Tunesmith approached and settled cross-legged. “A child’s habits aren’t easily broken. Will Acolyte listen to me after this?”
“It’s a good start.”
“There is food for you, too, Louis Wu. I see no risk in your eating boiled tree-of-life root.”
The thought made him flinch, but, “Yams and sweet potatoes are nearly the same species. We roast them.”
“It means?”
“Build a fire. Put the roots in the coals where it’s not too hot.”
“We’ll find something to burn in the tree-of-life farm.” Tunesmith called toward sounds of grinding teeth and yowling rage. The Kzin was still trying to chew nourishment from the corpse of a protector. “Acolyte, there is prey in the tree-of-life farm. Little animals, and quick. I don’t think anyone but a Night People protector will ever eat Bram, and then not today.”
“Well, let me hunt, then!”
“You’ll need me to get back.” Tunesmith fluted, and they flicked away.
Tunesmith come back with an armful of yellow roots. “Acolyte hunts alone. I whistled in the return flick to use when he wants it.” He set the roots in the fire. “How do you like your water?”
“Clean. Any temperature, really.”
“Cold, too?”
“Sure.”
Tunesmith flicked out, and back again with a slab of ice. “Easier than choosing an appropriate container.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Miles above us, where air is thin and cold.” He soaked a swatch of cloth in dripping ice water and draped it around Louis’s neck. “How long do you cook tree-of-life?”
“An hour,” Louis said, and he showed Tunesmith the timepiece in the skin of his hand. “This tells tides, too. Not much use here. This makes it a calculator. This is a game, you move the numbers around like-tanj, you’re fast.”
Acolyte flicked in, his mouth bloody, something dripping from his hand. He set to work with the wtsai. “I looked for anything from the Map of Earth. Nothing quite fit, but this is much like a rabbit, don’t you think?” He cleaned the beast and skinned and splayed it butterfly fashion, and perched it above the coals to roast.
Louis said, “Some fun, huh?”
Acolyte thought it over. “Yes. But I’m not wounded.”
Acolyte’s forehead was swollen and the yellow fur was soaked with blood. Louis said, “We’re all wounded. Victors don’t have to pay attention to that. Acolyte, tell us a story.”
“You first. You fought the lucky protector, Teela Brown.”
“I’m not quite proud of that. Let me tell you how I boiled a sea.”
He did. Then Acolyte told his father’s tale: his arrival at the Map of Earth with a kzinti assault boat and puppeteer tools. The war. Friends and enemies, the deaths, the matings arranged to bind allies. Learning to talk to females.
Chmeee had sired three children in his few weeks on the Map of Kzin. A local lord had contracted to raise them. When he could, Chmeee had retrieved his eldest son from Kathakt-amicably-and brought him to the Map of Earth. Acolyte had seen his first human being at twelve falans.
The eldest son of a lord trained hard. Enemies and friends, whom to watch, whom to almost trust, how to talk to possible mates. Don’t talk to female diplomats, they’ll have your hide-
“This grows boring,” Tunesmith said.
Acolyte said, “Yes, it grew boring until I wanted to scream. One day I screamed challenge and fought my father. He let me go. I’ve been injured and I’ve starved and I was slaved to a vampire protector, but that diplomatic flup is out of my life. Tell us a tale, Tunesmith.”
“I’ll sing it. Then we should sleep, and after, Louis can lead us to safety.”
Tunesmith sang of a thing of fiery magic abandoned by Louis Wu, who boiled a sea. Five Night People, greatly daring, had dismounted a magical door. They didn’t know where it led and they couldn’t make it work.
One night Chime was gone.
The rest promised to hold his son from following, and Tunesmith went through the door alone. A scent pulled him toward what he could only perceive as the promise of Paradise.
He woke in the garden of tree-of-life. The woman who had gone through ahead lay dead beside him. Chime had been too old.
He explored. He found the Meteor Defense and the telescope. He created a physics to explain what he was seeing. He and Louis discussed that, with Acolyte listening. Tunesmith had deduced not just worlds, but black holes, too. He had guessed at the existence and nature of other protectors.
“What did you eat? Dead rabbits?”
“Well, Chime, of course, but I haven’t been awake long enough to get very hungry.”
Louis tried to talk about what a protector needed to know immediately. Invader ships: it was time to take some prisoners, see what their policy actually was. Hidden Patriarch and its crew: there must be City Builders everywhere, easily found. The children would need mates in not many years. The Web Dweller-
“A contract is an unambiguous promise, stet, Louis? But why should the Web Dweller offer me such a thing?”
Acolyte said, “Through fear, but he often reacts badly to fear.”
“Better if you have something he wants,” said Louis. “Tunesmith, what if you offered him the four hundred and first rim wall ramjet?”
His own dinner was ready by now. He explained while he ate. Bussard ramjet, attitude jet, hydrogen fusion. Tunesmith already understood the law of reaction and the Ringworld’s instability.
“There are only four hundred mountings. When you build the four hundred and first motor, we’ll mount Hot Needle of Inquiry at the axis. It’s a General Products hull; radiation can’t touch it. At sublight speed it’ll take the Hindmost a thousand years or so to match with the Fleet of Worlds…”
Acolyte stalked away from the smell of politics.
Louis said, “I don’t expect that’ll bother him. The Conservatives are in power in the Fleet of Worlds. Nothing will change. They may even want him back. Anyway, we can offer.”
“He likes power games, does he?”
“Stet.”
“Let him play. If he gains more power, we’ll offer him the two hundredth ramjet. It’s clear we don’t need them all. Acolyte! Do you wonder how you lived?”
Acolyte stalked back. Tunesmith sang of finding the skeleton and weapons of Cronus. Clues there told him that he was challenged. He chose his lurking spot and waked.
A monstrous shape of orange hair flicked in and surged away. Tunesmith stalked it, but he sensed no harm in it. “It may be my kind hasn’t grown up frightened of your kind’s smell.”
Acolyte thought that over. Tunesmith said, “But now I knew my enemy would use others for bait. When two hominids appeared and one threw the other flying—”
The Hindmost flicked in.
He squeaked like a smashed piano and was instantly gone, but Tunesmith was faster than that. He went through with the Kzin on his heels and Louis screaming, “Wait! What if it’s Mons Olympus?”
He’d reached his feet, but they were gone. Louis said, “Idiots,” and limped to the stepping disk and flicked through anyway.
Tunesmith was in some kind of weird weaving defense pose. Acolyte was not quite a safe distance away, trying to talk him down. Tunesmith ignored the Kzin. “I want to talk to your leader,” he said firmly.
Thousands of three-legged, two-headed creatures were watching them through the forward wall.
“We say ‘Hindmost,’” one of them said. “I’m the Hindmost. Speak your desire.”
“Teach me.”
The granite block had been set aside.