Ringworld's Children r-4

by Larry Niven

  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."

&nbs
p; "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.

  CHAPTER 22

  Breeder

  Louis Wu woke aflame with new life. Cautious in free fall, he waited for the coffin lid to move aside. A hologram Hindmost was looking down at him.

  Louis wriggled out. "Nothing hurts."

  "Good."

  "I was used to it. Oh, futz, Ive lost my mind!"

  "Louis, didnt you know the machine would rebuild you as a breeder?"

  "Yah, but… my head feels futzy. Full of cotton. I never felt so much myself as when I could think like a protector."

  "We could have rebuilt the doc—"

  "No. No." Fist against coffin lid. "I remember that much. I have to be a breeder, or dead. If Im a protector, I will track down Wembleth and Roxanny, and Tunesmith and Proserpina will follow me."

  "But they would certainly protect your blood line."

  "They would, yes. But if Wembleth is loose on the Ringworld, his luck… hey."

  "You dont believe in Teela Browns luck."

  "I didnt. But when I was a protector… its not good science, stet? Because its not falsifiable. But look at the pattern. He stole my woman, stet? She fell into his lap. The only woman in reach who could make Wembleth young again, and bear his children too. Hes the only survivor of a village that died of asphyxiation, and hed be dead if rescue hadnt fallen on him from interstellar space!"

  "Louis! Teela wasnt lucky!"

  "Stet, and Wembleth lost all his friends, and ended up a hunted refugee. What if its the genes that are lucky? Teelas genes want to reproduce. You can always argue either way.

  "It could still be all moonbeams. Anything that doesnt make predictions that can be disproved isnt science. Maybe Teela was only a statistical fluke until we found her. After that, whatever happens to her, you can always explain it as luckier than something else that might have happened. Read Candide."

  "Ill look it up."

  "Unfalsifiable. If its wrong, you cant prove it. When I was a protector, I didnt disbelieve. Maybe Teelas children are the Ringworlds luck. If their location is uncertain, they protect the whole Ringworld. Basic quantum mechanics. And its going to need that! Theyve all gone out into the universe at a minute and a quarter per light year—"

  "Louis."

  "What?"

  "We havent moved since you went into the doc, two months ago Earthtime. Were a warm spot on the sky. Sooner or later the Fringe War will notice us. What else has that heterogeneous mob got for entertainment but to track us down and take our ship?"

  "Right." Louis climbed back through the maze of access tubes, getting lost once, guided by the puppeteer behind him. He set himself in the pilots chair and jumped to hyperdrive. Radial lines indicating stars edged out of the mass detector, and Louis turned Long Shot toward Home.

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