Ringworld's Children (15 page)

Hanuman's eyes met Louis's, but he said nothing. Wembleth and Acolyte had begun a halting conversation. Wembleth found the Kzin fascinating. Louis closed his faceplate and followed the ARMs out.

The ship was awesomely cramped.

Three seats faced away from each other around a central pillar. One seat was occupied. There was a pucker next to the airlock door for the now-detached tent. A hole in the floor led to a cavity the size of a man: the Weapons and Mission Room.

Roxanny entered first. She slid into the second seat. "LE Luis Tamasan, meet 'Tec-Two Claus Raschid. Claus, Luis," she said. "Not quite a native."

Claus turned around and offered a hand. He was darker than Roxanny, taller than Oliver, and his arm had a long reach. "Luis, I'm the pilot. Sit there."

Louis had hoped to talk to Roxanny alone, or even Oliver alone. They'd both come along, a little too closely agreed for Louis's comfort, leaving Acolyte and Wembleth (and Hanuman) alone in the tent.

Louis slid into the third seat. He felt planes shifting, adjusting to his height and weight and the bulk of his pressure suit. Basic seating: it fit him imperfectly.

Roxanny Gauthier tapped an instruction into her chair arms, using both hands. A crash web held Louis before he could move.

The force field in a crash web would protect a passenger in a collision; it was also useful for police work.

Louis didn't react right away. How would
Luis
react? Frozen in panic, at least long enough for Louis to
think.
And then what?

"For your protection. You did say you wanted to see Earth," Roxanny said, smiling like a cat.

Oliver slid in through the airlock and then down through the hatch, into the fourth chair. The Mission and Weapons Room fitted Oliver like a tight suit.

Louis wriggled a bit; the field permitted that much. He asked, "Are we going to Earth?"

"Back to
Gray Nurse,
anyway," the third crewman said. "We'll be there in an hour. We'd better be. Roxanny, you left the kitchen 'doc behind."

"We had to," she said.

"Stet, but if anything goes wrong--stet. Luis, the carrier
Gray Nurse
is our first stop, and people other than us will decide where you go from there. I expect that's Earth, or at least Sol system. And hey, you can tell us some things while we're on route. Chiron can't stop you now. You'll be the second Ringworlder to reach human space."

"Don't go through this hole," Louis said.

All three ARMs turned their heads to look at him. Roxanny asked, "Why not?"

That was a tough one. Louis Wu was certain that Tunesmith wouldn't allow an ARM spacecraft to escape this easily. Something would block them... but why would
Luis Tamasan
say something so out of character?

He said, "Chmeee says he left the world through Fist-of-God. My father came through a different puncture. Neither of them saw anything like this... shimmer. Fist-of-God Mountain isn't repairing itself, is it? But this hole is."

Claus said, "So is Fist-of-God. The crater closed itself weeks ago, before we noticed. We were hoping you could tell us about that."

Tunesmith must have tested his reweaving system,
Louis guessed. Luis said nothing.

Claus Raschid had something on a virtual screen. "Here we are. Luis, try to follow this. The nearest puncture we know of is a million miles away. Too far. They'll track us across the surface. Every tanj species in the Fringe War will want us as bad as we want you, because of what we might know. But we might escape if we go through
immediately, right here,
and with our motors
off."
The ship lifted. "Here is where
Gray Nurse
is waiting, our mother ship, in the dark, up against the Ringworld floor--"

Below them Oliver was yelling, "Raschid! What are you playing at?"

Louis tried to yell louder. Being immobilized was driving him frantic. "Drop something first! See what happens to it!"

"I'm getting us home," Raschid told Oliver. The ship eased sideways. Now it was above the puncture. "All power sources
off.
Luis, if we had the auxiliary fuel tank I'd drop that, but I don't."

They were falling. Louis glimpsed the tent sitting alone on the scrith. They'd be all right, he told himself; they had Hanuman to guide them. The hole expanded. It was full of stars.

Snail Darter
smashed down into something that gave.

Crash webs caught his captors recoiling upward. Louis felt his brain bounce in his skull. Already in a crash web, he recovered first... still immobilized. He could hear Oliver screaming below him.

Claus shouted, "What did we hit?"

"Get us
out!
Get us
out
!" Roxanny screamed.

Reweaving system,
Tunesmith had said. How strong would threads made of scrith be? Strong enough to stop a falling spacecraft? But they'd cut through the hull. The hole must be laced with them.

"The thrusters are dead," Claus said.

"Where are they?" Louis demanded.

Claus craned around to snarl at him. Louis asked, "They're on the bottom, aren't they?" It was ancient habit: shipbuilders tended to put thruster motors where they would have put rockets. "Whatever's in that hole,
mending
that hole, it's cutting the thrusters apart. We'll sink into it. How long before it reaches the power source? What do you use for a power source? Where is it?" Babbling, he was babbling. Why hadn't the stasis field been triggered? But if that happened, they might be here forever.

Claus was slow catching up. Roxanny Gauthier said, "Midship. It's a battery. If anything cuts into it--"

The ship was indeed sinking inch by inch into the puncture. Worse, it was beginning to tip over.

Claus was staring at them, not getting it. When he did, he yelled in terror. His hands danced above the controls.

Roxanny shouted, "Wait!"

The hatch in the floor closed. Oliver's yell chopped off.

A rocket motor bellowed. The cabin section detached and rose fast, wobbled, then steadied. Claus took over manually; the cabin tilted far over, fell, tilted upright again.

"You
killed
him!" Roxanny said. "Oliver!"

"He was sitting in the wrong place." Claus glared at Louis Wu, who was in Oliver's chair; then at Roxanny. "Wasn't that you yelling, 'Get us out'?"

The tent billowed in the exhaust as the escape pod thumped down. Recoil threw Roxanny and Claus several inches before their crash webs caught them.

Through the wall of the tent Louis could just see that Acolyte and Hanuman were spreading the rescue pod open for Wembleth to enter.

A brilliant light flared from the direction of the puncture. Then that side of the cabin blackened. Louis yelled, "Roxanny,
let me loose!"

"Wait it out, Luis."

A shock wave slammed the cabin.

"They're dying out there! Let me loose! Claus!"

Claus said, "Here." His hand moved, and Louis was free. He rolled out of his chair and into the tiny airlock.

The tent was splayed out in fragments like an exploded balloon. The blast had scattered its contents. Wembleth and his rescue pod rolled gently past, Wembleth tumbling like clothes in an Oil Age dryer, as Louis wiggled out of the airlock.

Acolyte was trying to find his feet, falling over, trying again. Hanuman was not in sight. Wembleth must have regained his senses: he was curled in a tight ball now, still tumbling.

"Acolyte? Are you all right? Pressure okay?"

"My suit is holding pressure. Do you see Hanuman?"

"No."

Wembleth was nearest. Louis flashed his attitude jets, dropped ahead of him, and ran alongside the balloon, pushing to stop its spin. The Ringworlder tried to help. They got it stopped, though Wembleth was unbalanced... off balance because Hanuman was clinging tight to him, face to chest. Hanuman still wore his pressure suit.

"Acolyte, I've got them both."

They walked back toward the ruined tent. Acolyte, Claus, and Roxanny joined them. Roxanny was carrying something heavy, an oblong brick she hugged to her breast.

The kitchen 'doc hadn't been moved. It looked unharmed.

They moored it to Louis's flycycle, and moored Wembleth's rescue pod to Acolyte's. The ARMs gave orders as if they were superior officers. Louis asked at one point, "Any reason to take your escape vehicle? I don't think flycycle motors are up to that."

"Leave it," Roxanny said. "It's dead."

The explosion of the fighter ship's battery might have damaged Tunesmith's reweaving system,
Louis thought. Tunesmith should be told... but he
was
being told, by voice and camera feeds. He just couldn't answer, and that was fine with Louis.

The glow in the XXL plug was dimmed. The tube sagged, leaking broad white rivers of tropospheric storm. It didn't matter. They'd left the puncture nearly closed.

The party flew to spinward, directly away from where they had left their fuel tank. "Leave it as bait. We don't want to be near it," Roxanny Gauthier ordered. "Whatever dropped that inflatable mountain range might take an interest. Vashneesht, you said? What do you know of Vashneesht?"

Louis said, "Vashneesht is just what we say when nobody knows anything. Wizards. Magic." Interworld words Luis would know from his parents.

She was riding the front saddle of Louis's flycycle. She'd tried to operate the controls, and turned icy when they didn't work. Louis flew from the aft saddle. Neither Roxanny nor Claus had said so, but it seemed clear they'd been drafted into the ARM.

The other flycycle seemed in good shape. Acolyte rode the front seat; Claus was hidden behind him. The native seemed comfortable enough, slung below the flycycle in his inflated rescue pod, until he began gasping.

"Acolyte!"

"Here, Louis."

"The rescue pod has run out of air. Wembleth is in trouble."

Claus said, "Tanj, it must have been faulty."

"We descend?"

They landed. Wembleth had fainted.

They kept their suits on. The air was thin fog and hurricane wind; it dimmed their headphone voices. Louis shouted, "I don't think opening the rescue pod--"

Acolyte: "Better idea?"

"Get the tree swinger to open his helmet. His suit has a recycling feature."

The little anthropoid was quick to respond to Acolyte's gestures. He threw back his helmet, sneezed at the stink, but left it open. Concerned, he pushed his face close to Wembleth's and sniffed. Wembleth stirred and presently sat up.

They flew above fallen trees that had grown as puffy tops on tall, slender trunks. The antimatter blast had flattened them with their tops pointing spinward. Further away, the wind from the pressure drop felled them to antispin and left lower growth alive.

Falling pressure was a wave still expanding across this land. The flycycles followed the shock wave, catching up slowly. They crossed tens of thousands of miles of disaster and storm. Now there were standing trees among the fallen in the pufftop forest. The forest ran on, cleaving to the lowlands, mingling with other ecologies.

Louis took them down into a break in the pufftop forest, in a meadow alongside a rushing stream.

Air! They pulled Wembleth out of his bubble before they stripped off their own suits. Wembleth whooped; he danced, though stiffly. He plunged into the water, stripped off his coarse-woven shirt and pants, and began scrubbing himself with them.

Water! Running water, ankle deep, ran down to a deep pool. The ARMs looked at each other; then they stripped off their skintights too and dove in. In midair, Roxanny's laughing eyes brushed Luis Tamasan's. Louis couldn't breathe.

Acolyte plunged in with a mighty splash. With his fur plastered flat he looked wonderfully funny. It broke the spell: Louis laughed.

Hanuman was wrestling with the fittings of his suit. Louis helped him out. Hanuman, the affectionate anthropoid, hugged him and whispered, "The ARMs have hand weapons hidden."

"Surprise," Louis murmured.

"Ook ook ook. Get naked?"

"My problem--"

"They know. Go in like Wembleth." Hanuman eeled out of his arms and, four-legged, ran for the water. He dove in without a splash. Louis yelled and chased him, leaping into a cannonball dive.

Cold! He pulled his skintight off in deep water. He made an attempt to rub it clean against himself, then balled it up and threw it onto the rocky shore to drain.

There now. All concerned could pretend not to know that Luis Tamasan was in a state of arousal.

He stayed clear of the ARMs, who were--getting friendly, he'd thought, but Claus was backing off, and Roxanny was talking fast and inaudibly. Quarrel? They'd still want privacy.

Acolyte didn't swim well, but the stream wasn't deep. He scooped up Hanuman and waded up to Louis, who was treading water.

Hanuman spoke briskly. "I saw a meteorite descend near the puncture. Tunesmith would spot another ship."

"He can't tell us. I turned him off. I--"

"Good. I will continue riding with Acolyte. Let me lead. I can take us to a service stack."

A service stack would take them home to the Map of Mars. Louis asked, "How far away?"

"Orbiting. Tunesmith can direct it toward us."

"Do we want the ARMs to see a service stack?"

"We'll ask Tunesmith later, when we ask if he's seen other intruders. Your opinion?"

Louis thought about it. "They'll want to rejoin their ship. We don't mind that, right? As long as they don't learn too much first."

Hanuman's voice was a whipcrack, barely audible. "Gauthier rescued their library! I want it! I want to watch them use it before we let them loose. But these ARMs are dangerous companions. No need to risk us all. Louis, what if Acolyte and I escape? We can rendezvous with a service stack. You stay and observe."