Ringworld's Children

"I was a prisoner. I spent long periods in depression, noticing nothing. I never quite starved myself. When I was myself, I made telescopes but not probes. We were barred from intrusive investigations. With telescopes I could see nothing nearby, but I could study what was happening far up the arc. Meteors continued to be intercepted. An eyestorm formed; I guessed at the dynamics; I saw the storm dissipate. It meant that protectors were still doing repairs. Luis, what?"

"Depression. Sorry, I dont mean to interrupt—"

"How can I not notice when you want to speak?"

"These bouts of depression, do they make you miss things? Im wondering about the rim-wall attitude jets, and Fist-of-God Mountain."

"Where is it?"

"Near the far ocean. It was a giant meteoroid impact, from underneath. It didnt leak much because the land was pushed up."

"I would not have acted. This is work for the resident protector."

"There was a fight for who would be resident protector."

Roxa

Louis asked, "Did your jailers give you tree-of-life?"

"Yes, but neutered. A virus causes the gene flip that makes a breeder a protector. The virus lives in tree-of-life root. Neutered tree-of-life will still feed me, will feed any protector, but it wont change a breeder. What made you ask that, Luis?"

"Just a thought." Tree-of-life only grew in the Repair Center, as far as Louis knew. Apparently it had died out elsewhere. "Is it easy to get rid of the protector virus?"

"Yes."

"But you got more?"

"How did you know that? Yes, I filtered it from the air when it grew thick enough and scattered far enough, four hundred thousand falans after creation. I cultured the virus and grew it in my plants. I made a few servants then, not enough to be noticed, and sent them on errands. But they revolted, and I had to kill them, Luis, and the next time I tried it, it didnt work. My plants had been neutered again. I know not by what means, and the virus wasnt in the air any more. You ate tree-of-life tonight."

Roxa

"Something more than a million falans after creation. You know what happened, dont you, Luis? Tell me."

Louis shook his head. "The protectors are gone. Thats all we know."

Proserpina said, "I understand now. Species differentiation has been extreme in the past two million falans. I can see how far your species has veered, Roxa

"Their people fission into incompatible species under nearly identical conditions. Ive tapped the heliograph communication network formed by the Night People. Eaters of the dead, arent they? And that intelligent, and as breeders! Some half-intelligent protector ruled the Repair Center for a very long time. I cant guess how many other variations there are."

Roxa

"But on the Map of Earth there isnt room for mutations to settle in and compete and shape each other to strangeness. My servants settled my breeders among the Pak of the Map of Earth. My line may thrive there. Luis, what are you hiding?"

"Im sorry."

She loomed over him, small and dangerous. "Talk to me."

Prone in his casket, he said, "I have a friend on the Map of Earth. I want him protected."

"Tunesmith wouldnt let another protector near the Map of Earth. I havent survived by challenging the resident. What are you hiding?"

Roxa

"Archaic Kzinti," Louis said. "Not the same as the armies of the Fringe War. They sailed across the Great Ocean and formed a colony on the Map of Earth, not that long ago."

"While I was in depression," Proserpina said. "I left too much to the resident. Stet. Ill research Kzinti, archaic and modern. Maybe we can deal. But I must confront the resident.

"Tonight I must go away. Tunesmith must be dealt with one way or another. I may be gone for days. Tec Gauthier, you must care for Luis. Luis, shall I give you back your sensation?"

"Try it."

When pain came, Louis wondered if Proserpina was taking revenge on a bearer of bad news. But there was no more than an ache, though it ran from hip to heel.

"Wriggle around if you feel like it, but carefully. Dont detach anything." Proserpina stroked the tree swingers head. "Little Hanuman, would you like to come with me?"

Hanuman considered, then jumped into her arms. She looked around at them. "I make one proscription. All of what you can reach is open to you, save only the big building to spin and starboard, and the continent nearest to antispinward. Im sure the big building is trapped. I havent dared it myself. The little continent is where the Penultimate kept the dangerous species from Pak. Analogues of wolves, tigers, lice, mosquitoes, needle cactus, and poison mushrooms, the plants and creatures we never wanted among our breeders. Most of them were extinct when we left the core stars, but we saved a few. We might have released them, had we known that our breeders would evolve into their ecological slots."

She turned and was gone so quietly and easily that it was as if a ghost had evaporated.

CHAPTER 16

Meeting of Minds

She would let him fly!

Hanuman prepared. The chair was wrong for him; he reshaped it. Proserpina watched.

They stepped into the forest to collect a store of fruit. Sudden as lightning, Proserpina snatched a weasel-like animal out of a bush and broke its neck. She tossed it aboard with the fruit and the water.

She took her place on a horseshoe of couch and improvised a crash web. Hanuman studied the ring of telltales and controls for some seconds before he dared touch them. They had a half-random look: fitted in whenever there was something new to be monitored.

The vehicle was nothing like an airplane.

Relaxed as if poured into her couch, Proserpina watched him lift and swoop and spin and dip almost low enough to shatter a tree and minaret, lift too fast, slow until the wind-induced tremor went away, then rise sedately into the vacuum where he could build up some speed.

The mag ship was as much a wonder as any of Tunesmiths ships. Its brute strength was startling: it could easily have torn itself into shreds of foil. Its motor was the Ringworld floor itself, powered by sunlight falling on trillions of square miles of shadow squares. Sailing lines of magnetic force, it moved less like an airplane than like an undersea vessel.

These controls werent all involved with flying. Hanuman was aloft for some time before he tried anything esoteric. Proserpina watched but did not interfere as he manipulated magnetic fields beneath the landscape. Soil lifted and shifted. In his wake, a stream began to change its course.

Hed seen Tunesmith manipulating such forces in a command post in the Repair Center. This wasnt just a spacecraft. It was an entire Ringworld defense system.

Under guidance from the mag ship, the superconductor cables below the landscape could attract, repel, or shift anything metallic: incoming meteoroids, alien ships and missiles, even the occasional solar storm or lethal surge of cosmic rays. Hanuman might be good enough to orchestrate such a defense. He had watched Tunesmith at work.

The land below Hanuman was only a mask over vacuum. Knowing that in his gut, seeing it in the Ringworlds underside, ridges that were canyons and riverbeds, creases that were mountain ranges, had almost destroyed the newly created protector. Hanuman had never grown used to it. Only now did he begin to feel that he was its master.