Ringworld

The pedestal in the center of the square had once held a statue. Louis identified the humanlike footprints, each four feet long, that marked where the statue had stood. Now the pedestal housed a kind of triangular altar, and a man stood with his back to the altar waving his arms as the people sang.

Flash of pink above gray robe … Louis assumed that the man was wearing a headpiece, perhaps of pink silk.

He chose to land on the pedestal itself. He was just touching down when the conductor turned to face him. As a result he almost wrecked the 'cycle.

It was pink scalp Louis had seen. Unique in this crowd of heads like golden flowers, faces of blond hair with eyes peeping through, this man's face was as naked as Louis Wu's own.

With a straight-armed gesture, palms down, the man held the last note of the singing … held it for seconds … then cut it. A fragment of a second later the tail of it drifted in from the edges of the square. The — priest? — faced Louis Wu in a sudden silence.

He was as tall as Louis Wu, tall for a native. The skin of his face and scalp were so pale as to be nearly translucent, like a We Made It albino. He must have shaved many hours ago with a razor that was not sharp enough, and now the stubble was emerging, adding its touch of gray everywhere but for the two circles around his eyes.

He spoke with a note of reproof, or so it seemed. The translator disc instantly said, "So you have come at last."

"We didn't know we were expected," Louis said truthfully. He was not confident enough to try a God Gambit based on himself. In a long lifetime he had learned that telling a consistent set of lies could get hellishly complicated.

"You grow hair on your head," said the priest. "One presumes that your blood is less than pure, O Engineer."

So that was it! The race of the Engineers must have been totally bald; so that this priest must imitate them by using a blunt razor on his tender skin. Or … had the Engineers used depil cream or something just as easy, for no reason more pressing than fashion? The priest looked very like the wire-portrait in the banquet hall.

"My blood is of no concern to you," Louis said, shelving the problem. "We are on our way to the rim of the world. What can you tell us about our route?"

The priest was transparently puzzled. "You ask information from me? You, an Engineer?"

"I'm not an Engineer." Louis held his hand ready to activate the sonic fold.

But the priest only looked more bewildered. "Then why are you half-hairless? How do you fly? Have you stolen secrets from Heaven? What do you want here? Have you come to steal my congregation?"

The last question seemed the important one. "We're on our way to the rim. All we need here is information."

"Surely your answers are in Heaven."

"Don't be flippant with me," Louis said evenly.

"But you came directly from Heaven! I saw you!"

"Oh, the castle! We've gone through the castle, but it didn't tell us much. For instance, were the Engineers really hairless?"

"I have sometimes thought that they only shave, as I do. Yet your own chin seems naturally hairless."

"I depilate." Louis looked about him, at the sea of reverent golden flower-faces. "What do they believe? They don't seem to share your doubts."

"They see us talking as equals, in the language of the Engineers. I would have this continue, if it please you." Now the priest's ma

"Would that improve your standing with them? I suppose it would," said Louis. The priest really had feared to lose his congregation — as any priest might, if his god came to life and tried to take over. "Can't they understand us?"

"Perhaps one word in ten."

At this point Louis had cause to regret the efficiency of his translator disc. He could not tell if the priest was speaking the language of Zignamuclickclick. Knowing that, knowing how far the two languages had diverged since the breakdown in communications, he might have been able to date the fall of civilization.

"What was this castle called Heaven?" he asked. "Do you know?"

"The legends speak of Zrillir," said the priest, "and of how he ruled all the lands under Heaven. On this pedestal stood Zrillir's statue, which was life-sized. The lands supplied Heaven with delicacies which I could name if you like, as we learn their names by rote; but in these days they do not grow. Shall I?"

"No thanks. What happened?"

A singsong quality had crept into the man's voice. He must have heard this tale many times, and told it many times . . .

"Heaven was made when the Engineers made the world and the Arch. He who rules Heaven rules the land from edge to edge. So Zrillir ruled, for many lifetimes, throwing sunfire from Heaven when he was displeased. Then it was suspected that Zrillir could no longer throw sunfire.

"The people no longer obeyed him. They did not send food. They pulled down the statue. When Zrillir's angels dropped rocks from the heights, the people dodged and laughed.

"There came a day when the people tried to take Heaven by way of the rising stairway. But Zrillir caused the stairway to fall. Then his angels left Heaven in flying cars.

"Later it was regretted that we had lost Zrillir. The sky was always overcast; crops grew stunted. We have prayed for Zrillir's return."

"How accurate is all this, do you think?"

"I would have denied it all until this morning, when you came flying down from Heaven. You make me terribly uneasy, O Engineer. Perhaps Zrillir does indeed intend to return, and sends his bastard ahead to clear the way of false priests."

"I could shave my scalp. Would that help?"

"No. Never mind; ask your questions."

"What can you tell me about the fall of Ringworld civilization?"

The priest looked still more uneasy. "Is civilization about to fall?"

Louis sighed and — for the first time — turned to consider the altar.

The altar occupied the center of the pedestal on which they stood. It was of dark wood. Its flat rectangular surface had been carved into a relief map, with hills and rivers and a single lake, and two upward-turning edges. The other pair of edges, the short edges, were the bases of a golden paraboloid arch.

The gold of that arch was tarnished. But from the curve of its apex a small golden ball hung by a thread; and that gold was highly polished.

"Is civilization in danger? So much has happened. The sunwire, your own coming — is it sunwire? Is the sun falling on us?"

"I strongly doubt it. You mean the wire that's been falling all morning?"

"Yes. In our religious training we were taught that the sun hangs from the Arch by a very strong thread. This thread is strong. We know," said the priest. "A girl tried to pick it up and undo a tangle, and it cut through her fingers."

Louis nodded. "Nothing's falling," he said. Privately he thought: Not even the shadow squares. Even it you cut all the wires, the squares wouldn't hit the Ringworld. The Engineers would have given them an orbital aphelion inside the Ring.

He asked, without much hope, "What do you know about the transport system at the rim?" And in that instant he knew something was wrong. He'd caught something, some evidence of disaster; but what?

The priest said, "Would you mind repeating that?"

Louis did.

The priest answered, "Your thing that talks said something else the first time. Something about a restricted something."

"Fu

"'You are using a restricted wavelength in violation -' I do not remember the rest," said the priest. "We had best end this interview. You have reawakened something ancient, something evil -" The priest stopped to listen, for Lou s translator was speaking again in the priest's language. "- 'in violation of edict twelve, interfering with maintenance.' Can your powers hold back -"