The Ringworld Engineers Part 16

"Why?"

"An alien had my electric source. He wanted to give me orders. But I was ashamed before that."

"The City Builders never had wires in their skulls. We would have found them when we searched the ruined cities. Where is this custom practiced?" she asked. Then she rolled away from him and stared at him in horror.

It was the sin he regretted most often: not keeping his mouth shut. He said, "I'm sorry."

"You said strips of that cloth would -- What is that cloth?"

"It conducts electric current and magnetic fields with no loss. Superconductor, we call it."

"Yes, that was what failed the City Builders. The ... superconductor rotted. Your cloth will rot too, will it not? How long?"

"No. It's a different kind."

She screamed it at him. "*How do you know that, Louis Wu?*"

"The Hindmost told me. The Hindmost is an alien who brought us here against our will. He left us with no way home."

"This Hindmost, he took you as slaves?"

"He tried to. Humans and kzinti, we make poor slaves."

"Is his word good?"

Louis grimaced. "No. And he took the superconductor cloth and wire when he fled his world. He didn't have time to make it. He must have known where it was, in storage. Like the other things he brought, the stepping discs: it must have been readily available." And he knew instantly that something was wrong, but it took him a moment to know what it was.

The translator had stopped speaking too soon.

Then it spoke with a very different voice. "Louis, is it wise to, tell her these things?"

"She guessed part of it," Louis said. "She was about to blame me for the Fall of the Cities. Give me back my translator."

"Can I allow you this ugly suspicion? Why would my people perform so malicious an act?"

"Suspicion? You son of a b.i.t.c.h." Vala knelt watching him with big eyes, listening to him talk to himself in gibberish. She couldn't hear the Hindmost's voice in his earphones. Louis said, "They kicked you out as Hindmost and you ran. You grabbed what you could and ran. Stepping discs and superconductor cloth and wire and a s.h.i.+p. Discs were easy. You must make them by the million. But where would you find superconductor cloth just waiting for you? And you knew it wouldn't rot on the Ringworld!"

"Louis, why would we do such a thing?"

"Trade advantage. Give me back my translator!"

Valavirgillin got up. She pulled the pot a little out from the fire, stirred it, tasted. She disappeared toward the vehicle and returned with two wooden bowls, which she filled with a dipper.

Louis waited uneasily. The Hindmost could leave him stranded, with no translator. Louis wasn't good with languages ...

"All right, Louis. It wasn't planned this way, and it happened before my time. We were searching for a way to expand our territory with minimal risk. The Outsiders sold us the location of the Ringworld."

The Outsiders were cold, fragile beings who roamed throughout the galaxy in slower-than-light craft. They traded in knowledge. They might well have known of the Ringworld, and sold the information to puppeteers, but ... "Wait a minute. Puppeteers are afraid of s.p.a.ceflight."

"I overcame that fear. If the Ringworld had proved suitable, then one s.p.a.ceflight in an individual's lifetime is no great risk. We would have flown in stasis, of course. From what the Outsiders told us, and from what we learned via telescopes and automatic probes, the Ringworld seemed ideal. We had to investigate."

"An Experimentalist faction?"

"Of course. Still, we hesitated to contact so powerful a civilization. But we a.n.a.lyzed Ringworld superconductors through laser spectroscopy. We made a bacterium that could feed on it. Probes seeded the superconductor plague across the Ringworld. You guessed as much?"

"That much, yeah."

"We were to follow with trading s.h.i.+ps. Our traders would come opportunely to the rescue. They would learn all we needed to know, and gain allies too." Clear and musical, the puppeteer's voice held no trace of guilt, nor even embarra.s.sment.

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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sume 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 leaders.h.i.+p, 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 att.i.tude jets."

"Bussard ramjets mounted on brackets on the rim wall, regularly s.p.a.ced, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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."

"Yeah."

"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 att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+p."

"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."

"Yeah. 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 subst.i.tute 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 fas.h.i.+on.

It all looked so real, he thought. Two or three years from now it might as well have been some madman's daydream.