The Ringworld Engineers Part 14

He fell slowly. There was nothing human on the stairs, but things had been dropped: anonymous clothing, weapons, boots, another shoulder pack. Louis continued dropping ... and suddenly knew he'd found the right level. Quick adjustments to his flying belt sent him slamming through a doorway in pursuit of a smell radically different from what Chmeee had called cordite.

He was outside the tower. He barely avoided smas.h.i.+ng into a wall; he was still inside the lower, crushed building. Somehow he'd dropped his light. He flicked up the amplification in the binocular goggles and turned right, toward light.

There was a dead woman in the great doorway: one of the attackers. Blood had pooled beneath a projectile wound in her chest. Louis felt a great sadness for her ... and a driving urgency that made him fly right over her, through the doors and out.

The amplified Archlight was bright even through cloud cover. He had found the attackers, and the defenders too. They were paired off, pale, slender forms with shorter, darker ones who still wore bits of clothing, a boot or a head covering or a s.h.i.+rt ripped open. In the fury of their mating they ignored the flying man.

But one was not paired with anyone. As Louis stopped his flight she reached up and grasped his ankle, without insistence and without fear. She was silver-haired and very pale, and her finely chiseled face was beautiful beyond words.

Louis turned off the flying belt and dropped beside her. He took her in his arms. Her hands ran over his strange clothing, questing. Louis dropped the stunner, pulled off his vest and flying belt-his fingers were clumsy-his impact armor, his undersuit. He took her without finesse. His urgency was greater than any consideration for her. But she was as eager as he.

He was not aware of anything but himself and her. Certainly he didn't know that Chmeee had joined them. He knew that, joltingly, when the kzin rapped his new love hard across the head with his laser. The furry alien hand sank its claws in her silver hair and pulled her head back, and pulled her teeth loose from Louis Wu's throat.

Chapter 15 -.

The Machine People The wind blew dust up Louis Wu's nostrils; it whipped his hair in a storm around his face. Louis brushed it back and opened his eyes. The light was blinding-bright. His fumbling hands found a plastic patch on his neck, then binocular goggles covering his face. He pulled them loose.

He rolled away from the woman and sat up.

Now it was dim. Almost dawn: the terminator line split the world into light and dark. Louis ached in every muscle. He felt as if he'd been beaten. Paradoxically, he felt wonderful. For too many years he had used s.e.x only rarely, and only as cover, because wireheads traditionally have no interest in such things. Last night his whole soul had been involved.

The woman? She was about Louis's height, and on the stocky side of pretty. Not flat-chested, but not busty either. Her black hair was bound in a long braid, and there was a disconcerting fringe of beard along her jaw. She slept the sleep of exhaustion, and she'd earned it. They both had. Now he was beginning to remember. But his memories didn't make much sense.

He'd been making love-no, he'd been head over heels in love with the pale, slender woman with the red lips. Seeing his blood on her mouth, feeling the sting in his neck, had left him only with a terrible sense of loss. He'd howled when Chmeee twisted her head around until her neck snapped. He'd fought when the kzin plucked him off the dead woman. The kzin had tucked him under one arm; he was still raging, still fighting, while Chmeee fished the medkit out of Louis's vest and slapped a patch on his neck and tucked the medkit away again.

Then Chmeee had killed them, all the pretty silver-haired men and women, spearing them accurately through their heads with the brilliant ruby needle of his flashlight-laser. Louis remembered trying to stop him, and being thrown rolling across the broken pavement. He'd staggered to his feet, and seen someone else moving, and moved toward her. Her, the dark-haired woman, the only defender left alive. They'd moved into each other's arms.

Why had he done that? And Chmeee had tried to get his attention ... hadn't he? Louis remembered a shrieking as of tigers at war.

"Pheromones," he said. "And they looked so harmless!" He stood up and looked about him in sheer horror. The dead were all around him: the dark ones with wounded necks, the pale ones with blood on their mouths and black char marks in their silver hair.

The guns hadn't been enough. What the vampires had was worse than a tasp. They put out a superstimulus cloud of pheromones, human scent-signals of s.e.xual readiness. One of the vampires, or a pair, must have reached the tower. And the defenders had come out, running, shedding guns and clothing in a haste that sent one over the banister to his death.

But why, with the vampires dead, had he and the dark-haired woman ...?

The wind tossed at Louis's hair. Yeah. The vampires were dead, but he and the dark-haired woman were still in a cloud of pheromones. They'd mated in frenzy ... "If the wind hadn't come up we'd still be Doing It. Yeah. Now, where the tanj did I leave ... everything?"

He found the impact armor and the flying belt. The undersuit was torn to shreds. What about the vest? He saw that the woman's eyes were open. She sat up suddenly, with a horror in her eyes that Louis could well understand. He said to her, "I've got to have the vest because the translator's in it. I hope Chmeee doesn't frighten you off before I can-"

Chmeee. How had this looked to him?

Chmeee's great hand engulfed Louis's skull and twisted it backward. Louis clung to the woman with his body and his mind, and thrust, thrust, but his eyes were filled with that orange beast-face, and his ears with screaming insults. It was distracting ...

Chmeee wasn't in sight. Louis found the vest a good distance away, gripped in a vampire's dead hand. He couldn't find the stunner. By now he was really worried. Something ugly was thrusting out of his memory. He was running when he reached the place where they'd grounded the lander.

A chunk of rock too big for three men to lift was holding down a generous pile of black superconductor cloth. Chmeee's parting gift. The lander was gone.

I'll have to get over this sooner or later, Louis thought. Why not now? A friend had taught him this cantrip, this bit of magic for recovering from shock or grief. Sometimes it worked.

He was sitting on what had been a porch railing, though the porch now sat alone in a sand-covered walkway. He had donned his impact armor and the vest with all the pockets. He had put clothing between himself and a vast and lonely world. Not modesty, but fear.

That had used up all his ambition. Now he sat. Thoughts drifted aimlessly. He thought of a working droud as far away as the Earth from its moon, and a two-headed ally who would not risk landing here even to save Louis Wu. He thought of the Ringworld engineers and their idealized ecology, which had included nothing like mosquitoes or vampire bats; and his lips quirked into the beginning of a smile, then settled into a dead man's expression, which is no expression at all.

He knew where Chmeee had gone. He smiled again to think how little good it did him. Had Chmeee told him that? No matter. Survival or the mating urge or vengeance on the Hindmost would all drive Chmeee in the same direction. But would any of these motives bring him back to rescue Louis Wu?

And he thought how little one death mattered, with the Ringworld's trillions all doomed to intimate contact with their sun.

Well, Chmeee might return. Louis ought to get off his b.u.t.t and do something about reaching the floating city. They'd been headed there; Chmeee would expect to find him there, if some whim brought the kzin back for the ally who had failed him so badly. Or Louis might actually learn something valuable. Or ... he'd have to survive somewhere in the year or two left to him. I'll have to get over this sometime. Why not now?

Somebody yelled.

The black-haired woman had dressed herself in shorts and s.h.i.+rt and a backpack. She held a projectile weapon at her side, pointed at Louis Wu. With her other arm she gestured and yelled again.

Vacation was over. Louis became acutely aware that his hood was around his neck. If she tried a head shot-well, she might just give him time to pull the hood over his face, and then it wouldn't matter if she fired or not. The impact suit would stop the projectiles while he ran. What he really needed was the flying belt. Or did he?

"Okay," said Louis, and he smiled and raised his hands to the sides. What he really needed was an ally. With one hand he reached slowly into his vest, withdrew the translator, clipped it just under his throat. "This will talk for us, as soon as it learns to."

She motioned with the gun: Go ahead of me.

Louis walked as far as the flying belt, then stooped and picked it up, without jerky motions. Thunder cracked. A stone six inches from Louis Wu's foot jumped wildly away. He dropped the harness and stepped back.

Tanj, she wasn't talking! She'd decided he couldn't speak her language, and that was that. How would the translator learn anything?

With his hands in the air, he watched her fiddle one-handed with the flying belt while she kept the gun more or less on him. If she touched the wrong controls, he'd lose the belt and the cloth too. But she set the belt down, studied Louis's face a moment, then stepped back and gestured.

Louis picked up the flying belt. When she gestured toward her vehicle, he shook his head. He went to where Chmeee had left an acre or so of superconductor cloth, weighted down by a boulder far too heavy to move.

The gun never left him as he strapped the harness around the rock and activated the flying belt. He wrapped his arms around the rock-and the harness, for fear it would slip-and lifted. The rock came up. He turned full around and let go. It settled slowly to the ground.

Was that respect in her eyes? Was it for his technology or his strength? He turned off the belt, picked up it and the superconductor cloth, and moved ahead of her to her vehicle. She opened double doors in its side. He set his burden down and looked around.

Couches around three sides; a tiny stove in the center, and a hatch in the roof for a smoke hole. Stacks of baggage behind the rear seat. Another couch in front, facing forward.

He backed out. He turned back toward the tower, took one step forward, and looked at her. She got the idea. She dithered, then gestured him on.

The dead were beginning to smell. He wondered if she would bury or burn them. But she walked among the bodies without stopping. It was Louis who stopped, to probe with his fingers in a woman's silver hair.

There was too much hair, too little skull. Beautiful she was, but her brain was smaller than a human brain. He sighed and went on.

The woman followed him through the sh.e.l.l of the lower building, into the tower's spiral staircase, and down. A dead man of her species lay broken in the crushed bas.e.m.e.nt, and the flashlight-laser was next to him. When he glanced back at the woman, he saw tears in her eyes.

He reached for the flashlight-laser and she fired past him. The ricochet thumped him on the hip, and he s.h.i.+ed violently inside the suddenly rigid sh.e.l.l. He backed against the shattered wall while she picked up the device.

She found the switch, and light jumped around them in a wide beam. She found the focus; the beam narrowed. She nodded and dropped the device in her pocket.

On their walk back to the vehicle Louis casually pulled the impact-suit hood over his face, as if the sunlight were too bright. She might have all she wanted from Louis Wu, or she might be short of water, or she might not want his company.

She didn't shoot him. She climbed into the car and locked the doors, with a key. For an instant Louis saw himself marooned with no water and no tools. But she gestured him close to the right-hand window, where the driving controls were. She began to show him how to drive.

It was the breakthrough Louis had hoped for. He repeated the words she called through the window, and added his own words. "Steering ring. Turn. Activator. Key. Throttle. Retrothrottle." She was pretty good with gestures. A hand zipping through air plus a finger tracing a needle's path were "airspeed gauge."

It startled her when the translator began talking back to her. She let the language lesson continue for a bit. Then she unlocked the door, backed across the seat with the gun ready, and said, "Get in. Drive."

The machine was noisy and balky. It translated every little b.u.mp directly to the driver's couch until Louis learned to steer around cracks in the road, rubble, or drifts of sand. The woman watched him silently. Did she have no curiosity? It occurred to him that she had lost a dozen companions to the vampires. Under the circ.u.mstances she was functioning well enough.

Presently she said, "I am Valavirgillin."

"I am Louis Wu."

"Your devices are strange. The speaker, the lifter, the variable light-what more have you?"

"Tanj dammit! I left the eyepieces."

She pulled the binocular goggles out of a pocket. "I found these."

She may have found the stunner too. Louis didn't ask. "Good. Put them on and I'll show you how they work."

She smiled and shook her head. She must be afraid he'd jump her. She asked, "What were you doing in the old city? Where did you find these things?"

"They are mine. I brought them from a far star."

"Do not mock me, Louis Wu."

Louis looked at her. "Did the people who built the cities have such things?"

"They had things that speak. They could raise buildings in the air; why not themselves?"

"What of my companion? Have you found his like on the Ringworld?"

"He seemed monstrous." She flushed. "I had no chance to study him."

No, she'd been distracted. Nuts. "Why do you point a gun at me? The desert is enemy to both of us. We should help each other."

"I have no reason to trust you. Now I wonder if you are mad. Only the City Builders traveled between the stars."

"You are mistaken."

She shrugged. "Must you drive so slowly?"

"I need practice."

But Louis was getting the hang of it. The road was straight and not too rough, and there was nothing coming at him. There were drifts of sand across the road. Valavirgillin had told him not to slow for these.

And he was moving at a fair clip toward his destination. He asked, "What can you tell me about the floating city?"

"I have never been there. The children of the City Builders use it. They no longer build, nor do they rule, but our custom is that they keep the city. They have many visitors."

"Tourists? People who go only to see the city?"

She smiled. "For that and other reasons. One must be invited. Why must you know these things?"

"I have to get to the floating city. How far may I drive with you?"

Now she laughed. "I think that you will not be invited there. You are not famous nor powerful."

"I'll think of something."

"I go as far as the school at River's Return. There I must tell them what happened."

"What did happen? What were you doing there in the desert?"

She told him. It wasn't easy. There were gaps in the translator's vocabulary. They worked around the gaps and filled them in.

The Machine People ruled a mighty empire.

Traditionally an empire is a cl.u.s.ter of nearly independent kingdoms. The various kingdoms must pay taxes, and they follow the emperor's commands as regards war, banditry control, maintenance of communication, and sometimes an official religion. Otherwise they follow their own customs.

And that was doubly true within the Machine Empire, where, for instance, the way of life of a herd-keeping carnivore was in compet.i.tion with the life style of the Gra.s.s People; was useful to the traders, who bought the carnivores' tooled leather goods; and was irrelevant to the ghouls. In some territories many species worked in cooperation, and all allowed free pa.s.sage to the ghouls. The various species followed their own customs because they were built to.

Ghoul was Louis Wu's word. Valavirgillin called them something like Night People. They were the garbage collectors and the morticians too, which was why Valavirgillin had not buried her dead. The ghouls had speech. They could be taught to give last rites in the local hominid religions. They formed an information source for the Machine People. Legend said that they had done the same for the City Builders when the City Builders ruled.

According to Valavirgillin, the Machine Empire was an empire of trade, and it taxed only its own merchants. The more she talked, the more exceptions Louis found. The kingdoms maintained the roads that linked the empire, if their people were capable of it, which (for instance) the tree-living Hanging People were not. The roads marked the borders between territories held by different species of hominid. Wars of conquest across the roads were forbidden; and so the roads prevented wars (sometimes!) merely by existing.

The empire had the power to draft armies to battle bandits and thieves. The large patches of land the empire took for trading posts tended to become full colonies. Because roads and vehicles linked the empire, the kingdoms thereof were required to distill chemical fuel and hold it available. The empire purchased mines (by forced sale?), mined its own ore, and leased the right to manufacture machinery according to the empire's specifications.

There were schools for traders. Valavirgillin and her companions were students and a teacher from the school at River's Return. They had set out on a field trip to a trade center bordering the jungle lands of the Hanging People-brachiators, Louis gathered, who traded in nuts and dried fruit-and the Herders, carnivores who dealt in leather goods and handicrafts. (No, they were not small and red. A different species.) They had veered for a side trip to an ancient desert city.

They had not expected vampires. Where would vampires find water in this desert? How would they get there? Vampires were almost extinct except for- "Except for what? I missed something."

Valavirgillin blushed. "Some older people keep toothless vampires for-for the purpose of rishathra. That may be how it happened. A tame pair escaped somehow, or a pregnant female."

"Vala, that's disgusting."

"It is," she agreed coolly. "I never heard anyone admit to keeping vampires himself. Where you come from, is there nothing that some do that others find shameful?"

That shot struck home. "I'll tell you about current addiction sometime. Not now."

She studied him over the metal snout of her weapon. Despite that fringe of black beard along her jaw, she looked human enough ... but widened. Her face was almost perfectly square. Louis was having trouble reading her face. That was predictable; the human face has evolved as a signaling device, and Vala's evolution diverged from his.

He asked, "What will you do next?"

"I must report the deaths ... and give over the artifacts from the desert city. There is a bounty, but the empire claims City Builder artifacts."