The Ringworld Engineers

Louis bared his left arm. Of course it bore no tattoos. He said what he had pla

The staff slashed at him.

It rapped his head glancingly as Louis threw himself backward. He rolled and was on his feet, crouching, trained reflexes working fine, with his arms coming up just too late to block the staff. It cracked against his skull. Lights flared behind his eyes and went out.

He was in free fall. Wind roared past him. Even to a man nearly unconscious, the co

Switch–He half remembered. His hands leaped to his chest, found flying-belt controls, twisted the lift knob hard over.

The belt lifted savagely and swung him around, feet down. Louis tried to shake the mists out of his head. He looked up. Through a gap in darkness he saw the solar corona glowing around a shadow square; he saw hard darkness descending to smash him. He twisted the lift knob to stop his rapid rise.

Safe.

His belly was churning and his head hurt. He needed time to think. Clearly his approach had been wrong.

But if the guard had rolled him off the walk … Louis patted his pockets; everything was there. Why hadn’t the guard robbed him first?

Louis half remembered the answer: he’d jumped, missed the guard, rolled. And passed out in midair. That put a different face on the matter. It might even have been best to wait. Too late now.

So try the other approach.

He swam beneath the city, outward toward the rim. Not too far. There were too many lights along the perimeter. But near the center was a double cone with no lights showing at all. The lower tip was blunt: a carport with a poured-stone ledge protruding. Louis floated into the opening.

He raised the amplification of his goggles. It worried him that he hadn’t done that earlier. Had the blow to his head left him stupid?

Prill’s people, the City Builders, had had flying cars, he remembered. There was no car here. He found a rusted metal track along the floor, and a crude, armless chair at the far end, and bleachers: three rows of raised benches on either side of the track. The wood had aged, the metal was crumbly with rust.

He had to examine the chair before he understood. It was built to run down the track and to flop forward at the end. Louis had found an execution chamber, with provision for an audience.

Would he find courtrooms above? And a jail? Louis had about decided to try his luck elsewhere when a gravelly voice spoke out of the dark, in a speech he hadn’t heard in twenty-three years. “Intruder, show your arm. Move slowly.”

Again Louis said, “I can make your water condensers work,” and heard his translator speak in Halrloprillalar’s tongue. It must have been already in the translator, in storage.

The other stood in a doorway at the top of a flight of stairs. He was Louis’s height, and his eyes glowed. He carried a weapon like Valavirgillin’s. “Your arm is bare. How did you come here? You must have flown.”

“Yes.”

“Impressive. Is that a weapon?”

He must mean the flashlight-laser. “Yes. You see very well in the dark. What are you?”

“I am Mar Korssil, a female of the Night Hunters. Set down your weapon.”

“I won’t.”

“I am reluctant to kill you. Your claim might be true—”

“It is.”

“I am reluctant to wake my master, and I will not let you pass this door. Set down your weapon.”

“No. I’ve already been attacked once tonight. Can you lock that door so that neither of us can open it?”

Mar Korssil tossed something through the door; it jingled as it struck. She closed the door behind her. “Fly for me,” she said. Her voice was still a gravelly bass.

Louis lifted a few feet, then settled back.

“Impressive.” Mar Korssil came down the stairs with her weapon at ready. “We have time to talk. In the morning we will be found. What do you offer, and what do you want?”

“Was I right in guessing that your water condenser doesn’t work? Did it stop at the Fall of the Cities?”

“It has never worked to my knowledge. Who are you?”

“I am Louis Wu. Male. Call my species the Star People. I come from outside the world, from a star too dim to see. I have stuff to repair at least some of the water condensers in the city, and I have hidden much more. It may be that I can give you lighting too.”

Mar Korssil studied him with blue eyes as big as goggles. She had formidable claws on her fingers, and buck teeth like axheads. What was she, a rodent-hunting carnivore? She said, “If you can repair our machines, that is good. As to repairing those of other buildings, my master will decide. What do you want?”

“A great deal of knowledge. Access to whatever the city holds in the way of stored knowledge, maps, histories, tales—”

“You ca

It was becoming obvious: the floating city was no more a city than Pericles’ Greece had been a nation. The buildings were independent, and he was in the wrong building. “Which building is the library?” he asked.

“At the port-by-spinward perimeter, a cone moored tip down … Why do you ask?”

Louis touched his chest, rose, moved toward the outer night.

Mar Korssil fired. Louis fell sprawling. Flames blazed against his chest. He yelled and jerked the harness loose and rolled away. The flying-belt controls burned, a smoky yellow flame with blue-white flashes in it.

Louis found the flashlight-laser in his hand, pointed at Mar Korssil. The Night Hunter seemed not to notice. “Do not make me do that again,” she said. “Are you wounded?”

Those words saved her life; but Louis had to kill something. “Drop the weapon or I slice you in half,” he said, “like this.” He waved the laser beam through the execution chair; it flamed and fell apart.

Mar Korssil didn’t move.

“I only want to leave your building,” Louis said. “You’ve marooned me. I’ll have to enter your building, but I’ll leave by the first ramp I find. Drop the weapon or die.”

A woman’s voice spoke from the stairway. “Drop the gun, Mar Korssil.”

The Night Hunter did.

The woman came down the stairs. She was taller than Louis, and slender. Her nose was tiny, her lips invisibly thin. Her head was bald, but rich white hair flowed down her back from behind her cars and the back of her neck. Louis guessed that the white hair was a mark of age. She showed no fear of him. He asked, “Do you rule here?”

“I and my mate-of-record rule. I am Laliskareerlyar. Did you call yourself Luweewu?”

“Close enough.”

She smiled. “There is a peephole. Mar Korssil signaled from the garage: an unusual act. I came to watch and listen. I am sorry about your flying device. There are none left in all the city.”

“If I repair your water condenser, will you set me free? And I need advice.”

“Consider your bargaining position. Can you resist my guards who wait outside?”

Louis had almost resigned himself to killing his way out. He made one more try. The floor seemed to be the usual poured stone. He ran the laser beam in a slow circle, and a patch of stone a yard across dropped into the night. Laliskareerlyar lost her smile. “Perhaps you can. It shall be as you say. Mar Korssil, come with us. Stop anyone who tries to interfere. Leave your gun where it lies.”

They climbed a spiral escalator that no longer ran. Louis counted fourteen loops, fourteen stories. He wondered if he had been wrong about Laliskareerlyar’s age. The City Builder woman climbed briskly and had breath left over for conversation. But her hands and face were wrinkled as if worn too long.