Ringworld's Children

with unfiltered light.

The linear accelerator roared; an arc of lightning ran bottom to top.

The crater began to close.

Louis turned back to the display. Looking over Tunesmiths shoulder, he watched fusion light flare from offscreen and dwindle to a bright point. Whatever Tunesmith had launched was already too far to see.

Tunesmith had joined the Fringe War!

A protector could not be expected to do nothing, even if the alternative was to bring war down on their heads. Louis scowled. Bram the protector had been crazy, even if supremely intelligent. Louis must eventually decide if Tunesmith was crazy too, and what to do about it.

Meanwhile this latest maneuver should keep the protector busy. Now, how much freedom had Louis been allotted? Louis said, 'Hindmosts Voice, show me the locations of all stepping disks.'

The Hindmosts Voice popped up three hundred and sixty degrees of Map Room. The Ringworld surrounded Louis, a ring six hundred million miles around and a million miles wide, banded in blue for day and black for night and broad fuzzy edges for dusk and dawn. Winking orange cursor lights were displayed across its face. Some were shaped like arrowheads.

This pattern had changed greatly since Louis had last seen it. 'How many?'

'Ninety-five stepping disks are now in use. Two failed. Three were dropped into deep space and probes launched through them. The fleets shot them down. Ten are held in reserve.'

The Hindmost had stocked stepping disks aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry, but not a hundred and ten! 'Is the Hindmost building more stepping disks?'

'With his help Tunesmith has built a stepping-disk factory. Work proceeds slowly.'

The blinking orange lights that marked stepping disks were thick along the near side of the Ringworld, the Great Ocean arc. The far side looked sparse. Two blinking orange arrowheads had nearly reached the edge of the Other Ocean. Others were moving in that direction.

The Other Ocean was a diamond shape sprawling across most of the width of the Ringworld, one hundred eighty degrees around from the Great Ocean. Two such masses of water must counterbalance each other. The Hindmosts crew had not explored the Other Ocean. High time, Louis thought.

Most of the stepping disks were clustered around the Great Ocean, and of those, most were in a tight cluster that must be the Map of Mars. Louis pointed at one offshore from Mars. 'What is that?'

'That is Hot Needle of Inquirys lander.'

Teela the protector had blasted the lander during their last duel. 'Its functional?'

'The stepping-disk link is functional.'

'What about the lander?'

'Life support is marginal. Drive systems and weaponry have failed.'

'Can some of these service stacks be locked out of the system?'

'That has been done.' Lines spread across the map to link the blinking lights. Some had crossed-circle verboten marks on them: closed. The maze was complicated, and Louis didnt try to understand it. 'My Master has override codes,' the Voice said.

'May I have those?'

'No.'

'Number these stepping-disk sites for me. Then print out a map.'

As the Ringworld was vast, the scale was extreme. His naked eye would never get any detail out of it. When the map extruded, he folded it and stuffed it in a pocket anyway.

He broke for lunch and came back.

He set two service stacks moving and changed a number of links. The Hindmosts Voice printed another map with his changes added. He pocketed that too. Better keep both. Now, with luck, hed have avenues of travel unknown to Tunesmith.

Or it might be wasted effort. The Hindmost, when he woke, could change it all back in a moment.

The Voice refused to make weapons. Of course the kitchen in Needles crew quarters hadnt done that either.

Tunesmith was still at the end of a boom, still tracking whatever hed launched.

'Where are the rest of us?' Louis asked the Voice.

'Who do you seek?'

'Acolyte.'

'I do not have that name—'

'The Kzin we shared this ship with. Chmeees child.'

'I list that LE as—' blood-curdling howl. Louis had to pry his fingers loose from a table edge. 'Rename him Acolyte?'

'Please.'

The map was back, and a blinking point next to Fist-of-God… a hundred thousand miles port-and-antispin from Fist-of-God — four times the circumference of the Earth — and twice that far to spinward of the Map of Mars. The hugeness of the Ringworld had to be learned over and over. The Voice said, 'Here we set Acolyte, with a service stack, thirty-one days ago. He has since moved by eleven hundred miles.' The point jumped minutely. 'Tunesmith has altered the setting for the stepping disk. It sends to an observation point on the Map of Earth.'

Home to Acolytes father. 'Has he used it?'

'No.'

'Where are the City Builders?'

'Do you mean the librarians? Kawaresksenjajok and Fortaralisplyar and three children were returned to their origin—'

'Good!' Hed meant to do that himself.

'To the library in the floating city. I note your approval. Who else shall I track?'

Who else had been his companions? Two protectors. Bram the Vampire protector was dead. Tunesmith was… still busy, it seemed. In the Meteor Defense Room the protectors telescope screen was following a receding point, the vehicle hed launched earlier. Its drive was off… flared brilliantly and blinked off again.

That was a warship. Reaction motors were still needed for war; modern thrusters couldnt switch on and off as fast.

Louis asked, 'Have you kept track of Valavirgillin?'

The map jumped. 'Here, near the floating city and a local center of Machine People culture.'

Good, and she was well away from vampires. They had not met in twelve years. 'Why did you track her, Hindmosts Voice?'

'Orders.'

Carefully, 'Who do you take orders from?'

'From you and Tunesmith and—' a blast of orchestral chaos, piercingly sweet. Louis recognized the Hindmosts true name. 'But all such may be countermanded by—' the Hindmosts name again.

'Is Tunesmith restricted from any interesting levels of this ship?'

'Not currently.'

The Hindmost was still in wrapped-around-himself catatonia. 'How long since hes eaten?' Louis asked.

'Two local days. He wakes to eat.'

'Wake him up.'

'How shall I wake him without trauma?'

'I saw him in a dance once. Turn that on. Prepare food for him.'

CHAPTER 2 The Hindmost

The Hindmost dreamed of perfect safety.