Close behind him Roxanny snapped, 'Luis, dont!' Hanuman
Behind Roxanny, sunrise glowed on the edge of a ridge.
The light should have grabbed his attention. But Louis was facing Roxanny and Claus and two guns. His mind caught up too slowly. Hidden or not, the sun is always at noon. That
The ground trembled.
Acolyte hadnt moved; he must have been warned not to.
'I think well do better alone,' Claus told them, smiling, victorious. 'We only need one flycycle, but we need you to tell us how to fly it. You both know how. We only need one of you.'
Louis turned away from the fireball rising above the ridge.
The flare must have half-blinded Claus. The ground lurched, Louis lurched, Claus lurched, and Hanuman jumped into Clauss arms. Claus tried to move him aside. Acolyte turned as he rose. His claw swept across Claus and hooked him under the throat.
Louis whipped around and ran two steps. His fist took Roxanny under the jaw. He gave it plenty of follow through. She went down, rolling, and Louis leapt after her, afraid hed hit her too hard, but he had to have that gun. In his peripheral vision, Acolyte hurled Claus into the ground in a spray of blood.
Louiss foot landed on her gun hand, and he had the gun. 'Dont,' he said.
She did. Her foot lashed out and caught him in the gut. Louis moved his hand: the gun missed her when it went off. Dust blasted out of the turf. A sonic weapon. He was still on his feet, trying to back away. Her other foot hooked his knee. He disengaged. She was up. The heel of her hand caught his cheek, and he was sprawling, still trying to avoid firing. Then she had his gun hand, and twisted, and had his gun. She aimed at a rising flycycle. He kicked her off balance. She fired as she fell.
He was on the ground, screaming. It felt like all the bones of his left hip and leg had shattered. Roxanny fired into the sky, lowered her arm and cursed.
When his eyes could focus, she was pointing the gun straight at him from four feet away.
The fireball was dying above the ridge. A spacecraft came out of the glare and began to settle.
One flycycle was still on the ground. The other wasnt in sight. Hanuman and Acolyte and Wembleth werent either. Claus lay on his back, his head torn nearly off, his entrails displayed.
Roxanny had him under the gun. 'Why dont I just shoot you?' she asked.
'Roxanny, dont,' said Louis Wu, master of sarcasm. He dared not move and he couldnt think. Just as well. A twenty-year-old would break under the fury in her eyes. 'Dont shoot me,' Luis said. 'Ill fly you anywhere you like. Only I cant move.'
Wembleth appeared from behind a tree, saw the gun in Roxannys hand, and ducked back.
'I dont need your flycycle,' Roxanny said. 'Weve got a ship. Wembleth! Get aboard and take a seat. Luis, can you stand up?'
'Futz, no!' Louis said.
She stooped above him and picked him up in her arms. His leg and hip sagged as if boneless. She nearly dropped him when he screamed. The pain blasted his mind away and he missed the rest.
Louis was on his back. Some kind of talk show was running on the ceiling, but the voices didnt match. Aha: the sound was turned off. The voices had been speaking for some time, against a noisy background Louis took for a ship of war.
'I had brothers once.' Wembleth sounded drugged. Wembleths translator device sounded crisp and alert. 'Stayed with their home turf when Father and I moved to…'
'…Move often?' A male voice of command, one Louis had never heard.
Wembleth: 'Yes.'
Roxanny had shot him.
Louis couldnt believe it. How badly was he hurt? His mind was muzzy; hed have trouble keeping a story straight. If they questioned Luis Tamasan, theyd hear far too much. Louis tried to move.
He couldnt feel much. There was a tickle behind the back of his neck. His eyes could move, and his head, a little. He could just see that he was naked, on his back, immobilized in something like a stretch rack… or the Intensive Care Cavity of a military autodoc. The noisy background suggested a ship of war. He listened to the voices, trying to make them out.
Male officer: '…brothers?'
'Chosen brothers. Grew up faster than me… stayed with their own, to find mates.'
'Seen many kinds of human…?'
Wembleth: 'Twenty, thirty species… reshed with…'
He thought he could guess what had happened up there.
A ship beneath the Ringworld floor had fired antimatter bullets upward. No need to find an eyestorm already in place. One bullet to tear away the foamed scrith meteor insulation. The next to blast a hole through the scrith floor and the landscape above, big enough for a small troop transport to pass through.
It was crazy, vicious, simple, and direct. He should have seen it coming instead of making elaborate long- range travel plans.
Wembleth: 'Cant get anywhere if you dont know… reshtra… dont try to guess—'
Roxannys voice. 'War? Do you ever fight—'
'Seen carnivores fight plant eaters… eaten me too. That what you mean?'
'Ook.'
Mmm? Turning his head wasnt easy: Louis was restrained in a nest of attachments, and hed lost all sensation below his neck. But there was Hanuman, in a cage big enough to hold a Kzin. They locked eyes in mutual sympathy. Then something blocked Louiss view.
Roxanny Gauthier hung back behind a burly man, maybe a Jinxian, both wearing falling jumpers with ARM insignia. The man loomed over Louis, judging. He said, 'Youd be Luis Tamasan.'
'Yah,' said Louis Wu.
'You attacked one of my people.'
'Im Tec-Major Schmidt. Youre a civilian prisoner. That gives you certain rights, but youre in futzy poor shape to exercise them. These stunners only stun if youre far enough away, but you were right up against Tec-First Gauthier. Youve got bones broken into shrapnel from your hip to your knee. The doc can heal you if you dont move for a while. Five days.'
'Tanj.' Better make nice — 'Thank you, sir. I suppose Id be crippled for life without your help.'
The officer grinned.
'I wont try to pull loose,' Louis said.
'You could hurt yourself pretty bad if you did. Stet.' The tickle behind his neck moved down his spine — his arms came back to life, the left very tender, bruised from elbow to fingertips — and further, until — 'Hiii!' — and back up an inch. Louis could still feel bruises along his ribs, but not that awful shattered shriek of agony that started with his left hip.
Schmidts hands manipulated a video remote in Louiss peripheral vision. The talk show disappeared; Ringworld jumped into being, spilling off the ceiling, and down the rectangular walls. Schmidt asked, 'Where do you come from?'
'Rotate it. More. Stet. Sir, thats the Great Ocean. Look along the spinward edge…' Louis began describing the Weaver village hed lived in last year. People, houses, the river, visiting Fishers, the webeye camera the Hindmost ('Chiron') had sprayed across the stone face of a gorge. These ARMs had no way of checking. If they could, Weavers would tell stories of Louis Wu and the Hindmost as Vashneesht having some kind of quarrel.
But his mind was turning foggy. Louis hadnt been drunk in a long time, but it was like this.
Schmidt zoomed on the Great Ocean region. 'You live there? And your parents? Who else? A Kzin family? This puppeteer you told us about?'
