by Larry Niven
Louis had been expecting that, a little, and it wasn’t Laliskareerlyar’s odd appearance that made him hesitate. It was the terror of taking off his armor and his tools. He remembered an old sketch of a king brooding on his throne. I’m paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?
But he was far overdue for sleep! He was simply going to have to trust the Lyars. “Good,” he said. He began to strip off his armor.
Age had treated Laliskareerlyar oddly. Louis knew ancient literature, plays and novels that predated boosterspice. Age was a crippling disease … but this woman wasn’t crippled. Her skin was loose on her, and her limbs didn’t bend as far as Louis’s. But she had an endless interest in love, and in the strangeness of Louis’s body and reflexes.
It was a long time before he slept. He had begged off telling her about the plastic under his hair. He wished she hadn’t reminded him of that. The Hindmost had a working droud … and he hated himself for wanting it.
***
He was awakened near nightfall. The bed jolted twice, and he blinked and rolled over. He faced Laliskareerlyar and a City Builder man who had also been touched by age.
Laliskareerlyar introduced him as Fortaralisplyar, her mate of record and Louis’s host. He thanked Louis for his work on the building’s old machinery. Dinner was already on one of the tables, and Louis was invited to share it with them: a large bowl of stew, too bland for Louis’s taste. He ate.
“Orlry Building asks more than we have,” Fortaralisplyar told Louis. “We have bought for you the right to enter three of our neighbors’ buildings. If you succeed in repairing even one of their water condensers, we can get you into Orlry Building. Is that satisfactory?”
“Excellent. I need machines that haven’t worked in eleven hundred years, and haven’t been tampered with either.”
“My mate told me.”
Louis left them to their sleep as dark was falling. They had invited him to join them, and the great bed was roomy enough, but Louis was slept out and restless.
The great building was like a tomb. From the upper floors Louis watched for activity in the maze of bridges. He saw nothing but an occasional big-eyed Night Hunter. It figured. If the City Builders slept ten hours out of thirty, it might as well be during the dark. He wondered if they were an asleep in the lighted buildings too.
“Calling the Hindmost,” he said.
“Yes, Louis. Must we translate?”
“No need, we’re alone. I’m in the floating city. It’ll take me a day or two to get into the Library. I think I’m marooned here. My flying belt’s ruined.”
“Chmeee still will not answer.”
Louis sighed. “What else is new?”
“In two days my first probe will complete its circuit of the rim wall. I can bring it to the floating city. Will you want me to negotiate directly with the inhabitants? We are good at that. At least I can lend credence to your tale.”
“I’ll let you know. What about the Ringworld attitude jets? Have you found any more mounted?”
“No. Of those you know of, all twenty-one are firing. Can you see them?”
“Not from here. Hindmost? Can you learn anything about the physical properties of scrith, Ringworld floor material? Strength, flexibility, magnetic properties?”
“I have been working on that. The rim wall is available to my instruments. Scrith is very much denser than lead. The scrith floor of the Ringworld is probably less than a hundred feet thick. I’ll show you my data when you return.”
“Good.”
“Louis, I can give you transportation, if need be. It would be easier if I could send Chmeee.”
“Great! What kind of transportation?”
“You will have to wait for my probe. I will give further instructions then.”
He watched the nearly empty city for a while after the Hindmost hung up. He felt depressed. Alone in a gone-to-seed building in a gone-to-seed city, without his droud …
A voice behind his shoulder said, “You told my mistress that you are not nocturnal.”
“Hello, Mar Korssil. We use electric lighting. Some of us keep strange hours. Anyway, I’m used to a shorter day.” Louis turned around.
The big-eyed humanoid wasn’t pointing her weapon at Louis, exactly. She said, “These past falans, the day has been changing its length. It is distressing.”
“Yah.”
“Whom did you speak to?”
“A two-headed monster.”
Mar Korssil departed. Perhaps she was offended. Louis Wu remained at the window, free-associating through the memories of a long and eventful life. He had given up hope of returning to known space. He’d given up the droud. Perhaps it was time to give up … more.
***
Chkar Building was a poured-stone slab covered in balconies. Explosions had scarred one side of the building, exposing the metal skeleton in places. The water condenser was a trough along the top, slightly canted. An old explosion had sprayed metal droplets into the machinery below. Louis didn’t expect his repairs to work, and they didn’t.
“Mine is the blame,” Laliskareerlyar said. “I had forgotten that Chkar Building fought with Orlry Building two thousand falans ago.”
Panth Building was built like an onion standing on its tip. Louis guessed that the building had started life as a health club; he recognized pools, spas, hotboxes, massage tables, a gymnasium. The place seemed to have plenty of water. And a faint half-familiar smell tickled at his memory …
Panth had also fought with Orlry. There were craters. A bald young man named Arrivercompanth swore that the water condenser had never been damaged. Louis found the dust tracks in the machinery, and the contacts above them. When he had made his repairs, there were water droplets forming on the rounded roof and running into a gutter.
There was some difficulty about payment. Arrivercompanth and his people wanted to offer rishathra and promises. (And then Louis recognized the scent tickling his nose and hindbrain. He was in a house of ill repute, and there were vampires somewhere about.) Laliskareerlyar wanted cash now. Louis tried to follow her argument. He gathered that the Ten would be unhappy when Panth stopped buying water, and only too happy to levy a fine against them for fraud. Arrivercompanth paid.
Gisk had been a condominium, or something similar, at the Fall of the Cities. It was a cube with an air well down the center, and it was half empty. Judging by the smell of the place, Gisk had been restricting its use of water overmuch. Louis was learning the look of water-condensation machinery. He made his repairs quickly, and they worked. The Gisks paid at once. They fell at Laliskareerlyar’s feet to express their thanks … ignoring her tool-wielding servant. Oh, well.
Fortaralisplyar was delighted. He packed a double-handful of metal coins into Louis’s vest and explained the tricky etiquette of bribery. The face-saving language would strain his translator to the limits. “When in doubt, don’t,” Fortaralisplyar told him. “I will come with you to Orlry Building tomorrow. Let me do the bargaining.”
***
Orlry Building was on the port side of the city. Louis and Fortaralisplyar took their time, sightseeing, walking the highest ramps to get a better view. Fortaralisplyar was proud of his city. “A bit of civilization remained even after the Fall,” he said. He pointed out Rylo, a building that had been an emperor’s castle. It was beautiful but scarred. The emperor had tried to claim the city for his own at about the time Orlry Building arrived. A fluted column shaped like a Greek pillar, supporting nothing but itself, was Chank, which had been a shopping center. Without the supplies aboard Chank—from markets, restaurants, clothing and bedding stores, even toy shops—for trading with the Machine People, the city would have died early. From the basement of Chank the air road spiraled down to Sky Hill.
Orlry Building was a disc forty feet thick and ten times that wide, built along the lines of a pie. The massive tower at one edge, elaborated with gun emplacements and railed platforms and a derrick, reminded Louis of the bridge of a great ship—a battleship.
The walkway to Orlry was broad, but there was only one walkway and one entrance. Along the upper rim were hundreds of small projections. Louis guessed that they were cameras or other sensors, and that they no longer worked. Windows had been chopped into Orlry’s sides after the building was raised. The glass in them fitted poorly.
Fortaralisplyar was dressed in yellow and scarlet robes of what appeared to be vegetable fiber: coarse by Louis’s standards, but grand from a distance. Louis followed him into Orlry, into a large reception area. There was light, but it flickered: scores of alcohol lamps burning near the ceiling.
Eleven City Builder types of both sexes waited for them. They were dressed almost identically, in loose pants with tight cuffs and brightly colored capes. The edges of the capes were cut elaborately and without symmetry. Badges of rank? The white-haired man who came smiling to greet them wore the most elaborately cut cape and a shoulder gun.
He spoke to Fortaralisplyar. “I had to see him for myself, this being who can give us water from machinery five thousand falans dead.”
The handgun in his worn plastic shoulder holster was small, with clean, efficient lines; but even a gun couldn’t make Filistranorlry look warlike. His small features showed happy curiosity as he examined Louis Wu. “He seems unusual enough, but … well. You have paid. We shall see.” He gestured to the soldiers.
They searched Fortaralisplyar, then Louis. They found his flashlight, tested it, gave it back. They puzzled over his translator until Louis said, “That speaks for me.”
Filistranorlry jumped. “So it does! Will you sell that?” He was speaking to Fortaralisplyar, who answered, “It is not mine.”
Louis said, “I would be mute without it.” Orlry’s master seemed to accept this.
***
The water condenser was a dip in the center of Orlry’s broad roof. The access tubes below were too small for Louis. Even if he took off his armor he wouldn’t fit, and he didn’t intend to do that. “What do you use for repairmen? Mice?”
“Hanging People,” Filistranorlry said. “We must rent their services. Chilb Building was to have sent them by now. Do you see any other problems?”
“Yes.” By now the machinery was familiar enough; Louis had repaired three buildings and failed at a fourth. He could see what ought to be a pair of contacts. He looked for the dust below them, and it wasn’t there. “Were there earlier attempts at repair?”
“I assume so. How would we know, after five thousand falans?”
“We’ll wait for the repairmen. I hope they can follow orders.” Tanj! Somebody long dead had neatened things up by blowing the telltale dust tracks away. But Louis was sure he could get his arms in there …
Filistranorlry asked, “Would you care to see our museum? You’ve bought that right.”
Louis had never been a weapons buff. He recognized some of the principles, if not the forms, behind the killing tools in the glass cases and behind the glass walls. Most of them used projectiles or explosions or both. Some would throw strings of tiny bullets that exploded like small firecrackers in enemy flesh. The few lasers were massive and cumbersome. Once they must have been mounted on tractors or floating platforms, but those had been scavenged for use elsewhere.
A City Builder arrived with half a dozen workmen. The Hanging People stood as high as Louis’s floating ribs. Their heads seemed too large for their bodies; their toes were long and dexterous, and their fingers nearly brushed the floor. “This is probably a waste of time,” one said.
“Do it right and you’ll be paid anyway,” Louis told him. The little man sneered.
They wore armless gowns covered in pockets, the pockets heavy with tools. When the soldiers wanted to search them, they stripped off the gowns and let the soldiers search those. Perhaps they didn’t like to be touched.
So small. Louis whispered to Fortaralisplyar, “Does your species do rishathra with those?”
The City Builder chuckled. “Yes, but carefully.”
The Hanging People clustered around Louis Wu’s shoulders, peering, as he reached into the access tube. He wore the insulated gloves he’d borrowed from Mar Korssil. “These are what the contacts look like. Fasten the cloth strip thus … and thus. You should find six pairs of contacts. There may be a worm track of dust below.”
After they had disappeared around the curve of the access tube, he told the masters of Orlry and Lyar, “We’ll never know it if they make a mistake. I wish we could inspect their work.” But he did not mention his other fear.
The Hanging People presently emerged. They all trooped up onto the roof: workers, soldiers, masters, and Louis Wu. There they watched as mist formed and condensed and water ran toward the center of the dip.
And six Hanging People now knew how to repair water condensers with strips of black cloth.
“I want to buy that black cloth,” Filistranorlry said.
The Hanging People and their City Builder master were already disappearing down the stairwell. Filistranorlry and ten soldiers blocked Louis and Fortaralisplyar from that escape route.
“I don’t intend to sell,” Louis said.
The silver-haired soldier said, “I hope to keep you here until I can persuade you to sell. If pressed, I will insist that you sell the talking box too.”
Louis had half expected this. “Fortaralisplyar, would Orlry Building keep you here by force?”
Lyar’s master looked Orlry’s master in the eye as he said, “No, Louis. The complications would be unpleasant. The lesser buildings would join to free me. The Ten would become the Nine rather than face a boycott on guests.”
Filistranorlry laughed. “The lesser buildings would grow thirsty …” and his smile vanished as Fortaralisplyar’s grew. Lyar Building now had water to give away.
“You could not hold me. Guests would be pushed from the ramps. The dramas in Chkar and the facilities in Panth would be closed to you—”
“Go, then.”
“I take Louis.”
“You do not.”
Louis said, “Take the money and go. It’ll make things easier for all concerned.” His hand was in his pocket, on the flashlight-laser.
Filistranorlry held out a small bag. Fortaralisplyar took it, counted the contents. He walked through the soldiers and descended the stairway. When he was out of sight, Louis pulled the hood of the impact suit over his head.
“I offer a high price. Twelve–” something untranslated. “You would not be cheated,” Filistranorlry was saying. But Louis backed toward the edge of the roof. He saw Filistranorlry signal to the soldiers, and he ran.
The edge of the roof was a chest-high fence: zigzag iron spokes, carved to resemble elbow root. The shadow farm was far below. Louis ran along the fence toward the walkway. The soldiers were close, but Filistranorlry was standing back and firing his pistol. The roar was disconcerting, even terrifying. A slug slammed into Louis’s ankle; the suit went rigid, and he rolled like a tumbled statue, picked himself up, and ran again. As two soldiers threw themselves at him, he swung over the fence and dropped.
Fortaralisplyar was on the walkway. He turned, startled.
Louis landed flat on his face, in an impact suit gone rigid as steel. The form-fitting coffin supported him, but he was still stunned. Hands helped him to his feet before he really wanted to get up. Fortaralisplyar put his shoulder under Louis’s armpit and began walking them away.
“Get away. They might shoot,” Louis gasped.
“They would not dare. Are you hurt? Your nose is bleeding.”
“It was worth it.”
Chapter 21
The Library
They entered the Library via a small vestibule in the bottom of the cone, the tip.
Behind a wide, massive desk, two librarians worked at reading screens: bulky machines, styled like a cluster of boxes, that used book tapes rolling through a reader. The librarians looked like a priest and priestess in identical blue robes with jaggedly cut collars. It was some minutes before the woman looked up.
> Her hair was pure, clean white. Perhaps she’d been born with white hair, because she wasn’t old. A woman of Earth would have been about to take her first shot of boosterspice. She was straight and slender, and pretty, Louis thought. Flat-chested, of course, but nicely built. Halrloprillalar had taught Louis to find a bald head and a well-shaped skull sexy. If she would smile … but even to Fortaralisplyar she was rude and imperious. “Yes?”
“I am Fortaralisplyar. Have you my contract?”
She tapped at the keyboard of the reading machine. “Yes. Is this the one?”
“He is.”
Now she looked at Louis. “Luweewu, can you understand me?”
“I can, with the aid of this.”
When the translator spoke, her calm cracked, but only for a moment. She said, “I am Harkabeeparolyn. Your master has purchased your right to unlimited research for three days, with an option to purchase an additional three days. You may roam the Library at will, barring the residential sections, the doors marked in gold. You may use any machine unless it is marked thus.” She showed him: an orange tic-tac-toe grid. “To use these, you need help. Come to me or to anyone whose collar is cut like mine. You may use the dining room. For sleep or a bath you must return to Lyar Building.”
“Good.”
The librarian looked puzzled. Louis was a little startled himself. Why had he said that with such force? It struck him that Lyar Building felt more like home to him than the apartment on Canyon ever had.
Fortaralisplyar paid out silver coins, bowed to Louis, and departed. The librarian turned back to her reading screen. (Harkabeeparolyn. He was tired of six-syllable names, but he’d better memorize it.) Harkabeeparolyn glanced around when Louis said, “There’s a place I’d like to find.”
“In the Library?”
“I hope so. I saw a place like it long ago. You stood at the center of a circle, and the circle was the world. The screen at the center turned, and you could make any part of the world show big—”