“I wish I had some meat,” Vala said.
Louis said, “Give me the goggles.”
He turned away from the fire before he put the goggles on. He turned up the light amplification. The pairs of eyes that had been watching from beyond the reach of the firelight resolved. Louis was glad he hadn’t fired at random. Two large shapes and a smaller one were a family of ghouls.
But one bright-eyed shadow was small, and furry. Louis snipped it headless with the long bright thread from his flashlight-laser. The ghouls flinched. They whispered among themselves. The female started toward the dead animal, but stopped to give Louis precedence. Louis picked up the body and watched her back away.
The ghouls seemed diffident enough. But their place in the ecology was very secure. Vala had told him what happened when a people went to the great effort of burying or burning their dead. The ghouls attacked the living. They owned the night. With magic gleaned from scores of local religions, they were said to be able to turn invisible. Even Vala half believed it.
But they weren’t bothering Louis. Why would they? Louis would eat the furry beast, and one day Louis himself would die, and the ghouls would claim their due.
While they watched him, he examined the creature: rabbitlike, but with a long, flat-ended tail and no forepaws at all. Not a hominid. Good.
When he looked up, there was a faintly glowing violet flame far to port.
Holding his breath, holding himself very still, Louis raised both the light amplification and the magnification. Even his pulse in his temples was blurring the picture now, but he knew what he saw. The magnified flame was eye-hurting violet, and it fanned out like a rocket firing in vacuum. Its bottom was clipped off by a straight black line: the edge of the portward rim wall.
He lifted the goggles. Even after his eyes adjusted, the violet flame was barely visible, but it was still there. Tenuous… and tremendous.
Louis returned to the fire and dropped the beast at Vala’s feet. He walked into the darkness to starboard and donned the goggles again.
The flame to starboard showed much larger, but of course that rim wall was much closer.
Vala skinned the little furry beast and dropped it into the pot without removing the entrails. When she had finished, Louis led her by the arm into the darkness. “Wait a little, then tell me if you see a blue flame far away.”
“Yes, I see it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, but I think my father does. There was something he wouldn’t talk about, the last time he came back from the city. There are more. Turn your eyes to the base of the Arch to spinward.”
A daylit, blue-and-white horizontal stripe was bright enough to make him squint. Louis covered it with the edge of his hand… and now, with the goggles to help, he could make out two small candle flames on the rims of the Arch, and two above them, tinier yet.
Valavirgillin said, “The first appeared seven falans ago, near the base of the spinward Arch. Then more to spinward, and these large flames to port and starboard, then more small ones on the antispinward Arch. Now there are twenty-one. They only show for two days each turn, when the sun is brightest.”
Louis heaved a gusty sigh of relief.
“Louis, I don’t know what it means when you do that. Are you angry or frightened or relieved?”
“I don’t know either. Let’s say relieved. We’ve got more time than I thought.”
“Time for what?”
Louis laughed. “Haven’t you had enough of my madness yet?”
She bridled. “After all, I can choose whether to believe you or not!”
Louis got mad. He didn’t hate Valavirgillin, but she was a thorny character, and she had already tried to kill him once. “Fine. If this ring-shaped structure you live on is left to itself, it will brush against the shadow squares — the objects that cover the sun when night comes — in five or six falans. That will kill everything. There won’t be anything left alive when you brush against the sun itself—”
She screamed, “And you sigh with relief?”
“Easy, take it easy. The Ringworld is not being left alone. Those flames are motors for moving it. We’re almost at the closest point to the sun, and they’re using braking thrust — they’re firing inward, sunward. Like this.” He sketched the situation for her in the dirt with a pointed stick. “See? They’re holding us back.”
“You say now that we will not die?”
“The motors may not be strong enough for that. But they’ll hold us back. We could have ten or fifteen falans.”
“I do hope you are mad, Louis. You know too much. You know that the world is a ring, and that is secret.” She shrugged as one shifts a heavy weight. “Yes, I have had enough of it. Will you tell me why you have not suggested rishathra?”
He was surprised. “I would have thought you’d had enough of rishathra to last a lifetime.”
“That is not funny. Rishathra is the way to seal a truce!”
“Oh. All right. Back to the fire?”
“Of course, we need light.”
She pulled the pot a little back from the flame, to cook more slowly. “We must discuss terms. Will you agree not to harm me?” She sat down across from him on the ground.
“I agree not to harm you unless I am attacked.”
“I make you the same concession. What else do you want from me?”
She was brisk and matter-of-fact, and Louis fell into the spirit of the thing. “You will transport me as far as you can, subject to your own needs. I expect that’s as far as, ah, River’s Return. You will treat the artifacts as mine. You will not turn them or me over to any authority. You will give me advice, to the best of your knowledge and ability, that will get me into the floating city.”
“What can you offer in return?”
Here now, wasn’t this woman utterly at Louis Wu’s mercy? Well, never mind. “I will attempt to find out if I can save the Ringworld,” he said, and was somewhat astonished to realize that it was what he most desired. “If I can, I will, no matter what the cost. If I decide the Ringworld can’t be saved, I will try to save myself, and you if it’s convenient.”
She stood. “A promise, empty of meaning. You offer me your madness as if it held real value!”
“Vala, haven’t you dealt with madmen before?” Louis was amused.
“I have never dealt with even sane aliens! I am only a student!”
“Calm down. What else can I offer you? Knowledge? I’ll share my knowledge freely, such as it is. I know how the City Builders’ machines failed, and who caused it.” It seemed safe to assume that the City Builders were Halrloprillalar’s species.
“More madness?”
“You’ll have to decide that for yourself. And… I can give you my flying belt and eyepieces when I’m through with them.”
“When is that likely to be?”
“When and if my companion returns.” The lander held another flying belt and set of goggles, intended for Halrloprillalar. “Or let them be yours when I die. And I can give you half my store of cloth now. Strips of it would let you repair some of the City Builders’ old machines.”
Vala thought it over. “I wish I were more skilled. Well, then, I agree to all of your requirements.”
“I agree to yours.”
She began to take off her clothes and jewelry. Slowly, seemingly titillatingly… until Louis saw what she was doing: stripping herself of all possible weapons. He waited until she was quite naked, then imitated her, dropping the flashlight-laser and goggles and the pieces of impact armor some distance from her, adding even his chronometer.
They made love, then, but it wasn’t love. The madness of last night was gone with the vampires. She asked his preferred technique, then insisted, and he chose the missionary position. It was too much a formality. Perhaps it was meant to be. Afterward, when she went to stir the cooking pot, he was careful that she didn’t get between him and his weapons. It felt like that kind of situation.
