The Ringworld Engineers Part 9

She looked at him curiously. "Their minds were turned to our destruction."

"We shot them. We ask you to let them live."

"How? What would they do to us if we let them wake up?"

It was a problem. Louis temporized. "If I solve that, will you let them live? Remember, it was our sleepgun." And that should suggest to Ginjerofer that Chmeee could use the gun again.

"We will confer," said Ginjerofer.

Louis waited, and thought. No way would forty giant herbivores fit in the lander. They could be disarmed, of course ... Louis grinned suddenly at the sword in the giant's big, broad-fingered hand. The long, curved blade would work as a scythe.

Ginjerofer came back. "They may live if we never see their tribe again. Can you promise that?"

"You're a bright woman. Yeah, they could have relatives with a vengeance tradition. And yeah, I can promise you'll never see this tribe again."

Chmeee spoke in his ear. "Louis? You may have to exterminate them!"

"No. It could cost us some time, but tanj, look at them! Peasants. They can't fight us. At worst I'll make them build a big raft and we'll tow it with the lander. The sunflowers haven't crossed the downstream river yet. We'll let them off a good way away, where there's gra.s.s."

"For what? A delay of weeks!"

"For information." Louis turned back to Ginjerofer. "I want the one in the armor, and I want all their weapons. Leave them not so much as a knife. Keep what you want, but I want most of it piled in the lander."

She looked dubiously at the armored giant. "How shall we move him?"

"I'll get a repulser plate. You tie the rest up after we're gone. Let them loose in pairs. Tell them the situation. Send them to spinward in daylight. If they come back to attack you with no weapons, they're yours. But they won't. They'll cross that plain d.a.m.n fast, with no weapons and no gra.s.s over an inch tall."

She considered. "It seems safe enough. It will be done."

"We'll be at their camp, wherever it is, long before they arrive. We'll wait for them, Ginjerofer."

"They will not be hurt. My promise is for the People," she said coldly.

The armored giant woke shortly after dawn.

His eyes opened, blinked, and focused on a looming orange wall of fur, and yellow eyes, and long claws. He held quite still while his eyes roved ... seeing the weapons of thirty comrades piled around him ... seeing the airlock, with both doors open. Seeing horizon slide past; feeling the wind of the lander's speed.

He tried to roll over.

Louis grinned. He was watching via a scanner in the rec-room ceiling while he steered the lander. The giant's armor was soldered to the deck at knees, heels, wrists, and shoulders. A little heat would free him, but rolling around wouldn't.

The giant made demands and threats. He did not plead. Louis paid scant attention. When the computer's translating program started getting sense out of that, he'd notice. At the moment he was more concerned with his view of the giants' camp.

He was a mile up, and fifty miles from the red carnivores' huts. He slowed. The gra.s.s hereabouts had had time to grow back, but the giants had left another great bare region behind them, toward the sea and the sunflower gleam beyond. They were out in the gra.s.s: thousands of them scattered widely across the veldt. Louis caught points of light glittering from scythe-swords.

No giants were near the camp itself. There were wagons parked near the center of camp, and no sign of draft beasts. The giants must pull the wagons themselves. Or they might have motors left from the event Halrloprillalar had called the Fall of the Cities, a thousand years ago.

The one thing Louis couldn't see was the central building. He saw only a black spot on his window, a black rectangle overloaded by too much light. Louis grinned. The giants had enlisted the enemy.

A screen lighted. A seductive contralto said, "Louis."

"Here."

"I return your droud," the puppeteer said.

Louis turned. The small black thing was sitting on the stepping disc. Louis turned away as one turns one's back on an enemy, remembering that the enemy is still there.

He said, "There's something I want you to investigate. There are mountains along the base of the rim wall. The natives-"

"For the risks of exploring I selected you and Chmeee."

"Can you understand that I might want to minimize those risks?"

"Certainly."

"Then hear me out. I think well want to investigate the spill mountains. Before we do, there are just a lot of things we need to know about the rim wall. All you have to-"

"Louis, why did you call them spill mountains?"

"The natives call them that. I don't know why, and neither do they. Suggestive, eh? And they don't show from the back. Why not? Most of the Ringworld is like the mask of a world, with seas and mountains molded into it. But there's volume to the spill mountains."

"Suggestive, yes. You must learn the answers yourselves. I am called Hindmost, as any leader may be called Hindmost," the puppeteer said, "because he directs his people from safety, because safety is his prerogative and his duty, because his death or injury would be disaster for all. Louis, you've dealt with my kind before!"

"Tanj, I'm only asking you to risk a probe, not your valuable hide! All we need is a running hologram taken along the rim wall. Put the probe in the rim transport loops and decelerate it to solar orbital speed. You'll be using the system just as it's meant to be used. The meteor defense won't fire on the rim wall-"

"Louis, you are trying to outguess a weapon programmed hundreds of thousands of years ago by your reckoning. What if something has blocked the rim transport system? What if the laser targeting system has become faulty?"

"Even at worst, what have you lost?"

"Half my refueling capability," said the puppeteer. "I planted stepping-disc transmitters in the probes, behind a filter that will pa.s.s only deuterium. The receiver is in the fuel tank. To refuel I need only drop a probe in a Ringworld sea. But if I lose my probes, how will I leave the Ringworld? And why should I take that risk?"

Louis held tight to his temper. "The volume, Hindmost! What's inside the spill mountains? There must be hundreds of thousands of those half-cones thirty to forty miles tall, and the backs are flat! One could be the control and maintenance center, or a whole string of them. I don't think they are, but I want to know before I go anywhere near them. Aside from that, there must be att.i.tude jets for the Ringworld, and the best place for them is the rim wall. Where are they, and why aren't they working?"

"Are you quite sure they must be rocket motors? There are other solutions. Gravity generators would serve for att.i.tude control."

"I don't believe it. The Ringworld engineers wouldn't need to spin the Ringworld if they had gravity generators. It'd make for a much simpler engineering problem."

"Control of magnetic effects, then, in the sun and the Ringworld floor."

"Mmm ... maybe. Tanj, I'm not sure. I want you to find out!"

"How can you dare to bargain with me?" The puppeteer seemed more puzzled than angry. "At my whim you remain until the Ringworld grinds against the shadow squares. At my whim you will never taste current again."

The translator was finally speaking. "b.u.t.t out," Louis said. He'd been given no volume control for the Hindmost's voice, but the Hindmost stopped talking.

The translator said, "Docile? Because I eat plants, must I be docile? Take me out of my armor and I will fight you naked, you ball of orange hair. My s.p.a.ce in the longhouse needs a fine new rug."

"And what," Chmeee asked, "of these?" He showed polished black claws.

"Give me one tiny dagger against your eight. Or give me none, I will fight without."

Louis was chortling. He used the intercom. "Chmeee, haven't you ever seen a bullfight? And this one must be the Patriarch of the herd, the king giant!"

The giant asked, "Who or what was that?"

"That was Louis." Chmeee's voice dropped. "There is danger for you. I urge you to be respectful. Louis is ... fearsome."

Louis was a little startled. What was this? A reverse G.o.d Gambit, with the Voice of Louis Wu as guest star? It could work, if Chmeee the ferocious kzin was clearly afraid of an unseen voice ... Louis said, "King of Plant Eaters, tell me why you attacked my wors.h.i.+ppers."

"Their beasts ate our forage," said the giant.

"Was there forage elsewhere, that you could avoid risking my anger?"

Among the males of a herd of cattle or buffalo, one either dominates or submits. There is no middle ground. The giant's eyes rolled, seeking escape, but there was none. If he couldn't dominate Chmeee, how could he cow an unseen voice?

"We had no choice," he said. "To spinward are the fire plants. To port are the Machine People. To starboard is a high ridge of exposed scrith. Nothing will grow on scrith, and it is too slippery to climb. To antispinward is gra.s.s, and nothing to stop us but small savages, until you came! What is your power, Louis? Are my men alive?"

"I let your men live. In"-fifty miles, running naked and hungry-"... in two days they will be with you. But I can kill you all with a motion of my finger."

The giant's eyes searched the ceiling, pleading. "If you can kill the fire plants, we will wors.h.i.+p you."

Louis settled back to think. Suddenly it was no longer fun.

He heard the giant begging Chmeee for information on Louis; he heard Chmeee lying outrageously. They'd played such games before. The G.o.d Gambit had kept them alive during their long return to the Liar; Speaker-To-Animals's reputation as a war G.o.d, and the natives' offerings, had kept them from starvation. Louis hadn't realized that Speaker / Chmeee enjoyed it.

Sure, Chmeee was having fun. But the giant was pleading for help, and what could Louis do against sunflowers? Actually, it was hardly a problem. The giants had offended him, hadn't they? G.o.ds in general were not noted for forgiveness. So Louis opened his mouth, and closed it again, and thought some more, and said, "For your life and the lives of your people, tell me the truth. Can you eat the fire plants if they do not burn you first?"

The giant answered eagerly. "Yes, Louis. We forage along the border at night, when we grow hungry enough. But we must be far away by dawn! The plants can find us miles away, and they burn anything that moves! They all turn at once, they turn the glare of the sun on us, and we burn!"

"But you can eat them when the sun isn't s.h.i.+ning."

"Yes."

"How do the winds blow in this region?"

"Winds? ... In these parts they blow to spinward. For great distances around, they blow only into the realm of fire plants."

"Because the plants heat the air?"

"Am I a G.o.d, to know that?"

After all, the sunflowers only got a certain amount of sunlight. The way they worked, they'd heat the air around and above them, but the sunlight would never pa.s.s the silver blossoms to reach the roots. Dew would condense on the cool soil. The plants would get their moisture that way. And rising hot air would bring a steady wind from the borders of the sunflower patch.

And the plants burned anything that moved, to turn plant-eating beasts and birds into fertilizer.

He could do it. He could.

"You will do most of the work yourself," Louis said. "The tribe is yours and you will save them. Afterward, you and they will turn toward the dying fire plants. Eat them, or plow them under and plant whatever you like to eat." Louis grinned at Chmeee's bewilderment, and continued, "You will never disturb my wors.h.i.+ppers, the red people."

The armored giant was gloriously happy. "All of this is most welcome news. Our wors.h.i.+p is yours. We must seal the covenant by rishathra."

"You're kidding."

"What? No, I spoke of this earlier, but Chmeee did not understand. Bargains must be sealed by rishathra, even between men and G.o.ds. Chmeee, this is no problem. You are even of proper size for my women."

"I am stranger than you think," Chmeee said.

From Louis's ceiling viewpoint it looked like Chmeee was exposing himself to the giant. Certainly something had caused the giant's startled expression. Louis couldn't have cared less. Tanj dammit! he thought. I actually thought of an answer! And now this. What do I have to do to- Yeah. "I will make for you a servant," Louis said. "Because I am hurried, he will be dwarf, and mute in your language. Call him Wu. Chmeee, we must confer."

Chapter 11 -.

The Gra.s.s Giants The lander touched down in a malevolent glare of white light. The glare from the longhouse persisted for a minute after the lander stopped moving, then died. Presently the ramp descended. The king giant, fully armored, let it carry him to the ground. He raised his head and bellowed. The sound must have carried for many miles.

Giants began jogging toward the lander.

Chmeee descended, then Wu. Wu was small, partly hairless, and harmless-looking. He smiled a lot; he looked about him with charming enthusiasm, as if seeing the world for the first time ...

The longhouse was a fair distance away. It was mud and gra.s.s, reinforced with vertical members. The row of sunflowers planted on the roof s.h.i.+fted restlessly, now turning their concave mirror faces and green photosynthetic nodes to the sun, now flas.h.i.+ng at the giants converging from all directions.

Chmeee was asking, "What if an enemy attacked in the daytime? How can you reach the longhouse? Or do you store your weapons elsewhere?"

The giant considered before giving away secrets of defense. But Chmeee served Louis, and it was well not to offend him ... "See you the pile of brush to antispinward of the longhouse? If danger threatens, a man must approach from behind that pile and wave a sheet. The sunflowers fire the damp wood. Under cover of smoke we may then enter and take weapons." He glanced at the lander and added, "An enemy fast enough to reach us before we can reach weapons is too strong for us anyway. Perhaps the sunflowers would surprise him."

"May Wu choose his own mate?"

"Does he have that much volition? I had thought to lend him my wife Reeth, who has practiced Rishathra before. She is small, and the Machine People are not so different from Wu."

"Acceptable," Chmeee said without a glance at Wu.

A hundred of the giants surrounded them now. No more seemed to be coming. The kzin asked, "Are these all?"

"These and my warriors are all of my tribe. There are twenty-six tribes on the veldt. We stay together when we can, but none speaks for all," the king giant said.

Of the hundred or so, eight were males, and all of the eight were markedly scarred; three were actual cripples. None but the king giant showed the wrinkles and whitening hair of age.

The rest were females ... rather, they were women. They stood six and a half to seven feet tall, small next to their men: brown-skinned, dignified, naked. Their hair was golden and spilled in wealth down their backs; it was generally a ma.s.s of tangles. None bore any kind of decoration. Their legs were thick, their feet large and hard. A few of the women were white-haired. Their heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s gave a good indication of their relative ages. They examined their guests with pleasure and wonder while the armored giant told what he knew of them.

And Chmeee, with his translator off, spoke low. "If you prefer one or another female, I must say so now."

"No, they're all about equally ... attractive."

"We can still end this situation. You must be mad to make such a promise!"