The Ringworld Engineers Part 19

"I am reluctant to wake my master, and I will not let you pa.s.s this door. Set down your weapon."

"No. I've already been attacked once tonight. Can you lock that door so that neither of us can open it?"

Mar Korssil tossed something through the door; it jingled as it struck. She closed the door behind her. "Fly for me," she said. Her voice was still a gravelly ba.s.s.

Louis lifted a few feet, then settled back.

"Impressive." Mar Korssil came down the stairs with her weapon at ready. "We have time to talk. In the morning we will be found. What do you offer, and what do you want?"

"Was I right in guessing that your water condenser doesn't work? Did it stop at the Fall of the Cities?"

"It has never worked to my knowledge. Who are you?"

"I am Louis Wu. Male. Call my species the Star People. I come from outside the world, from a star too dim to see. I have stuff to repair at least some of the water condensers in the city, and I have hidden much more. It may be that I can give you lighting too."

Mar Korssil studied him with blue eyes as big as goggles. She had formidable claws on her fingers, and buck teeth like axheads. What was she, a rodent-hunting carnivore? She said, "If you can repair our machines, that is good. As to repairing those of other buildings, my master will decide. What do you want?"

"A great deal of knowledge. Access to whatever the city holds in the way of stored knowledge, maps, histories, tales-"

"You cannot expect us to send you to the Library. If your claim is true, you are too valuable. Our building is not wealthy, but we may buy knowledge from the Library if you have specific questions."

It was becoming obvious: the floating city was no more a city than Pericles' Greece had been a nation. The buildings were independent, and he was in the wrong building. "Which building is the library?" he asked.

"At the port-by-spinward perimeter, a cone moored tip down ... Why do you ask?"

Louis touched his chest, rose, moved toward the outer night.

Mar Korssil fired. Louis fell sprawling. Flames blazed against his chest. He yelled and jerked the harness loose and rolled away. The flying-belt controls burned, a smoky yellow flame with blue-white flashes in it.

Louis found the flashlight-laser in his hand, pointed at Mar Korssil. The Night Hunter seemed not to notice. "Do not make me do that again," she said. "Are you wounded?"

Those words saved her life; but Louis had to kill something. "Drop the weapon or I slice you in half," he said, "like this." He waved the laser beam through the execution chair; it flamed and fell apart.

Mar Korssil didn't move.

"I only want to leave your building," Louis said. "You've marooned me. I'll have to enter your building, but I'll leave by the first ramp I find. Drop the weapon or die."

A woman's voice spoke from the stairway. "Drop the gun, Mar Korssil."

The Night Hunter did.

The woman came down the stairs. She was taller than Louis, and slender. Her nose was tiny, her lips invisibly thin. Her head was bald, but rich white hair flowed down her back from behind her cars and the back of her neck. Louis guessed that the white hair was a mark of age. She showed no fear of him. He asked, "Do you rule here?"

"I and my mate-of-record rule. I am Laliskareerlyar. Did you call yourself Luweewu?"

"Close enough."

She smiled. "There is a peephole. Mar Korssil signaled from the garage: an unusual act. I came to watch and listen. I am sorry about your flying device. There are none left in all the city."

"If I repair your water condenser, will you set me free? And I need advice."

"Consider your bargaining position. Can you resist my guards who wait outside?"

Louis had almost resigned himself to killing his way out. He made one more try. The floor seemed to be the usual poured stone. He ran the laser beam in a slow circle, and a patch of stone a yard across dropped into the night. Laliskareerlyar lost her smile. "Perhaps you can. It shall be as you say. Mar Korssil, come with us. Stop anyone who tries to interfere. Leave your gun where it lies."

They climbed a spiral escalator that no longer ran. Louis counted fourteen loops, fourteen stories. He wondered if he had been wrong about Laliskareerlyar's age. The City Builder woman climbed briskly and had breath left over for conversation. But her hands and face were wrinkled as if worn too long.

An unsettling sight. Louis wasn't used to that. Intellectually he knew what it was: the sign of age, and the sign of her ancestor, the Pak protector.

They climbed by the light of Louis's flashlight-laser. People appeared at doorways; Mar Korssil warned them back. Most were City Builders, but there were other species too.

These servants had served the Lyar family for many generations, Laliskareerlyar explained. The Mar family of night watchmen had been policemen serving a Lyar judge. The Machine People cooks had served almost as long. Servants and City Builder masters saw themselves as one family, bound by periodic rishathra and old loyalties. All told, Lyar Building held a thousand people, half of them interrelated City Builders.

Louis stopped to look through a window halfway up. A window, in a stairwell that ran through the core of a building? It was a hologram, a view along one of the rim walls, showing a vast stretch of Ringworld landscape. One of the last of the Lyar treasures, Laliskareerlyar told him with pride and regret. Others had been sold over hundreds of falans to pay water fees.

Louis found himself talking too. He was wary and angry and tired, but there was something about the old City Builder woman that drew him out. She knew about planets. She didn't question his veracity. She listened. She looked so much like Halrloprillalar that Louis found himself talking about her: about the ancient, immortal s.h.i.+p's wh.o.r.e who had lived as a half-mad G.o.ddess until Louis Wu and his motley crew arrived; how she had helped them, how she had left her ruined civilization with them, how she had died.

Laliskareerlyar asked, "Is that why you didn't kill Mar Korssil?"

The Night Hunter woman looked at him with great blue eyes.

Louis laughed. "Maybe." He told them of his conquest of the sunflower patch. He was skirting a dangerous subject, for he saw no point in telling Laliskareerlyar that the world was going to brush against its sun. "I want to leave the world knowing that I've done no damage. I've got more of that cloth buried near here ... Tanj! I can't think of any way to reach it now.

They had reached the top of the spiral. Louis was huffing. Mar Korssil unlocked a door; there were more stairs beyond. Laliskareerlyar asked, "Are you nocturnal?"

"What? No."

"We had best wait for day. Mar Korssil, go and send us breakfast. Send Whil, with tools. Then go to sleep." As Mar Korssil trotted obediently downstairs, the old woman sat cross-legged on ancient carpet. "I expect we must work outside," she said. "I don't understand the risk you took. For what? Knowledge? What knowledge?"

It was difficult to lie to her, but the Hindmost might well be listening. "Do you know anything of a machine to change one kind of matter into another? Air into dirt, lead into gold?"

She was interested. "Ancient magicians were said to be able to turn gla.s.s into diamonds. But these were children's tales."

So much for that. "What of a Repair Center for the world? Are there legends about that? Telling its location?"

She stared. "As if the world were no more than a made thing, a larger version of the city?"

Louis laughed. "Much larger. Much much much larger. No?"

"No."

"What about an immortality drug? I know that's real. Halrloprillalar used it."

"Of course it was real. There is none left in the city, nor anywhere else that I know of. The tale is a favorite with"-the translator used an Interworld phrase-"con men."

"Does the tale tell where it might have come from?"

A young City Builder woman came puffing up the stairs carrying a shallow bowl. Louis's fears of poison disappeared at once. The stuff was lukewarm, something like oatmeal, and they ate with their hands from the one bowl.

"The youth drug comes from spinward," the old woman said, "but I know not how far to spinward. Is this the treasure of knowledge you came for?"

"Any of several treasures. That would be a good one." There would certainly have been tree-of-life in the Repair Center, Louis thought. I wonder how they'd handle it? Surely no human being would want to be a protector? But there might be hominids who would ... Well, those puzzles could wait.

Whil was a burly hominid with a simian face, dressed in a sheet whose original color was lost to time. It was a mad G.o.d's rainbow now. Whil didn't talk much. His arms were short and thick and looked very strong. He led them up the last flight of steps, carrying his toolbox, and out into the dawn.

They were on the lip of a funnel, at the truncated tip of the double cone. The rim was only a foot across. Louis's breath caught in his throat. With his flying belt dead, he had reason to fear heights. Wind rushed past him, whipping Whil's sheet into a fluttering multicolored flag.

Laliskareerlyar asked, "Well? Can you fix it?"

"Not from here. There must be machinery below."

There was, but it wasn't easy to reach. The crawl s.p.a.ce was inches wider than Louis Wu. Whil crawled ahead of him, opening panels, as instructed.

The crawl s.p.a.ce was doughnut-shaped, circling the machinery that must circle the funnel. And the water was supposed to precipitate on the funnel, no doubt. By refrigeration? Or had they something more sophisticated?

The widgetry concealed by the panels was tightly packed, and a total mystery to Louis Wu. It was sparkling clean, except for ... yeah. He peered closer, not breathing. A wire-thin worm trail of dust had fallen through the widgetry. Louis tried to guess where it had fallen from. He'd have to a.s.sume the rest of the machinery was still functional.

He backed out. From Whil he borrowed thick gloves and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. He cut a strip from the edge of the black cloth in his vest and twisted it. He strung it between two contacts and fastened them.

Nothing obvious happened. He continued around the circle, following Whil. In all he found six worm trails of dust. He fastened six twisted strips of superconductor where he thought they belonged.

He wriggled out of the crawl s.p.a.ce. "Of course your power source could be long dead," he said.

"We must see," said the old woman. She went up the stairs to the roof. Louis and Whil followed.

The smooth face of the funnel seemed misted over. Louis knelt and reached to touch it. Wet. The water was warm. Already it was beading and flowing downslope to the pipes. Louis nodded thoughtfully. Another good deed that wouldn't matter in fifteen falans.

Chapter 20 -.

Economics in Lyar Just below the thick waist of Lyar Building was what seemed to be a combination audience chamber and bedroom. A huge circular bed with a curtained canopy, couches and chairs around small and large tables, a picture-window wall facing the nearer edge of the shadow farm, a bar built to offer a wide variety of potables. That variety was gone. Laliskareerlyar poured from a crystal decanter into a two-handled goblet, sipped, and pa.s.sed it across to Louis.

He asked, "Do you hold audiences in here?"

She smiled. "Of a sort. Family gatherings."

Orgies? Very likely, if rishathra was what held the Lyar family together. A family fallen on hard times. Louis sipped from the goblet, tasted nectar-and-fuel. The sharing of cups and food dishes-was fear of poison behind that? But she did it so naturally. And there were no diseases on the Ringworld.

"What you have done for us will increase our status and our funds," said Laliskareerlyar. "Ask."

"I need to reach the Library, enter it, and persuade the people who rule there to let me make free use of all their knowledge."

"That would be very expensive."

"Not impossible? Good."

She smiled. "Too expensive. The relations.h.i.+p among the buildings is complicated. The Ten rule the tourist trade-"

"Ten what?"

"Ten large buildings, Luweewu, the most powerful among us. Nine still have lights and water condensers. Together they built the bridge to Sky Hill. Well, they rule the tourist trade, and they pay fees to the lesser buildings to cover hospitality for their alien guests, the use of all public places, and special fees for events in private buildings. They make all agreements with other species, as with the water the Machine People pump up to us. We pay fees to the Ten for water and for special concessions. Yours would be a very special concession although we pay the Library a general fee for education.

"The Library is one of the Ten?"

"Yes. Luweewu, we do not have the money. Is there a chance that you can do the Library a service? Perhaps your research would help them."

"It's possible."

"They would return some of the fee for a service rendered. Even more than we gave, possibly. But we don't have it. Would you sell them your light weapon or the machine that talks for you?"

"I think I'd better not."

"Can you repair more water condensers?"

"Maybe. Did you say one of the Ten does not have a working water condenser? Then why are they one of the Ten?"

"Orlry Building has been among the Ten since the Fall of the Cities. Tradition."

"What were they when the cities fell?"

"A military installation, a storehouse for weapons." She ignored Louis's chortling. "They have a fondness for weapons. Your light-projector-"

"I'd be afraid to let it go. But maybe they'd like their water condenser fixed."

"I will learn what fee they ask to let you into Orlry Building."

"You're joking."

"No. You must be guarded, to prevent your carrying away weapons. You pay an entertainment fee to see the ancient weapons, and more if they are to be demonstrated. If you see their maintenance facilities, you may learn weaknesses. I will ask." She stood. "Shall we indulge in rishathra?"

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?"