/There's an inconsistency here.  I think it was in 'Passerby'  when a
/rammer met some alien with godlike powers 'walking' through space and
/Niven argued that few if any alien races would be more intelligent than
/humans, because, according to him, evolution stops when a race starts
/using tools.   A race's evolution is shaped by it's environment, and when
/a race starts using tools it starts shaping its own envirionment and
/therefore evolution stops.

Yes; this argument gets used elsewhere as well, maybe in the Man-Kzin
wars.  While possibly accurate, in the general case it ignores the
possibility of an intelligent race deliberately modifying itself, the
basis of Vinge's transcendant fiction.

/Come to think of it, only the Pak are said to be superintelligent.  The

True.  The puppeteers are less turbid and more straightforward in their
logic, and the tnuctipun are pretty techno-studly, but only the
protectors are clearly presented as individually mental supergiants.

I still say intervention -- rogue Tnuctipun for lack of anyone else.

-xx- Damien X-)

"He is beyond question a writer of power; and his
power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly,
graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one
is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing."