Ringworld's Children

bottle could still be furnished with hidden control rooms. Where was Hot Needle of Inquiry? It didnt matter. Louis could reach the ship by stepping disk, and that was all that mattered, unless — was it flightworthy? Hed have to learn.

Why was Tunesmiths nose so large, when Proserpinas was almost flat?

Did Louis Wu have children or N-children among the ships of the Fringe War?

Where was Long Shot? Tunesmith might be studying the ship where hed worked on Needle and the autodoc, in the Launch Room beneath the Map of Mons Olympus. The Launch Room was roomy enough. It was the first place Louis would look, if he ever got over this… torpor. It felt like he was thinking very fast, but his mind was like ten thousand butterflies in a field, lighting everywhere, going nowhere. His body… he couldnt tell.

He hid, and he ate.

Where had Roxanny taken Wembleth? Shed fled from Louis Wu and his protector allies. Of course she must have burned her bridges behind her: changed settings on the stepping disks, maybe burned out the last one before hiding herself. How would he ever find them?

One hundred and fifty-one days flickered past. Then it was as if hed wakened from a doze.

He stayed where he was, half buried in dirt and plant stalks. His hands moved over his face and his body, finding a new shape. Swollen joints. Vanished testicles, penis shrunken to nothing. His skull had softened, expanded, hardened again, leaving a minor crest of bone. His face was a hard mask, lips fused to gums and ossified. His nose was enlarged. Hed look like a clown. And his sense of smell had become almost magical.

Hah! Hed solved it, the problem of the noses.

A human nose forms a kind of hood: it will hold a bubble of air for a swimmer. Apes dont have the hooded nostrils because they dont swim. Humans have evolved halfway in every direction, including the aquatic: most of their skin is bare, like the smooth skin of a dolphin.

Fate really did intend mankind to swim.

Breeders lose most of their sense of smell because it would drive them crazy. They would kill any stranger who came near their children, even doctors and teachers. They would protect their children from everything, driving them crazy.

Louiss nose told him that the Penultimates arcology-sized refuge was empty of enemies. The only life here was burrowers and insect analogues, and an old scent that went straight to his hindbrain.

He looked at the watch tattooed on the back of his hand. Swollen knuckles and wrist bones distorted the digital display. It was telling Canyon time. He did the math and found that hed been dawdling for two falans. Far too long. But it was right, hed counted one hundred fifty-one thirty-hour days. An old ARM record said that Jack Brennan had changed to a protector much faster than that.

Something had slowed his metamorphosis.

He tried to stand up, already guessing the answer.

He couldnt stand straight. Hed been half-healed when he began to eat yellow root. The injuries were embedded in the regrowth pattern. Hed become a protector, but crippled. His knee, leg, hip, and ribs on the left side were twisted out of true. His body was nearly fat free, the fat burned out of him during too long an estivation.

He limped through the hanging garden, learning how to move all over again. A protector who couldnt fight. He reached for something badger-like and caught its leg only because it was so slow. He ate it in haste, and judged it was enough.

A few ramps below was the scorched and half-melted service stack. He limped down and had a look. It had cooled, of course. He tried to pop the controls open, but melted metal had fused it shut.

He climbed painfully onto the stepping disk. Nothing happened.

His fist slapped the rim hard.

Mars! He twisted and reached up to slap both hands against the inverted stepping disk before he could fall away. A moment later he was in a handstand in a field of high grass. He rolled to his feet quick (where was Tunesmith?) and found himself under a blue hemisphere, in the tree- of-life garden where hed killed Teela Brown.

Tunesmith?

Nowhere.

He popped the stepping-disk controls open and began to play. First things first.

There was a mile-long craft on the Great Ocean. Hidden Patriarch had brought Kzinti to conquer the Map of Earth, centuries ago, and on that ship was a stepping disk. Louis didnt remember its code, but he found it.

Hidden Patriarch. He flicked in wire-tense, ready to fight or die.

Nothing came at him. He could see a bronze fractal spider web looking at him from a rusted iron wall: one of the Hindmosts webeyes. Otherwise the location didnt seem to be guarded.

Hed left Hidden Patriarch almost beneath the Ringworlds starboard rim wall. Such a view could reduce a man to the size of a proton. Mountains as big as Everest lined its base, green with riotous life. Spill mountains were all seabottom muck, all fertilizer.

The librarians hadnt moved the ship. The Hindmost said theyd been returned home. Hidden Patriarch might well be empty.

Louis popped the controls, taking this disk out of the network. Now he was unreachable.

For a few moments now, Louis only thought. His memories were muzzy — a long lifetime of breeder memories. His memories of this last hour were diamond clear.

Long ago, it seemed, hed studied a map of the Hindmosts stepping-disk system. Now he reached back into those memories to find settings and placements for various locations. They were mostly lost… but what he needed was a disk only recently put into service. Thought and memory gave him the code by which the Hindmost designated stepping disks. Wouldnt Tunesmith keep that system? It would give Louis a handful of settings to try.

Hed better have a pressure suit.

He popped aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry and yelled, 'Hindmosts Voice! Its Louis!' Despite changes in his throat structure he made himself sound like Louis Wu.

'Dont move. You are not Louis Wu,' said a flat voice like the Hindmosts.

Louis didnt move. He was in the crew cabin. For an instant he considered familiar food, a shower, and a change of clothes, but it just didnt matter. He said, 'Tell the Hindmost Louis Wu has become a protector. I need to talk to him.'

'Louis? I warned you!' said the same voice.

'I knew. Dont tell me where you are. Ive come for a pressure suit. Have you been watching the Fringe War? Has anything happened?'

'An antimatter missile destroyed one of the ramjets on the rim wall,' the puppeteers voice said. 'Twenty- eight Ringworld days ago. The explosion was tremendous, not just antimatter but kilotonnes of confined plasma under fusion. Spill mountains melted. I couldnt learn what faction did that. I thought chaos would follow. I made ready to depart, but nothing happened.'

'Those attitude jets always were too vulnerable. Tunesmith must have set up something else by now.' Louiss mind ranged ahead of his words. 'The Ringworld builders never did want rim wall ramjets as anything more than a temporary fix and a safety feature. They built the superconductor grid to move the system magnetically, push against the sun. Tunesmith controls that.'

'Youre guessing.'

'I guess good. Im a protector. Free me, Hindmost, and Ill get off your property.'

'Whats it like?' the Hindmost asked.

'I feel confined. Im crippled,' Louis said. 'I cant fight and cant run. I can think faster than I ever did before. I see more answers. Thats confining too, in a way. If I see the right answer every time, therere no choices.

'Tunesmith has a plan. I wont interfere unless he threatens my N-children, but I should talk to him. Its just that there are things I have to do first. What about you? Do you have a plan?'