Excerpt: Ringworld's Children

Most of the stepping disks were clustered around the Great Ocean, and of those, most were in a tight cluster that must be the Map of Mars. Louis pointed at one offshore from Mars. "What is that?"

"That is Hot Needle of Inquiry's lander."

Teela the protector had blasted the lander during their last duel. "It's functional?"

"The stepping-disk link is functional."

"What about the lander?"

"Life support is marginal. Drive systems and weaponry have failed."

"Can some of these service stacks be locked out of the system?"

"That has been done." Lines spread across the map to link the blinking lights. Some had crossed-circle verboten marks on them: closed. The maze was complicated, and Louis didn't try to understand it. "My Master has override codes," the Voice said.

"May I have those?"

"No."

"Number these stepping-disk sites for me. Then print out a map."

As the Ringworld was vast, the scale was extreme. His naked eye would never get any detail out of it. When the map extruded, he folded it and stuffed it in a pocket anyway.


He broke for lunch and came back.

He set two service stacks moving and changed a number of links. The Hindmost's Voice printed another map with his changes added. He pocketed that too. Better keep both. Now, with luck, he'd have avenues of travel unknown to Tunesmith.

Or it might be wasted effort. The Hindmost, when he woke, could change it all back in a moment.

The Voice refused to make weapons. Of course the kitchen in Needle's crew quarters hadn't done that either.

Tunesmith was still at the end of a boom, still tracking whatever he'd launched.

"Where are the rest of us?" Louis asked the Voice.

"Who do you seek?"

"Acolyte."

"I do not have that name --"

"The Kzin we shared this ship with. Chmeee's child."

"I list that LE as --" blood-curdling howl. Louis had to pry his fingers loose from a table edge. "Rename him Acolyte?"

"Please."

The map was back, and a blinking point next to Fist-of-God . . . a hundred thousand miles port-and-antispin from Fist-of-God -- four times the circumference of the Earth -- and twice that far to spinward of the Map of Mars. The hugeness of the Ringworld had to be learned over and over. The Voice said, "Here we set Acolyte, with a service stack, thirty-one days ago. He has since moved by eleven hundred miles." The point jumped minutely. "Tunesmith has altered the setting for the stepping disk. It sends to an observation point on the Map of Earth."

Home to Acolyte's father. "Has he used it?"

"No."

"Where are the City Builders?"

"Do you mean the librarians? Kawaresksenjajok and Fortaralisplyar and three children were returned to their origin --"

"Good!" He'd meant to do that himself.

"To the library in the floating city. I note your approval. Who else shall I track?"

Who else had been his companions? Two protectors. Bram the Vampire protector was dead. Tunesmith was . . . still busy, it seemed. In the Meteor Defense Room the protector's telescope screen was following a receding point, the vehicle he'd launched earlier. Its drive was off . . . flared brilliantly and blinked off again.

That was a warship. Reaction motors were still needed for war; modern thrusters couldn't switch on and off as fast.

Louis asked, "Have you kept track of Valavirgillin?"

The map jumped. "Here, near the floating city and a local center of Machine People culture."

Good, and she was well away from vampires. They had not met in twelve years. "Why did you track her, Hindmost's Voice?"

"Orders."

Carefully, "Who do you take orders from?"

"From you and Tunesmith and --" a blast of orchestral chaos, piercingly sweet. Louis recognized the Hindmost's true name. "But all such may be countermanded by --" the Hindmost's name again.

"Is Tunesmith restricted from any interesting levels of this ship?"

"Not currently."

The Hindmost was still in wrapped-around-himself catatonia. "How long since he's eaten?" Louis asked.

"Two local days. He wakes to eat."

"Wake him up."

"How shall I wake him without trauma?"

"I saw him in a dance once. Turn that on. Prepare food for him."

Copyright © 2004 Larry Niven

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