Ringworld's Children

by Larry Niven

  "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 they'd stunned you. Hey, I slept as well as you did. The ARMs are doing something tricky, I think, but Hanuman's 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.

  "We'll 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 didn't 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: they'd 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 wouldn't have centuries of memories; he wouldn't tell stories well, and he'd 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 didn't like to be near him; he favored Claus, and Claus treated him as a pet.

  There were hot buttons everywhere in the text.

  Pierson's 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 Pierson's puppeteers. In human space they sold almost nothing but spacecraft hulls.

  Known space--Those regions of the galaxy's 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 Claus's lap. Claus scratched the anthropoid's head, and didn't 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 Hanuman's 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. We've been in touch with Gray Nurse."

  "And?"

  She glanced at Acolyte. "Let's 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 didn't have a choice."

  Shrug. "You'd be very valuable. I could try to get you citizenship"

  "Roxanny, my father was an illegal birth." He wanted that established, Luis Tamasan isn't 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 wouldn't know--"Birthright? Roxanny, what is a birthright?"

  "I'll find it for you in the library. Basically, you're born with one or two birthrights depending on--tanj--mostly on your genetic pattern. If you're 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 doesn't sound like I want to settle on Earth."

  "No, given a bastard father. It's 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--hasn't closed it."

  "The Phantom Weaver."

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

  "I suppose."

  "Would he come?"

  "You can't get him citizenship. He's a Kzin. You're fighting Kzinti, aren't you?"

  "There hasn't been a formal war in, oh, four hundred years." She tapped her sleeve and read what appeared. "In sixteen hundred falans. He'd be all right. There are hundreds of thousands of Kzinti citizens in human space."

  "I wouldn't tell him to come. He's younger than me, you know."

  "Let's get back."

  Louis didn't move. "What about Wembleth? Do we want him?"

  "Yah. He's 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. "Let's 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.

  Cl
ose behind him Roxanny snapped, "Luis, don't!" 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 couldn't be the sun.

  The ground trembled.

  Acolyte hadn't moved; he must have been warned not to.

  "I think we'll 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 Claus's 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 he'd 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.

  Louis's foot landed on her gun hand, and he had the gun. "Don't," 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 wasn't in sight. Hanuman and Acolyte and Wembleth weren't either. Claus lay on his back, his head torn nearly off, his entrails displayed.

  Roxanny had him under the gun. "Why don't I just shoot you?" she asked.

  "Roxanny, don't," said Louis Wu, master of sarcasm. He dared not move and he couldn't think. Just as well. A twenty-year-old would break under the fury in her eyes. "Don't shoot me," Luis said. "I'll fly you anywhere you like. Only I can't move."

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

  "I don't need your flycycle," Roxanny said. "We've 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 didn't 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. Wembleth's 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 couldn't believe it. How badly was he hurt? His mind was muzzy; he'd have trouble keeping a story straight. If they questioned Luis Tamasan, they'd hear far too much. Louis tried to move.

  He couldn't 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: "Can't get anywhere if you don't know... reshtra... don't try to guess--"

  Roxanny's voice. "War? Do you ever fight--"

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

  "Ook."

  Mmm? Turning his head wasn't easy: Louis was restrained in a nest of attachments, and he'd 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 Louis's 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, "You'd be Luis Tamasan."

  "Yah," said Louis Wu.

  "You attacked one of my people."

  I lived to regret it. "Sorry."

  "I'm 'Tec-Major Schmidt. You're a civilian prisoner. That gives you certain rights, but you're in futzy poor shape to exercise them. These stunners only stun if you're far enough away, but you were right up against 'Tec-First Gauthier. You've got bones broken into shrapnel from your hip to your knee. The 'doc can heal you if you don't move for a while. Five days."

  "Tanj." Better make nice--"Thank you, sir. I suppose I'd 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 you're on tubes."

  "I won't 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.

  Schmidt's hands manipulated a video remote in Louis's 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, that's the GreatOcean. Look along the spinward edge...." Louis began describing the Weaver village he'd 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 hadn't been drunk in a long time, but it was like this.

  Schmidt zoomed on the GreatOcean 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 don't live in the village, they're from somewhere on the GreatOcean." If they pushed him, he'd 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 he'd been babbling, thinking out loud.

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

  "Sir. There." Louis pointed into the ceiling, into the GreatOcean, 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 couldn't keep secrets. Maybe they'd drugged him, maybe it was just painkillers. He'd 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 they're 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 wouldn't have evolved into actual human beings, right, Luis?"

  Louis's 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. They're 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 what's 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: "He's got stepping disks too. What was that sound?"