Ringworld's Children

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 wasnt there. Only the smell of brachiating hominids.

His fathers hunting park had been more dangerous. The danger level of fathers 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 didnt 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 todays bewildering variety of hominids had evolved over the million years, the four million falans, that followed.

Of course Louis was guessing. Hed 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. Louiss 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 Chmeees 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 fathers 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 Kzins 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 him.

"I should reclaim my float plate," Acolyte said. He dropped toward the forest floor and took off through tilted trunks along a path Louis couldnt 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 its 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. Teelas 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? Teelas 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 Repair Center 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. Hed wondered too. Bram had had little respect for human life, breeder or protector.

Acolyte asked, "Are you caught up with whats happening?"

"Tanj, no. Tunesmith is driving me crazy with his secrets."

The protector said, "Ill talk as we go.

"Louis, you made me. You saw that a Vampire protector was unfit to decide the Ringworlds fate, or else that Bram himself was unfit. You thought a Ghoul would serve. You lured me into the Repair Center. 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 protectors 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 Ghouls 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, doesnt it?"

Louis agreed. "They dont dare endanger it. They dont know how to duplicate the drive. Theres 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 Tunesmiths service stack, then landed. Tunesmith said, "I cant 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 Hindmosts records," the protector said, "with a few improvements. Ill mount it on Mons Olympus. Ive heliographed the design to protectors along the rim wall. Soon we wont 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 its 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 hed been.

No idea what they were doing.

It seemed to Louis that the protectors 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 hadnt 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. Ive intercepted what must be messages between ships, too well encrypted even for me. By Needles database I can identify ships and habitats in the inner comets belonging to ARM, Patriarchy, Trinocs, an Outsider ship, and three Piersons 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 dont always use light sails. We bought hyperdrive technology from them, but theyve got something even better. The good news is, theyve got no use for liquid water and high gravity, so theyve 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 couldnt afford serious weapons."

"Good. Hindmost, did you show him Diplomat?"

"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 hes 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. Thats three hundred minutes each way. We start with ten hours to play with before Long Shots 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 hed 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 cant use hyperdrive if theyre docked with another ship. Follow me." Tunesmith strode forward and was gone. And again, Louis followed.