Larry Niven - The Ringworld Engineers

But he was far overdue for sleep! He was simply going to have to trust the Lyars. “Good,” he said. He began to strip off his armor.

Age had treated Laliskareerlyar oddly. Louis knew ancient literature, plays and novels that predated boosterspice. Age was a crippling disease… but this woman wasn’t crippled. Her skin was loose on her, and her limbs didn’t bend as far as Louis’s. But she had an endless interest in love, and in the strangeness of Louis’s body and reflexes.

It was a long time before he slept. He had begged off telling her about the plastic under his hair. He wished she hadn’t reminded him of that. The Hindmost had a working droud… and he hated himself for wanting it.

He was awakened near nightfall. The bed jolted twice, and he blinked and rolled over. He faced Laliskareerlyar and a City Builder man who had also been touched by age.

Laliskareerlyar introduced him as Fortaralisplyar, her mate of record and Louis’s host. He thanked Louis for his work on the building’s old machinery. Dinner was already on one of the tables, and Louis was invited to share it with them: a large bowl of stew, too bland for Louis’s taste. He ate.

“Orlry Building asks more than we have,” Fortaralisplyar told Louis. “We have bought for you the right to enter three of our neighbors’ buildings. If you succeed in repairing even one of their water condensers, we can get you into Orlry Building. Is that satisfactory?”

“Excellent. I need machines that haven’t worked in eleven hundred years, and haven’t been tampered with either.”

“My mate told me.”

Louis left them to their sleep as dark was falling. They had invited him to join them, and the great bed was roomy enough, but Louis was slept out and restless.

The great building was like a tomb. From the upper floors Louis watched for activity in the maze of bridges. He saw nothing but an occasional big-eyed Night Hunter. It figured. If the City Builders slept ten hours out of thirty, it might as well be during the dark. He wondered if they were an asleep in the lighted buildings too.

“Calling the Hindmost,” he said.

“Yes, Louis. Must we translate?”

“No need, we’re alone. I’m in the floating city. It’ll take me a day or two to get into the Library. I think I’m marooned here. My flying belt’s ruined.”

“Chmeee still will not answer.”

Louis sighed. “What else is new?”

“In two days my first probe will complete its circuit of the rim wall. I can bring it to the floating city. Will you want me to negotiate directly with the inhabitants? We are good at that. At least I can lend credence to your tale.”

“I’ll let you know. What about the Ringworld attitude jets? Have you found any more mounted?”

“No. Of those you know of, all twenty-one are firing. Can you see them?”

“Not from here. Hindmost? Can you learn anything about the physical properties of scrith, Ringworld floor material? Strength, flexibility, magnetic properties?”

“I have been working on that. The rim wall is available to my instruments. Scrith is very much denser than lead. The scrith floor of the Ringworld is probably less than a hundred feet thick. I’ll show you my data when you return.”

“Good.”

“Louis, I can give you transportation, if need be. It would be easier if I could send Chmeee.”

“Great! What kind of transportation?”

“You will have to wait for my probe. I will give further instructions then.”

He watched the nearly empty city for a while after the Hindmost hung up. He felt depressed. Alone in a gone-to-seed building in a gone-to-seed city, without his droud…

A voice behind his shoulder said, “You told my mistress that you are not nocturnal.”

“Hello, Mar Korssil. We use electric lighting. Some of us keep strange hours. Anyway, I’m used to a shorter day.” Louis turned around.

The big-eyed humanoid wasn’t pointing her weapon at Louis, exactly. She said, “These past falans, the day has been changing its length. It is distressing.”

“Yah.”

“Whom did you speak to?”

“A two-headed monster.”

Mar Korssil departed. Perhaps she was offended. Louis Wu remained at the window, free-associating through the memories of a long and eventful life. He had given up hope of returning to known space. He’d given up the droud. Perhaps it was time to give up… more.

Chkar Building was a poured-stone slab covered in balconies. Explosions had scarred one side of the building, exposing the metal skeleton in places. The water condenser was a trough along the top, slightly canted. An old explosion had sprayed metal droplets into the machinery below. Louis didn’t expect his repairs to work, and they didn’t.

“Mine is the blame,” Laliskareerlyar said. “I had forgotten that Chkar Building fought with Orlry Building two thousand falans ago.”

Panth Building was built like an onion standing on its tip. Louis guessed that the building had started life as a health club; he recognized pools, spas, hotboxes, massage tables, a gymnasium. The place seemed to have plenty of water. And a faint half-familiar smell tickled at his memory…

Panth had also fought with Orlry. There were craters. A bald young man named Arrivercompanth swore that the water condenser had never been damaged. Louis found the dust tracks in the machinery, and the contacts above them. When he had made his repairs, there were water droplets forming on the rounded roof and running into a gutter.

There was some difficulty about payment. Arrivercompanth and his people wanted to offer rishathra and promises. (And then Louis recognized the scent tickling his nose and hindbrain. He was in a house of ill repute, and there were vampires somewhere about.) Laliskareerlyar wanted cash now . Louis tried to follow her argument. He gathered that the Ten would be unhappy when Panth stopped buying water, and only too happy to levy a fine against them for fraud. Arrivercompanth paid.

Gisk had been a condominium, or something similar, at the Fall of the Cities. It was a cube with an air well down the center, and it was half empty. Judging by the smell of the place, Gisk had been restricting its use of water overmuch. Louis was learning the look of water-condensation machinery. He made his repairs quickly, and they worked. The Gisks paid at once. They fell at Laliskareerlyar’s feet to express their thanks… ignoring her tool-wielding servant. Oh, well.

Fortaralisplyar was delighted. He packed a double-handful of metal coins into Louis’s vest and explained the tricky etiquette of bribery. The face-saving language would strain his translator to the limits. “When in doubt, don’t,” Fortaralisplyar told him. “I will come with you to Orlry Building tomorrow. Let me do the bargaining.”

Orlry Building was on the port side of the city. Louis and Fortaralisplyar took their time, sightseeing, walking the highest ramps to get a better view. Fortaralisplyar was proud of his city. “A bit of civilization remained even after the Fall,” he said. He pointed out Rylo, a building that had been an emperor’s castle. It was beautiful but scarred. The emperor had tried to claim the city for his own at about the time Orlry Building arrived. A fluted column shaped like a Greek pillar, supporting nothing but itself, was Chank, which had been a shopping center. Without the supplies aboard Chank — from markets, restaurants, clothing and bedding stores, even toy shops — for trading with the Machine People, the city would have died early. From the basement of Chank the air road spiraled down to Sky Hill.

Orlry Building was a disc forty feet thick and ten times that wide, built along the lines of a pie. The massive tower at one edge, elaborated with gun emplacements and railed platforms and a derrick, reminded Louis of the bridge of a great ship — a battleship. The walkway to Orlry was broad, but there was only one walkway and one entrance. Along the upper rim were hundreds of small projections. Louis guessed that they were cameras or other sensors, and that they no longer worked. Windows had been chopped into Orlry’s sides after the building was raised. The glass in them fitted poorly.