Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

“We shot them. We ask you to let them live.”

“How? What would they do to us if we let them wake up?”

It was a problem. Louis temporized. “If I solve that, will you let them live? Remember, it was our sleepgun.” And that should suggest to Ginjerofer that Chmeee could use the gun again.

“We will confer,” said Ginjerofer.

Louis waited, and thought. No way would forty giant herbivores fit in the lander. They could be disarmed, of course… Louis grinned suddenly at the sword in the giant’s big, broad-fingered hand. The long, curved blade would work as a scythe.

Ginjerofer came back. “They may live if we never see their tribe again. Can you promise that?”

“You’re a bright woman. Yah, they could have relatives with a vengeance tradition. And yah, I can promise you’ll never see this tribe again.”

Chmeee spoke in his ear. “Louis? You may have to exterminate them!”

“No. It could cost us some time, but tanj, look at them! Peasants. They can’t fight us. At worst I’ll make them build a big raft and we’ll tow it with the lander. The sunflowers haven’t crossed the downstream river yet. We’ll let them off a good way away, where there’s grass.”

“For what? A delay of weeks!”

“For information.” Louis turned back to Ginjerofer. “I want the one in the armor, and I want all their weapons. Leave them not so much as a knife. Keep what you want, but I want most of it piled in the lander.”

She looked dubiously at the armored giant. “How shall we move him?”

“I’ll get a repulser plate. You tie the rest up after we’re gone. Let them loose in pairs. Tell them the situation. Send them to spinward in daylight. If they come back to attack you with no weapons, they’re yours. But they won’t. They’ll cross that plain damn fast, with no weapons and no grass over an inch tall.”

She considered. “It seems safe enough. It will be done.”

“We’ll be at their camp, wherever it is, long before they arrive. We’ll wait for them, Ginjerofer.”

“They will not be hurt. My promise is for the People,” she said coldly.

The armored giant woke shortly after dawn.

His eyes opened, blinked, and focused on a looming orange wall of fur, and yellow eyes, and long claws. He held quite still while his eyes roved… seeing the weapons of thirty comrades piled around him… seeing the airlock, with both doors open. Seeing horizon slide past; feeling the wind of the lander’s speed.

He tried to roll over.

Louis grinned. He was watching via a scanner in the rec-room ceiling while he steered the lander. The giant’s armor was soldered to the deck at knees, heels, wrists, and shoulders. A little heat would free him, but rolling around wouldn’t.

The giant made demands and threats. He did not plead. Louis paid scant attention. When the computer’s translating program started getting sense out of that, he’d notice. At the moment he was more concerned with his view of the giants’ camp.

He was a mile up, and fifty miles from the red carnivores’ huts. He slowed. The grass hereabouts had had time to grow back, but the giants had left another great bare region behind them, toward the sea and the sunflower gleam beyond. They were out in the grass: thousands of them scattered widely across the veldt. Louis caught points of light glittering from scythe-swords.

No giants were near the camp itself. There were wagons parked near the center of camp, and no sign of draft beasts. The giants must pull the wagons themselves. Or they might have motors left from the event Halrloprillalar had called the Fall of the Cities, a thousand years ago.

The one thing Louis couldn’t see was the central building. He saw only a black spot on his window, a black rectangle overloaded by too much light. Louis grinned. The giants had enlisted the enemy.

A screen lighted. A seductive contralto said, “Louis.”

“Here.”

“I return your droud,” the puppeteer said.

Louis turned. The small black thing was sitting on the stepping disc. Louis turned away as one turns one’s back on an enemy, remembering that the enemy is still there.

He said, “There’s something I want you to investigate. There are mountains along the base of the rim wall. The natives—”

“For the risks of exploring I selected you and Chmeee.”

“Can you understand that I might want to minimize those risks?”

“Certainly.”

“Then hear me out. I think we’ll want to investigate the spill mountains. Before we do, there are just a lot of things we need to know about the rim wall. All you have to—”

“Louis, why did you call them spill mountains?”

“The natives call them that. I don’t know why, and neither do they. Suggestive, eh? And they don’t show from the back. Why not? Most of the Ringworld is like the mask of a world, with seas and mountains molded into it. But there’s volume to the spill mountains.”

“Suggestive, yes. You must learn the answers yourselves. I am called Hindmost, as any leader may be called Hindmost,” the puppeteer said, “because he directs his people from safety, because safety is his prerogative and his duty, because his death or injury would be disaster for all. Louis, you’ve dealt with my kind before!”

“Tanj, I’m only asking you to risk a probe, not your valuable hide! All we need is a running hologram taken along the rim wall. Put the probe in the rim transport loops and decelerate it to solar orbital speed. You’ll be using the system just as it’s meant to be used. The meteor defense won’t fire on the rim wall—”

“Louis, you are trying to outguess a weapon programmed hundreds of thousands of years ago by your reckoning. What if something has blocked the rim transport system? What if the laser targeting system has become faulty?”

“Even at worst, what have you lost?”

“Half my refueling capability,” said the puppeteer. “I planted stepping-disc transmitters in the probes, behind a filter that will pass only deuterium. The receiver is in the fuel tank. To refuel I need only drop a probe in a Ringworld sea. But if I lose my probes, how will I leave the Ringworld? And why should I take that risk?”

Louis held tight to his temper. “The volume, Hindmost! What’s inside the spill mountains? There must be hundreds of thousands of those half-cones thirty to forty miles tall, and the backs are flat! One could be the control and maintenance center, or a whole string of them. I don’t think they are, but I want to know before I go anywhere near them. Aside from that, there must be attitude jets for the Ringworld, and the best place for them is the rim wall. Where are they, and why aren’t they working?”

“Are you quite sure they must be rocket motors? There are other solutions. Gravity generators would serve for attitude control.”

“I don’t believe it. The Ringworld engineers wouldn’t need to spin the Ringworld if they had gravity generators. It’d make for a much simpler engineering problem.”

“Control of magnetic effects, then, in the sun and the Ringworld floor.”

“Mmm… maybe. Tanj, I’m not sure. I want you to find out!”

“How can you dare to bargain with me?” The puppeteer seemed more puzzled than angry. “At my whim you remain until the Ringworld grinds against the shadow squares. At my whim you will never taste current again.”

The translator was finally speaking. “Butt out,” Louis said. He’d been given no volume control for the Hindmost’s voice, but the Hindmost stopped talking.

The translator said, “Docile? Because I eat plants, must I be docile? Take me out of my armor and I will fight you naked, you ball of orange hair. My space in the longhouse needs a fine new rug.”