Ringworld's Children

CHAPTER 21 In Flight

Penultimates Palace. Louis flicked in and rolled off the burnt stack of float plates. Nothing fired on him.

The flying belt took him out and down. He skimmed above the yellow lawn, wondering at the black markings. One pattern must be the Penultimates name or portrait… there, traces of a cartoon, very simplified, a style weirdly reminiscent of William Rotsler. The other would be speech.

He had guesswork for a Rosetta Stone. What would a protector say to an invader? That might be a pictograph pun: a word you could read as "Enter" or "Extinct"; "Greetings" or "Epitaph". Could you extrapolate a language from that?

Nah.

Louis flew low, enjoying the skill it took to weave between trees. Maybe theyd conceal him if Proserpina came looking for him on her own turf. (Nah. She had his scent.) Hard turns and high gees and a brief freedom from intellectual problems.

Proserpinas sunfish ship rested among the trees near Proserpinas base. Lesser trees had grown up through the gridwork. Louis set the flying belt behind a thick trunk, stripped off his falling jumper, and left that too. He made his way forward on foot. See the naked, limping breeder.

Here was the ARM doc from Gray Nurse. Louis wondered what the diagnostic readings would say about him. Mutated? Not human? Dying? He walked past it without a pause. No time!

He stopped by Snail Darters library. No time, but protectors didnt always have a choice.

Hed watched Claus and Roxanny work this device. It wasnt hard to persuade it to summon up a roster for the Fringe War fleet. There were dozens of Wu, and six Harmony: his first daughter had married a Harmony. An ID number sequence would identify his line of descent -

A grandson and his daughter had joined the Navy decades ago. Wes Carlton Wu was Flight Captain aboard Koala, a lurker ship, with Tanya Wu as Purser. Another quick pass found no other blood relatives, and time was shrinking.

Louis approached the sunfish ship.

Think like a Pak. A protector might kill any breeder who smelled wrong, to leave more space for her own breeders. But youre Proserpina. Accommodation has been your survival for a million years. You dont want to hurt a breeder. It might be some powerful enemys N-child!

There were no steps up to the cabin. Louis climbed up like a Hanging Person.

It was roomy inside. There were handgrips everywhere, and footgrips: just how prehensile were Proserpinas toes? And sensors and touchpads and toggles and levers, randomly placed. There was a horseshoe of couch, but only one control chair, and it would not fit Louis. Hed have to change it — but hed better give some thought to convincing the ship he was Proserpina.

Louis was disappointed in the Hindmost. He had steered the destiny of a species whose tools and learning beggared mankinds. Why couldnt he move a few kilotons of medical equipment? It would have saved Louis considerable trouble and two or three hours time.

Maybe the Experimentalist faction on the Fleet of Worlds was more like New Orleans traditional Fool King. Set them going, but watch them. Turn them off when they do something excessively expensive or dangerous. Sometimes theyll do something worthwhile -

He was getting distracted.

Thou shalt have no Proserpinas before me. Shed have set defenses to prevent a protector from manipulating the ship. Unless — would Proserpina really set a death trap for someone like Tunesmith, acknowledged as brighter and more dangerous than Proserpina herself? Retaliation could be terminal.

And what about protector slaves? This chair looked like it had been altered to fit a Hanging Person, then adjusted for Proserpina again. Hey, she must have let Hanuman fly it!

Futz! The ship wasnt defended. She was the defense. Who would dare steal Proserpinas ship? — and that was the point: risk for Louis Wu was do nothing. He adjusted the chair and sat down, strapped himself in, and lifted.

Trees had grown into the ships metal lacework. They tore loose. Louis lofted the ship above the atmosphere, then turned toward the rim wall.

Was the sun starting to roil? Hed burn his eyes out if he looked hard. There must be a way to dim the glass, right? And Tunesmith would have the meteor defense going. Louis zigzagged his path a bit, and studied the controls. Here?

It didnt just darken the view; it was light-amplification too. He turned it very dark, and looked up.

A solar prominence was reaching out and out.

Louis jogged the ship at high gees. The ground flared below him. He could see the beam tracking and avoid it, even guide it a little to miss a populated spill mountain, and then he was off the Ringworld and dropping, easing back and under the Ringworld floor.

He had to follow the arc halfway around, three hundred million miles. Now the nontrivial danger was alien ships. Louis zigged along the magnet grid, accelerating hard, hearing a toc, toc of multimolecule-sized cameras hitting the skin of the ship. The Fringe War would be after him soon enough.

Something flashed on the Ringworlds underside. Louis zagged almost into another flash. Maybe hed started a war himself.

Tunesmiths Meteor Reweaving System had closed Fist-of-God. Louis came up around the rim instead. He made for the Map of Mars, a little over half a million miles away. The sun was roiling again.

A spark struck upward: a launch from Mons Olympus. Louis slid the sunfish ship beneath the path of the meteor package, just for a moment. Tunesmith wouldnt have set the meteor defense to fire on those! He slowed, descended through the crater, and set the ship to hover.

He crawled halfway out of the cabin and shouted down. "Hindmost! Close it!"

The craters lid began to close.

Louis began to play with the sunfish ships controls. The docs Intensive Care Cavity rose, twirled in the air, and settled a bit jerkily into the bay in Long Shot. Then the Service Wall, trailing loose cables. Then other, smaller components. Then the lifeboat.

Then a tank Louis had identified earlier.

The puppeteer was shouting something. " — tied down?"

Louis settled the tank in with the rest of the doc. He brought the sunfish ship down and got out.

The Hindmost came trotting up. He asked, "How will you tie these components against shock of takeoff?"

"Tunesmith was using a tank of foam plastic. Lets set it going and close the ship up, then board."

The tank was spraying foam plastic as Louis closed the lid on it. Hed taken the pilots seat without comment. Hey, it was built for humans. The Hindmost asked, "Shouldnt we open the crater again?"

"Hindmost, lets try something else." He activated the hyperdrive. The cavern disappeared. The Q2 ship launched itself straight down into a boil of colors.

Map of Earth. Shortly after nightfall Acolyte begged audience with Chmeee.

One of the guards said, "Play elsewhere, child. Your father is busy." And grinned.

"I bear a message from Tunesmith."

"An odd name."

"Chmeee will know it. Tunesmith who lives under the Map of Mars."

The guard was bored, and he toyed with Acolyte a bit longer. Then he went into the tent. When he came out, he asked, "How did it come, this message?"

"There were flashes of light from the mountains to starboard."

Acolyte was allowed entrance. He groveled before his father, who asked, "Is this the Tunesmith who wants to give me the Map of Earth? Ive heard nothing since you delivered his message."

"He says you may take the Map yourself, after the other prides have gone mad."

It had gone quiet: Chmeees courtiers were paying attention.

Chmeee asked, "Mad?" and studied his son, whose subservience seemed laid over a whiplash eagerness. "Lecture me, then."

"Tunesmith instructs us to hide ourselves from the sky for two full days. We must be under a roof or tent, all of us, even females and kits. We should sleep if we can. We must all be under cover, or blindfolded, before shadow reveals the sun."

"So soon? How shall I manage that?"

Acolyte dared to grin. "What would Louis Wu say?"

" Thats why I get the big money. What is to happen to the sky?"

"That was not told. You have seen ships leaving tracks of light across the sky. You have heard talk of the Fringe War. I watched it in Tunesmiths Meteor Defense Room. It is told that Tunesmith will end the war."

Chmeee nodded. "Are you ready to run? It is well." His voice rose to a bellow. "All in my hearing, you are each an emissary to my far provinces! Divide the contents of my kitchen to feed yourselves. Go where I send you. Carry a blindfold ready to use. You will know when to use it. Fools will go blind or mad.

"You are each more valuable than those you will speak to, and you will be under cover before the shadow square passes. Two days hidden, or answer to me. The rest of us may conquer the Map of Earth if we so choose."

The boy Kazarp was gazing open-mouthed at the sky. Shadow had covered the sun, but the shadow squares were glittering in a way hed never seen. Presently he raised his instrument and began to play.

Over the music he heard a stealthy shift in posture, too close for any stranger, and he said, "I knew you were there."

"Dont turn around. I am become Vashneesht."

His father had disappeared falans ago, and now this: a thing out of fantasy, awesome and terrible. Kazarp didnt turn. "Father? Does mother know?"

"You must tell her. Tell her gently. Then tell her she must hide from the sky for two days, and you too, for fear of going mad. Spread the word. A burrow would be better than a roof. Afterward there is a world of mad folk to care for, and far more feasting than our folk will ever want."

"Will you stay?"

"Not now. I will visit when I can."

Long Shots cabin was at the bottom of the sphere, between four fusion-drive nostrils. In hyperdrive Long Shot flew ass-backward into the unknown. Louis launched straight down, into and through the Ringworld floor — feeling a touch of drag from the superdense scrith — and out into space.

He was moving away from the sun and straight into the thickest gathering of Fringe War ships. Not that that mattered. Those ships were all in Einstein space, this close to a large mass. Louis was flying blind, of course, through hyperspace. What he hoped was that this faster ship would outrun the eaters.

The puppeteer was wound into a tight knot. He wouldnt be of much help.

How fast would Long Shot move near this great a mass? Hed wondered if it would even exceed lightspeed. Tunesmith might have worked out the QII systems behavior, but Louis didnt have enough clues. Hed learn soon enough. When the crystal sphere that was the mass detector began working, hed be outside the "singularity."

Eleven hours later, Louis knew that even protectors could grow tired. He could ignore that, and hunger and thirst, and pain in guts and joints, headache and sinus ache, that properly belong only to an aging savage. It didnt matter. Hed got clear of the Ringworld. Of thirty trillion Ringworld hominids, a fat percentage would survive. Wembleth and Roxanny and their child were lost in noise. If Tunesmith worked out what they truly were, he wouldnt even search. With luck, though, hed think Louis had taken Wembleth to the stars.

Winning could compensate for a lot of pain.

The window was the floor, and it would darken, light-amplify, record and display recordings, or zoom. Louis watched flow patterns of colored light, and a dark comma zipping past.

He saw the view change. The window wasnt there: his eyes slid around it.

Louis looked at the mass detector. There should have been lines of light crawling toward him. Nothing showed. It was just doped crystal.

Louis hit the cutoff.

He saw showers of stars. The universe was wide and beautiful below his feet. He was in Einstein space.

It would have pleased him to sell Long Shot to some band of freebooters in human space. Or form his own! Now that looked unlikely. Louis set the window to zoom, then darkened it a little against the zodiacal glare. The Ringworld eclipsed the sun except for a tiny sliver of light.

Six light-hours from Ringworld system — he measured it — the sun wouldnt light up Long Shot very much, but putting the ship in the Ringworlds shadow would leave it black as space. He hadnt used fusion motors at all: nobody would find him via neutrino flux. The rest of the electromagnetic spectrum might reveal him to the Fringe War if they happened to look. Louis thought theyd be too busy for that. Theyd hunt for Proserpinas sunfish ship until something more interesting happened… real soon now.

The rec room above was as tiny as the cabin below, but there was a game-room wall, food dispenser, and a shower bag. He noticed also the hatch in the ceiling. That was new. It led into a maze of man-wide access tubes he could see through the wall. They were hard to follow, a neat puzzle, but one led to the storage room where he had stowed the lifeboat and autodoc. Good.

He took time for a shower. Hey, if he missed the event, Long Shot would catch the light wave further out.

Nothing had changed when hed dried himself. He sank his fingers in the Hindmosts mane and dodged a hind leg kick — almost. "Wake," he said.

"Did I hurt you?"

"Doesnt matter."

"Why are we at rest?"

"I want to watch something. Also, I cant use the mass detector."

"Eee!" the Hindmost whistled.

"Its a psionics device. Youll have to fly the ship yourself. But were loose, everyone I love is safe, the Fringe War wont be looking for us, and the way lies clear to Canyon."

"To Canyon?"

"Well, or the Fleet of Worlds, if you like. I just assumed youd brought your mate and children with you when you left the Fleet."

"Of course."

"If we can work out details, theres something I need."

"Youre bluffing, Louis, as you did once before. Youre dying, arent you?"

"Yah. I was too twisted up when tree-of-life started to change me. Im dying, stet, but not bluffing. Everythings worked out fine. But Id be pleased if we could get Carlos Wus autodoc running again."

"That would take… mmm."

"Considerable trouble. Hard physical labor. What can I offer you?"

"Long Shot moves too fast. Collision with some star is nearly certain. I dont have the nerve to fly us to Home."

"Not Canyon?"

"Home," said the puppeteer. "I didnt think I could hide us on Canyon. Too small. Home is very like Earth, Louis, and has a wonderful history."

"Home it is," Louis said agreeably. "Hey." The magnified sun glared, etching the control room with sharp-edged shadows.

The puppeteer turned one head, then both. The pupils irised nearly shut. His voice was a monotone: the Hindmost was upset. "Where is the Ringworld?"

"Yah."

"Yah?"

"Yah. Tunesmith used nanotechnology to change the entire superconductor grid to the configuration he found in Long Shot. Hes off like a bunny under Quantum II hyperdrive, and he took the Ringworld with him."

"How far?"

"What?" But this was the only ship that could catch it. A little more than two thirty-hour days at Quantum II hyperdrive… a light year in 5/4 minutes… "Three thousand light years before Tunesmith runs out of power. Thats way out of human space. Telescopes wont see anything for a hundred generations. You might catch that much mass shifting around with a gravity-wave detector. What were you going to do, chase it down?"

"The wealth," mourned the Hindmost. "All gone. I lost my place as Hindmost chasing the Ringworlds wealth of knowledge. And those you spoke of, those you love, Louis, what of them?"

"Ill never find them. Hindmost, thats the point. Now lets fix that autodoc before something intimate tears loose inside me."

"I think we can ignore the tidal effect," Tunesmith said. "Dont you?"

Proserpinas fingers danced. The wall display — which showed nothing, a kind of curdled gray everywhere — went black. White hieroglyphs danced across it in a Pak mathematical system millions of falans old. "The suns gravity pulled up and a bit inward along a very narrow angle, when the Ringworld had a sun. With the sun gone," she said, "all the seas will tend to flow toward the rim walls. Were in flight for two days? Stet, thats negligible. What Im worried about," hieroglyphs danced again, "is the approach."

The sky had gone crazy. Roxanny and Wembleth wriggled out of the tent, Roxanny a little clumsy, and stared into a light-show that would have won awards. Wembleth asked, "What is happening?"

"I swear I have no idea. Some supersecret weapon. Futz, I hope it isnt Kzinti. I dont see any ships at all, unless — what was that?" A little black comma fell wiggling across the sky, starboard to port. It left a pockmark near the top of the rim wall, visible through mag specs.

"I dont know," Wembleth said.

"A ship bigger than Long Shot? No species I know makes one."

"Its changing again, Roxanny."

For an instant the colors faded, and then the whole sky was gone, and they were both blind.

It was hard to remember that there had once been sight. "Its the Blind Spot," she said. Roxanny had been trained: she looked at her feet. Yes, there they were. "Futz, I cant believe it. Were in futzy hyperdrive! Look down. Lower your—" Wembleth was wandering off, still blind. Roxanny followed him and, still without looking up, felt her way up his body and tilted his head down.

"Lets get into the tent," she said.

They lived in the pressure tent for two days. When they had a sky again, it was stars glaring on black. "This is going to drive a lot of your people crazy," Roxanny said. "The Ringworld was never this dark. The headlights on the flycycle are going to be priceless."

"I never saw stars so bright," Wembleth said. "Its a whole new age, Roxanny. You said there are Ball Worlds around most stars? They could be our childrens inheritance."

One bright star was growing brighter above the portward rim wall.

The sky had returned to the Meteor Defense wall display.

Proserpina said, "Well have to find us a sun, stet? And shift the whole Ringworld sideways to get to it. The mag fields are useless without something to push against, so well be using just the attitude jets. Line up with a sun, fall toward it, use the fields to stop ourselves. The seas will shift, Tunesmith."

"I know. Ive found a yellow-white star with nearly our own velocity. There, the bright one, do you see it?"

"Yes. Zoom."

The star expanded, and darkened. "Increased X-ray output in this region," she said. "Well need to boost the ozone layer until we can build a shadow square system."

"Yes."

"Im more worried about tides."

"Yes, there will still be stress on the seas and oceans."

"I thought of letting them freeze, but we cant. We—"

"Of course not, but we can use magnetic effects on the sun itself. Look, I found a way to skew our path so the star comes straight down the axis. Well ring the sun. Well bob a few times stabilizing ourselves; that sends the seas back and forth, not just all in one direction, which would be disastrous."

White hieroglyphs danced across the starscape. "It would work," Proserpina said. "Well lose much of our population, even some species."

"I know."

"I have a request. Tell me if its feasible."

"See if you can describe it."

"Leave the sun bobbing back and forth along the Ringworld axis. Well get tides. Well get seasons, changing weather."

"What, like a Ball World?" Tunesmith laughed. "Like your world, the Pak world. What about breeders? Wont they go crazier yet?"

"Anyone who kept his mind through these last two days will get used to anything," Proserpina said.