“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.
“Hahahahah! I couldn’t help it. I was tanj lucky. He wasn’t about to stun me. He’d have killed me with one swipe of his claws, but he got himself under control.”
“Either way, an interesting story.”
“Chmeee, a notion has crossed my mind. If we could get off the Ringworld, you’d want to return as Chmeee, wouldn’t you?”
“Little chance that I would be known. The Hindmost’s rejuvenation treatment erased my scars, too. I would seem little older than my oldest son, who must now be managing my estates.”
“Yeah. And the Hindmost might not cooperate—”
“I would not ask!”
“Would you ask me?”
Chmeee said, “I would not need to.”
“I hadn’t quite realized that the Patriarch might accept the word of Louis Wu as to your identity. But he would, wouldn’t he?”
“I believe he would, Speaker-to-Tigers. But you have chosen to die.”
Louis snorted. “Oh, Chmeee, I’m dying no faster than you are! I’ve got another fifty years, likely enough, and Teela Brown slagged the Hindmost’s magical medical widgetry.”
That, the Hindmost thought, was quite enough of that!
“He must have his own medical facilities on the command deck,” the Kzin said.
“We can’t get to those.”
“And the kitchen had medical programs, Louis.”
“And I’d be begging from a puppeteer.”
Yet an interruption might infuriate them. Perhaps a distraction?
The speech of the puppeteers was more concise and flexible than any human or kzinti tongue. The Hindmost whistle-chirped a few phrases: {command [] dance [] drop one level in complexity [] again [] go to webeye six Hidden Patriarch [] transmit/receive [] send visual, sound, no smell, no texture, stunner off}. “Chmeee, Louis—”
They both jumped, then rolled to their feet, staring.
“Do I interrupt? I desire to show you certain pictures.”
For a moment they simply watched the dance. The Hindmost could guess how silly he must look. Grins were spreading across both faces; though Louis’s meant laughter and Chmeee’s meant anger. “You’ve been spying,” Chmeee said. “How?”
“Look up. Don’t destroy it, Chmeee, but look above your head at the mast that supports the radio antenna. Just at the reach of your claws—”
The alien faces expanded hugely. Louis said, “Like a bronze spiderweb with a black spider at the center. Fractal pattern. Hard to see… hard to see where it stops, too. I thought some Ringworld insect was spinning these.”
The Hindmost told them, “It’s a camera, microphone, telescope, projector, and some other tools, too. It sprays on. I’ve left them in various places, not just this ship. Louis, can you summon your guests?” Whittle: {command [] locate City Builders}. “I have something to show you. They should see this, too.”
“What you’re doing, it looks a little like Tai Kwon Do,” Louis said.
{Command [] Seek: Tai Kwon Do}.
The information surfaced. A fighting style. Ridiculous: his species never fought. The Hindmost said, “I don’t want to lose my muscle tone. The unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.” A second window opened among the dancers: the City Builders were preparing a meal in the huge kitchen. “You must see—”
Chmeee’s claws swiped at the puppeteer’s eyes. Window Six blinked white and closed.
Kick. Weave past the Moment’s Leader. Stand. Shift a millimeter; stand. Patience.
Avoid him they might. They had avoided him for ten hours now, and for half an archaic year before that; but they had to eat.
The wooden table was tremendous, the size of a kzinti banquet. A year ago the Hindmost had had to turn down the olfactory gain in the webeye, for the stench of old blood rising from the table. The smell was fainter now. Kzinti tapestries and crudely carved frescoes had been removed, too bloody for the hominids’ taste. Some had been moved to Chmeee’s cabin.
The smell of roasting fish was heavy on the air. Kawaresksenjajok and Harkabeeparolyn were doing things in the makeshift kitchen.
Their infant daughter seemed happy enough at one end of the table itself. At the other end, the raw half of a huge fish awaited the Kzin’s pleasure.
Chmeee eyed the fish. “Your luck was good,” he approved. His eyes roved the ceiling and walls. He found what he sought: a glittering fractal spiderweb just under the great orange bulb at the apex of the dome.
The City Builders entered, wiping their hands. Kawaresksenjajok, a boy not much past adolescence; Harkabeeparolyn, his mate, some years older; both quite bald across the crowns of their heads, their hair descending to cover their shoulder blades. Harkabeeparolyn picked up the baby and gave it suck. Kawaresksenjajok said, “We lose you soon.”
Chmeee said, “We have a spy. I thought as much, but now we know it. The puppeteer placed cameras among us.”
The boy laughed at his anger. “We would do the same to him. To seek knowledge is natural!”
“In less than a day I will be free of the eyes of the puppeteer. Kawa, Harkee, I will miss you greatly. Your company, your knowledge, your skewed wisdom. But my thought will be mine alone!”
I’m losing them all, the Hindmost thought. Survival suggests that I build a road to take them back to me. He said, “Folk, will you give me an hour to entertain you?”
The City Builders gaped. The Kzin grinned. Louis Wu said, “Entertain… sure.”
“If you’ll turn off the light?”
Louis did that. The puppeteer whistle-sang. He was looking through the display, watching their faces.
Where the webeye had been, now they saw a window: a view through blowing rain, down past the rim of a vast plate. Far below, pale humanoid shapes swarmed in their hundreds. They seemed gregarious enough. They rubbed against each other without hostility, and here and there they mated without seeking privacy.
“This is present time,” the Hindmost said. “I’ve been monitoring this site since we restored the Ringworld’s orbit.”
Kawaresksenjajok said, “Vampires. Flup, Harkee, have you ever seen so many together?”
Louis asked, “Well?”
“Before I brought our probe back to the Great Ocean. I used it to spray webeyes. You’re seeing that region we first explored, on the highest structure I could find, to give me the best view. Alas for my view, rain and cloud have obscured it ever since. But, Louis, you can see that there is life here.”
“Vampires.”
“Kawaresksenjajok, Harkabeeparolyn, this is to port of where you lived. Can you see that life is thriving here? You could return.”
The woman was waiting, postponing judgment. The boy was torn. He said a word in his own language, untranslatable.
“Don’t promise what you can’t deliver,” said Louis Wu.
“Louis, you have evaded me ever since we saved the Ringworld. Always you speak as if we turned a blowtorch hundreds of thousands of miles across on inhabited terrain. I’ve questioned your numbers. You don’t listen. See for yourself, they still live!”
“Wonderful,” Louis said. “The vampires lived through it!”
“More than vampires. Watch.” The Hindmost whistled; the view zoomed on distant mountains.
Thirty-odd hominids marched through a pass between peaks. Twenty-one vampires; six of the small red-skinned herders they’d seen on their last visit; five of a bigger, darker hominid creature; two of a small-headed variety, perhaps not sapient. All of the prey were naked, and none were trying to escape. They were tired but joyful. Each member of another species had a vampire companion. Only a few vampires wore clothing against the chill and the rain. The clothing was clearly borrowed, cut to fit something other than what wore it.