The Ringworld Engineers

The smell of tree-of-life was in Louis’s nose and in his brain. It was not like the wire. Current was sufficient unto itself an experience that demanded nothing further to make it perfect. The smell of tree-of-life was ecstasy, but it sparked a raging hunger. Louis knew what tree-of-life was now. It had glossy dark-green leaves and roots like a sweet potato, and it was all around him, and the taste — something in his brain remembered the taste of Paradise.

It was all around him, and he couldn’t eat. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t eat because of his helmet, and he tore his hands away from the clamps that would release his helmet, because he couldn’t eat while the human variant of a Pak protector was killing Chmeee.

He steadied the laser with both hands, as if it might recoil. The kzin and the protector were inextricably tangled and rolling downhill, leaving shreds of black cloth. He followed them down with a thread of ruby light. First fire, then aim. You’re not really hungry. It would kill you, you’re too old to make the change to protector, it would kill you.

Tanj, the smell! His brain reeled with it. The strain of resisting it was horrible. It was every bit as bad as not resetting his droud every evening of his life for these past eighteen years. Intolerable! Louis held the beam steady and waited.

Teela missed a disemboweling kick. For an instant her leg stuck straight out. The red thread touched it, and Teela’s shin flashed eye-searing red.

He saw another clear shot that disappeared as he fired. Part of Chmeee’s nude pink tail flared and fell away, writhing like an injured worm. Chmeee didn’t seem to notice. But Teela knew where the beam was. She tried to throw Chmeee into it. Louis moved the wand of red light clear and waited.

Chmeee had been slashed; he was bleeding in several places; but he was on top of the protector, using his mass. Louis noticed a sharp-edged rock nearby, like a carefully flaked fist ax, that would crush Chmeee’s skull. He released the trigger and aimed at the rock. Teela’s hand flashed out for it and burst into flame.

Surprise, Teela!

Tanj, the smell! I’ll kill you for the smell of tree-of-life!

A hand gone and a lower leg: Teela should be handicapped by that, but how badly had she damaged Chmeee? They must have been tiring, because Louis caught a clear glimpse of Teela’s hard beak in Chmeee’s thick neck. Chmeee twisted, and for an instant there was nothing behind Teela’s misshapen skull but blue sky. Louis waved the light into her brain.

It took Louis and Chmeee pulling together to open Teela’s jaws where they were locked in Chmeee’s throat. “She let her instincts fight for her,” Chmeee gasped. “Not her mind. You were right, she fought to lose. Kdapt help me if she had fought to win.”

And then it was over, except for the blood leaking into Chmeee’s fur; except for Louis’s bruised and possibly broken ribs, and the pain that twisted him sideways; except for the smell, the smell of tree-of-life, and that went on and on. Except for Harkabeeparolyn, now standing in pond water up to bar knees, mad-eyed and frothing at the mouth as she fought to pound her helmet open.

They took her arms and led her away. She fought. Louis fought too: he fought to keep walking away from the rows and rows of tree-of-life.

Chmeee stopped in the corridor. He undogged Louis’s helmet and pulled it away. “Breathe, Louis. The wind blows toward the farm.”

Louis sniffed. The smell was gone. They took Harkabeeparolyn’s helmet off to let the smell out of her suit. It didn’t seem to matter. Her eyes were mad, staring. Louis wiped foam from her mouth.

The kzin asked, “Can you resist? Can you hold her from returning? And yourself?”

“Yah. Nobody but a reformed wirehead could have done it.”

“Urrr?”

“You’ll never know.”

“I never will. Give me your flying belt.”

The straps were tight. They must have hurt, cutting across Chmeee’s wounds. Chmeee was gone only a few minutes. He came back with Harkabeeparolyn’s flying belt, his own disintegrator, and two flashlight- lasers.

Harkabeeparolyn was calmer, probably through exhaustion. Louis was fighting a terrible depression. He barely heard Chmeee say, “We seem to have won the battle and lost the war. What shall we do next? Your woman and I both need treatment. It may be we can reach the lander.”

“We’ll go through Needle. What do you mean, lost the war?”

“You heard Teela. Needle is in stasis, and we are left with nothing but our hands. How can we learn what any of this machinery does without Needle’s instruments?”

“We won.” Louis felt awful enough without the kzin’s pessimism. “Teela isn’t infallible. She’s dead, isn’t she? How would she know if the Hindmost was reaching for the stasis switch? Why should he?”

“With a protector in his ship, just a wall away?”

“Didn’t he have a kzin trapped in that same room? That wall is General Products hull. I’d say the Hindmost reached to turn off the stepping discs. He was a little slow.”

Chmeee thought it over. “We have the disintegrator.”

“And only two flying belts. Let’s see, how far are we from Needle? Around two thousand miles, almost back the way we came. Futz.”

“What does a human do for a broken arm?”

“Splint.” Louis got up. It was not easy to keep moving. He found a length of aluminum bar and had to be reminded what he wanted it for. They had nothing for bindings but superconductor cloth. Harkabeeparolyn’s arm was swelling ominously. Louis bound her arm. He used the black thread to sew stitches where Chmeee had been most deeply gashed.

They could both die without treatment, and there wasn’t any treatment. And Louis might sit down and die, the way he was feeling. Keep moving. Futz, it won’t hurt any less if you stop moving. You’ve got to get over this sometime. Why not now?

“Got to rig a sling between the flying belts. What can we use? Superconductor isn’t strong enough.”

“We must find something. Louis, I am too badly wounded to scout.”

“We don’t need to. Help me get this suit off Harkabeeparolyn.”

He used the laser. He cut away the front of the pressure suit. He sliced the loose fabric into strips. He punched holes around the edges of what was left of the suit, and threaded strips of the rubberized fabric through it. The other ends he tied to the straps of his flying belt.

The suit had become a Harkabeeparolyn-shaped sling. They put her back into it. She was docile now, but she wouldn’t speak.

Chmeee said, “Clever.”

“Thank you. Can you fly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try it. If you have to drop out and you feel better later, you’ll still have a flying belt. Maybe we’ll find a landmark big enough that I can come back for you and find you again.”

They set off down the corridor that had brought them here. Chmeee’s gashes were bleeding again, and Louis knew he was hurting. Three minutes into their journey they came to a disc six feet across, floating a foot in the air and piled with gear. They settled beside it.

“We might have known. Teela’s cargo disc, by another of those interesting coincidences,” Louis said.

“Another part of her game?”

“Yah. If we lived, we’d find it.” Everything on the disc was strange to the eye, alien, except a heavy box whose bolts had been melted off. “Do you remember this? It’s the medical kit off Teela’s flycycle.

“It won’t help a kzin. And the medicines are twenty-three Earth years old.”

“Better than nothing, for her. You, you’ve got allergy pills, and there’s nothing here to infect you. We’re not close enough to the Map of Kzin to get kzinti bacteria.”

The kzin looked bad. He shouldn’t have been standing up. He asked, “Can you learn these controls? I don’t trust myself to try them.”

Louis shook his head. “Why bother? You and Harkabeeparolyn get on the disc. It’s already floating. I’ll tow it. You sleep.”