by Larry Niven
“When is that likely to be?”
“When and if my companion returns.” The lander held another flying belt and set of goggles, intended for Halrloprillalar. “Or let them be yours when I die. And I can give you half my store of cloth now. Strips of it would let you repair some of the City Builders’ old machines.”
Vala thought it over. “I wish I were more skilled. Well, then, I agree to all of your requirements.”
“I agree to yours.”
She began to take off her clothes and jewelry. Slowly, seemingly titillatingly ... until Louis saw what she was doing: stripping herself of all possible weapons. He waited until she was quite naked, then imitated her, dropping the flashlight-laser and goggles and the pieces of impact armor some distance from her, adding even his chronometer.
They made love, then, but it wasn’t love. The madness of last night was gone with the vampires. She asked his preferred technique, then insisted, and he chose the missionary position. It was too much a formality. Perhaps it was meant to be. Afterward, when she went to stir the cooking pot, he was careful that she didn’t get between him and his weapons. It felt like that kind of situation.
She came back to him, and he explained that his kind could make love more than once.
He sat cross-legged with Vala in his lap, her legs closed tight around his hips. They stroked each other, aroused each other, learned each other. She liked having her back scratched. Her back was muscular, her torso wider than his own. A strip of her hair ran all the way down her spine. She had fine control of the muscles of her vagina. The fringe of beard was very soft, very fine.
And Louis Wu had a plastic disc under the hair at the crown of his head.
They lay in each other’s arms, and she waited.
“Even if you don’t have electricity, you must know about it,” Louis said. “The City Builders used it to run their machines!”
“Yes. We can make electricity from the flow of a river. Tales tell that endless electricity came from the sky before the fall of the City Builders.”
Which was accurate enough. There were solar power generators on the shadow squares, and they beamed the power to collectors on the Ringworld. Naturally the collectors used superconducting cables, and naturally they had failed.
“Well, then. If I let a very fine wire down into my brain in the right place—which I did—then a very little bit of electric power will tickle the nerves that register pleasure.”
“What is it like?”
“Like getting drunk without the hangover or the dizziness. Like rishathra, or real mating, without needing to love anyone but yourself and without needing to stop. But I stopped.”
“Why?”
“An alien had my electric source. He wanted to give me orders. But I was ashamed before that.”
“The City Builders never had wires in their skulls. We would have found them when we searched the ruined cities. Where is this custom practiced?” she asked. Then she rolled away from him and stared at him in horror.
It was the sin he regretted most often: not keeping his mouth shut. He said, “I’m sorry.”
“You said strips of that cloth would -- What is that cloth?”
“It conducts electric current and magnetic fields with no loss. Superconductor, we call it.”
“Yes, that was what failed the City Builders. The ... superconductor rotted. Your cloth will rot too, will it not? How long?”
“No. It’s a different kind.”
She screamed it at him. “*How do you know that, Louis Wu?*”
“The Hindmost told me. The Hindmost is an alien who brought us here against our will. He left us with no way home.”
“This Hindmost, he took you as slaves?”
“He tried to. Humans and kzinti, we make poor slaves.”
“Is his word good?”
Louis grimaced. “No. And he took the superconductor cloth and wire when he fled his world. He didn’t have time to make it. He must have known where it was, in storage. Like the other things he brought, the stepping discs: it must have been readily available.” And he knew instantly that something was wrong, but it took him a moment to know what it was.
The translator had stopped speaking too soon.
Then it spoke with a very different voice. “Louis, is it wise to, tell her these things?”
“She guessed part of it,” Louis said. “She was about to blame me for the Fall of the Cities. Give me back my translator.”
“Can I allow you this ugly suspicion? Why would my people perform so malicious an act?”
“Suspicion? You son of a bitch.” Vala knelt watching him with big eyes, listening to him talk to himself in gibberish. She couldn’t hear the Hindmost’s voice in his earphones. Louis said, “They kicked you out as Hindmost and you ran. You grabbed what you could and ran. Stepping discs and superconductor cloth and wire and a ship. Discs were easy. You must make them by the million. But where would you find superconductor cloth just waiting for you? And you knew it wouldn’t rot on the Ringworld!”
“Louis, why would we do such a thing?”
“Trade advantage. Give me back my translator!”
Valavirgillin got up. She pulled the pot a little out from the fire, stirred it, tasted. She disappeared toward the vehicle and returned with two wooden bowls, which she filled with a dipper.
Louis waited uneasily. The Hindmost could leave him stranded, with no translator. Louis wasn’t good with languages ...
“All right, Louis. It wasn’t planned this way, and it happened before my time. We were searching for a way to expand our territory with minimal risk. The Outsiders sold us the location of the Ringworld.”
The Outsiders were cold, fragile beings who roamed throughout the galaxy in slower-than-light craft. They traded in knowledge. They might well have known of the Ringworld, and sold the information to puppeteers, but ... “Wait a minute. Puppeteers are afraid of spaceflight.”
“I overcame that fear. If the Ringworld had proved suitable, then one spaceflight in an individual’s lifetime is no great risk. We would have flown in stasis, of course. From what the Outsiders told us, and from what we learned via telescopes and automatic probes, the Ringworld seemed ideal. We had to investigate.”
“An Experimentalist faction?”
“Of course. Still, we hesitated to contact so powerful a civilization. But we analyzed Ringworld superconductors through laser spectroscopy. We made a bacterium that could feed on it. Probes seeded the superconductor plague across the Ringworld. You guessed as much?”
“That much, yeah.”
“We were to follow with trading ships. Our traders would come opportunely to the rescue. They would learn all we needed to know, and gain allies too.” Clear and musical, the puppeteer’s voice held no trace of guilt, nor even embarrassment.
Vala set the bowls down and knelt across from him. Her face was in shadow. From her viewpoint the translation could not have ended at a worse moment.
Louis said, “Then the Conservatives won an election, I take it.”
“Inevitable. A probe found attitude jets. We knew of the Ringworld’s instability, of course, but we hoped for some more sophisticated means of dealing with it. When the pictures were made public, the government fell. We have had no chance to return to the Ringworld until—“
“When? When did you spread the plague?”
“Eleven hundred and forty years ago by Earth time. The Conservatives ruled for six hundred years. Then the threat of the kzinti put Experimentalists back in power. When the time seemed opportune, I sent Nessus and his team to the Ringworld. If the structure had survived for eleven hundred years after the fall of the culture that kept it in repair, it would have been worth investigating. I c
ould have sent a trade and rescue team. Unfortunately—“
Valavirgillin had the flashlight-laser in her lap, pointed at Louis Wu.
“—unfortunately the structure was damaged. You found meteor holes and landscape eroded down to the scrith. It now seems—“
“This is an emergency. This is an emergency.” Louis held his voice steady. How had she done that? He’d watched her kneel with a steaming bowl of stew in each hand. Could the thing have been taped to her back? Skip it. At least she hadn’t fired yet.
“I hear you,” said the Hindmost.
“Can you turn off the flashlight-lasers by remote control?”
“I can do better than that. I can explode it, killing him who holds it.”
“Can’t you just turn it off?”
“No.”
“Then give me back my translator function tanj quick. Testing—“
The box spoke Machine People speech. Vala answered immediately. “Whom or what were you talking to?”
“To the Hindmost, the being who brought me here. May I assume that I have not yet been attacked?”
She hesitated before answering. “Yes.”
“Then our agreements are still in force, and I’m still gathering data with intent to save the world. Do you have reason to doubt that?” The night was warm, but Louis felt very naked.
The dead eye of the flashlight-laser remained dead. Vala asked, “Did the Hindmost’s race cause the Fall of the Cities?”
“Yes.”
“Break off negotiation,” Vala ordered.
“He’s got most of our data-gathering instruments.”
Vala thought it through, and Louis remained still. Two pairs of eyes glowed close behind her in the dark. Louis wondered how much the ghouls heard with those goblin ears, and how much they understood.
“Use them, then. But I want to hear what he says,” said Vala. “I have not even heard his voice. He may be only your imagination.”
“Hindmost, you heard?”
“I did.” Louis’s earplugs were speaking Interworld, but the box at his throat spoke Valavirgillin’s own tongue. Well and good. “I heard your promise to the woman. If you can find a way to stabilize this structure, do so.”
“Sure, your people could use the room.”
“If you should stabilize the Ringworld with help from my equipment, I want credit. I may want to ask a reward.”
Valavirgillin snarled and choked off a reply. Louis said quickly, “You’ll get the credit you deserve.”
“It was my government, under my leadership, that tried to bring aid to the Ringworld eleven hundred years after the damage was done. You will vouch for that.”
“I will, with reservations.” Louis was speaking for Vala’s benefit. He told her, “By our agreements, you regard what you’re holding as my property.”
She flipped him the flashlight-laser. He set it aside, and felt himself sagging with relief, or fatigue, or hunger. No time. “Hindmost, tell us about the attitude jets.”
“Bussard ramjets mounted on brackets on the rim wall, regularly spaced, three million miles apart. We should find two hundred mountings on each rim wall. In operation each would collect the solar wind over a four- to five-thousand-mile radius, compress it electromagnetically until it undergoes fusion, and blast it back in rocket fashion, in braking mode.”
“We can see some of them firing. Vala says there are ... twenty-one operating?” Vala nodded. “That’s 95 percent of them missing. Futz.”
“It seems likely. I have holos of forty mountings since we last spoke, and all were empty. Shall I compute the thrust delivered with all jets firing?”
“Good.”
“I expect there are not enough jets mounted to save the structure.”
“Yeah.”
“Would the Ringworld engineers have installed an independently operating stabilizing system?”
Pak protectors didn’t think that way, did they? They tended to have too much confidence in their ability to improvise. “Not likely, but we’ll keep looking. Hindmost, I’m hungry and sleepy.”
“Is there more that must be said?”
“Keep a watch on the attitude jets. See what’s functional and get their thrust.”
“I will.”
“Try to contact the floating city. Tell—“
“Louis, I can send no message through the rim wall.”
Of course not, it was pure scrith. “Move the ship.”
“It would not be safe.”
“What about the probe?”
“The orbiting probe is too distant to send on random frequencies.” With vast reluctance the Hindmost added, “I can send messages via the remaining probe. I should send it over the rim wall in any case, to refuel.”
“Yeah. First set it on the rim wall for a relay station. Try to reach the floating city.”
“Louis, I had trouble homing on your translator. I trace the lander nearly twenty-five degrees to antispinward of your position. Why?”
“Chmeee and I split our efforts. I’m headed for the floating city. He’s headed for the Great Ocean.” It should be safe to say that much.
“Chmeee doesn’t answer my broadcasts.”
“Kzinti make poor slaves. Hindmost, I’m tired. Call me in twelve hours.”
Louis took up his bowl and ate. Valavirgillin had used nothing in the way of spices. The boiled meat and roots didn’t excite his taste buds. He didn’t care. He licked the bowl clean and retained just enough sense to take an allergy pill. They crawled into the vehicle to sleep.
Chapter 17 -
The Moving Sun
The padded bench was a poor substitute for sleeping plates, and it was jolting under him. Louis was stiff tired. He slept and was shaken awake, slept and was shaken awake ...
But this time it was Valavirgillin shaking his shoulders. Her voice was silkily sarcastic. “Your servant dares to break your well-earned rest, Louis.”
“Uh. Okay. Why?”
“We have come a good distance, but here there are bandits of the Runner breed. One of us must ride as gunner.”
“Do Machine People eat after waking?”
She was disconcerted. “There is nothing to eat. I am sorry. We eat one meal, then sleep.”
Louis donned impact armor and vest. Together he and Vala manhandled a metal cover into place over the stove. Louis stood on it and found that his head and armpits rose through the smoke hole. He called down, “What do Runners look like?”
“Longer legs than mine, big chests, long fingers. They may carry guns stolen from us.”
The vehicle lurched into motion.
They were driving through mountainous country, through dry scrub vegetation, chaparral. The Arch was visible by daylight, if you remembered to look; otherwise it faded into the blue of the sky. In the haze of distance Louis could make out a city floating on air in fairy-tale fashion.
It all looked so real, he thought. Two or three years from now it might as well have been some madman’s daydream.
He fished the translator out of his vest. “Calling the Hindmost. Calling the Hindmost ...”
“Here, Louis. Your voice holds an odd tremor.”
“Bumpy ride. Any news for me?”
“Chmeee still does not answer calls, nor do the citizens of the floating city. I have landed the second probe in a small sea, without incident. I doubt that anyone will discover it on a sea bottom. In a few days Hot Needle of Inquiry will have full tanks.”
Louis declined to tell the Hindmost about the Sea People. The safer the puppeteer felt, the less likely he was to abandon his project, the Ringworld, and his passengers. “I meant to ask. You�
��ve got stepping discs on the probes. If you sent a probe for me, I could just step through to Needle. Right?”
“No, Louis. Those stepping discs connect only to Needle’s fuel tank, through a filter that passes only deuterium atoms.”
“If you took off the filter, would they pass a man?”
“You would still end in the fuel tank. Why do you ask? At best you might save Chmeee a week of travel.”
“That could be worth doing. Something might come up.” Now, why was Louis Wu hiding the rogue kzin’s defection? Louis had to admit that he found the incident embarrassing. He really didn’t want to talk about it ... and it might make a puppeteer nervous. “See if you can work out an emergency procedure, just in case we need it.”
“I will. Louis, I locate the lander a day short of reaching the Great Ocean. What does Chmeee expect to find there?”
“Signs and wonders. Things new and different. Tanj, he wouldn’t have to go if we knew what was there.”
“But of course,” the puppeteer said skeptically. He clicked off, and Louis pocketed the translator. He was grinning. What did Chmeee expect to find at the Great Ocean? Love and an army! If the map of Jinx had been stocked with bandersnatchi then what of the map of Kzin?
Sex urge or self-defense or vengeance—any one of these would have driven Chmeee to the map of Kzin. For Chmeee safety and vengeance went together. Unless Chmeee could dominate the Hindmost, how could he return to known space?
But even with an army of kzinti, what could Chmeee expect to do against the Hindmost? Did he think they’d have spacecraft? Louis thought he was in for a disappointment.
But there would certainly be female kzinti.
There was something Chmeee could do about the Hindmost. But Chmeee probably wouldn’t think of it, and Louis couldn’t tell him now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, yet. It was too drastic.
Louis frowned. The puppeteer’s skeptical tone was worrying. How much had he guessed? The alien was a superb linguist; but because he was an alien, such nuances would never creep into his voice. They had to be put there.
Time would tell. Meanwhile, the dwarf forest had grown thick enough to hide crouching men. Louis kept his eyes moving, searching clumps and folds of hillside ahead. His impact armor would stop a sniper’s bullet, but what if a bandit shot at the driver? Louis could be trapped in mangled metal and burning fuel.