The Ringworld Throne r-3 Page 5

  Perilack and Kaywerbrimmis looked at each other as if both taken by the same notion. The little woman took Kay’s elbow; Kay’s arm brushed the Gleaner’s feathers. He suggested, “I expect you accumulate these faster than you can use them?”

  She said, “No, the skins spoil quickly. We can trade a few, not many.”

  “What if we could find a way to delay the spoilage?”

  From time to time Valavirgillin would catch a foul whiff of battlefield stench and snort it out. But the smells weren’t reaching Kaywerbrimmis. Not him! Kay was into trader mode. His mind was in a place where win and lose were a matter of numbers, where discomfort was an embarrassment one could not afford, where an empire survived because one hominid’s trash was another’s ore bed.

  Full night had fallen. But by the faint flash of an arc of daylit Arch, she saw Beedj’s broad grin. She asked the Grass Giant, “Have you watched bargaining sessions?”

  “Some. Louis Wu came when I was a child, but agreements were all between him and the old Thurl. The Reds made peace with us thirty falans ago; we parceled up habitats. Twenty-four falans ago we gathered with the Reds and Sea People, shared maps. All peoples have learned things about the new territory. But all find Grass Giants awkwardly large.”

  A polite disclaimer would not be believed. Vala reached up to grasp elbows with the Grass Giant. She’d been listening for Ghouls in the night, but the only sound was the rain.

  The clouds had closed. It had become full dark.

  One of the Gleaner men asked, “Should we only wait? Would they find that more polite?”

  Manack, wasn’t it? Hair thicker around the throat, as if he were an alpha male and Silack a beta. In a good many hominid species, one male got most of the action; but Vala didn’t know that about Gleaners.

  Vala said, “Manack, we’re here. In their habitat. You may even consider that we’ve come to entertain the lords of the night. Will you share rishathra?” To Beedj she quickly added, “Beedj, this is for size, to leave me larger. I expect Whand will go with Moonwa first …” Though Kay and Perilack, she noticed, were no longer talking business. Philosophies differ.

  ***

  To rish with a Gleaner male was no more than foreplay.

  Rishathra with the Thurl’s heir was something else again. It had its pleasures. He was big. He was very eager. He was very proud of his self-restraint, though it was right at the edge of his control. He was very big.

  Kaywerbrimmis was having a wonderful night, or seemed to be. He was sharing some joke or secret with Moonwa now. Good trader, that one; a generally good man. Vala kept looking in his direction.

  They’d mated. Vala couldn’t get her mind out of that mode … shouldn’t try, really. It was a good mind-set for a rishathra party. Still.

  Mating is a matter of order. Eons of evolution have shaped many hominid’s mating responses: approach, scents, postures and positions, visual and tactile cues. Culture shapes more: dances, cliques, styles, permitted words and phrases.

  But evolution never touches sex outside one’s species, and rishathra is always an art form. Where shapes don’t fit, other shapes might be found. Those who cannot participate can watch, can give ribald advice …

  Can stand guard, for that matter, when a trader’s body or mind needs a rest.

  The night was almost silent, but not every whisper was wind. Ghouls should be out there. It was their duty. But if for any reason word hadn’t reached them of a corpse-strewn battlefield, then those sounds might be vampires.

  Vala perched on a stool three paces high and sturdy enough for a Grass Giant. The night was warm enough for nakedness, or she was, but loaded guns were on her back. Before her was blowing rain and little else to see. At her back any excitement had died for the moment.

  “We and the Grass Giants, we love each other, but we’re not mere parasites,” one of the Gleaners was saying. “Wherever there once were mirror-flower forests, there are plant eaters now, prey that can feed us. We forage ahead of the Thurl’s people. We probe, we guide, we make their maps.”

  Manack, that was. He was a bit small to accommodate even a Machine People woman, and inexperienced; but he could learn. The proper attitude was easy for some. Others never learned it.

  Mating has consequences. A hominid’s response to mating is not of the mind. Rishathra has no consequences, and the mind may remain in command. Embarrassment is inappropriate. Laughter is always to be shared. Rishathra is entertainment and diplomacy and friendship, and knowing that you can reach your weapons in the dark.

  “We hope to make our fortunes,” Kay was saying. “Those who extend the Empire are well-treated. The Empire grows with our fuel supply. If we can persuade a community to make fuel and sell it to the Empire, the bonus would let each of us raise a family.”

  Moonwa said, “Those rewards are yours. Your client tribes face something else. Loss of ambition, loss of friends and mates, delusion and early death for any who learn to drink your fuel.”

  “Some are too weak to say, ‘Enough.’ Moonwa, you must be stronger than that.”

  “Of course. I can do that tonight, now. Enough, Kaywerbrimmis!”

  Vala turned to see white grins large and small. Beedj said, “I wore one of your fuel wetted towels last night. It made me dizzy. It threw my aim off.”

  Kay gracefully changed the subject. “Valavirgillin, will you return to Center City, mate and raise a family?”

  “I mated,” she said.

  Kay suddenly had nothing to say.

  He didn’t know!

  What had he been thinking? That he and she would be, come formal mates? Valavirgillin said, “I made myself rich with a gift from Louis Wu of the Ball People.” How she had done that was nobody’s business, and illegal. “I mated then. Tarb’s parents were friends of my family, as is usual with us, Moonwa. He had little money, but he’s a good father, he freed me to engage in business dealings.

  “I grew restive. I remembered that Louis Wu suggested … no. Asked if my people make tools from the sludge that remains after we distill alcohol. Plastic, he said. His talking thing would not translate, but I learned his word. He said it means shapeless. Plastic can take any shape the maker likes. That sludge is useless, nasty stuff. Clients might be grateful if we had a reason to haul it away for them.

  “So I funded a chemical laboratory.” She shrugged in the dark. “Always it cost more than anyone expected, but we got answers. There are secrets in that goo.

  “One day most of my money was gone. Tarablilliast and the children are with my sire-family, and I am here, until I can feed them again. Coriack, are you ready to take guard?”

  “Of course. Hold the thought, Whandernothtee. Vala, what’s out there?”

  “Rain. I glimpse something black and shiny, sometimes, and I hear tittering. No smell of vampires.”

  “Good.”

  ***

  Moonwa had lapsed into Grass Giant language and was making jokes that set Beedj roaring. In the gray light of morning the Gleaners spoke together, waved at the brightening land, then more or less fell over in a pile.

  “Do you think they came?” Spash asked nobody in particular, and he stepped out of the tent.

  Whand said, “I don’t care. Let’s sleep.”

  “They came,” Spash said.

  Vala stepped out.

  It was moments before she realized that one sheet was empty. Which? Far left … six Gleaner dead. The rest were untouched.

  Beedj came forth briskly, swinging his scythe-sword. More Giants were coming down the earth wall. They conferred, then fanned out to explore, looking for evidence of what the Ghouls had done.

  But Vala climbed up the wall to sleep in the payload shell.

  ***

  At midday she woke ravenous, with the smell of roasting meat in her nostrils. She followed the smells down to the tent.

  She found Gleaners and Machine People together. The Gleaners had been hunting. The fire they had made to cook their kills, Barok and Whand had used to
make bread from local grass.

  “We eat four, five, six meals in a day,” Silack told her. “Pint says you eat once a day?”

  “Yes. But a lot. Are you finding enough meat?”

  “When your men came down to eat, ours went to hunt more. Eat what you see, the hunters will be back.”

  The flatbread was a good effort, and Vala complimented the men. Smeerp meat was good, too, if a bit lean and tough. At least the Gleaners didn’t have a habit found in other hominids: changing the flavor of meat by rubbing it with salt or herbs or berries.

  Vala wondered about breeding smeerps in other places, but all traders knew the answer to that. One hominid’s local bounty was another’s plague. With no local predators to restrict their numbers, smeerps would be eating somebody’s crops, breeding beyond their food source, then vectoring diseases when starvation weakened them.

  Meanwhile she had eaten everything in sight. Gleaners and Machine People alike were watching her in amusement. Silack said, “Heavy exercise last night.”

  “Did I miss anything?”

  Kay said, “The Ghouls were active. There aren’t any dead Grass Giants between the wall and the tall grass. Beedj found neat piles of bones in the grass. They didn’t touch the vampires. Saved them for tonight, I guess.”

  “Considerate of them.” With their dead gone, the Grass Giants’ mourning was over, except … “More considerate if they would take the rest of our dead. Anything else?”

  Silack pointed.

  It wasn’t raining now. The clouds formed an infinite flat roof, way high. You could see a long way across the veldt. What Vala could see was a sizable beast-drawn wagon plodding toward Grass Giant domains.

  Five great big-shouldered beasts. More than that high-sided wagon needed, though it was big.

  “It will be here well before dusk. Even so, if your species can sleep in spurts, you will have time.”

  Vala nodded and climbed up the wall to sleep some more.

  ***

  Paroom was riding in the guide seat beside a much smaller red-skinned man. Three more Reds rode in the enclosed space beneath.

  They stopped the wagon just under the wall, near the opening. They lifted a thing out of the wagon bed. Vala squinted, trying to see something almost invisible. Her mercenary instincts raced along her nerves, gibbering.

  At the Fall of the Cities, flying vehicles were the most common of fallen objects. This curved transparent sheet was the kind of thing people found in fallen cars. Most were shattered. This one looked intact. Its value must be immense!

  The Reds came forward, carrying it at the corners. Each carried a sword nearly as long as himself, hung from his back in a leather sheath. They wore dyed leather kilts and leather backpacks, men and women both, though brighter colors adorned the women’s. Their teeth were pointed, all of them, a double row of canines.

  Valavirgillin, Kaywerbrimmis, Moonwa, the Thurl in full armor, Manack, and Coriack waited to greet them. The group had been pruned a little.

  “Thurl, this is a window,” one Red male said solemnly. “It is a gift from the Marsh People, who cannot go from where they live. They beg that we shall ward them from the spreading plague of vampires. The Marsh People cannot flee, for only the marsh gives them life.”

  Valavirgillin caught the Thurl’s questioning look. “We know species like that,” she said. “Marsh, desert, one side of a mountain, a forest that is all one kind of tree. Their bellies have changed to accept only one food, or they cannot survive cold or heat, or too little moisture in the air, or too much. But this is a magnificent gift.”

  “It is. We will do what we can for the Marsh People,” the Thurl said. “These, our allies, were able to reach us …” and the Thurl made introduction, speaking slowly, pronouncing the names of Gleaners and Machine People with varying accuracy.

  “I am Tegger hooki-Thandarthal,” the Red male said. “This is Warvia hooki-Murf Thandarthal. We travel with Anakrin hooki-Whanhurhur and Chaychind hooki-Karashk.” The other two Reds had moved away to tend to the loadbeasts.

  The Thurl asked, “How do your people deal with rishathra?”

  “We cannot,” said Warvia, and did not amplify.

  Paroom grinned, and Vala grinned back, picturing the male Grass Giants’ disappointment. The Thurl as host spoke for all, as protocol required, but briefly. What point in enlarging upon a guest’s skill at rishathra, for a species that couldn’t do that at all? Tegger and Warvia merely nodded when he fell silent. The other Red males were not even listening. They were examining the vampire corpses lying on one sheet, and chattering at high speed.

  Tegger and Warvia looked much alike. Their red skins were smooth; their faces were hairless. They wore kilts of soft leather with decorative lacing. They were as tall as Machine People, but much thinner. Big ears stood out from narrow heads. Their teeth seemed to be not filed, but grown that way. Warvia had breasts, but almost flat.

  “We never hear of so many vampires found together,” Warvia said.

  “You killed an army,” Tegger said. “Vampires lie everywhere. Your neighbors must be glad.”

  Warvia asked, “The Ghouls, have they come?”

  The Thurl said, “An army of vampires came the night before last. An army was gone when the shadow withdrew from the sun. You have seen the dead they left behind, but our own dead have gone with the Ghouls. They were half as many or a bit more, plus a hundred of Gleaners and four of our Machine People. The vampires are a terrible foe. Welcome to you.”

  “We have seen nothing of the terror,” Tegger said. “Young hunters disappear. Our teachers lose their skill, we said, or some new hunting thing has found us. Paroom, if we did show disbelief, forgive us.”

  Paroom nodded graciously. The Thurl said, “What we knew of vampires was half false. The Machine People empire came in time to help us.”

  Vala was beginning to realize that no other Grass Giant could say such a thing. To disparage the tribe was to disparage the Thurl. “We must show you our defenses,” he continued, “but have you eaten? Should you cook while there is still light?”

  “We eat our meat uncooked. We like variety. Grass Giants eat no meat, but what of Gleaners and Machine People? May we share? Let us show you what we have.”

  They had five loadbeasts and the cage atop their wagon. The thing in the cage felt their gaze and roared. It was a beast as massive as a Grass Giant, and a killer, Vala realized. She asked, “What is that?”

  “Hakarrch,” Tegger said with visible pride. “A hunter of the Barrier Hills. Two were sent us by the Gardener People for our sport. Hunted outside its familiar terrain, the male still killed one of us before we brought it down.”

  It was a brag. Mighty hunters we are. We hunt the lesser hunters, and we’ll hunt your vampires. Vala suggested, “Perilack, shall we sample this? Not tonight, but tomorrow at our one meal.”

  The Gleaner woman said, “Bargain. Warvia, tonight you may kill a loadbeast. Tomorrow and after, let us play host. We will feed all until the—” Shadow’s edge had bitten a piece from the sun, but the light was still bright. “—eaters of the dead deign to speak. You’ll want to taste smeerp meat.”

  “We thank you.”

  ***

  The fire had become the only light: not enough light to cook, but the cooking was over. Of the other Reds, Anakrin hooki-Whanhurhur was an old man, wrinkled but still agile. Chaychind hooki-Karashk, another male, was badly scarred and had lost an arm in some old battle.

  They had brought a gift of their own, a sizable ceramic jug of a strong, dark beer. Not bad at all. Vala saw Kay react, too. Let’s see how Kay handles it.

  Kay exclaimed, “Do you make this yourselves? Do you make a lot?”

  “Yes. Do you think of trade?”

  “Chaychind, it might be worth moving if it’s cheap enough—”

  “Tales of the Machine People are not exaggerated.”

  Kay looked flustered. Too bad, but Vala had better step in. “Kaywerbrimmis means that if we can dist
ill enough of this, we would have fuel for our cruisers. Our cruisers carry weapons and can carry much more. They move faster than loadbeasts, but they cannot move without fuel.”

  “A gift you want?” Chaychind asked, while Tegger exclaimed, “You would boil our beer for fuel?”

  “Gifts for the war. All must contribute. Grass Giant fighters, Gleaner spies, your fuel—”

  “Our eyes.”

  “Ah?”

  “We know of no species that can see as far as any Red Herder.”

  “Your eyes. Our cruisers, our cannon, our flamers. Can you contribute three hundred manweights of beer to the war against the vampires? It would distill to thirty manweights of fuel. We carry a distilling system simple enough to be copied.”

  Warvia exclaimed, “That’s enough to souse whole civilizations!”

  But Tegger asked, “What size of manweights?”

  Hah! Vala said, “Your size.” Tegger had asked the obvious question, but it implied agreement … and a Machine People manweight would have been a sixth higher. “I’m thinking of taking two cruisers. Leave the third here. Let the Thurl fuel the third cruiser.”

  “Whand and Chit can supervise that,” Kay said.

  “Oh?” She’d wondered why both were absent.

  “They’ve had enough, Boss. Spash is wavering, too. So’s Barok.”

  “Any foray would be to murder selves,” red Warvia said, “unless we can know our enemy. Have the Ghouls spoken?”

  The Thurl said, “Some bodies are gone,” and shrugged.

  “We’re paying for our good manners,” Vala said. A trader must know how to project her voice on demand. “The bodies we guarded from vermin, the lords of the night will take last. They took our Gleaner dead because they died a day earlier.” The night would hear her.

  ***

  Tonight Kay and Whand were on the wall with Barok, watching over them with the cannon. Spash and Chit had traded places with them.

  This night looked to be less exhausting, but less joyful, too. The Gleaners and Machine People and an undersized Grass Giant woman named Twuk tried to get something going. The Thurl kept his armor on. The four Red Herders watched gleefully from beyond touching distance, and chattered in their own language, and it all sort of fell apart.