“How?”

Louis threw his head back and laughed, mouth wide, all teeth showing. From a Kzin that would have been a direct challenge, and Chmeee’s ears went quite flat.

“Hahahahah! I couldn’t help it. I was tanj lucky. He wasn’t about to stun me. He’d have killed me with one swipe of his claws, but he got himself under control.”

“Either way, an interesting story.”

“Chmeee, a notion has crossed my mind. If we could get off the Ringworld, you’d want to return as Chmeee, wouldn’t you?”

“Little chance that I would be known. The Hindmost’s rejuvenation treatment erased my scars, too. I would seem little older than my oldest son, who must now be managing my estates.”

“Yeah. And the Hindmost might not cooperate—”

“I would not ask!”

“Would you ask me?”

Chmeee said, “I would not need to.”

“I hadn’t quite realized that the Patriarch might accept the word of Louis Wu as to your identity. But he would, wouldn’t he?”

“I believe he would, Speaker-to-Tigers. But you have chosen to die.”

Louis snorted. “Oh, Chmeee, I’m dying no faster than you are! I’ve got another fifty years, likely enough, and Teela Brown slagged the Hindmost’s magical medical widgetry.”

That, the Hindmost thought, was quite enough of that!

“He must have his own medical facilities on the command deck,” the Kzin said.

“We can’t get to those.”

“And the kitchen had medical programs, Louis.”

“And I’d be begging from a puppeteer.”

Yet an interruption might infuriate them. Perhaps a distraction?

The speech of the puppeteers was more concise and flexible than any human or kzinti tongue. The Hindmost whistle-chirped a few phrases: {command [] dance [] drop one level in complexity [] again [] go to webeye six Hidden Patriarch [] transmit/receive [] send visual, sound, no smell, no texture, stunner off}. “Chmeee, Louis—”