The Ringworld Throne

Two. Sleepy Gleaners had come out to join the excitement. Sleepy Ghouls were crawling under an awning. And the way down seemed almost clear.

Somewhere behind black clouds, Valavirgillin thought, shadow must be sliding away to reveal the sun. The only light that reached through the storm was a frenzied dance of lightning.

Four Gleaners and Valavirgillin marched through the rain to the top of Stair Street. They entered the bubble, followed by every hominid save the Ghouls, and climbed the giant steps into that amazing kitchen.

Silack fitted himself into the moving box. Only the other Gleaners knew how he had been chosen over the rest. The flamer fitted easily into his arms.

“Fire it at a wall. Or a vampire, or anything,” Manack told him. He was jittery, and he held a Machine People handgun. It took both hands. “I’m coming right down after you with nothing but this, and when I get down, I want light. I want to see what comes at us. Your first move when the door opens, give me light.”

They closed the door on Silack and flipped the switch down. There was light enough to watch the line vibrating; noise enough too.

The motor noise stopped.

They waited.

Manack tried to move the switch. It didn’t respond to easy pressure. Vala restrained him from using more force.

The switch clicked up by itself, and the line began to vibrate. They waited while the box rose into view.

Silack rolled out and sucked air for a great shout. “Light!” he bellowed. Perilack threw herself at him and hugged him tight. He talked over her shoulder. “Manack, I’m sorry, but the panel was right there, and I thought I might want to leave fast when I turned the switches on, and flup, was I right! I turned on all the lights at once, and the—”

Perilack cried, “They’re on?”

“Yes,” said Silack, and his audience ran away.

Valavirgillin was gasping and staggering as she reached Ramp Street. The Gleaners and Reds were far ahead of her and the other Machine People. The Grass Giants were pounding along behind them.

Ramp Street’s lights burned through the rain. They swarmed down the ramp.

There was light below, too, and a traffic jam out of nightmare. Light blazed pitilessly on the great central structure, on sage and windows and running water, and all the space around it. The Shadow Nest was brighter than the murky daylight. Vampires caught in the light were trying to get out. Vampires returning from their hunt were trying to get in.

Silack was shouting, “As soon as the lights came on, the vampires ran every way there was. Two or three tens of them decided the offices were a cave! There’s a big space in there that overlooks the stage on one side and the speaking platform on the other-Harpster was right about that-and connects to the offices, too. Vampires were coming at me from three directions. Manack, I propped the door open to the moving box ten I got out. Time I got down, I knew I didn’t want it leaving without me!”

“You greedy flup-sculptor, you!”

“I know, Manack—”

“You took all the glory!”

“-I was very, very glad I still had the box. They came in, I flamed them, I went up.”

Murderous fights were developing between vampires who wanted in and those who wanted out. Three turns above, Grass Giants were starting to cheer them on. In a moment they”d be taking bets.

Valavirgillin announced, “Listen up! I’m thinking this is the best time to get out. Most of the vampires are still out hunting, and most of what we’ve got are blind and confused. If we wait as much as a tenthday, the hunters will be home and we’ll have to wait for night. I’m hungrier than that. So we go now!”

If I’m crazy, point it out!

They looked at her in a silence broken only by shrieking of ten thousand vampires.

“Now!” she bellowed, and her people began to run.

Louis could see three Sailing People peering over the Council House roof. They showed courage, but they weren’t seeing any more than Louis was. The window in the cliff had become no more than dark rock. The Hindmost’s spy device lay in darkness in the payload shell of a six-wheeled wagon.

The Hindmost said in Interspeak, “I still can hear them, Louis, and smell them.”

The dark cliff became a dark window. A Pierson’s puppeteer danced, and uncountable others wove a pattern behind him: a dark forest of one-eyed snakes.

Louis was amused. “Dancing in the dark?”

The Hindmost twirled. “A test of agility. Darkness was common enough, long, long ago. Not impossible that the dark might come to any of us.”

So: they tested each other for mating privileges, like the Fertility Board on Earth. The Hindmost was honing his skills. But he’d said—”You can hear whom?”

“I can hear Valavirgillin’s company. With the door in the payload bay closed, I can still resolve voices. They are organizing to defend the wagons. Now the wagons are in motion, with vampires all about. Would you hear?”

“In a minute. I wonder what our Ghoulish observers make of your dancing.”

“The small one shifts position constantly. The larger remains still. Would you capture him?”

“…No.”

“Touch your translator to the core of the webeye. I will transmit.”

Louis waded through shallow water to the cliff. It remained a fuzzy-edged doorway to Pierson’s puppeteers dancing in dusk. A black dot like a lumpy heart floated unsupported at nose level, and Louis pushed his translator against that.

He heard voices, human shading into animal, bass to tenor and higher, agony and rage and urgency. Once, a cry of surprise and pain, more yelling, then a solid thud as a body fell on the webeye itself. Once, he made out Valavirgillin’s voice bellowing orders as she never had in his presence. Otherwise it was all a confusion of screaming.

The vampire shrieking dwindled over several minutes. Then, jarring as hell, came a cool, musically persuasive voice that sounded not quite like speech. That stopped suddenly, followed by eerie quiet.

Vala turned them downstream because the upstream direction seethed with vampires returning from the hunt. She kept them moving for a tenthday after they were clear. Slick black heads popped into view on the river: the River People were keeping pace.

Cruiser One was still rolling when Beedj swung the payload bay doors open and rolled inside.

Vala waited.

Something heavy rolled out.

Paroom. They’d been all over him, tearing him to ribbons, while friends hacked at them from above and below. A vampire had slashed Perilack, too. Vala waited.

Beedj climbed up beside her. “Dead,” he said. “Perilack doesn’t look bad. I washed the scratches with fuel. Does that really do anything?”

Vala nodded, wondering if Grieving Tube and Harpster would be offended… would understand why Paroom’s body was better left for strangers than for his Night People friends. She said none of that to the Thurl’s heir. It was all his own decision.

A meadow stretched away from the river. It looked like good hunting. Valavirgillin kept them in a clump, all the several species, and made them wear towel masks. There were vampires about.

Vala had taken stacks of cloth from the dock warehouses. She gave Rooballabl and Fudghabladl a long sheet of gauzy stuff for netting fish. They were hugely successful, and now there was fish for any who could eat it.

The Grass Giants had found some acceptable river grass. There was prey about. Reds and Gleaners didn’t need to wait for fire. The Machine People had a firepot starting to boil, and roots and meat in it.

Her crew was being fed.

Valavirgillin looked her people over while she waited. Tegger looked much better with food in him. Forn