Ringworld's Children Read Online Free PDF

system."
    "Antimatter. Hindmost, that makes the Fringe War a lot more dangerous. The Ringworld is too fragile for this."
    "Agreed."
    "What's he doing now?"
    The shadow of a protector leapt from its chair, arced like a ballet superstar across the view of comets and warships, touched down at one focus of the elliptical room, and was gone.
    A hand like a sackful of ball bearings closed on Louis's forearm. He spasmed like a man electrocuted. "Louis! Good, you're awake," Tunesmith said briskly. "Without you this would have been difficult. Hindmost, come out of there. Danger does not await our convenience. Louis, are you all right? Your heartbeat sounds funny."
     

Chapter 3
    Tunesmith was a young protector.
    A Night People male of middle age had been lured into a cavern that grew tree-of-life. Tunesmith had emerged from his cocoon state a hundred and ten days ago: a tremendous mind demanding to be trained, in a hominid body hardened for endless war.
    At first he must have satisfied himself with the Librarians' incomplete knowledge, and Acolyte's, and with what came in niggardly driblets from the Hindmost.
    Tunesmith would not have begun his intrusions in any tentative fashion, Louis thought. The Hindmost might block that. Tunesmith must have built this heavy equipment and programmed it at his leisure, then set it moving all at once, after he'd picked the Hindmost's locks.
    Fait accompli: suddenly he's standing over the puppeteer in his own living quarters. Suddenly he's filleted the Hindmost's spacecraft and is removing components as a fisher guts a trout.
    Protectors of any species would be manipulative. Intelligence was manipulative, wasn't it? A superior intelligence would want to control his teachers. Knock them off balance from time to time. The differences between ally, servant, slave, and sled dog blur when the difference in intelligence is great enough.
    A moment ago Louis had been spying on a protector. Suddenly the protector was beside him, gripping his wrist.
    Louis said, "I'm fine. Much too young to have a heart attack."
    The puppeteer's heads and legs were buried under him.
    "Work on him," Tunesmith said. "I'm going to be busy."
    "Two questions," Louis said, but the protector was gone.
    The Hindmost eased a head into the open. No part of the neck showed, only eye and mouth.
    Tunesmith could be seen sprinting about outside Hot Needle of Inquiry, working controls, then shouting into thin air. Heavy machinery began to move. The rebuilt hyperdrive motor was in motion. Unequal halves of the ship's hull began to close. The top of the linear accelerator began to track across the underside of Mons Olympus.
    The Hindmost whistled. "I was right! He's--" The head ducked back under him. Tunesmith was back.
    He stooped to work controls on the hidden stepping disk. Then he picked up the curled-up puppeteer, evading the hind leg as it lashed out. They weighed about the same, Louis guessed. "Louis, follow," he barked, and stepped forward and was gone.
     
    Just for an instant, Louis Wu rebelled.
    It was a test, of course. Would Louis Wu follow him without question? This was all just too familiar.
    An alien mastermind bursts into Louis Wu's life, assembles a crew, and hares off on a mission known only to the master. First Nessus, then the Hindmost, then the protector Teela Brown, then Bram, now Tunesmith, each chooses Louis Wu for reasons of convenience, drops him into the middle of a situation he doesn't understand, and runs him like a marionette. By the time Louis finishes playing catch-up, he's committed to something on the far side of sanity.
    Pierson's puppeteers were control freaks. A true coward never turns his back on danger.
    Being a protector was all about control.
    Where would he be, what would Louis Wu have done, by the time he knew anything?
    The instant passed. If he didn't follow, he'd be out of the action entirely. Louis stepped forward, onto a stepping disk that looked like the rest of the floor, and flicked