Vampires weren’t sapient at all, or so the Hindmost had been told. He wondered if animals would keep slaves or livestock… but never mind. “Louis, Chmeee, do you see? Here are other species, also alive. I even saw a City Builder once.”

Louis Wu said, “I don’t see cancer and I don’t see mutations, but they must be there. Hindmost, I got my information from Teela Brown. Teela was a protector, brighter than you and me. One and a half trillion deaths, she said.”

The Hindmost said, “Teela was intelligent, but I see her as human, Louis. Even after her change: human. Humans don’t look directly at danger. Puppeteers you call cowards, but not to look is cowardice—”

“Drop it. It’s been a year. Cancers can take ten or twenty. Mutations take a whole generation.”

“Protectors have their limits! Teela had no notion of the power of my computers. You left me to make the adjustments, Louis—”

“Drop it.”

“I will continue to look,” the puppeteer said.

The Hindmost danced. The marathon would continue until he made a mistake. He was pushing himself toward exhaustion; his body would heal and then grow strong.

He had not bothered to eavesdrop through the aliens’ dinner. Chmeee had not slashed the webeye, but they would not speak secrets in its view.

They need not. A year past, while his motley crew was still trying to settle the matter of Teela Brown and the Ringworld’s instability, the Hindmost’s flying probe had sprayed webeyes all over Hidden Patriarch.

He would rather have been concentrating on the dance.

Time enough for that. Chmeee would be gone soon. Louis would revert to silence. In another year he, too, might leave the ship, leave the Hindmost’s control. The City Builder librarians… work on them?