The Ringworld Engineers

by Larry Niven

  Laliskareerlyar asked, “Is that why you didn’t kill Mar Korssil?”

  The Night Hunter woman looked at him with great blue eyes.

  Louis laughed. “Maybe.” He told them of his conquest of the sunflower patch. He was skirting a dangerous subject, for he saw no point in telling Laliskareerlyar that the world was going to brush against its sun. “I want to leave the world knowing that I’ve done no damage. I’ve got more of that cloth buried near here ... Tanj! I can’t think of any way to reach it now.

  They had reached the top of the spiral. Louis was huffing. Mar Korssil unlocked a door; there were more stairs beyond. Laliskareerlyar asked, “Are you nocturnal?”

  “What? No.”

  “We had best wait for day. Mar Korssil, go and send us breakfast. Send Whil, with tools. Then go to sleep.” As Mar Korssil trotted obediently downstairs, the old woman sat cross-legged on ancient carpet. “I expect we must work outside,” she said. “I don’t understand the risk you took. For what? Knowledge? What knowledge?”

  It was difficult to lie to her, but the Hindmost might well be listening. “Do you know anything of a machine to change one kind of matter into another? Air into dirt, lead into gold?”

  She was interested. “Ancient magicians were said to be able to turn glass into diamonds. But these were children’s tales.”

  So much for that. “What of a Repair Center for the world? Are there legends about that? Telling its location?”

  She stared. “As if the world were no more than a made thing, a larger version of the city?”

  Louis laughed. “Much larger. Much much much larger. No?”

  “No.”

  “What about an immortality drug? I know that’s real. Halrloprillalar used it.”

  “Of course it was real. There is none left in the city, nor anywhere else that I know of. The tale is a favorite with”—the translator used an Interworld phrase—“con men.”

  “Does the tale tell where it might have come from?”

  A young City Builder woman came puffing up the stairs carrying a shallow bowl. Louis’s fears of poison disappeared at once. The stuff was lukewarm, something like oatmeal, and they ate with their hands from the one bowl.

  “The youth drug comes from spinward,” the old woman said, “but I know not how far to spinward. Is this the treasure of knowledge you came for?”

  “Any of several treasures. That would be a good one.” There would certainly have been tree-of-life in the Repair Center, Louis thought. I wonder how they’d handle it? Surely no human being would want to be a protector? But there might be hominids who would ... Well, those puzzles could wait.

  Whil was a burly hominid with a simian face, dressed in a sheet whose original color was lost to time. It was a mad god’s rainbow now. Whil didn’t talk much. His arms were short and thick and looked very strong. He led them up the last flight of steps, carrying his toolbox, and out into the dawn.

  They were on the lip of a funnel, at the truncated tip of the double cone. The rim was only a foot across. Louis’s breath caught in his throat. With his flying belt dead, he had reason to fear heights. Wind rushed past him, whipping Whil’s sheet into a fluttering multicolored flag.

  Laliskareerlyar asked, “Well? Can you fix it?”

  “Not from here. There must be machinery below.”

  There was, but it wasn’t easy to reach. The crawl space was inches wider than Louis Wu. Whil crawled ahead of him, opening panels, as instructed.

  The crawl space was doughnut-shaped, circling the machinery that must circle the funnel. And the water was supposed to precipitate on the funnel, no doubt. By refrigeration? Or had they something more sophisticated?

  The widgetry concealed by the panels was tightly packed, and a total mystery to Louis Wu. It was sparkling clean, except for ... yeah. He peered closer, not breathing. A wire-thin worm trail of dust had fallen through the widgetry. Louis tried to guess where it had fallen from. He’d have to assume the rest of the machinery was still functional.

  He backed out. From Whil he borrowed thick gloves and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. He cut a strip from the edge of the black cloth in his vest and twisted it. He strung it between two contacts and fastened them.

  Nothing obvious happened. He continued around the circle, following Whil. In all he found six worm trails of dust. He fastened six twisted strips of superconductor where he thought they belonged.

  He wriggled out of the crawl space. “Of course your power source could be long dead,” he said.

  “We must see,” said the old woman. She went up the stairs to the roof. Louis and Whil followed.

  The smooth face of the funnel seemed misted over. Louis knelt and reached to touch it. Wet. The water was warm. Already it was beading and flowing downslope to the pipes. Louis nodded thoughtfully. Another good deed that wouldn’t matter in fifteen falans.

  Chapter 20 -

  Economics in Lyar

  Just below the thick waist of Lyar Building was what seemed to be a combination audience chamber and bedroom. A huge circular bed with a curtained canopy, couches and chairs around small and large tables, a picture-window wall facing the nearer edge of the shadow farm, a bar built to offer a wide variety of potables. That variety was gone. Laliskareerlyar poured from a crystal decanter into a two-handled goblet, sipped, and passed it across to Louis.

  He asked, “Do you hold audiences in here?”

  She smiled. “Of a sort. Family gatherings.”

  Orgies? Very likely, if rishathra was what held the Lyar family together. A family fallen on hard times. Louis sipped from the goblet, tasted nectar-and-fuel. The sharing of cups and food dishes—was fear of poison behind that? But she did it so naturally. And there were no diseases on the Ringworld.

  “What you have done for us will increase our status and our funds,” said Laliskareerlyar. “Ask.”

  “I need to reach the Library, enter it, and persuade the people who rule there to let me make free use of all their knowledge.”

  “That would be very expensive.”

  “Not impossible? Good.”

  She smiled. “Too expensive. The relationship among the buildings is complicated. The Ten rule the tourist trade—“

  “Ten what?”

  “Ten large buildings, Luweewu, the most powerful among us. Nine still have lights and water condensers. Together they built the bridge to Sky Hill. Well, they rule the tourist trade, and they pay fees to the lesser buildings to cover hospitality for their alien guests, the use of all public places, and special fees for events in private buildings. They make all agreements with other species, as with the water the Machine People pump up to us. We pay fees to the Ten for water and for special concessions. Yours would be a very special concession although we pay the Library a general fee for education.

  “The Library is one of the Ten?”

  “Yes. Luweewu, we do not have the money. Is there a chance that you can do the Library a service? Perhaps your research would help them.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “They would return some of the fee for a service rendered. Even more than we gave, possibly. But we don’t have it. Would you sell them your light weapon or the machine that talks for you?”

  “I think I’d better not.”

  “Can you repair more water condensers?”

  “Maybe. Did you say one of the Ten does not have a working water condenser? Then why are they one of the Ten?”

  “Orlry Building has been among the Ten since the Fall of the Cities. Tradition.”

  “What were they when the cities fell?”

  “A military installation, a storehouse for weapons.” She ignored Louis’s chortling. “They have a fondness for weapons. Your
light-projector—“

  “I’d be afraid to let it go. But maybe they’d like their water condenser fixed.”

  “I will learn what fee they ask to let you into Orlry Building.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. You must be guarded, to prevent your carrying away weapons. You pay an entertainment fee to see the ancient weapons, and more if they are to be demonstrated. If you see their maintenance facilities, you may learn weaknesses. I will ask.” She stood. “Shall we indulge in rishathra?”

  Louis had been expecting that, a little, and it wasn’t Laliskareerlyar’s odd appearance that made him hesitate. It was the terror of taking off his armor and his tools. He remembered an old sketch of a king brooding on his throne. I’m paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?

  But he was far overdue for sleep! He was simply going to have to trust the Lyars. “Good,” he said. He began to strip off his armor.

  Age had treated Laliskareerlyar oddly. Louis knew ancient literature, plays and novels that predated boosterspice. Age was a crippling disease ... but this woman wasn’t crippled. Her skin was loose on her, and her limbs didn’t bend as far as Louis’s. But she had an endless interest in love, and in the strangeness of Louis’s body and reflexes.

  It was a long time before he slept. He had begged off telling her about the plastic under his hair. He wished she hadn’t reminded him of that. The Hindmost had a working droud ... and he hated himself for wanting it.

  He was awakened near nightfall. The bed jolted twice, and he blinked and rolled over. He faced Laliskareerlyar and a City Builder man who had also been touched by age.

  Laliskareerlyar introduced him as Fortaralisplyar, her mate of record and Louis’s host. He thanked Louis for his work on the building’s old machinery. Dinner was already on one of the tables, and Louis was invited to share it with them: a large bowl of stew, too bland for Louis’s taste. He ate.

  “Orlry Building asks more than we have,” Fortaralisplyar told Louis. “We have bought for you the right to enter three of our neighbors’ buildings. If you succeed in repairing even one of their water condensers, we can get you into Orlry Building. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Excellent. I need machines that haven’t worked in eleven hundred years, and haven’t been tampered with either.”

  “My mate told me.”

  Louis left them to their sleep as dark was falling. They had invited him to join them, and the great bed was roomy enough, but Louis was slept out and restless.

  The great building was like a tomb. From the upper floors Louis watched for activity in the maze of bridges. He saw nothing but an occasional big-eyed Night Hunter. It figured. If the City Builders slept ten hours out of thirty, it might as well be during the dark. He wondered if they were an asleep in the lighted buildings too.

  “Calling the Hindmost,” he said.

  “Yes, Louis. Must we translate?”

  “No need, we’re alone. I’m in the floating city. It’ll take me a day or two to get into the Library. I think I’m marooned here. My flying belt’s ruined.”

  “Chmeee still will not answer.”

  Louis sighed. “What else is new?”

  “In two days my first probe will complete its circuit of the rim wall. I can bring it to the floating city. Will you want me to negotiate directly with the inhabitants? We are good at that. At least I can lend credence to your tale.”

  “I’ll let you know. What about the Ringworld attitude jets? Have you found any more mounted?”

  “No. Of those you know of, all twenty-one are firing. Can you see them?”

  “Not from here. Hindmost? Can you learn anything about the physical properties of scrith, Ringworld floor material? Strength, flexibility, magnetic properties?”

  “I have been working on that. The rim wall is available to my instruments. Scrith is very much denser than lead. The scrith floor of the Ringworld is probably less than a hundred feet thick. I’ll show you my data when you return.”

  “Good.”

  “Louis, I can give you transportation, if need be. It would be easier if I could send Chmeee.”

  “Great! What kind of transportation?”

  “You will have to wait for my probe. I will give further instructions then.”

  He watched the nearly empty city for a while after the Hindmost hung up. He felt depressed. Alone in a gone-to-seed building in a gone-to-seed city, without his droud ...

  A voice behind his shoulder said, “You told my mistress that you are not nocturnal.”

  “Hello, Mar Korssil. We use electric lighting. Some of us keep strange hours. Anyway, I’m used to a shorter day.” Louis turned around.

  The big-eyed humanoid wasn’t pointing her weapon at Louis, exactly. She said, “These past falans, the day has been changing its length. It is distressing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whom did you speak to?”

  “A two-headed monster.”

  Mar Korssil departed. Perhaps she was offended. Louis Wu remained at the window, free-associating through the memories of a long and eventful life. He had given up hope of returning to known space. He’d given up the droud. Perhaps it was time to give up ... more.

  Chkar Building was a poured-stone slab covered in balconies. Explosions had scarred one side of the building, exposing the metal skeleton in places. The water condenser was a trough along the top, slightly canted. An old explosion had sprayed metal droplets into the machinery below. Louis didn’t expect his repairs to work, and they didn’t.

  “Mine is the blame,” Laliskareerlyar said. “I had forgotten that Chkar Building fought with Orlry Building two thousand falans ago.”

  Panth Building was built like an onion standing on its tip. Louis guessed that the building had started life as a health club; he recognized pools, spas, hotboxes, massage tables, a gymnasium. The place seemed to have plenty of water. And a faint half-familiar smell tickled at his memory ...

  Panth had also fought with Orlry. There were craters. A bald young man named Arrivercompanth swore that the water condenser had never been damaged. Louis found the dust tracks in the machinery, and the contacts above them. When he had made his repairs, there were water droplets forming on the rounded roof and running into a gutter.

  There was some difficulty about payment. Arrivercompanth and his people wanted to offer rishathra and promises. (And then Louis recognized the scent tickling his nose and hindbrain. He was in a house of ill repute, and there were vampires somewhere about.) Laliskareerlyar wanted cash now. Louis tried to follow her argument. He gathered that the Ten would be unhappy when Panth stopped buying water, and only too happy to levy a fine against them for fraud. Arrivercompanth paid.

  Gisk had been a condominium, or something similar, at the Fall of the Cities. It was a cube with an air well down the center, and it was half empty. Judging by the smell of the place, Gisk had been restricting its use of water overmuch. Louis was learning the look of water-condensation machinery. He made his repairs quickly, and they worked. The Gisks paid at once. They fell at Laliskareerlyar’s feet to express their thanks ... ignoring her tool-wielding servant. Oh, well.

  Fortaralisplyar was delighted. He packed a double-handful of metal coins into Louis’s vest and explained the tricky etiquette of bribery. The face-saving language would strain his translator to the limits. “When in doubt, don’t,” Fortaralisplyar told him. “I will come with you to Orlry Building tomorrow. Let me do the bargaining.”

  Orlry Building was on the port side of the city. Louis and Fortaralisplyar took their time, sightseeing, walking the highest ramps to get a better view. Fortaralisplyar was proud of his city. “A bit of civilization remained even after the Fall,” he said. He pointed out Rylo, a building that had been an emperor’s
castle. It was beautiful but scarred. The emperor had tried to claim the city for his own at about the time Orlry Building arrived. A fluted column shaped like a Greek pillar, supporting nothing but itself, was Chank, which had been a shopping center. Without the supplies aboard Chank—from markets, restaurants, clothing and bedding stores, even toy shops—for trading with the Machine People, the city would have died early. From the basement of Chank the air road spiraled down to Sky Hill.

  Orlry Building was a disc forty feet thick and ten times that wide, built along the lines of a pie. The massive tower at one edge, elaborated with gun emplacements and railed platforms and a derrick, reminded Louis of the bridge of a great ship—a battleship. The walkway to Orlry was broad, but there was only one walkway and one entrance. Along the upper rim were hundreds of small projections. Louis guessed that they were cameras or other sensors, and that they no longer worked. Windows had been chopped into Orlry’s sides after the building was raised. The glass in them fitted poorly.

  Fortaralisplyar was dressed in yellow and scarlet robes of what appeared to be vegetable fiber: coarse by Louis’s standards, but grand from a distance. Louis followed him into Orlry, into a large reception area. There was light, but it flickered: scores of alcohol lamps burning near the ceiling.

  Eleven City Builder types of both sexes waited for them. They were dressed almost identically, in loose pants with tight cuffs and brightly colored capes. The edges of the capes were cut elaborately and without symmetry. Badges of rank? The white-haired man who came smiling to greet them wore the most elaborately cut cape and a shoulder gun.

  He spoke to Fortaralisplyar. “I had to see him for myself, this being who can give us water from machinery five thousand falans dead.”

  The handgun in his worn plastic shoulder holster was small, with clean, efficient lines; but even a gun couldn’t make Filistranorlry look warlike. His small features showed happy curiosity as he examined Louis Wu. “He seems unusual enough, but ... well. You have paid. We shall see.” He gestured to the soldiers.