Ringworld's Children

He did not dream that he was Hindmost again, ruler of a trillion of his own kind. Hed been mad to be so ambitious. Always he had known that that was no stable state, that his Experimentalist faction could lose power in a moment. As it had.

He dreamed that he was young again. That was so long ago that all detail had been smoothed from his mind, and he only remembered a generic sense of being little and protected and unique.

He dreamed that no tool would ever bite his hand.

And then the dance began -

The illusion was marvelous.

Louis stood in a vast hall. The floor was all broad, shallow steps. A thousand aliens moved around him; two thousand throats uttered orchestral music that was also conversation, unbearably complex. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would have gone crazy. The Beatles… started out crazy, but futz, so did Mozart.

Kick, slide, left heads brush fingerlips; hind leg kicks, partner shies. The Hindmost kicked. A flat one-eyed head emerged from beneath his torso. Spin, kick; the Hindmost lurched to his forefeet and tried to turn. Was this a dance or a martial art?

The Hindmost whistled. The dance dissipated. 'Louis,' the puppeteer said.

'How long were you out?'

'I sleep much. Where is Tunesmith?'

'Fighting a war, I think.'

A head turned to the display of the Meteor Defense Room. 'I watched him build that vehicle. The Fringe War grows ever hotter. Have they invaded the Ringworld?'

'I have no idea. Hindmost, how did Needle come to be in this state?'

'Recall that Tunesmith accepted me as his teacher, on your advice.'

Tunesmith, the Ghoul musician, had been newborn as a protector and thirsty for learning. 'He needed training, and fast,' Louis said. 'I thought that the more he learned from us, the more we could guess what hed do. Did you try to keep secrets?'

'Yes.'

'And you barred him from the flight deck, of course.'

'I did,' the puppeteer acknowledged. 'I taught using your displays in crew quarters. I taught well, but he learned faster, always faster. He demanded access to my tools. I refused. Six days after you entered the doc, I woke to find him standing over me here where I thought he could not reach. I gave him everything.'

'When did he chop up your ship?'

'Some time afterward. I was in fear-coma for eleven days. I woke and found this. Little has changed since. Louis, he has repaired the hyperdrive!'

'A fat lot of good—'

'He will reassemble the ship. When he does, I flee. Be aboard.'

'When?'

The puppeteers eyes looked at each other.

That meant confusion, or amusement, or any form of internal conflict. Louis asked, 'Whats he been doing? Building a warship—'

'Yes, and tracking the Fringe War, delving the secrets of my machinery — he wouldnt trust me to teach him — and ridding himself of my allies and yours. The Machine People are sent home. Acolyte is sent to spy on nothing at all. You, he kept safely asleep in the Intensive Care Cavity, and did extensive experiments there too. Louis, I must instruct you. You shall know everything you might need.'

Louis asked, 'Why?'

'We are allies!'

'Why?' The droud was gone from its place, a bulge in Louiss pocket. Would the Hindmost mention it?

'Tunesmith has us enslaved! Cant you see what he plans for you?'

'I think so. Hell make me a protector.'

Protector was the adult form of the human species.

Child, breeder, protector. At middle age — younger for some species of hominid, older for a few, around forty-five for humans — a breeder can become a protector. His/her skin thickens and wrinkles to armor. The brain case expands. A second two-chamber heart grows where the femoral arteries run into the legs. Joints grow bulky, giving a greater momentum for greater leverage in muscles and tendons.

There are psychological changes too. A protector loses the attributes of gender. A protector will protect his/her progeny, identifying them by scent. Mutations are left to die. A protector with no surviving children usually stops eating and dies… but some may choose to protect and nurture their entire species. That can work, if there is a perceived threat.

But none of it happens without the virus that lives in tree-of-life to trigger the change.

Tree-of-life did not grow properly on Earth. On the Ringworld it had been found only in chambers beneath the Map of Mars. The hominids of Earth, and of the Ringworld too, had evolved as breeders, an unfinished form, like axolotls.

Too young a hominid does not react to the smell of tree-of-life root. The root will poison an elderly hominid. Louis Wu had been too old until Carlos Wus autodoc changed him, and now he was too young.

'Im safe for at least a quarter century,' he said.

The puppeteer said, 'Longer than that, if you use Carlos Wus autodoc in time. The doc rejuvenates you. Tunesmith will stop you from doing that.'

Good point. Louis said, 'And what if he waits that long before he puts Needle back together?'

The puppeteer spoke in mournful music. 'Then I am lost. Severed from my family, my home. Slave to a creature shaped by his evolution to hold nothing of worth beyond his own bloodline. Louis, you face the same. You are not of Tunesmiths species.'

'On the Ringworld Im not of any species.'

'Yes, Louis, yes,' in crescendo, 'dont you see the implication? He will feed you tree-of-life. You will be a protector. He will not give you power over him. You are to be only a prisoner and advisor, a talking head, the protector who has no descendants to guard. You will be the Voice that speaks for the safety of the Ringworld itself!'

'Yes,' Louis said patiently, 'but not for twenty-five years. Ive been rebuilt young. I dont react to the smell of the root. Im not old enough to make the change.'

'But do you want that?'

'No. Nonono. What can you do for me? Ive been studying your placement of stepping disks. I made a few changes.'

The Hindmost whistled up the Map Room display, the Ringworld and stepping disks, and vectors and all. He turned a complete circle, heads held wide apart for extreme binocular vision. 'Good.'

'I expect you could reset everything. Understand though, Hindmost, if a service stack isnt where I expect to find it, that could kill me. You should give me access codes.'

'Yes.'

'By now Tunesmith must know everything about the doc. What dont I know?'

'You would not have the mental capacity.'

Louis was silent.

'Carlos Wu built an experimental nanotech-based medical system more than two hundred years ago. The United Nations considered him a proprietary genius. They claimed his work too. He took the doc when he disappeared. Carlos Wu was never found. The doc reappeared six years later on Shasht-Fafnir. My agent, Nessus, was able to buy it. My research team modified it to accommodate Kzinti and Piersons puppeteer physiology and to make it more versatile and dependable.

'Now Tunesmith has rebuilt the machine. I expect it will accommodate Night People too. Hes mastered this form of nanotechnology and is using nanomachines to make more stepping disks. What else must you know? The