They were nearing the edge of the jungle.
"Why would Acolyte join you?"
"I expect you will tell him to. Acolyte's father sent him to you 'to learn wisdom'."
"Joining you on a piracy expedition, is that wisdom?"
The puppeteer asked, "Do you need us? Do you trust us? Could you fight alone?"
The protector said, "I must leave someone to fly Hot Needle of Inquiry, or else leave Needle abandoned and adrift among the comets."
The Hindmost immediately said, "I can fly Needle."
"Hindmost, you would run."
"Louis and I will be pleased to--"
"Louis flew Long Shot once before. He will again. You and Acolyte will fly Needle."
"As you will," the Hindmost said.
Tunesmith said, "Louis, you swore an oath. You must protect the Ringworld."
In a mad moment Louis Wu had sworn to save the Ringworld. He'd done that, twelve years ago, when the Ringworld had drifted off center... but Louis only said, "I won't force Acolyte."
"Then I must await developments."
There were long-tailed Hanging People in the jungle. They threw sticks and dung. Louis and the Hindmost rose above the treetops, but Tunesmith's float plates dropped near the forest floor. They heard him whoop and saw him flinging missiles. Stones and sticks flew faster and more accurately than Hanging People could dodge. In less than a minute they'd vanished.
Tunesmith rose to join them. "Tell me again why Ringworld species are always hospitable!"
"Tunesmith, those were apes," Louis said. "Hominids aren't always sapient, you know. Is this what you picked to pilot your probe?"
"Yes, made into protectors. Sapience is relative."
Louis wondered if a protector really didn't see the difference between these apes and Louis Wu. A protector's lips and gums hardened into something like a beak; he could not frown, or smile, or sneer, or grin.
It was jungle all the way, trees and vines that Louis couldn't name, and a species of elbow root growing in chains at sixty-degree angles, big enough to match sequoias.
Louis switched his faceplate display to infrared. Now lights on the ground wove about each other, lurked, charged, merged. Thousands of tiny lights above him must be birds. Larger lights in the trees would be sloth and Hanging People and--Louis swerved to dodge a fifty-pound flying squirrel with a head that was all ears and fangs. It cursed luridly as it passed under him.
Hominid?
Nice day for a float.
Tunesmith settled in a circle of elbow trees. The ground was uneven, humped here and there, and overgrown with a tangle of grass. The Hindmost descended and Louis followed, still seeing nothing... and then an abandoned float plate. How had that gotten here?
His own disk settled. Louis stepped off, and they were surrounded. Weird little men stepped out of the elbow trees and women popped out of the ground. All were armed with short blades. They only stood heart-high. Louis, wearing impact armor, did not feel threatened.
Tunesmith hailed them and began talking rapidly. Louis's translator device had never heard this language; it and he could only listen. But he could see through torn grass into a burrow that ran deep underground. The grass was torn just so in fifty places.
He was standing on a city.
Hominids--descended from the Pak who must have built the Ringworld--had occupied every possible ecological niche, starting half a million years ago with a population already in the trillions (though the numbers were pretty much guesswork.) This group were burrowers. They wore only their own straight brown body hair, and carried animal-skin pouches. They had a streamlined look, like ferrets.
They were looking less defensive now. Some were laughing. Tunesmith spoke and more laughed. One stepped to a rise of ground and pointed.
Tunesmith bowed. He said, "Acolyte is hunting a daywalk or three to spin of port. Louis, what shall I tell them? They offer rishathra."
He was tempted for an instant, then embarrassed. "Louis isn't in season."
Tunesmith barked. The Burrowing People laughed hysterically, looking at Louis with myopic eyes.
Louis asked, "What was your excuse?"
"I've been here. They know about protectors. Board your disk."
Chapter 4 -
Acolyte
The smells were stunningly rich. Hundreds of varieties of plants, scores of animals. Kzinti could survive in style here, until their numbers grew too great. Acolyte, millions of miles from the nearest Kzinti, did not miss their company; but Acolyte resolved to tell his father about this place.
He sniffed, seeking an elusive smell: anything large or lethal.
It wasn't there. Only the smell of brachiating hominids.
His father's hunting park had been more dangerous. The danger level of father's park was as carefully measured as the placement of each bush. Kzinti needed a threat to bring them alive, and to keep their numbers down too.
Pak protectors didn't think like that.
Louis Wu had explained it thus: protectors had spread life across this land in imitation of the life patterns that evolved on Ball Worlds, but they had left out anything that harmed or annoyed Pak breeders, from carnivores down to parasites and bacteria. Whatever attacked today's bewildering variety of hominids had evolved over the million years, the four million falans, that followed.
Of course Louis was guessing. He'd said that too.
So, here was a safe place to play. One day Tunesmith would call, or Louis, and Acolyte would find danger enough. The lights in the night sky were not all stars.
A blotch in infrared, bigger than other blotches, went from perfect stillness to a blur of speed, leapt into a tree, merged with a smaller glow, paused--
Tunesmith yowled.
A returning yowl seemed muffled. Louis's dawdling translator caught up; it said, "Acolyte!" "Here. Wait." Then: "Louis!"
"Hello, Acolyte!" called Louis.
"Louis! I was worried! How are you?"
"Young. Hungry, antsy, not quite sane."
"You were forever in the healing box!"
Tunesmith said, "Acolyte kept bothering me for updates until I had to find work for him elsewhere."
Louis was touched. Acolyte had worried... thinking that Louis remained in the 'doc because there was more to be done for him. More likely Tunesmith was just keeping Louis out of the way; or he might have been refining the rejuvenation process, or using Louis as a test subject to study nanotechnology, tanj him. A twelve-year-old should not be forced to such cynical thinking, even a twelve-year-old Kzin.
The massive cat was halfway up a tree trunk, eating, while Hanging People threw hard fruit from a distance. Tunesmith separated his float plates and hovered one next to Acolyte.
Chmeee was a Kzin chosen by the puppeteer Nessus to join his exploration team, decades ago. Acolyte was Chmeee's eldest son, cast out by his father and sent to "learn wisdom" from Louis Wu. He stood seven feet tall, shorter than his father, furred in orange and dark chocolate: dark ears, dark stripes down his back, a smaller chocolate comma down his tail and leg. Three parallel ridges ran down his belly, possibly his father's legacy; Louis had never asked. On a huge tilted trunk under green-black foliage, he looked utterly at home.
He asked, "Are we finally ready?"
"Yes," said Tunesmith.
Acolyte judged the distance above a drop of fifty feet. He had to make a twisting leap. He hit the disk on all fours. The disk dropped under his weight, and Acolyte slid, scrambled, and had his grip.
A Kzin's hands were good, but with his claws extended his fingers would have slid off. Anger might have killed him. It was a jest, or a test--and Tunesmith had been dropping past him, ready to catch hi
m.
"I should reclaim my float plate," Acolyte said. He dropped toward the forest floor and took off through tilted trunks along a path Louis couldn't find.
A float plate floated above a display of huge, gorgeous orange flowers. Acolyte eased the disk he was riding down over the other float plate, and with a magnetic click they locked.
"I left one with the Underpeople, their toy until I need it," the Kzin said. "I mass too much. I have to be too careful when it's just one floater."
The double disk took off, Tunesmith followed, and they were racing.
Louis tried to keep up, but it was a hairy ride. They were leaving the Hindmost far behind. Tunesmith called, "What have you learned?"
The Kzin bellowed, "Nothing since we spoke. Teela's path ends with the Mechanics, two months after she left Louis and my father. I have dwelt among five civilizations, six species--interesting symbiotic culture, Mechanics, and a variety of Hanging People. None tell any tale of Teela Brown, or Seeker, or weapons that throw light, advanced medicine, famine averted, a flycycle--Whatever I thought of, they never heard of it."
"Were you lied to?"
"Who would dare? Who would care? Teela's path is discontinuous. I never tracked her through the sky! I only found places where she and Seeker landed. The Mechanics remember her from two or three falans after a floating building passed over, a hundred and fifty falans ago. Have you sought rumors of flying devices? Or assessed conflicting reports?"
"Yes."
"Louis--" Acolyte looked back, then slowed. Tunesmith slowed too: the race was over.
"Louis, I was asked to track Seeker and Teela Brown. I found little. They disappeared for seventy or eighty falans. Then the Vampire protector Bram tells us they entered the RepairCenter as breeders. The man died of tree-of-life--too old--and Teela woke from coma as a protector."
Tunesmith said, "I want to know how breeders could find their way into the Map of Mars. I want to know why Bram let Teela wake. It would have been so easy to study her in her coma, then kill her. They may be trivial questions, but I wonder."
Louis shrugged. He'd wondered too. Bram had had little respect for human life, breeder or protector.
Acolyte asked, "Are you caught up with what's happening?"
"Tanj, no. Tunesmith is driving me crazy with his secrets."
The protector said, "I'll talk as we go.
"Louis, you made me. You saw that a Vampire protector was unfit to decide the Ringworld's fate, or else that Bram himself was unfit. You thought a Ghoul would serve. You lured me into the RepairCenter. A tree-of-life garden made me a protector. You expected me to kill Bram, and I did. I assume you considered implications." No anger, no bitterness showed. A protector's face was like hardened leather.
"Consider this implication: no protector ever evolved to stand aside when his descendants are in danger. You saw that a Ghoul's children must benefit where other hominids survive well, but did you see that too? We must act, sensibly or not. The Fringe War was bad enough when you entered the 'doc, Louis. Now the ARM has brought antimatter-powered ships, twenty and counting. Now it seems the Kzinti have stolen the puppeteers' Quantum II hyperdrive ship. To use it for courier service tells us interesting secrets, doesn't it?"
Louis agreed. "They don't dare endanger it. They don't know how to duplicate the drive. There's still only one ship."
Tunesmith asked, "Hindmost, could you build another Long Shot!"
"No. My research team could, but trial and error played a large part, and the cost... broke my power, drove me into exile, as much as any of my other mistakes."
They circled Tunesmith's service stack, then landed. Tunesmith said, "I can't do nothing. If I can understand Long Shot--Here, let me reset our destination. Acolyte, this setting would take you to your father. Were you tempted?"
"I have nothing to offer him yet."
"Follow me through." Tunesmith stepped from his float plate and was gone.
They came out underground, where float plates waited. The air smelled of the caverns beneath the Map of Mars. Tunesmith showed off his toys as they drifted through tunnels and caverns. A dozen float plates carried a huge laser cannon at a walking pace. "I made this from specs in the Hindmost's records," the protector said, "with a few improvements. I'll mount it on Mons Olympus. I've heliographed the design to protectors along the rim wall. Soon we won't have to depend on the sun to let us talk. I should mount one on Fist-of-God too.
"Here--" He reached out and down to snatch up a nest of tubing. He put one end to his mouth and wild music emerged. "What do you think?" He blew again, and what the futz, Louis danced on the float plate with an imaginary partner.
Tunesmith stopped to examine massive machinery, then reworked some superconducting circuitry with a spray gun. The mass crept away on sixty or seventy float plates. "Meteor repair kit," he said. "Finished, but now it's got to be moved to the launcher."
Stepping disks were growing in a vat while instruments monitored the metal content of the fluid. Tunesmith used a finished stepping disk to flick them into the Meteor Defense Room.
Louis had no idea where he'd been.
No idea what they were doing.
It seemed to Louis that the protector's mind was like a vast maze, and Louis lost within it. Working with Bram had been no different. The Vampire protector had committed an intolerable crime, and Louis had found him out. Louis had taken steps to replace him with a Ghoul, a Night People. Well and good, but had he expected to suddenly attain freedom?
Protectors themselves didn't have freedom. If Tunesmith could always see the right answer, why would he ever choose otherwise? And all that a poor stupid breeder could do was ride along. But if Louis didn't get some answers soon--
The Fringe War was all laid out on the floor-to-ceiling screen circling the Meteor Defense Room. Ships and bases were marked with blinking cursors in neon colors. Kzinti and human ships were numerous. Others manifested a presence: puppeteers, Outsiders, Trinocs, ships and probes Tunesmith hadn't identified. The Ringworld was of interest to any entity who learned of it.
A Kzinti ship fell through the inner system, rounding the sun without a challenge.
Tunesmith said, "An ARM attempted to talk to me, but I choose not to answer. No other faction has. There were early attempts to invade. The meteor defense stops everything but microprobes, but those must be everywhere. I've intercepted what must be messages between ships, too well encrypted even for me. By Needle's database I can identify ships and habitats in the inner comets belonging to ARM, Patriarchy, Trinocs, an Outsider ship, and three Pierson's puppeteers all hanging well outside the system, and thousands of probes of unidentified origin. I had best assume that everyone knows everything that anyone is doing. Even for me, keeping a secret will be tricky."
He zoomed the display. "Louis, what is this?"
A dot was light-amplified to a blurred view of a ghostly torus made of black lace, all intertwining threads, a tiny point-source of yellow-white light at the center, no obvious spacecraft drive. "Thirty-two Ringworld radii distant--"
Louis said, "Another Outsider. They don't always use light sails. We bought hyperdrive technology from them, but they've got something even better. The good news is, they've got no use for liquid water and high gravity, so they've no interest in human worlds."
"And this?" A battered cylinder, flared at the tail, windows glinting about its waist.
"Mmm? The design looks like United Nations work of a long time ago. Maybe a slowboat retrofitted with hyperdrive. It might be from Sheathclaws. Would they try to deal themselves in? That planet was settled by Kzinti telepaths and humans."
"Sheathclaws. A threat?"
"No. They couldn't afford serious weapons."
"Good. Hindmost, did you show him Diplom
at?"
"Yes. We watched your Probe One break up a rendezvous between Diplomat and Long Shot. Long Shot retreated to hyperspace."
"Louis, Acolyte, Hindmost, I need a sanity check," Tunesmith said. "Is this a story you can believe? My Probe One frightens Long Shot away from a scheduled rendezvous. Long Shot jumps in hyperdrive, not far, then observes from a safe distance, a few light minutes away, until the pilot sees no further threat. Now he returns to exchange data and packages with Diplomat, but he's late.
"He returns to the Patriarchy still behind schedule and trying to catch up. Long Shot must report directly, because who else could? Every other ship is too slow. The Kzinti homeworld is two hundred thirty light years from here. That's three hundred minutes each way. We start with ten hours to play with before Long Shot's pilot can return to Ringworld space, and he will still make his next rendezvous in haste. Yes?"
"Kzinti would do that anyway," Louis said. "Charge right in."
Acolyte bristled. "We do not worship clocks and calendars, Tunesmith. This ship Diplomat was attacked. They will be wary."
Louis said, "Spaceborn always worship clocks and calendars. Orbits are like that."
"Hindmost?"
The puppeteer asked, "What are you risking on this guesswork?"
"Too much," Tunesmith said, "but I must gamble. Fringe War activity accelerates toward a singularity. My worst move is no move."
"What do you intend?"
"I will capture Long Shot."
Louis saw that he'd been right: a crazy mission. He pointed out, "Long Shot is three thousand times as fast as us in hyperdrive, and never enters the Ringworld singularity."
"They can't use hyperdrive if they're docked with another ship. Follow me." Tunesmith strode forward and was gone. And again, Louis followed.
Chapter 5 -
Hanuman
As best he could tell, Probe Two was a perfect machine. Hanuman continued working on it anyway. Of all the fascinating machines in Tunesmith's domain, this was the one he felt justified in making his own. His own life would ride this ship.