The Ringworld Engineers

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.

She stood there with her mouth open and the two pieces in her hands.

“I am perfectly willing to take suggestions from a friend and ally,” he told her. “I’m sick of taking orders. I got plenty of that from my furry companion. Let’s be friends.”

She dropped what she was holding and raised her hands.

“You’ve got more bullets and more guns in the back of the vehicle. Arm yourself.” Louis turned away. He sliced his beam down the dead tree in zigzag fashion. A dozen logs fell burning. Louis strolled over and kicked the logs into a tighter pile around the stump. He played the laser into their midst and watched the fire catch.

Something thumped him between the shoulder blades. For an instant the impact suit went stiff. He heard a single crack of thunder.

Louis waited for a bit, but the second shot didn’t come. He turned and walked back to the vehicle and Vala. He said to her, “Don’t you ever, ever, ever do that again.”

She looked pale and frightened. “No. I won’t.”

“Shall I help you carry your cooking things?”

“No, I can… Did I miss you?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“One of my tools saved me. I brought it a thousand times the distance light travels in a falan, and it’s mine.”

She made a kind of arm-flapping gesture and turned away.

Chapter 16 — Strategies Of Trade

There was a plant that grew along the ground like so many links of green-and-yellow-striped sausage, with rootlets sprouting between the links. Valavirgillin sliced some of these into a pot. She added water, then some seed pods from a sack in the vehicle. She set the pot on the burning logs.

Tanj, Louis could have done that himself. Dinner was going to be crude.

The sun was entirely gone now. A tight cluster of stars to port must be the floating city. The Arch swooped up the black sky in horizontal bands of glowing blue and white. Louis felt that he was on some tremendous toy.