Read Ringworld's Children for Free Online Page A

lethal.
    It wasn't there. Only the smell of brachiating hominids.
    His father's hunting park had been more dangerous. The danger level of father's park was as carefully measured as the placement of each bush. Kzinti needed a threat to bring them alive, and to keep their numbers down too.
    Pak protectors didn't think like that.
    Louis Wu had explained it thus: protectors had spread life across this land in imitation of the life patterns that evolved on Ball Worlds, but they had left out anything that harmed or annoyed Pak breeders, from carnivores down to parasites and bacteria. Whatever attacked today's bewildering variety of hominids had evolved over the million years, the four million falans, that followed.
    Of course Louis was guessing. He'd said that too.
    So, here was a safe place to play. One day Tunesmith would call, or Louis, and Acolyte would find danger enough. The lights in the night sky were not all stars.
     
    A blotch in infrared, bigger than other blotches, went from perfect stillness to a blur of speed, leapt into a tree, merged with a smaller glow, paused--
    Tunesmith yowled.
    A returning yowl seemed muffled. Louis's dawdling translator caught up; it said, "Acolyte!" "Here. Wait." Then: "Louis!"
    "Hello, Acolyte!" called Louis.
    "Louis! I was worried! How are you?"
    "Young. Hungry, antsy, not quite sane."
    "You were forever in the healing box!"
    Tunesmith said, "Acolyte kept bothering me for updates until I had to find work for him elsewhere."
    Louis was touched. Acolyte had worried... thinking that Louis remained in the 'doc because there was more to be done for him. More likely Tunesmith was just keeping Louis out of the way; or he might have been refining the rejuvenation process, or using Louis as a test subject to study nanotechnology, tanj him. A twelve-year-old should not be forced to such cynical thinking, even a twelve-year-old Kzin.
    The massive cat was halfway up a tree trunk, eating, while Hanging People threw hard fruit from a distance. Tunesmith separated his float plates and hovered one next to Acolyte.
    Chmeee was a Kzin chosen by the puppeteer Nessus to join his exploration team, decades ago. Acolyte was Chmeee's eldest son, cast out by his father and sent to "learn wisdom" from Louis Wu. He stood seven feet tall, shorter than his father, furred in orange and dark chocolate: dark ears, dark stripes down his back, a smaller chocolate comma down his tail and leg. Three parallel ridges ran down his belly, possibly his father's legacy; Louis had never asked. On a huge tilted trunk under green-black foliage, he looked utterly at home.
    He asked, "Are we finally ready?"
    "Yes," said Tunesmith.
    Acolyte judged the distance above a drop of fifty feet. He had to make a twisting leap. He hit the disk on all fours. The disk dropped under his weight, and Acolyte slid, scrambled, and had his grip.
    A Kzin's hands were good, but with his claws extended his fingers would have slid off. Anger might have killed him. It was a jest, or a test--and Tunesmith had been dropping past him, ready to catch him.
    "I should reclaim my float plate," Acolyte said. He dropped toward the forest floor and took off through tilted trunks along a path Louis couldn't find.
    A float plate floated above a display of huge, gorgeous orange flowers. Acolyte eased the disk he was riding down over the other float plate, and with a magnetic click they locked.
    "I left one with the Underpeople, their toy until I need it," the Kzin said. "I mass too much. I have to be too careful when it's just one floater."
    The double disk took off, Tunesmith followed, and they were racing.
    Louis tried to keep up, but it was a hairy ride. They were leaving the Hindmost far behind. Tunesmith called, "What have you learned?"
    The Kzin bellowed, "Nothing since we spoke. Teela's path ends with the Mechanics, two months after she left Louis and my father. I have dwelt among five civilizations, six species--interesting symbiotic culture, Mechanics, and a