The Ringworld Engineers Part 10

"I can do it. Hey, don't you want revenge for your burnt pelt?"

"Revenge on a plant? You are mad. Our time is precious, and in just over a year they will all be dead-sunflowers, giants, little red carnivores, and all!"

"Yeah ..."

"Your help is no help at all, if they knew it. How long will your project take? A day? A month? You hurt our own project."

"Maybe I am mad. Chmeee, I have to carry this through. In all the time since I left the Ringworld I haven't had reason to be proud of myself. I have to prove-"

The king giant was saying, "Louis himself will tell you that the threat of the fire plants is over for us. He will tell us our part-"

Wu, self-effacing, as was his nature, stepped behind the great kzin; and none of the giants particularly noticed that he was talking to his hand. Half a minute later the time-delayed Voice of Louis boomed from the lander, saying, "Hear me, for your day has come to make the places of the fire plants clean for all the breeds of men. My work will go before you as a cloud. You must gather the seeds of what you wish to grow where fire plants grow now ..."

In the first light of dawn, when the sun shone overhead as a mere splinter of light at the edge of a shadow square, the giants were up and moving.

They liked to sleep touching each other. The king giant was the center of a circle of women, with Wu at its edge, his small, half-bald head pillowed on a woman's shoulder, his legs hooked over a man's long bony legs. The dirt floor was covered in flesh and hair.

Waking, they moved in order, those nearest the door untangling themselves and picking up bags and sickle-swords and moving out, then those farther in. Wu moved out with them.

Outside the distant lander, a one-armed giant with a marred face said a quick farewell to Chmeee and came jogging toward the longhouse. Last night's guards would be sleeping inside during the day, and some older women had stayed too.

The giants turned and stared openly when Wu began climbing the wall.

The gra.s.s and mud surface was crumbly, but the roof was only twelve feet high. Louis pulled himself up between two sunflowers.

The plants stood a foot tall on k.n.o.bbly green stalks. Each had a single oval blossom, mirror-surfaced, nine to twelve inches across. A short stalk poked from the mirror's center and ended in a dark-green bulb. The back of the blossom was stringy, laced with some vegetable a.n.a.logue of muscle fibers. And all of the blossoms were throwing sunlight at Louis Wu; but there wasn't enough sunlight to hurt him yet.

Louis wrapped his hands around a thick sunflower stalk and rocked it gently. There was no give; the roots were dug deep into the roof. He took off his shirt and held it between the blossom and the sun. The mirror-blossom wavered and rippled in indecision, then folded forward to enclose the green bulb.

Mindful of his audience, Wu climbed down with some attention to style. A white glare followed him as he went to join Chmeee.

The kzin said, "I spent part of this night talking to a guard."

"Learn anything?"

"He has the utmost confidence in you, Louis. They're gullible."

"So were the carnivores. I wondered if it was just good manners."

"I think not. The carnivores and the herbivores expect anything at all to walk in from the horizon at any moment. They know that there are people with strange shapes and G.o.dlike powers. They made me wonder what we may meet next. Uurrr, and the sentry knew that we are not of the race that built the Ringworld. Is this significant?"

"Maybe. What else?"

"There will be no problem with the other tribes. Cattle they may be, but with minds. Those who stay on the veldt will collect seeds for those who choose to invade sunflower territory. They will give women to the young adult men if they go. Perhaps a third of them will leave when you have worked your magic. The rest will have enough gra.s.s. They will not need to move toward the red people."

"Okay."

"I asked about long-term weather."

"Good! Well?"

"The guard is an old man," Chmeee said. "When he was young and had both legs-before something marred him; the translator said 'ogre'-the sun was always the same brightness and the days were always the same length. Now the sun seems sometimes brighter and sometimes dimmer, and when the sun is bright, the days seem too short, and vice versa. Louis, he remembers how it started. Twelve falans ago, which would be one hundred and twenty rotations of the constellations, there was a time of dark. Dawn never came for what would have been two or three days. They saw the stars, and a ghost-flame spreading overhead. Then all was as it should be for some falans. When the uneven days came, it was long before they noticed; they don't have clocks."

"Seems predictable enough. Except-"

"But the long night, Louis. What does that sound like?"

Louis nodded. "The sun flared up. The shadow square ring closed somehow. Maybe the wire that holds it together can be reeled in by automatics."

"Then the flare jet pushed the Ringworld off center. Now the days grow more uneven. It frightens all of the races the giants trade with."

"And well it should."

"I wish there were something we could do." The kzin's tail lashed once. "But we battle sunflowers instead. Did you enjoy yourself this night?"

"Yeah."

"Then you should be smiling."

"If you really wanted to know, you could have watched. Everyone else did. There aren't any walls in that big building; they all crowd in together. Anyway, they like watching."

"I can't tolerate the smell."

Louis laughed. "It's strong. Not bad, just strong. And I had to stand on a stool. And the women were ... docile."

"Females should be docile."

"Not human females! They're not even stupid. I couldn't talk, of course, but I listened." Louis's forefinger tapped the k.n.o.b in his ear. "I listened to Reeth organizing the clean-up squad. She's good. Hey, you were right, they're organized just like a herd of cattle! The females are all wives of the king giant. None of the other males ever gets laid, except that sometimes the king giant declares a holiday and then goes away so he won't have to watch. Fun's over when he comes back, and officially nothing happened. Everyone's a little miffed because we brought him back from the raid two days early."

"What are human females supposed to be like?"

"Oh ... o.r.g.a.s.m. The males of all the mammals have o.r.g.a.s.ms. The females generally don't. But human women do. But the giant women, they just accept. They don't, ah, partic.i.p.ate."

"You didn't enjoy it?"

"Of course I enjoyed it. It's s.e.x, isn't it? But it takes a little getting used to, that I couldn't make Reeth enjoy it like I did, that she can't."

"My sympathy is all that it should be," Chmeee said, "considering that my nearest wife is two hundred light-years away. What must we do next?"

"Wait for the king giant. He may be a little groggy. He spent a lot of last night getting reacquainted with his wives. In fact, the only way he had to tell me how was by demonstration. He's awesome," Louis said. "He ... serviced? He serviced a dozen women, and I tried like tanj to keep up with him, but it didn't help my ego that ... Skip it." Now Louis was grinning.

"Louis?"

"My reproductive set isn't built to the same scale."

"The guard said that the females of other species stand in awe of the giant males. The males practice rishathra whenever they can. They enjoy peace conferences immensely. The guard was annoyed that Louis did not make you female."

"Louis was in a hurry," Wu said, and he went in.

Last night the gatherers' big bags had disgorged a great heap of cut gra.s.s some distance from the longhouse. Guards and the king giant had eaten most of the pile; the gatherers must have been eating as they worked. Now Louis watched as the king giant, loping toward the lander, stopped to finish the pile off.

Herbivores spent too much of their lives eating, Louis mused. How had the humanoids kept their intelligence? Chmeee was right-you didn't need intelligence to sneak up on a blade of gra.s.s. Maybe it took intelligence to avoid being eaten. Or ... it took considerable cunning to sneak up on a sunflower.

Louis felt himself being watched.

He turned. Nothing.

It would be embarra.s.sing at best if the king giant learned he'd been duped. Yet Louis was all alone on the flight deck, if you ignored the Hindmost's spy-eyes. Why this tingling at the back of his neck? He turned again, and who was he kidding? It was the droud. The black plastic case was staring at him from the stepping disc.

A touch of the wire would really make him feel like a G.o.d. It would really louse up his act, too! He remembered that Chmeee had seen him under the wire. "Like a mindless marine plant ..." He turned away.

The king giant came without armor today. As he and Chmeee entered the rec room the kzin raised his hands to the ceiling, palms together, and intoned, "Louis." The giant imitated him.

"Find me one of the repulser plates," Louis said without preamble. "Set it out on the floor. Good. Now get some of the superconductor cloth. It's three doors down, the big locker. Good. Wrap the cloth around the repulser plate. Cover it completely, but leave a fold so you can reach the settings. Chmeee, how strong is that cloth?"

"A moment, Louis ... See, it cuts with a knife. I don't think I could rip it."

"Good. Now get me twenty miles of the superconducting wire. Wrap one end around the repulser plate. Tie it well; use a lot of loops. Be lavish. Good enough. Now coil the rest of the wire so it won't tangle when you let it out. I need the other end. Chmeee, you do that. King of the Gra.s.s Eaters, I need the biggest rock you can carry. You know this territory. Find it and bring it."

The king giant stared ... and dropped his eyes and went. Chmeee said, "It sours my stomach to take your orders so meekly."

"But you thought of it, and besides that, you're dying to find out what I'm planning. But-"

"I could make you tell."

"I can make you a better offer than that. Come up here, please."

Chmeee bounded up through the hatch. Louis asked, "What do you see on the stepping disc?"

Chmeee picked up the droud.

Louis's voice was jagged in his throat. "Break it."

The kzin instantly stiff-armed the small instrument into a wall. It didn't dent. He pried at the casing, got it open, and jabbed at the inside with the hullmetal blade of the knife he'd been using. At last he said, "It's beyond repair."

"Good."

"I will wait below."

"No, I'll come with you. I want to check your work. And I want breakfast." He was feeling twitchy. He wasn't sure how he felt. Rishathra hadn't quite lived up to his expectations, and the pure joy of the wire was over forever. But ... cheese fondue? Right. And freedom, and pride. In a couple of hours he was going to wipe out a sunflower invasion and shock tanj out of Chmeee. Louis Wu, ex-wirehead, whose brain hopefully had not turned to oatmeal after all.

The king giant came back hugging a boulder and moving very slowly. Chmeee started to take it from him, hesitated an instant as he saw its size, and finished the motion. He turned with it in his arms and, with strain just showing in his voice, said, "What must I do with it, Louis?"

It was tempting. Oh, there are so many possibilities ... Give me a minute to think it over ... But G.o.ds don't dither, and he couldn't let Chmeee drop it with the giant watching.

"Set it on superconductor cloth and wrap it up. Tie it with superconductor wire. Take a lot of turns around the rock, and be lavish with the knots, too. Okay, now I want some stronger wire that'll stand up to heat."

"We have Sinclair molecule chain."

"Less than twenty miles of that. I want it shorter than the superconductor wire." Louis was glad he'd made the inspection. He had overlooked the chance that the superconductor wire wouldn't be strong enough to hold the cloth-wrapped repulser plate, once the plate reached alt.i.tude. But Sinclair chain was fantastic stuff. It ought to hold.

Chapter 12 -.

Sunflowers Louis flew high and fast to spinward. The veldt showed too much brown: gra.s.s cropped first by green elephants and then by giants was having trouble growing back. Ahead, the white line of sunflowers glared across the sea.

The king giant watched through the transparent airlock doors. "It may be I should have brought armor," he said.

Chmeee snorted. "To fight sunflowers? Metal grows hot."

"Where," Louis asked, "did you get the armor?"

"We made a road for the Machine People. They made us free of the gra.s.slands the road was to go through, and afterward they made armor for the kings of the tribes. We kept moving. We didn't like their air."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It tastes wrong and smells wrong, Louis. It smells like what they drink sometimes. They pour the same stuff in their machines, but without mixing it with anything."

Chmeee asked, "I wondered about the shape of your armor. It is not quite your own shape. I wondered why."

"The shape is meant to awe and frighten. Did you not find it so?"

"No," said Chmeee. "Is it the shape of those who built the Ringworld?"

"Who knows?"

"I do," Louis said. The giant's eyes flicked nervously upward.

The gra.s.s, grown tall again, abruptly gave way to forest. The sunflowers had grown bright. Louis dropped the lander to a hundred feet and slowed drastically.

The forest ended in a long white beach. Louis slowed further and eased the lander down, down, until he was almost skimming the water. The sunflowers lost interest.

He flew on toward the diminished glare. The sea was calm, rippled by a breeze from astern. The sky was blue and cloudless. Islands went by, small and medium-sized, with beaches and convoluted sh.o.r.es and peaks charred black. Two had been commandeered by sunflowers.

Fifty miles offsh.o.r.e, the sunflowers were taking an interest again. Louis brought the lander to a halt. "They can't hope to use us for fertilizer," he said. "We're too far away and flying too low."

"Brainless plants." Chmeee coughed contempt.

The king giant said, "They are clever. They start brush fires. When only ashen ground is left, the fire plants spread their seed."

But they were over water! ... Skip it. "King of the Gra.s.s Giants, this is your hour. Drop the rock overboard. Don't snag the wire." Louis opened the airlock and lowered the ramp. The king giant went forth into the ominous glare. The boulder fell twenty feet into the water, trailing black and silver wires.

Spotlights seemed to wink at them from the far sh.o.r.e as cl.u.s.ters of the plants tried to burn the lander, then lost interest. They sought motion, but they wouldn't fire on running water, would they? On a waterfall, say? The plants did best on half-arid worlds ... "Chmeee. Take the repulser plate outside. Set it for, oh, eighteen miles. See that the wires don't foul."