Ringworld (23 page)

"Does that mean her 'cycle's been damaged?"

"Yes, extensively. The sender was near one thruster unit of her flycycle. Perhaps she ran afoul of another working machine, akin to the one which burned our communicator discs.

"Um. But you know where she was when she dropped out of the conversation."

"Ten degrees to spinward of port. I do not know the distance, but we can estimate this from the speed tolerances of her flycycle."

They flew ten degrees to port of spinward, a slanting line across Speaker's hand-drawn map. For two hours there had been no lights; and Louis had begun to wonder if they were lost.

Thirty-five hundred miles from the rolling hurricane that was the Eye storm, the line across Speaker's map ended at a seaport. Beyond the seaport was a bay the size of the Atlantic Ocean. Teela couldn't have flown further than that. The seaport would be their last chance ...

Suddenly, beyond the crest of a deceptively gradual slope of hill, there were lights.

"Pull up," Louis whispered fiercely, not knowing why he whispered. But Speaker had already stopped them in midair.

They hovered, studying the lights and the terrain.

The terrain: city. City everywhere. Below, shadowy in the blue Archlight, were houses like beehives with rounded windows, separated by curved sidewalks too narrow to be called streets. Ahead: more of the same, and then taller buildings further on, until all was skyscrapers and floaters.

"They built differently," Louis whispered. "The architecture -- it's not like Zignamuclickchek. Different styles ..."

"Skyscrapers," said Speaker. "With so much room on the Ringworld, why build so tall?"

"To prove they can do it. No, that's asinine," said Louis. "There'd be no point, if they could build something like the Ringrworld itself."

"Perhaps the tall buildings came later, during the decline of civilization."

The lights: blazing white tiers of windows, a dozen isolated towers blazing from crown to base They were clustered in what Louis already thought of as the Civic Center because all six of the floating buildings were there.

One thing more: a small suburban patch to spinward of the Civic Center glowed dim orange-white.

***

On the second floor of one of the beehive houses, the three sat in a triangle around Speaker's map.

Speaker had insisted that they bring the flycycles inside with them. "Security." Their light came from the headlamps of Speaker's own 'cycle, reflected and softened by a curved wall. A table, oddly sculpted to form plates and coaster depressions, had toppled and smashed to dust when Louis brushed against it. Dust was an inch thick on the floor. The paint on the curved wall had crumbled and settled in a soft ridge of sky-blue dust along the baseboard.

Louis felt the age of the city settling on him.

"When the map room tapes were made, this was one of the largest of Ringworld cities," Speaker said. His crescent claw moved across the map. "The original city was a planned city, a semicircle with its flat side along the sea. The tower called Heaven must have been built much later, when the city had already spread wings far along the coast."

"Pity you didn't draw a map of it,"' said Louis. For all that showed on Speakees map was a shaded semicircle.

Speaker picked up the map and folded it. "Such an abandoned metropolis must hold many secrets. We must be wary here. If civilization can rise at all in this land -- on this structure -- then it must be where clues point the way to vanished technology."

"What of vanished metals?" Nessus objected. "A fallen civilization could not rise again on the Ringworld. There are no metals to mine, no fossil fuels. Tools would be restricted to wood and bone."

"We saw lights."

"The pattern seemed random -- a result of many self-contained power sources failing one by one. But you may be right," said Nessus. "If toolbuilding has resumed in this place, we must contact the toolbuilders. But on our own terms."

"We may already have been located by our intercom emissions."

"No, Speaker. Our intercom emissions are closed beams."

Louis, half listening, thought: She could be hurt. She could be lying somewhere, unable to move, waiting for us.

And he couldn't make himself believe it.

It seemed that Teela had run afoul of some old Ringworld machine: perhaps a sophisticated automatic weapon, if the Ringworlders had such things. Conceivably it had zapped only her intercom and locator-sender, leaving the motive systems intacr. But it seemed improbable.

Then why couldn't he work up a sense of urgency? Louis Wu, cool as a computer while his woman faced unknown peril.

His woman ... yes, but something more, and somothing different.

How stupid of Nessus, to assume that a bred-for-luck human would think like the humans he was used to! Would a lucky puppeteer think like, say, the sane puppeteer Chiron?

Maybe fear was in a puppeteer's genes.

But in a human beings fear had to be learned.

Nessus was saying, "We must assume a momentary failure of Teela's sporadic luck. Under that assumption, Teela is not injured."

"What?" Louis was jolted. The puppeteer seemed to have paralleled his own thinking.

"A failure of her flycycle would probably leave her dead. If she were not killed instantly, then she must have been rescued as soon as her luck resumed its power."

"That's ridiculous. You can't expect a psychic power to follow rules like that!"

"The logic is impeccable, Louis. My point is that Teela does not need rescue immediately. If alive, she can wait. We can wait for morning to spy out the land."

"Then what? How do we find her?"

"She is in safe hands, if her luck held. We search for those hands. If there are no hands, we will know that tomorrow, and we can hope she will signal us. There are various ways she can do that."

Speaker broke in. "But they all use light."

"And if they do?"

"They do. I have considered this. It is possible that her headlamps still function. If so, she will have left them on. You claim she is intelligent, Louis."

"She is."

"And she has no regard for security. She would not care what found her, so long as we found her. If her headlamps are dead, she might use her flashlight-laser to signal anything that moves -- or to start a signal fire."

"What you're saying is that we can't find her in daylight. And you're right," Louis admitted.

Nessus said, "First we must explore the city by daylight. If we find citizens, well and good. Otherwise we may search for Teela tomorrow night."

"You'd leave her lying somewhere for thirty hours? You cold-blooded -- Tanjit, that patch of light we saw couldbe her! Not street lamps, but burning buildings!"

Speaker stood up. "True. We must investigate."

"I am Hindmost to this fleet. I say that Teela's value does not match the risk of a night flight over an alien city."

Speaker-To-Animals had mounted his flycycle. "We are in territory which may be hostile. Thereby I command. We will go to seek Teela Brown, a member of our company."

The kzin lifted off, eased his flycycle through a great oval window. Beyond the window were fragments of a porch, then the suburbs of an unnamed city.

The other flycycles were on the ground floor. Louis descended the stairwell hurriedly but with care, as part of the stairs had collapsed, and the escalator machinery had long since turned to rust.

Nessus looked down at him over the rim of the stairwell. "I stay here, Louis. I consider this mutiny."

Louis did not answer. His flycycle rose, edged through the oval doorway, and angled up into the night.

***

The night was cool. Archlight painted the city in navy blue shadows. Louis found the gleam of Speaker's 'cycle and followed it toward the glowing section of suburb, to spinward of the brilliantly lighted Civic Center.

It was all city, hundreds of square miles of city. There weren't even parks. With all the room on the Ringworld, why build so close? Even on Earth, men valued their elbow room.

But Earth had transfer booths. That must be it: the Ringworlders had valued travel time more than elbow room.

"We stay low," said Speaker via intercom. "If the lights of the suburbs are mere street lighting, we return to Nessus. We must not risk the possiblity that Teela was shot down."

"Right," said Louis. But he thought: listen to him, worrying about security in the face of a purely hypothetical enemy. A kzin, sanely reckless, looked cautious as a puppeteer next to Teela Brown.

Where was she now? Well, or hurt, or dead?

They had been searching for civilized Ringworlders since before the Liar crashed. Had they finally found them? That chance was probably what had kept Nessus from deserting Teela entirely. Louis's threat meant nothing, as Nessus must be well aware.

If they had found civilized Ringworlders as enemies, well, that was hardly unexpected ...

His 'cycle was drifting to the left. Louis corrected.

"Louis." Speaker-To-Animals seemed to be wrestling something "There seems to be interference --" Then, urgently, with the practiced whip of command in his voice, "Louis. Turn back. Now."

The kzin's command voice seemed to speak directly to Louis's hindbrain. Louis turned immediately.

The flycycle, however, went straight.

Louis threw all his weight on the steering bar. No good. The 'cycle continued moving toward the lights of the Civic Center.

"Something's got us!" Louis shouted; and with that the terror had him. They were puppets! Huge and dark and sentient, the Puppet Master twitched their arms and legs and moved them about to an unseen script. And Louis Wu knew the Puppet Master's name.

The luck of Teela Brown.

Speaker, being more practical, flipped the emergency siren.

The multiple frequency scream went on and on. Louis wondered if the puppeteer would answer at all. The boy who cried wolf ...? But Nessus was crying, "Yes? Yes?" with the volume too loud. Of course, he'd had to get downstairs first.

"We are under attack," Speaker told him. "Some agency is flying our vehicles by remote control. Have you suggestions?"

You couldn't tell what Nessus was thinking. His lips, twice too many, loose and broad and knobbed to serve as fingers, moved continually but without meaning. Would the puppeteer be able to help? Or would he panic?

"Turn your intercoms about to give me a view of your path. Are either of you hurt?"

"No, but we are stuck," said Louis. "We can't jump. We're too high, moving too fast. Were headed straight for the Civic Center."

"For what?"

"The cluster of lighted buildings. Remember?"

"Yes." The puppeteer seemed to consider. "A bandit signal must be overriding the signals from your instruments. Speaker, I want readings from your dashboard."

Speaker read off, while he and Louis drew ever closer to the lights of the central city. At one point Louis interrupted. "We're passing that patch of suburbia with the street lights."

"Are they indeed street lights?"

"Yes and no. All the oval doors of the houses glow bright orange. It's peculiar. I think it's honest street lighting, but the power's been dimmed and cooled by time."

"I concur," said Speaker-To-Animals.

"I hate to nag, but we're getting closer. I think we're headed for the big building in the middle."

"I see it. The double cone with lights only in the top half."

"That's the one."

"Louis, let us try to interfere with the bandit signal. Slave your 'cycle to mine."

Louis activated the slave circuit.

His 'cycle slammed hard up against him, as if he'd been booted in the butt by a giant foot. An instant later the power cut off entirely.

Crash balloons exploded before and behind him. They were shaped balloons, and they interlocked around him like a pair of clasped hands. Louis could not so much as move his hands or turn his head.

He was falling.

"I'm falling," he reported. His hand, pressed against the dashboard by the balloons, still touched the slave circuit. Louis waited another moment, still hoping the slave circuit would take hold. But the beehive houses were coming too close. Louis shifted back to manual.

Nothing happened. He was still falling.

With a calm that was sheer braggadocio, Louis said, "Speaker, don't try the slave circuit. It doesn't work." And because they could see his face, he waited with his face immobile and his eyes open. Waited for the Ringworld to slap him dead.

Deceleration came suddenly, pushing hard upward on the cycle. The 'cycle turned over, leaving Louis Wu head down under five gees of pull.

He fainted.

When he came to, he was still head down, held by the pressure of the crash balloons. His head was pounding. He saw a hazy crazy vision of the Puppet Master cursing and trying to get his strings. untangled, while, the puppet Louis Wu dangled head down over the stage.

***

The floating building was short and wide and ornate. Its lower half was an inverted cone. As the flycycles approached it, a horizontal slit slid open and swallowed them.

They were passing into the dark interior when Speaker's flycycle, which had been edging closer to Louiss, quietly turned over. Balloons exploded around Speaker before he could fall. Louis scowled in sour satisfaction. He had been miserable long enough to appreciate the company.

Nessus was saying, "Your inverted attitude implies that you are being supported by fields electromagnetic in nature. Such fields would support metal but not protoplasm, with the result ..."

Louis wriggled against his confinement; but not too hard. He would fall if he wriggled free of the balloons. Behind him the door slid shut, just faster than Louis's eyes could adjust to the dark. He saw nothing of the interior. He couldn't guess how far down the floor might be.

He heard Nessus saying, "Can you reach it with your hand?"

And Speaker, "Yes, if I can push between the ... Yowrr! You were right. The casing is hot."

"Then your motor has been burnt out. Your flycycles are inert, dead."

"Fortunate that my saddle is shielded from the heat."

"We can hardly be surprised if the Ringworlders were adept at harnessing electromagnetic forces. So many other tools were denied them: hyperdrive, thrusters, induced gravity ..."

Louis had been straining to see something, anything. He could turn his head, slowly, his cheek scraping against the balloon surface; but there was no light anywhere.

Moving his arms against the pressure, he felt across the dashboard until he thought he had found the headlight switch. Why he expected it to work, he could not have said.

The beams went out tight and white, and bounced dimly back from a distant curved wall.

A dozen vehicles hung about him, all at the same level. There were packages no larger than a racing jet backpack, and others as large as flying cars. There was even a kind of flying track with a transparent hull.

Within the maze of floating junk, a flycycle held Speaker-To-Animals upside down. The kzin's bald head and hairy orange mask protruded below the shaped crash balloons; and one clawed hand had been pushed forcefully out to touch the side of the 'cycle.

"Good," said Nessus. "Light. I was about to suggest that. Do you both understand the implication? Every electrical and electromagnetic circuit in your vehicle has been burnt out, provided it was working when you were attacked. Speaker's vehicle, and presumably yours, Louis, was attacked again as you entered the building."

"Which is pretty clearly a prison," Louis forced out. His head felt like a water balloon being filled too full, and he had trouble speaking. But he couldn't let the others do all the work even if the work was only speculating on alien technology while hanging head down.

"And if it's a prison," he went on, "then why isn't there a third zap gun in here with us? In case we should happen to have working weapons. Which we do."

"There unquestionably is one," said Nessus. "Your headlamps prove that the third zap gun is not working. The zap guns are clearly automatic; otherwise someone would be guarding you. It should be safe for Speaker to use the Slaver digging tool."

"That's good news," Louis said. "Except that I've been looking around --"

He and Speaker were floating upside down in an airborne Sargasso Sea. Of three archaic flying jet packs, one was still occupied. The skeleton was small but human. Not a trace of skin remained on the white bones. The clothing must have been good, for shreds of it still survived: brightly colored rags, including a tattered yellow cloak that hung straight down from the point of the flyer's jaw.

The other packs were empty. But the bones had to be somewhere ... Louis forced his head back, back ...

The basement of the police building was a wide, dim, conical pit. Around the wall were concentric rings of cells. The doors were trap doors above the cells. There were radial stairways leading down to the pit at the apex. In and around the pit were the bones Louis was searching for, shining dimly back at him from far below.

He couldn't wonder that one man in a ruined flying pack had been afraid to turn himself loose. But others, trapped here in cars and backpacks, had preferred the long fall to death by thirst.

Louis said, "I don't see what Speaker is supposed to use the Slaver disintegrator on."

"I have been thinking about that very seriously."

"It he blows a hole in the wall, it doesn't help us. Likewise the ceiling, which he can't reach anyway. If he hits the generator for the field holding us here, we fall ninety feet to the floor. But if he doesn't, we'll be here until we starve, or until we give up and turn ourselves loose. Then we fall ninety feet to the floor."

"Yes."

"That's all? Just yes?"

"I need more data. Will one of you please describe what you see around you? I see only part of a curved wall."

They took turns describing the conical cell block, what they could see of it in the dim, point-source light. Speaker turned on his own lights, and that helped.

But when Louis ran out of things to say, he was still trapped, upside down, without food or water, hanging above a lethal drop.

Louis felt a bubbling scream somewhere in him, buried deep and well under control, but rising. Soon it would be near the surface ...

And he wondered if Nessus would leave them.

That was bad. It was a question with an obvious answer. There was every reason why the puppeteer should leave, and no reason why he should not.

Unless he still hoped to find civilized natives here.

"The floating vehicles and the age of the skeletons both indicate that there is nobody tending the machinery of the cell block," Speaker speculated. "The fields that trapped us must have collected a few vehicles after the city was deserted; but then there were no more vehicles on the Ringworld. So the machines still work, because nothing has strained their powers in so long a time."

"That may be so," said Nessus. "But someone is monitoring our conversation."

Louis felt his ears prick up. He saw Speaker's fan out.

"It must have required excellent technique to tap a closed beam. One wonders if the eavesdropper has a translator."

"What can you tell about him?"

"Only his direction. The source of the interference is your own present whereabouts. Perhaps the eavesdropper is above you."

Reflexively Louis tried to look up. Not a prayer. He was head down, with two crash balloons and the flycycle between him and the ceiling.

"We've found the Ringworld civilization," he said aloud.

"Perhaps. I think a civilized being could have repaired the third zap gun, as you called it. But the main thing ... let me think."

And the puppeteer went off into Beethoven, or the Beatles, or something classical-sounding. For all Louis could tell he was making it up as he went along.

And when he said let me think, he meant it. The whistling went on and on. Louis was getting thirsty. And hungry. And his head was pounding.

He had given up hope, several separate times, when the puppet= came on again. "I would have preferred to use the Slaver disintegrator, but it is not to be. Louis, you will have to do it; you are primate-descended, better than Speaker at climbing. You will secure the --"

"Climbing?"

"When I finish you may ask questions, Louis. Secure the flashlight-laser from wherever you put it. Use the beam to puncture the balloon in front of you. You will have to snatch at its fabric as you fall. Use it to climb over the flycycle until you are balanced on top. Then --"

"You're out of your mind."

"Let me finish, Louis. The purpose of all this activity is to destroy the zap gun, as you called it. Probably there are two zap guns. One is over the door you entered by, or under it. The other may be anywhere. Your only clue may be that it looks like the first zap gun."

"Sure, and it may not. Never mind that. How do you expect me to grab at the fabric of an exploding balloon fast enough to -- No. I can't."

"Louis. How can I reach you if a weapon waits to burn out my machinery?"

"I don't know."

"Do you expect Speaker to do the climbing?"

"Can't cats climb?"

Speaker said, "My ancestors were plains cats, Louis. My burnt hand is healing slowly. I cannot climb. In any case, the leaf-eater's proposition is insane. Surely you see that he is merely looking for an excuse to desert us."

Louis saw. Perhaps he let the fear show.

"I will not leave you yet," Nessus said. "I will wait. Perhaps you will conceive a better plan. Perhaps the eavesdropper will show himself. I will wait."

***

Louis Wu, wedged upside down and motionless between two shaped balloons, naturally found it difficuk to measure time. Nothing changed. Nothing moved. He could hear Nessus whistling in the distance; but nothing else seemed to be happening.

Eventually Louis started counting his own heartbeats. Seventy-two to the minute, he figured.

Precisely ten minutes later he was heard to say, "Seventy-two. One. What am I doing?"

"Were you speaking to me, Louis?"

"Tanjit! Speaker, I can't take this. I'd rather die now than go crazy first." He began forcing his arms down.

"I command, Louis, under combat conditions. I order you to remain calm, and wait."

"Sorry." Louis forced his arms down, relax, jerk down, relax. There it was: his belt. His hand was too far forward. He forced his elbow back, relax, jerk back ...

"What the puppeteer suggests is suicide, Louis."

"Maybe." He had it: the flashlight-laser. Two more jerks freed it from his belt and pointed it forward; he would burn into the dashboard but would not burn himself.

He fired.

The balloon collapsed slowly. As it did, the one at his back pushed him forward into the dashboard. Under the lighter pressure, it was easy to push the fiashligbt-laser into his belt and to clutch two handfuls of wrinkling, collapsing fabric.

He was also sliding out of his seat. Faster, faster -- He gripped with manic force, and when he turned over, falling, his hands did not slip on the fabric. He hung by his hands beneath his flycycle, with a ninety foot drop below and --

"Speaker!"

"Here I am, Louis. I have secured my own weapon. Shall I pop the other balloon for you?"

"Yes!" It was right across his path, blocking him entirely.

The balloon did not collapse. One side of it puffed dust for two seconds, then disappeared in a great puff of air. Speaker had zapped it with one beam of the disintegrator.

"Finagle knows how you can aim that thing," Louis wheezed. He began to climb.

It was easy going while the fabric held out. Translate: Despite the hours hed spent with blood flowing to his brain, Louis managed not to let go. But the fabric ended in the vicinity of the foot throttle; and the 'cycle had rolled half over with his weight, so that he still hung from underneath.