Larry Niven: Ringworld's Children

"And run nanodust into the superconducting network under the Ringworld, so that its structure can be altered?"

"Yes, with help from Proserpina and our associates."

"Proserpina, are you with this?"

"Yes, Louis. There werent enough holes in the landscape, so we had to drill in spots—"

"Is it working?"

Tunesmith said, "I think so."

"Stet, Im sane and so are you, or else were all crazy. Is the system ready to go?"

"It may be, if my power storage holds. I cant include the shadow squares or the sun. At best I can only run for a little more than two days. But, Louis, Im not sure the nanosystems have finished infecting the entire grid. I need to know how much time weve got. What will the Fringe War do?"

Louiss mind was dancing down a new path. "You can build a new day-and-night system. Tunesmith, why not build a real Dyson sphere? Ten million miles diameter with a sun at the center and the Ringworld around it. Make it thin like a solar sail so light pressure will inflate it. Give it windows to let daylight through to the Ringworld. The rest of the material is a photoelectric transformer. Youll be collecting most of the power of a sun."

Proserpina said, "Youre fresh, Louis." In Ghoulish speech that implied meat not ready to eat: unacceptable immaturity. "Protectors can be scatterbrains. You must solve one problem at a time. Were still looking at the Fringe War fleet. When will they strike?"

"Theres another matter—"

Tunesmith bellowed, "No! Already some faction has destroyed one of my attitude jets. Who? What motive? Was it a deliberate provocation?"

"Show me the event. Meteor Defense Room."

They flicked out.

He absolutely couldnt signal the Hindmost. The puppeteer would have to move now.

Meteor Defense. Proserpina and Tunesmith took their chairs in a jump. Twisted Louis had to climb to reach the third chair. He looked for where stepping disks ought to be. The one hed come through was clearly marked. A Hanging People protector, Hanuman, flicked through an unmarked site and awaited orders. Others might be concealed there or there. Bet on three or four, no more. Why were the chairs on these booms so massive?

The wall displayed the Ringworld system as if viewed from the sun. The Ringworld was a mere outline, white threads against starscape. "I need a pointer," Louis said, and found touchpoints on a knob. "Stet. These are Outsider ships, right? Two. Do you see more?"

"No."

"Were not really of interest to anything that different. These," he highlighted lenses and spheres, "are Kzinti, and these are ARM," long levers studded with lesser ships. "I dont see the Sheathclaws ship."

"It went away."

"Probably ordered off, or they might have run from Kzinti. Kzinti use telepaths as slaves. What are you wondering about?"

"Interactions," Proserpina said.

He needed a way to use up some time, then send the protectors off on some sort of distraction. Louis drew a net of lines linking various ships, and added vector arrows. "See? Distance and velocity and gravity, you need to take it all into consideration, so its complicated—"

Proserpina snapped, "It is not! Its only different. We did this all the way from the galactic core to the Ringworld site! Theyve arranged a standoff, but its unstable here —"

"Yah. And this balance wont hold if — if some dissident faction, say the One Race contingent, is actually running this ship or—"

"I dont see how it held this long. I dont see how it could hold much longer," Tunesmith said. "But you know them all, Louis."

"It wont hold. Youre missing the effect of the Outsiders. Theyre more powerful than the other factions and everybody knows it. Just being here, theyve made it all more stable until now. Everybodys been wondering what the Outsiders will do. What the Outsiders will do is nothing, and the whole Fringe War is gradually coming to know that."

He was seeing it now, the disintegrating patterns, strength built up here, bluff here. Two bar-shaped ARM ships poised to destroy one great Kzin lens. Thirty-one ships edged up around one Outsider ship in hope of protection that would vanish like dawn frost on the Moon. Futz, the balance just wasnt there.

"Tunesmith, this whole house of cards could come down at any second. Dont wait. How fast can you get us moving?"

"Half a day, with luck."

Louis turned, shocked. "Why so long?"

"I need to run all the power in the shadow square system into the superconductor grid. If I did that too early, it would leak—"

"Cant you get magnetohydrodynamic power from the rim ramjets?"

"What a good idea. It would have required a certain amount of redesigning, say twenty to thirty days and a thousand spill mountain protectors. I need half a day, then go, and no more Fringe War."

"Start now," Louis said.

Patiently Tunesmith said, "Youve only just arrived. We dont even know, you dont even know who attacked us twenty-eight days ago. Wheres the danger coming from? Can I just kill it? The superconductor net has been rewiring itself for only two falans, crystallizing into its new configuration. Even if the change is complete, I need to test it."

Sometimes you just have to gamble, Louis thought. But Tunesmith wouldnt act fast enough without more pressure. "Show me how it happened," he said.

The sky changed: ships moved, stars didnt. The Ringworld went solid. A frame zoomed on one of the attitude jets, a gauzy glittering net molded magnetically into a hyperboloid of rotation with a line of white fire running down the axis. Suddenly it was bright, bright, dimming — the motor was gone, and a piece was bitten out of the rim wall. Along its foot, spill mountains were burning.

"Is this all youve got?"

"Various frequencies."

Replay, hydrogen alpha light. Louis waved it off. "Its too overt for puppeteers, too restrained for Kzinti. Maybe a Kzinti dissident. There are ARM dissidents too; we could ask Roxanny. Or anyone whod like to see both sides reduced a little. Ive never been sure about Trinocs, or puppeteers."

"Not much help," Tunesmith agreed.

"Tell me what you know about Teela Brown."

Proserpina asked, "Who?"

"An insane puppeteer scheme," Tunesmith said. "She was a victim. General Products, the merchant arm of Piersons puppeteers in human space, set up a birthright lottery on Earth. The attempt was to breed for lucky humans. In practice what they got was a few statistical flukes, like Teela Brown. She… Louis! Did you have a child with Teela Brown?"

Louis said nothing.

" Where is your child?"

Louis said nothing. Among protectors, a poker face is easy; body language is hard.

He waited until he saw motion. Proserpina left her chair in a long jump. Tunesmith jumped in a different direction. Hanuman looked uncertain; he remained at the visible stepping disk, the far one. As soon as the protectors were committed, Louis jumped toward Tunesmiths chair.

One of these chairs had to be a stepping disk. It was a natural hiding place. Two would be redundant, though all three had been made too thick and too wide — and Tunesmith would have claimed the right one. But other stepping disks in this room had to be guarded. If Louis was right — and he was, because Hanuman instantly launched himself toward the same chair.

Hanuman got there first. The chair started to swing aside, but Louis was there. Hanuman caught Louis with a powerful kick, but Louis had the mass. He slammed Hanuman into the stepping disk and reached around the dazed hominid to pop the rim and turn the disk on. They both flicked out.

Heel of the hand, a blow to Hanumans head. Hanuman went limp. Louis pushed, sent him flying. Grinding pain in his hip: Hanumans kick had broken something.