Ringworld's Children

Most of the pain above his waist — left arm, ribs — had eased off. He wondered how long he was going to be like this. If Roxanny and the joker had taught each other their speech, then the joker hadnt been speaking local dialect, and that meant Louis couldnt even talk to these kids.

But Roxanny and the joker were coming back, and Roxanny was holding Wembleths hand.

They couldnt get through the crowd to reach the rescue bubble. They didnt try. The joker began to lecture, pointing occasionally at the humans and Wembleth. The kids inside couldnt hear, so they went out. Presently the joker sent Wembleth and Roxanny in, and gestured four remaining kids out, and closed the bubble.

Roxanny glared after the joker, who was hopping away on the struts of the cargo grid. 'She wont talk,' Roxanny said bitterly.

'Translator wont work?'

'The translators fine, but it doesnt have anything to say.'

Louis asked, 'Are you keeping ARM secrets?'

'Sos she! Yes, she, she told me that much. She said her name was Proserpina.'

Wembleths teeth chattered as he spoke. His translator said, 'Were going for another ride.'

Louis asked, 'Are you up for that?'

The man shivered violently. 'I pissed my clothing last time. Thank you for not noticing.'

Louis sniffed. The air in the bubble had never ceased to smell clean and fresh. 'Protectors build good machines,' he said. 'Well be fine.' He saw the joker enter the ships cabin.

Gravity went away. 'Well be fine,' he repeated.

The sunfish ship floated away from the cliff, then straight up. Blue sky darkened to black.

Louis said, 'Ive figured out this ship. Gravity control—'

'Magnetic,' Roxanny said crisply. 'They must use the grid. Luis, theres a superconductor grid in the Ringworld floor. If this ship is using a magnetic drive, then it can thrust against the Ringworld. Its like leaving your motor at home. I felt my hair stand up. Didnt you?'

'Stet, but I meant the cabin gravity. Powerful, but it flutters. Why wouldnt Vashneesht fix that? I think theyre too arrogant to test what they build. They do it all in one shot.'

'Got it all figured out, do you, kid?'

Louis flushed. He said, 'Stet, its magnetic. Youd have near infinite range and huge acceleration as long as you stay near the superconductor net. You could use it as a weapon too. Push away missiles and ships. It could even be seen as a message.'

'Message?'

' I cant invade you. Im purely defensive. Like a fort.'

'Mmm. Or just Keep out. '

'Were falling again!' Wembleth burst out. 'Roxanny, where are we going?'

Roxanny shook her head.

They crossed a wonderfully fractal shoreline, all curliques of bay and beach, and were over the ocean. Ocean and sprinklings of islands. If you thought of them as islands, you didnt see that much speed, but theyd be one-to-one maps of a world.

Near the shore of the Other Ocean the clusters were a bit foreshortened. Otherwise they were all maps of the same world. One sprawling continent with a spine of mountain; four smaller bodies and an archipelago of scattered tiny islands, all to antispin of the mainland; all showed a grainy texture. If you had to tell someone where you were — say, Tunesmith, if you could get hold of any kind of communicator — how would you?

But the shadows were different. Bands and flecks and patches of shadow on only a few of the islands.

Roxanny said, 'This is Ocean Two! Do you suppose were going to one of the maps?'

'Sure. What do you make of the shadows, Roxanny?'

'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.

Roxanny said, 'Luis, Wembleth, theres two oceans on the Ringworld, you know? There are all those billions of little shallow seas with corrugated shorelines to give the locals lots of convenient bays and harbors, and all the trillions of klicks of twisty rivers. But then there are two big counterbalanced oceans, the one with all the inhabited worlds in known space on it — thats yours, Luis — and this, this endlessly repeated map. Its probably one-to-one scale of something, but its no world known to the ARM.'

Louis started to laugh.

Roxanny glared at him. She said, 'There are thirty-two of these maps, all of the same world! So after we land, we still wont know where we are. Is that what has you amused?'

'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,' Roxanny said, 'and we got all that from a stray Pak protector via Jack Brennan, and he was a Belter turned protector who couldnt be trusted worth tanj. So, no, we dont know the shapes of the Pak continents. Maybe they change. These creatures are powerful.

'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,' Roxanny said.

'Roxanny? This big?' They were still miles high.

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.

Roxanny said, 'Formal gardens are all rectangles, unless theyre supposed to look like wilderness. What kind of garden is all circles, and no two the same size? This is like… right.'

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,' Roxanny said. Louis laughed.

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

CHAPTER 15 Proserpina