The Ringworld Engineers

He lusted after the librarian.

He loved her voice. She’d been talking for hours, yet the lilt was still there. She’d told him that she sometimes read to blind children: children without sight. Louis got queasy just thinking about it. He liked her dignity and her courage. He liked the way the robe outlined her shape; and he’d glimpsed her nakedness.

It had been years since Louis Wu had loved a strictly human woman. Harkabeeparolyn came too close. And she wasn’t having any. When the puppeteer finally rejoined them, Louis was glad of the distraction.

They talked quietly in Interworld, below the sound of Harkabeeparolyn reading to the computer.

“Where did they come from, these amateur repairmen?” Louis wondered. “Who on the Ringworld would know enough to remount the attitude jets? Yet they don’t seem to know that it’s not enough.”

“Let them alone,” the Hindmost said.

“Maybe they know it’s not enough? Maybe the poor bleeders just can’t think of anything else to do. And there’s the question of where they got their equipment. It could have come from the Repair Center.”

“We face enough complications now. Let them alone.”

“For once I think you’re right. But I can’t help wondering. Teela Brown got her schooling in human space. Big space-built structures are nothing new to her. She’d know what it meant when the sun started sliding around.”

“Could Teela Brown have organized so large an effort?”

“Maybe not. But Seeker would be with her. Was Seeker in your tapes? He was a Ringworld native, and maybe immortal. Teela found him. A little crazy, but he could have done the organizing. He was a king more than once, he said.”

“Teela Brown was a failed experiment. We tried to breed a lucky human being, feeling that puppeteer associates would share the luck. Teela may or may not have been lucky, but her luck was surely not contagious. We do not want to meet Teela Brown.”

Louis shivered. “No.”

“Then we must avoid the attention of the repair crew.”

“Add a postscript to the tape you’re sending to Chmeee,” Louis said. “Louis Wu rejects your offer of sanctuary on the Fleet of Worlds. Louis Wu has taken command of Hot Needle of Inquiry and has destroyed the hyperdrive motor. That should shake him up.”

“It did that for me. Louis, my sensors will not penetrate scrith. Your message will have to wait.”

“How long until we reach him?”

“About forty hours. I have accelerated to a thousand miles per second. At this velocity it takes more than five gravities of acceleration to hold us in our path.”

“We can take thirty gravities. You’re being overcautious.”

“I’m aware of your opinion.”

“You don’t take orders worth a tanj,” Louis said. “Either.”

Chapter 25 — The Seeds Of Empire

Beyond the curved ceiling the Ringworld floor streamed past.

It wasn’t much of a view, not from thirty thousand miles away, passing at a thousand miles per second, and cloaked in foam padding. Presently the boy fell asleep in the orange furs. Louis continued to watch. The alternative was to float here wondering if he’d doomed them all.

And finally the Hindmost told the City Builder woman, “Enough.”

Louis tumbled off the shifting surface.

Harkabeeparolyn massaged her throat. They watched as the Hindmost ran four stolen tapes through the reading machine.

It took only a few minutes. “This now becomes the computer’s problem,” the puppeteer said. “I’ve programmed in the questions. If the answers are in the tapes, we’ll have them in a few hours, maximum. Louis, what if we don’t like the answers?”

“Let’s hear the questions.”

“Is there a history of repair activity on the Ringworld? If so, did repair machinery approach from any one source? Is repair more frequent in any given locale? Is any section of the Ringworld in better repair than the rest? Locate all references to Pak-like beings. Does the style of armor vary with distance from a central point? What are the magnetic properties of the Ringworld floor and of scrith in general?”

“Good.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“… Yah. We want the most probable source of the immortality drug. It’ll be the Great Ocean, but let’s ask anyway.”

“I will. Why the Great Ocean?”

“Oh, partly because it’s so visible. And partly because we’ve found one surviving sample of the immortality drug, and one only. Halrloprillalar had it. We found her in the vicinity of the Great Ocean.” And partly because we crashed there, Louis thought. The luck of Teela Brown distorts probability. Teela’s luck could have brought us straight to the Repair Center that first time. “Harkabeeparolyn? Can you think of anything we missed?”

Her voice was scratchy. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

How to explain? “Our machine remembers everything on your tapes. We tell it to search its memory for answers to given questions.”

“Ask it how to save the Ringworld.”

“We have to be more specific. The machine can remember and correlate and do sums, but it can’t think for itself. It’s not big enough.”

She shook her head.

“What if the answers are wrong?” the Hindmost persisted. “We cannot flee.”

“We try something else.”

“I have thought about this. We must go into polar orbit around the sun, to minimize the risk that a fragment of the disintegrating Ringworld will strike us. I will put Needle in stasis, to wait for rescue. Rescue will not come, but the risk is better than what we face now.”

It could come to that, Louis thought. “Fine. We’ve got a couple of years to try to find better odds.”

“Less than that. If—”

“Shut up.”

The exhausted librarian dropped onto the water bed. Imitation kzin fur surged and rippled under her. She held herself rigid for a moment, then cautiously let herself fall back. The fur continued to ripple. Presently the stiffness left her and she let herself roll with the tide. Kawaresksenjajok murmured sleepy protest and turned over.

The librarian looked most appealing. Louis resisted an urge to join her on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired. Miserable. Will I ever see my home again? If the end comes — when it comes — I’d like to wait for it on the Library roof. But the flowers will be dead by then, won’t they? Scorched and frozen.”

“Yah.” Louis was touched. Certainly he’d never see his own home again. “I’ll try to get you back. Right now you need sleep. And a back massage.”

“No.”

Strange. Wasn’t Harkabeeparolyn one of the City Builders, Halrloprillalar’s people, who had ruled the Ringworld largely through sex appeal? Sometimes it was difficult to remember that the individuals within an alien species could differ as thoroughly as humans did.

He said, “The Library staff seemed more priests than professionals. Do you practice continence?”

“While we work in the Library, we are continent. But I was continent by choice.” She rose on an elbow to look at him. “We learn that all other species lust to do rishathra with the City Builders. Is that the case with