The Ringworld Engineers

The boy pointed. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know.” It was a dimple in the Ringworld’s underside … with fog in it. “I think it’s a meteor puncture. There’ll be an eye storm above it.”

The reading screen was on the flight deck, facing Harkabeeparolyn through the wall. The Hindmost had repaired the damage and added a braided cable that led into the control panel. As Harkabeeparolyn read aloud, the ship’s computer was reading the tape and correlating it to her voice and to its own stored knowledge of Halrloprillalar’s tongue. That tongue would have changed over the centuries, but not too much, not in a literate society. Hopefully the computer could take over soon.

As for the Hindmost, he had disappeared into the hidden section. The alien had suffered repeated shocks. Louis didn’t begrudge him time off for hysterics.

Needle continued to accelerate. Presently the inverse landscape was speeding past almost too fast for detail. And Harkabeeparolyn’s voice was becoming throaty. Time for a lunch break, Louis decided.

A problem emerged. Louis dialed filets mignons and baked potatoes, with Brie and French bread to follow. The boy stared in horror. So did the woman, but at Louis Wu.

“I’m sorry. I forgot. I keep thinking of you as omnivores.”

“Omnivores, yes. We eat plants and flesh both,” the librarian said. “But not decayed food!”

“Don’t get so upset. There’s no bacteria involved.” Properly aged steak, milk attacked by mold … Louis dumped their plates into the toilet and dialed again. Fruit, crudités with a separate sour-cream dip which he dumped, and seafood, including sashimi. His guests had never seen salt-water fish before. They liked it, but it made them thirsty.

And watching Louis eat made them unhappy. What was he supposed to do, starve?

They might starve. Where would he get fresh red meat for them? Why, from Chmeee’s side of the autokitchen, of course. Broil it with the laser on wide beam, high intensity. He’d have to get the Hindmost to recharge the laser. That might not be easy, considering the last use to which he’d put it.

Another problem: they might be consuming too much salt. Louis didn’t know what to do about that. Maybe the Hindmost could reset the autokitchen controls.

After lunch Harkabeeparolyn went back to her reading. By now the Ringworld was streaming past too fast for detail. Kawaresksenjajok flicked restlessly from cell to cargo hold and back again.

Louis, too, was restive. He should be studying: reviewing the records of the first voyage, or of Chmeee’s adventures to date on the Map of Kzin. But the Hindmost wasn’t available.

Gradually he became aware of another source of discomfort.

He lusted after the librarian.

He loved her voice. She’d been talking for hours, yet the lilt was still there. She’d told him that she sometimes read to blind children: children without sight. Louis got queasy just thinking about it. He liked her dignity and her courage. He liked the way the robe outlined her shape; and he’d glimpsed her nakedness.

It had been years since Louis Wu had loved a strictly human woman. Harkabeeparolyn came too close. And she wasn’t having any. When the puppeteer finally rejoined them, Louis was glad of the distraction.

They talked quietly in Interworld, below the sound of Harkabeeparolyn reading to the computer.

“Where did they come from, these amateur repairmen?” Louis wondered. “Who on the Ringworld would know enough to remount the attitude jets? Yet they don’t seem to know that it’s not enough.”

“Let them alone,” the Hindmost said.

“Maybe they know it’s not enough? Maybe the poor bleeders just can’t think of anything else to do. And there’s the question of where they got their equipment. It could have come from the Repair Center.”

“We face enough complications now. Let them alone.”

“For once I think you’re right. But I can’t help wondering. Teela Brown got her schooling in human space. Big space-built structures are nothing new to her. She’d know what it meant when the sun started sliding around.”

“Could Teela Brown have organized so large an effort?”

“Maybe not. But Seeker would be with her. Was Seeker in your tapes? He was a Ringworld native, and maybe immortal. Teela found him. A little crazy, but he could have done the organizing. He was a king more than once, he said.”

“Teela Brown was a failed experiment. We tried to breed a lucky human being, feeling that puppeteer associates would share the luck. Teela may or may not have been lucky, but her luck was surely not contagious. We do not want to meet Teela Brown.”

Louis shivered. “No.”

“Then we must avoid the attention of the repair crew.”

“Add a postscript to the tape you’re sending to Chmeee,” Louis said. “Louis Wu rejects your offer of sanctuary on the Fleet of Worlds. Louis Wu has taken command of Hot Needle of Inquiry and has destroyed the hyperdrive motor. That should shake him up.”

“It did that for me. Louis, my sensors will not penetrate scrith. Your message will have to wait.”

“How long until we reach him?”

“About forty hours. I have accelerated to a thousand miles per second. At this velocity it takes more than five gravities of acceleration to hold us in our path.”

“We can take thirty gravities. You’re being overcautious.”

“I’m aware of your opinion.”

“You don’t take orders worth a tanj,” Louis said. “Either.”

Chapter 25

The Seeds of Empire

Beyond the curved ceiling the Ringworld floor streamed past.

It wasn’t much of a view, not from thirty thousand miles away, passing at a thousand miles per second, and cloaked in foam padding. Presently the boy fell asleep in the orange furs. Louis continued to watch. The alternative was to float here wondering if he’d doomed them all.

And finally the Hindmost told the City Builder woman, “Enough.”

Louis tumbled off the shifting surface.

Harkabeeparolyn massaged her throat. They watched as the Hindmost ran four stolen tapes through the reading machine.

It took only a few minutes. “This now becomes the computer’s problem,” the puppeteer said. “I’ve programmed in the questions. If the answers are in the tapes, we’ll have them in a few hours, maximum. Louis, what if we don’t like the answers?”

“Let’s hear the questions.”

“Is there a history of repair activity on the Ringworld? If so, did repair machinery approach from any one source? Is repair more frequent in any given locale? Is any section of the Ringworld in better repair than the rest? Locate all references to Pak-like beings. Does the style of armor vary with distance from a central point? What are the magnetic properties of the Ringworld floor and of scrith in general?”

“Good.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“… Yah. We want the most probable source of the immortality drug. It’ll be the Great Ocean, but let’s ask anyway.”

“I will. Why the Great Ocean?”

“Oh, partly because it’s so visible. And partly because we’ve found one surviving sample of the immortality drug, and one only. Halrloprillalar had it. We found her in the vicinity of the Great Ocean.” And partly because we crashed there, Louis thought. The luck of Teela Brown distorts probability. Teela’s luck could have brought us straight to the Repair Center that first time. “Harkabeeparolyn? Can you think of anything we missed?”

Her voice was scratchy. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

How to explain? “Our machine remembers everything on your tapes. We tell it to search its memory for answers to given questions.”

“Ask it how to save the Ringworld.”

“We have to be more specific. The machine can remember and correlate and do sums, but it can’t think for itself. It’s not big enough.”