The Ringworld Engineers

Louis still felt uncomfortable in his nudity. “I’m going back to my room,” he said. “Why don’t you join me? There’s food and a change of clothing, and better beds if you want them.”

Harkabeeparolyn flicked into existence, last in line on the stepping disc, and flinched violently. Louis laughed aloud. She tried to glare at him, but her eyes shied away. Naked!

Louis dialed for a falling jumper and covered himself. “Better?”

“Yes, better. Do you think I am foolish?”

“No, I think you don’t have climate control. You can’t go naked most places, so it looks strange to you. I could be wrong.”

“You could be right,” she said, surprised.

“You slept on a hard deck last night. Try the water bed. It’s big enough for both of you and a couple more, and Chmeee isn’t using it right now.”

Kawaresksenjajok flung himself bodily onto the fur-covered water bed. He bounced, and waves surged outward beneath the fur. “Luweewu, I like it! it’s like swimming, but dry!”

Stiff-backed with distrust, Harkabeeparolyn sat down on the uneasy surface. Dubiously she asked, “Chmeee?”

“Eight feet tall and covered with orange fur. He’s… on a mission in the Great Ocean. We’re going to get him now. You may talk him into sharing with you.”

The boy laughed. The woman said, “Your friend must find another playmate. I do not indulge in rishathra.”

Louis chortled. (The underside of his mind thought: tanj!) “Chmeee’s stranger than you think. He’s as likely to want rishathra with a weenie plant. You’d be quite safe unless he wants the whole bed, which is possible. Be careful never to shake him awake. Or you can try the sleeping plates.”

“Do you use the sleeping plates?”

“Yes.” He guessed at the meaning of her expression. “The field can be set to keep two bodies apart.” (Tanj! Did the boy’s presence inhibit her?)

She said, “Luweewu, we have inflicted ourselves on you in the middle of your mission. Did you come simply to steal knowledge?”

The correct answer would have been yes. Louis’s answer was at least true. “We’re here to save the Ringworld.”

Thoughtfully she said, “But how can I… ?” And then she was staring past Louis’s shoulder.

The Hindmost waited beyond the forward wall, and he was glorious. Now his claws were tipped with silver, and he wore his mane in gold and silver strands. The short, pale hair over the rest of his body had been brushed to a glow. “Harkabeeparolyn, Kawaresksenjajok, be welcome,” he sang. “Your aid is urgently needed. We have traveled a vast distance between the stars in hope of saving your peoples and your world from a fiery death.”

Louis swallowed laughter. Fortunately his guests had eyes only for the Pierson’s puppeteer.

“Where are you from?” the boy demanded of the puppeteer. “What is it like?”

The puppeteer tried to tell them. He spoke of worlds falling through space at near lightspeed, five worlds arrayed in a pentagon, a Kemplerer rosette. Artificial suns circled four, to grow food for the population of the fifth. The fifth world glowed only by the light of its streets and buildings. Continents blazed yellow-white, oceans dark. Isolated brilliant stars surrounded by mist were factories floating on the sea, their waste heat boiling the water. Waste industrial heat alone kept the world from freezing.

The boy forgot to breathe as he listened. But the librarian spoke softly to herself. “He must come from the stars. He is shaped like no living thing known anywhere.”

The puppeteer spoke of crowded streets, tremendous buildings, parks that were the last refuge of a world’s native life. He spoke of stepping-disc arrays whereby one could walk around the world in minutes.

Harkabeeparolyn shook her head violently. Her voice rose. “Please, we don’t have time. I’m sorry, Kawa! We want to hear more, we need to know more, but — the world, the sun! Louis, I never should have doubted you. What can we do to help?”

The Hindmost said, “Read to me.”

Kawaresksenjajok lay on his back, watching the back of the world roll past him.

Needle ran beneath a featureless black roof in which the Hindmost had set two hologram “windows.” One wide rectangle showed a light-amplified view; the other examined the Ringworld’s underside by infrared light. In infrared the underside of day still glowed brighter than night-shadowed land; and rivers and seas were dark by day and light by night.

“Like the back of a mask, see?” Louis kept his voice down to avoid interrupting Harkabeeparolyn. “That branching river chain: see how it stands out? The seas bulge too. And that line of dents — that’s a whole mountain range.”

“Are your worlds like that?”

“Oh, no. On one of my worlds all that would be solid underneath, and the surface would be happening by accident. Here the world was sculpted. Look, the seas are all the same depth, and they’re spaced out so there’s enough water everywhere.”

“Somebody carved the world like a bas relief?”

“Just like that.”

“Luweewu, that’s scary. What were they like?”

“They thought big, and they loved their children, and they looked like suits of armor.” Louis decided not to say more about the protectors.

The boy pointed. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know.” It was a dimple in the Ringworld’s underside… with fog in it. “I think it’s a meteor puncture. There’ll be an eye storm above it.”

The reading screen was on the flight deck, facing Harkabeeparolyn through the wall. The Hindmost had repaired the damage and added a braided cable that led into the control panel. As Harkabeeparolyn read aloud, the ship’s computer was reading the tape and correlating it to her voice and to its own stored knowledge of Halrloprillalar’s tongue. That tongue would have changed over the centuries, but not too much, not in a literate society. Hopefully the computer could take over soon.

As for the Hindmost, he had disappeared into the hidden section. The alien had suffered repeated shocks. Louis didn’t begrudge him time off for hysterics.

Needle continued to accelerate. Presently the inverse landscape was speeding past almost too fast for detail. And Harkabeeparolyn’s voice was becoming throaty. Time for a lunch break, Louis decided.

A problem emerged. Louis dialed filets mignons and baked potatoes, with Brie and French bread to follow. The boy stared in horror. So did the woman, but at Louis Wu.

“I’m sorry. I forgot. I keep thinking of you as omnivores.”

“Omnivores, yes. We eat plants and flesh both,” the librarian said. “But not decayed food!”

“Don’t get so upset. There’s no bacteria involved.” Properly aged steak, milk attacked by mold… Louis dumped their plates into the toilet and dialed again. Fruit, crudites with a separate sour-cream dip which he dumped, and seafood, including sashimi. His guests had never seen salt-water fish before. They liked it, but it made them thirsty.

And watching Louis eat made them unhappy. What was he supposed to do, starve?

They might starve. Where would he get fresh red meat for them? Why, from Chmeee’s side of the autokitchen, of course. Broil it with the laser on wide beam, high intensity. He’d have to get the Hindmost to recharge the laser. That might not be easy, considering the last use to which he’d put it.

Another problem: they might be consuming too much salt. Louis didn’t know what to do about that. Maybe the Hindmost could reset the autokitchen controls.

After lunch Harkabeeparolyn went back to her reading. By now the Ringworld was streaming past too fast for detail. Kawaresksenjajok flicked restlessly from cell to cargo hold and back again.

Louis, too, was restive. He should be studying: reviewing the records of the first voyage, or of Chmeee’s adventures to date on the Map of Kzin. But the Hindmost wasn’t available.

Gradually he became aware of another source of discomfort.