The Ringworld Engineers

He asked, “Is this offer contingent on our finding a magic transmuter?”

“No. Your talents are needed regardless. However … any promise I make now would be more easily carried out under an Experimentalist regime. Conservatives might not recognize your value, let alone Chmeee’s.”

That was nicely phrased, Louis conceded. “Speaking of Chmeee—”

“The kzin has defected, but I leave my offer open to him. He has found kzinti females to save. Perhaps you can persuade him.”

“I wonder.”

“And after all, you may see your worlds again. In a thousand years, known space may have forgotten the puppeteers. Mere decades will have passed for you, falling near lightspeed with the Fleet of Worlds.”

“I want time to think it over. I’ll put it to Chmeee when I get the chance.” Louis glanced behind him. The City Builders were watching him. It was a pity he couldn’t consult them, because he was deciding their fate too.

But he had decided. “What I’d like to do next,” he said, “is move on to the Great Ocean. We could come up through Fist-of-God Mountain and go slowly enough—”

“I have no intention of moving the Needle at all. There may be threats other than the meteor defense, and surely it is enough!”

“I’ll bet I can change your mind. Do you remember finding a rig for hoisting the Bussard ramjets on the rim wall? Have a look at that rig now.”

For a moment the puppeteer remained frozen. Then he whirled and was out of sight behind the opaque wall of his quarters.

And that ought to keep him busy long enough.

At his leisure Louis Wu moved to his pile of discarded clothing and equipment. He fished the flashlight-laser out of his vest. Step four: coming up. A pity his autodoc was in the lander, a hundred million miles out of reach. He might need it soon.

There was certainly flare shielding on the outer hall of Needle. Every ship had that, at least on the windows. Under the impact of too much light, flare shielding became a mirror, and maybe saved the pilot’s eyesight.

It stopped solar flares, and it stopped lasers. If the Hindmost had set impervious walls between himself and his captive crew, surely he would have coated the entire flight deck with shielding.

But what about the floor?

Louis knelt. The hyperdrive motor ran the whole length of the ship; it was bronze colored, with some copper and hullmetal. Puppeteer machinery, with all angles rounded, it looked half melted already. Louis angled the flashlight-laser into it and fired through the transparent floor.

Light glared back from the bronze surface. Metal vapor spewed. Liquid metal ran. Louis let the beam chew deep, then played it around, burning or melting anything that looked interesting. A pity he’d never studied hyperdrive system engineering.

The laser grew warm in his hand. He’d been at this for some minutes. He shifted the beam to one of the six mountings that held the motor suspended in its vacuum chamber. It didn’t melt; it softened and settled. He attacked another. The motor’s great mass sagged and twisted.

The narrow beam flickered, strobelike, then faded. Battery dead. Louis tossed the flashlight-laser away from him, remembering that the puppeteer could make it explode in his hand.

He strolled to the forward wall of his cage. The puppeteer wasn’t in sight, but presently Louis heard the sound of a steam calliope dying in agony.

The puppeteer trotted around the opaque green section and stood facing him. Muscles quivered beneath his skin.

“Come,” said Louis Wu, “let us reason together.”

Without haste, the puppeteer tucked both heads beneath his forelegs and let his legs fold under him.

Chapter 24

Counterproposal

Louis Wu woke clearheaded and hungry. For a few minutes he rested, savoring free fall; then he reached out and killed the field. His watch said he’d slept seven hours.

Needle’s guests were sleeping beneath one of the tremendous clamps that had held the lander in place during flight. The white-haired woman slept restlessly, tangled in her ponchos, with one bare leg sticking out. The brown-haired boy slept like a baby.

There was no way to wake them, and no point. The wall wouldn’t carry sound, and the translator didn’t work. And the stepping-disc link would carry no more than a few pounds. Had the puppeteer really expected some kind of complex conspiracy? Louis smiled. His mutiny had been simplicity itself.

He dialed a toasted-cheese handmeal and ate while he padded to the forward wall of his cell.

In repose the Hindmost was a smooth egg shape, covered in hide, with a cloud of white hair tufting the big end. His legs and his heads were hidden beneath him. He hadn’t moved in seven hours.

Louis had seen Nessus do that. It was a puppeteer’s response to shock: to tuck himself into his navel and make the universe disappear. Well and good, but nine hours seemed excessive. If the puppeteer had been driven into catatonia by Louis’s shock treatment, that could be the end of everything.

The puppeteer’s ears were in his heads. Louis’s words must carry through a thickness of meat and bone. He shouted, “Let me offer you several points to ponder!”

The puppeteer did not respond. Louis raised his voice in soliloquy. “This structure is sliding into its sun. There are things we can do about that, but we can’t do any of them while you contemplate your navel. Nobody but you can control any of Needle’s instruments, sensors, drives, etcetera, and that’s just the way you pla

He finished his handmeal while he waited, Puppeteers were superb linguists, in any number of alien languages. Would a puppeteer respond to a narrative hook?

And in fact the Hindmost exposed one head far enough to ask, “What opportunity?”

“The chance to study sunspots from underneath.”

The head withdrew under the puppeteer’s belly.

Louis bellowed, “The repair team is coming!”

Head and neck reappeared and bellowed in response. “What have you done to us? What have you done to me, to yourself, to two natives who might have fled the fire? Did you have thought for anything besides mere vandalism?”

“I did. You said it once. Some day we must decide who rules this expedition. This is the day,” said Louis Wu. “Let me tell you why you should be taking my orders.”

“I never guessed that a wirehead would lust for mere power.”

“Make that point one. I’m better at guessing than you are.”

“Proceed.”

“We’re not leaving here. Even the Fleet of Worlds is out of reach at slower-than-light speeds. If the Ringworld goes, we all go. We’ve got to put it back in position somehow.

“Third point. The Ringworld engineers have been dead for at least a quarter of a million years,” Louis said carefully. “Chmeee would say a couple of million. The hominids couldn’t have mutated and evolved while the Ringworld engineers were alive. They wouldn’t have allowed it. They were Pak protectors.”

Louis had expected horror or terror or surprise. The puppeteer showed only resignation. “Xenophobes,” he said. “Vicious and hardy and very intelligent.”

He must have suspected.

“My ancestors,” said Louis. “They built the Ringworld, and they built whatever system is supposed to hold it in place. Which of us has a better chance of thinking like a Pak protector? One of us has to try.”

“These arguments would mean nothing if you had left us the chance to run. Louis, I trusted you.”

“I wouldn’t like to think you were that stupid. We didn’t volunteer for this expedition. Kzinti and humans, we make poor slaves.”

“Did you have a fourth argument?”

Louis grimaced. “Chmeee is disappointed in me. He wants to force you to his will. If I can tell him you’re taking my orders, he’ll be impressed. And we need him.”