by Larry Niven
"You could refuse, each time."
"No. That's my problem exactly." Louis peered into the dark. "What shall I call you?"
The music of the kazoo-harp suddenly had a bass accompaniment. Louis listened for a time. A wind instrument? He could not guess its shape.
"Tunesmith," he decided. "Tunesmith, it's been helpful talking with you."
"We should speak of other things."
"Ships and shoes and sealing wax, and --"
"Protectors."
What did the Ghoul heliograph net know of protectors? "But I'm groggy. Tomorrow night," Louis said, and crawled inside to sleep.
Chapter 12 -
Weaning Vampires
Tegger had expected the window-dome to be some kind of weird dwelling, but it wasn't. There was no obvious way to lock the door. The interior was all one big room, and that was a stairway too big even for Grass Giants: concentric semicircles of steps. And tables, a dozen light tables on skids.
What was this? he wondered. If a hundred or so hominids sat on those steps, they'd have one fine view of the factory city and lands beyond. A conference room? He tried it himself for a bit, then moved on.
Doors at the top of the last step. Beyond, darkness. Tegger lit a torch.
This was not a room to live in. It was all flat surfaces, and thick doors that had little windows in them and little boxes inside.
When in doubt, he thought, keep looking. Three big water basins with drains. A flat table of wood now warped. Hanging from a hundred hooks, metal bowls and dishes with long handles. Behind a panel above eye level Tegger found something he recognized: tiny knobs joined by fine lines of dust.
He began replacing the dust lines with strips of Vala-cloth.
A light came on.
Six channels he'd laid; one light. What did the others do?
There were more doors to the back. Tegger took up his torch and passed through.
Storage here: doors, drawers, and bins. The ghosts of old smells were pleasant enough. Plants. They didn't smell like food, but they probably were. Tegger searched out dried plant residues, but found nothing that even a Grass Giant would eat.
They sat on those semicircular steps and *ate*?
Maybe. Tegger went back into the lighted room. It seemed warmer ... and he still didn't get it until he tried to lean on one of the flat surfaces.
Red Herders don't yell when hurt. Tegger hugged his burnt arm, teeth bared in pain. Then, after careful thought, he began to spit on flat surfaces.
Twice, his spit sizzled.
The doors to two of the boxes were hot to the touch.
He was in some kind of chemical plant. Maybe another hominid could understand this better than he.
***
The peak of the City was a great squat tube with a wasp-waist constriction. A helical stair took him to the rim. Tegger looked about him like a king.
What he'd missed before, leapt at him now that he'd reached the tallest point in the City.
Every roof was the same color!
The flat tops of rectangular solids, the curved tops of tanks, were all a glittery gray. Some had symbols painted on the gray in narrow lines. The only exceptions were the houses along Stair Street, where flat places were soil and pools, and -- yes -- the *stairs* were glittery gray.
But the sides of things were of all colors. Industrial shapes were not so much decorated as labeled. There was script Tegger didn't recognize, square and curved and scrawly. There were simple pictures.
The old City Builders could fly. Why not label the tops of things, too? Unless this gray surface had -- was ... Flup, he almost had it.
*Work on it. Meanwhile ...* He was standing at the rim of a tremendous tube, ten manheights tall and about that wide. Tegger looked down inside, a much greater distance than ten manheights. The reek of ash and chemicals was faint, but he wasn't imagining it. Here was a chimney big enough to burn whole villages.
This alone might be reason enough to set a factory floating. The smoke from such a burning might hover for years before drifting away, but at least it would rise first! Irritated neighbors might be pacified. Then again, how would neighbors reach a floating industrial center to make their complaints?
He'd been climbing stairs and exploring houses for a quarter of the day, but the cruisers hadn't moved. Valavirgillin must have chosen that peak as a defensible position. Sentries shifted on the rock, watching the river, watching the Shadow Nest and its floating roof.
Tegger dropped his poncho to expose the unmistakable color of his skin. At the rim of the tallest point of the City, he raised both arms and waved.
*Warvia! By the power of our love, and Valavirgillin! By the power of the cloth I stole, I've reached this place. Here I will accomplish something, somehow. Somehow!*
Had he been seen? He thought they were pointing at him ...
Well, then.
The City rolled away below him. He was able to find the dock, to orient himself from that. The houses and stairs ran from just below him down to Rim Street, along both sides of a zigzag line. That line was nearly opposite the docks.
Most of what he saw, he still didn't understand. But ...
Cisterns. Sixteen huge cylindrical tanks were open to the sky, evenly spaced about the City. He had to guess that those tanks were intended to hold water. The houses and window-dome, at least, would need water. But the cisterns were empty, every one of them. Like the pools along Stair Street. All empty.
After the Fall of the Cities, citizens would have nothing to carry them down. Some must have gone down the ramp. When the vampires moved in, that option closed. They were marooned.
They would need water. There was the river; there must be pumps. Why else position a factory above a river? But the pumps had likely stopped working, and the rain hadn't started yet.
But they'd drained the City's water. Why had they done that? Were they already crazy?
Whisper was gone, and his own mind wasn't enough. He had to get the cruisers up here, somehow.
He slept in the window-dome that night, on one of the steps. It seemed safe, and he loved the view.
***
At halfnight several hundred vampires streamed away from the Shadow Nest, up the Homeflow and into the mountains. As the last edge of sun disappeared, their numbers rose into the thousands.
Vala's people reacted variously to that many vampires passing that closely. The Gleaners simply missed it: they *had* to sleep at night. Vala rapidly realized that she couldn't use Grass Giant sentries at night. Anyone could see their courage, but anyone could smell their fear ...
Except Beedj. How did they train a budding Thurl? Was it something she could use, too? She sent the rest to bed and relied thenceforth on her own people and the Ghouls.
Whatever their frustrations, they were learning a great deal about vampires.
The second night was ending; and now, in driving rain, beneath a black lid of cloud, the vampires straggled home. Their numbers were thinned a bit, Harpster said, and they had a few tens of prisoners. They had been more quarrelsome going out.
The Ghouls reported structures in the Shadow Nest. There were huts or storage shacks; many had fallen down. Something mountainous stood in mid-river. The Ghouls couldn't see the top of it; their angle was too high.
They could see no way up save for the spiral ramp.
There was a midden, a garbage dump off to port-antispin of the Shadow Nest. It must have been growing for ages, a mountain of vampire and prisoner corpses, until even Vala could see it once it was pointed out. It was too close to the Shadow Nest to be of use to Ghouls.
There was no place beneath the floating factory that the vampires didn't go.
&
nbsp; It was full light now, and the procession of vampires had become a trickle. "When that stops, we're going back to the river," Vala said.
"We need our sleep," Harpster said.
"I know. You stay here."
"We're ripe for bathing and we need to learn. We'll sleep under the awning. Wake us at the river."
***
Valavirgillin rolled the cruiser along the riverbank. There was no way to hide anything so large, and she didn't try.
Flashes of daylight came and went, and flurries of rain. The Shadow Nest loomed ahead, too near. None of her companions could see into the blackness below the ancient hulk; but when the shifting black clouds closed their own lid over the land, Vala could see motion around the shadow's edges. Some vampires, at least, were active.
It was midday. Valavirgillin kept a wary eye on the weather. If it got too dark, the vampires would be out and hunting.
The tilted plate loomed across the sluggish brown water. It looked hard to reach. Vampires seemed safely distant. Vala stepped out onto the river mud.
Two black heads surfaced well out into the water and swam toward them.
It was best to introduce oneself repeatedly to aliens who might not see differences in individuals. "I am Valavirgillin --"
"Rooballabl, Fudghabladl. The river is shallow here. Your cruiser might safely roll as far as the island. It would be more difficult to attack you."
"-- Warvia, Manack, Beedj." Barok and Waast were tending the cannon. "We're not planning to stay. Roobla, there was activity around here last night --"
"The Red companion you asked us to look for, we have seen him. We could not come near, but we saw him fight and we saw him fly. Fudghabladl says that he had a companion. I never saw one --"
Warvia burst out, "Companion? Where would Tegger find a companion? *Was it a vampire?*"
"I saw no companion, no kind. Fudghabladl's sight fails. Tegger talked to himself from time to time. He came to look at this tilted flying thing. Six vampires jumped him. They did no courting, they simply attacked."
Rooballabl sounded petulant, as if the vampires had broken a rule. Vala nodded. *Worth knowing.*
Beyond that, the River Folk had seen not much more than Warvia had seen from the cruisers. When the tale was told, Vala asked, "Are you safe here?"
"We believe so. We learn, too. Do you know that prisoners live in the Shadow Nest?"
"We saw prisoners brought through the pass," Warvia said.
"Some roam free," Rooballabl said. "We did not come near those, but we watched. Never were more than two or three loose at once."
"What species?"
"Two big ones went to eat river grass, then back under the shadow. Grass Giants, I think. Many vampires came to meet them. The vampires fought. Some ran away and the rest fed upon the Grass Giants. The Grass Giants did not survive. But we saw Farmers of the Spin Delta region pull up roots and boil and eat them, and return alive."
Fudghabladl spoke. The River Folk chatted a bit, then Rooballabl translated in spurts. "Fudghabladl watched a Red woman. She spent half a day hunting, but badly. She had no patience. She came back again and again to the shadow and her vampire. He would send her again. Late in the day she caught a leaperbuck drinking, jumped it and broke its neck. Pulled it back to the shadow. Three vampires shooed the rest off. These three drank the beast's blood, then they rished with the Red, then the Red ate of the leaperbuck. She was very hungry."
Vala tried not to see the hot rage and shame in Warvia's face. She asked Rooballabl, "Did you see any of my species?"
More River Folk chatter. Then, "One, a young woman, goes guarded by a vampire male. Valavirgillin, what success for you?"
"We've seen Tegger waving at us. He's up there, alive and active. I still don't see how we can get ourselves up. I don't see how else we can do anything."
"What did you expect?"
Warvia half snarled, "The *Ghouls* had a *plan*. The ramp they want doesn't go all the way down."
Vala half expected angry comments from under the awning, but the Night People held their peace.
"It must have reached the ground once," Rooballabl said. "What else could it be for?"
When the city worked, there had been flying cargo craft, but rolling craft must have been cheaper, and surely there were cargoes too heavy to float. "I expect the Fall of the Cities brought the vampires," Vala said.
Beedj asked, "How?"
With her eyes on the misty outline of the Shadow Nest, Valavirgillin let her mind roam and her tongue follow. "A center of industry could hardly permit vampires to nest in their basement. So, somehow they kept the vampires out, but when the cities fell, it stopped working. Vampires look for shadows. They moved in. One night the vampires went up the ramp. They didn't get everyone, so by the next night the refugees had pulled up the ramp --"
Again Beedj asked, "How?"
Vala shrugged.
Rooballabl's voice was like bubbles popping in mud. "Ask instead, why? They built a tremendous hanging road for cargoes too big even for this great floating plate. Why would anyone build it to move, to lift? Such a -- vertical bridge -- would be difficult to build, and easily damaged if it also had to lift. We understand weight and mass a little, I think."
Rooballabl was right, and Vala was irritated. "I don't know the answer. How about a war between people who could fly and people who couldn't? You'd want to pull up the bridge, so to speak."
Her crew looked at each other. Beedj asked, "Do any of you have old records of such a war?" None spoke. "Rumors, then?"
"Forget it," Vala snapped.
Manack asked, "Why build the ramp to lift? Why not just lift the city a little?" Alien or not, he saw something in Vala's demeanor and added, "Never mind."
***
The sky was black and pouring rain when Tegger waked into the shadow.
He lit a torch when he could, but the light didn't travel far. It lit a featureless circle of the road down. He was walking into a roar like a rainstorm. He edged to the right side and found a rib-high curb. Peered over and saw nothing.
They must have seen him. They might not like the torch, but it certainly made him conspicuous. He was carrying nine more. What would happen if he dropped one?
Instead, he leaned far over the curb and hurled the torch onto the loop of road below him. He looked over to be sure it still burned, then walked a little farther down the ramp. He'd come somewhat more than a full turn.
Now he could let his night vision develop.
These odors reminded him of the nights he and the others had spent waiting to speak to the Ghouls. The sounds were like the Thurl's tent at night: domestic sounds, murmurs, sudden quarrels, all in an alien language, all above a sound like a waterfall. What he imagined below him must be worse than the reality ...
Tegger looked over.
The bottom of the spiral ramp was high off the ground.
Something inside him saw that as funny. He could see pale triangular faces looking up, and that was funny, too. Tegger began to giggle.
Deep into shadow, water fell in a vertical river, a waterfall of tremendous scope. All the rain falling on the City was pouring onto some huge dark mass, and thence into the Homeflow.
He was at the edge of the City. The waterfall must be near or at the center, but the roar was loud even here. It was pouring onto, *into*, a vast, intricate structure, then into the Homeflow via lesser falls and streams. Tegger could see little but dark-on-dark, but ... here was a fountain of such size as nobody but an ancient City Builder would even consider.
The Homeflow ran around the fountain on both sides. Here it seemed to be confined in concrete. Where the concrete ended, near Tegger's perch, was rapids. Water falling fr
om the City, adding its momentum to the Homeflow itself, had cut a deep canyon. Only its walls showed in the blaze of daylight around the City's edge.
And of course there were vampires everywhere.
Most were asleep, cuddled in family groups. Wait, now ... that was a Machine People, wasn't it? Hard to tell in the dark. A woman, despite the mustache; she had breasts. And no clothing. She was the center of a circle of vampires.
It looked to Tegger like they were protecting her from other vampires: from thieves. Four of adult size, two small enough to be children, and the infant in one woman's arms: enough to guard her.
Machine People had been taken during the attacks on the Thurl. Tegger continued to watch.
The baby woke and attempted to suck.
The woman half woke. She gave the baby to the Red woman. Oh, flup, the Red was putting it to her neck!
Tegger let himself slump against the curb, in the dark. He hadn't eaten in some time, but old bird meat was trying to rise again.
Why do vampires collect prisoners?
How do vampires wean their babies?
Tegger didn't want to know anymore.
Sometimes the trick is to set a problem aside. Tegger had almost reached the light above him when it all came together in his mind.
Water. Ramp. Lights. Vampires below, stranded City Builders above. The cruisers!
There was more to be learned, but Tegger knew what he had to do now. And afterward ... ultimately he'd love help.
***
All over the floating industrial structure, lights were going on.
Valavirgillin was hurting for lack of sleep. Soon she would seek her bed. But they were so beautiful.
Her mind drifted.
Food was running low in the heights. Grass was scarce; prey was scarce and agile. The Gleaners were finding enough to eat. The River Folk had found fish, enough and to spare. Cruiser One had brought whole basketfuls back. Fish would feed anyone but the Ghouls and Grass Giants. Machine People would need something more than fish, but not yet.
A few vampires were hunting around the Shadow Nest's garbage dump. They must be hungry, Vala thought, but they were having some success. Warvia reported scavengers no Red had ever seen before. Perhaps Ghouls killed competing scavengers where they could.