The Ringworld Engineers

They had not expected vampires. Where would vampires find water in this desert? How would they get there? Vampires were almost extinct except for—

“Except for what? I missed something.”

Valavirgillin blushed. “Some older people keep toothless vampires for—for the purpose of rishathra. That may be how it happened. A tame pair escaped somehow, or a pregnant female.”

“Vala, that’s disgusting.”

“It is,” she agreed coolly. “I never heard anyone admit to keeping vampires himself. Where you come from, is there nothing that some do that others find shameful?”

That shot struck home. “I’ll tell you about current addiction sometime. Not now.”

She studied him over the metal snout of her weapon. Despite that fringe of black beard along her jaw, she looked human enough … but widened. Her face was almost perfectly square. Louis was having trouble reading her face. That was predictable; the human face has evolved as a signaling device, and Vala’s evolution diverged from his.

He asked, “What will you do next?”

“I must report the deaths … and give over the artifacts from the desert city. There is a bounty, but the empire claims City Builder artifacts.”

“I tell you again that they are mine.”

“Drive.”

The desert was showing patches of greenery, and a shadow square sliced the sun, when Valavirgillin bade him stop. He was glad to. He was exhausted with the battering of the road and the endless task of keeping the vehicle aimed.

Vala said, “You will– di

They were used to gaps in the translation. “I missed that word.”

“You contrive to heat food until it can be eaten. Louis, can’t you–?”

“Cook.” She wasn’t likely to have frictionless pans and a microwave oven, was she? Or measuring cups, refined sugar, butter, any spice he could recognize—“No.”

“I will cook. Make me a fire. What do you eat?”

“Meat, some plants, fruit, eggs, fish. Fruit I can eat not cooked.”

“Just like my people, except for fish. Good. Step out and wait.”

She locked him out of the vehicle, then crawled into the back. Louis stretched aching muscles. The sun was a blazing sliver, still dangerous to look at, but the desert was growing dark. A broad band of worldscape blazed to antispinward. There was brownish scrub grass around him now, and a clump of tall, dry trees. One tree was white and dead-looking.

She crawled out into the air. She tossed a heavy thing at Louis’s feet. “Cut wood and build a fire.”

Louis picked it up: a length of wood with a wedge of crude iron fixed to one end. “I hate to sound stupid, but what is it?”

She named it. “You swing the sharp edge against the trunk till the tree falls down. See?”

“Am” Louis remembered the war axes in the museum on Kzin. He looked at the ax, then the dead tree … and suddenly he’d had enough. He said, “It’s getting dark.”

“Do you have trouble seeing at night? Here.” She tossed him the flashlight-laser.

“That dead tree good enough?”

She turned, giving him a nice profile, the gun turning with her. Louis adjusted the light to narrow beam, high intensity. He flipped it on. A bright thread of light licked past her. Louis flicked it across her weapon. The weapon spurted flame and fell apart.

She stood there with her mouth open and the two pieces in her hands.

“I am perfectly willing to take suggestions from a friend and ally,” he told her. “I’m sick of taking orders. I got plenty of that from my furry companion. Let’s be friends.”

She dropped what she was holding and raised her hands.

“You’ve got more bullets and more guns in the back of the vehicle. Arm yourself.” Louis turned away. He sliced his beam down the dead tree in zigzag fashion. A dozen logs fell burning. Louis strolled over and kicked the logs into a tighter pile around the stump. He played the laser into their midst and watched the fire catch.

Something thumped him between the shoulder blades. For an instant the impact suit went stiff. He heard a single crack of thunder.

Louis waited for a bit, but the second shot didn’t come. He turned and walked back to the vehicle and Vala. He said to her, “Don’t you ever, ever, ever do that again.”

She looked pale and frightened. “No. I won’t.”

“Shall I help you carry your cooking things?”

“No, I can … Did I miss you?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“One of my tools saved me. I brought it a thousand times the distance light travels in a falan, and it’s mine.”

She made a kind of arm-flapping gesture and turned away.

Chapter 16

Strategies of Trade

There was a plant that grew along the ground like so many links of green-and-yellow-striped sausage, with rootlets sprouting between the links. Valavirgillin sliced some of these into a pot. She added water, then some seed pods from a sack in the vehicle. She set the pot on the burning logs.

Tanj, Louis could have done that himself. Di

The sun was entirely gone now. A tight cluster of stars to port must be the floating city. The Arch swooped up the black sky in horizontal bands of glowing blue and white. Louis felt that he was on some tremendous toy.

“I wish I had some meat,” Vala said.

Louis said, “Give me the goggles.”

He turned away from the fire before he put the goggles on. He turned up the light amplification. The pairs of eyes that had been watching from beyond the reach of the firelight resolved. Louis was glad he hadn’t fired at random. Two large shapes and a smaller one were a family of ghouls.

But one bright-eyed shadow was small, and furry. Louis snipped it headless with the long bright thread from his flashlight-laser. The ghouls flinched. They whispered among themselves. The female started toward the dead animal, but stopped to give Louis precedence. Louis picked up the body and watched her back away.

The ghouls seemed diffident enough. But their place in the ecology was very secure. Vala had told him what happened when a people went to the great effort of burying or burning their dead. The ghouls attacked the living. They owned the night. With magic gleaned from scores of local religions, they were said to be able to turn invisible. Even Vala half believed it.

But they weren’t bothering Louis. Why would they? Louis would eat the furry beast, and one day Louis himself would die, and the ghouls would claim their due.

While they watched him, he examined the creature: rabbitlike, but with a long, flat-ended tail and no forepaws at all. Not a hominid. Good.

When he looked up, there was a faintly glowing violet flame far to port.

Holding his breath, holding himself very still, Louis raised both the light amplification and the magnification. Even his pulse in his temples was blurring the picture now, but he knew what he saw. The magnified flame was eye-hurting violet, and it fa

He lifted the goggles. Even after his eyes adjusted, the violet flame was barely visible, but it was still there. Tenuous … and tremendous.

Louis returned to the fire and dropped the beast at Vala’s feet. He walked into the darkness to starboard and do

The flame to starboard showed much larger, but of course that rim wall was much closer.

Vala ski

“Yes, I see it.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No, but I think my father does. There was something he wouldn’t talk about, the last time he came back from the city. There are more. Turn your eyes to the base of the Arch to spinward.”