The Ringworld Throne

port-and-antispin, where the river entered the shadow. Huge mushrooms grew in those plots, and vampires lived under them. Shadow farms. A hundred varieties of fungus might have grown here before the vampires moved in. The monster mushrooms must have been too big to trample.

Directly below was paving similar to the stuff the Machine People used for roads.

“You see, there’s quite a lot of light,” Grieving Tube said cheerfully.

“I wanted to wait for a wind,” Harpster complained.

A wind, yes. Vala felt madness bubbling in her blood. The rich smell of pepperleek had become no more than a spice for the rutting scent. Wind would have blown that away. There must be tens of thousands of them down there, she thought, and they were starting to look up.

Warvia was breathing through her mouth in great gasps. Warvia knew her will could be broken. Kay was edging away from Vala: no distractions needed now. The others looked all right. Try to concentrate! That center structure…

The fountain was many things. There were windows in the side that faced the ramp, and small balconies without railings, and outside stairways: probably offices rather than domiciles.

Partway around, a flat space faced rising concentric arcs, something like the steps in the feeding dome. Seats. That had to be a stage! Piles of rotting stuff at the corners might have been a curtain; collapsing flat structures must be props; a flimsy wall, fallen, showed a honeycomb of backstage structure. Valavirgillin wondered if others would recognize it for what it was.

Water poured from above, a waterfall surrounded by shadowy giants, and wound through and around every part of the structure. Standing statues of City Builder Folk poured water from great bowls. Water flowed down the back of the stage, a permanent backdrop. Thus watered, vividly hued mushrooms still grew behind the office structures. It all flowed down through a maze of pipes and channels to meet the Homeflow.

Forn was right. That mountain of masonry was as big as a civic center. It wouldn’t support the mass of a floating factory, maybe, but it would stand against any mass of water this group could collect.

“All right. All right. We can’t lower the factory on them,” Perilack said. “What if we move it sideways? Something’s holding it here. What if we could set it loose? Let it slide away with the vampires all running after it. Wouldn’t they make great targets?”

Grieving Tube said, “She’s at least partly right. Something holds it here, some—” She went off into her own language, and so did Harpster. Vala turned back. Even the Ghouls might not be able to set a floating city adrift.

Harpster dropped back into the Tongue. “-like at the bottom of a bowl, a low spot in the realm of magnetic power. We could tow the floater out of it if we had enough power, but with two steam cruisers? Flup, I wish you people had never heard of Louis Wu.”

Statuary, lines of windows, a stage, a sculpted flow of water. “What’s missing?” Vala asked herself.

Grieving Tube heard. “Boss?”

Vala said, “Tell me what you see.”

The Ghoul woman obliged. “Offices. Public affairs, I bet. They put it all down here so they wouldn’t have to invite political entities topside. The stage is for speeches and conferences, but it’s a stage, too. This was a social center.”

Harpster said, “I’d like to see around the other side.”

“What do you think you’d find?” Vala asked.

“I think… a podium. This one’s for plays, it’s not really right for speeches, or music for that matter. I bet somebody got an award for the way he worked the fountain into it all. Think how beautiful it would be if we could clear the vampires out.”

“Got it,” Vala shouted. “Lights!”

The Ghouls’ eyes glowed at her.

“Lights! Plays, music, speeches, bureaus of this and that, award-winning sculpture?” Vampire song rose high at the sound of Valavirgillin’s shout, but her warriors were listening, too. “Nobody but a Ghoul would expect all that to be played in the dark! Warvia, Tegger must know where the lights are.”

Warvia was fully awake now. “He’d have turned them on.”

“Flup.”

“Boss, the switches might be down here.”

“Flup. That’d be nasty.”

Harpster said, “I see it.” He was pointing up. “Warvia, that group of statues right at the top? City Builder warriors three manheights tall. They’re all carrying spears…”

Vala could see vague hominid shapes up there, but nothing more. The ring of daylight didn’t reach that high.

“It’s just one great black spot to me,” Warvia said.

“They’re there,” Grieving Tube said. “That top one—”

“Bigger than the rest. Spear as thick as my leg, and it doesn’t have a point, it just goes right up into the roof. It’s a pipe for the power. Sorry, Boss.”

“Flup! Not water pipes? Of course not, they’ve got infinite water. All right. But we’ll search topside first because it’s easier. Get Tegger to show us what he found. Then look where he didn’t.”

Warvia refused to let them wake Tegger. “Boss, he showed you everything he knows!”

Harpster and Grieving Tube dropped out early. Nobody could expect Ghouls to guess where an alien hominid would put light switches!

The rest of the warriors spread through the city. Valavirgillin cut a sheet of Louis’s cloth, once a priceless secret, into strips and gave them away like confetti. They played with the boxes and switches Tegger had showed them, and presently had the city blazing to rival the cloudy daylight.

Thin strips of glittery gray ran from the glittery-gray rooftop patches, down the sides of buildings. Several of the party followed those lines to where they converged. When Twuk brought Valavirgillin to see, she found a hole near the city’s center that was as wide as a Ghoul’s leg. She stirred traces of dust she found inside, and sniffed her finger. She couldn’t be sure that it was ruined superconductor; but Vala didn’t doubt what they’d found.

She hated what had to come next, but there was no help for it. The channel could be two tens of manheights high. Vala cut all of her remaining sheets of Louis Wu’s cloth into strips, knotted them together, tied the resulting rope to a chunk of wall and lowered it into the hole until it went slack.

What was it touching, down there at the bottom of a statue’s spear haft? It might be an unbroken line of power. She’d done what she could. Now she used torn branches to move the top end of her toe to where all the channels of silver-gray joined. That patch was flat. There was nothing to tie her line to, but she could weight it with a block of rubble only three Grass Giants could lift.

The clouds darkened and presently sent forth a steady rain. The explorers bore what they could of that, then came trickling back to the dock area. Each looked into Ramp Street. The Grass Giants were the last to give up. The others told them what they’d found, but the Grass Giants had to look, too. The Shadow Nest remained in shadow.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN — WEB OF SPIES

A shadow crossed the light, falling on his closed eyelids. Tegger was just close enough to waking to enjoy the warmth, the relaxation, the sense of Warvia’s back against his chest and belly, the smell of her hair. If he let himself wake further, he’d be thinking of hunger.

Hunger. How was he to feed Warvia? The carrion birds had fled from noise and alcohol fumes and heroes. There were vampires-he shied from a sick memory-but what was here for carnivore Reds?

Drive the vampires away. Descend. Hunt.

In daylight all shadows were vertical. Night must have fallen, and these must be dockyard lights. Who would be moving past at night? Tegger opened his eyes.

Two furry backs moved in and out of the light, moved away down Rim Street.