Ringworld (15 page)

"We do not love heights so well. Humans might, if they did not so love their lives."

"Boosterspice," Louis exclaimed. "That's the answer. They didn't have boosterspice."

"Yes, that might make them less safety-conscious. They would have less of life to protect," the puppeteer spewlated. "That seems ominous, does it not? If they think less of their own lives, they will think less of ours."

"You're borrowing trouble."

"We will know soon enough. Speaker, do you see that last building, the tall, cream-colored one with the broken windows --"

They had passed over it while the puppeteer spoke. Louis, who was taking his turn at flying the 'cycles, circled for another look.

"I was right. You see, Speaker? Smoke."

***

The building was an artistically twisted and sculpted pillar some twenty stories tall. Its windows were rows of black ovals. Most of the windows of the ground floor were covered. The few that ware open poured thin gray smoke into the wind.

The tower stood ankle-deep among one- and two-story homes. A row of those houses had been smashed flat by a rolling cylinder which must have fallen from the sky. But the rolling wreckage had disintegrated into concrete rubble before it reached that single tower.

The back of the tower was the edge of the city. Beyond were only rectangles of cultivation. Humanoid figures were running in from the fields even as the flycycles settled.

Buildings which had looked whole from high up were obvious wrecks at rooftop level. Nothing was untouched. The power failure and its accompanying disasters must have occurred generations ago. Then had come vandalism, rain, all the various corrosions caused by small life-forms, oxidation of metals, and something more. Something that in Earth's prehistoric past had left village mounds for later archeologists to browse thrmgh.

The city-dwellers had not restored their city after the power failure. Neither had they moved away. They had lived on in the ruins.

And the garbage of their living had accumulated about them.

Garbage. Empty boxes. Wind-borne dust. Inedible parts of food, bones, and things comparable to carrot leaves and corn cobs. Broken tools. It built up, when people were too lazy or too hard-worked to haul the rubbish away. It built up, and the parts softened and merged, and the pile settled under its own weight, and was compressed further by heavy feet, year by year, generation by genetation.

The original entrance to the tower was already buried. Ground level had risen that far. As the flycycles settled on hard-packed dirt, ten feet above what had once been a parking area for large ground-bound vehicles, five humanoid natives strode in solemn dignity through a second-story window.

The window was a double bay window, easily large enough to accommodate such a procession. Its sill and lintel were decorated with thirty or forty human-looking skulls. Louis could see no obvious pattern to their arrangement.

The five walked toward the 'cycles. As they came near they hesitated, in visible doubt as to who was in charge. They, too, looked human, but not very. Clearly they belonged to no known race of man.

The five were all shorter than Louis Wu by six inches or more. Where it showed, their skin was very light, almost ghost-white in contrast to Teela's merely Nordic pink or Louis's darker yellow-brown. They tended to short torsos and long legs. They walked with their arms identically folded; and their fingers were extraordinarily long and tapering, so that any of the five would have been a born surgeon in the days when men still performed surgery.

Their hair was more extraordinary than their hands. On all five dignitaries, it was the same shade of ash blond. They wore their hair and beards combed but uncut; and their beards covered their faces entirely, except for the eyes.

Needless to say, they all looked alike.

"They're so hairy!" Teela whispered.

"Stay on your vehicles," Speaker ordered in a low voice. "Wait until they reach us. Then dismount. I assume we are an wearing our communicator discs?"

Louis wore his inside his left wrist. The discs were linked to the autopilot aboard the Liar. They should work over such a distance, and the Liar's autopilot should be able to translate any new language.

But there was no way to test the tanj things except in action. And there were all those skulls ...

Other natives were pouring into the former parking lot. Most of them halted at the sight of the confrontation-in-progress, so that the crowd formed a wide rough circle well outside the region of action. A normal crowd would have grumbled to itself in speculation and wagers and arguments. This crowd was unnaturaily silent.

Perhaps the presence of an audience forced the dignitaries to decide. They chose to approach Louis Wu.

The five ... they didn't really look allke. They differed in height. All were thin, but one was almost a skeleton, and one almost had muscles. Four wore shapeless, almost colorless brown robes, a fifth wore a robe, of similar cut -- cut from a similar blanket? -- but in a faded pink pattern.

The one who spoke was the thinnest of them. A blue tattooed bird adorned the back of his hand.

Louis answered.

The tattooed one made a short speech. That was luck. The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation.

Louis replied.

The tattooed man spoke again. His four companions maintained their dignified silence. So, incredibly, did their audience.

Presently the discs were filling in words and phrases ...

He thought later that the silence should have Upped him off It was their stance that fooled him. There was the wide ring of the crowd, and the four hairy men in robes, all standing in a row; and the man with the tattooed hand, talking.

"We call the mountain Fist-of-God." He was pointing directly starboard. "Why? Why not, if it please you, engineer?" He must have meant the big mountain, the one they had left behind with the ship. By now it was entirely concealed by haze and distance.

Louis listened and learned. The autopilot made a dandy translator. Gradually a picture built up, a picture of a farming village living in the ruins of what had once been a mighty city...

"True, Zignamuclickclick is no longer as great as it once was. Yet our dwellings are far superior to what we could make for ourselves. Where a roof is open to the sky, still the lower floor will remain dry during a short rainstorm. The buildings of the city are easy to keep warm. In time of war, they are easily defended and difficult to burn down.

"So it is, engineer, that though we go in the morning to work our fields, at night we return to our dwellings along the edge of Zignamuclickclick. Why should we strain to make now homes when the old ones serve better?"

Two terrifying aliens and two almost-humans, unbearded and unnaturally tall; all four riding wingless metal birds, speaking gibberish from their mouths and sense from metal discs ... small wonder if the natives had taken them for the Ringworld builders. Louis did nothing to correct the impression. An explanation of their origin would have taken days, and the team was here to learn, not to teach.

"This tower, engineer, is our seat of government. We rule more than a thousand people here. Could we raise a better palace than this tower? We have blocked off the upper stories so that the sections we use will retain heat. Once we defended the tower by dropping rubble from upper floors. I remember that our worst problem was the fear of high places ...

"Yet we long for the return of the days of wonder, when our city held a thousand thousand people, and buildings floated in the air. We hope that you will choose to bring back those days. It is said that in the days of wonder, even this very world was bent to its present shape. Perhaps you will deign to say if it is true?"

"It's true enough," said Louis.

"And shall those days return?"

Louis made an answer he hoped was noncommittal. He sensed the other's disappointment, or guessed it.

Reading the hairy man's expression was not easy. Gestures are a kind of code; and the spokesman's gestures were not those of any terrestrial culture. Tightly-curled platinum hair hid his entire face, except for the eyes, which were brown and soft. But eyes hold little expression, contrary to public opinion.

His voice was almost a chant, almost a recital of poetry. The autopilot was translating Louis's words into a similar chant, though it spoke to Louis in a conversational tone. Louis could hear the other translator discs whistling softly in Puppeteer, snarling quietly in the Hero's Tongue.

Louis put questions ...

"No, engineer, we are not a bloodthirsty people. We make war rarely. The skulls? They lie underfoot wherever one walks in Zignamuclickclick. They have been there since the fall of the city, it is said. We use them for decoration and for their symbolic significance." The spokesman solemnly raised his hand with its back to Louis, presenting the bird tattoo.

Amd everyone in sight shouted, "--!"

The word was not translated.

It was the first time anyone but the spokesman had said anything at all.

Louis had missed something, and he knew it. Unfortunately there wasn't time to worry about it.

"Show us a wonder," the spokesman was saying. "We doubt not your power. But you may not pass this way again. We would have a memory to pass to our children."

Louis considered. They'd already flown like birds; that trick would not impress twice. What about manna from the kitchen slots? But even Earthborn humans varied in their tolerance of certain food. The difference between food and garbage was mostly cultural. Some ate locusts with honey, others broiled snails; one man's cheese was another's rotted milk. Best not chance it. What about the flashlight-laser?

As Louis reached into his 'cyclies cargo slot, the first edge of a shadow square touched the rim of the sun. Darkness would make his demonstration all the more impressive.

With aperture wide and power low, he turned the light first on the spokesman, then on his four co-rulers, last on the faces of the crowd. If they were impressed, they hid it well. Hiding his disappointment, Louis aimed the implement high.

The figurine which was his target jutted from the tower's roof. It was like a modernized, surrealistic gargoyle. Loulies thumb moved, and the gargoyle glowed yellow-white. His index finger shifted, and the beam narrowed to a pencil of green light. The gargoyle sprouted a white-hot navel.

Louis waited for the applause.

"Yon fight with light," said the man with the tattooed hand. "Surely this is forbidden."

The crowd shouted, and was as suddenly silent.

"We did not know it," said Louis. "We apologize."

"Did not know it? How could you not know it? Did you not raise the Arch in sign of the Covenant with Man?"

"What arch is that?"

The hairy man's face was hidden, but his astonishment was evident. "The Arch over the world, O Builder!"

Louis understood then. He started to laugh.

The hairy man punched him unskillfully in the nose.

***

The blow was light, for the hairy man was slight and his hands were fragile. But it hurt.

Louis was not used to pain. Most people of his century had never felt pain more severe than that of a stubbed toe. Anaesthetics were too prevalent, medical help was too easily available. The pain of a skiier's broken leg usually lasted seconds, not minutes, and the memory was often suppressed as an intolerable trauma. Knowledge of the fighting disciplines, karate, judo, jujitsu, and boxing, had been illegal since long before Louis Wu was born. Louis Wu was a lousy warrior. He could face death, but not pain.

The blow hurt. Louis screamed and dropped his flashlight-laser.

The audience converged. Two hundred infuriated hairy men became a thousand demons; and things weren't nearly as funny as they had been a minute ago.

The reed-thin spokesman had wrapped both arms around Louis Wu, pinioning him with hysterical strength. Louis, equally hysterical, broke free with one frantic lunge. He was on his 'cycle, his hand was on the lift lever, when reason prevailed.

The other 'cycles were slaved to his. If he took off they would take off, with or without their passengers.

Louis looked about him.

Teela Brown was already in the air. From overhead she watched the fight, her eyebrows puckered in concern. She had not thought of trying to help.

Speaker was in furious motion. He'd already felled half a dozen enemies. As Louis watched, the kzin swung his flashlight-laser and smashed a man's skull.

The hairy men milled about him in an indecisive circle.

Long-fingered hands were trying to pull Louis from his seat. They were winning, though Louis gripped the saddle with hands and knees. Belatedly he thought to switch on the sonic fold.

The natives shrieked as they were snatched away.

Someone was still on Louis's back. Louis pulled him away, let him drop, flipped the sonic fold off and then on again to eject him. He scanned the ex-parking lot for Nessus.

Nessus was trying to reach his 'cycle. The natives seemed to fear his alien shape. Only one blocked his way; but that one was armed with a metal rod from some old machine.

As Louis located them, the man swung the rod at the puppeteer's head.

Nessus snatched his head back. He spun on his forelegs, putting his back to danger, but facing away from his flycycle.

The puppeteer's own flight reflex had killed him -- unless Speaker or Louis could help him in time. Louis opened his mouth to shout, and the Puppeteer completed his motion.

Louis closed his mouth.

The puppeteer turned to his cycle. Nobody tried to stop him. His hind hoof left bloody footprints across the hard-packed dirt.

Speaker's circle of admirers were still out of his reach. The kzin spat at their feet -- not a kzinti gesture but a human one -- turned and mounted his 'cycle. His flashlight-laser was gory up to the elbow of his left hand.

The native who had tried to stop Nessus lay where he had fallen. Blood pooled lavishly about him.

The others were in the air. Louis took off after them. From afar he saw what Speaker was doing, and he called, "Hold it! That's not necessary."