by Larry Niven
The teleport device that had been mounted on the probe’s flank now lay flat on the riverbank beside the Council House.
“Nobody’s trying to hide it,” Louis said. “The little disk in the nose with the deuterium filter, is that still in place?”
The Hindmost looked. “Yes.”
“It’s almost flattering. Someone wants me back.”
“Theft!”
“Yeah, but leave it. What you’d better do is bring the probe here and mount another disk. Acolyte, the Hindmost will read you your contract. Don’t harm either of these people. Wake me up when the ’doc is through with me. The kitchen wall has settings to feed a Kzin, and Bram here will be using it, too. Will you be all right?”
“Yes.”
“Stet.” With no small trepidation, Louis lay down in the coffin-shaped ’doc. The lid closed.
Chapter 21
Physics Lessons
AIR SLED TRANSFER STATION, A.D. 2893
They saw it days ahead: a black line against the vastly more distant starboard rim wall.
Closer, the line became a tremendous and artificial silhouette rising above the desert: a raised platform with bumps clustered near the center.
Closer yet, the Reds could see daylight under parts of the elevation. By then Warvia knew. It was the Night People’s goal, and the Sand People’s cemetery.
They were traveling through a dry land. Sand wasn’t good for the motor. There had been a hungry few days before they ran across the Sand People.
The Sand People went muffled in pastel robes. Small, compact beasts drew their wagons in groups of twelve, and served as meat animals, too. Carnivores! Red Herders and Machine People rejoiced alike.
They made gifts of the cloth they’d taken from the Shadow Nest. The Sand People killed two of their beasts to make a feast. The several species shared lore and stories as best they could. Only Karker spoke the trade language well enough to be understood, and everything had to be translated.
Rishathra didn’t require translation, only gestures. Without their robes, the Sand People were small and compact: as short as Gleaners, with broader torsos and lean arms and legs.
Harpster and Grieving Tube kept to the payload shell.
The cruiser departed at halfdawn.
It made Warvia uneasy to know that the Ghouls below her driving bench were near starving. But their goal was in sight.
They arrived in bright mid-afternoon.
An ancient road half covered with sand rose to the axis of the platform. Three arms splayed out from the center section at 120-degree angles. The arms were wedge-shaped platforms that floated unsupported.
The center section was a forest of mooring posts, metal rails, pulleys, and ropes. The roofed buildings on this structure looked like afterthoughts. They were empty and sandblasted by time: warehouses, a banquet hall, an inn. Running through the axis was a deep well with clean water at the bottom.
On one of the wide paths between buildings, the Sand People had laid out their dead. It looked as if they had been doing that for generations. There were hundreds of skeletons. A double handful at the hub end were more mummy than bone. A few were more recent yet.
“Just as Karker said,” said Sabarokaresh. “Warvia, did Karker tell you …?”
Warvia said, “Karker told me how to find a shrieker village. Sand People don’t eat shriekers, but I told him we could.”
“You were guessing?”
“Well, what choice? Antispin of the funeral place …” Warvia waved to antispin, and then looked again. Not thirty paces paces [sic—should be a single “paces”] away, the smooth plains became a jumble of mounds. It looked like a crumbling city in miniature.
“We won’t wake the Ghouls,” Sabarokaresh decided. “Let them wake and follow their noses.”
So they set their wagon on the cemetery heights, not too close to the array of corpses, and went out to look over the shrieker village.
***
It was not the strangest thing Warvia had seen, yet it was strange enough.
Here on the flat plain were hundreds of squared-off mounds. It looked like a half-melted city as built by people a foot high. Every mound had a door in it. Every door faced out from the center of the city.
When the vampire killers walked toward the mounds, an army poured out of the holes and took up station.
The shriekers were of a size to make a day’s meal, Warvia thought. Their faces were blunt. They came out on all fours, then stood upright to display outsize claws intended more for digging than fighting, and shrieked. The high pitch hurt Warvia’s ears.
“Sticks,” Forn suggested.
Tegger waved it off. “If we just wade in and start clubbing them, they’ll swarm us. There’s a forest of ropes where we left the wagon. Didn’t I see a net there?”
***
The guard took station again to defend their city. Barok and Tegger threw the net. It was of strong, coarse weave, intended to lift cargo. Most of the guard crawled out and attacked. The Reds and Machine People ran then, pulling the net behind them, and paused to flip it over, to trap the few remaining guards. The other shriekers stopped, shrieked at the invaders, and returned to their stations.
Four big ones remained caught.
The Reds had eaten, and the Machine People were cooking their catch, before shadow crossed the sun. The Night People emerged, looked about them, and followed their noses. Warvia and Tegger crawled into the payload shell to sleep.
***
“Mummified, most of them,” Harpster told them at the following halfdawn. “Too far gone even to carry as hardship rations. Most of them died old. Sand People seem to lead a good, healthy life. Never mind, there was a …”
“Herder,” Grieving Tube finished for him. “Killed by his own beasts, I expect. We rarely starve.”
“Good,” Warvia said.
The sliver of sun was already too bright for the Night People. They sat under an awning while the others soaked up sunlight and waited for the morning to warm.
“We asked the Sand People about this place,” Foranayeedli said. “They grow up in its shadow, but they know nothing of it except as a burial place.”
“It’s much more,” Harpster said. “Our need now is to mount the cruiser and moor it tight. We’ll need food for five days for all four of you—”
Sabarokaresh said, “We leave you here.”
Warvia and Tegger had known this was coming. Warvia said, “We thank you for staying so long. We would have looked peculiar, Red Herders driving a Machine People cruiser. Have your plans changed?”
“We return to port at our own pace. We’ll buy our passage with stories and lore. We’ll teach the tribes we pass among to make fuel.” Barok squeezed his daughter’s arm. “When finally we reach Machine People again, we’ll have enough of bounties to make Forn a dowry.”
“For the lessons also, thank you,” Tegger said carefully.
The girl favored him with a lecherous smile. “You were easy to teach!” She glanced at her father. “Oh, there were things we never yet spoke of—”
“Courting,” Barok said.
“Yes. Remember how to court,” Foranayeedli said. “Most hominids have courting rituals. Don’t try to guess what they are. Stick to your own. It keeps you comfortable, keeps them amused. Can you remember courting?”
Warvia said, “A little.”
Tegger said, “We court briefly and negotiate first. I suppose other hominids consider us shy or cold.”
“Hmm, yes—”
Grieving Tube said firmly, “Time runs short. We must mount the wagon. Barok, Forn, you’ll help before you leave?”
“We will. We’ve found livestock, too. What do you intend?”
“The wagon must sit solidly on the vehicle at the end of the starboard platform.”
“Is that a vehicle?”
It was one of three long floating platforms. Tegger might have taken it for a covered dance floor, tournament field, shooting range … The roof was transparen
t. The floor was flat, and five times as big as the cruiser’s wheelbase. Sturdy aluminum loops as big as his torso were recessed into the floor.
They centered the cruiser on the platform. Harpster and Grieving Tube supervised from under the awning while the rest threaded rope through aluminum loops and over and around the iron payload shell. They used pulleys to put tension on the ropes, until it seemed no force beneath the Arch would cause the wagon to shift.
They were done by midday. Barok and Forn began to gear up for their own journey.
“You’ll need food,” Tegger said. “Shall we smoke some shriekers?”
“Good. And I noticed something,” Barok said. He led them to his find: a shallow tray three manheights long by two wide, with lines trailing from holes at the corners. He lifted it effortlessly.
Warvia grinned. “Brilliant! You can tow it!”
“Yes. But first …”
***
The shrieker guard emerged to form rank.
First, the nets. They scooped up most of the guard, twisted the net and threw it aside.
Then the four dipped the edge of their tray into the loose sandy dirt and pushed and wiggled and pushed until the tray slid in and under. When they pulled at the ropes, the corners of the tray came up. They had a section of shrieker city on a tray.
The guard had been working their way free. What they saw maddened them. A swarm of them dug straight into the section of city on the tray, frantic lest it escape. The rest formed a crescent and screamed.
Lifting it took all the strength of all four, but they only had to carry it thirty paces. Then ropes and pulleys lifted it to the cemetery heights, and sliding posts on rails took it the rest of the way. They set it down aft of the cruiser, and slid the tray out from under the dirt.
Four shriekers still struggling in the net were pulled loose, killed, cleaned, and smoked over wood Barok pulled from a collapsed building. The Machine People drank as they worked, as much water as their bellies could carry. They left before halfnight.
***
Warvia and Tegger talked to the Night People while they inspected the work.
“Truly, we thought you, too, would leave us before now,” Harpster said. He was looking to spinward of port, where Foranayeedli and Sabarokaresh were tiny shadows.
The Sand People had mapped a path to other tribes. Traveling by night, the City Builders could bounce from one tent city to another until they were in green lands once again.
And where, Warvia wondered, would two Red Herders be by then?
Warvia explained: “Red Herders travel widely. Twenty daywalks is nothing. Where we settle, rumor and questions will catch us up. We make poor liars, Harpster. We must go farther. Best to do without the questions.”
Tegger said, “In twenty daywalks we’ve had rishathra with Machine People and Dryland Farmers and Sand People.”
Warvia remembered that her own experience was wider yet. Nobody spoke that truth, not even Harpster. He only gunned and said, “But not Weed Gatherers nor Ghouls. Picky!”
Warvia’s eyes dropped. She would rish, but not with a Ghoul, and Tegger wouldn’t either.
“But we acted without the encouragement of vampire musk,” Tegger said. “There is a restlessness in us—or me …?”
“Us,” Warvia said firmly. “Mated we are, but no longer for each other alone. I don’t doubt that we can return to our custom—”
“But we must be far from the rumor of Red Herders who rished with every species along their path! We’ve nearly left the Machine People empire behind. A little farther—”
Warvia said, “Five days, you said. How does this thing move?”
The Ghouls were at work closing the aft end of the great crystal canopy. Warvia began to feel claustrophobic. It bothered her, how little she and Tegger knew of where they were going.
She thought they would not answer; and then Harpster said, “Like this.” He moved a lever that took both arms and a strong back. The platform detached from the dock.
Motion was hard to see, it was so smooth, but the platform was clearly drifting away.
“How far are you going?” Tegger asked.
“Oh, easily farther than the rumors you’re fleeing.” Harpster grinned.
Grieving Tube strode around the bulk of the wagon. “Is this Barok’s work? He did well. Tegger, Warvia, we’re going as far as the rim wall. We can drop you off at the next stop if you like, or you can come along and then leave us coming back.”
Tegger laughed incredulously. “You’ll be dead of old age before you get to the rim wall!”
“Next stop, then,” Harpster said agreeably.
Grieving Tube chitter-whistled angrily. Harpster laughed and chittered back, whistling ribald-sounding comments through his teeth.
“Grieving Tube wants you,” he told the Red Herders. “She thinks we should travel with people who can look daylight in the face.”
“We only need to be outside Machine People turf,” Tegger said.
“Leave us when you like. But think! It’s serious work we’re doing. We’re going up the spill mountains and farther yet. No Red Herder has ever done anything so big. You’ll have so much to tell when you finally settle that you’ll never remember to speak of rishathra.”
The desert slid smoothly past. Warvia asked, “What are we riding?”
“It’s a Builder thing. I’ve only heard about them. None of the Night People would use an air sled unless the need was dire, but we have permission and directions.”
“How fast does it go?” The landscape was moving faster yet. The receding dockyard had become a dot. A sound was rising, as of wind heard through a sturdy stone wall.
“Fast. We’ll be below the spill mountains in five days.”
“No.”
“So I was told. But the first stop is only three days away.”
“I’m frightened.” Watching the world zip past was beginning to hurt Warvia’s eyes.
“Warvia, there are lines under the land. In drawings they took like a honeycomb, and they lift and move Builder things. We can only stop where the lines come together.”
“Three days,” Grieving Tube repeated.
Far across the desert, a caravan of hominids and beasts popped up and was gone so quickly that Warvia couldn’t even identify the species. The air sled was still accelerating.
***
The payload shell smelled of Ghouls. It hummed. Warvia huddled against Tegger in the dark and didn’t speak of what was happening outside. They mated with an intensity backed by fear, and for that time Warvia entirely forgot where she was. But then the whisper of motion was back, and Tegger’s voice in the darkness to drown it out.
“What was Karker like?”
“Strong. Strange to hold: strangely shaped.”
“Down here …?”
“No, not here. His body was broad, shoulders and belly and hips. I think every man is alike here. And he was very eager to talk, to try his skill at trade language.”
“You only talked?”
Warvia giggled. “We rished. It was his first time. Imagine, Tegger! I was his teacher!”
“Did you tell him—”
“Of course. The only Red Herder woman who ever engaged in rishathra, and all his for the night. He loved it. Who were you with?”
“Hen—no, Hansheerv. I made sure I got her name right. She was the tall one, almost my size?” Warvia laughed at that, and he said, “The old leader’s widow, though she’s about my age. Of course we couldn’t talk. We tried to rish in the dark, but we couldn’t gesture that way, so we went outside and did it by Archlight.”
“I wonder if the Night People were watching.”
“I wondered, too,” Tegger said. And then the whisper of uncanny speed was in their ears and souls.
They dozed. When each knew that the other couldn’t sleep, they mated again. And tried to sleep again. When the outline of the door was a white glow, Warvia asked, “Are you hungry?”
“Yes. Are you going out?
/>
“No.”
The door opened on halfdawn light. The Ghouls shambled in. The door closed. “We’re moving well along,” Harpster said, and Tegger heard relief and fatigue in his voice. “Warvia, Tegger, are you all right?”
“Scared,” Warvia said.
Tegger asked, “Shouldn’t someone be steering?”
Grieving Tube said, “The air sled rides lines buried in the scrith. We can’t get lost.”
Tegger said, “If the air sled went astray, it would kill us so fast that we’d barely know it.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“How do you know?”
Harpster growled. Grieving Tube said, “Let us sleep.”
Since they’d left the vampires behind, the Night People had been sleeping in the payload shell. The smell was rich. Warvia huddled against her mate and tried not to think of the smell of Ghouls, or her hunger, or the vibration in the iron around her.
She uncurled and stood up. “I’m going to hunt up a meal. Shall I bring you back something?”
“Yes.”
***
They had left the eternal clouds far behind. The day was ablaze. The land streamed past, pulling Warvia’s eyes with it. Warvia dropped from the cruiser and loped over to the piled sand, keeping her gaze always toward her feet.
No shrieker guards came.
Warvia found an entrance hole and tickled it with a stick. A fat shrieker popped out and screamed at her. She snatched it, broke its neck and ate voraciously.
She couldn’t keep from looking. The land had become a vast forest. The tops of huge trees were all far below, all converging and disappearing behind the sky sled. The motion threw her balance off, making her dizzy.
She made herself circle the cargo tray and tickle another opening. When a defender appeared, she snatched it and wrapped it in her skirt.
She was stepping onto the running board when she heard a voice speak her name.
The shrieker fell and scampered free. Warvia jumped straight backward, her spear poised to kill. That wasn’t Tegger, and the Ghouls were fast asleep …