Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 13 Gray Nurse

In the morning Louis found himself on a grassy hill. He stood to look about him.

The flycycles hadnt been moved from their place on the rivers shore. Acolyte slept between them. Hanuman and the Earth folk were nowhere visible. The Hinsh had departed. Downslope toward the river were melon trees and broken melon shells. A puddle of orange-and-chocolate fur beside the pool had to be Acolyte.

He walked on down.

He expected the Kzin to wake as he approached, but Acolyte didnt move. His sides moved. Good: the Kzin was breathing. Now, what mischief were the ARMs up to?

Louis took a flycycle aloft.

Claus and Roxanny were on the other side of the creek, behind a hill. They were working with the heavy oblong brick shed stowed in Louiss baggage compartment. It unfolded into something like a holoscreen keypad: the library from their little spacecraft.

Wembleth and Hanuman were peering past them into the hologram display. Roxanny saw Louis and waved. He waved back.

That didnt look like they were keeping secrets. Louis returned to the pool.

Acolyte was sitting up, stretching. He looked around him. "Where is everyone?"

"Across the river. Are you all right?"

"Well fed and well slept out. I found a small deer or something. Louis, nobody told me not to gorge. We should have arranged to stand watch."

Louis stretched. "I wondered if theyd stunned you. Hey, I slept as well as you did. The ARMs are doing something tricky, I think, but Hanumans watching them. Shall we see?"

They took a flycycle across.

Claus awaited their descent. He said, "Luis, Acolyte, I want to interview both of you as to what you saw at the puncture. Any objection?"

Louis thought of objections, but none that Luis could back up. "Show us how it works," he said.

"Just the Kzin first," Claus said.

"Well help each other," Louis said, and Acolyte rumbled agreement. Then Wembleth too wanted to participate. That allowed the three to play off each other in an interview that became an animated conversation.

Louis gambled that the ARMs didnt have equipment to detect lies in the tremor of a voice. Gray Nurse or another in the ARM fleet might.

As to what "Luis" had seen, Louis stuck close to the truth. They had been indoors: theyd missed the explosion (and Luis knew nothing of industrial antimatter). As he and Acolyte arrived from… somewhere… a great light had appeared, not much brighter than the sun, but huge. Then a glare-yellow doughnut the size of a mountain range lay blocking the region they had come to see.

He was asked about his background. He invented, but kept it terse. A twenty-year-old wouldnt have centuries of memories; he wouldnt tell stories well, and hed be a bit shy around elders. Acolyte, who really was only twelve, was able to stick to his own memories, because Chiron (Luis said) had never confronted the half-grown Kzin. Luis speculated aloud whether the puppeteer was afraid.

And the library fascinated all three interviewees.

Protector — 1) Adult stage of the Pak species, where the line runs from child to breeder to adult. 2) Hominids in general are descended from Pak. They too have a breeder stage, at which they usually spend their lives, and an adult stage rarely achieved. 3 Archaic -

If Claus or Roxanny looked up a reference, Wembleth, Luis, and Acolyte crowded in to look. So did Hanuman, though he was generally ignored. Roxanny didnt like to be near him; he favored Claus, and Claus treated him as a pet.

There were hot buttons everywhere in the text.

Piersons puppeteers — A species of great industrial power and sophistication, once common through known space and beyond, now thought to be fleeing the galactic core explosion. See General Products company. Physiology…

Core explosion — Thought to be a rash of supernovae… due to reach Earth in twenty thousand years. Inadequately studied.

General Products — A company once owned and run by Piersons puppeteers. In human space they sold almost nothing but spacecraft hulls.

Known space — Those regions of the galaxys Major Arm thought to be explored and understood by known sapient species.

Ringworld life forms are little understood. Ecologies tend to familiar patterns, but no trained biologist has had opportunity to investigate.

Mammals —

Hominids — Related to the genus Hominidae on Earth. Probably all such species derive from Pak breeders imported from the galactic core, subsequently evolved in many directions.

Louis Wu — {rotating hologram}

"Now give us some privacy," Roxanny said without looking up.

Louis and Acolyte backed away. Hanuman climbed into Clauss lap. Claus scratched the anthropoids head, and didnt seem to notice its high cranial capacity or the ridge on top. The interview had lasted nearly two hours.

Louis and Acolyte settled beside the flycycle. Louis deployed the kitchen. Acolyte said, "Hanuman wants the library."

"Tunesmith will too." Louis passed the Kzin a squeeze of broth.

"One flycycle would hold all three of us if Hanuman rides my lap or yours," Acolyte said. "Hanuman learns fast. He might already know all he needs to run the library. Then we go, unless you truly want the ARM woman as mate."

"Good plan. We go when Hanumans ready," Louis said. He sucked at a squeeze of green tea. He was not nearly so sure as he sounded.

The library codes might not be easy to crack.

The ARM might not let them go easily.

Anything could happen. The ARMs were in a shouting match, though Louis and Acolyte were too far away to make it out. Then Claus was back at work with the library, Wembleth and Hanuman were peering over his shoulder, and Roxanny strode briskly toward the flycycles. "Luis!" she said with a whip in her voice.

Louis offered her a squeezebulb. Roxanny looked startled. "Oh! Thank you. Weve been in touch with Gray Nurse."

"And?"

She glanced at Acolyte. "Lets go somewhere," she said.

She led them across the river on stepping stones, then behind some low bushes. Sitting, they were hidden. Louis kissed her. She accepted the kiss without response, then asked, "Do you still want rescue? Do you want to visit Earth?"

"Last time I didnt have a choice."

Shrug. "Youd be very valuable. I could try to get you citizenship"

"Roxanny, my father was an illegal birth." He wanted that established, Luis Tamasan isnt registered, before she tried to look up an imaginary man. "Citizenship in what? What does it mean?"

He listened carefully to her answers. There would be changes in civilization since his departure. It sounded like there were more laws, more restrictions. Maybe only in Sol system.

Luis wouldnt know — "Birthright? Roxanny, what is a birthright?"

"Ill find it for you in the library. Basically, youre born with one or two birthrights depending on — tanj — mostly on your genetic pattern. If youre healthy, you probably have two birthrights. You can lose it, or get more. Two birthrights make a child."

Louis Wu had used up his birthrights. Faking his ID would involve faking that, and the penalties were draconian. He said, "It doesnt sound like I want to settle on Earth."

"No, given a bastard father. Its the most interesting world, though."

It was just possible, he thought, that Luis Tamasan could become a whole new person. If he settled We Made It or Home, why would anyone ever try to connect his gene pattern to a Louis Wu? He could pay taxes. Learn a new profession. Marry — "What are our odds of getting to space?"

"We know where a puncture is, if the whoever — the wizard — hasnt closed it."

"The Phantom Weaver."

She shrugged. "Whatever you like. Gray Nurse can fire projectiles at a puncture from underneath. Thatll tell us if its been closed. Beyond that, who knows? Will Acolyte go along with this?"

"I suppose."

"Would he come?"

"You cant get him citizenship. Hes a Kzin. Youre fighting Kzinti, arent you?"

"There hasnt been a formal war in, oh, four hundred years." She tapped her sleeve and read what appeared. "In sixteen hundred falans. Hed be all right. There are hundreds of thousands of Kzinti citizens in human space."

"I wouldnt tell him to come. Hes younger than me, you know."

"Lets get back."

Louis didnt move. "What about Wembleth? Do we want him?"

"Yah. Hes a real native, after all. He must know wonderful things, and there are people who would kill to read his genetic pattern." Roxanny stood and semaphored her arms at Claus. "Lets get back."

A shadow square had blocked all but a sliver of sun. Acolyte was squatting before the library, Claus standing behind him. Nearby, Hanuman picked imaginary parasites, looking solemn. The little protector looked up at Louis and made an urgent twirling motion.

Claus raised his hand, holding something L-shaped.

Close behind him Roxanny snapped, "Luis, dont!" Hanuman eeked at the sound. She had one too: a slender flat object like the butt of a handgun, clearly a weapon. Old yogatsu training told Louis she was outside his extreme reach.

Behind Roxanny, sunrise glowed on the edge of a ridge.

The light should have grabbed his attention. But Louis was facing Roxanny and Claus and two guns. His mind caught up too slowly. Hidden or not, the sun is always at noon. That couldnt be the sun.

The ground trembled.

Acolyte hadnt moved; he must have been warned not to.

"I think well do better alone," Claus told them, smiling, victorious. "We only need one flycycle, but we need you to tell us how to fly it. You both know how. We only need one of you."

Louis turned away from the fireball rising above the ridge.

The flare must have half-blinded Claus. The ground lurched, Louis lurched, Claus lurched, and Hanuman jumped into Clauss arms. Claus tried to move him aside. Acolyte turned as he rose. His claw swept across Claus and hooked him under the throat.

Louis whipped around and ran two steps. His fist took Roxanny under the jaw. He gave it plenty of follow through. She went down, rolling, and Louis leapt after her, afraid hed hit her too hard, but he had to have that gun. In his peripheral vision, Acolyte hurled Claus into the ground in a spray of blood.

Louiss foot landed on her gun hand, and he had the gun. "Dont," he said.

She did. Her foot lashed out and caught him in the gut. Louis moved his hand: the gun missed her when it went off. Dust blasted out of the turf. A sonic weapon. He was still on his feet, trying to back away. Her other foot hooked his knee. He disengaged. She was up. The heel of her hand caught his cheek, and he was sprawling, still trying to avoid firing. Then she had his gun hand, and twisted, and had his gun. She aimed at a rising flycycle. He kicked her off balance. She fired as she fell.

He was on the ground, screaming. It felt like all the bones of his left hip and leg had shattered. Roxanny fired into the sky, lowered her arm and cursed.

When his eyes could focus, she was pointing the gun straight at him from four feet away.

The fireball was dying above the ridge. A spacecraft came out of the glare and began to settle.

One flycycle was still on the ground. The other wasnt in sight. Hanuman and Acolyte and Wembleth werent either. Claus lay on his back, his head torn nearly off, his entrails displayed.

Roxanny had him under the gun. "Why dont I just shoot you?" she asked.

"Roxanny, dont," said Louis Wu, master of sarcasm. He dared not move and he couldnt think. Just as well. A twenty-year-old would break under the fury in her eyes. "Dont shoot me," Luis said. "Ill fly you anywhere you like. Only I cant move."

Wembleth appeared from behind a tree, saw the gun in Roxannys hand, and ducked back.

"I dont need your flycycle," Roxanny said. "Weve got a ship. Wembleth! Get aboard and take a seat. Luis, can you stand up?"

"Futz, no!" Louis said.

She stooped above him and picked him up in her arms. His leg and hip sagged as if boneless. She nearly dropped him when he screamed. The pain blasted his mind away and he missed the rest.

Louis was on his back. Some kind of talk show was running on the ceiling, but the voices didnt match. Aha: the sound was turned off. The voices had been speaking for some time, against a noisy background Louis took for a ship of war.

"I had brothers once." Wembleth sounded drugged. Wembleths translator device sounded crisp and alert. "Stayed with their home turf when Father and I moved to…"

"…Move often?" A male voice of command, one Louis had never heard.

Wembleth: "Yes."

Roxanny had shot him.

Louis couldnt believe it. How badly was he hurt? His mind was muzzy; hed have trouble keeping a story straight. If they questioned Luis Tamasan, theyd hear far too much. Louis tried to move.

He couldnt feel much. There was a tickle behind the back of his neck. His eyes could move, and his head, a little. He could just see that he was naked, on his back, immobilized in something like a stretch rack… or the Intensive Care Cavity of a military autodoc. The noisy background suggested a ship of war. He listened to the voices, trying to make them out.

Male officer: "…brothers?"

"Chosen brothers. Grew up faster than me… stayed with their own, to find mates."

"Seen many kinds of human…?"

Wembleth: "Twenty, thirty species… reshed with…"

He thought he could guess what had happened up there.

A ship beneath the Ringworld floor had fired antimatter bullets upward. No need to find an eyestorm already in place. One bullet to tear away the foamed scrith meteor insulation. The next to blast a hole through the scrith floor and the landscape above, big enough for a small troop transport to pass through.

It was crazy, vicious, simple, and direct. He should have seen it coming instead of making elaborate long-range travel plans.

Wembleth: "Cant get anywhere if you dont know… reshtra… dont try to guess—"

Roxannys voice. "War? Do you ever fight—"

"Seen carnivores fight plant eaters… eaten me too. That what you mean?"

"Ook."

Mmm? Turning his head wasnt easy: Louis was restrained in a nest of attachments, and hed lost all sensation below his neck. But there was Hanuman, in a cage big enough to hold a Kzin. They locked eyes in mutual sympathy. Then something blocked Louiss view.

Roxanny Gauthier hung back behind a burly man, maybe a Jinxian, both wearing falling jumpers with ARM insignia. The man loomed over Louis, judging. He said, "Youd be Luis Tamasan."

"Yah," said Louis Wu.

"You attacked one of my people."

I lived to regret it. "Sorry."

"Im Tec-Major Schmidt. Youre a civilian prisoner. That gives you certain rights, but youre in futzy poor shape to exercise them. These stunners only stun if youre far enough away, but you were right up against Tec-First Gauthier. Youve got bones broken into shrapnel from your hip to your knee. The doc can heal you if you dont move for a while. Five days."

"Tanj." Better make nice — "Thank you, sir. I suppose Id be crippled for life without your help."

The officer grinned. "Oh yah. Now, can I free your arms? It would mean you can eat. Otherwise youre on tubes."

"I wont try to pull loose," Louis said.

"You could hurt yourself pretty bad if you did. Stet." The tickle behind his neck moved down his spine — his arms came back to life, the left very tender, bruised from elbow to fingertips — and further, until — "Hiii!" — and back up an inch. Louis could still feel bruises along his ribs, but not that awful shattered shriek of agony that started with his left hip.

Schmidts hands manipulated a video remote in Louiss peripheral vision. The talk show disappeared; Ringworld jumped into being, spilling off the ceiling, and down the rectangular walls. Schmidt asked, "Where do you come from?"

"Rotate it. More. Stet. Sir, thats the Great Ocean. Look along the spinward edge…" Louis began describing the Weaver village hed lived in last year. People, houses, the river, visiting Fishers, the webeye camera the Hindmost ("Chiron") had sprayed across the stone face of a gorge. These ARMs had no way of checking. If they could, Weavers would tell stories of Louis Wu and the Hindmost as Vashneesht having some kind of quarrel.

But his mind was turning foggy. Louis hadnt been drunk in a long time, but it was like this.

Schmidt zoomed on the Great Ocean region. "You live there? And your parents? Who else? A Kzin family? This puppeteer you told us about?"

"No, not Chiron. Finagle knows where Chiron lives," with a laugh he wished he could suppress. His tongue was curling out of control. "Kzinti dont live in the village, theyre from somewhere on the Great Ocean." If they pushed him, hed reveal another partial truth: that Chmeee lived among Kzinti who had taken over the Map of Earth, natives and all.

Tec-Major Schmidt said, "A lot of Kzintosh call themselves Chmeee. He was some kind of legendary hero. What do you mean, Map of Earth?"

Louis realized hed been babbling, thinking out loud.

Schmidt repeated, "Map of Earth?" with steel in his voice.

"Sir. There." Louis pointed into the ceiling, into the Great Ocean, where the continents of Earth were arrayed around its north pole, a hundred thousand miles spinward of the Map of Mars. He knew now that he couldnt keep secrets. Maybe theyd drugged him, maybe it was just painkillers. Hed last as long as he could, and then tell them his name and watch Roxanny explode in his face.

Roxanny said, "Futz. They keep human slaves?"

Luis: "Homo habilis. Pak breeders."

Schmidt: "Unchanged? Like the skeletons in the Olduvai Gorge?"

Luis: "I never saw one. Like to see their noses."

"Maybe theyre a little skewed?" Schmidt said, clearly speaking for a recorder. "From what we already know, a trillion Pak breeders had a quarter million years to evolve without protectors to cull the mutants. The Kzinti would have done some selective breeding. Anyway, these animals wouldnt have evolved into actual human beings, right, Luis?"

Louiss words came slowly. "They could have evolved intelligence. We did. Did you want to invade?" He laughed. "Rescue? These archaic Kzinti built the bigges sea ship in history, and that was a thousand years ago. Theyre not using jus spears and clubs."

"We can beat seagoing ships. Now, what kind of tech has the puppeteer got? Anything weird?"

Whump.

Louis said, as Luis, "How do I know whats weird?"

But he heard himself continue, "Cameras like copper spiderwebs? Out of a spray gun?" his voice lost in a recorded bellow. The ceiling was flashing an unfamiliar distress symbol. Hull breach*in*aft portside consumables tank. Power*lost in*sections two*and*three. Schmidt and Roxanny drew weapons and turned away, stooping to get through a small oval doorway. Louis spoke to nobody: "Hes got stepping disks too. What was that sound?"

Gray Nurse shook herself. Gravity went away.

Hanuman said, "Invaders. Well either be rescued or killed. Expect surprises. No protector would leave us in alien hands."

"Why not?" Louis heard the whine in his voice. "Why the futz cant they jus leave us alone?"

He didnt hear Hanumans answer. It had become too noisy. A spacecraft being boarded made a fearful echo chamber.

Roxanny Gauthier ducked back through the oval door and around out of Louiss sight. A moment later Wembleth drifted loose, too drugged to act. Roxanny touched points on Hanumans cage, and it opened.

She was talking in a hysterical whisper. "I dont know what they are. Not Kzinti. Nightmares." She looked at Louis, immobile in his medical cage, and said, "Sorry."

"Whas happening?" Louis asked. She touched his lips with a forefinger. She braced herself behind Louiss medical cage. Only her projectile weapon showed, aimed at the doorway.

A voice spoke from somewhere, Tec Schmidts voice sounding much too calm. "All hands, were fighting from the radiation refuge. I can see invaders on the hull and in four, five, six, and ten. Our motors are burned out, but were under acceleration anyway. We dont know where its coming from. Were also facing friendly fire, ARM missiles incoming, sixty and counting, no alien attackers yet. Tec-Admiral Wrayne doesnt want us captured, I guess."

"Why didnt we see it coming?" she whispered. "Theyve got an invisible ship! Shh."

Schmidts voice — "The missiles are veering away!" — died in a roar of static.

A shadow blinked past the little door. Roxanny fired, and cursed. What came through then looked like a small man filmed fast-forward. It was behind Roxanny before she could turn, and Louis couldnt see the rest.

Three bulkier man-shapes zipped through the door, moving more slowly. They sealed it behind them. They were wearing skintight pressure suits. They deployed a balloon with inflatable tubes around it: a big nonstandard rescue pod. They didnt wait for it to inflate.

Spill mountain people come in a variety of species, but they all look more or less alike: burly bodies and short thick arms and legs, large lung capacity, thick fur for insulation, hairless faces. These three had been spill mountain people. Now they werent. They wore pressure suits and big globular helmets, but their faces gave them away: mouths hard and toothless, like flattened beaks; big Roman noses; hairless skin wrinkled into leather armor. A mummified look, and an uncanny grace. Theyd eaten tree-of-life. They were protectors.

The fourth came around into view towing an unconscious Roxanny. It was a protector, but not of the spill mountain people. Smaller, more slender. A dead-looking face with no more nose than an ape. Louis didnt recognize the species, but it wasnt a Hanging Person. Louis had thought Tunesmith was involved in this. He was less sure now.

They pushed Wembleth into the rescue pod, then Roxanny. Hanuman crawled in without a struggle. Then the protectors turned to Louis.

"Im injured," he said. No reaction.

They studied the machinery around him, talking tersely in a language Louiss translator didnt have. Then they switched things off. When one reached behind Louiss back, pain came as if hed been hit by a truck.

He fought to keep from fainting, holding his attention on his breathing. Later he remembered a good deal. The feel of their hands, large, with blunt fingers and knobby knuckles. Brown eyes with epicanthic folds. The slender odd-man-out protector gave orders in monosyllables. The others detached Louis from the ICC, pushed him into the rescue pod, and sealed it. A framework still held his leg and hip immobile. Two studied the machinery that had held him while another cut a wide hole in the hull.

Air puffed the rescue pod into space.