The Ringworld Engineers

by Larry Niven

  Brennan’s skin was deeply wrinkled leathery armor. His joints were abnormally swollen. His lips and gums had fused into a hard beak. None of this seemed to bother the drastically altered Belt miner.

  “All the symptoms of old age are holdovers from the change from breeder to protector,” he was telling a long-dead ARM inquisitor. “Skin thickens and wrinkles; it’s supposed to get like this, hard enough to turn a knife. You lose your teeth to leave room for the gums to harden. Your heart can weaken because you’re supposed to grow a second heart, two-chambered, in the groin.”

  Brennan’s voice was a rasp. “Your joints are supposed to expand, to offer a larger moment arm for the muscles. Increased strength. But none of this works quite right without tree-of-life, and there hasn’t been tree-of-life on Earth for three million—“

  Louis jumped when fingers tugged at his jumper. “Luweewu? I’m hungry.”

  “Okay.” He was tired of studying anyway; it wasn’t telling him much that was useful.

  Harkabeeparolyn was still asleep. The smell of meat broiling in a flashlight-laser beam woke her. Louis dialed fruits and cooked vegetables for them, and showed them where to dump anything they didn’t like.

  He took his own dinner into the cargo hold.

  It bothered him to have dependents. Granted that both were Louis Wu’s victims. But he couldn’t even teach them to get their own meals! The settings were marked in Interworld and the Hero’s Tongue.

  Was there any way to put them to work?

  Tomorrow. He’d think of something.

  The computer was beginning to deliver results. The Hindmost was busy. When Louis got the puppeteer’s attention for a moment he asked for the records of Chmeee’s invasion of the castle.

  The castle occupied the peak of a rocky hill. Herds of piglike beasts, yellow with an orange stripe, grazed the yellow grass veldt below. The lander circled about the castle, then settled into the courtyard in a cloud of arrows.

  Nothing happened for several minutes.

  Then orange blurred from several arched doorways at once, too fast to see.

  They stopped, flattened like rugs and clutching weapons, against the base of the lander. They were kzinti, but they seemed distorted. There had been divergence over a quarter of a million years.

  Harkabeeparolyn spoke at Louis’s shoulder. “Are these your companion’s kind?”

  “Close enough. They seem a little shorter and a little darker, and ... the lower jaw seems more massive.”

  “He abandoned you. Why don’t you leave him?”

  Louis laughed. “Why, to get you a bed? We were in battle conditions when I let a vampire seduce me. He was disgusted. As far as Chmeee knows, I abandoned him.”

  “No man or woman can resist a vampire.”

  “Chmeee is not a man. He couldn’t possibly want rishathra with a vampire, or with any hominid.”

  Now more of the great orange cats sprinted to posts beneath the lander. Two carried a rust-stained metal cylinder. The dozen cats crept to the far side of the lander.

  The cylinder disappeared in a blast of yellow-white flame. The lander slid a yard or two. The kzinti waited, then crept back to study the results.

  Harkabeeparolyn shuddered. “They seem more likely to desire me for a meal.”

  Louis was growing irritated. “They might. But I remember a time when Chmeee was starving, and he never touched me. What’s your problem, anyway? Don’t you get carnivores in the city?”

  “We do.”

  “And the Library?”

  He thought she wouldn’t answer. (Furry faces showed at many of the slit windows. The explosion had done no visible damage.) Then, “I was in Panth Building for a time.” She did not meet his eyes.

  For a moment he couldn’t remember. Then: Panth Building. Built like an onion floating tip down. Repairs to the water condenser. The ruler wanted to pay the fee in sex. Scent of vampire in the halls.

  “You had rishathra with carnivores?”

  “With Herders and Grass People and Hanging People and Night People. One remembers.”

  Louis withdrew a little. “With Night People?” Ghouls?

  “The Night People are very important to us. They bear information for us and for the Machine People. They hold together what is left of civilization, and we do well not to offend them.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But it was the—Luweewu, the Night Hunters have a very keen sense of smell. The scent of vampire sends them running. I was told that I must have rishathra with a Night Hunter. Without vampire scent. I asked for transfer to the Library.”

  Louis remembered Mar Korssil. “They don’t seem repugnant.”

  “But for rishathra? We who have no parents, we must pay society’s debt before we can mate and make a household. I lost my accumulated fund when I transferred. The transfer did not come soon enough.” She looked up into his eyes. “It was not joyful. But other times were as bad. When the vampire scent wears off, the memory does not One remembers the smells. Blood on the Night Hunter’s breath. Corruption on the Night People’s.”

  “You’re well out of that,” Louis said.

  Some of the kzinti tried to stand up. Then they all fell asleep. Ten minutes later the hatch descended. Chmeee came down to take command.

  It was late when the Hindmost reappeared. He looked rumpled and tired. “It seems your guess was correct,” he said. “Not only will scrith hold a magnetic field, but the Ringworld structure is webbed with superconductor cables.”

  “That’s good,” said Louis. A great weight lifted from him. “That’s good! But how would City Builders know that? I can’t see them digging into the scrith to find out.”

  “No. They made magnets for compasses. They traced a gridwork of superconductor lines running in hexagonal patterns through the Ringworld foundation, fifty thousand miles across. It helped them make their maps. Centuries passed before the City Builders knew enough physics to guess what they were tracing, but their guess led them to develop their own superconductor.”

  “The bacteria you seeded—“

  “it will not have touched superconductor buried in scrith. I’m aware that the Ringworld floor is vulnerable to meteorites. We must hope that none ever breached the superconductor grid.”

  “It’s good odds.”

  The puppeteer pondered. “Louis, are we still searching for the secret of massive transmutation?”

  “No.”

  “It would solve our problem very nicely,” said the Hindmost. “The device must have operated on a tremendous scale. Converting matter to energy must be far easier than converting matter to other matter. Suppose we simply fired a ... call it a transmutation cannon at the underside of the Ringworld at its farthest distance from the sun. Reaction would put the structure back in place very nicely. Of course there would be problems. The shock wave would kill many natives, but many would live, too. The burned-off meteor shielding could be replaced at some later date. Why are you laughing?”

  “You’re brilliant. The trouble is, we don’t have any reason to think there was ever a transmutation cannon.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Halrloprillalar was just making up stories. She told us so later. And after all, how would she know anything about the way the Ringworld was built? Her ancestors weren’t much more than monkeys when that happened.” Louis saw the heads dip, and snapped, “Do not curl up on me. We don’t have the time.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Little. Pattern analysis is still incomplete. The fantasies involving the Great Ocean mean nothing to me. You try them.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Sounds too low to interp
ret held him awake. Louis turned over in darkness and free fall.

  There was light enough to see. Kawaresksenjajok and Harkabeeparolyn lay in each other’s arms, murmuring in each other’s ears. Louis’s translator wasn’t picking it up. It sounded like love. The sudden stab of envy made him smile at himself. He’d thought the boy was too young; he’d thought the woman had sworn off. But this wasn’t rishathra. They were the same species.

  Louis turned his back and closed his eyes. His ears expected a rhythmic wave action; but it never came, and presently he was asleep.

  He dreamed that he was on sabbatical.

  Falling, falling between the stars. When the world became too rich, too varied, too demanding, then there came a time to leave all worlds behind. Louis had done this before. Alone in a small spacecraft, he had gone into the unexplored gaps beyond known space, to see what there was to see, and to learn if he still loved himself. Now Louis floated between sleeping plates and dreamed happy dream of falling between the stars. No dependents, no promises to keep.

  Then a woman howled in panic, right in his ear. A heel kicked him hard, just below the floating ribs, and Louis doubled up with a breathy cry. Flailing arms battered him, then closed round his neck in a death-grip hug. The wailing continued.

  Louis pried at the arms to free his throat. He called, “Sleepfield off!”

  Gravity returned. Louis and his attacker settled onto the lower plate. Harkabeeparolyn stopped screaming. She let her arms be pried away.

  The boy Kawaresksenjajok knelt beside her, confused and frightened. He spoke urgent questions in the City Builder language. The woman snarled.

  The boy spoke again. Harkabeeparolyn answered him at length. The boy nodded reluctantly. Whatever he’d heard, he didn’t like it. He stepped into the corner, with a parting look that Louis couldn’t interpret at all, and vanished into the cargo hold.

  Louis reached out for his translator. “Okay, what’s it all about?”

  “I was falling!” she sobbed.

  “It’s nothing to be afraid of,” Louis told her. “This is how some of us like to sleep.”

  She looked up into his face. “Falling?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her expression was easy to interpret. Mad. Quite mad ... and a shrug. Visibly she braced herself. She said, “I have made myself know that my usefulness is over, now that your machines can read faster than I can. I can do one thing only to make our mission easier, and that is to ease the pain of your thwarted lust.”

  “That’s a relief,” Louis said. He meant it as sarcasm; would she hear it that way? Louis was tanjed if he’d accept that kind of charity.

  “If you bathe, and clean your mouth very thoroughly—“

  “Hold it. Your sacrifice of your comfort to higher goals is praiseworthy, but it would be bad manners for me to accept.”

  She was bewildered. “Luweewu? Do you not want rishathra with me?”

  “Thank you, no. Sleepfield on.” Louis floated away from her. From previous experience he sensed a shouting match coming, and that couldn’t be helped. But if she tried physical force, she’d find herself falling.

  She surprised him. She said, “Luweewu, it would be terrible for me to have children now.”

  He looked down at her face: not enraged, but very serious. She said, “If I mate now with Kawaresksenjajok, I may bring forth a baby to die in the fire of the sun.”

  “Then don’t. He’s too young anyway.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Oh. Well. Don’t you have—No, you wouldn’t be carrying contraceptives. Well, can’t you estimate your fertile period and avoid it?”

  “I don’t understand. No, wait, I do understand. Luweewu, our species ruled most of the world because of our command of the nuances and variations of rishathra. Do you know how we learned so much about rishathra?”

  “Just lucky, I guess?”

  “Luweewu, some species are more fertile than others.”

  “Oh.”

  “Before history began, we learned that rishathra is the way not to have children. If we mate, four falans later there is a child. Luweewu, can the world be saved? Do you know that the world can be saved?”

  Oh, to be on sabbatical. Alone in a singleship, light-years from all responsibility to anyone but Louis Wu. Oh, to be under the wire ... “I can’t guarantee anything at all.”

  “Then do rishathra with me, to let me stop thinking of Kawaresksenjajok!”

  It was not the most flattering proposal of Louis Wu’s young life. He asked, “How do we ease his mind?”

  “There is no way. Poor boy, he must suffer.”

  Then you can both suffer, Louis thought. But he couldn’t make himself say it. The woman was serious, and she was hurting, and she was right. This was not a time to bring a baby City Builder into the world.

  And he wanted her.

  He climbed out of free fall and took her to the water bed. He was glad that Kawaresksenjajok had retired to the cargo hold. What would the boy have to say tomorrow morning?

  Chapter 26 -

  Beneath the Waters

  Louis woke under gravity, with a smile on his face, a pleasant ache in every muscle, and a grittiness in his eyes. He had slept very little last night. Harkabeeparolyn hadn’t exaggerated her urgency. He had never known (despite his time with Halrloprillalar) that City Builders went into heat.

  He shifted, and the big bed surged beneath him. A body rolled against him: Kawaresksenjajok, on his belly, spread out like a starfish and snoring gently.

  Harkabeeparolyn, curled in orange fur at the foot of the bed, stirred and sat up. She said, perhaps in apology at leaving him, “I kept waking up and not knowing where I was, with the bed heaving under me.”

  Culture shock, he thought. He remembered that Halrloprillalar had liked the sleeping field, but not for sleeping. “There’s plenty of floor. How do you feel?”

  “Much better, for the moment. Thank you.”

  “Thank you. Are you hungry?”

  “Not yet.”

  He exercised. His muscles were still hard, but he was out of practice. The City Builders watched him with puzzled expressions. Afterward he dialed breakfast: melon, souffl’s [souffles] Grand Marnier, muffins, coffee. His guests refused the coffee, predictably, and also the muffins.

  When the Hindmost appeared he looked rumpled and tired. “The patterns we sought are not evident in the records of the floating city,” he said. “All species build their armor in the shape of a Pak protector. Armor is not the same everywhere, not quite, but the styling does not vary in any pattern. It may be we can blame the spread of City Builder culture for that. Their empire mixed ideas and inventions until we may never trace their origins.”

  “What about the immortality drug?”

  “You were right. The Great Ocean is seen as a source of horrors and delights, including immortality. The gift is not always a drug. Sometimes it comes without warning, bestowed by whimsical gods. Louis, the legends make no sense to me, a nonhuman.”

  “Set the tape up for us. I’ll get our guests to watch it too. Maybe they can explain what I can’t.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “What about repairs?”

  “There has been no repair activity on the Ringworld in recorded history.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “How large a region is covered by the city records? How long a time? Small, and short. Aside from that, I’ve studied the old interviews with Jack Brennan. I gather that protectors have long lives and very long attention spans. They prefer not to use servomechanisms if they can do a job themselves. There was no autopilot aboard Phssthpok’s spacecraft, for instance.”

  “That’s not consiste
nt. The spillpipe system is certainly automatic.”

  “A very simple brute-force approach. We don’t know why the protectors died or left the Ringworld. Is it possible that they knew their fate, that they had time to automate the spillpipe system? Louis, we don’t need to know any of this.”

  “Oh, yeah? The meteor defense is probably automatic too. Wouldn’t you like to know more about the meteor defense?”

  “I would.”

  “And the attitude jets were automatic. Maybe there were manual overrides for all of that. But a thousand hominid species have evolved since the Pak disappeared, and the automatics are still going. Either the protectors always intended to leave—which I can’t believe—“

  “Or they took many years to die,” the Hindmost said. “I have my own ideas on that.” And he would say no more.

  Louis found fine entertainment that morning. The tales of the Great Ocean were good stuff, with heroes and royalty and feats of detection and magic and fearsome monsters, and a flavor different from the fairy tales of any human culture. Love was not eternal. The City Builder hero’s (or heroine’s) companions were always of the opposite sex, their loyalty was held by imaginatively described rishathra, and their conveniently strange powers were taken for granted. Magicians were not automatically evil; they were random dangers to be avoided, not fought.

  Louis found the common denominators he was looking for. Always there was the vastness of the sea and the terror of the storms and the sea monsters.

  Some of those would be sharks, sperm whales, killer whales, Gummidgy destroyers, Wunderland shadowfish, or trapweed jungles. Some were intelligent. There were sea serpents miles long, with steaming nostrils (implying lungs?) and large mouths lined with sharp teeth. There was a land that burned any ship that approached, invariably leaving one survivor. (Fantasy, or sunflowers?) Certain islands were sea beasts of sedentary inclination, such that a whole ecology could establish itself on a beast’s back, until a shipload of sailors disturbed the creature. Then it would dive. Louis might have believed that one if he hadn’t seen the same legend in Earth’s literature.