Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

“Good news. What will you do now?”

For a moment Louis was tempted to abandon the floating city and deal strictly with the ghouls. But he’d come too far, and after all, there were ghouls everywhere. “I’ll wait for night and then go up. Vala, your share of the cloth is in the vehicle. I’d be obliged if you don’t show it to anyone or tell anyone about me for… a couple of turns should do it. My share you can dig up in a falan if nobody comes for it. And I’ve got this.” He patted a vest pocket, where a square yard of superconductor was folded into the bulk of a handkerchief.

“I wish you wouldn’t take it to the city,” Vala said.

“After all, they’ll think its just cloth unless I tell them different,” Louis said. It was almost a lie. Louis intended to use the superconductor.

The ghouls stared when he took off his shorts — adding detail to his description, no doubt, to help them find his species’ home on the Ringworld. He donned impact armor.

The female suddenly asked, “How did you convince a Machine People woman that you were sane?”

Vala told her, while Louis donned vest and goggles and pocketed the flashlight-laser. The ghouls almost lost their smiles. The woman asked, “Can you save the world?”

“Don’t count on me. Try to find the Repair Center. Spread the word. Try questioning the bandersnatchi — the great white beasts who live in the great swamp to spinward.”

“We know of them.”

“Good. Vala—”

“I go now to tell how my companions died. We may not meet again, Louis.” Valavirgillin picked up the empty pack and walked quickly away.

“We should escort her,” the female ghoul said. They left.

They hadn’t said good luck . Why? The way they lived… they might all be fatalists. Luck would mean nothing to them.

Louis scanned the textured sky. He was tempted to go now, immediately. Better to wait for night. He spoke into the translator: “Hindmost, are you there?”

Apparently the puppeteer wasn’t.

Louis stretched out under the shelf fungus. The air seemed cleaner near the ground. He sipped meditatively at the fuel-and-nectar bottle Vala had left him.

What were the ghouls? Their position in the ecology seemed very secure. How had they kept their intelligence? Why would they need intelligence? Perhaps they had to fight for their prerogatives on occasion. Or for respect. Complying with a thousand local religions could also require considerable verbal facility.

More to the point: how could they help him? Was there a ghoulish enclave somewhere that remembered the source of the immortality drug? Which, by hypothesis, was made from Pak tree-of-life root…

One thing at a time. Try the city first.

The pillars of light thinned, then faded out. Other lights appeared in the solid sky: hundreds of lighted windows. None showed directly above him. Who would occupy a basement above a garbage dump? (Someone who couldn’t afford lighting?)

The shadow farm seemed deserted. Louis heard only the wind. Standing on the shelf fungus gave him a glimpse of distant windows flickering as if with firelight: housing for the farmers around the perimeter.

Louis touched the lift knob on his flying belt and went up.

At something over a thousand feet the smell of fresh air became more pronounced, and the floating city was around him. He circled the blunt tip of an inverted tower: four levels of dark windows, and a garage below that. The big garage door was closed and locked. Louis circled, looking for a broken window. There weren’t any.

These windows must have survived for eleven hundred years. Probably he couldn’t break one if he tried. He didn’t want to enter the city as a burglar anyway.

Instead, he let himself rise along the sewer pipe, hoping to gain privacy that way. There were ramps around him now, but no street lights anywhere. He guided himself to a walkway and settled on it. Now he felt less conspicuous.

There was nobody in sight. The broad ribbon of poured stone curved away among the buildings, left and right, up and down, putting out pseudopods at random. With a thousand feet of empty space below, there were no guardrails. Halrloprillalar’s people must be closer to their brachiating past than Earth’s people. Louis strolled toward the lights, keeping nervously to the center of the walk.

Where was everybody? The city had an insular look, Louis thought. There was housing in plenty, and ramps between the housing areas, but where were the shopping centers, the playhouses, the bars, the malls, parks, sidewalk cafés? Nothing advertised itself, and everything was behind walls.

Either he should find someone to introduce himself to, or he should be hiding. What about that glass slab with the dark windows? If he entered from above, he could make certain it was deserted.

Someone came down the walk toward him.

Louis called, “Can you understand me?” and heard his words translated into the Machine People tongue.

The stranger answered in the same language. “You should not walk about the city in darkness. You might fall.” He was closer now. His eyes were huge; he was not of the City Builder species. He carried a slender staff as long as himself. With the light behind him, Louis could see no more of him. “Show your arm,” he said.

Louis bared his left arm. Of course it bore no tattoos. He said what he had planned to say from the beginning. “I can repair your water condensers.”

The staff slashed at him.

It rapped his head glancingly as Louis threw himself backward. He rolled and was on his feet, crouching, trained reflexes working fine, with his arms coming up just too late to block the staff. It cracked against his skull. Lights flared behind his eyes and went out.

He was in free fall. Wind roared past him. Even to a man nearly unconscious, the connection was obvious. Louis thrashed in panic in the dark. Blowout in a spacecraft! Where am I? Where are the meteor patches? My pressure suit? The alarm switch?

Switch — He half remembered. His hands leaped to his chest, found flying-belt controls, twisted the lift knob hard over.

The belt lifted savagely and swung him around, feet down. Louis tried to shake the mists out of his head. He looked up. Through a gap in darkness he saw the solar corona glowing around a shadow square; he saw hard darkness descending to smash him. He twisted the lift knob to stop his rapid rise.

Safe.

His belly was churning and his head hurt. He needed time to think. Clearly his approach had been wrong. But if the guard had rolled him off the walk… Louis patted his pockets; everything was there. Why hadn’t the guard robbed him first?

Louis half remembered the answer: he’d jumped, missed the guard, rolled. And passed out in midair. That put a different face on the matter. It might even have been best to wait. Too late now.

So try the other approach.

He swam beneath the city, outward toward the rim. Not too far. There were too many lights along the perimeter. But near the center was a double cone with no lights showing at all. The lower tip was blunt: a carport with a poured-stone ledge protruding. Louis floated into the opening.

He raised the amplification of his goggles. It worried him that he hadn’t done that earlier. Had the blow to his head left him stupid?

Prill’s people, the City Builders, had had flying cars, he remembered. There was no car here. He found a rusted metal track along the floor, and a crude, armless chair at the far end, and bleachers: three rows of raised benches on either side of the track. The wood had aged, the metal was crumbly with rust.

He had to examine the chair before he understood. It was built to run down the track and to flop forward at the end. Louis had found an execution chamber, with provision for an audience.