Ringworld's Children

'Theres nothing to hit. You get used to this—'

The protectors were back. Two were pushing a fair-sized mass: the medical cage. They moored it to the cargo grid next to the rescue bubble. There was other cargo to be attached. Then they swarmed away to the cabin, leaving one still on the grid.

Gray Nurse was whipped away.

Louis felt no acceleration beyond a kind of flutter, but he felt his hair writhe about him. They must be doing hundreds of gravities. Gray Nurse was just gone. Hed seen nothing like a rocket motor, nor even a thruster.

Wembleth had his arms over his face.

The sunfish ship followed the thread of a spillpipe beneath the Ringworlds black underside. A slow hour later, by the watch face in the back of Louiss hand, the spillpipe led them around the rim and up into a glare of sunlight.

Louis looked down along the inside of the rim wall, a thousand miles down toward a few tiny cones along its base. Beyond was a wide shore — twenty to thirty thousand miles of shore, it must be, given how high they were — and then an infinity of blue water seen from high enough to show the texture of sea bottom, and a few sparse clusters of big flat islands.

The clustered islands were peculiar. They all looked alike, and there was something else too. Louis had never seen anything like it, and that alone meant that he was looking at the Other Ocean.

They were dropping toward the rim wall. Theyd been in flight for less than an hour.

'Wembleth?'

'Roxanny! Can you talk?'

She blinked. 'Luis? They took you too. Where are we? Who are these — ?'

'Spill mountain people,' Louis said. 'There are lots of species. Do you ARMs know about — ?'

'Down there below us, those are spill mountains,' she said. 'Theyre bigger than they look. Do you know what they are?'

'Theyre just the mountains,' Louis said, secretly amused.

The spill mountains had grown larger. Each of the little cones had a few silver threads of river running from its base.

'Pipes run under the Ringworld floor. They pump sea-bottom slush up over the rim. Otherwise all the fertile soil would wind up in the sea bottoms and nothing would grow.'

They were dropping toward one of the peaks. Roxanny said, 'Those mountains are waste heaps leaning against the rim wall, forty to fifty klicks high. People live on them. Weve seen balloons going between the peaks. But, Luis, I think the ones who attacked us were protectors. Do you know about protectors?'

'Same thing as Vashneesht? Magicians. Very smart, very fierce, and theyre born in armor. We wondered if they were myths. There are some artifacts.'

'Oh, theyre real. One of those looked different from the rest,' Roxanny said. 'A primitive protector got as far as Sol system, seven hundred years ago, all the way from the galactic core. Its face looked like that ones.'

'The joker. Thats the one in charge,' Louis said.

'How do you know that?'

Bram and Anne, both Vampire protectors, had found it easy to enslave spill mountain protectors. Spill mountain people couldnt live on the flats. In every case their entire species was isolated on some single mountain, held hostage with nowhere to flee. A spill mountain protector was born trapped.

Luis wouldnt know that, so Louis said, 'I heard him giving orders.'

They were crawling down the sky toward one of the spill mountains. Louis could hear a thin whining and feel a tremor in the rescue bubble. The sunfish ship had no kind of streamlining. They sank past an icy peak. Green showed much lower down. The sunfish ship moved close and slid sideways along a staircase of ledges, and now Louis could see trees and tiered fields and glimpse snow heaped in regular cones. Miles below was a breathtaking view of an endlessly rolling land, intricately detailed in tiny seas, rivers, ridges of hills.

There was a thump. Louis drifted against the bubble wall. Then the gravity generator went off and he slumped against the curve of wall in full gravity. Pain lashed up his leg and hip.

He didnt quite pass out. Roxanny whispered to him, 'Things happen in war, Luis. Dont hold it against me,' while the protectors moved around on the ice and rock, detaching treasure from Gray Nurse and carrying it away. Several were working on Gray Nurses doc.

The joker protector opened the rescue balloon. Warm air puffed out; thin cold air blew in. The joker stepped in, sniffed, looked at each of the occupants in turn. Roxanny was wary; Wembleth cringed in terror. Hanumans eyes met the other protectors. They didnt try to speak, but they knew each other for what they were.

The joker touched Louiss leg and its brace, using great care.

Wembleth bolted for the opening. The joker swiped at him and missed… or else changed his mind. Wembleth bolted along the ledge, past conical houses, and was out of sight.

Wembleth was suffocating again. There wasnt enough air. The folk around him didnt seem to be having trouble. A few children watched him curiously.

Hed snatched up the translator device Roxanny had given him. Learning their language would be easier now… but it would still take hours. Strangers were always well treated, but the Vashneesht was a stranger too. Wembleth knew hed have to hide now, and without help.

The houses were tall heaps of snow with a single small hole for a door. Hed be found quick in one of those, and only one way out. He considered hiding in a snowdrift, but only for an instant. Hed freeze. He wasnt wearing enough clothing. And he was leaving footprints!

A ridge of naked rock gave him the chance to backtrack. He followed it to where he could jump across snow onto the angled trunk of a huge elbow tree. His knees betrayed him as he jumped; he landed on the slope, slid, caught himself, and clawed his way up sixty feet of naked trunk. The top was a dense green tuft. Wembleth burrowed into it.

He could see out, a little.

Four spill mountain protectors, naked in the cold and their own thick white fur, wedged Gray Nurses doc through the opening into the rescue bubble.

Louis moaned when they moved him. The protectors were fiercely strong and surprisingly gentle, but it hurt. They lowered him into the Intensive Care Cavity and one reached around behind him. All sensation went away below the small of his back.

Though the military doc was severed from Gray Nurse, somehow theyd got it running.

The joker turned when Roxanny spoke. 'You are in violation of several dozen laws enforced by the ARM and related governments.'

The joker answered in unknown speech.

Roxannys translator would pick up the language. Good, and Louiss would catch it too. Immobilized as he was, there was no more he could accomplish here. Louis went to sleep.

Through the greenery Wembleth watched the protector leave the rescue bubble. Roxanny followed. A dozen children followed her. The protector tracked his footprints for a time, then jumped across to the ridge of rock, examined it with her nose to the ground, then came straight toward him. She ran lightly up the trunk. She reached into the tuft and pulled Wembleth out into empty air.

She let him dangle from one hand as she climbed down. He was frozen with fear and cold.

A dozen Children crowded the rescue bubble, and more swarmed outside. Hanuman was clowning for them. They shied back when Louis stirred and woke.

He smiled at a wall of white fur and two dozen eyes. 'Hello,' he said. A few voices answered. His translator did not.