Ringworld's Children Read online

  Ringworld's Children

  by Larry Niven

  This is for the firemen of California and neighboring states who fought the fires of October 2003, with particular thanks to those who saved our house and others in Indian Falls, Chatsworth, Los Angeles County.

  Preface

  The Ringworld is about the same mass as Jupiter. Its shape is that of a ribbon a million miles across and six hundred million miles long, which makes it a bit larger than the Earth's orbit, and a few miles thick. It circles a yellow dwarf star. Its spin, at 770 miles/second, is enough to give it about Earth's gravity of centrifugal force. Walls along both rims, standing a thousand miles high, are enough to hold an atmosphere for millions of years.

  Much else derives from these basic assumptions.

  The inner surface is a habitat three million times the area of planet Earth. The topography is literally a work of art, carved in by whoever built the thing, so that from underneath the Ringworld resembles the back of a mask.

  An inner ring of shadow squares block the sun, giving periods of night; else it would always be noon. A system of pipes leads from the bottoms of oceans, under the Ringworld floor, up the back of the rim wall and over the edge, to recycle seabottom ooze (or flup) into spill mountains. Huge attitude jets stand atop the rim wall, Bussard ramjets using the solar wind of protons for their fuel, to hold the Ringworld against its inherent instability. There are spaceport ledges outside the walls. Two vast salt oceans serve as preserves for seagoing life, and as something more: maps of several worlds at one-to-one scale. The Ringworld floor is of unnaturally strong material, dubbed scrith, with other unusual properties.

  The sun itself is involved in the Ringworld's meteor defense. A superconducting network embedded in the Ringworld floor generates a superthermal laser effect in a solar flare. The drawback: it can't fire through the Ringworld itself. Thus any meteorite that strikes the Ringworld, such as the one that made Fist-of-GodMountain, generally rams upward from underneath.

  Some details become clues to the nature of the Builders.

  The plethora of harbors and fjords, plus the shallow oceans (most of them), suggest a race that uses only the top of an ocean.

  The nastier life forms--mosquitoes, flies, jackals, sharks, vampire bats--don't exist. Hominids have moved into some of those ecological slots. The Engineers weren't ecologists, they were gardeners.

  The inhabitants are hominids in bewildering variety, some intelligent, some not. They fill ecological niches which on Earth are held by almost any mammal, but particularly the nastier life forms, jackals and wolves and vampire bats ... as if mankind's ancestor, Homo habilis, had been protected until they numbered hundreds of billions, then abandoned to mutate endlessly.

  You don't know the Ringworld until you've grasped its size.

  After the book came out, a friend was going to build a scale model for an upcoming convention. He had a marble, a blue immy, to serve as the Earth, for scale. Turns out he'd need a ribbon five feet tall and half a mile long. The hotel wasn't big enough.

  One guy who tried to map the Ringworld told me he ran out of computer space very rapidly. He ran into too many powers of ten.

  David Gerrold speaks of a class of novel called "the Enormous Big Thing." Today you could fill a fair-sized shelf with them. Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama and Bob Shaw's Orbitsville are in that class, and so is my own Rainbow Mars.

  But Ringworld came first, published in 1970.

  It might have been laughed at. Too big, too improbable. Any normal structural material would be torn apart by its spin. I waited for the reviews in some fear.

  James Blish wrote that he thought it would win the Hugo Award, but it shouldn't.

  The readers gave it a Hugo Award anyway.

  The writers gave it a Nebula.

  I didn't have a sequel planned. I was not expecting a flood of redesigns.

  During one of my speeches, a man pointed out that the Ring-world's mathematics are simple: it's a suspension bridge with no endpoints.

  An academic in England pointed out that the tensile strength of the Ringworld frame must be approximately the force that holds an atomic nucleus together. (Hence, scrith.)

  A grade school class in Florida spent a semester on the Ringworld. Their conclusion: the worst problem is that, without tectonic activity, all the topsoil would flow into the oceans in a few thousand years. (Hence, flup and the spillpipes.)

  At the 1970 World Science Fiction Convention there were MIT students in the halls chanting, "The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!" (Did the best that I was able... hence, attitude jets.)

  Somebody decided that the shadow squares shed too much twilight. What's needed is five long shadow squares orbiting retrograde.

  Ultimately there was too much opportunity for redesign. I had to write The Ringworld Engineers.

  All of these readers had found something worth knowing. The Ringworld is a great, gaudy, intellectual toy, a playground with the gates left wide open.

  Some readers just read a book and stop.

  Others play with the characters, or the assumptions, or the environment. They make up their own homework. We readers have been doing that for unguessable thousands of years: demanding more data on Atlantis from Plato, inventing Purgatory to put between Hell and Heaven, redesigning Dante's Inferno, writing new Odysseys. An amazing subculture has sprung up around Star Trek.

  The Internet opens a whole new metaplayground for such people. A number of Web sites have sprung up (well, at least two) whose topic is Larry Niven's fiction.

  In September 1999, tipped off by my lovely agent, Eleanor Wood, I logged onto [email protected]. They were arguing about whether you can clone a protector, and whether Seeker and Teela Brown might have left a child behind. If they'd been right I wouldn't have seen a story, but they were off on the wrong foot, and I could fix it. After a few months of following these discussions, rarely interrupting, I had enough material for Ringworld's Children.

  This is a playground for the mind. It's a puzzle too, a maze. Question every turn or you'll get lost. When you've finished the book, remember not to lock the gate.

  "All this was indispensably necessary," replied the one-eyed doctor, "for private misfortunes are public benefits, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good." --Pangloss, in Candide, by Voltaire

  Ringworld Parameters

  30 hours = one Ringworld day

  1 Ringworld rotation = 7½ days

  75 days = 10 turns = 1 falan

  Mass = 2 x l0exp30 grams

  Radius = .95 x l0exp8 miles

  Circumference = 6 x l0exp8 miles

  Width = .997 x l0exp6 miles

  Surface area = 6 x l0exp14 square miles = 3 million times the surface area of the Earth

  Surface gravity = .992 G (spin)

  Spin velocity = 770 miles/second

  Rim walls rise inward, 1000 miles.

  Star: G3 verging on G2, barely smaller and cooler than Sol

  Cast of Characters

  Recent arrivals

  Louis Wu: Earth born. First and second Ringworld expeditions.

  Teela Brown: Earth born, of a line bred for luck by Pierson's puppeteer manipulation. Turned protector in The Ringworld Engineers, and now deceased. First Ringworld expedition.

  Nessus: Pierson's puppeteer, the Hindmost's partner and mate. Led the first Ringworld expedition.

  The Hindmost: Pierson's puppe
teer, once Chief-in-Command of his species. Led the second Ringworld expedition.

  Chmeee, once Speaker-to-Animals: Kzin. First and second Ringworld expeditions.

  Roxanny Gauthier: Earth born, Detective-One in the ARM. Served aboard Snail Darter and Gray Nurse.

  Oliver Forrestier: Wunderland born, Detective, ARM. Served aboard Snail Darter and Gray Nurse.

  Claus Raschid: Earth born, Detective-Two, ARM. Served aboard Snail Darter and Gray Nurse.

  Detective-Major Schmidt: Earth born. Served aboard Gray Nurse.

  Wes Carlton Wu: Earth born, Flight Captain aboard Koala.

  Tanya Haynes Wu, Earth born, Purser aboard Koala.

  Ringworld's children

  Seeker: species unknown, last seen with Teela Brown.

  Acolyte: Kzin, Chmeee's exiled son.

  Bram: Vampire turned protector, ruler of the RepairCenter for countless aeons until killed by Tunesmith with Louis Wu's help.

  Wembleth: species unknown, Ringworld-born traveler.

  Tunesmith: Night Person (Ghoul) turned protector.

  Kazarp: Night Person, Tunesmith's son.

  Hanuman: Hanging Person turned protector.

  Valavirgillin: Machine People, represents Farsight Trading.

  Proserpina: surviving Pak protector.

  The Penultimate: Pak protector, long dead.

  Szeblinda: Hinsh. Giraffe People

  Kawaresksenjajok: City Builder

  Fortaralisplyar: City Builder

  Glossary

  Aerobrake: To shed velocity by passing through a planetary atmosphere.

  Antispin: Direction opposite the Ringworld's direction of spin.

  Arch: The Ringworld as seen from anywhere on its surface.

  ARM: Once the Amalgamation of Regional Militia; for several hundred years, the United Nations armed forces. Jurisdiction was originally limited to Earth-Moon system.

  Autodoc: Any system built to perform automated medical operations.

  Belter: Citizen of the asteroid belt, Sol system.

  Canyon: A world of human space, once Patriarchy property.

  Carlos Wu's autodoc: An experimental medical system first seen in "Procrustes".

  Droud: A small device that plugs into the skull of a current addict. Its purpose: to meter a current flow to the pleasure center of the user's brain.

  Elbow root: A ubiquitous Ringworld plant. Grows as a kind of natural fence.

  Experimentalist: A Pierson's puppeteer political faction now out of power.

  Eyestorm: The pattern of winds that forms above a puncture in the Ringworld floor. A tornado on its side. (Hurricanes and tornadoes are impossible on the Ringworld's flat surface.)

  Fleet of Worlds: The homeworld of the Pierson's puppeteer species, and four more worlds sequestered for farming, all occupy a Kemplerer rosette moving at near lightspeed.

  Flup: Seabottom ooze.

  Flycycle: A one- or two-LE flying device.

  Fringe War: All the spacegoing species of known space seem to have sent ships to Ringworld system. Bram, when he was in command of the RepairCenter, shot them down if they approached too close. Tunesmith hasn't done that, and the Fringe War is currently in a cold state.

  General Products: A company owned by Pierson's puppeteers that sold mostly spacecraft hulls. Dissolved two hundred years ago.

  The Great Ocean: One of two salt seas on the Ringworld, measuring six hundred times the surface area of the Earth.

  Grippy: An all purpose hand tool.

  Home: A world of human space, unusually Earthlike.

  Hot Needle of Inquiry: Second ship (of Experimentalist design) to reach the Ringworld.

  Human space: The region of stars explored by humanity.

  Known space: The region of the universe known to explorers who communicate with humanity.

  LE (Legal Entity): Any entity (human or not, organic or not) legally entitled to civil rights.

  Long Shot: Prototype Quantum II hyperdrive spacecraft, first ship to visit the galactic core.

  Lying Bastard: First ship (of Experimentalist design) to reach the Ringworld.

  Map of Earth (or Mars, Kzin, Kdatlyno, etc.): The Great Ocean is scattered with maps of nearby inhabited worlds at one-to-one scale, complete with local ecologies as of the time the Ringworld was built.

  Meteor defense: Ringworld systems can cause a solar flare, and a superthermal laser effect within the flare. Energy output is awesome, but the effect is slow.

  N-child: Lineal descendant.

  Outsider hyperdrive or Hyperdrive: A means of faster-than-light travel common in known space.

  Patriarchy: The Kzinti interstellar empire.

  Port: To the left as one looks spinward.

  Quantum II hyperdrive: An advanced experimental faster-than-light system, puppeteer designed, first seen in "At the Core." One Ringworld day under QII hyperdrive = 1440 light years.

  Repair Center: The ancient center of Ringworld repair, maintenance, and control, housed beneath the Map of Mars on the GreatOcean.

  Rishathra (reshtra, etc.): Sexual practice outside one's own species but within the intelligent hominids.

  Scrith: Ringworld structural material. Scrith underlies all the terraformed and contoured inner surface of the Ringworld. The rim walls are also of scrith. Very dense, with a tensile strength on the order of the force that holds an atomic nucleus together.

  Sheathclaws: A world held by humans and Kzinti together.

  Spill mountains: Mountains standing against the rim wall, the outflow of the rim spillpipes. One stage in the circulation of flup.

  Spin or Spinward: In the direction of rotation of the Ringworld. (Against the rotation of the sky.)

  Starboard: To the right as one looks spinward.

  Stasis field: Human technology. An induced state in which time passes very slowly. Ratios can be as high as a billion years of real time to a few seconds in stasis. An object in stasis is very nearly invulnerable.

  Stepping disks: Puppeteer technology, an advanced form of teleportation.

  Stet: Leave it alone; accept as written; make no change; restore.

  Tanj: An expletive, once shorthand for "There ain't no justice."

  Thruster: Reactionless drive. In human space, thrusters have generally replaced fusion rockets on all spacecraft save warcraft.

  Vishnishtee (Vashneesht, Vasnesht, Vasneesit, etc.): Wizard or protector.

  Webeye: Puppeteer technology, a multisensory transmitter.

  Weenie plant: Ubiquitous Ringworld plant. Edible.

  2893 A.D.

  Chapter 1 -

  Louis Wu

  Louis Wu woke aflame with new life, under a coffin lid.

  Displays glowed above his eyes. Bone composition, blood parameters, deep reflexes, urea and potassium and zinc balance: he could identify most of these. The damage listed wasn't great. Punctures and gouges; fatigue; torn ligaments and extensive bruises; two ribs cracked; all relics of the battle with the Vampire protector, Bram. All healed now. The 'doc would have rebuilt him cell by cell. He'd felt dead and cooling when he climbed into the Intensive Care Cavity.

  Eighty-four days ago, the display said.

  Sixty-seven Ringworld days. Almost a falan; a falan was ten Ringworld rotations, seventy-five thirty-hour days. Twenty or thirty days should have healed him! But he'd known he was injured. What with all the general bruising from the battle with Bram, he hadn't even noticed puncture wounds in his back.

  He'd been under repair for twice that long the first time he lay in this box. Then, his internal plumbing systems had been leaking into each other, and h
e'd been eleven years without the longevity complex called boosterspice. He'd been dying, and old.

  Testosterone was high, adrenalin high and rising.

  Louis pushed steadily up against the lid of the 'doc. The lid wouldn't move faster, but his body craved action. He slid out and dropped to a stone floor, cold beneath his bare feet. Stone?

  He was naked. He stood in a vast cavern. Where was Needle?

  The interstellar spacecraft Hot Needle of Inquiry had been embedded in cooled magma when last he looked, and Carlos Wu's experimental nanotech repair system had been in the crew quarters. Now its components sat within a nest of instruments and cables on a floor of cooled lava. The 'doc had been partly pulled apart. Everything was still running.

  Hubristic, massive, awesome: this was a protector's work. Tunesmith, the Ghoul protector, must have been studying the 'doc while it healed Louis.

  Nearby, Hot Needle of Inquiry had been fileted like a finless fish. A slice of hull running almost nose to tail had been cut away, exposing housing, cargo space, docking for a Lander now destroyed, thruster plates, and the hyperdrive motor housing. More than half of the ship's volume was tanks, and of course they'd been drained. The rim of the cut had been lined with copper or bronze, and cables in the metal led to instruments and a generator.

  The cut section had been pulled aside by massive machinery. The cut surface was rimmed in bronze laced with cables.

  The hyperdrive motor had run the length of the ship. Now it was laid out on the lava, in a nest of instruments. Tunesmith again?

  Louis wandered over to look.

  It had been repaired.

  Louis had stranded the Hindmost in Ringworld space by chopping the hyperdrive in half, twelve or thirteen years ago. Dismounted, it looked otherwise ready to take Needle between the stars at Quantum I speeds, three days to the light year.

  I could go home, Louis thought, tasting the notion.

  Where is everybody? Louis looked around him, feeling the adrenalin surge. He was starting to shiver with cold.