by Larry Niven
“I didn’t scent him until he leapt. He must have judged me harmless.”
“Are you offended?”
“Louis, where is Bram?”
“Anywhere. Bram controls the stepping disks. There must be twenty or so scattered through the Repair Center.”
“Yes, he whistles them up, but that other got through before Bram could change the flick, don’t you think?”
“What I’m thinking,” Louis said, “is that Bram went through and then changed the flick to Mons Olympus, or the rim, or Hell. Then the other one copied Bram’s command and changed it back.”
“Then we’re missing a fine battle.”
What was he smelling? Flowers, something flowery, pulled at Louis’s attention and made it hard to think. The Kzin’s smell was far stronger … and his fur had hard lumps. Wait, now, that was a throwing knife, and that was a long metal pole with chisel-sharpened ends.
Louis said, “You probably can’t kill Bram. For that matter, wasn’t he teaching you?”
“Louis, shouldn’t I kill my teacher?”
Oh? “I’ll keep that in mind.” Louis sat up.
“No, not you, Louis! I came to you for wisdom, but Bram made me his servant. I learned from Bram by listening until I was ready to learn by freeing myself. See, I have these.”
Cronus’s weapons.
Louis said, “Most appropriate, but Bram—”
Bram fell from the ceiling. It was thirty feet to the floor, and he landed hard, rolled, and came up with two feet of blade. He tried to balance it on end as another man-shape dropped toward him.
The other’s arms swung forward. Bram leapt away as sharp objects rattled across the floor. Shuriken? The blade fell over. Bram’s enemy slammed down, rolled and bounced to his feet. He seemed made of knobs, bigger than Bram, with one arm clutched against his chest and sharp metal in the other.
Louis’s mind was still trying to catch up.
Bram must have turned a second stepping disk upside down and fixed it to the ceiling. Copying the Martians? Now the vampire protector had nearly reached the first stepping disk, with his larger attacker a long jump behind, as Acolyte surged from cover. Acolyte jabbed the iron pole at Bram’s ribs.
Bram didn’t turn. He braked for an instant. The pole went past his navel and Bram had the end. He pulled and twisted, the pole bent, and the other end cracked Acolyte across the forehead.
It slowed Bram just enough. The other was on him. He chopped at Bram’s wrist, at the foot that came at his face, elbow, the other foot, the other arm.
Bram went down flopping, with bones or tendons cut in all four limbs.
His attacker had vanished. He spoke in the trade language as spoken around Weaver Town, distorted by a protector’s usual breathy speech impediment, and Louis’s translator was only a moment behind.
“Furry People, you must stay back for now. You shall be satisfied, but this seems a good time to talk.”
Acolyte was sitting up, dazed. “Louis?”
If the other protector was still afraid of Bram, so was Louis. He couldn’t see any way to drag Acolyte to cover. His own cover wasn’t good, but he stayed where he lay. He called, “Stay back, Acolyte. I brought him here.”
“Yes,” said Bram’s attacker. The walls reflected his voice, masking its origin. “Louis Wu, why have you done that?”
Bram sat in a spreading pool of blood. He could have been trying to tie tourniquets, but he wasn’t. He’d left his weapons lying. It came to Louis that whatever was done for him, Bram would stop eating now and would be dead shortly thereafter. Protectors do that when they lose their reason to live.
Louis called into the dark. “You’d be Tunesmith?”
“And you’d be Louis Wu who boiled an ocean, but why have you made Tunesmith into this?”
Bram broke in. “My time runs short. May I borrow yours? Come, I swear you’re safe. Louis, Tunesmith has asked my question. Why did you open a stepping disk for a Ghoul whom you have never seen?”
“Forgive me,” Louis Wu said. He was having trouble concentrating. That flowery smell! He remained where he was, on his side, nursing his ruined shoulder.
He said, “Bram, you know why I judged you and Anne unfit to hold the Repair Center. I haven’t heard you say I was wrong. We could argue before Tunesmith and let him judge. Bram?”
Silence.
“Tunesmith, did you examine the skeleton?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been calling him Cronus. Cronus was your ancestor. I think even Bram saw the implication. Cronus had eighty thousand falans to breed his genetic line toward the traits he wanted. He shaped an empire with communications that reach all the way around the Arch—”
“Ring. It’s a ring,” said Tunesmith.
“Cronus extended his breeding program through an area almost too vast to describe. The Night People must number tens of billions. They’re all one species, as the vampires are not. He shaped you to be ideal protectors.”
Tunesmith said, “I see possible improvements.”
“So? Bram here is a vampire protector. We have recordings of Bram in better health, and you’ll see them. You’re his clear superior. Bigger brain. More versatile. Less reflex, more choices. Bram?”
Bram said, “He beat me. Bigger brain? He was intelligent as a breeder, of course it’s bigger now. Louis, he knows nothing. Invaders threaten. You are obliged to train him!”
“I know, Bram—”
“Contract violation or no, you must teach him. Tunesmith, trust his intent, question his judgment. Learn from the Web Dweller but do not trust until he gives you a contract.”
Louis asked, “My turn?”
“Speak.”
“Tunesmith, protectors do immense damage when they fight. Bram and his mate fixed a problem, and the protectors in charge of the rim wall right now are a local spill mountain species. We need them there. I’ll show you why when we get—” The smell. “—get back to the ship.” It was tree-of-life. “Get me out of here, Tunesmith. I can’t stay here!”
“Louis Wu, you’re much too young to respond to the smell of the roots. It’s faint here, too.”
“I’m too old! The root would kill me!” Louis rolled to his knees. He couldn’t use his right arm—“Last time I smelled this I barely got away.” With Acolyte’s help he was on his feet, and he lurched toward the stepping disk.
He had beaten current addiction once. The tree-of-life smell had turned off his mind in a moment, but he had beaten that, too. It had been much stronger eleven years ago. Only a reformed current addict could have walked away from it.
A hand like a fistful of walnuts had his wrist. “Louis Wu, I heard him use three chords and I followed him through each time. One leads to traps and a weapons cache, one to a fall from the ceiling, and the last flicks us to where we fought. Whole fields of tree-of-life grow there, where an artificial sun—”
Louis began to laugh. The smell of tree-of-life was in his brain, and the way out led to where he had fought Teela Brown!
Tunesmith watched him. He said, “Too old, but something was done to you.”
Bram was trying to laugh. It sounded awful. “I saw records. Nanotechnology. Experiment stolen from Earth, stolen again, bought by General Products from a thief on Fafnir. It’s the puppeteer’s autodoc, Louis!” His voice wasn’t built for it and his lungs were collapsing, but he laughed. “Eighty falans, Louis. Ninety. No more. Remember me!”
Tunesmith and Acolyte were both looking at Louis Wu.
The scent was in his nose, but it wasn’t pulling him. His mind was his own. But that meant …
He told them, “I was very sick. The autodoc must have healed me very thoroughly. Changed everything. Every cell.” Bram was right. Twenty years, twenty-five tops.
“You could become a protector,” Tunesmith said.
“It’s only a choice.”
Bram was dead. Maybe a protector could will his heart to stop. His last words were suspiciously apt.
“It�
�s an option,” Louis repeated. The strength was draining out of him.
“You’re ill,” Tunesmith said.
The Kzin helped him lie down. Tunesmith’s knobby hands probed him. The portable medkit hadn’t magically healed anything. Tendons, mesentery, a hamstring. His shoulder was badly swollen around five deep puncture wounds. Tunesmith’s arm was worse, puffed out and immobile in a sling, but the protector ignored it.
“I don’t know your kind. I don’t think you can walk, and you may have a fever soon. Louis, what would you normally do for medicine?”
“Back to the ship. Into the ’doc. Heals everything.”
Tunesmith went away, taking the Kzin with him. They were back quickly. They lifted Louis and set him down again. He rose into the air, lying flat.
“This will carry you. Signal the magic door.”
The Ghoul protector had invented the stretcher? No, they’d gone for a cargo plate and rope to pull it. Louis said, “I can’t sing the Hindmost’s programming language.”
“We’re trapped?”
“Not quite.”
They set him down. Tunesmith said, “Louis, what shall I do to find my son?”
“Oh … tanj. I totally forgot Kazarp in all this. Would he hang around the Weavers? Does he have relatives in the area?”
“There were Night People with us when I flicked in. They can return him to his mother. My fear is that he may have followed me.”
“Aw, futz! No, wait, you’d smell him. Knowing your own gene line is built into your brain. Tunesmith, he’ll know me. Better send me. Don’t go yourself.”
“I would terrify him. Louis, shall I play random chords?”
“And test them how? Bram set traps. Tunesmith, we don’t need the stepping disks. I led us back to Needle once before, on foot, without the Hindmost’s help. Dug a tunnel. That’s still in place.”
“How long?”
“A few days. You’ll have to tow me. We’ll need water and food.”
“There’s water at the tree-of-life farm,” Tunesmith said. “Food—” He and Acolyte moved toward Bram’s body, and stopped. Tunesmith said, “I was taught that others should not see me eat.”
“He’s not yet carrion,” Acolyte said.
“My teacher’s friend, few there are who will discuss cuisine with the Night People, but I see you have an interest. We can eat the freshly dead. We often prefer it, but some are too tough at first, and this was a protector. I could put him on a second cargo plate and pull him along with a longer rope—”
“I’m hungry now, Tunesmith. I would not offend you by eating in your presence.”
“Take what you need.”
Louis turned his back on what happened next, but he couldn’t help grinning. The sounds told the story. A kzinti kitten must have to fight for his food. Now Acolyte was trying to wrench his hard-won portion from Bram’s body. Now he used his wtsai, thuk! and retreated with whatever that got him.
Tunesmith approached and settled cross-legged. “A child’s habits aren’t easily broken. Will Acolyte listen to me after this?”
“It’s a good start.”
“There is food for you, too, Louis Wu. I see no risk in your eating boiled tree-of-life root.”
The thought made him flinch, but, “Yams and sweet potatoes are nearly the same species. We roast them.”
“It means?”
“Build a fire. Put the roots in the coals where it’s not too hot.”
“We’ll find something to burn in the tree-of-life farm.” Tunesmith called toward sounds of grinding teeth and yowling rage. The Kzin was still trying to chew nourishment from the corpse of a protector. “Acolyte, there is prey in the tree-of-life farm. Little animals, and quick. I don’t think anyone but a Night People protector will ever eat Bram, and then not today.”
“Well, let me hunt, then!”
“You’ll need me to get back.” Tunesmith fluted, and they flicked away.
***
Tunesmith come back with an armful of yellow roots. “Acolyte hunts alone. I whistled in the return flick to use when he wants it.” He set the roots in the fire. “How do you like your water?”
“Clean. Any temperature, really.”
“Cold, too?”
“Sure.”
Tunesmith flicked out, and back again with a slab of ice. “Easier than choosing an appropriate container.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Miles above us, where air is thin and cold.” He soaked a swatch of cloth in dripping ice water and draped it around Louis’s neck. “How long do you cook tree-of-life?”
“An hour,” Louis said, and he showed Tunesmith the timepiece in the skin of his hand. “This tells tides, too. Not much use here. This makes it a calculator. This is a game, you move the numbers around like—tanj, you’re fast.”
Acolyte flicked in, his mouth bloody, something dripping from his hand. He set to work with the wtsai. “I looked for anything from the Map of Earth. Nothing quite fit, but this is much like a rabbit, don’t you think?” He cleaned the beast and skinned and splayed it butterfly fashion, and perched it above the coals to roast.
Louis said, “Some fun, huh?”
Acolyte thought it over. “Yes. But I’m not wounded.”
Acolyte’s forehead was swollen and the yellow fur was soaked with blood. Louis said, “We’re all wounded. Victors don’t have to pay attention to that. Acolyte, tell us a story.”
“You first. You fought the lucky protector, Teela Brown.”
“I’m not quite proud of that. Let me tell you how I boiled a sea.”
He did. Then Acolyte told his father’s tale: his arrival at the Map of Earth with a kzinti assault boat and puppeteer tools. The war. Friends and enemies, the deaths, the matings arranged to bind allies. Learning to talk to females.
Chmeee had sired three children in his few weeks on the Map of Kzin. A local lord had contracted to raise them. When he could, Chmeee had retrieved his eldest son from Kathakt—amicably—and brought him to the Map of Earth. Acolyte had seen his first human being at twelve falans.
The eldest son of a lord trained hard. Enemies and friends, whom to watch, whom to almost trust, how to talk to possible mates. Don’t talk to female diplomats, they’ll have your hide—
“This grows boring,” Tunesmith said.
Acolyte said, “Yes, it grew boring until I wanted to scream. One day I screamed challenge and fought my father. He let me go. I’ve been injured and I’ve starved and I was slaved to a vampire protector, but that diplomatic flup is out of my life. Tell us a tale, Tunesmith.”
“I’ll sing it. Then we should sleep, and after, Louis can lead us to safety.”
Tunesmith sang of a thing of fiery magic abandoned by Louis Wu, who boiled a sea. Five Night People, greatly daring, had dismounted a magical door. They didn’t know where it led and they couldn’t make it work.
One night Chime was gone.
The rest promised to hold his son from following, and Tunesmith went through the door alone. A scent pulled him toward what he could only perceive as the promise of Paradise.
He woke in the garden of tree-of-life. The woman who had gone through ahead lay dead beside him. Chime had been too old.
He explored. He found the Meteor Defense and the telescope. He created a physics to explain what he was seeing. He and Louis discussed that, with Acolyte listening. Tunesmith had deduced not just worlds, but black holes, too. He had guessed at the existence and nature of other protectors.
“What did you eat? Dead rabbits?”
“Well, Chime, of course, but I haven’t been awake long enough to get very hungry.”
Louis tried to talk about what a protector needed to know immediately. Invader ships: it was time to take some prisoners, see what their policy actually was. Hidden Patriarch and its crew: there must be City Builders everywhere, easily found. The children would need mates in not many years. The Web Dweller—
“A contract is an unambiguous promise, stet, Louis? But
why should the Web Dweller offer me such a thing?”
Acolyte said, “Through fear, but he often reacts badly to fear.”
“Better if you have something he wants,” said Louis. “Tunesmith, what if you offered him the four hundred and first rim wall ramjet?”
His own dinner was ready by now. He explained while he ate. Bussard ramjet, attitude jet, hydrogen fusion. Tunesmith already understood the law of reaction and the Ringworld’s instability.
“There are only four hundred mountings. When you build the four hundred and first motor, we’ll mount Hot Needle of Inquiry at the axis. It’s a General Products hull; radiation can’t touch it. At sublight speed it’ll take the Hindmost a thousand years or so to match with the Fleet of Worlds …”
Acolyte stalked away from the smell of politics.
Louis said, “I don’t expect that’ll bother him. The Conservatives are in power in the Fleet of Worlds. Nothing will change. They may even want him back. Anyway, we can offer.”
“He likes power games, does he?”
“Stet.”
“Let him play. If he gains more power, we’ll offer him the two hundredth ramjet. It’s clear we don’t need them all. Acolyte! Do you wonder how you lived?”
Acolyte stalked back. Tunesmith sang of finding the skeleton and weapons of Cronus. Clues there told him that he was challenged. He chose his lurking spot and waked.
A monstrous shape of orange hair flicked in and surged away. Tunesmith stalked it, but he sensed no harm in it. “It may be my kind hasn’t grown up frightened of your kind’s smell.”
Acolyte thought that over. Tunesmith said, “But now I knew my enemy would use others for bait. When two hominids appeared and one threw the other flying—”
The Hindmost flicked in.
He squeaked like a smashed piano and was instantly gone, but Tunesmith was faster than that. He went through with the Kzin on his heels and Louis screaming, “Wait! What if it’s Mons Olympus?”
He’d reached his feet, but they were gone. Louis said, “Idiots,” and limped to the stepping disk and flicked through anyway.
***
Tunesmith was in some kind of weird weaving defense pose. Acolyte was not quite a safe distance away, trying to talk him down. Tunesmith ignored the Kzin. “I want to talk to your leader,” he said firmly.
