The Ringworld Throne

In the tent it was almost totally dark. Vala could make out the gleam of the Ghouls’ eyes and teeth, and two black silhouettes against a scarcely brighter glow, Archlight seeping through clouds. But her eyes were adjusting, picking out detail:

There were two, a man and a woman. Hair covered them almost everywhere. It was black and straight and slick with the rain. Their mouths were overly wide grins showing big spade teeth. They wore pouches on straps, and were otherwise naked. Their big blunt hands were empty. They were not eating. Vala was terribly relieved, even as she resisted the impulse to shy back.

Likely enough, none but Valavirgillin had ever seen one of these. Some were reacting badly. Chit remained in the door, on guard, facing away. Spash was on her feet, not cringing, but it seemed the limit of her self-control. Silack of the Gleaners, Tegger, and Chaychind all cringed away with wide eyes and open mouths.

She had to do something. She stood and bowed. “Welcome. I am Valavirgillin of the Machine People. We’ve waited to beg your help. These are Anakrin and Warvia of the Red Herders, Perilack and Manack of the Gleaners, Chitakumishad and Sopashintay of the Machine People—” picking them out as and when she thought they had recovered their aplomb.

The Ghoul male didn’t wait. “We know your various kinds. I am—” something breathy. His lips didn’t close completely. Otherwise he was fluent in the trade dialect, his accent more like Kay’s than Vala’s. “But call me Harpster, for the instrument I play. My mate is—” something breathy and whistling, not unlike the music that was still playing outside. “Grieving Tube. How do you practice rishathra?”

Tegger had been cowering. Now he was beside his mate, instantly. “We cannot,” he said.

The Ghoul woman half hid a laugh. Harpster said, “We know. Be at ease.”

The Thurl spoke directly to Grieving Tube. “These are under my protection. My armor may come off, if you can speak for our safety. After that, you need only have care for my size.” And Waast only smiled at Harpster, but Vala could admire her for the nerve that took.

The Gleaners were in a line, all four standing tall. “Our kind does practice rishathra,” Coriack said.

Vala longed for her home. Somewhere she would have found food for her mate and children, and as for her love of adventure, a person could set that aside for a time… too late now. “Rishathra binds our Empire,” Valavirgillin told the lords of the night.

Harpster said, “Truth was that rishathra bound the City Builders’ empire. Fuel binds yours. We do practice rishathra, but not tonight, I think, because we can guess how it would disturb the Red Herders—”

“We are not so fragile,” Warvia said.

“-and for another reason,” Harpster said. “Do you have a request to make of us?”

They all tried to speak at once. “Vampires—”

“You see the terror—”

“The deaths—”

The Thurl had a voice to cut through all that. “Vampires have devastated all species in a territory ten daywalks across. Help us to end their menace.”

“Two or three daywalks, no more,” Harpster said. “Vampires need to reach shelter after a raid. Still, a large territory, housing more than a ten of hominid species—”

“But they feed us well,” Grieving Tube said gently, her voice pitched a little higher than her companion’s. “The problem you face is that we have no problem. What is good for any of you is good also for the People of the Night. The vampires feed us as surely as the lust for alcohol among your client species, Valavirgillin. But if you can conquer the vampires, that serves us, too.”

Did they realize how much they had revealed in a few breaths of speech? But too many others were speaking at once, and Vala held silence.

“For your understanding,” Grieving Tube said, “consider. Manack, what if your queen had a quarrel with the Thurl’s people? You might persuade us not to touch any dead who lie near the Thurl’s walls. Soon he must surrender.”

Manack protested, “But we and the Grass Giants-we would never—”

“Of course not. But Warvia, you and the old Thurl were at war fifty falans ago. Suppose your leader Ginjerofer had begged us to tear apart any Grass Giants who came to kill their cattle?”

Warvia said, “Very well, we understand.”

“Do you? We must not side with any hominid against any other. You all depend on us. Without the People of the Night, your corpses lie where they fall, diseases form and spread, your water becomes polluted,” the Ghoul woman sang in her high, pitched breathy voice.

She had made this speech before. “We forbid cremation, but suppose we did not? What if every species had the fuel to burn their dead? Clouds still lid this sky forty-three falans after a sea was boiled. What if that were the smoke of the burned dead, a stench growing richer every falan? Do you know how many hominids of every species die in a falan? We do.

“We cannot choose sides.”

Chaychind hooki-Karashk had been flushing a darker red. “How can you speak of siding with vampires? With animals!”

“They don’t think,” said Harpster, “and you do. But can you always say that so surely? We know of hominids just at the edge of thinking, several just along this arc of the Arch. Some use fire if they find it, or form packs when prey is large and formidable. One strips branches into spears. One lives in water; they cannot use fire, but they flake rocks for knives. How do you judge? Where do you draw the line?”

“Vampires don’t use tools or fire!”

“Not fire, but tools. Under this endless rain vampires have learned to wear clothing stripped from their prey. When they are dry, they leave it like garbage.”

The Ghoul woman said, “You see why we should not rish with you, if we must refuse your other desires.” Grieving Tube did not see, chose not to see, the mixed emotions that statement generated.

Well, she must try something. Vala said, “Your help would be of immense value, if you had reason to give it. Already you have told us the reach of vampire depredations, and that they must return to their lair, that they have one single lair. What else could you tell us?”

Harpster shrugged, and Vala winced. His shoulders were terribly loose, like unconnected bones rolling freely under his skin.

She continued stubbornly, “I have heard a rumor, a story, a fable. The Machine People hear it where vampires are known. You must understand that to our client species far from Center City, there’s no real explanation of how all these vampires appeared so suddenly.”

“They have a high breeding rate,” Harpster noted.

Grieving Tube said, “Yes, and clusters of them split from the main body to find other refuges. Ten daywalks was not too large a guess.”

The others, even Chaychind, were letting Vala speak. Vala said, “But a less sensible explanation spreads, too. The victim of a vampire will rise from the dead to become a vampire himself.”

“That,” said Harpster, “is purest nonsense!”

And of course it was. “Of course it is, but it explains how the plague spreads so rapidly. See it from the viewpoint of a—” Careful now. “-Hanging Person widow and mother.” Hanging People were everywhere. Vala set one hand on the beam overhead, lifted her feet to hang, and said, “What is to be done, lest my poor dead Vaynya become my enemy in the night? The lords of the night forbid us to burn the dead. But sometimes they permit it —”

“Never,” said Grieving Tube.

Vala said, “Starboard-spin from Center City by twelve daywalks, there are memories of a plague—”

“Long ago and far away,” Harpster snapped. “We designed the crematorium ourselves, taught them how to use it, then moved away. Years later we returned. The plague was beaten. The Digging People still cremated, but we persuaded them to leave their dead again. It was easily done. Firewood was scarce.

“You see the danger,” Vala said. “I don’t believe locals have started burning vampire victims yet—”

“No. We would see plumes of smoke.”

“-but if one client species begins, the rest might follow.”

Grieving Tube said sadly, “Then of course we’d have to do a deal of killing.”

Valavirgillin throttled a shudder. She bowed low and answered, “Why not begin now, with vampires?”