The Ringworld Throne

talked to Ghouls. “Ghouls work the shadow farm under a cluster of floating buildings, far to port. We pay them in tools, and the City Builders give them library privileges. They’ll deal for information.”

“We don’t know anything.”

“Nearly true.”

“What else have we got?” The Thurl said, “Oh, Valavirgillin, this is nasty stuff.”

“What?”

The Thurl waved about him. In view were nearly a hundred vampire corpses, all lying near the wall, and half as many Grass Giant dead scattered from the crossbow limit to the uncut grass.

Beedj was examining a smaller corpse. He saw he had her attention, and he lifted the head so that Vala could see its face. It was Himapertharee, of Anthrantillin’s crew.

A shudder rippled along Vala’s spine. But the Thurl was right. She sad, “Ghouls must feed. More than that: if these thousand corpses were left to lie, there would be plague. All would blame the Ghouls. The Ghouls must come to clean up.”

“But why will they listen to me?”

Vala shook her head. It felt stuffed with cotton.

“What then, after we know where the vampires lair? Attack them ourselves?”

“The Ghouls might tell us that, too—”

The Thurl broke into a run. Vala saw Beedj waving, holding-what? At that moment he shook it violently, then flung it away, and hurled himself in the other direction. Where it fell, it writhed and went quiet, though Beedj was howling.

It was a living vampire.

Beedj called, “Thurl, I’m sorry. It was alive, wounded, just the bolt through its hip. I thought we might talk to it, examine it-anything-but-but the smell!”

“Calm yourself, Beedj. Was the smell sudden? You attack, it defends?”

“What, like a fart? Sometimes controlled, sometimes not?… Thurl, I’m not sure.”

“Resume your patrol.”

Beedj’s sword slashed viciously at the grass. The Thurl walked on.

Vala had been thinking. She said, “You must set a delegation among the dead. A tent, a few of your men —”

“We’d find them sucked empty in the morning!”

“No, I think it’s safe for tonight and tomorrow night. The vampires have hunted this area out, and they’d smell their own dead. Even so, arm your people and, mmm, send men and women together.”

“Valavirgillin—”

“I know your custom, but if the vampires sing, best your people mate with each other.” Should she be saying this? She surely would not have spoken thus before other Grass Giants.

The Bull snarled, but—”Yes. Yes, and what the Thurl does not see did not happen. So.” The Thurl beckoned at Beedj. He asked Vala, “Will Farsight Trading join us?”

“We should support you. Two species in need will speak louder than one.” Farsight Trading could roll away from most problems, but not this. They’d poured most of their fuel into towels.

“Three species, then. Many Gleaners died the night before last. The Gleaners will wait with us. Should we be more yet? Vampires must have hunted among the Reds.”

“Worth a try.”

Beedj came up. The Thurl began talking much faster than Vala could follow. Beedj tried to argue, then acquiesced.

“We should sleep during the day,” Vala said. Her body was crying for sleep.

Something closed on her wrist. “Boss?”

She jerked awake. Her squeak was intended as a scream. She rolled away and sat up and-it was only Kaywerbrimmis.

“Boss, what have you been telling the Bull?”

She was still groggy. She needed a drink and a bath or-that rattle, was it rain? And a flash and boom that was certainly thunder.

She’d pulled off her filthy clothing before she slept. She slid out of the blankets, out of the payload shell, into the cool rain. Kay watched from the gun room as she danced in the rain.

Consequences. Traders didn’t mate. They shared rishathra with the species they met, but mating was something else. You didn’t get a business partner pregnant, and you didn’t engage in sexual dominance games, and you didn’t fall in love.

But in far realms, among strange hominids, you couldn’t shun each other, either.

She beckoned and shouted, “Wash with me. What time is it?”

“Coming on dusk. We slept a long time.” Kay was pulling off his clothes in something like relief. “I thought we’d need this time to arm against vampires.”

“We’ll do that. How’s Barok?”

“Don’t know.”

They drank, washed each other, dried each other, and were reassured: the mating urge could be resisted.

The rain stopped. You could see wind driving the last flurries across the stubble. Swaths of navy-blue sky showed through blowing broken clouds, and a sudden narrow vertical line of blue-white dashes.

Vala gaped. She hadn’t seen the Arch in four rotations.

By glow of Archlight she could see patterns in the grass stubble. An arc of pale rectangles. A tent erected within the arc. Grass Giants moved back and forth, and a handful of much smaller hominids moved with them. On the rectangles… sheets? They were laying out bodies.

“Did you tell them to do that?”

“No. Not a bad idea, though,” Vala said.

In Anthrantillin’s deserted cruiser they found Barok with a woman twice his size. He seemed abnormally subdued, but he was smiling. “Wemb, my partners Valavirgillin and Kaywerbrimmis. Folk, this is Wemb.”

Kay started to say, “I would have thought—”

Barok’s laugh was not quite sane. “Yes, and you would’ve been right, if you would have thought we slept!”

Wemb cut in. “Sleeping here, together, protects each against intent of the rest, against yet more rishathra. We were lucky in each other.”

Groping through his exhausted mind, Barok found another thought. “Forn. You never found Foranayeedli?”

Vala said, “She’s gone.”

Barok’s body rippled, an uncontrollable shudder. His hand closed on Vala’s wrist. “I shouted down at her. ‘Load!’ Nothing. She was gone. I stepped out to look for her, to stop her if she followed the singing. Stepped out and my mind turned off. I was at the foot of the wall and the rain was hammering me into the ground. Someone stumbled into me. Knocked me in the mud. Wemb. We, rishathra isn’t a strong enough word.”

Wemb took him by the shoulder and turned him toward her. “Shared love, or even mated, but we must say rishathra, Barok. Truly we must.”

“-Tore our clothes away and rished and rished, and our minds seeped back to us with not a heartbeat to spare. A half circle of those pale things was closing on us. The rain must have washed away some of the scent. I saw crossbows lying all around us. Grass Giant warriors have been stumbling down the wall all night long, dropping crossbows and anything else they’re carrying—”

“We picked up crossbows,” the Grass Giant woman cut in. “I saw Makee lying dead with a vampire in his arms and a bolt through both of them, and his quiver dropped beside him. Picked up the quiver and dumped it and pushed a handful of bolts at Barok and shot the nearest vampire. Then the next.”

“At first I couldn’t cock the crossbow.”

“Then the next. Is that why you were screaming? We never talked till after.”

“Scream and pull. Scream for strength,” Barok said. “Your cursed tools aren’t built for tiny little Machine