The Ringworld Throne

Fingers brushed his face. He slashed waist high, forward and back, before ears and eyes caught up.

Her song peaked in a squeak of agony. He poked out at throat level. The song ended. Tegger clapped his hands over his ears and ran.

And ran.

He knew that smell! She was behind him, dying, but with her scent in his nose he saw her more clearly than his pounding feet. The leather cloak she wore was too big for her, and in tatters, and she spread it like wings to show her nakedness. Her song was piercingly sweet. She was slender and very pate, perhaps adolescent, her hair thick and white, the points of her canine teeth visible past her red lips.

Vampire! Night after night they sang outside the Thurl’s wall. Tegger was stronger than their lures. He’d said so over and over. But that drifting scent was older yet, for it was Warvia’s scent during the friendliest part of her cycle; only stronger. His heaving breath was driving it out of his nose, out of his mind, and he ran—out of the mist, and slowed to a stop.

For most of a falan he’d studied the map, the relief map they’d shaped and fired outside the Thurl’s compound. Now it was as if he were an ant viewing it at eye level.

He crept uphill to put a boulder between himself and the creatures around the Floater, before he looked again.

An ant looking at an anthill. It was far away still, but a Red’s eyes are good. Those were human shapes interacting in what seemed human patterns. They moved as if at work or gathered in little social groups. Some carried burdens that their posture said were babies. They moved in and out of the black shadow that lay beneath a huge disk, a mass like a full-sized city floating above them.

The Ghouls had called it a factory complex, but Tegger couldn’t help but think of it as a City Builder city. A vampire city, now.

He could see no more than twenty vampires, even including the few down at the river, but there must be thousands in the shadow of the Floater. If it fell, it would crush most of them. Shrapnel spraying horizontally would take out most of the rest, Tegger thought.

He could see something hanging down, like an unsupported spiral staircase. He couldn’t see the bottom. Maybe he could climb that.

How to reach it? As best he could judge through the drifting fog, the floating city was twelve hundred paces downstream along a wide mud flat that the Homeflow had carved into multiple cha

Too close to the Shadow Nest, cha

A pity he couldn’t swim. Could he hide beneath the water and move downstream that way? Or would he freeze? Or were there vampires too close, and would the smell be too much for him? For the vampire woman’s scent was still in his mind if not his nose.

Were there River People about? He was willing to ask for help.

Mist blew across his view, a fine rain washed him, and a voice in the mist whispered in his ear. “So you really were as strong as you thought.”

Tegger snorted. An unarmed woman: no challenge, mere murder. His mind shied from what the dying vampire had taught him of himself, and fastened on another puzzle. “How did you get ahead of me, Whisper?”

Silence.

Tegger was coming to believe that Whisper was a machine, something left over from before the Fall of the Cities. Or else a wayspirit who had dreadful secrets. Whisper didn’t answer questions about Whisper.

Ask instead—“Is there a way to make the Floater fall on the Shadow Nest?”

The whisperer said, “I know of none.”

“My father told me. The City Builders made lightning to flow through silver threads for their power. We could turn it off! Find the threads, rip them out!”

Whisper said, “Floater plates don’t use power to float, though power was needed to make them. They were made to repel the scrith, the floor of the Arch, and that is what they do.”

It was impossible, then. It had always been impossible. In some bitterness Tegger said, “You know so much. You hide so much. Are you a Ghoul?”

Silence.

One might consider that distance means nothing to a wayspirit. Or that a madman’s imagination is as quick as thought. Or if Gleaners run faster than Reds, faster than Tegger at a dead scared run, then something else might run faster than Gleaners.

But Ghouls could not. Whatever else he was, though Ghouls were as elusive as Whisper, Whisper was not a Ghoul.

The mist drifted, revealed and concealed. It was full dark, or very near. Through gaps in the clouds Tegger could catch an occasional vertical blue-white glare, the Arch still unchanged, whatever happened to his universe.

The activity beneath the floating mass was increasing, Tegger thought. It was certainly growing darker. Vampires would be waking. Tegger said, “We should hide.”

“I see a place, but it might not help you.”

“Why not?” Tegger asked, and was instantly aware of the sweat ru

He waited while the mist closed in—and heard no more from Whisper. On hands and toes, then, he moved down to the river. He drew his sword before he waded in. No telling what lived in the brown water. If a fish brushed him, he might find his di

He stopped as water brushed his kilt. Valavirgillin’s rag, should he get it wet?

He pulled it free of his kilt. It was filmy stuff, very finely woven, very strong. He’d seen his hand through it earlier, though it was too dark now. He’d noticed it because it was cold; but it wasn’t cold at all an instant after he stuffed it in his kilt. During a halfday of ru

He let a corner dip into the river.

It wasn’t dissolving. Good. But the upper corner in his fingers was as cold, instantly, as the river washing past his legs.

He submerged himself. Rubbed himself with moss, climbed out fast, dried himself fast. Ru

Vala’s cloth was like a pipe for heat and cold. What would happen—“Whisper, what if I put a corner of Valavirgillin’s cloth in a fire? Would it burn? Would it be too hot to hold?”

There was nowhere Whisper might be on this bare mud.

His own mind told him he’d be crazy to build a fire. Hominids used fire. Vampires, no matter how stupid, would learn to seek fire. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder.

He toweled his face, and pulled the towel away in time to see six vampires ru

They didn’t sing. They didn’t posture, didn’t implore with their bodies. They came fast. Tegger snatched up his sword.

A sword didn’t frighten them. They were pacing each other; spreading out a little, attacking as a pack. Tegger ran to the left and slashed, slashed. Two fell back with haphazard wounds, enough to put them out, Tegger thought, but he was too busy to look. The other four had him encircled.

He half rested, turning in a step-stop motion, his sword held vertical, reversing himself, reversing. He and his friends had played this game with sticks when they were children. Their elders had fought Grass Giants this way.

Two wounded were crawling away, uphill toward the shadow. The remaining three men and one woman circled him.

He hadn’t known—none of the vampire hunters had known—that when vampires outnumbered their prey six to one, they didn’t bother with lures or song or even scent. They just attacked.

He must reach the cruisers, if he lived. Tell them. Even if he must face Warvia again. Warvia.