"Nobodyll hear, my poor boy. I sent Wembleth to look for anything that flies. Lets see if I can get you interested. Luis, how old are you?"

"Two hundred and—"

"Seriously." She squeezed him intimately. "Sometimes you seem older. You know things you shouldnt." Breast tips brushed against his chest hairs as she hovered above him. "How do you know there are whales in the Great Ocean?"

"My father told me. You can see huge levels of detail underwater from high enough up."

"Oh."

"Youve been treating me like a kid, Roxanny. Im not sure I like it. Im not sure I dont. But hey, youre definitely in charge now."

"Oh, yah. So lets see how agile I am." With a certain dexterity, she fitted them together. "Im over fifty, Luis. This doc is my boosterspice supply for the foreseeable future."

"Well, dont bounce too hard or youll wreck it."

She laughed. He felt the ripple in her powerful belly muscles.

"Roxanny. Did you know… boosterspice is made from tree-of-life?"

"What? No! Who told you that?"

"Proserpina. Look at the… implications. If the United Nations was playing with tree-of-life… half a thousand years ago… what else have they done with it? Maybe theres a protector running the ARM."

Her eyes got big. "I dont believe it. Luis, the ARMs top rank is all paranoid schizophrenics! And they dont take their shots! Cant you—"

"Keep moving. I thought that was just rumor."

"Well, everybody says so. Theyd never let a protector rule them. It might take over the Earth!"

"But if they did let a protector get loose, hed run the ARM. And hed think like a paranoid schizophrenic, wouldnt he? Roxanny, I should stop distracting you."

"Tanj right you should. Thinking about the ARM is no fun at all. This feel good?"

"Yah."

"Youre not ticklish?"

"Used to be."

"Not at all?"

He giggled. "No. Nope." Hed got his tickle reflex under control, long ago.

Wrong.

The holoscreen view of Tunesmith matched Proserpinas imagination: elongated jaws, a face bare of beard, knobs at the jaw hinges, flat nostrils, sharp-edged cheekbones: a Ghoul turned protector.

Tunesmith spoke the Ghoul tongue. Proserpina was only confused for a moment. The heliographs had spread a common language. She knew written Ghoulish, and a version spoken near the spill mountains. She had listened to Hanuman while he spoke into the holoscreen. It was only a matter of pronunciation. "Omnivore plains runner? I have long wondered about you. Your species survives on the Map of Earth, but not unaltered—"

Proserpina yowled. Hanuman was up a tree and hidden in its puffball top, before his mind quite caught up. But Proserpina was still at the holoscreen, and Tunesmith was still speaking -

"Local carnivores, transplanted Kzinti, have been selecting among the local hominids for such traits as please them. The exception is an invader who came with the first expedition. Chmeee tends hominids in his little sector of the Map, lets them run wild, and does not eat their meat or allow his servants to harm them. We might solve your problem most easily by giving the Map of Earth to Chmeee. We could deal with him through his son or through his ally Louis Wu.

"The Fringe War is a more difficult problem. I believe we must meet. You must view the Repair Center, and I must not leave you unwatched.

"What I know of you leads me to believe that you have learned not to act. Such a degree of self-control is rare in one of our kind. I believe I would be safe in your presence if I can offer reasonable guarantees for your own safety.

"A guarantee you might accept is your knowledge of what I am. We evolved as intelligent breeders. My own several species survive as eaters of the dead. Thus we normally see harm to any race as bad. Where other hominids survive well, so do we. Wars are not good for us; a battle is a glut followed by famine. Drought is not good, so we guide locals in water and canal management. Deserts are not good; we guide locals in replanting. We teach flood control and fanning. We keep local religions, but we guide them away from messy practices, jihads and human sacrifice and cremation. We keep track through heliographs managed by the people of the rim walls. We control our numbers.

"If I see no reason to harm you, I will not. If I desire your good will, I will act to your benefit. Learn what you can of me, and decide whether you will come to meet me. I will send a service stack to rendezvous with Hanumans flycycle."

The face of Tunesmith went away. The picture remained: a background of interstellar space, skeletal black structures in the foreground. Proserpina shouted, "Hanuman!"

Hanuman climbed down.

Proserpinas grip had bent the armrests of the skycycles forward chair. She said, "My descendants are being eaten by large orange carnivores."

"Did you know before last night?"

"I knew that most of the Ringworld was out of my control and barred to me. This was not nearly the worst of what I imagined, but I knew with my forebrain, Hanuman, not with my glands. Well, what is a service stack?"

"Float plates topped by a stepping disk. I can guide us through the stepping-disk system."

"We should look to our guests first. You take the flycycle. Ill take the mag ship home. I have an errand."

Evening.

"It isnt the same as rishathra," Louis said. "Cant you feel the difference?"

"Kid, youve had more experience than I have at that," Roxanny said, "so you say. What are we doing for dinner?"

"You could go hunting."

"I feel lazy."

"Will this system make dole bricks?"

Roxanny looked it over. "Just soup."

"Draw me a mug."

She dialed for two. "Luis, how would you get into the mountain?"

"I havent even seen it. My daydreams have mostly involved walking erect, not climbing around in an artificial mountain. What are you thinking?"

Roxanny said, "Wed need transportation. Even on Earth, arcologies are too big to explore on foot. Then Id worry about security. Protectors were very territorial, its said."

"This is good stuff."

Roxanny sipped. It was a heavy, grainy soup. "You get tired of it fast."

"Think about breeders."

"What?"

"Breeders. Pak who havent turned protector. Plains apes, adults, and children. They can run alongside an antelope whacking it on the head with a knobbed bone, and not fall over. Keeping their balance may be what got them the big, complicated brain. But they can still climb. If there are booby traps in that futzy great building, theyll be set to leave breeders alone."

"Well, unless the breeders are kept out by something like, I dont know, a fence?"

"We should look for a fence," he agreed. "Roxanny? Dont go alone, stet?"

"Whats that?" Light outside.

"Flycycle riding lights."

Roxanny went out to look. She came back holding hands with Hanuman. "That protector sent the flycycle home on automatic."

"Its got an autopilot. She might have fiddled with it. Where is she?"

Roxanny shrugged. "Nobody was aboard but the Beast."