The Ringworld Throne

Tegger slid away from Warvia. He found a blanket and covered her. Harpster and Grieving Tube were turning into Stair Street. Tegger followed, stalking.

Ghouls were a secretive bunch. They had the right to their secrets; but Reds were stalkers.

The Night People moved in a glare of artificial light. The rest of Vala’s crew had found switches Tegger missed. Night was their element, but tonight it was the Ghouls who were half blind. Would it bother them? Ghouls must depend a good deal on scent.

The houses along Stair Street were staggered. There was plenty of cover. Tegger hid behind solid masses, trees and walls, staying well back. Where were the Ghouls?

Coming out of a shattered window, softly complaining in their own speech. Tegger had found a whole family of skeletons in that house. Were the Ghouls sniffing out carrion? They’d find nothing but bones.

At the top of Stair Street they moved into the bubble-shaped banquet hall. Nothing for them there, either, Tegger remembered. He waited in an empty pool, his eyes just above the rim.

They came out, and continued up into shadow. The City’s apex, the chimney, was still dark. Would they climb it to view their domain? But as Tegger eeled up crooked Stair Street, he did not see shadows rising against the sky. He grew more cautious still.

The sound he heard then was loud. Metal was being tormented.

He climbed a ladder and peered over the top of a chemical storage tank, his shadow lost in a maze of pipes.

The Ghouls were at the base of the chimney. It was still too dark to see what they were doing. He heard brick being cut in rhythmic fashion, cut by a saw. He dropped from the ladder and began weaving closer.

It wasn’t food they were seeking. What, then? He edged from behind a radiator wall, and Grieving Tube took him by the wrist.

He most carefully didn’t reach for his sword. He whispered, “It’s Tegger.”

Grieving Tube called, “It’s Tegger!” She grinned into his face and said, “You slept through some of this. Valavirgillin is sure there must be lamps focused on the structure below us. Only need to be turned on. We think so, too, but switches are down there.”

“What, in the fountain?”

“Fountain, stage, mid-stage command offices, speaking platform. They would want to command the light themselves. Valavirgillin has restored the cable that carries the sunpower.”

“They’d want some way of getting down there, too,” Harpster said. He had come up quite silently. Ghouls could teach Red Herders how to stalk prey. “I thought we might find a stairway, something for people, for visitors. The ramp isn’t it—”

“The ramp is for vehicles. People would feel menaced,” Grieving Tube said.

“So we looked for a stairway along the chimney, because we already know it goes pretty far down, but Grieving Tube has a better idea.”

Tegger said, “That chimney goes down to a furnace.”

“It goes to furnaces all over the city. Channels off to all sides, down inside. We looked.” Harpster grinned with great square teeth. “Coming? Or would you prefer to stalk us?”

Tegger said, “There’s not much entertainment up here, and not much distraction to a hungry Red.”

Harpster said, “You solved that one. You ate—”

“Come, then,” Grieving Tube said hastily, “we will divert you.” She walked downstep toward the dining place, away from the chimney. Her hand was on Tegger’s wrist, her grip unbreakably strong.

“I know what I ate,” Tegger said.

“Yes, but who would you tell? Your mate?”

“Yes.”

Grieving Tube stopped in the door. “Truly?”

“Of course I must tell Warvia.”

Harpster said, “Four vampires on the ramp. You killed three. The remaining woman, you knocked out all her teeth and rished with her, then hacked off a segment of muscle meat. It seems clear you must have eaten it.”

Tegger said, “I could see the cruisers below me, running into shadow. I had to get into the ramp to give the drivers light. The smell maddened me, and my hunger maddened me, and I did mad things. But I still dropped the torches and the fuel.”

In the end it was Harpster who turned away.

A table or two fell over as they climbed the giant steps. The Ghouls weren’t dexterous here. “After the Boss said that about lights,” Grieving Tube said, “I got to thinking what else they’d want down there. I thought, food.”

Harpster pushed through and waited for the others to follow him.

The big room was stifling hot. “Don’t touch anything,” Tegger said. “I should have turned those off.”

“If you can remember which ones aren’t lights,” Grieving Tube said.

Tegger nodded. He began plucking Vala-cloth twists from between pairs of knobs, snatching them free in a jolt and sparkle of sunpower.

“People working down below us, in offices,” Harpster said. “People sitting in arcs around a stage. People just watching water fall. Would they get hungry? Omnivores get hungry a lot.”

“Maybe not just omnivores. Other hominids, too,” said Grieving Tube. “Diplomatic relations, it may be.”

“It seems the long way around,” Tegger said. “Catch food down there on the surface, raise it, grow it, ship it in from farms. What then? Char it, cut it up, mix it with flavorings? Fine. But why carry it up here just to send it back down?”

Grieving Tube sighed. “The Red’s got a point.”

“Yes, and we didn’t find anything, but the lighting is fluppy awful in here,” Harpster said. “See what you can see, Tegger.” He opened another door.

It was the storage chamber Tegger had explored earlier. Lights glowed in the ceiling. Tegger had found doors and drawers at every level, doors an armlength high and smaller, but he hadn’t left them open like this. Vala’s whole caravan must have been through here.

Storage areas behind the doors, and not much in the storage areas. Dried plants, various kinds, some covered with fungus…

Harpster said, “Gleaners and Grass Giants found some dried roots here, not much else. But these lights are blinding, and if we turn them off it’s like being buried.”

“Harpster? Can’t you see in the dark?”

“Night People can see at night. By Archlight. Even in a rainstorm it’s not black.”

None of these cupboard doors was even big enough for a Gleaner. “Did you find any more doors?”

“Nothing man-sized.”

A cheery voice called, “What about Hanging People?”

Tegger jumped. That was Warvia!

She was looking down at him from above a wall of boxes. “Warvia! Where have you been?” he cried.

She laughed, flattered. “Behind you as you left the dock. When your prey stopped, I bathed in a pool so I could get closer still.”

Harpster said, “Prudent. Our sense of smell is better than you might guess. So, shall we invite you into our puzzle?”

She jumped down. On her back was one of Valavirgillin’s alcohol flamers. “I heard most of it and solved some of it. Come and look?”

“We follow.”

Warvia led them back into the heat. “You know, “ she said, “the raw foodstuffs probably come up from the docks, up the alleys. Whatever they do to it here, there’s probably some chemistry involved, things none of us would do to food. But it’s food going down that has to be in small clumps.”

Grieving Tube asked, “Truly? Why?”

Warvia moved among the tables and hot surfaces and doors. “You’re watching a play. Or you’re playing dominance games for high stakes, water and grazing rights. Or your Thurl is speaking your tribe’s future. Down