Ringworld's Children

doc is set to rebuild certain life forms from their genetic codes.'

'Lets talk about Needle. Has he added weapons?'

'Yes, and mastered mine, and boosted my thrusters beyond sane safety limits—'

'Whats he doing now?'

In the pop-up window, the black silhouette of Tunesmith wasnt doing anything. All the action was in deep space, where a point was moving away from the Ringworld at high speed. The ships of the Fringe War hadnt found it yet.

'A very agile ship with a miniature cabin. A small Hanging People protector is the pilot,' the Hindmost said. 'Little fuel, large thruster and reaction motors, weapons not from my library. As you saw, launched via linear accelerator. Onboard fuel is used only to dodge and decelerate. Tunesmith names it Probe One.'

Probe One was hard to see when its motor was off, but the motor was sputtering now as it dodged plasma weapons and missiles and, somehow, even lasers. Tunesmiths instruments followed it out toward interstellar space.

The Ringworld system retained its outer comets. All the near masses — planets, moons, asteroids — had been stripped from Ringworld system long ago, but comets must have been judged no threat to the Ringworld. After all, there were no big masses to change their orbits and hurl them inward.

Ships of half a dozen species had been hiding among the comets ever since Chmeee and Louis revealed the Ringworlds existence nearly forty years ago.

Now ARM ships — human-built, the police and military branch of the United Nations — streaked in from offscreen. They looked more like tethers than ships, some with smaller ships attached. Probe One lit like a flashbulb — guessed wrong about a laser! — and vanished.

Tunesmiths screen swung wide, following nothing obvious.

Louis hadnt seen any debris.

'Hanging People' was a generic designation for hominids who lived a monkey lifestyle. Some werent sapient. A Hanging People protector would still gain human intelligence or better. Hastily trained for spaceflight, it might outguess ARM defenses, but Tunesmith would still outthink it, would still keep control. Being a protector was all about control.

Tunesmiths telescope swung half around the sky, a hundred and eighty degrees, or nearly that. Tunesmiths viewpoint focused on a fuzzy object… a comet, loosely packed ice drifting apart. Then on a spacecraft emerging from within the cloud.

It was lens shaped, painted black with vivid orange markings in the dots-and-commas of Kzinti script.

'Markings name this ship Diplomat,' the Hindmost told Louis. 'Weve observed. Diplomat seems well armed, but it never comes close to the Ringworld star. Always it lurks among the comets. Always it can flee in hyperdrive.'

'That doesnt sound like Kzinti.'

'They learn. I deem Diplomat the command ship for the Patriarchy fleet.'

Probe One was back. It had circled halfway around Ringworlds sun through hyperspace in less than thirty minutes. Its huge intrinsic velocity had pointed away from the sun; now it carried the ship inward, straight toward Diplomat.

Word from the other side of the sky would not have reached Diplomat yet. Minutes passed before the ships Kzinti crew reacted to the intruder. Then threads of interplanetary dust glowed a bit in Diplomats laser fire, and a handful of small ships zipped out of the ice cloud.

Probe One began dodging. A laser: Probe One flared brilliantly. Louis squinted against the glare. Tunesmiths screen wasnt built to protect viewers from blindness. Probe One dodged out of the beam and into a scintillation of impacts and was still going.

Louis asked, 'General Products hull?'

'That, under a layer of Ringworld floor material.'

Another ship popped out nearby, just long enough for Louis to get a good view. It was much larger than Diplomat, a transparent sphere with complex machinery packed tightly inside the hull… gone now, like the soap bubble it resembled.

'Long Shot,' Louis said, anger rising.

'I saw it,' the Hindmost said.

'They ran. Kzinti dont do that.'

'Long Shot is being used for courier service. Its too valuable to risk, and the Patriarchy will not have found room for armaments.'

'ARM and Patriarchy were supposed to share that ship. Chmeee and I gave it to them with that understanding.'

Probe One was too near the lens ship, accelerating sideways to get around it while fighting energy displays and lesser ships. Suddenly there was actinic light. Louis blinked hard. When he could see again, Probe One was gone.

'What the futz was that?' he demanded.

'Antimatter bullet. The newer ARM ships are all powered by antimatter, but we had not seen it used by the Patriarchy. They must manufacture their own in a particle accelerator somewhere. The ARM has a source, an antimatter solar system.'

'Antimatter. Hindmost, that makes the Fringe War a lot more dangerous. The Ringworld is too fragile for this.'

'Agreed.'

'Whats he doing now?'

The shadow of a protector leapt from its chair, arced like a ballet superstar across the view of comets and warships, touched down at one focus of the elliptical room, and was gone.

A hand like a sackful of ball bearings closed on Louiss forearm. He spasmed like a man electrocuted. 'Louis! Good, youre awake,' Tunesmith said briskly. 'Without you this would have been difficult. Hindmost, come out of there. Danger does not await our convenience. Louis, are you all right? Your heartbeat sounds funny.'

CHAPTER 3 Recruiting

Tunesmith was a young protector.

A Night People male of middle age had been lured into a cavern that grew tree-of-life. Tunesmith had emerged from his cocoon state a hundred and ten days ago: a tremendous mind demanding to be trained, in a hominid body hardened for endless war.

At first he must have satisfied himself with the Librarians incomplete knowledge, and Acolytes, and with what came in niggardly driblets from the Hindmost.

Tunesmith would not have begun his intrusions in any tentative fashion, Louis thought. The Hindmost might block that. Tunesmith must have built this heavy equipment and programmed it at his leisure, then set it moving all at once, after hed picked the Hindmosts locks.

Fait accompli: suddenly hes standing over the puppeteer in his own living quarters. Suddenly hes filleted the Hindmosts spacecraft and is removing components as a fisher guts a trout.

Protectors of any species would be manipulative. Intelligence was manipulative, wasnt it? A superior intelligence would want to control his teachers. Knock them off balance from time to time. The differences between ally, servant, slave, and sled dog blur when the difference in intelligence is great enough.

A moment ago Louis had been spying on a protector. Suddenly the protector was beside him, gripping his wrist.