Ringworld's Children

Proserpina stared at her. Then she turned away to gather more fruit. 'Ill feed your injured one,' she said. 'Eat. Explore. Enjoy,' waving vaguely at the forest and its hidden buildings. 'The stream is that way. Follow it back. Well talk soon.'

Roxanny watched her go. Had she really been left to explore unsupervised? The prospect was terrifying and irresistible. She was in the Garden of Eden. God walked here. Nothing was otherwise harmful.

The building -

It was a toroid. One door, no windows. A sequoia-sized tree in the center lifted it two meters off its foundations. While Roxanny hesitated, Wembleth jumped to reach a doorsill, lifted himself, and was in. Roxanny waited a beat, then followed. She wished she had better armaments than the needier in the small of her back.

Roxanny jogged around the perimeter. It was all one big tubular room, a few degrees tilted. She found nothing worth seeing or stealing. The floor was deep in dirt and rotting leaves. No obvious lighting, barring the transparent roof. No offices. No toilets.

She asked Wembleth, 'Do you know this style of building?'

'Vashneesht work. Very old. These walls cannot be harmed, but many lifetimes of wind made these corners round. I think servants of the Vashneesht lived here. Look, this was bed.'

The vegetable trash? Roxanny was used to float plates.

The next building over looked like a pump house nested in a forest of pipes. It was, but it also held toilets, a huge tub for bathing, and dust heaps that must have been towels. Wembleth understood: he knew more primitive means for using wastes for fertilizer. Sewage and wash water flowed into a sprinkler system. It was all powered from the roof, from converted sunlight. Roxanny and Wembleth spent an hour bathing and then investigating the system. The remarkable thing was that it still worked.

Roxanny led them along the river, in the direction of flow of the shadow squares, antispinward. They came to a wide, white sand beach. Huge combers rolled in from an endless ocean.

Roxanny tried her mag specs. She knew what she ought to see, but the horizon was a line of haze; the specs only magnified it, or picked out currents of heat. Shed be peering through hundreds of miles of that, to see subcontinents belonging to this same little map. How long would it take to get used to the Ringworlds scale?

Shed get a better view from the roof of the arcology; but that was not walking distance.

Proserpina paused at the edge of the garden long enough to instruct her servants. Aliens were not to see them. Aliens were not to be interfered with. Aliens were not barred from the Penultimates long-abandoned buildings.

Hanuman was eating and watching her from far up a tall tree. Proserpina gestured him down.

'Who do you serve?' she asked.

The brachiator spoke a musical phrase, then translated into Interworld. 'Tunesmith. He derives from one of the Night People varieties. His secrets are not mine to give.'

'Why do you conceal your nature from the ARM? Why should I?'

'A ship of the ARM exploded three days ago. It tore a hole in the worlds floor that would have destroyed us all.' Hanuman described the location quickly and precisely. 'Tunesmith repaired it—'

'How?'

'Secret, but his means are limited. Another such event would end everything. You and Tunesmith and I have this in common. To hold ARM ships away from the world is our only hope. Kzinti also must be kept distant. Puppeteers would rule us to make us dependable. They would make the Ringworld safe to a point beyond habitability. Who knows what Outsiders might do? There are other factions. Question Tec Gauthier or scan any ARM ships library. Giving information to any of these invaders would only lure them all here to learn more. To tell them of protectors might scare them witless. Rewarding invaders with valuable data—'

'Enough of your chatter, I understand you. What of Luis Tamasan?'

'What sources have you been scanning?'

'Scan is too large a word. Ive barely had time to browse in the libraries of Gray Nurse and Hot Needle of Inquiry.'

'Seek Louis Wu.'

'Gray Nurse has the report he made to the United Nations following the Lying Bastard expedition. Should I hide his identity too?'

'Please yourself. He plays a frivolous game of mate-and-dominate with the ARM woman.'

'Stet, we will leave all as it is for this little time.'

Hanuman asked, 'What is this place? Are my charges endangered?'

'No, but guard them if you will. This was the domain of the last rebel but one, the Penultimate,' Proserpina said. 'Will you serve me?'

'No.' No ambiguity, no hesitation.

'I want to talk to Tunesmith. How may I do this?'

'Tell me what you want said. Give me a vehicle.'

'I have all of the history of this structure and its regents, all for barter. The Repair Center is not the Ringworlds only secret. Do you dare withhold my knowledge from Tunesmith?'

'No. Tunesmith is more intelligent than you or me, but he cannot act without data.'

'Where is he?'

'Some distance up the arc.'

'You came to investigate the antimatter explosion. You left your vehicle behind when the ARM ship took you.' Hanuman didnt react. Proserpina said, 'You have no transport. I have only this one mag ship. To make another would delay us for days. Can we spare the time?'

'I must guide you to Tunesmith.'

Proserpina thought about this. Could she find a way to guard herself? Or was it time to die, if Tunesmith chose to make it so?

'Ill make things secure here first,' she said. 'Wait until tomorrow night.'

Louis Wu was not unhappy. He was getting a long rest, prone in the Intensive Care Cavity. Nobody expected anything of him. Let others deal with the Fringe War, antimatter fuel tanks, the dance of protectors. He dozed, and thought, and dozed…

And he fell asleep, or was put to sleep. He woke under high, dark trees. His massive ARM autodoc was no longer attached to the sunfish ship. The joker stood above him.

He tried not to be dismayed that shed come back alone. Hanuman must be with the others: hed protect them.

She asked, 'Are you well?'

'Check the readouts,' Louis said.

She took him at his word. 'Youre healing. Youre getting nourishment and something to calm you.' She tapped at a screen. 'You wouldnt be getting these inputs if you didnt have internal injuries. Theyre still healing. This other concoction seems to be brewed from tree-of-life root, or some synthetic analogue, but the machine isnt feeding that to you either.'

'Really? Tree-of-life? The stuff that—'

'Here, this tube.'

Louis tried to sit up. 'I cant see it.'

She sketched a mark in the air. Louis knew that symbol, a trademark half a thousand years old. 'Boosterspice.'

'Intended to restore a breeders age-raddled body? And you dont need it. Youre an old man made young. Is boosterspice one of Tunesmiths secrets?'

Louis blinked. 'No. It might be an ARM secret.' Hed been told as a child that boosterspice had been made via genetic engineering done on ragweed. It now struck him that the longevity treatment had been introduced, and allegedly changed human nature forever, about two hundred years after an alien ramship reached Sol system. It could fit.

'You are fertile. I can smell it. Roxanny spoke of shots to make a person sterile.'