The Ringworld Throne

by Larry Niven

  "It's just one great black spot to me," Warvia said.

  "They're there," Grieving Tube said. "That top one --"

  "Bigger than the rest. Spear as thick as my leg, and it doesn't have a point, it just goes right up into the roof. It's a pipe for the power. Sorry, Boss."

  "Flup! Not water pipes? Of course not, they've got infinite water. All right. But we'll search topside first because it's easier. Get Tegger to show us what he found. Then look where he didn't."

  ***

  Warvia refused to let them wake Tegger. "Boss, he showed you everything he knows!"

  Harpster and Grieving Tube dropped out early. Nobody could expect Ghouls to guess where an alien hominid would put light switches!

  The rest of the warriors spread through the city. Valavirgillin cut a sheet of Louis's cloth, once a priceless secret, into strips and gave them away like confetti. They played with the boxes and switches Tegger had showed them, and presently had the city blazing to rival the cloudy daylight.

  Thin strips of glittery gray ran from the glittery-gray rooftop patches, down the sides of buildings. Several of the party followed those lines to where they converged. When Twuk brought Valavirgillin to see, she found a hole near the city's center that was as wide as a Ghoul's leg. She stirred traces of dust she found inside, and sniffed her finger. She couldn't be sure that it was ruined superconductor; but Vala didn't doubt what they'd found.

  She hated what had to come next, but there was no help for it. The channel could be two tens of manheights high. Vala cut all of her remaining sheets of Louis Wu's cloth into strips, knotted them together, tied the resulting rope to a chunk of wall and lowered it into the hole until it went slack.

  What was it touching, down there at the bottom of a statue's spear haft? It *might* be an unbroken line of power. She'd done what she could. Now she used torn branches to move the top end of her toe to where all the channels of silver-gray joined. That patch was flat. There was nothing to tie her line to, but she could weight it with a block of rubble only three Grass Giants could lift.

  The clouds darkened and presently sent forth a steady rain. The explorers bore what they could of that, then came trickling back to the dock area. Each looked into Ramp Street. The Grass Giants were the last to give up. The others told them what they'd found, but the Grass Giants had to look, too. The Shadow Nest remained in shadow.

  Chapter 16 -

  Web of Spies

  A shadow crossed the light, falling on his closed eyelids. Tegger was just close enough to waking to enjoy the warmth, the relaxation, the sense of Warvia's back against his chest and belly, the smell of her hair. If he let himself wake further, he'd be thinking of hunger.

  Hunger. How was he to feed Warvia? The carrion birds had fled from noise and alcohol fumes and heroes. There were vampires -- he shied from a sick memory -- but what was here for carnivore Reds?

  *Drive the vampires away. Descend. Hunt.*

  In daylight all shadows were vertical. Night must have fallen, and these must be dockyard lights. Who would be moving past at night? Tegger opened his eyes.

  Two furry backs moved in and out of the light, moved away down Rim Street.

  Tegger slid away from Warvia. He found a blanket and covered her. Harpster and Grieving Tube were turning into Stair Street. Tegger followed, stalking.

  Ghouls were a secretive bunch. They had the right to their secrets; but Reds were stalkers.

  The Night People moved in a glare of artificial light. The rest of Vala's crew had found switches Tegger missed. Night was their element, but tonight it was the Ghouls who were half blind. Would it bother them? Ghouls must depend a good deal on scent.

  The houses along Stair Street were staggered. There was plenty of cover. Tegger hid behind solid masses, trees and walls, staying well back. Where were the Ghouls?

  Coming out of a shattered window, softly complaining in their own speech. Tegger had found a whole family of skeletons in that house. Were the Ghouls sniffing out carrion? They'd find nothing but bones.

  At the top of Stair Street they moved into the bubble-shaped banquet hall. Nothing for them there, either, Tegger remembered. He waited in an empty pool, his eyes just above the rim.

  They came out, and continued up into shadow. The City's apex, the chimney, was still dark. Would they climb it to view their domain? But as Tegger eeled up crooked Stair Street, he did not see shadows rising against the sky. He grew more cautious still.

  The sound he heard then was loud. Metal was being tormented.

  He climbed a ladder and peered over the top of a chemical storage tank, his shadow lost in a maze of pipes.

  The Ghouls were at the base of the chimney. It was still too dark to see what they were doing. He heard brick being cut in rhythmic fashion, cut by a saw. He dropped from the ladder and began weaving closer.

  It wasn't food they were seeking. What, then? He edged from behind a radiator wall, and Grieving Tube took him by the wrist.

  He most carefully didn't reach for his sword. He whispered, "It's Tegger."

  Grieving Tube called, "It's Tegger!" She grinned into his face and said, "You slept through some of this. Valavirgillin is sure there must be lamps focused on the structure below us. Only need to be turned on. We think so, too, but switches are down there."

  "What, in the fountain?"

  "Fountain, stage, mid-stage command offices, speaking platform. They would want to command the light themselves. Valavirgillin has restored the cable that carries the sunpower."

  "They'd want some way of getting down there, too," Harpster said. He had come up quite silently. Ghouls could teach Red Herders how to stalk prey. "I thought we might find a stairway, something for people, for visitors. The ramp isn't it --"

  "The ramp is for vehicles. People would feel menaced," Grieving Tube said.

  "So we looked for a stairway along the chimney, because we already know it goes pretty far down, but Grieving Tube has a better idea."

  Tegger said, "That chimney goes down to a furnace."

  "It goes to furnaces all over the city. Channels off to all sides, down inside. We looked." Harpster grinned with great square teeth. "Coming? Or would you prefer to stalk us?"

  Tegger said, "There's not much entertainment up here, and not much distraction to a hungry Red."

  Harpster said, "You solved that one. You ate --"

  "Come, then," Grieving Tube said hastily, "we will divert you." She walked downstep toward the dining place, away from the chimney. Her hand was on Tegger's wrist, her grip unbreakably strong.

  "I know what I ate," Tegger said.

  "Yes, but who would you tell? Your mate?"

  "Yes."

  Grieving Tube stopped in the door. "Truly?"

  "Of course I must tell Warvia."

  Harpster said, "Four vampires on the ramp. You killed three. The remaining woman, you knocked out all her teeth and rished with her, then hacked off a segment of muscle meat. It seems clear you must have eaten it."

  Tegger said, "I could see the cruisers below me, running into shadow. I had to get into the ramp to give the drivers light. The smell maddened me, and my hunger maddened me, and I did mad things. But I still dropped the torches and the fuel."

  In the end it was Harpster who turned away.

  A table or two fell over as they climbed the giant steps. The Ghouls weren't dexterous here. "After the Boss said that about lights," Grieving Tube said, "I got to thinking what else they'd want down there. I thought, food."

  Harpster pushed through and waited for the others to follow him.

  The big room was stifling hot. "Don't touch anything," Tegger said. "I should have turned those off."

  "If you can remember which one
s aren't lights," Grieving Tube said.

  Tegger nodded. He began plucking Vala-cloth twists from between pairs of knobs, snatching them free in a jolt and sparkle of sunpower.

  "People working down below us, in offices," Harpster said. "People sitting in arcs around a stage. People just watching water fall. Would they get hungry? Omnivores get hungry a lot."

  "Maybe not just omnivores. Other hominids, too," said Grieving Tube. "Diplomatic relations, it may be."

  "It seems the long way around," Tegger said. "Catch food down there on the surface, raise it, grow it, ship it in from farms. What then? Char it, cut it up, mix it with flavorings? Fine. But why carry it up here just to send it back down?"

  Grieving Tube sighed. "The Red's got a point."

  "Yes, and *we* didn't find anything, but the lighting is fluppy awful in here," Harpster said. "See what you can see, Tegger." He opened another door.

  It was the storage chamber Tegger had explored earlier. Lights glowed in the ceiling. Tegger had found doors and drawers at every level, doors an armlength high and smaller, but he hadn't left them open like this. Vala's whole caravan must have been through here.

  Storage areas behind the doors, and not much in the storage areas. Dried plants, various kinds, some covered with fungus ...

  Harpster said, "Gleaners and Grass Giants found some dried roots here, not much else. But these lights are blinding, and if we turn them off it's like being buried."

  "Harpster? Can't you see in the dark?"

  "Night People can see at *night*. By Archlight. Even in a rainstorm it's not *black*."

  None of these cupboard doors was even big enough for a Gleaner. "Did you find any more doors?"

  "Nothing man-sized."

  A cheery voice called, "What about Hanging People?"

  Tegger jumped. That was Warvia!

  She was looking down at him from above a wall of boxes. "Warvia! Where have you been?" he cried.

  She laughed, flattered. "Behind you as you left the dock. When your prey stopped, I bathed in a pool so I could get closer still."

  Harpster said, "Prudent. Our sense of smell is better than you might guess. So, shall we invite you into our puzzle?"

  She jumped down. On her back was one of Valavirgillin's alcohol flamers. "I heard most of it and solved some of it. Come and look?"

  "We follow."

  Warvia led them back into the heat. "You know, " she said, "the raw foodstuffs probably come up from the docks, up the alleys. Whatever they do to it here, there's probably some chemistry involved, things none of us would do to food. But it's food going *down* that has to be in small clumps."

  Grieving Tube asked, "Truly? Why?"

  Warvia moved among the tables and hot surfaces and doors. "You're watching a play. Or you're playing dominance games for high stakes, water and grazing rights. Or your Thurl is speaking your tribe's future. Down comes your dinner, but it's half a weebler. It's burnt black on the outside and seared dry on the inside, just the way you like it, and there's enough to feed twenty people, but there's twenty-six of you! What now?"

  She's worked this out after she had the answer, Tegger thought. She was enjoying herself greatly.

  "You fight for your share. Or you try to cut it evenly, but maybe six of you are all trying, too. You forget the play or the shouting match or the speech. The actors grow enraged, or the Thurl. But if individual portions come down, nobody needs to fight," Warvia said.

  Here was a little door set into a wall, a thick door with a window in it, showing two shelves in a box. Warvia opened the door and put her hand in --

  Tegger shouted, "Hot!"

  "I touched the door first, love." She pushed against the back of the box, and the box wiggled. "Watch this." She closed the door and flipped a switch down.

  The box dropped away, leaving an empty space behind.

  "The door won't open now, " she said, and showed them.

  Harpster asked, "How far down does it go?"

  "It should go to where food's wanted. What you were saying, I never could see why *people* had to go down with the food. So I touched every door, and opened doors that weren't hot, and this was what was loose. Then I had to find someplace to put a strip of Vala-cloth."

  Harpster flipped the switch to its middle position, then up. "That box wouldn't hold a man."

  "It'll hold me, if we take the shelves out."

  It would hold Tegger as easily. Tegger didn't bother offering. Warvia's puzzle, Warvia's choice. Red Herders are territorial.

  The shelves came up and out easily. Maybe the old City Builders did sometimes send down a whole burnt weebler or whatever. Warvia tried to crawl into the resulting space and couldn't.

  The Night People lifted her bodily into place. On her side, her legs and arms sprawled past the door. On her back, on her face ... but her legs wouldn't fold that far. Tegger thought of tearing the top off the box, to see if there was room above it. What he finally said was, "Even major surgery won't get you in there with weapons too."

  "I'd go naked!"

  "You don't fit," Grieving Tube said. "This is a box for a Gleaner. Try all you like, Warvia. We are not hurried. Harpster my love, our part here is over. Gleaners don't wake until full day."

  ***

  The Night People chatted as they walked back to the docks. Harpster said, "We should send something down ahead of our emissary. A bottle of fuel? Balanced to spill over? In case there are vampires between him and the fuse box. A quick fireball, *poomf*."

  Tegger didn't feel like talking, and Warvia spoke not at all. They crawled under their awning and watched Grieving Tube and Harpster slink away.

  Then Warvia took Tegger's hand and slid out the other side of the awning. They ran softly to where the docks narrowed to become Rim Street. "We explored while you slept," Warvia whispered. "Follow me."

  Tegger said, "I have to tell you about something."

  "On the ramp? I heard. You went mad. I went mad. We're still mates. But, love, I do not see how we can go home."

  Tegger sighed, relieved that such a nightmare could be solved so easily. "Where, then?"

  "I have half a notion. Come."

  They ran a zigzag path through a system of alleys, climbed through and along pipes to reach a higher level, working their way up.

  Warvia led the way over the banquet hall and down, and farther up, and behind the chimney, and around, on their bellies now, toward a sound of metal being tortured.

  The noise stopped.

  Warvia gestured him back. She stood and stepped forth. "Very good. Now how will you get it down?"

  Harpster and Grieving Tube finished lowering the great ceramic slab onto its back. They had cut it no more than a thumblength thick; it must be quite fragile, Warvia assumed. The front of it was a bronze web of intricate geometric form.

  Harpster said, "We do love our secrets. Still, this slab isn't going down unless in a cruiser. We'll have to tell the Boss. So. How much do you know?"

  "I saw you cutting it. Looked it over after you led Tegger away. What is it? Why do you want it?"

  Harpster said, "We think it's an eye and an ear and maybe other senses, too. We think it belongs to Louis Wu and his off-Arch companions."

  "We think they were the ones who recentered the sun," Grieving Tube said. "That would make them immensely powerful. We could tell them how to use that power, if we could communicate with them --"

  "But Louis Wu popped into some kind of flying tube. Later our sources saw that tube, or another such, hovering near the Shadow Nest. Night People elsewhere report more such webs. It must be for spying."

  Warvia asked, "You'll try to talk to it?"

  "We'll try that. If n
othing answers, then we'll take it to where it can see what we want seen."

  "Tegger and I can't go home," Warvia said carefully. "If we had Night People to speak for us as heroes, we might find entry into another tribe of Red Herders. With that in mind, where do you intend to travel?"

  Harpster began to bark laughter. Grieving Tube snapped at him. "Fool! They need not come all the way. Warvia, we -- No, tell me this instead. How much shock can you stand?"

  Warvia beckoned. Tegger came into view. No point in hiding now, he was laughing too hard. He said, "If you think you can still shock us, go ahead and try."

  Harpster began to talk.

  Chapter 17 -

  The War Against the Dark

  Tremendous tilted faces looked out of the rock. Two Red Herders and two even larger Night People spoke secrets none could hear, for an audience --

  Louis Wu was the only one laughing.

  Louis tore his gaze free of the Hindmost's show. For the locals it must seem that they were watching gods decide their fate.

  The Sailing People had run.

  He saw no trace of Tunesmith or Kazarp.

  Weavers were all about him, but most of them were asleep. Torpid Weaver children were trying to keep their eyes open. Tomorrow they'd know they had dreamed. Louis Wu was alone before these tremendous faces.

  He said in Interspeak, for the Hindmost's benefit, "Those Ghouls came a long way to steal a webeye. They really must want to talk to you."

  The view changed. For the blink of an eye it became an infrared map of the village pool: black water, faintly glowing Weavers asleep on low tables, the brighter glow of Louis Wu's naked skin ... and a lacework glow behind him, and another alongside the Council House.

  *Kazarp and Tunesmith hidden in tall grass. The Ghouls are watching, too. Will they recognize themselves?*

  Huge faces dimmed. The webeye and its brick backing were being set down in darkness. Now the cliff was only dark rock.

  ***

  The sun was no more than a sliver of light palely glowing through cloud when Valavirgillin rolled out to see what the commotion was about.