The Ringworld Engineers Part 30

Wintry-cool and mechanical, that voice. "I did. It can't help us. What is left?"

"Follow orders. Hold us at four miles per second antispinward. Let me know when I can flick across to the lander."

"Aye, aye." The puppeteer turned away.

"Hindmost?"

A head turned back.

"Sometimes there's no point in giving up."

Chapter 28 -.

The Map of Kzin All the lights glowed green. Whatever the medical situation, the autodoc was handling it somehow. Chmeee was alive in there-alive, if not healthy.

But the flight-deck thermometer indicated a temperature of a hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

The Hindmost said, "Louis, are you ready to cross?"

The Map of Mars was a black dash below the line of hologram "windows," straight to starboard. The Map of Kzin was a good deal harder to see. Ahead of Mars by several degrees of arc, and fifty thousand miles farther away, Louis made out blue-gray dashed lines against a blue-gray sea.

He said, "We're not exactly opposite yet."

"No. The Ringworld's spin will still impose a velocity difference between Needle and the lander. But the vector is vertical. We can compensate for long enough."

It took Louis a moment to translate those words into a diagram. Then "You're going to dive at the ocean from a thousand miles alt.i.tude?"

"Yes. No risk is insane now, given the position your insanity has put us in."

Louis burst out laughing (a puppeteer teaching courage to Louis Wu?) and sobered as suddenly. How else could an ex-Hindmost regain any of his authority? He said, "Good enough. Start your dive."

He dialed and donned a pair of wooden clogs. He stripped off his falling jumper and rolled it around the impact suit and utility vest, but kept the flashlight-laser in his hand. The empty seascape had begun to expand.

"Ready."

"Go."

Louis crossed a hundred and twenty thousand miles in one giant step.

Kzin, twenty years ago: Louis Wu sprawled on a worn stone fooch and thought well of himself.

These oddly shaped stone couches called foochesth were as ubiquitous as park benches throughout the hunting parks of Kzin. They were almost kidney-shaped, built for a male kzin to lie half curled up. The kzinti hunting parks were half wild and stocked with both predators and meat animals: orange-and-yellow jungle, with the foochesth as the only touch of civilization. With a population in the hundreds of millions, the planet was crowded by kzinti standards. The parks were crowded too.

Louis had been touring the jungle since morning. He was tired. Legs dangling, he watched the populace pa.s.s before him.

Within the jungle the orange kzinti were almost invisible. One moment, nothing. The next, a quarter-ton of sentient carnivore hot on the trail of something fast and frightened. The male kzin would jerk to a stop and stare-at Louis's closed-lip smile (because a kzin shows his teeth in challenge) and at the sign of the Patriarch's protection on his shoulder (Louis had made sure it showed prominently). The kzin would decide it was none of his business, and leave.

Strange, how that much predator could show only as a sense of presence in the frilly yellow foliage. Watching eyes and playful murder, somewhere. Then a huge adult male and a furry, cuddly adolescent half his height were watching the intruder.

Louis had a tyro's grasp of the Hero's Tongue. He understood when the kzin kitten looked up at its parent and asked, "Is it good to eat?"

The adult's eyes met Louis's eyes. Louis let his smile widen to show the teeth.

The adult said, "No."

In the confidence of four Man-Kzin wars plus some "incidents"-all centuries in the past, but all won by men-Louis grinned and nodded. You tell him, Daddy! It's safer to eat white a.r.s.enic than human meat!

Ringworld, twenty years later: The walls bathed him in heat. He started to sweat. It didn't bother him. He'd used saunas. One hundred and sixty degrees isn't hot for a sauna.

The Hindmost's recorded voice snarled and spat in the Hero's Tongue, offering sanctuary on the Fleet of Worlds. "Cut that broadcast!" Louis commanded, and it was done.

Upward-streaming flames screened the windows. The cannon-carrying vehicle had been moved away. A pair of distorted kzinti sprinted across the courtyard, placed a canister under the lander, sprinted back to a doorway.

These were not quite kzinti: not as civilized as Chmeee. If they got their paws on Louis Wu-but he should be safe enough here.

Louis squinted down through the flames. There were six of the canisters in place around the lander's base. Bombs, no doubt. They'd be set off any second now, before the flame could explode them individually.

Louis grinned. His hands poised above the control board while he fought temptation. Then: he tapped in instructions, fast. The b.u.t.tons were uncomfortably hot. He braced his legs and gripped the chair back, with his falling jumper to pad his hands.

The lander rose from the flames. A ring of fireb.a.l.l.s billowed below, and then the castle was a dwindling toy. Louis was still grinning. He felt virtuous; he'd resisted temptation. If he'd taken off on the fusion drive instead of the repulsers, the kzinti would have been amazed at the power of their explosives.

Hail clattered on the hull and windows. Louis looked up, startled, as a dozen winged toys curved down toward him. Then the aircraft were dropping away. Louis pursed his lips; he reset the autopilot to halt his rise at five miles. Maybe he'd want to lose those planes. Maybe not.

He got up and turned for the stairs.

Louis snorted when he read the dials. He called the Hindmost. "Chmeee is fully healed and peacefully asleep in the 'doc. The 'doc won't wake him up and let him out because conditions outside are not habitable."

"Not habitable?"

"It's too hot. The autodoc isn't set to let the patient step out into a fire. Things ought to cool off now that we're out of the flames!" Louis ran his hand across his forehead; water streamed to his elbow. "It Chmeee gets out, will you tell him the situation? I need a cold shower."

He was in the shower when the floor dropped under him. Louis s.n.a.t.c.hed for a towel and was wrapping it around his waist as he ran up the stairs. He heard hail rapping on the hull.

Slowly and carefully, as if he still hurt, Chmeee turned from his place at the controls. He squinted oddly. Hair had been shaved away around the eye. Mock skin covered a shaved strip running up his thigh to the groin. He said, "h.e.l.lo, Louis. I see you survived."

"Yeah. What are you doing?"

"I left pregnant females in the fortress."

"Are they about to be killed this instant? Or can we hover for a few minutes?"

"Have we something to discuss? I trust you know better than to interfere."

"The way things stand now, your females win be dead in two years."

"They may ride home in stasis aboard Hot Needle of Inquiry. I still hope to persuade the Hindmost-"

"Persuade me. I have taken command of Needle."

Chmeee's hands moved. The floor surged savagely. Louis grabbed at a chair back and rode it out. A glance at the board told him that Needle's descent had stopped. The rain of projectiles had stopped too, though a dozen aircraft still circled beyond the windows. The fortress was half a mile below.

Chmeee asked, "How did you arrange that?"

"I made slag out of the hyperdrive motor."

The kzin moved incredibly fast. Before Louis could do more than flinch, he was wrapped in orange fur. The kzin was pulling Louis against his chest with one arm while the other held four claws against Louis's eyebrows.

"Shrewd," said Louis. "Very shrewd. Where do your plans carry you from here?"

The kzin didn't move. Blood trickled past Louis's eyes. He felt that his back was breaking. Louis said, "It seems I've had to rescue you again."

The kzin released him and stepped back carefully, as if afraid to move on impulse. He asked, "Have you doomed us all? Or do you have some notion of moving the entire Ringworld back into position?"

"The latter."

"How?"

"A couple of hours ago I could have told you. Now we'll have to find another answer."

"Why did you do it?"

"I wanted to save the Ringworld. There was just one way to get the Hindmost's cooperation. His life's at stake now. How do I go about getting your cooperation?"

"You fool. I fully intend to learn how to move the Ringworld, if only to save my children. Your problem is to persuade me that I need you."

"The Pak who built the Ringworld were my ancestors. We're trying to think like them, aren't we? What did they build in that would do the job? Aside from that, I've got two City Builder librarians with a good knowledge of Ringworld history. They wouldn't cooperate with you. They already see you as monstrous, and you haven't even killed me yet."

Chmeee thought it over. "If they fear me they will obey. Their world is at stake. Their ancestors were Pak too."

The lander's temperature had become uncomfortably cool for a naked man, but Louis was sweating again. "I've already located the Repair Center."

"Where?"

Louis considered withholding that information, briefly. "The Map of Mars."

Chmeee sat down. "Now, that is most impressive. These displaced kzinti learned a good deal about the Map of Mars during their age of exploration, but they never learned that."

"I'll bet some s.h.i.+ps disappeared around the Map of Mars."

"The aircraft pilot told me that many s.h.i.+ps disappeared, and nothing of value was ever taken from the Map of Mars. The explorers brought home wealth from a Map further to spinward, but they never brought as much wealth as they put into making the s.h.i.+ps. Do you need the autodoc?"

Louis wiped blood from his face with his falling Jumper. "Not just yet. That Map to spinward sounds like Earth. So it wasn't defended after all."

"It seems not. But there is a Map to port, and s.h.i.+ps that went there never returned. Could the Repair Center be there?"

"No, that's the Map of Down. They met Grogs." Louis swabbed at his face again. The claws hadn't cut deep, he thought, but a facial cut bleeds a long time. "Let's do something about your pregnant females. How many?"

"I don't know. Six were in their mating period."

"Well, we don't have room for them. They'll have to stay in the castle. Unless you think the local lord will kill them?"

"No, but he may very well kill my male children. Another danger ... Well, I can deal with that." Chmeee turned to the controls. "The most powerful civilization is built around one of the old exploration s.h.i.+ps, the Behemoth. If they track me here, there might be war against the fortress."

The aircraft burned like torches as they fell. Chmeee tested the sky with radar, deep-radar, and infrared. Empty. "Louis, were there more? Did any land?"

"I don't think so. If they did, they ran out of fuel, and there aren't any runways ... Roads? Scan the roads. You can't let them radio the big s.h.i.+p." Radio would be line of sight, and the Ringworld atmosphere probably had a Heaviside layer.

There was one road, and tanj few straight patches on it. There were flat fields ... It was some minutes before Chmeee was satisfied. The aircraft were dead, all of them.

"Next step," said Louis. "You can't just wipe out everyone in the fortress. I gather kzinti females can't take care of themselves."

"No ... Louis, it's odd. The females of the castle are much more intelligent than those of the Patriarchy."

"As intelligent as you?"

"No! But they even have a small vocabulary."

"Is it possible that your own people have been breeding your females for docility? Refusing to mate with the intelligent ones for hundreds of thousands of years? After all, you cull the slave species."

Chmeee s.h.i.+fted restlessly. "It may be. The males here are different too. I tried to deal with the rulers of the exploration s.h.i.+p. I showed my power, then waited for them to attempt to negotiate. They attempted no such thing. They behaved as if there was nothing to do but fight until they or I were destroyed. I had to mock Chjarrl, to insult his pride in his ancestry, before he would tell me anything."

But puppeteers never bred these kzinti for docility, Louis thought. "Well, if you can't take the females out of the fortress and you can't kill off the males, then you'll tanj well have to deal with them. G.o.d Gambit?"

"Perhaps. Let us do it this way ..."

Well above arrow range, just above the range of the cannon on the intruder's vehicle, the lander hovered. Its shadow covered the ashes of the fire in the courtyard. Louis listened to the voices from Chmeee's translator, and waited for Chmeee's signal.

Chmeee inviting archers to fire at him. Chmeee threatening, promising, threatening. Staccato thunder from a laser beam cutting rock, followed by a crash. Hissing, snarling, spitting.

No mention of Chmeee's really dangerous master.

Four hours he was down there. Then Chmeee stepped from one of the narrow windows and floated upward. Louis waited till he was aboard, then lifted.

Presently Chmeee appeared behind him, minus flying belt and impact armor. Louis said, "You never signaled for the G.o.d Gambit."

"Are you offended?"

"No, of course not."

"It would have gone badly. And ... I could not have done it. This is my own species. I could not threaten them with a man."

"Okay."