The Ringworld Engineers Part 37

Chmeee said, "Irrelevant unless Louis is totally wrong. Teela inspected those motors while mounting them."

"Yeah. If they weren't strong enough, she talked herself into adding an overdesign safety factor. Guarding against the mischance of a large solar flare. She knew that was possible. Doublethink!"

"To guide the flare is not necessary to us, merely convenient," the kzin continued. "Let the laser-generating subsystem be disconnected. Then, if need be, Needle may be placed where we want the flare to fall, then used as a target: accelerated until the meteor defense fires. Needle is invulnerable."

Louis nodded. "We'd like something a little more accurate. We'd do the job faster and kill less people. But ... yeah. We can do it all. We can do it."

The Hindmost came with them to inspect the components of the meteor defense. n.o.body talked him into that. The sensor devices they dismounted from Needle had to be operated by a puppeteer's lips and tongue. When he suggested teaching Louis how to manipulate the controls using a pick and tweezers, Louis laughed at him.

The Hindmost spent some hours in the blocked section of Needle. Then he followed them out through the tunnel. His mane was dyed in streaks of a hundred glowing colors, and beautifully groomed. Louis thought, Everyone wants to look good at his own funeral, and wondered if that was it.

It wasn't necessary to use a bomb on the laser subsystem. Finding the off switch took the Hindmost a full day and a disc-load of the dismounted instruments, but it was there.

The web of superconductor cables had its nexus in the scrith twenty miles beneath the north pole of the Map of Mars. They found a central pillar twenty miles tall, a sheath of scrith enclosing the cooling pumps for the Map of Mars. The complex at the bottom must be the control center, they decided. They found a maze of huge airlocks, and each had to be pa.s.sed by solving some kind of design puzzle. The Hindmost handled that.

They pa.s.sed through the last door. Beyond was a brightly lighted dome, and dry-looking soil with a podium in the center, and a smell that sent Louis spinning around, running for his life, towing a bewildered Kawaresksenjajok by his thin wrist. The airlock was closed before the boy started to fight. Louis batted him across the head and kept going. They had pa.s.sed through three airlocks before he let them stop.

Presently Chmeee joined them. "The path led across a patch of soil beneath artificial sunlights. The automated gardening equipment has failed, and few plants still grow, but I recognized them."

"So did I," said Louis.

"I knew the smell. Mildly unpleasant."

The boy was crying. "I didn't smell anything! Why did you throw me around like that? Why did you hit me?"

"Flup," said Louis. It had finally occurred to him that Kawaresksenjajok was too young; the smell of tree-of-life wouldn't mean anything to him.

So the City Builder boy stayed with the aliens. But Louis Wu didn't see what went on in the control room. He returned to Needle alone.

The probe was still far around the Ringworld, light-minutes distant. A hologram window, glowing within the black basalt outside Needle's wall, looked out through the probe's camera: a dimmed telescopic view of a sun somewhat less active than Sol. The Hindmost must have set that up before he left.

The bone in Harkabeeparolyn's arm was healing slightly crooked; Teela's old portable 'doc couldn't set it. But it was healing. Louis worried more about her emotional state.

With nothing of her own world around her, and flame about to take everything she remembered-call it culture shock. He found her on the water bed watching the magnified sun. She nodded when he greeted her. Hours later she hadn't moved.

Louis tried to get her talking. It wasn't good. She was trying to forget her past, all of it.

He found a better approach when he tried to explain the physical situation. She knew some physics. He didn't have access to Needle's computer and hologram facilities, so he drew diagrams on the walls. He waved his arms a lot. She seemed to understand.

On the second night after his return, he woke to see her cross-legged on the water bed, watching him thoughtfully, holding the flashlight-laser in her lap. He met its gla.s.sy stare, then swung his arm in circles to turn himself over and went back to sleep. He woke up next morning, so what the tanj.

That afternoon he and Harkabeeparolyn watched a flame rise from the sun, licking out and out and out. They said very little.

EPILOGUE.

One falan later: ten Ringworld rotations.

Far up the arc of the Ringworld, twenty-one candle flames glowed brightly, as brightly as the corona of the hyperactive sun showing around the edges of a shadow square.

Needle was still embedded in basalt beneath the Map of Mars. Needles crew watched in a hologram window, courtesy of the probe's cameras. The probe had been brought to rest at the cliff edge of the Map of Mars, on carbon dioxide snow, where martians were not likely to tamper with it.

Between those two rows of candle flames, plants and animals and people would be dying. In numbers that would make human s.p.a.ce look empty, the plants would be withering or growing strangely. Insects and animals would breed, but not according to their kind. Valavirgillin would be wondering why her father had died and why she was throwing up so often and whether it was part of the general doom and what was the Star People man doing about it all?

But none of that showed from fifty-seven million miles away. They saw only the flames of the Bussard ramjets burning enriched fuel.

"I am pleased to announce," the Hindmost said, "that the center of ma.s.s of the Ringworld is moving back toward the sun. In another six or seven rotations we can set the meteor defense as we found it, to fire on meteors. Five percent of att.i.tude jet efficiency will be enough to hold the structure in place."

Chmeee grunted in satisfaction. Louis and the City Builders continued to awe into the hologram glowing in a depth of black basalt.

"We have won," the Hindmost said. "Louis, you set me a task whose magnitude compares only to the building of the Ringworld itself, and you set my life at stake. I can accept your arrogance now that we have won, but there are limits. I will hear you congratulate me or I will cut off your air."

"Congratulations," said Louis Wu.

The woman and boy on either side of him began to cry.

Chmeee snorted. "To the victor belongs the right to gloat, at minimum. Do the dead and dying bother you? Those worth your respect would have volunteered."

"I didn't give them the chance. Look, I'm not asking you to be guilt-ridden-"

"Why should I be? I mean no offense, but the dead and dying are all hominids. They are not of your species, Louis, and they are certainly not of mine, nor of the Hindmost's. I am a hero. I have saved the equivalent of two inhabited worlds, and their populations are of my species, or nearly so."

"All right, I see your point."

"And now, with advanced technology to back me, I intend to carve out an empire."

Louis found himself smiling. "Sure, why not? On the Map of Kzin."

"I thought of that. I believe I prefer the Map of Earth. Teela told us that kzinti explorers rule the Map of Earth. In spirit they may resemble my world-conquering people more nearly than the decadents of the Map of Kzin."

"You know, you're probably right."

"Furthermore, they of the Map of Earth have fulfilled an ancient daydream of my people."

"Oh?"

"Conquering Earth, you idiot."

It had been long since Louis Wu laughed. Conquering plains apes! "*Sic transit gloria mundi*. How do you plan to get there?"

"It should be no great feat to free Needle and guide it back to Mons Olympus-"

"My s.h.i.+p," the Hindmost said gently, but his voice cut through Chmeee's. "My controls. Needle goes where I will it."

An edge in Chmeee's voice. "And where might that be?"

"Nowhere. I feel no strong urge to justify myself," the Hindmost said. "You are not my species, and how can you harm me? Will you burn out my hyperdrive motor again? Yet you are allies. I will explain."

Chmeee was up against the forward wall, giving the puppeteer his full attention. Claws extended. Fur fluffed around his neck. Naturally.

"I have violated tradition," said the Hindmost. "I have continued to function when death might touch me at any second. My life has been at stake for nearly two decades, with the risk rising almost asymptotically. The risk is over, and I am exiled, but I live. I want to rest. Can you empathize with my need to take a long rest? In Needle I have as many of the comforts of home as I will ever see. My s.h.i.+p is safely buried in rock, between two layers of scrith, which compares in strength to Needle's own hull. I have quiet and safety. If later I feel the need to explore, a billion cubic miles of the Ringworld Repair Center is just outside. I am just where I want to be, and I will stay."

Louis and Harkabeeparolyn did rishathra that night. (No: they made love.) They hadn't done that in some time. Louis had feared that the urge was gone. Afterward she told him.

"I have mated with Kawaresksenjajok."

He'd noticed. But she meant permanently, didn't she? "Congratulations."

"This is not the place to raise a child." She had not bothered to say I'm pregnant. Of course she was pregnant.

"There must be City Builders all over the Ringworld. You could settle anywhere. In fact, I'd like to come with you," Louis said. "We saved the world. We'll all be heroes, a.s.suming anyone believes us."

"But, Louis, we can't leave! We can't even breathe on the surface, our pressure suits are in shreds, and we are in the middle of the Great Ocean!"

"Were not desperate," said Louis. "You talk as if we'd been left naked between the Clouds of Magellan. Needle isn't our only transportation. There are thousands of those floating discs. There's a s.p.a.cecraft so big that the Hindmost could pick out the details on deep-radar. We'll find something in between."

"Will your two-headed ally try to stop us?"

"Contrariwise. Hindmost, are you listening?"

The ceiling said, "Yes," and Harkabeeparolyn jumped.

Louis said, "You're in the safest place imaginable on the Ringworld. You said so yourself. The most unpredictable threat you face has to be the aliens aboard your own s.h.i.+p. How would you like to get rid of us?"

"I would. I have suggestions. Shall I wake Chmeee?"

"No, we'll talk tomorrow."

Just at the cliff edge was where the water began to condense. From there it streamed downward. It became a vertical river, a waterfall twenty miles tall. The bottom was a sea of mist reaching hundreds of miles out to sea.

The probe camera that looked down the side of the Map of Mars showed them nothing but falling water and white mist.

"But in infrared light the picture is different," the Hindmost said. "Observe."

The mist hid a s.h.i.+p. A narrow triangle of a s.h.i.+p, oddly designed. No masts. Just a second, thought Louis. Twenty miles down ... "That thing must be a full mile long!"

"Nearly that," the Hindmost agreed. "Teela told us she had stolen a kzinti colony vessel."

"Okay." Louis had already decided, that quick.

"I detached an intact deuterium filter from the probe Teela later destroyed," the Hindmost said. "I can fuel that s.h.i.+p. Teela's journey was grueling, but yours need not be. You may take floating discs for exploring, and for trade goods when you reach sh.o.r.e."

"Good idea."

"Will you want a working droud?"

"Don't ever ask me that again, okay?"

"Okay. Your answer is evasive."

"Right. Can you dismount a pair of stepping discs from Needle and install them in the s.h.i.+p? It'd give us something to fall back on if we hit real trouble." He saw the puppeteer eye to eye with himself, and he added, "It could save your life. There's still a protector and he won't have to leave the Ringworld now, thanks to us."

"I can do that," the Hindmost said. "Well, is this an adequate means to reach the mainland?"

Chmeee said, "Yes. A long voyage ... a hundred-thousand-mile journey. Louis, your people suppose a sea voyage to be restful."

"On this sea, it's more likely to be entertaining. We wouldn't have to head straight to spinward. There's the Map of an unknown world to antispinward, and it's less than twice as far." Louis smiled at the City Builders. "Kawaresksenjajok, Harkabeeparolyn, shall we check out some legends for ourselves? And maybe make a few."

THE END.

Ringworld Parameters 30 hours = 1 Ringworld day 1 turn = 7.5 days = A Ringworld rotation 75 days = 10 turns = 1 falan Ma.s.s = 2 X 10e30 grams Radius= .95 X 10e8 miles Circ.u.mference = 5.97 X 10e8 miles Width = 997,000 miles Surface area = 6 X 10e14 square miles = 3 X 10e6 times the surface area of Earth (approx.) Surface gravity = 31 feet/second/second = .992 G Rim walls rise inward, 1000 miles high.

Star: G3 verging on G2, barely smaller and cooler than Sol

Glossary ANTISPINWARD: Direction opposite to the Ringworld's direction of spin.

ARCH: The Ringworld as seen from the surface. Some natives believe their world is a flat surface surmounted by a narrow parabolic arch.

ARM: The United Nations police. Jurisdiction is limited to Earth-Moon system.

BELTER: Citizen of the asteroid belt, Sol system.

CONTROL CENTER: See REPAIR CENTER.

CZILTANG BRONE: A City Builder device, a beamer that allows solid objects, freight, pa.s.sengers, etc., to penetrate scrith.

DROUD: A small device that plugs into the skull of a current addict. Its purpose: to meter the current flow to the pleasure center of the addict's brain.

EYE STORM: The pattern of winds that form around a meteor puncture in the Ringworld floor.

ELBOW ROOT: Ringworld plant grown for fences.

FLEET OF WORLDS: The five puppeteer planets.

FLYCYCLE: Single-seater vehicle used for exploration on the first Ringworld expedition.

FLUP: Seabottom ooze.

FOOCH (FOOCHESTH): Stone couches set throughout the kzinti hunting parks.