The Ringworld Throne r-3 Page 7

  Vala thought, Oh.

  “The bottleneck is the fuel,” Chitakumishad was saying. “The Reds make a beer, it can be turned into fuel—”

  “Go to your war by way of the Red pastures. We can send them the design for your distilleries by a secret means, tomorrow. Let them make fuel there while you make fuel here from your own stills and rotting grass. You will confront the Shadow Nest no more than a falan from now.”

  Chit nodded, his own mind busy with plans. “Fuel to take two cruisers there and back—”

  “You must cross the Barrier of Flame. I think your cruisers can do that. There are passes.”

  “Takes more fuel.”

  “Fuel to explore, or for towels or flame throwers, would come out of what you have. What of it? Only in victory will you need fuel to return here, and then your third cruiser can meet you, or you may leave one behind.

  “Travel in mated pairs,” Harpster said. “Grieving Tube and I will travel together. Thurl, we know your customs, but from time to time your tribe divides. Do it that way. Tegger, you and Warvia believe you can resist the vampires. It may be so, but what of these others? Let them mate when they must, and not rish with bloodsuckers. Anakrin, Chaychind, you have no mates. You should go home …”

  And the arguments began. No hominid here would uncritically accept a Ghoul’s plan for their war. But Vala remained silent and knew how much she had won.

  They’re with us. They really are. And they’ll bathe …

  Chapter 5

  The Web Dweller

  WEAVER TOWN, A.D. 2892

  No telling how long the wizard had been there. The older children had gone into the Great Wood to compete at catching birds. The boy Parald threw with conspicuous grace; his net kept its shape longest, flew the farthest, though he’d caught only two. Strill was thinking how to speak to him, when she chanced to look up.

  The wizard was out on the river, floating far above the silver water, on a thick coin-shaped support not much wider than a man is tall.

  They shouted, beckoning him down. When he noticed them, he stopped his stately progress among the treetops, then descended gradually. He smiled and spoke in an unknown tongue. He was bald over most of his body, but that wasn’t rare among visitors.

  They led him home, talking all the way. Some of the boys tested his knowledge with insults. Strill disapproved, and presently knew she was right.

  The wizard never did learn their speech, barring a few basic words like “flup” and “rishathra,” but he wore a necklace that spoke like a teacher before they reached the village.

  Anyone of a strange species might be a teacher. A wizard who flew, who was served by a magical translator, must have a good deal to teach.

  ***

  Nine years now, since he’d left Kawaresksenjajok and Harkabeeparolyn; ten since Chmeee departed for the Map of Earth. Eleven years since they’d set sail aboard Hidden Patriarch. Twelve since their return to the Ringworld. Forty-one years since Louis Wu and his motley crew first touched down, cocooned in stasis, at 770 miles per second.

  The first hominids they’d found had been small, furry religious fanatics.

  These chattering youths were of that or a similar species. They were chin-high to Louis Wu and covered with fluffy blond fur, and wore kilts of muted browns. They threw their wonderfully patterned nets with wonderful skill, in this maze of bare trunks beneath branches spread like the caps of mushrooms.

  They were friendly. Every species around the Great Ocean was friendly to strangers. Louis was used to it.

  The oldest girl asked, “What shape is the world?”

  Quiet fell and heads turned. Was it a test? “I should ask rather than tell, Strill. What shape is the world?”

  “A circle, the shape of infinity, the Web Dweller says. I don’t understand, though. I see an arch, like—” Strill pointed. There were small conical roofs below, sprouting among the trees: a sizable village strung along the river’s vastness. Upstream was an arch like the oft-rebuilt St. Louis Arch, broad at the base, narrowing as it rose. “—like the Upstream Gate.”

  So that was all right. “The arch is the part of the ring you’re not standing on,” Louis said. Web Dweller?

  He was walking with one proprietary hand on the stacked cargo plates as they floated alongside him.

  There were millions of these in the Repair Center beneath the Map of Mars. He’d welded some needed items to the topmost floating disk. These included handholds, a seat back, a bin for spare clothing and another for food, and a little attitude thruster, a spare part for the Hindmost’s probes. And … well, he’d found that already in place after the battle eleven years ago. It was Teela Brown’s medkit.

  Furry adults and small furry children saw the bird catchers returning early. Most stayed with their tasks, but a man and a woman waited at the arch to greet them.

  Strill cried, “He’s a wizard! Kidada-sir, he says it’s a ring!”

  The man glanced at the floating plates. He asked, “Do you know this?”

  Louis said, “I’ve seen it. I’m Louis Wu of the Ball People.”

  It shouldn’t have meant anything to them, but the Elders gaped and the children ooohed.

  The woman said, “Louis Wu of the Ball People?” Age had put white in her golden fur, and more of that in the man’s. Their knee-length kilts were elaborate tapestries that would have been valuable in any culture. “I am Sawur and this is Kidada, both of the Council, both of the Weaver Folk. You are from nowhere on the Arch, yes? The Web Dweller has vouched for your power and wisdom.”

  “Web Dweller?” How could anyone have known of him here?

  Kidada said, “The Web Dweller is certainly of another world. It’s got two heads! And servants like itself in uncountable numbers.”

  Aw, tanj. “What else did the Web Dweller have to say?”

  “It showed us pictures from far up the Arch, so it says.”

  “What did you see? Vampires?”

  “Strange humanoids living in darkness, and an alliance of many kinds of people come to attack them. Can you tell us of those?”

  “I know something of vampires. The Web Dweller may know more, but I haven’t spoken to him in thirty-six falans.”

  “How do your folk manage rishathra?” Sawur asked, and there was suppressed giggling.

  Louis grinned. “As best we can. Yours?”

  “We Weavers are said to be very good with our hands, and visitors speak well of the touch of our fur. One must ask, shall we wash?”

  “Good idea.”

  ***

  Weavers, they called themselves.

  Their village—city–was nowhere crowded, but it seemed to go on and on, spilling up and down both sides of the river, sprouting among the trees of the vast forest. Their houses were wickerwork shells shaped like low mushrooms, not unlike the trees.

  Louis was being led toward a vertical cliff of bare pale rock. Kidada said, “See you water running down that cliff face? The baths are below. Sunlight warms the water as it flows, a little.”

  The pool was long and narrow. Low tables bore little heaps of embroidered kilts. Sawur and Kidada added theirs to a heap. Three parallel furrows ran through the hair across the old man’s buttocks, old scars rimmed with white fur, leading Louis to wonder about local predators.

  Weavers were already bathing themselves. Children and the elderly seemed to gravitate together; postadolescents separated out, but rarely formed pairs. Louis had learned to look for such patterns.

  The water was muddy. He didn’t see any towels. He set his clothing—Canyon style camping garb and backpurse, from two hundred light-years away—on a table, and stepped in. When in Rome …

  It wasn’t all that warm, either.

  Now all the ages mixed as the Weavers gathered around the visiting alien, the teacher. Newly met species always had the same questions.

  “My companions and I steered our great ship to the shore of the Great Ocean, forty falans ago. We found desolation. Long before any of y
ou were born, Fist-of-God raised the shore forty manheights along twenty thousand daywalks of shoreline …”

  Confusion. Louis’s translator would translate Sol system measurements into the Ringworld’s thirty-hour day, seventy-five days to a falan; but daywalks and manheights varied by species. Louis floated on his back, treading water while they spoke of distance, time, height. No hurry. He’d done this dance before.

  “People to spinward remember Fist-of-God in their legends. Something bigger than any mountain struck the floor of the world from underneath at hellish speed, thirty-five hundred falans ago”; A.D. 1200, by Louis’s best guess. “It pushed the land up and then ripped through as a fireball. You can see the mountain it made from here, a hundred thousand miles away, and the deserts all around it. The shore of the Great Ocean moved a thousand miles seaward. All the patterns of life changed …”

  The water was armpit-deep, shallower at the end where the children gathered. A kind of dance was going on here: not a courtship game, but the women around Louis were of mating age, and men their age were hanging back. Ring pattern. A rishathra dance?

  His eye kept snagging on Strill’s attentive look and wonderful smile. They all had questions. The same questions always. But Louis had seen the glitter of bronze on the bare cliff above his head. The fractal spiderweb was out of a Weaver’s reach, and the water flowing down the rock wasn’t washing it off.

  So he spoke for an unseen audience. “We had to stay with the ocean or we’d have had nothing to eat. We spent two falans cruising along the shore, and finally we realized we were in a river mouth. We continued upstream. The fertility has returned to the soil along the Shenthy River valley. We’ve been in this vast river valley for thirty-five falans. My City Builder friends left me at a village downstream, twenty falans ago.”

  “Why?”

  “They have children now. But I continued upstream. The people are friendly everywhere. They like hearing my tales.”

  Sawur asked, “Why does that surprise you, Louis Wu?”

  He smiled at the older woman. “When a visitor comes to your village, he probably doesn’t eat what you eat or sleep where you sleep or feel quite comfortable in your house. An alien doesn’t compete with his host. And he might have something to teach. But the Ball People are all one species on all the worlds. A visitor can be bad news.”

  A moment’s uncomfortable silence followed. One of the brawny boys settled behind Strill broke it. He called, “Can you do this?” He reached around his back, one arm above, one below, and clasped wrists with himself.

  Louis Wu laughed. Once he could have. “No.”

  “Then you should have your back washed,” the boy said, and they all moved in.

  ***

  The great thing about the Ringworld was its variety. And the great thing about variety was that rishathra wouldn’t work at all if it required an elaborate dance.

  “How do your folk manage rishathra?”

  “If you will state your gender—”

  “How long can you hold your breath?” Sea Folk.

  “No, but we like to talk about it.”

  “We cannot. Don’t be offended.” Red Herders.

  “It was thus we ruled the world!” City Builders.

  “Only with sapient species. Here, solve this riddle—”

  “Only with nonsapient species. We prefer not to become involved.”

  “May we watch you with your companion?” Louis had once had to explain that Chmeee was not a hominid, and was male besides. He wondered how much the Weavers knew about the bronze spiderweb above their heads. They were pairing off now, but not mating in public. How would Weavers rish?

  Sawur led him out of the water. She squeezed a liter of water from her brown and white fur, with Louis’s help. When she saw he was shivering, she wiped him down with his shirt.

  Louis could smell roasting bird flesh.

  They dressed. Sawur led him into a circle of woven wicker cages. “Council House,” she said of one. Birds were roasting above a barbecue pit. The smells were wonderful. Birds and a huge fish, tended by … “Sawur, those aren’t Weavers.”

  “No. Sailing Folk and Fishers.”

  One Weaver of middle age was tending the pit with the help of seven aliens. They weren’t all of the same species. Two males had webbed hands and broad flat feet, and oily straight hair slicked along their bodies in a smooth curve. The other five, three men and two women, were burly, powerful versions of the Weavers, with altered jaws. Close enough that they might still mate, maybe. All seven were wearing the fantastic Weaver kilts.

  The big Fisher, Shans Serpentstrangler, made introduction. Louis tried to remember their names. His translator would retrieve them, if he could remember even a syllable. Shans explained, “We trade for cloth, yes? We compete. When Hishthare Rockdiver and I offer to broil this monster fish the Sailors catch downstream, the Sailors offer, too. Afraid we talk to Kidada, learn something needful. Get a lower price.”

  “Meanwhile we argue over how to cook our fish.” That was the Sailor, Wheek. “Kidada at least gets his birds the way he wants.”

  “I’d say those birds are done,” Louis said. “I can’t guess about the fish. When did you start?”

  “It will be perfect in a hundred breaths,” Shans said. “Cooked on the down side for the Sailors, warm on the up side for us. How do you like it?”

  “Down side.”

  The Weaver population half dried themselves and came to eat. The birds came off the hot rocks and were torn apart. The fish continued to cook. Louis would find his own vegetables, tomorrow.

  And they talked.

  The Weavers’ nimble fingers wove nets to catch mid-sized birds and beasts of the forest; but they wove cloth for river traffic. Peekaboo clothing, hammocks, fishnets, belt pouches and back pouches, a variety of things for a variety of species.

  Fishers and Sailors traded up and down the river, carrying Weaver kilts, smoked and salted fish, salt, root vegetables …

  It was shop talk. Louis eased out of that. He asked Kidada about his scar, and was told of a fight with what sounded like a monster bear. Weavers withdrew: they’d heard the tale. Kidada told a good tale, though from the sound of it, the scar should have been in front.

  At sunset all the Weavers seemed to melt away. Sawur led him to a ring of tents, their feet crunching in dry brush.

  Sailors and Fishers remained in conversation around the dying coal bed. One called advice after him: “Don’t wander. Only the Night People walk these paths at night.”

  They stooped under the edge of the wicker cage. Sawur rolled against him and fell asleep at once. Louis felt a moment’s irritation; but species differ.

  ***

  Sleeping in a strange place hadn’t bothered Louis in falans … no, in years. Nor sleeping in a strange woman’s arms, nor rubbing against fluffy fur … like sleeping with a big dog … nor both together. But knowing the Hindmost’s eye was near, that kept him awake for some time.

  Sometime in the night, he dreamed that a monster sank teeth into his leg. He woke holding back a scream.

  Sawur spoke without opening her eyes. “What is it, teacher?”

  “Cramp. In my leg.” Louis rolled out of her arms and crawled to the door.

  “I get cramps, too. Walk.” Sawur was asleep.

  He limped outside. The side of his calf was shrieking. He hated muscle cramps!

  The daylit arcs of the Ringworld reflected far more light than Earth’s full moon. The medical kit would give him medicine for a cramp, but it didn’t act any quicker than just walking it off.

  His foot crunched dry twigs.

  Low dry brush surrounded the guests’ huts. Friendly as they were, the Weavers must have some way to discourage thieves. This dry stuff might be their defense.

  The cramp had eased, but he was wide-awake. His cargo plates floated outside the guest hut. He pulled himself aboard. He crossed the brushy barrier without a sound, weaving among the tree trunks.

  Not a bit noc
turnal, these Weavers. No sign of any of them. Sleeping like the dead, how would they catch a thief? The visiting aliens had retired, too. Lanterns lit the bow and stern of a long, low sailboat he hadn’t noticed earlier.

  In a minute or two Louis was floating silently above the pool, lit by Archlight real and reflected.

  Motion within the cliff … and a light blazed in his face.

  Louis squinted, cursing. He looked into the glare … through a window with fuzzed-out edges, at an impressive cinder cone capped in what seemed dirty snow. On any world, that would be a volcano. Here it could be a meteor crater punched from below. It looked very like Fist-of-God, crowned with vacuum and naked Ringworld floor structure.

  A message from the Hindmost?

  Once the puppeteer knew Louis was moving up the river, he could have moved his probe ahead. He’d sprayed a spy device on this rock cliff, and others elsewhere, no doubt. He’d talked to the Weavers … easy enough, but why bother? What did he want?

  Something spat from the crater, twice, thrice within ten seconds.

  “Six hundred and ten hours ago,” said a familiar contralto. “Watch.”

  The view zoomed on the three objects. Lens-shaped spacecraft, big. Kzinti design, Louis thought. They stopped just above the peak, then began their descent, two or three meters above the glassy crater wall.

  “The warcraft are moving quite slowly. Let me show you fast-forward,” the Hindmost said. The warcraft moved briskly downslope. Beyond and below, cloudscape jumped into streamlined motion. “In two hours, twenty minutes at just under sonic speed, they had covered fourteen hundred miles. For kzinti, amazing restraint. Then they diverged, thus—”

  The cloudscape and the saucers jerked to a near stop. Two veered off at right angles; the third continued straight on.

  White light blinked. Then the scene was as before, but the three ships had a blobby, half-melted look, and they gleamed like mirrors. They began to descend … to fall.

  “Stasis fields. They stopped your beam,” Louis said.

  “Worrisome, Louis. Wrong twice within five seconds. Is your brain deteriorating?”