Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 15 Proserpina

She brought the mag ship down in the garden, six miles downhill from the Penultimates mainland habitat. As soon as shed safed the motors, Proserpina rolled out of the cabin and ran aft. A sense of order might help the aliens adjust, but shed learn less if she gave them too much time.

Isolated, shorn of her senses, imprisoned in the Isolation Zone for all of these millions of falans — Proserpina had still been able to infer general details of Ringworld history: infighting, dominance games, reshaping of world-sized stretches of topography, shifting alliances, changing genetic patterns…

There was only one Repair Center, set halfway around the Ringworld from this, the Isolation Zone. The Repair Center could be seen as the Ringworlds natural throne room. A Ghoul was in power now, and that was good. He was short of experience, and reckless (not good), and probably male. Males wandered further. Where tree-of-life was scarce, a male would find it first.

Control was what this was all about. In earlier ages she had seen conspiracy after conspiracy, and had always found a way to stay neutral without being destroyed. There was always a master of creation, and — after one awful early experiment — it was never Proserpina.

She hop-stepped over the struts of the cargo grid and slid into the rescue bubble.

The woman spoke. "We need to talk."

Proserpina perceived Tec-First Gauthiers impatience and was amused. The woman was young, though not young for a breeder. Her stance suggested a different gravity; her speech was a bit altered from what Proserpina had heard while eavesdropping on the Ghouls retinue. Gauthier was one of the invaders. Shed have much to tell, once she stopped refusing to tell it.

Proserpinas silence made the woman uneasy. "We need to talk to make the translators work," she added.

Proserpina didnt smile. She couldnt. Theyd talked while they hunted Wembleth in the spill mountain village, but theyd said nothing. Nouns, verbs: not enough to cue Tec Gauthiers speaking device. Gauthier was keeping secrets.

So was Proserpina. When she needed to talk, she would.

The brachiator watched her and did nothing. Shed been expecting subservience. The little protector must serve another, perhaps the Ghoul.

One of the males made a soft-voiced request. Proserpina didnt know his speech. Shed work it out presently. He stood like a local, a little stooped, but at home with Ringworld spin gravity. He wouldnt have much to tell. What he wanted was clear: he was hungry.

The other male was injured and immobilized, naked and helpless. He watched. Proserpina was struck by his patience. Though no protector, he was an elder, of the same species as the woman. This would be the Ghouls breeder servant, Louis Wu of the Ball Worlds.

"Youre all hungry," Proserpina said in Interworld. The men were unsurprised, but Gauthier jumped. "You can all tolerate fruit. Well work out details of your diet presently. Were all omnivores, I think, except you," looking at the little one. "How are you called?"

The woman recovered her aplomb. She gestured: "Luis Tamasan. Wembleth. Roxanny Gauthier. Proserpina? How did you learn our language?"

"Ive hacked into a library," Proserpina said. She saw the woman bristle: Gray Nurses computer! Stolen! "I chose my name from your literature," speaking now to Luis/Louis. Wu and the little protector were keeping secrets too.

She clapped her hands. "Lets feed you. Theres fruit outside, and a stream."

"Ill have to feed Luis," Roxanny said.

"You must learn whats edible. Come. Luis, well be back soon. Your device is giving you nutrient, but its best if your digestive systems are exercised."

"Thank you," he said.

Roxanny looked dubious, but she went.

Roxanny followed the protector. Wembleth followed Roxanny, holding Hanumans hand. The ape scrambled along faster than his little legs were up to.

From the back the joker looked like a small, scrawny, bald woman. She stood a meter and a half tall. All of her joints were swollen; her back was a column of pebbles. Roxanny knew that she should be afraid of the creature, but she couldnt feel intimidated.

Proserpina was talking to Wembleth in Interspeak. Wembleth chattered in his own language, and Roxanny listened to his translator with half her attention.

"Mother abandoned us. I never asked Father about it; he was touchy there, but I listened. They both used to go exploring. One day she was just gone. Some species do that, turn vicious and solitary, like the Swamp Folk. Friendly and curious when theyre young, great rishathra, then something triggers, and they bulk up and change attitude and go off into the swamp. I was afraid Id do the same. Interbreeding is rare, and you dont know what youll get."

"Have you rished with Swamp People?"

"With a Swamp Girl until she mated, and afterward we were friends. Then she got pregnant, and she went off alone to raise the children."

There were low buildings in the forest. Trees masked them. Trees grew from the roofs, or up the side of a minaret. A huge tree grew through the hollow core of a ring two stories high.

Shadows ticked at the corners of her vision. Tree shadows wouldnt move in this weird place where it was always noon or night. Roxanny became sure that there were animals in the forest, watching them.

Proserpina was fast, darting among the trees, plucking and gathering plants in varied colors and shapes. "Try this," she said to Luiss long-armed pet, setting a purple blob in his hands. It resembled an eggplant, but it sprayed red juice when Hanuman bit into it. Hanuman buried his face in it.

"Here. Here." Proserpina distributed other fruits, and watched for reactions. Roxannys 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 Hanumans purple blob.

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

"Very."

"How?"

"I havent been here long. Im still looking." Roxanny was reluctant to speak. Sooner or later the protector would be asking questions she shouldnt answer. Still — werent there things she could learn from a protector?

So she temporized. "We learned a lot before any ship landed. Its 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. Thats 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 its a kinder, gentler time?"

"Not while youre 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. Weve tried to breed that trait out of ourselves, so its 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. Im not schitz, Proserpina. My genes are clean." Roxanny clamped her lips closed. This was far more personal than anything shed 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 cant. Ive had my shot."

Proserpina stared at her. Then she turned away to gather more fruit. "Ill 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. Well 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. Shed 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 Ringworlds scale?

Shed 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 Penultimates 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 worlds 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 ships 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. Ive 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 Ringworlds 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 didnt 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?

"Ill 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 shed come back alone. Hanuman must be with the others: hed protect them.

She asked, "Are you well?"

"Check the readouts," Louis said.

She took him at his word. "Youre healing. Youre getting nourishment and something to calm you." She tapped at a screen. "You wouldnt be getting these inputs if you didnt have internal injuries. Theyre still healing. This other concoction seems to be brewed from tree-of-life root, or some synthetic analogue, but the machine isnt feeding that to you either."

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

"Here, this tube."

Louis tried to sit up. "I cant 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 breeders age-raddled body? And you dont need it. Youre an old man made young. Is boosterspice one of Tunesmiths secrets?"

Louis blinked. "No. It might be an ARM secret." Hed 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 Id 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 dont 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 shouldnt have been already fixed. When Nessus made his offer, I went to the Ringworld."

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

"Yah."

"Theres 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 doesnt matter, they can all heal at the same time. In four days youll walk, in seven youll run. Would you try solid food?"

Louis pointed: "That ones 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?"

"Im the oldest protector, the last of the rebels," she said. "Tell me who you are. The woman doesnt know. She didnt perceive Hanuman either. What does she think he is?"

"We let her think Hanuman is a tame monkey. She thinks Im the son of an ARM who got himself stranded. Can we keep it that way? Roxanny is an ARM detective. There are things they shouldnt 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?"

"Plutos 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 arent 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 dont agree, but you dont hate him. Youd free yourself if you could. Will you serve me? No. For a time, then? Perhaps if you knew me better? Im not prone to rages or bouts of frantic activity or megalomania, Louis. I dont suck blood, though you served a bloodsucker. Ive 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."

"Ive heard that before," Louis said.

"From some braggart breeder? Theyve become hugely various, havent they? My telescopes wont penetrate atmosphere well enough, and I dare not travel to see more, but Ive dealt with spill mountain species. Louis or Luis, Im the real one. I broke promises before the work was finished, so it was finished without me, but I believe Im 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? Its better if you can feel whats going on."

"Thats pretty fierce," he gasped.

"Ill 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."

"In privacy, please."

"Stet." She turned away. "Then you can tell me about the people of the Ringworld. Who have you met? What are they like? I have the right. Our children became their ancestors."

Louis considered keeping silence. It was not his nature. He couldnt hide anything from a protector anyway. He did wonder if Proserpina had set ARM truth drugs dripping into him.

But the vampire nest wasnt a secret to be kept. It was a futzy good story. Breeders — Ringworld hominids — had evolved into an ecological slot elsewhere occupied by vampire bats. Louis Wu had interfered with the weather over a world-sized area. His intentions had been good — hed ruined the environment for some dangerous plants — but over the next few years, vampires moved under the permanent cloud deck established by Louis Wu, and took over a floating industrial park.

That happened far around the Ringworlds arc from where Louis was dwelling with a Weaver species. Hed watched through the Hindmosts webeye camera. Louis described it for Proserpina, and the Weaver village, and that led him back and back. Floating buildings gathered to form a city, and the shadow farm beneath, that grew a hundred kinds of fungus. The Ringworld slid off center, near to brushing against its sun. Back and back, until he was telling her how hed come to the Ringworld, lured into an expedition to explore something strange beyond the worlds he knew.

She knew what questions to ask, when to keep silent, when to break and feed him fruit. "Here, this machine makes a nutrient fluid too. Would you eat that?"

He tried it. It was basic stuff to feed an injured soldier. "Not bad."

"You eat meat too, dont you? Fresh killed? Ill hunt you up a sampling tomorrow. Im more of a scavenger than you are, I think. How did you return to the stars? Through an eyestorm?"

"Something like that."

He spoke of Halrloprillalar, the City Builder who claimed that her kind had built the Ringworld. "She was joking with me, but she had it backward. She and her species nearly destroyed it."

"How?"

"They dismounted the attitude jets on the rim wall and built them into their spacecraft. Proserpina, why did you let that happen?"

Poker face. "We made attitude jets to be easily dismounted so that they can be easily replaced. We expected them to wear out in time. Was this a part of the Fringe War?"

"No. Earlier."

"Well speak of this again. When did the Fringe War start?"

"Tanj, I dont know. The first ships may have got here ahead of the Hindmost, a hundred falans ago. You stole Gray Nurses library, didnt you? Have you got it running? See if its got footage of Needle coming in."

"Ill do that," said the protector.

Louis called after her. "Check on the others, will you?"

"Theyre safe here, but I will. Sleep."

It was night, and hed talked himself hoarse. He slept.

He woke to find Roxanny and Wembleth asleep on the plastic sheeting. He didnt disturb them. In an hour they woke, found the store of fruit, and ate.

Roxanny fed him delicately. Perhaps shed raised a child once.

She and Wembleth had spent yesterday exploring while Louis lay in his ICC. "These elbow trees are easy to climb. Its even somewhat safe, once I found some rope. We got a wonderful view. Its all flat, the horizon never curves out of sight, and I had these." Mag specs. "Luis, did you notice one big central mountain, coming in?"

"Yah, inland."

"Its windows top to bottom, but there are only a few picture windows. The rest looks like a spray of glitter everywhere. Id call that structure an arcology, but big, and built by military, or maybe paranoid crazies. Straight highways with towers at the end, wonderful fields of fire. Big helipads. I didnt see any guns; I just saw where they should be mounted.

"Theres only that one huge palace. Over the rest of the island — I keep saying island, just because I can see so much of it, even though most of it dwindles into what looks like fog. Continent. The buildings nearby are all very basic, and theres nothing big further out. Wembleth thinks its all housing for breeders, Homo habilis. We didnt see any, they could all have died off, but Luis, if this was a protectors home, thered be defenses and research labs and libraries, wouldnt there?"

"Well, theres the arcology," Louis said.

She grinned at him. "Do you even know what arcology means?"

"Big building."

"Well… yah. I dont think shes using it. It was left by the previous tenant. I think Proserpina has a base, maybe on the little continents, maybe on another Map. She wouldnt have turned us loose where she works. This place is… remember I said garden? Suppose you had to turn the whole Earth into a garden? Earth is a closed ecology, but it changes. It drifts." She looked deep into his eyes, seeking understanding. "Gardeners dont like weeds. Theyd do something about deserts… wouldnt have to worry about tundra because theres no winter… but a gardener might have to control the weather."

"Weathers chaotic. It cant be controlled," Louis said.

"What if you had huge air masses to work with? An area of a thousand Earths, and no hurricane patterns to foul you up because youre not on a spinning ball. Air masses wouldnt move fast—"

Louis laughed. "Stet. Maybe."

"We wont actually see other maps," she said, suddenly depressed. "No boats for guests. What do you think, Luis? One whole supercontinent for a garden, and breeders are an integral part of the garden. Defenses on the islands. Telescopes and research facilities. Mines… you dont get mines on the Ringworld, do you?"

"If you could reach the spill mountains," Louis said. "Materials might layer out according to density. Otherwise, no mining rights. You dig for oil, you hit scrith, then vacuum."

"Proserpina can reach the spill mountains."

Louis shrugged. "I cant help you explore. Be cautious. Every culture has fairy tales about someone finding something he shouldnt."

"Even so," Roxanny said, "Id like to get into that building."

Wembleth and Roxanny went out again after breakfast.

Proserpina was back at midday. She asked, "What are stepping disks?"

"Where did you find those?"

"Your own report to the ARM, Louis Wu. You didnt tell enough. What if I had to make stepping disks? Is the Ghoul protector doing that?"

"You first. How are my companions?"

"Exploring. Hanuman went off alone, Wembleth and Roxanny are together. Theyll learn little in this place. The last rebel to die lived here. I took charge of his habitat, but the Penultimates palace is trapped. I leave it alone."

She hoisted a miniature deer nearly her own weight. It dangled, its neck broken. Big insects buzzed it. "I use this animal for food myself. Can you eat it?"

"Maybe—"

"Treat it with heat?"

"Yah. Clean out the body cavity. Shall I — ?"

"You may exercise your upper body, but otherwise rest. Your bones are pinned together, but let them knit. I will cook. I can research this."

Barbecue smells made him hungry. In an hour she was back with a roasted carcass. She stripped off pieces of meat for him. He found it pleasant to be waited on.

" But always at my back I hear Times winged footsteps hurrying near," she said. "No, eat. I need to know how urgent this matter of the Fringe War is. Does Tunesmith have it under control?"

"More or less," he said.

"Eat. Is it more, or less?" She scowled at what she saw in his face. "Less. Hanuman tells me of the blast that tore a hole into space. I saw it from a distance, and knew I must act. Antimatter. Could it have killed all life? Did Tunesmith really prevent that?"

"Yes."

"What did you see?"

"Wembleth and Roxanny would eat some of that," Louis said.

The protector met his eyes for a long heartbeat. "Ill fetch them," she said. She set a great slab of meat in his reach, and departed.

Daylight was fading when they returned. Proserpina and the others cooked dinner outside. Louis smelled wood smoke and roasting meat. What Roxanny brought to Louis included vegetables: green-and-yellow leafy plants, and roasted yams.

Proserpina was becoming a skilled chef. She ate with them, but what she ate was raw meat and raw yams. When they had finished eating, she said, "I want your trust."

The ancient protectors eyes locked with theirs, skipping past Hanuman as if he were a dumb animal. "Wembleth, Roxanny, Luis, youd be demented to trust me knowing no more than you do."

"Tell us a story," Louis said. Proserpina was keeping Hanumans secrets, and Louiss, and perhaps Roxannys too. There was no reason to trust her, and every reason to listen.

"These events all took place near the galactic core. We who held our world were ten to a hundred million protectors of the Pak species," the protector said. "The number varied wildly in the endless war.

"Something more than four million falans ago — Ive lost track of time to some extent — ten thousand of us built a carrier ship and some fighter scouts. Eighty years later, six hundred were left to ride them." Proserpina spoke slowly, reaching far back into her memory. Interworld was a flexible language, but it wasnt built for these concepts.

"This land is a good map of the Pak world. Did you see its shape? Circles everywhere," Proserpina said. "Blast craters, new and ancient, from an endless variety of weapons. These maps were identical when we built them, but theyve changed since. On the Pak world and here, we fought for any advantage for our blood line. Luis, what?"

"Well, its strange," Louis Wu said. "One world, over and over? The Pak world was in the galactic core. Suns are packed close together there. You came here, thirty thousand light years in one leap. Why didnt you use worlds closer in?"

"Yes, our worlds were much closer together than yours. Endless room, endlessly coveted. We saw no way to reach them in a spacecraft carrying breeders, because we would fight for advantage of the breeders. If we solved that, wed face another problem. Any world would require reshaping for periods of thousands of years. Before the work was complete, each would be snatched away by armies of other protectors. We could see that this had happened. Worlds near Pak were shaped to a Pak ideal, then blasted back to barren waste long before I was born. We saw no way to take other worlds unless we could change the circumstances that shaped us.

"This is what we did, we six hundred. First, we gave up nearby worlds. If another ship could reach us, that world was too close. We found records of a voyage into the galactic arms, a route already tested by an earlier colony ship. The colony failed, but we knew no intervening danger had stopped it from reaching its target world.

"Second, we segregated ourselves from our breeders. We housed them in a cylinder topographed like a rolled-up landscape. Their food would grow there too, water and air and wastes recycled, a locked ecology. No pheromones from breeder housing would reach the flight control complex. The breeders were not to love us; they would not be aware of us at all. Any protector violating the ban must die.

"Of course there was natural selection at work. Many breeders would die, did die without the company of protectors." Proserpinas eyes sought theirs. "Even now, four million falans evolved, dont you Ball Worlders sometimes need the companionship of something greater than yourselves?"

Roxanny said, "No."

"I find records of scores of religions."

"Weve outgrown them," Roxanny said.

After a moments pause, Proserpina said, "Stet. Many breeders died for lack of our company, but less every generation. Again, many protectors found we must smell or touch our own kind. Many found ways to enter breeder housing, and died when they were caught. Others stopped eating. In the first thousand years we lost half our number. Replacing them from breeder stock was a chancy thing. Natural selection took its toll.

"What emerged at the end of three hundred and fifty thousand falans of travel, was a race that can live without the smell of our own blood line constantly in our nostrils.

"We veered away from the target world. A colony there had failed, but we could not know how badly. We might find protectors already in place, and our ship was a fragile bubble. We believed — Yes, Roxanny?"

"Earth?"

"Yes, your world, Earth. We could have had Earth. Your tree-of-life plants werent growing right. Your protectors died. Their descendants were mutating in many directions. We didnt know that. I learned too little of the Earth colony before your evolved breeders began blasting radio waves at the stars. By then—"

Proserpina blinked at them; started over. "We arrived in the local neighborhood. We found worlds we might take, but our ambitions were greater than that. We chose a system with a gas giant planet huddled close up against its star. We surmise it formed far out in the disk that became the planets. Then it was drawn in over the billions of years, eating lesser worlds as it came. Thus we found a planetary system already cleared out for our convenience, and most of the mass gathered in a single body, a mass of almost twenty Jupiters, Roxanny.

"So we built. We met difficulties working that close to a sun, but we could use the suns magnetic fields to confine the masses we worked with, particularly the hydrogen we needed for fusion motors to spin up the ring.

"Stars that can generate extensive planetary systems form in clusters. There were stars with planets around us where we stopped, and some were Pak-like or close to it. We identified those that might evolve dangerous enemies. We collected local ecologies and settled them on maps of their worlds.

"We never approached Earth, Roxanny. We were afraid. We studied the system intensively at long range. The Map of Earth became home to our own breeders. We needed fifty thousand falans to build an ecology into the Ringworlds inner surface, but we started there, with the Map of Earth as a test bed."

"Whales," Louis said. "There are whales in the Great Ocean. Some protector must have gone to Earth."

"It may have happened after I was isolated," Proserpina said. "Wembleth, are you keeping up with this?" Proserpina changed languages and spoke rapidly. She switched back: "Later Ill show Wembleth maps of the sky, and diagrams. You two should try to tell him what a Ball World is. Roxanny, these maps of our world are prisons. We knew some of us would break the one law. We built the prisons first, to warn each other. Any felon would be isolated with a world to rule and a population all of her own kind, just as if theyd each conquered the Pak homeworld, but all made hostage to the majority.

"I was one of those."

"Why?"

"Oh, Roxanny." Proserpinas body language suggested impatience and bitter laughter. "We thought we would win! Eleven of us thought we could take the Repair Center. Wed breed our descendants to all of the lines, and cull to keep our traits dominant. In a thousand years wed be safe, even if the power balance changed, even if an insurgence should kill us. We planned it all in an afternoon, and collected our resources as fast as ever we could. Even so, we were a little slow.

"They confined me on one of the Maps, not this one. They collected a hundred of my line and scattered them in pairs through this land. I must build a land they could live in. I must guide the breeders myself so that ultimately they meet and interbreed, or else inbreeding would destroy them. While I did all that, time passed me by. I was out of the loop. Others of my descendants lived among the Ringworlds expanding population, and their genes were hostage too."

Proserpina fell silent. Louis asked, "How long did it last? What stopped it?"

"A few hundred thousand falans — Im guessing, Luis. Wembleth, Roxanny, you dont understand? On the Ringworld we built, a breeder population expanded to a trillion. At some point they became a chaos of mutations. Mutations are of no use to a protector; they dont smell right. Luis asks me when the protectors stopped culling their tribes, and why. I witnessed too little. I dont know why. Im guessing even at when.

"I was a prisoner. I spent long periods in depression, noticing nothing. I never quite starved myself. When I was myself, I made telescopes but not probes. We were barred from intrusive investigations. With telescopes I could see nothing nearby, but I could study what was happening far up the arc. Meteors continued to be intercepted. An eyestorm formed; I guessed at the dynamics; I saw the storm dissipate. It meant that protectors were still doing repairs. Luis, what?"

"Depression. Sorry, I dont mean to interrupt—"

"How can I not notice when you want to speak?"

"These bouts of depression, do they make you miss things? Im wondering about the rim-wall attitude jets, and Fist-of-God Mountain."

"Where is it?"

"Near the far ocean. It was a giant meteoroid impact, from underneath. It didnt leak much because the land was pushed up."

"I would not have acted. This is work for the resident protector."

"There was a fight for who would be resident protector."

Roxanny and Proserpina stared at Louis. Then Proserpina moaned. "Ive been remiss."

Louis asked, "Did your jailers give you tree-of-life?"

"Yes, but neutered. A virus causes the gene flip that makes a breeder a protector. The virus lives in tree-of-life root. Neutered tree-of-life will still feed me, will feed any protector, but it wont change a breeder. What made you ask that, Luis?"

"Just a thought." Tree-of-life only grew in the Repair Center, as far as Louis knew. Apparently it had died out elsewhere. "Is it easy to get rid of the protector virus?"

"Yes."

"But you got more?"

"How did you know that? Yes, I filtered it from the air when it grew thick enough and scattered far enough, four hundred thousand falans after creation. I cultured the virus and grew it in my plants. I made a few servants then, not enough to be noticed, and sent them on errands. But they revolted, and I had to kill them, Luis, and the next time I tried it, it didnt work. My plants had been neutered again. I know not by what means, and the virus wasnt in the air any more. You ate tree-of-life tonight."

Roxanny gasped. Louis gulped. He said, "Tasted like a yam. I think it probably is a yam, Roxanny. Proserpina, when did it happen?"

"Something more than a million falans after creation. You know what happened, dont you, Luis? Tell me."

Louis shook his head. "The protectors are gone. Thats all we know."

Proserpina said, "I understand now. Species differentiation has been extreme in the past two million falans. I can see how far your species has veered, Roxanny, under pressures that favor intelligence, hairlessness, swimming talent, and a two-legged run. My telescopes can observe the spill mountains. I went to visit them when I dared, when I was sure I was the last protector in these lands.

"Their people fission into incompatible species under nearly identical conditions. Ive tapped the heliograph communication network formed by the Night People. Eaters of the dead, arent they? And that intelligent, and as breeders! Some half-intelligent protector ruled the Repair Center for a very long time. I cant guess how many other variations there are."

Roxanny said, "Thousands."

"But on the Map of Earth there isnt room for mutations to settle in and compete and shape each other to strangeness. My servants settled my breeders among the Pak of the Map of Earth. My line may thrive there. Luis, what are you hiding?"

"Im sorry."

She loomed over him, small and dangerous. "Talk to me."

Prone in his casket, he said, "I have a friend on the Map of Earth. I want him protected."

"Tunesmith wouldnt let another protector near the Map of Earth. I havent survived by challenging the resident. What are you hiding?"

Roxanny spoke. There are Kzinti on the Map of Earth. He said so. His friend Acolyte comes from there."

"Archaic Kzinti," Louis said. "Not the same as the armies of the Fringe War. They sailed across the Great Ocean and formed a colony on the Map of Earth, not that long ago."

"While I was in depression," Proserpina said. "I left too much to the resident. Stet. Ill research Kzinti, archaic and modern. Maybe we can deal. But I must confront the resident.

"Tonight I must go away. Tunesmith must be dealt with one way or another. I may be gone for days. Tec Gauthier, you must care for Luis. Luis, shall I give you back your sensation?"

"Try it."

When pain came, Louis wondered if Proserpina was taking revenge on a bearer of bad news. But there was no more than an ache, though it ran from hip to heel.

"Wriggle around if you feel like it, but carefully. Dont detach anything." Proserpina stroked the tree swingers head. "Little Hanuman, would you like to come with me?"

Hanuman considered, then jumped into her arms. She looked around at them. "I make one proscription. All of what you can reach is open to you, save only the big building to spin and starboard, and the continent nearest to antispinward. Im sure the big building is trapped. I havent dared it myself. The little continent is where the Penultimate kept the dangerous species from Pak. Analogues of wolves, tigers, lice, mosquitoes, needle cactus, and poison mushrooms, the plants and creatures we never wanted among our breeders. Most of them were extinct when we left the core stars, but we saved a few. We might have released them, had we known that our breeders would evolve into their ecological slots."

She turned and was gone so quietly and easily that it was as if a ghost had evaporated.