Ringworld's Children (20 page)

"Here. Here." Proserpina distributed other fruits, and watched for reactions. Roxanny's yellow globe was bitter. She dropped it. A handful of green cherries was edible, but sour around the seeds. Wembleth liked the inner rim of a mottled yellow ring--he had to fit his head inside it--and Hanuman's purple blob.

"Roxanny, is this place very different from your Ball Worlds?"

"Very."

"How?"

"I haven't been here long. I'm still looking." Roxanny was reluctant to speak. Sooner or later the protector would be asking questions she shouldn't answer. Still--weren't there things she could learn from a protector?

So she temporized. "We learned a lot before any ship landed. It's always noon here. I expect that could drive a person nuts. If you ever saw a sunset, it would be the end of the world."

"And a mining system would hit vacuum. That's not all bad. Industries can sometimes use vacuum."

"A year ago you were shooting down every ship that came near the Ringworld. Why did you do that? Why did you stop?"

"There was a protector Vampire in the Repair Center. He did the shooting. Another replaced him."

"And now it's a kinder, gentler time?"

"Not while you're playing with antimatter, dear one! That will have to stop! You could destroy us all, and yourselves too. I think you must be schitz. Roxanny, you flinched."

"Did I?"

"Are you schitz? Were you schitz? Were. How were you cured?"

Roxanny snarled, "I stopped taking the stuff!"

"Stuff?"

"The Amalgamated Regional Militia used to draft schitzes for the lower echelons. We've tried to breed that trait out of ourselves, so it's hard to find a real schitz, but there are biochemicals that can imitate the schitz state. You see things, think thoughts, hear voices that a citizen never dreams. I took the stuff during training. I can get a shot during a mission, it makes things easier, but I try to stay off it. I'm not schitz, Proserpina. My genes are clean." Roxanny clamped her lips closed. This was far more personal than anything she'd intended to reveal.

"Lower echelons? Do any of the top ranks go schitz? No, never mind. Do warriors such as yourselves have children, Roxanny?"

"No. I can't. I've had my shot."

Proserpina stared at her. Then she turned away to gather more fruit. "I'll feed your injured one," she said. "Eat. Explore. Enjoy," waving vaguely at the forest and its hidden buildings. "The stream is that way. Follow it back. We'll talk soon."

Roxanny watched her go. Had she really been left to explore unsupervised? The prospect was terrifying and irresistible. She was in the Garden of Eden. God walked here. Nothing was otherwise harmful.

The building--

It was a toroid. One door, no windows. A sequoia-sized tree in the center lifted it two meters off its foundations. While Roxanny hesitated, Wembleth jumped to reach a doorsill, lifted himself, and was in. Roxanny waited a beat, then followed. She wished she had better armaments than the needier in the small of her back.

Roxanny jogged around the perimeter. It was all one big tubular room, a few degrees tilted. She found nothing worth seeing or stealing. The floor was deep in dirt and rotting leaves. No obvious lighting, barring the transparent roof. No offices. No toilets.

She asked Wembleth, "Do you know this style of building?"

"Vashneesht work. Very old. These walls cannot be harmed, but many lifetimes of wind made these corners round. I think servants of the Vashneesht lived here. Look, this was bed."

The vegetable trash? Roxanny was used to float plates.

The next building over looked like a pump house nested in a forest of pipes. It was, but it also held toilets, a huge tub for bathing, and dust heaps that must have been towels. Wembleth understood: he knew more primitive means for using wastes for fertilizer. Sewage and wash water flowed into a sprinkler system. It was all powered from the roof, from converted sunlight. Roxanny and Wembleth spent an hour bathing and then investigating the system. The remarkable thing was that it still worked.

Roxanny led them along the river, in the direction of flow of the shadow squares, antispinward. They came to a wide, white sand beach. Huge combers rolled in from an endless ocean.

Roxanny tried her mag specs. She knew what she ought to see, but the horizon was a line of haze; the specs only magnified it, or picked out currents of heat. She'd be peering through hundreds of miles of that, to see subcontinents belonging to this same little map. How long would it take to get used to the Ringworld's scale?

She'd get a better view from the roof of the arcology; but that was not walking distance.

Proserpina paused at the edge of the garden long enough to instruct her servants. Aliens were not to see them. Aliens were not to be interfered with. Aliens were not barred from the Penultimate's long-abandoned buildings.

Hanuman was eating and watching her from far up a tall tree. Proserpina gestured him down.

"Who do you serve?" she asked.

The brachiator spoke a musical phrase, then translated into Interworld. "Tunesmith. He derives from one of the Night People varieties. His secrets are not mine to give."

"Why do you conceal your nature from the ARM? Why should I?"

"A ship of the ARM exploded three days ago. It tore a hole in the world's floor that would have destroyed us all." Hanuman described the location quickly and precisely. "Tunesmith repaired it--"

"How?"

"Secret, but his means are limited. Another such event would end everything. You and Tunesmith and I have this in common. To hold ARM ships away from the world is our only hope. Kzinti also must be kept distant. Puppeteers would rule us to make us dependable. They would make the Ringworld safe to a point beyond habitability. Who knows what Outsiders might do? There are other factions. Question 'Tec Gauthier or scan any ARM ship's library. Giving information to any of these invaders would only lure them all here to learn more. To tell them of protectors might scare them witless. Rewarding invaders with valuable data--"

"Enough of your chatter, I understand you. What of Luis Tamasan?"

"What sources have you been scanning?"

"Scan is too large a word. I've barely had time to browse in the libraries of
Gray Nurse
and
Hot Needle of Inquiry."

"Seek 'Louis Wu'."

"Gray Nurse
has the report he made to the United Nations following the
Lying Bastard
expedition. Should I hide his identity too?"

"Please yourself. He plays a frivolous game of mate-and-dominate with the ARM woman."

"Stet, we will leave all as it is for this little time."

Hanuman asked, "What is this place? Are my charges endangered?"

"No, but guard them if you will. This was the domain of the last rebel but one, the Penultimate," Proserpina said. "Will you serve me?"

"No." No ambiguity, no hesitation.

"I want to talk to Tunesmith. How may I do this?"

"Tell me what you want said. Give me a vehicle."

"I have all of the history of this structure and its regents, all for barter. The Repair Center is not the Ringworld's only secret. Do you dare withhold my knowledge from Tunesmith?"

"No. Tunesmith is more intelligent than you or me, but he cannot act without data."

"Where is he?"

"Some distance up the arc."

"You came to investigate the antimatter explosion. You left your vehicle behind when the ARM ship took you." Hanuman didn't react. Proserpina said, "You have no transport. I have only this one mag ship. To make another would delay us for days. Can we spare the time?"

"I must guide you to Tunesmith."

Proserpina thought about this. Could she find a way to guard herself? Or was it time to die, if Tunesmith chose to make it so?

"I'll make things secure here first," she said. "Wait until tomorrow night."

Louis Wu was not unhappy. He was getting a long rest, prone in the Intensive Care Cavity. Nobody expected anything of him. Let others deal with the Fringe War, antimatter fuel tanks, the dance of protectors. He dozed, and thought, and dozed....

And he fell asleep, or was put to sleep. He woke under high, dark trees. His massive ARM autodoc was no longer attached to the sunfish ship. The joker stood above him.

He tried not to be dismayed that she'd come back alone. Hanuman must be with the others: he'd protect them.

She asked, "Are you well?"

"Check the readouts," Louis said.

She took him at his word. "You're healing. You're getting nourishment and something to calm you." She tapped at a screen. "You wouldn't be getting
these
inputs if you didn't have internal injuries. They're still healing. This other concoction seems to be brewed from tree-of-life root, or some synthetic analogue, but the machine isn't feeding that to you either."

"Really? Tree-of-life? The stuff that--"

"Here, this tube."

Louis tried to sit up. "I can't see it."

She sketched a mark in the air. Louis knew that symbol, a trademark half a thousand years old. "Boosterspice."

"Intended to restore a breeder's age-raddled body? And you don't need it. You're an old man made young. Is boosterspice one of Tunesmith's secrets?"

Louis blinked. "No. It might be an ARM secret." He'd been told as a child that boosterspice had been made via genetic engineering done on ragweed. It now struck him that the longevity treatment had been introduced, and allegedly changed human nature forever, about two hundred years after an alien ramship reached Sol system. It could fit.

"You are fertile. I can smell it. Roxanny spoke of shots to make a person sterile."

Louis smiled. How would a genderless protector ever understand that?

He said, "I was chasing a woman named Paula Cherenkov. I knew she wanted children. I had the habit of bugging out of human space from time to time. I always thought I'd smuggle something some day... never did. This time I went to Jinx.

"Some worlds think just like flatlanders when it comes to the population explosion. Some worlds don't have much habitable territory. Not Jinx! When they need more room, they expand the terraformed regions. I got them to reconnect my vas deferens.

"Then Paula left Earth because she wanted a
large
family.

"A few years later I brought a new intelligent species into known space. The UN wanted to give me a birthright for finding the Trinocs and serving as their first ambassador. Now the doctors were waiting to fix what shouldn't have been already fixed. When Nessus made
his
offer, I went to the Ringworld."

Proserpina set her hands on Louis's belly and moved them around. Pressure above his left hip. "Old damage to the gut?"

"Yah."

"There's barely a trace. This floating rib is newly cracked--"

"Agh!"

Hands like a score of walnuts palpated his numb hips, then ran down his legs. "Six breaks, maybe more, all on the left. It doesn't matter, they can all heal at the same time. In four days you'll walk, in seven you'll run. Would you try solid food?"

Louis pointed: "That one's good. The Hinsh gave it to us." She broke a canteloupe-sized yellow fruit for him, and fed him, and ate some herself.

He asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm the oldest protector, the last of the rebels," she said. "Tell me who you are. The woman doesn't know. She didn't perceive Hanuman either. What does she think
he
is?"

"We let her think Hanuman is a tame monkey. She thinks I'm the son of an ARM who got himself stranded. Can we keep it that way? Roxanny is an ARM detective. There are things they shouldn't know."

"ARM is one of the factions--"

"Amalgamated Regional Militia. From Earth, the United Nations police since eight hundred years ago. There are a few hundred ARM ships in the Fringe War. How much do you know, Proserpina? Have you been hacking into
Needle?"

"Yah. Puppeteer civilization is too fascinating. I could become lost in it. Still, this Hindmost has extensive records of human civilization. Do you know the name 'Proserpina'?"

"Pluto's wife, the Lady who rules Hell. Greek myth, Elizabethan pronunciation. Is this Hell to you?"

"In a loose sense. Tell me about Tunesmith."

"Not yet. I want to know about you. Who you are."

He had the impression she was grinning. She said, "Your muscle cues aren't easy to read, flat on your back, hips and legs inert, and the rest hooked to all these pumps and sensors. Still, I sense something proprietary. Do you own Tunesmith?"

Louis laughed. "He thinks he owns me."

"You don't agree, but you don't hate him. You'd free yourself if you could. Will you serve me? No. For a time, then? Perhaps if you knew me better? I'm not prone to rages or bouts of frantic activity or megalomania, Louis. I don't suck blood, though you served a bloodsucker. I've been passive for millions of falans while the rest of my kind burned themselves out. Of course you must know me first, if we have time. My tale is complicated. I helped build the Ringworld."

"I've heard that before," Louis said.

"From some braggart breeder? They've become hugely various, haven't they? My telescopes won't penetrate atmosphere well enough, and I dare not travel to see more, but I've dealt with spill mountain species. Louis or Luis, I'm the real one. I broke promises before the work was finished, so it was finished without me, but I believe I'm the last builder. Would you like your legs back?"

What did she mean? She bent over him, reached around behind him. Pain surged.

"Can you tolerate it? It's better if you can feel what's going on."

"That's pretty fierce," he gasped.

"I'll cut the input by half--" (The pain receded.) "--and change your chemical balance a little." The pain fuzzed. "There. Will you try to urinate and evacuate? The 'doc system is equipped to handle that."