Louis Wu said, “I don’t see cancer and I don’t see mutations, but they must be there. Hindmost, I got my information from Teela Brown. Teela was a protector, brighter than you and me. One and a half trillion deaths, she said.”

The Hindmost said, “Teela was intelligent, but I see her as human, Louis. Even after her change: human. Humans don’t look directly at danger. Puppeteers you call cowards, but not to look is cowardice—”

“Drop it. It’s been a year. Cancers can take ten or twenty. Mutations take a whole generation.”

“Protectors have their limits! Teela had no notion of the power of my computers. You left me to make the adjustments, Louis—”

“Drop it.”

“I will continue to look,” the puppeteer said.

The Hindmost danced. The marathon would continue until he made a mistake. He was pushing himself toward exhaustion; his body would heal and then grow strong.

He had not bothered to eavesdrop through the aliens’ dinner. Chmeee had not slashed the webeye, but they would not speak secrets in its view.

They need not. A year past, while his motley crew was still trying to settle the matter of Teela Brown and the Ringworld’s instability, the Hindmost’s flying probe had sprayed webeyes all over Hidden Patriarch.

He would rather have been concentrating on the dance.

Time enough for that. Chmeee would be gone soon. Louis would revert to silence. In another year he, too, might leave the ship, leave the Hindmost’s control. The City Builder librarians … work on them?

They were lost to him already, in a sense. The Hindmost controlled Needle’s medical facilities. If they saw that he used his power for extortion, they saw nothing but the truth. But he had been too direct. Chmeee and Louis had both refused medical attention.

They were walking briskly down a shadowed corridor, Louis Wu and Chmeee. Reception was poor in so little light, but they wouldn’t see the web. The Hindmost caught only part of the dialogue. He played it back several times afterward.

Louis: “—dominance game. The Hindmost has to control us. We’re too close to him, we could conceivably hurt him.”

Chmeee: “I’ve tried to see a way.”

Louis: “How hard? Never mind. He left us alone for a year, then interrupted himself in the middle of an exercise routine. Why bother? Nothing about that broadcast looked urgent.”

Chmeee: “I know how you think. He overheard us, didn’t he? If I can return to the Patriarchy, I won’t need the Hindmost to recover my properties. I have you. You do not exact a price.”

Louis: “Yeah.”

The Hindmost considered interrupting. To say what?

Chmeee: “By my lost lands he controlled me, but how did he control you? He had you by the wire, but you gave up your addiction. The autodoc in the lander was destroyed, but surely the kitchen has a program to make boosterspice?”

“Likely enough. For you, too.”

Chmeee dismissed that with a wave. “But if you allow yourself to grow old, he has nothing.”

Louis nodded.

“But would the Hindmost believe you? To a puppeteer … I do not insult you. I’m sure you speak the truth, Louis. But to a puppeteer, to let yourself grow old is suicide.”

Louis nodded, silent.

“Is this justice for a trillion murders?”

Louis would have broken off conversation on another night. He said, “Justice for us both. I die of old age. The Hindmost loses his thralls … loses control of his environment.”

“But if they lived?”

“If they lived. Yeah. The Hindmost did the actual programming. I couldn’t go into that section of the Repair Center. It was infested with tree-of-life. I made it possible for him to spray a plasma jet from the sun across five percent of the Ringworld. If he didn’t do that, then I can … live. So the Hindmost owns me again. And that’s important, if I’m the reason he doesn’t own you.”

“Exactly.”

“So show Louis an old recording and say it’s a live broadcast—”

The wind was rising, gusts drowning the voices. Chmeee: “What if … numbers …”

“… Hindmost to drop it …”

“… brain is aging faster than the rest of you!” The Kzin lost patience, dropped to all fours and bounded away down the deck. It didn’t matter. They were out of range.

The Hindmost screamed like the world’s biggest espresso device tearing itself apart.

In his scream were pitches and overtones no creature of Earth or Kzin could hear, with harmonics that held considerable information. Lineages for two species barely out of the veldt, down from the trees. Designs for equipment that would cause a sun to flare, then cause the flare to lase, a cannon of Ringworld scale. Specs for computer equipment miniaturized to the quantum level, sprayed across the Hindmost’s cabin like a coat of paint. Programs of vast resiliency and power.

You twisted rejects from half-savage, half-sapient breeds! Your pitiful protector, your luck-bred Teela, hadn’t the flexibility or the understanding, but you don’t even have the wit to listen. I saved them all! I, with software from my ship!

One shriek and the Hindmost was calm again. He hadn’t missed a step. Back one, bow, while the Moment’s Leader engages the Brides in quadret: a chance to get a drink of water, badly needed. One head lowered to suck, one raised to watch the dance: sometimes there were variations.

Was Louis Wu going senile? So quickly? He was well over two hundred years old. Boosterspice had kept some humans hale and sapient for half a thousand years, sometimes more. But without his medical benefits, Louis Wu might age fast.

And Chmeee would be gone.

No matter. The Hindmost was in the safest place imaginable. His ship was buried in cubic miles of cooled magma near the center of the Ringworld Repair Center. Nothing was urgent. He could wait. There were the librarians. Something would change … and there was the dance.

Cloud covered the sky like a gray stone plate. The yellow grass had a wilted look: too much rain, not enough sun. No doubt the sun was straight overhead and the Arch was still in place, but Valavirgillin hadn’t seen either for twenty days now.

The cruisers rolled through an endless drizzle, through high grass, on wheels as tall as a man. Vala and Kay rode the steering bench; Barok rode above them as gunner. Barok’s daughter Forn was asleep under an awning.

Any day now—any hour—

Sabarokaresh pointed. “Is that what you’ve been looking for?”

Valavirgillin stood up in her seat. She could just see where the vastness of grass turned to a vastness of stubble.

Kaywerbrimmis said, “They leave this pattern. We’ll be seeing sentries or a harvesting party. Boss, I don’t understand how you knew they’d be Grass Giants here. I’ve never been this far to starboard myself. You, you’re from Center City? That’s a hundred daywalks to port.”

“Word came to me,” Valavirgillin said.

He didn’t ask more. A merchant’s secrets were her own.

They rolled into the stubble and turned. The cruisers rolled faster now. Stubble to right, shoulder-high grass to the left. Far ahead, birds were wheeling and diving. Big dark birds: scavengers.

Kaywerbrimmis touched his handguns for reassurance. Muzzle-loading, the barrel as long as his forearm. Big Sabarokaresh eased back into the turret. The top of the payload shell housed the cannon, and that might be needed. The other wagons were swinging left and right, covering Kay’s wagon so that he could investigate in safety.

The birds wheeled away. They’d left black feathers everywhere. Twenty big birds, gorged until they could hardly fly. What might feed so many?