Wembleth appeared from behind a tree, saw the gun in Roxannys hand, and ducked back.

"I dont need your flycycle," Roxanny said. "Weve got a ship. Wembleth! Get aboard and take a seat. Luis, can you stand up?"

"Futz, no!" Louis said.

She stooped above him and picked him up in her arms. His leg and hip sagged as if boneless. She nearly dropped him when he screamed. The pain blasted his mind away and he missed the rest.

Louis was on his back. Some kind of talk show was running on the ceiling, but the voices didnt match. Aha: the sound was turned off. The voices had been speaking for some time, against a noisy background Louis took for a ship of war.

"I had brothers once." Wembleth sounded drugged. Wembleths translator device sounded crisp and alert. "Stayed with their home turf when Father and I moved to…"

"…Move often?" A male voice of command, one Louis had never heard.

Wembleth: "Yes."

Roxanny had shot him.

Louis couldnt believe it. How badly was he hurt? His mind was muzzy; hed have trouble keeping a story straight. If they questioned Luis Tamasan, theyd hear far too much. Louis tried to move.

He couldnt feel much. There was a tickle behind the back of his neck. His eyes could move, and his head, a little. He could just see that he was naked, on his back, immobilized in something like a stretch rack… or the Intensive Care Cavity of a military autodoc. The noisy background suggested a ship of war. He listened to the voices, trying to make them out.

Male officer: "…brothers?"

"Chosen brothers. Grew up faster than me… stayed with their own, to find mates."

"Seen many kinds of human…?"

Wembleth: "Twenty, thirty species… reshed with…"

He thought he could guess what had happened up there.

A ship beneath the Ringworld floor had fired antimatter bullets upward. No need to find an eyestorm already in place. One bullet to tear away the foamed scrith meteor insulation. The next to blast a hole through the scrith floor and the landscape above, big enough for a small troop transport to pass through.

It was crazy, vicious, simple, and direct. He should have seen it coming instead of making elaborate long-range travel plans.

Wembleth: "Cant get anywhere if you dont know… reshtra… dont try to guess—"

Roxannys voice. "War? Do you ever fight—"

"Seen carnivores fight plant eaters… eaten me too. That what you mean?"

"Ook."

Mmm? Turning his head wasnt easy: Louis was restrained in a nest of attachments, and hed lost all sensation below his neck. But there was Hanuman, in a cage big enough to hold a Kzin. They locked eyes in mutual sympathy. Then something blocked Louiss view.

Roxanny Gauthier hung back behind a burly man, maybe a Jinxian, both wearing falling jumpers with ARM insignia. The man loomed over Louis, judging. He said, "Youd be Luis Tamasan."

"Yah," said Louis Wu.

"You attacked one of my people."

I lived to regret it. "Sorry."

"Im Tec-Major Schmidt. Youre a civilian prisoner. That gives you certain rights, but youre in futzy poor shape to exercise them. These stunners only stun if youre far enough away, but you were right up against Tec-First Gauthier. Youve got bones broken into shrapnel from your hip to your knee. The doc can heal you if you dont move for a while. Five days."

"Tanj." Better make nice — "Thank you, sir. I suppose Id be crippled for life without your help."

The officer grinned. "Oh yah. Now, can I free your arms? It would mean you can eat. Otherwise youre on tubes."

"I wont try to pull loose," Louis said.

"You could hurt yourself pretty bad if you did. Stet." The tickle behind his neck moved down his spine — his arms came back to life, the left very tender, bruised from elbow to fingertips — and further, until — "Hiii!" — and back up an inch. Louis could still feel bruises along his ribs, but not that awful shattered shriek of agony that started with his left hip.

Schmidts hands manipulated a video remote in Louiss peripheral vision. The talk show disappeared; Ringworld jumped into being, spilling off the ceiling, and down the rectangular walls. Schmidt asked, "Where do you come from?"

"Rotate it. More. Stet. Sir, thats the Great Ocean. Look along the spinward edge…" Louis began describing the Weaver village hed lived in last year. People, houses, the river, visiting Fishers, the webeye camera the Hindmost ("Chiron") had sprayed across the stone face of a gorge. These ARMs had no way of checking. If they could, Weavers would tell stories of Louis Wu and the Hindmost as Vashneesht having some kind of quarrel.

But his mind was turning foggy. Louis hadnt been drunk in a long time, but it was like this.

Schmidt zoomed on the Great Ocean region. "You live there? And your parents? Who else? A Kzin family? This puppeteer you told us about?"

"No, not Chiron. Finagle knows where Chiron lives," with a laugh he wished he could suppress. His tongue was curling out of control. "Kzinti dont live in the village, theyre from somewhere on the Great Ocean." If they pushed him, hed reveal another partial truth: that Chmeee lived among Kzinti who had taken over the Map of Earth, natives and all.

Tec-Major Schmidt said, "A lot of Kzintosh call themselves Chmeee. He was some kind of legendary hero. What do you mean, Map of Earth?"

Louis realized hed been babbling, thinking out loud.

Schmidt repeated, "Map of Earth?" with steel in his voice.

"Sir. There." Louis pointed into the ceiling, into the Great Ocean, where the continents of Earth were arrayed around its north pole, a hundred thousand miles spinward of the Map of Mars. He knew now that he couldnt keep secrets. Maybe theyd drugged him, maybe it was just painkillers. Hed last as long as he could, and then tell them his name and watch Roxanny explode in his face.

Roxanny said, "Futz. They keep human slaves?"

Luis: "Homo habilis. Pak breeders."

Schmidt: "Unchanged? Like the skeletons in the Olduvai Gorge?"

Luis: "I never saw one. Like to see their noses."

"Maybe theyre a little skewed?" Schmidt said, clearly speaking for a recorder. "From what we already know, a trillion Pak breeders had a quarter million years to evolve without protectors to cull the mutants. The Kzinti would have done some selective breeding. Anyway, these animals wouldnt have evolved into actual human beings, right, Luis?"

Louiss words came slowly. "They could have evolved intelligence. We did. Did you want to invade?" He laughed. "Rescue? These archaic Kzinti built the bigges sea ship in history, and that was a thousand years ago. Theyre not using jus spears and clubs."

"We can beat seagoing ships. Now, what kind of tech has the puppeteer got? Anything weird?"

Whump.

Louis said, as Luis, "How do I know whats weird?"

But he heard himself continue, "Cameras like copper spiderwebs? Out of a spray gun?" his voice lost in a recorded bellow. The ceiling was flashing an unfamiliar distress symbol. Hull breach*in*aft portside consumables tank. Power*lost in*sections two*and*three. Schmidt and Roxanny drew weapons and turned away, stooping to get through a small oval doorway. Louis spoke to nobody: "Hes got stepping disks too. What was that sound?"

Gray Nurse shook herself. Gravity went away.

Hanuman said, "Invaders. Well either be rescued or killed. Expect surprises. No protector would leave us in alien hands."

"Why not?" Louis heard the whine in his voice. "Why the futz cant they jus leave us alone?"

He didnt hear Hanumans answer. It had become too noisy. A spacecraft being boarded made a fearful echo chamber.

Roxanny Gauthier ducked back through the oval door and around out of Louiss sight. A moment later Wembleth drifted loose, too drugged to act. Roxanny touched points on Hanumans cage, and it opened.