The Ringworld Engineers

“What makes you say that?”

“The Ringworld engineers wouldn’t have brought jackals. There’s been time enough for some branch of the hominids to fit that niche in the ecology.”

“A hundred thousand years wouldn’t be enough,” said Chmeee.

“It might. I wonder what else the engineers didn’t bring. They didn’t bring mosquitoes.”

“You are facetious. But they would not have brought bloodsuckers of any kind.”

“No. Or sharks, or cougars.” Louis laughed. “Or skunks. What else? Venomous snakes? Mammals couldn’t live like snakes. I don’t think any mammals secrete poison in their mouths.”

“Louis, it would take millions of years for hominids to evolve in so many directions. We must consider whether they evolved on the Ringworld at all!”

“They did, unless I’m completely wrong. As for how long it took, there’s a small matter of mathematics. If we assume they started evolving a hundred thousand years ago, from a base popu…” Louis let the sentence trail off.

A good distance away—moving at fair speed, considering their burdens—the jackal-hominids suddenly stopped, turned back, seemed to pose for a moment, then dropped into the grass and vanished. A touch of the infrared sensor showed four glowing spots fa

“Company to spinward,” Chmeee said quietly.

The newcomers were big. They were Chmeee’s size, and they weren’t trying to hide. Forty bearded giants marched through the night as if they owned it. They were armed and armored. They moved in a wedge formation, with bowmen on the forward arms of the triangle and swordsmen inside, and the one fully armored man at the point. Others had plates of thick leather to guard arms and torsos, but that one, the biggest of the giants, wore metal: a gleaming shell that bulged at elbows, knuckles, shoulders, knees, hips. The forward-jutting mask was open, with a pale beard and wide nose showing inside.

“I was right. I was right all along. But why a Ringworld? Why did they build a Ringworld? How in Finagle’s Name did they expect to defend it?”

Chmeee finished swinging the stun ca

“The armor. Look at the armor. Haven’t you ever been in the Smithsonian Institute? And you saw the pressure suits in the Ringworlder spaceship.”

“Uurrr … yes. We have a more immediate problem.”

“Don’t shoot yet. I want to see … Yah, I was right. They’re going past the village.”

“Would you say that the little red ones are our allies? It was only coincidence that we met them first.”

“I’d say they are. Tentatively.”

The microphone picked up a high-pitched scream, interrupted by a bellow. The archers drew arrows simultaneously, fitted them to bows. Two small red sentries were bounding toward the huts at impressive speed. They were ignored.

“Fire,” Louis said softly.

The arrows went wild. The giants crumpled. Two or three green elephants bellowed and tried to get to their feet, paused, then settled back. One had a couple of arrows in its flank.

“They were after the herd,” Chmeee said.

“Yah. We don’t really want them slaughtered, do we? Tell you what, you stay here with the stun ca

“I don’t take your orders, Louis.”

“Do you have other suggestions?”

“No. Save at least one giant to answer questions.”

This one had fallen on his back. He was not just bearded, he was maned: only his eyes and nose showed in a mass of golden hair that spilled over face and head and shoulders. Ginjerofer squatted and forced his mouth open with two small hands. The warrior’s jaw was massive. His teeth were flat-topped molars, well worn down. All of them.

“See,” Ginjerofer said, “a plant-eater. They wanted to kill the herd, to take their grass.”

Louis shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought the competition would be so fierce.”

“We didn’t know. But they come from spinward, where our herds have cropped the grass close. Thank you for killing them, Louis. We must have a great feast.”

Louis’s stomach lurched. “They’re only sleeping. And they’ve got minds, like you, like me.”

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 gri

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

“You’re a bright woman. Yah, they could have relatives with a vengeance tradition. And yah, 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 grass.”

“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 damn fast, with no weapons and no grass 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 gri

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 grass 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 grass: 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 gri