The Ringworld Throne

The space behind that door looked very dark.

He used rotted bedding to make a torch and went in.

No windows here. There were furnishings … controls? Levers that would wiggle, anyway, above spouts that came out of the wall. Two were at either end of a tub with a drain in the bottom. Water spouts, but no water ran from them.

Tegger continued his search.

Another windowless room. Another skeleton, adult size, lay near a shallow opening with tens of tiny knobs inside. More controls—Tegger thought, reaching for his pack—like the recessed control panel in the hauler.

Towel. Wedge-bladed knife. Strips of Vala-cloth already cut. He began pushing them into place.

Nothing, nothing, nothing … a miracle happened.

Light. A point in the ceiling was blazing too bright to look at.

Tegger got out of there.

Lights were shining throughout the house. Tegger left them that way. It surprised him that there was still power. Where did it come from? Thunderstorms? Power was directed lightning …

He moved up the line of houses, faster now, looking through windows. Here and there he saw skeletons. Always inside. Bodies outside were gone, meat for birds.

There were scrubby grasses, some he knew as edible to hominids. Plants too weird to be anything but ornamental. Unless that one with big purple leaves … ?

He dug a bit, pulled, and found fat roots. Cloudy River Delta Farmers would eat those boiled.

These were miniature farms!

Tegger settled himself cross-legged on the roof edge of a plot of earth, slumping within his earth-colored poncho, letting the rain wash over him like just another lump on the landscape.

These little patches of dirt were farms no longer. The plants were no orderly array of crops. Untended since the Fall of the Cities, likely enough. But was it not strange that in this restricted space the occupants would seed croplands too small to feed a smeerp?

Tegger found it more than interesting. He hadn’t been nibbled by pests last night. Maybe he’d climbed out of their reach. Maybe nothing lived here save for the makaways who foraged below. But if there was anything like a food chain up here, it would begin with growing plants.

So, he would hunt.

What else was worth noting here?

Vines had grown from two narrow strips of soil to engulf the house behind him and tear it down. Windows and their frames had buckled. He could see furniture ruined by rain.

The houses were flat surfaces and right angles. But Stair Street was crowned by a dome of window-stuff as big as two or three houses. He’d compared it to an eyeball, but he was only seeing reflections of white clouds. It had no color of us own. The tube that was the City’s peak loomed above even that.

He was among the topmost houses; and they were the biggest, with the widest of garden / farms. It seemed the City Builders liked a view.

The wilderness before and below him was almost a perfect square. The center was an empty pool in the shape of a scallop shell. Four trees had been planted at the corners, but rain had carved ru

Tegger liked the pool. It might have been some Cluster Islands grotto. Its rounded bottom was smooth blue City Builder stuff, and there were stairs leading in. There was even a ru

There was dirt in the pool, too, but it didn’t belong. There wasn’t enough. It had washed in. Still, plants had taken root and were cracking the blue bottom.

A pool for swimming. Why? Stairs to get out: you could drown otherwise. Maybe City Builders swam; maybe Homeflow River Folk came visiting.

But having built it, why leave it empty?

Nothing was happening among the patches of plants. Tegger supposed he would have better hunting during halfnight. Between light and dark was an active time for things that were used to evading predators. Maybe he could chase something into the pool, trap it there.

Meanwhile—he dropped to the grass, then walked into the pool.

Mud had half choked the drain. It had not quite hidden the cover.

A round drain and a pipe below. A round cap the size of his spread fingers, on a hinge, with a rusted chain hanging from it. Tegger could see where it ought to lead, up there at the edge. You’d stay dry while you pulled the chain to open the cap.

He tried to close the cap. It resisted. He leaned his weight on it and the hinge snapped. He set the loose cap on the drain. It stayed. He watched as the pool began to fill.

Chapter 11

Guard Duty

Daylight was glowing on his eyelids. Louis tried to roll over, then stopped. He’d wake her.

His memory oozed into place. Sawur. Weavers. Shenthy River valley. Hindmost, vampires and vampire killers, a hidden protector …

She turned in his arms. Gold and silver fur; thin lips. Her breasts were near flat, but prominent nipples poked through the fur. She was awake in an eyeblink. Bare black eyelids made her brown eyes look huge.

Sawur studied him to verify that he, too, was awake. Then—he hadn’t asked, but he had guessed. Morning was Sawur’s time for rishathra, and Louis needed this in the worst way.

The worst way. She certainly sensed something wrong. She pulled back two inches to see his face. “Do you hunger in the morning?”

“Sometimes.”

“Something is distracting you.”

“Something was. Is. Sorry.”

She waited to be sure he had no more to say, then, “Will you teach today?”

“I should go looking for plants I can eat. We’re omnivores. Our guts need roughage. Hey, the older children go hunting—”

“Yes, we’ll go with them,” Sawur said. “They’ll learn more from you in the woods than they would from me in a hut. Here, this would be your parting gift, but you need it now.”

From a corner she pulled something with straps. Louis took it into sunlight to admire it. It was intricately embroidered weavework, a valuable gift: a backpouch.

He found remains of last night’s fish in the ashes of the barbecue, wrapped in leaves. It made a good breakfast.

He caught up to Sawur trying to herd a score of children all in one direction while she lectured on plants, fungus, animals, and animal spoor.

Yesterday he’d seen fleshy arrowhead-shaped leaves on a purple stalk, growing at the bases of the trees. Something like that grew downstream, and those leaves had been edible.

Ordinarily an omnivore could watch what other hominid species ate and try that himself, try eating whatever another hominid found safe. He couldn’t do that among strict carnivores.

Then again, what he found need not be shared. If it was poisonous, there was the medkit. Eat one thing at a time and check himself. If it was mildly poisonous, he might have to eat it anyway for roughage, for potassium, for whatever scarce substance he wasn’t getting.

The children watched as he tested this and that, chewed this, threw that away, put this or that in his backpouch. Sawur tried to help. She pointed out a poisonous twining plant before Louis could hurt himself, and a blue berry the birds liked, that tested clean and tasted of lemon. A fungus the size of a di

They reached a pond a little ahead of the children. Sawur slowed him with a hand on his arm. The water was flat and still. His knees and back protested as he knelt.

His hair … he’d never seen it like this, laced with white strands. His eyes were lined at the edges. Louis saw his age.