always found a way to stay neutral without being destroyed. There was always a master of creation, and — after one awful early experiment — it was never Proserpina.

She hop-stepped over the struts of the cargo grid and slid into the rescue bubble.

The woman spoke. "We need to talk."

Proserpina perceived Tec-First Gauthiers impatience and was amused. The woman was young, though not young for a breeder. Her stance suggested a different gravity; her speech was a bit altered from what Proserpina had heard while eavesdropping on the Ghouls retinue. Gauthier was one of the invaders. Shed have much to tell, once she stopped refusing to tell it.

Proserpinas silence made the woman uneasy. "We need to talk to make the translators work," she added.

Proserpina didnt smile. She couldnt. Theyd talked while they hunted Wembleth in the spill mountain village, but theyd said nothing. Nouns, verbs: not enough to cue Tec Gauthiers speaking device. Gauthier was keeping secrets.

So was Proserpina. When she needed to talk, she would.

The brachiator watched her and did nothing. Shed been expecting subservience. The little protector must serve another, perhaps the Ghoul.

One of the males made a soft-voiced request. Proserpina didnt know his speech. Shed work it out presently. He stood like a local, a little stooped, but at home with Ringworld spin gravity. He wouldnt have much to tell. What he wanted was clear: he was hungry.

The other male was injured and immobilized, naked and helpless. He watched. Proserpina was struck by his patience. Though no protector, he was an elder, of the same species as the woman. This would be the Ghouls breeder servant, Louis Wu of the Ball Worlds.

"Youre all hungry," Proserpina said in Interworld. The men were unsurprised, but Gauthier jumped. "You can all tolerate fruit. Well work out details of your diet presently. Were all omnivores, I think, except you," looking at the little one. "How are you called?"

The woman recovered her aplomb. She gestured: "Luis Tamasan. Wembleth. Roxa

"Ive hacked into a library," Proserpina said. She saw the woman bristle: Gray Nurses computer! Stolen! "I chose my name from your literature," speaking now to Luis/Louis. Wu and the little protector were keeping secrets too.

She clapped her hands. "Lets feed you. Theres fruit outside, and a stream."

"Ill have to feed Luis," Roxa

"You must learn whats edible. Come. Luis, well be back soon. Your device is giving you nutrient, but its best if your digestive systems are exercised."

"Thank you," he said.

Roxa

Roxa

From the back the joker looked like a small, scrawny, bald woman. She stood a meter and a half tall. All of her joints were swollen; her back was a column of pebbles. Roxa