The Ringworld Throne (22 page)

“You do, yes,” she said sharply. “You wouldn’t wake this morning, but you were talking to your dreams. What torments you, Louis?”

But they had nearly walked into an explosion of small nets.

The children had crept around the grove, surrounded it. Now the nets were flying. In an hour they had caught an amazing number of pigeon-sized birds.

Weavers seemed to have no interest in eggs, but Louis collected a dozen. They looked and felt like slick plastic, like free-fall drinking bulbs with no nipple. Worth a try.

In mid-afternoon they were back in the village. While the children plucked the birds, Louis and Sawur went off alone. They sat on a flat rock and watched the older Weavers building the fire.

Sawur asked again, “What torments a teacher?”

Louis laughed. Teachers don’t have torments? But how to explain to a Weaver ...?

“I made a fool of myself, long ago. It must have taken the Web Dweller four or five falans just to realize
how
stupid I’ve been,
why
Louis Wu wasn’t talking to him. But we’re talking now, and that’s not the problem.

“Sawur, the Web Dweller captured me and Chmeee to be his servants. Very reprehensible, of course, but he has gifts to pay for such a theft. He has seeds to be chewed to make an old hominid young, or a Kzin.”

Sawur nibbled her lip. “Well. He can. Will he?”

“For value received. And he has a device, an autodoc. It can heal serious wounds, scars and missing limbs. Likely it can repair damage even boosterspice won’t touch.

“Sawur, to rebuild a man requires extreme medical techniques. If he can build me young, I believe he can build me docile. Chmeee and I both made poor slaves. The Hindmost can make me a better servant. A perfect servant. Until the right before last, I had an excuse for keeping myself out of his machines. Now I don’t.”

Sawur asked, “Have his machines had you before?”

That
was a good question. “He had me in frozen sleep for two years. He may have done some medical work on me. He could have done anything he wanted.”

“But he didn’t.”

“I don’t think he did. I don’t feel any different.”

Sawur was silent.

Louis laughed suddenly, turned and hugged her. “Never mind. I cut his hyperdrive motor apart! He can’t go back to the stars, and that’s why he had to save the Arch. If he made me a servant, he made me a bad one.”

Sawur stared, then laughed loud. “But Louis, you trapped yourself, too!”

“I’d made a promise.” To Valavirgillin of the Machine People. “I said I’d save the Ringworld or die trying.”

Sawur was silent.

“He thought he had a wirehead.” Louis heard the gap in translation: wirehead had no equivalent in Sawur’s tongue. “He thought I would do anything he asked for electric current through the pleasure center of my brain ... as a Weaver might sell her freedom for, say, alcohol? He didn’t know I could throw it off. He knows now.”

Sawur said, “So, what if he makes you young and docile? But what if you first determine that you will ignore his commands?”

“Sawur.
He can change my mind
.”

“Ah.”

Louis brooded for a time. Presently he said, “I’m clever and agile and the Web Dweller knows in If he made me a better servant, I might become stupid or slow. I can tell myself he’d be a fool to alter me very much. It’s hellishly tempting. I’m afraid I’ll believe it, Sawur.”

“Would he keep a promise to you?”

Another good question.

Nessus, rejected by his species ... Nessus the mad puppeteer had demanded that the Hindmost mate with him, should he return from the Ringworld. The Hindmost had agreed. And
kept
the covenant.

But that was a bargain between equals ... no, it wasn’t. Nessus had been presumed mad, mad for centuries.

Throughout known space, puppeteers had kept their contracts with a variety of species.

He’d forgotten Sawur; he jumped when she spoke. “You’ve given me my youth and snatched it away, if I believe your crazy dream. But I’ll tell you this,” she said with a whip in her voice. “The older I am, the more I would give to be young again. If you don’t ever intend to deal with the Web Dweller, that’s one thing. If you do, then the last thing you want is to wait until you’re old and sick.”

She was, he decided, dead right.

That night they cooked their meat—and the Sailors their fish, and Louis his eggs and a river weed he’d found edible—and went to sit beneath the cliff.

Louis found himself looking for Tunesmith in the brush. There was no sign of the Ghoul, but he would be listening.

The floating industrial park had been lifeless when last Louis had seen it. Now the Hindmost’s webeye window showed it blazing with lights.

“You’ve got me,” Louis said to the empty air. “I have to know how that happened.”

The view jumped—

Pointed claws rested on her wrist. She whispered, “Grieving Tube?”

“Harpster. My mate wakes others. Valavirgillin, you must see.”

It seemed she’d only just closed her eyes. Vala rolled out of her blanket. She didn’t say, “This had best be important.” Other species had their priorities; traders had to learn them.

Black night and rain. The Shadow Nest was a blurred constellation. Harpster had returned to the cruiser. Waast and Beedj came out, then Barok. Barok asked, “What is it, Boss?”

“I can’t see anything.”

Warvia came up beside them. “It’s murky down there, Valavirgillin.”

“I know.”

“The ramp. Vala, you really can’t see? It isn’t just the ramp. The whole city has settled a little. Flup, Manack was right! “

The folk in Cruiser Two spilled out all at once, gaping, chattering. They saw no more than Vala did. But Harpster was at Warvia’s side, saying, “Not our imagination. The vampires are trying to jump to the ramp. It’s still too high for them—“

“They’ll have it in not too many breaths.”

“It’s Tegger!” Warvia screamed. “He did it!”

“But they’ll be pouring up the ramp!” Vala wondered, Is this real? Nobody could see the change but Warvia and the Ghouls, and even they wouldn’t claim that the ramp was
down
.

“Board!” Valavirgillin bellowed. “Anyone not aboard gets left! Board your vehicles and arm yourselves! We’re going up!”

Tegger lay on his belly, looking over the edge of the dock. He didn’t see many vampires. It wasn’t good hunting territory for them. Their only prey were the besotted prisoners under the shadow. A few starving rogues hunted out here, vampires desperate enough to try to trap animals for their blood.

It was dark down there and rain blurred the view, but the cruisers were unmistakable. They rolled slowly. Mud and sand sucked at their huge wheels.

Four vampires swarmed onto the first cruiser, quick as Gleaners, and climbed toward the driving bench.

Gleaners dropped from the turret, towels across their mouths, swords in hand. Paroom stepped from aft, swinging some kind of mace. In a moment the invaders became imploring suitors. Another moment and two were dead, the others in flight, and Paroom’s long mace caught one in midair ...

A shock traveled lightly up Tegger’s spine. He had been waiting for that.

He’d spent most of the day finding circuitry panels, opening them, testing what their circuits did. He’d learned to recognize the styles of panel that controlled lighting. Here was the panel that controlled the dockside lights. He’d already placed twists of Vala’s cloth. He flicked two switches and the dock lit up like daylight.

With his eyes tightly closed, Tegger felt his way to Ramp Street and into the darkness. He paused for a bit to get his night vision back. Then he looked over.

He’d felt the shock as the ramp touched bottom.

Vampires were moving up the successive turns of the ramp. There weren’t many. Perhaps their noses told them how little awaited them: one little lone Red Herder, and no other prey at all.

Tegger set to the patient work of lighting a torch. When he had it flickering, he set it aside and looked down again.

Roughly thirty young adults and adolescent children were climbing toward him in no great hurry. What were they thinking?
Here’s a road where no road was, but there’s no scent of prey. Follow it, but best not be first. Light, oh my, it hurts --
They were piling up a level below him, their arms hiding their faces. Tegger wondered if the dockyard lights would hold them.

The scent billowed into his face.

Reflex said
Do something!
And reflex called him down, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t. He whipped the torch around his head and hurled the fireball a level below. All the pale faces ducked away, and most of them were running back down the ramp. A few were trapped between the torch and the dockyard lights.

Tegger fled.

At the dock’s edge he leaned over empty space and sucked great lungfuls of clean air.

The cruisers were close now, two or three hundredbreaths away.

Vampires were harrying them, more with every breath that passed. Warriors lined the running boards. Gleaners jabbed spears between the pillars of Grass Giant ankles, while Grass Giants fired crossbows at more distant targets. Tegger heard, very faintly above the whisper of the river, the duet the Ghouls were playing from the cannon towers.

No gunfire? Had Valavirgillin ordered silence to delay alerting the nest? But the vampires’ numbers were growing; the nest was waking to an invasion.

The river flowed into darkness, and the cruisers followed.

Darkness. It was black as sin below him. Vampires would see just fine. Ghouls on the driving benches might be able to shout directions, but the rest would be blind.

There
was
something he could do. He’d need nerve. And his sword.

Valavirgillin drove with a hand for the tiller and another for her gun. Barok rode the bench with her, facing backward. She was breathing pepperleek through a towel. The Thurl had been right from the first: herbs were more effective than fuel.

A white face popped up and she fired two-handed, and had the tiller again before the cruiser could veer. Other guns began firing. Barok took her gun and handed her another, loaded.

The noise drove the vampires back, and the cruisers rolled into darkness.

The floating factory glowed above her like a constellation. She could see little below its edge, but she knew where the ramp was, and she aimed for that.

How well would these reject vampires fight now that only they could see? She was driving into a black stench like all the graveyards under the Arch. Disgust should be a defense, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. As always, the real enemy here was a growing urge to mate in the middle of a war.

Harpster interrupted his eerie music to shout, “Boss! Left! Left, then hook around right and onto the ramp. Boss, there are vampires on the ramp!”

Vala turned left, into blackness.

The cruisers were holding their own. The shadows they fought were children, maimed and halt, elderly, pregnant: all who hadn’t departed in the stream of hunters. In the dead of night they were at their peak of alertness. Vala had considered waiting for dawn. But dawn would have brought the hunters back, however exhausted, in all their strength and numbers; and these she fought now would have had half the night to reach Tegger.

Meteors fell ahead of her.

Vampires, crouched waiting between Vala and the ramp, skreeked and rolled aside. Fireballs fell—torches—and some went out, but six still burned. Tegger’s gift.

She was on the ramp, and Cruiser Two right behind her, and vampires coming from all sides. One popped up on the bench. Vala blasted it away and set the gun aside. The cannon roared: a wind of fire and pebbles swept the ramp clean ahead of her.

Behind her, light suddenly blazed as if the sun had fallen from the Arch. In the terrible glare, vampires hid their eyes and froze, sitting birds. Guns and crossbows banged and twanged all around her.

The bench shook. Vala whirled around with vampire scent driving her crazy and only her empty gun for defense. A distorted Machine People face looked back at her. Foranayeedli, looking quite crazy, gripped the bench with all four limbs and her teeth.

Vala kept driving.

Round and round. A shadow in the light semaphored both arms. One hand brandished a sword. She drove into the light.

Red Tegger—naked: why? -- stepped aside to let the cruisers past.

She saw Warvia leap from the cruiser. The shock when she impacted Tegger sent his sword flying. Warvia’s tunic flew after it. Vala hardly needed to hear the shouts of her companions: it was celebration time, rishathra time.

Someone must keep her wits long enough to guard them.

Vala pulled up in the white light of the dock. She heard fighting. Vampire? No, she heard speech ...

Foranayeedli had found her father. They were screaming mortal insults at each other.

Vala tried to judge if they would kill each other. There was a moment in which they paused for breath. Vala touched their shoulders—get their attention, back up
fast
, talk
fast
-- “Forn,
no
, Barok,
really
, it was
my
fault.
Our
fault.
Any
of us could see what would happen. Can’t we share the blame?”