by Larry Niven
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 could 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.”
“Yah.”
“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.”
“Yah. 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.
He kept his full attention on the landscape.
And presently he saw that it was beautiful. Straight trunks five feet tall sprouted enormous blossoms at their tips. Louis watched a tremendous bird settle into a blossom, a bird similar to a great eagle except for the long, slender spear of a beak. Elbow root, a larger breed than he’d seen on his first visit, some ninety million miles from here, flourished in a tangle of randomly placed fences. Here grew the sausage plant they’d eaten last night. There, a sudden cloud of butterflies, at this distance looking much like Earth’s butterflies.
It all looked so real. Pak protectors wouldn’t build anything flimsy, would they? But the Pak had had vast faith in their works, and in their ability to repair anything, or even to create new widgets from scratch.
And all of his speculation was based on the word of a man seven hundred years dead: Jack Brennan the Belter, who had known the Pak only through one individual. The tree-of-life had turned Brennan himself into a protector-stage human—armored skin, second heart, expanded braincase, and all. That might have left him insane. Or Phssthpok might have been atypical. And Louis Wu, armed with Jack Brennan’s opinions on Phssthpok the Pak, was trying to think like something admittedly more intelligent than himself.
But there had to be a way to save all this.
***
Chaparral gave way to sausage-plant plantations to spinward, rolling hills to antispinward. Presently Louis saw his first refueling station ahead. It was a major operation, a chemical factory with the beginnings of a town growing around it.
Vala called him down from his perch. She said, “Close the smoke hole. Stay in the van and do not be seen.”
“Am I illegal?”
“You are uncustomary. There are exceptions, but I would need to explain why you are my passenger. I have no good explanation.”
They pulled up along the windowless wall of the factory. Through the window Louis watched Vala dickering with long-legged, big-chested people. The women were impressive, with large mammaries on large chests, but Louis wouldn’t have called them beautiful. Each woman had long, dark hair covering her forehead and cheeks, enclosing a tiny T-shaped face.
Louis crouched behind the front seat while Vala stowed packages through the passenger’s door. Soon they were moving again.
An hour later, far from any habitation, Vala puffed off the road. Louis climbed down from his gunner’s perch. He was ravenous. Vala had bought food: a large smoked bird and nectar from the giant blossoms. Louis tore into the bird. Presently he asked, “You’re not eating?”
Vala smiled. “Not till night. But I will drink with you.” She took the colored glass bottle around to the back of the vehicle and ran clear fluid into the nectar. She drank, then passed the bottle. Louis drank.
Alcohol, of course. You couldn’t have oil wells on the Ringworld, could you? But you could build alcohol distilleries anywhere there were plants for fermenting. “Vala, don’t some of the, ah, subject races get to like this stuff too much?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you do about it?”
The question surprised her. “They learn. Some become useless from drinking. They supervise each other if they must.”
It was the wirehead problem in miniature, with the same solution: time and natural selection. It didn’t seem to bother Vala … and Louis couldn’t afford to let it bother him. He asked, “How far is it to the city?”
“Three or four hours to the air road, but we would be stopped there. Louis, I have given thought to your problem. Why can’t you just fly up?”
“You tell me. I’m for it if nobody shoots at me. What do you think—would somebody shoot at a flying man, or would they let him talk?”
She sipped from the bottle of fuel and nectar. “The rules are strict. None but the City Builder species may come unless invited. But none have flown to the city either!”
She passed him the bottle. The nectar was sweet: like watered grenadine syrup, with a terrific kick from what must be 200 proof alcohol. He set it down and turned his goggles on the city.
It was vertical towers in a lily-pad-shaped clump, in a jarring variety of styles: blocks, needles tapered at top and bottom, translucent slabs, polyhedral cylinders, a slender cone moored tip down. Some buildings were all window; some were all balconies. Gracefully looping bridges or broad, straight ramps linked them at unpredictable levels. Granted that the builders weren’t quite human, Louis still couldn’t believe that anyone would build such a thing on purpose. It was grotesque.
“They must have come from thousands of miles around,” he said. “When the power stopped, there were buildings with independent power supplies. They all got together. Prill’s people mushed them all up into one city. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“Nobody knows. But, Louis, you speak as if you watched it happen!”
“You’ve lived with it all your life. You don’t see it the way I do.” He kept looking.
There was a bridge. From a low, windowless building at the top of a nearby hill, it rose in a graceful curve
to touch the bottom of a huge fluted pillar. A poured stone road switchbacked uphill to the hilltop building.
“I take it the invited guests have to go through that place at the top, then up the floating bridge.”
“Of course.”
“What happens in there?”
“They are searched for forbidden objects. They are questioned. If the City Builders are choosy about whom they let up, why, so are we! Dissidents have sometimes tried to smuggle bombs up. Mercenaries hired by the City Builders once tried to send them parts to repair their magic water collectors.”
“What?”
Vala smiled. “Some still work. They collect water from the air. Not enough water. We pump water to the city from the river. If we argue over policy, they go thirsty, and we do without the information they gather, until a compromise is reached.”
“Information? What have they got, telescopes?”
“My father told me about it once. They have a room that shows what happens in the world, better than your goggles. After all, Louis, they have height and a view.”
“I should be asking your father all this. How—”
“That may not be a good idea. He is very … he does not see …”
“I’m the wrong shape and color?”
“Yes, he would not believe you can make things like the things you own. He would take them.”
Tanj dammit. “What happens after they let the tourists through?”
“My father comes home with his left arm inscribed in a language only the City Builders know. The script gleams like silver wire. It does not wash off, but it fades in a falan or two.”
That sounded less like a tattoo than like printed circuitry. The City Builders might have more control over their guests than their guests knew. “Okay. What do the guests do up there?”
“They discuss policy. They make gifts: large quantities of food and some tools. The City Builders show them wonders and do rishathra with them.” Vala stood suddenly. “We should be moving.”