Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

“Do not mock me, Louis Wu.”

Louis looked at her. “Did the people who built the cities have such things?”

“They had things that speak. They could raise buildings in the air; why not themselves?”

“What of my companion? Have you found his like on the Ringworld?”

“He seemed monstrous.” She flushed. “I had no chance to study him.”

No, she’d been distracted. Nuts. “Why do you point a gun at me? The desert is enemy to both of us. We should help each other.”

“I have no reason to trust you. Now I wonder if you are mad. Only the City Builders traveled between the stars.”

“You are mistaken.”

She shrugged. “Must you drive so slowly?”

“I need practice.”

But Louis was getting the hang of it. The road was straight and not too rough, and there was nothing coming at him. There were drifts of sand across the road. Valavirgillin had told him not to slow for these.

And he was moving at a fair clip toward his destination. He asked, “What can you tell me about the floating city?”

“I have never been there. The children of the City Builders use it. They no longer build, nor do they rule, but our custom is that they keep the city. They have many visitors.”

“Tourists? People who go only to see the city?”

She smiled. “For that and other reasons. One must be invited. Why must you know these things?”

“I have to get to the floating city. How far may I drive with you?”

Now she laughed. “I think that you will not be invited there. You are not famous nor powerful.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“I go as far as the school at River’s Return. There I must tell them what happened.”

“What did happen? What were you doing there in the desert?”

She told him. It wasn’t easy. There were gaps in the translator’s vocabulary. They worked around the gaps and filled them in.

The Machine People ruled a mighty empire.

Traditionally an empire is a cluster of nearly independent kingdoms. The various kingdoms must pay taxes, and they follow the emperor’s commands as regards war, banditry control, maintenance of communication, and sometimes an official religion. Otherwise they follow their own customs.

And that was doubly true within the Machine Empire, where, for instance, the way of life of a herd-keeping carnivore was in competition with the life style of the Grass People; was useful to the traders, who bought the carnivores’ tooled leather goods; and was irrelevant to the ghouls. In some territories many species worked in cooperation, and all allowed free passage to the ghouls. The various species followed their own customs because they were built to.

Ghoul was Louis Wu’s word. Valavirgillin called them something like Night People . They were the garbage collectors and the morticians too, which was why Valavirgillin had not buried her dead. The ghouls had speech. They could be taught to give last rites in the local hominid religions. They formed an information source for the Machine People. Legend said that they had done the same for the City Builders when the City Builders ruled.

According to Valavirgillin, the Machine Empire was an empire of trade, and it taxed only its own merchants. The more she talked, the more exceptions Louis found. The kingdoms maintained the roads that linked the empire, if their people were capable of it, which (for instance) the tree-living Hanging People were not. The roads marked the borders between territories held by different species of hominid. Wars of conquest across the roads were forbidden; and so the roads prevented wars (sometimes!) merely by existing.

The empire had the power to draft armies to battle bandits and thieves. The large patches of land the empire took for trading posts tended to become full colonies. Because roads and vehicles linked the empire, the kingdoms thereof were required to distill chemical fuel and hold it available. The empire purchased mines (by forced sale?), mined its own ore, and leased the right to manufacture machinery according to the empire’s specifications.

There were schools for traders. Valavirgillin and her companions were students and a teacher from the school at River’s Return. They had set out on a field trip to a trade center bordering the jungle lands of the Hanging People — brachiators, Louis gathered, who traded in nuts and dried fruit — and the Herders, carnivores who dealt in leather goods and handicrafts. (No, they were not small and red. A different species.) They had veered for a side trip to an ancient desert city.

They had not expected vampires. Where would vampires find water in this desert? How would they get there? Vampires were almost extinct except for—

“Except for what? I missed something.”

Valavirgillin blushed. “Some older people keep toothless vampires for — for the purpose of rishathra. That may be how it happened. A tame pair escaped somehow, or a pregnant female.”

“Vala, that’s disgusting.”

“It is,” she agreed coolly. “I never heard anyone admit to keeping vampires himself. Where you come from, is there nothing that some do that others find shameful?”

That shot struck home. “I’ll tell you about current addiction sometime. Not now.”

She studied him over the metal snout of her weapon. Despite that fringe of black beard along her jaw, she looked human enough… but widened. Her face was almost perfectly square. Louis was having trouble reading her face. That was predictable; the human face has evolved as a signaling device, and Vala’s evolution diverged from his.

He asked, “What will you do next?”

“I must report the deaths… and give over the artifacts from the desert city. There is a bounty, but the empire claims City Builder artifacts.”

“I tell you again that they are mine.”

“Drive.”

The desert was showing patches of greenery, and a shadow square sliced the sun, when Valavirgillin bade him stop. He was glad to. He was exhausted with the battering of the road and the endless task of keeping the vehicle aimed.

Vala said, “You will -- dinner.”

They were used to gaps in the translation. “I missed that word.”

“You contrive to heat food until it can be eaten. Louis, can’t you -- ?”

“Cook.” She wasn’t likely to have frictionless pans and a microwave oven, was she? Or measuring cups, refined sugar, butter, any spice he could recognize — “No.”

“I will cook. Make me a fire. What do you eat?”

“Meat, some plants, fruit, eggs, fish. Fruit I can eat not cooked.”

“Just like my people, except for fish. Good. Step out and wait.”

She locked him out of the vehicle, then crawled into the back. Louis stretched aching muscles. The sun was a blazing sliver, still dangerous to look at, but the desert was growing dark. A broad band of worldscape blazed to antispinward. There was brownish scrub grass around him now, and a clump of tall, dry trees. One tree was white and dead-looking.

She crawled out into the air. She tossed a heavy thing at Louis’s feet. “Cut wood and build a fire.”

Louis picked it up: a length of wood with a wedge of crude iron fixed to one end. “I hate to sound stupid, but what is it?”

She named it. “You swing the sharp edge against the trunk till the tree falls down. See?”

“Ax” Louis remembered the war axes in the museum on Kzin. He looked at the ax, then the dead tree… and suddenly he’d had enough. He said, “It’s getting dark.”

“Do you have trouble seeing at night? Here.” She tossed him the flashlight-laser.

“That dead tree good enough?”

She turned, giving him a nice profile, the gun turning with her. Louis adjusted the light to narrow beam, high intensity. He flipped it on. A bright thread of light licked past her. Louis flicked it across her weapon. The weapon spurted flame and fell apart.