“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
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.
Fortaralisplyar was dressed in yellow and scarlet robes of what appeared to be vegetable fiber: coarse by Louis’s standards, but grand from a distance. Louis followed him into Orlry, into a large reception area. There was light, but it flickered: scores of alcohol lamps burning near the ceiling.
Eleven City Builder types of both sexes waited for them. They were dressed almost identically, in loose pants with tight cuffs and brightly colored capes. The edges of the capes were cut elaborately and without symmetry. Badges of rank? The white-haired man who came smiling to greet them wore the most elaborately cut cape and a shoulder gun.
He spoke to Fortaralisplyar. “I had to see him for myself, this being who can give us water from machinery five thousand falans dead.”
The handgun in his worn plastic shoulder holster was small, with clean, efficient lines; but even a gun couldn’t make Filistranorlry look warlike. His small features showed happy curiosity as he examined Louis Wu. “He seems unusual enough, but… well. You have paid. We shall see.” He gestured to the soldiers.
They searched Fortaralisplyar, then Louis. They found his flashlight, tested it, gave it back. They puzzled over his translator until Louis said, “That speaks for me.”
Filistranorlry jumped. “So it does! Will you sell that?” He was speaking to Fortaralisplyar, who answered, “It is not mine.”
Louis said, “I would be mute without it.” Orlry’s master seemed to accept this.
The water condenser was a dip in the center of Orlry’s broad roof. The access tubes below were too small for Louis. Even if he took off his armor he wouldn’t fit, and he didn’t intend to do that. “What do you use for repairmen? Mice?”
“Hanging People,” Filistranorlry said. “We must rent their services. Chilb Building was to have sent them by now. Do you see any other problems?”
“Yes.” By now the machinery was familiar enough; Louis had repaired three buildings and failed at a fourth. He could see what ought to be a pair of contacts. He looked for the dust below them, and it wasn’t there. “Were there earlier attempts at repair?”
