A.D. 1733—Fall of the Cities

(Puppeteer Experimentalist regime introduces superconductor plague to Ringworld)

A.D. 2851—First contact: Lying Bastard impacts Ringworld

A.D. 2878—Hot Needle of Inquiry leaves Canyon

A.D. 2880—Hot Needle of Inquiry reaches Ringworld

A.D. 2881—Ringworld stability restored

A.D. 2882:

The Hindmost danced.

They were dancing as far as the eye could see, beneath a ceiling that was a flat mirror. Tens of thousands of his kind moved in tight patterns that were great mutating curves, heads cocked high and low to keep their orientation. The clicking of their hooves was a part of the music, like a hundred thousand castanets.

Kick short, kick past, veer. One eye for your counterpartner. In this movement and the next, never glance toward the wall that hides the Brides. Never touch. For millions of years the competition dance, and a wide spectrum of other social vectors, had determined who would mate and who would not.

Beyond the illusion of the dance loomed the illusion of a window, distant and huge. The Hindmost’s view of Hidden Patriarch was a distraction, a ground-rules hazard, an obstacle within the dance. Extend a head; bow—

The other three-legged dancers, the vast floor and ceiling, were projections from Hot Needle of Inquiry’s computer memory. Dancing maintained the Hindmost’s skills, his reflexes, his health. This year had been a time for torpor, for recuperation and contemplation; but such states could change in an instant.

One Earthly year ago, or half of the puppeteer world’s archaic year, or forty Ringworld rotations … the Hindmost and his alien thralls had found a mile-long sailing ship moored below the Map of Mars. They had named it Hidden Patriarch and set sail, leaving the Hindmost behind. The window in the Hindmost’s dance was a real-time view from the webeye device in Hidden Patriarch’s fore crow’s nest.

What the window showed was more real than the dancers.

Chmeee and Louis Wu lolled in the foreground. The Hindmost’s servants-in-rebellion both looked a bit the worse for wear. The Hindmost’s medical programs had restored them both to youth, not much more than two years ago. Young and healthy they still were, but soft and slothful, too.

Hind kick, touch hooves. Whirl, brush tongues.

The Great Ocean lay beneath a sea of fog. Wind-roiled fog made streamline patterns over the tremendous ship. At the shore the fog piled like a breaking wave. Only the crow’s nests, six hundred feet tall, poked above the fog. Far inland, far across the white blanket, mountain peaks burst through, nearly black, with glittering peaks.

Hidden Patriarch had come home. The Hindmost was about to lose his alien companions.

The webeye picked up voices.

Louis Wu: “I’m pretty sure that’s Mount Hood, and Mount Rainier there. That one I don’t know, but if Mount St. Helens hadn’t blown her top near a thousand years ago, that might be it.”

Chmeee: “A Ringworld mountain doesn’t explode unless you hit it with a meteor.”

“Precisely my point. I think we’ll be passing the map of San Francisco Bay inside of ten hours. The kind of wind and waves that build up on the Great Ocean, you’ll need a decent bay for your lander, Chmeee. You can start your invasion there, if you don’t mind being conspicuous.”

“I like conspicuous.” The Kzin stood and stretched, claws extended. Eight feet of fur tipped everywhere with daggers, a vision out of nightmare. The Hindmost had to remind himself that he faced only a hologram. The Kzin and Hidden Patriarch were 300,000 miles distant from the spacecraft buried beneath the Map of Mars.

Whirl, forefeet glide left, step left. Ignore the distraction.

The Kzin sat again. “This ship is fated, don’t you think? Built to invade the Map of Earth. Pirated by Teela after she became a protector, to invade the Map of Mars and the Repair Center. Now Hidden Patriarch returns to invade the Earth again.”

Within the Hindmost’s crippled interstellar spacecraft, a rising, cooling wind blew through the cabin. The dance moved faster now. Sweat soaked the Hindmost’s elegantly coiffed mane and rolled down his legs.

The window gave him more than visible light. By radar he could see the great bay, south by the map’s orientation, and a crust of cities the archaic kzinti had built around its shore. The curve of a planet would have hidden that from him.

Louis said, “I’m going to miss you.”

For a few moments it might be that his companion hadn’t heard. Then the great mass of orange fur spoke without turning. “Louis. Over there are lords I can defeat and mates to bear my children. There is my place. Not yours. Over there, hominids are slaves, and they’re not quite your species, either. You should not come, I should not stay.”

“Did I say different? You go, I stay. I’m going to miss you.”

“But against your intellect.”

“Eh.”

Chmeee said, “Louis, I heard a tale of you, years ago. I must learn the truth of it.”

“Say on.”

“After we returned to our worlds, after we gave over the puppeteer ship to be studied by our respective governments, Chtarra-Ritt invited you to make free of the hunting park outside Blood-of-Chwarambr City. You were the first alien ever to enter that place other than to die. You spent two days and a night within the grounds. What was it like?”

Louis was still on his back. “Mostly I loved it. Mostly for the honor, I think, but every so often a man has to test his luck.”

“We heard a tale, the next night at Chtarra-Ritt’s banquet.”

“What did you hear?”

“You were in the inner quadrant, among the imports. You found a valuable animal—”

Louis sat bolt upright. “A white Bengal tiger! I’d found this nice green forest nesting in all that red and orange kzinti plant life, and I was feeling kind of safe and cozy and nostalgic. Then this—this lovely-but-oh-futz man-eater stepped out of the bushes and looked me over. Chmeee, he was your size, maybe eight hundred pounds, and underfed. Sorry, go on.”

“What is it? Bengal tiger?”

“Something of ours, from Earth. An ancient enemy, you could say.”

“We were told that you stepped briskly past it to pick up a branch. Confronted the tiger and brandished the branch like a weapon and said, ‘Do you remember?’ The tiger turned away and left.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you do that? Do tigers talk?”

Louis laughed. “I thought he might go away if I didn’t act like prey. If that didn’t work, I thought I might whack him on the nose. There was this splintered tree, and a hardwood branch that looked just right for a club. And I talked to him because a Kzin might be listening. Being killed as an inept tourist in the Patriarch’s hunting park would be bad enough. Dying as whimpering prey, nyet.”

“Did you know the Patriarch had set you a guard?”

“No. I thought there might be monitors, cameras. I watched the tiger go. Turned around and was nose-to-nose with an armed Kzin. I jumped half out of my skin. Thought he was another tiger.”

“He said he almost had to stun you. You challenged him. You were ready to club him.”

“He said stun?”

“He did.”

Louis Wu laughed. “He had an ARM stunner with a built-up handle. Your Patriarchy never learned how to make mercy weapons, so they have to buy them from the United Nations, I guess. I set myself to swing the club. He dropped the gun and extended his claws, and I saw he was a Kzin, and I laughed.”

“How?”

Louis threw his head back and laughed, mouth wide, all teeth showing. From a Kzin that would have been a direct challenge, and Chmeee’s ears went quite flat.