The Ringworld Throne

But the Hindmost’s advanced, adaptable programs had exercised fine control over a plasma jet bigger than worlds. The Hindmost had not killed fifteen hundred billion. Not at all.

But Louis Wu had consented to their deaths.

He said, “That region of the Repair Center was infested with tree-of-life … with the plant that changes hominids into something very different. Kazarp says you’re about the right age to become a protector. I’m seven times that old. The virus in tree-of-life would kill old Louis Wu.

“So I sent the Web Dweller in alone to cause their deaths. Otherwise I would have seen how many didn’t die. I took all those lives, and the only apology I could make was to die.”

“But you’re not dead,” the hidden voice said.

“Dying. With the medkit on my cargo plates, I might get as much as another falan.”

The child’s music broke in discord, and the night was silent.

Tanj! He had longevity and he’d thrown it away, but these people had never had the choice. Just how ill-ma

The adult said, “And you gave up his friendship.”

“The Web Dweller doesn’t exactly have friends. He bargains very exactly, and his aim is always to make himself safer. He intends to live forever, whatever that takes. That bothered me then. It bothers me now. What will it take?”

“Your alliance? Does he have something to gain from you?”

“A traveling pair of hands. A life to risk that isn’t his own. A second opinion. He can offer me another hundred twenty falans of life.” And that was scary.

“Could he do that for, let us say, me?”

Offer longevity to a Ghoul? “No. His systems, the programs to heal him or me or the big cat, he must have designed and built them before he left home. He can’t get home. I stopped that. And if he could, why not just stay?”

And he thought further: He’s got a program to repair humans and a program for a Kzin. For a Ghoul he’d have to write a new program. What my life would cost me is already too much, but what would it cost to write a treatment program for yet another species? And if Louis Wu asked him to save a Ghoul, then why not a Weaver next? A City Builder? A …?

Impossible.

The hidden Ghoul had accepted that … or else he was thinking that some wanderers were mad. Kazarp was playing again. Louis said, “When I thought I’d murdered so many people … I decided to age and die in traditional fashion. How bad could it be? People have done that since there were people.”

“Luweewu, I would give all I have to be a hundred falans younger.”

“The Web Dweller can do that for me … for my species. He can do it again when I get old again. Demanding anything he likes of me, each time.”

“You could refuse, each time.”

“No. That’s my problem exactly.” Louis peered into the dark. “What shall I call you?”

The music of the kazoo-harp suddenly had a bass accompaniment. Louis listened for a time. A wind instrument? He could not guess its shape.

“Tunesmith,” he decided. “Tunesmith, it’s been helpful talking with you.”

“We should speak of other things.”

“Ships and shoes and sealing wax, and—”

“Protectors.”

What did the Ghoul heliograph net know of protectors? “But I’m groggy. Tomorrow night,” Louis said, and crawled inside to sleep.

Chapter 12

Weaning Vampires

Tegger had expected the window-dome to be some kind of weird dwelling, but it wasn’t. There was no obvious way to lock the door. The interior was all one big room, and that was a stairway too big even for Grass Giants: concentric semicircles of steps. And tables, a dozen light tables on skids.

What was this? he wondered. If a hundred or so hominids sat on those steps, they’d have one fine view of the factory city and lands beyond. A conference room? He tried it himself for a bit, then moved on.

Doors at the top of the last step. Beyond, darkness. Tegger lit a torch.

This was not a room to live in. It was all flat surfaces, and thick doors that had little windows in them and little boxes inside.

When in doubt, he thought, keep looking. Three big water basins with drains. A flat table of wood now warped. Hanging from a hundred hooks, metal bowls and dishes with long handles. Behind a panel above eye level Tegger found something he recognized: tiny knobs joined by fine lines of dust.

He began replacing the dust lines with strips of Vala-cloth.

A light came on.

Six cha

There were more doors to the back. Tegger took up his torch and passed through.

Storage here: doors, drawers, and bins. The ghosts of old smells were pleasant enough. Plants. They didn’t smell like food, but they probably were. Tegger searched out dried plant residues, but found nothing that even a Grass Giant would eat.

They sat on those semicircular steps and ate?

Maybe. Tegger went back into the lighted room. It seemed warmer … and he still didn’t get it until he tried to lean on one of the flat surfaces.

Red Herders don’t yell when hurt. Tegger hugged his burnt arm, teeth bared in pain. Then, after careful thought, he began to spit on flat surfaces.

Twice, his spit sizzled.

The doors to two of the boxes were hot to the touch.

He was in some kind of chemical plant. Maybe another hominid could understand this better than he.

The peak of the City was a great squat tube with a wasp-waist constriction. A helical stair took him to the rim. Tegger looked about him like a king.

What he’d missed before, leapt at him now that he’d reached the tallest point in the City.

Every roof was the same color!

The flat tops of rectangular solids, the curved tops of tanks, were all a glittery gray. Some had symbols painted on the gray in narrow lines. The only exceptions were the houses along Stair Street, where flat places were soil and pools, and—yes—the stairs were glittery gray.

But the sides of things were of all colors. Industrial shapes were not so much decorated as labeled. There was script Tegger didn’t recognize, square and curved and scrawly. There were simple pictures.

The old City Builders could fly. Why not label the tops of things, too? Unless this gray surface had—was … Flup, he almost had it.

Work on it. Meanwhile … He was standing at the rim of a tremendous tube, ten manheights tall and about that wide. Tegger looked down inside, a much greater distance than ten manheights. The reek of ash and chemicals was faint, but he wasn’t imagining it. Here was a chimney big enough to burn whole villages.

This alone might be reason enough to set a factory floating. The smoke from such a burning might hover for years before drifting away, but at least it would rise first! Irritated neighbors might be pacified. Then again, how would neighbors reach a floating industrial center to make their complaints?

He’d been climbing stairs and exploring houses for a quarter of the day, but the cruisers hadn’t moved. Valavirgillin must have chosen that peak as a defensible position. Sentries shifted on the rock, watching the river, watching the Shadow Nest and its floating roof.

Tegger dropped his poncho to expose the unmistakable color of his skin. At the rim of the tallest point of the City, he raised both arms and waved.

Warvia! By the power of our love, and Valavirgillin! By the power of the cloth I stole, I’ve reached this place. Here I will accomplish something, somehow. Somehow!

Had he been seen? He thought they were pointing at him …

Well, then.

The City rolled away below him. He was able to find the dock, to orient himself from that. The houses and stairs ran from just below him down to Rim Street, along both sides of a zigzag line. That line was nearly opposite the docks.