The Ringworld Throne

comes your dinner, but it’s half a weebler. It’s burnt black on the outside and seared dry on the inside, just the way you like it, and there’s enough to feed twenty people, but there’s twenty-six of you! What now?”

She’s worked this out after she had the answer, Tegger thought. She was enjoying herself greatly.

“You fight for your share. Or you try to cut it evenly, but maybe six of you are all trying, too. You forget the play or the shouting match or the speech. The actors grow enraged, or the Thurl. But if individual portions come down, nobody needs to fight,” Warvia said.

Here was a little door set into a wall, a thick door with a window in it, showing two shelves in a box. Warvia opened the door and put her hand in-

Tegger shouted, “Hot!”

“I touched the door first, love.” She pushed against the back of the box, and the box wiggled. “Watch this.” She closed the door and flipped a switch down.

The box dropped away, leaving an empty space behind.

“The door won’t open now, “ she said, and showed them.

Harpster asked, “How far down does it go?”

“It should go to where food’s wanted. What you were saying, I never could see why people had to go down with the food. So I touched every door, and opened doors that weren’t hot, and this was what was loose. Then I had to find someplace to put a strip of Vala-cloth.”

Harpster flipped the switch to its middle position, then up. “That box wouldn’t hold a man.”

“It’ll hold me, if we take the shelves out.”

It would hold Tegger as easily. Tegger didn’t bother offering. Warvia’s puzzle, Warvia’s choice. Red Herders are territorial.

The shelves came up and out easily. Maybe the old City Builders did sometimes send down a whole burnt weebler or whatever. Warvia tried to crawl into the resulting space and couldn’t.

The Night People lifted her bodily into place. On her side, her legs and arms sprawled past the door. On her back, on her face… but her legs wouldn’t fold that far. Tegger thought of tearing the top off the box, to see if there was room above it. What he finally said was, “Even major surgery won’t get you in there with weapons too.”

“I’d go naked!”

“You don’t fit,” Grieving Tube said. “This is a box for a Gleaner. Try all you like, Warvia. We are not hurried. Harpster my love, our part here is over. Gleaners don’t wake until full day.”

The Night People chatted as they walked back to the docks. Harpster said, “We should send something down ahead of our emissary. A bottle of fuel? Balanced to spill over? In case there are vampires between him and the fuse box. A quick fireball, poomf.”

Tegger didn’t feel like talking, and Warvia spoke not at all. They crawled under their awning and watched Grieving Tube and Harpster slink away.

Then Warvia took Tegger’s hand and slid out the other side of the awning. They ran softly to where the docks narrowed to become Rim Street. “We explored while you slept,” Warvia whispered. “Follow me.”

Tegger said, “I have to tell you about something.”

“On the ramp? I heard. You went mad. I went mad. We’re still mates. But, love, I do not see how we can go home.”

Tegger sighed, relieved that such a nightmare could be solved so easily. “Where, then?”

“I have half a notion. Come.”

They ran a zigzag path through a system of alleys, climbed through and along pipes to reach a higher level, working their way up.

Warvia led the way over the banquet hall and down, and farther up, and behind the chimney, and around, on their bellies now, toward a sound of metal being tortured.

The noise stopped.

Warvia gestured him back. She stood and stepped forth. “Very good. Now how will you get it down?”

Harpster and Grieving Tube finished lowering the great ceramic slab onto its back. They had cut it no more than a thumblength thick; it must be quite fragile, Warvia assumed. The front of it was a bronze web of intricate geometric form.

Harpster said, “We do love our secrets. Still, this slab isn’t going down unless in a cruiser. We’ll have to tell the Boss. So. How much do you know?”

“I saw you cutting it. Looked it over after you led Tegger away. What is it? Why do you want it?”

Harpster said, “We think it’s an eye and an ear and maybe other senses, too. We think it belongs to Louis Wu and his off-Arch companions.”

“We think they were the ones who recentered the sun,” Grieving Tube said. “That would make them immensely powerful. We could tell them how to use that power, if we could communicate with them—”

“But Louis Wu popped into some kind of flying tube. Later our sources saw that tube, or another such, hovering near the Shadow Nest. Night People elsewhere report more such webs. It must be for spying.”

Warvia asked, “You’ll try to talk to it?”

“We’ll try that. If nothing answers, then we’ll take it to where it can see what we want seen.”

“Tegger and I can’t go home,” Warvia said carefully. “If we had Night People to speak for us as heroes, we might find entry into another tribe of Red Herders. With that in mind, where do you intend to travel?”

Harpster began to bark laughter. Grieving Tube snapped at him. “Fool! They need not come all the way. Warvia, we-No, tell me this instead. How much shock can you stand?”

Warvia beckoned. Tegger came into view. No point in hiding now, he was laughing too hard. He said, “If you think you can still shock us, go ahead and try.”

Harpster began to talk.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN — THE WAR AGAINST THE DARK

Tremendous tilted faces looked out of the rock. Two Red Herders and two even larger Night People spoke secrets none could hear, for an audience-

Louis Wu was the only one laughing.

Louis tore his gaze free of the Hindmost’s show. For the locals it must seem that they were watching gods decide their fate.

The Sailing People had run.

He saw no trace of Tunesmith or Kazarp.

Weavers were all about him, but most of them were asleep. Torpid Weaver children were trying to keep their eyes open. Tomorrow they’d know they had dreamed. Louis Wu was alone before these tremendous faces.

He said in Interspeak, for the Hindmost’s benefit, “Those Ghouls came a long way to steal a webeye. They really must want to talk to you.”

The view changed. For the blink of an eye it became an infrared map of the village pool: black water, faintly glowing Weavers asleep on low tables, the brighter glow of Louis Wu’s naked skin… and a lacework glow behind him, and another alongside the Council House.

Kazarp and Tunesmith hidden in tall grass. The Ghouls are watching, too. Will they recognize themselves?

Huge faces dimmed. The webeye and its brick backing were being set down in darkness. Now the cliff was only dark rock.

The sun was no more than a sliver of light palely glowing through cloud when Valavirgillin rolled out to see what the commotion was about.

It was about Reds and Ghouls guiding four Grass Giants who were carrying a slab of cut brick down Stair Street. A slab of brick with a bronze web splayed across it. Heavy, from the way they moved. They eased it up to Cruiser Two and set one edge on the running board and rested.

The Ghouls began to talk. The Reds wanted to interrupt, but got little chance.

When all conversation was done, the web and its backing rested on the floor of the payload shell in Cruiser