The Ringworld Engineers Part 23

Louis waited until the fires had mostly gone out. Then he waded through coals to the probe. The roof was empty, as far as he could tell-empty even of bodies. No dead. Good.

The voice of his translator guided him as he cut away the thick molecular sieve in the top of the probe. Presently he had exposed a stepping disc. He asked, "Now what?"

"I've reversed the action of the stepping disc in the other probe and removed the filter. Can you get a reading machine?"

"I'll try. I don't like any of this."

"In two years it won't matter. I give you thirty minutes. Then come, bringing whatever you have."

A score of blue-robed librarians had almost decided to come after him when Louis appeared in the stairwell. His hood was pulled over his face. The bits of heavy metal they fired at him bounced from his impact armor, and he came on in a jerky step-stop-step walk.

The fusillade slowed and stopped. They retreated before him.

When they had gone far enough, Louis sliced through the top of the stairway below him. The spiral staircase had been moored only at top and bottom. Now it compressed like a spring, ripping side ramps from doorsills. Librarians hung on for dear life. Louis had the top two floors to himself.

And when he turned to the nearest reading room, Harkabeeparolyn was blocking his path with an ax in her hands.

"Once again I need your help," Louis said.

She swung. Louis caught the ax as it rebounded from the join of his neck and shoulder. She thrashed, trying to wrench it from his grip.

"Watch," he said. He waved the laser beam through the cable that fed a reading machine. The cable spurted flame and fell apart, sparking.

Harkabeeparolyn screamed, "Lyar Building will pay dearly for this!"

"That can't be helped. I want you to help me carry a reading machine up to the roof. I thought I was going to have to cut through a wall. This is better."

"I won't!"

Louis waved the light through a reading machine. It burned after falling apart. The smell was horrible. "Say when."

"Vampire lover!"

The machine was heavy, and Louis wasn't about to let go of the laser. He backed up the stairs; most of the weight was in Harkabeeparolyn's arms. He told her, "If we drop it we'll have to go back for another one."

"Idiot! ... You've already ... ruined the cable!"

He didn't answer.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I'm trying to save the world from brushing against its sun."

She almost dropped it then. "But-but the motors! They're all back in place!"

"So you already knew that much! It's too little too late. Most of your s.p.a.ceships never came back. There aren't enough motors. Keep moving."

As they reached the roof, the probe lifted and settled beside them on att.i.tude jets. They set the machine down. It wasn't going to fit. Louis gritted his teeth and sliced the screen free of the rest of the machine. Now it would fit.

Harkabeeparolyn just looked at him. She was too exhausted to comment.

The screen went into the gap where the molecular filter had been, and vanished. What remained, the guts of the machine, was much heavier. Louis managed to heave one end into the gap. He lay down on his back and used his legs to push it inward until it too vanished.

"Lyar Building had nothing to do with this," he told the librarian. "They didn't know what I had in mind. Here." He dropped a swatch of dull black cloth beside her. "Lyar Building can tell you how to fix water condensers and other old machines with this. You can make the whole city independent of the Machine People."

She watched him with eyes full of horror. It was hard to tell if she heard.

He eased himself feet first into the probe.

And out head first into Needle's cargo hold.

Part Three

Chapter 23 -.

Final Offer.

He was in a great echoing gla.s.s bottle, in near darkness. Twilight-shrouded, half-dismantled s.p.a.cecraft showed through the transparent walls. The probe had been returned to clamps on the back wall of the cargo hold, eight feet off the gray-painted floor. And Louis nestled in the probe, in the gap where the deuterium filter had been, like an egg in an egg cup.

Louis swung out, hung by his hands, and dropped. He was tired to the bone. One last complication, now, and then he could rest. Safety was just the other side of an impenetrable wall. He could see the sleeping plates ...

"Good." The Hindmost's voice spoke from somewhere near the ceiling. "Is that the reading screen? I expected nothing so bulky. Did you have to chop it in half?"

"Yeah." He had also dropped the components eight feet to the floor. Fortunately puppeteers were good with tools ... "I hope you've got a set of stepping discs in here."

"I antic.i.p.ated emergencies. Glance toward the forward left ... Louis!"

A moan of unearthly terror rose behind him. Louis spun around.

Harkabeeparolyn was nestled in the probe, where Louis had been a moment ago. Her hands strangled the stock of a projectile weapon. Her lips were skinned back from her teeth. Her eyes could not find rest. They flicked up, down, left, right, and found no comfort anywhere.

The Hindmost spoke in a monotone. "Louis, who is this that invades my s.p.a.cecraft? Is it dangerous?"

"No, relax. It's just a confused librarian. Harkabeeparolyn, go back."

Her keening rose in pitch. Suddenly she wailed, "I know this place, I've seen it in the map room! It's the starship haven, outside the world! Luweewu, what are you?"

Louis pointed the flashlight-laser at her. "Go back."

"No! You've wrecked the stolen library property. But if-if the world is threatened, I want to help!"

"Help how, you crazy woman? Look: you go back to the Library. Find out where the immortality drug came from before the Fall of the Cities. That's the place we're looking for. If there's any way to move the world without the big motors, that's where we'll find the controls."

She shook her head. "I don't ... How can you know that?"

"It's their home base. The pro-the Ringworld engineers had to have certain plants growing somewhere close ... Tanj ... I'm guessing. I'm only guessing. Tanj dammit!" Louis held his head. It was throbbing like a big drum. "I didn't ask for any of this. I was kidnapped!"

Harkabeeparolyn swung herself out from the probe and dropped. Her coa.r.s.e blue robe was damp with sweat. She looked a good deal like Halrloprillalar. "I can help. I can read to you."

"We've got a machine for that."

She came closer. The weapon drooped as if forgotten. "We did it to ourselves, didn't we? My people took the world's steering motors for our starships. Can I help set that right?"

The Hindmost said, "Louis, the woman cannot return. The stepping disc in the first probe is still a transmitter. Is that a weapon in her hands?"

"Harkabeeparolyn, give me that."

She did. Louis held the projectile weapon awkwardly. It looked to be of Machine People make.

The Hindmost told him, "Carry it to the forward left corner of the cargo bay. The transmitter is there."

"I don't see it."

"I painted it over. Set the weapon in the corner and step back. Woman, hold your place!"

Louis obeyed. The gun disappeared. Louis almost missed a flick of motion beyond the hull as the weapon dropped onto the s.p.a.ceport ledge. The Hindmost had set a stepping-disc receiver on the outside of the hull.

Louis marveled. There were elements of Renaissance Italy in the puppeteer's paranoia.

"Good. Next -- Louis! Another!"

A brown-fuzzed scalp poked out of the probe. It was the boy from the map room, stark naked and dripping wet and on the verge of toppling out as he stretched to look about him. His eyes were big with wonder. He was just the right age for confrontation with magic.

Louis bellowed, "*Hindmost! Turn off those stepping discs now!*"

"I have. I should have earlier. Who is this?"

"A librarian child. He's got a six-syllable name and I can't remember it."

"Kawaresksenjajok," the boy shouted, smiling. "Where are we, Luweewu? What are we doing here?"

"Finagle only knows."

"Louis! I will not have these aliens on my ship!"

"If you're thinking of s.p.a.cing them, forget it. I won't allow it."

"Then they must stay in the cargo hold, and so will you. I think you planned this, you and Chmeee. I should never have trusted either of you."

"You never did."

"Repeat, please?"

"We'll starve in here."

There was a longish pause. Kawaresksenjajok dropped lithely from the probe. He and Harkabeeparolyn engaged in furious whispering.

"You may return to your cell," the Hindmost said suddenly. "They may stay here. I will leave a stepping-disc link open so that you may feed them. This may work out very well."

"How?"

"Louis, it is good that some Ringworld natives survive."

The Ringworlders weren't close enough to hear Louis's translator. He said, "You're not thinking of giving up now, are you? What's in these tapes could take us straight to the magic trans.m.u.tation device."

"Yes, Louis. And the wealth from the Maps of several worlds may be in Chmeee's hands right now. We may count on distance to protect us for two or three days, no more. We must go soon."

The natives looked around at Louis's approach. He said, "Harkabeeparolyn, help me carry the reading machine."

Ten minutes later the spools and the reading machine and the severed screen were with the Hindmost on the flight deck. Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok awaited further orders.

"You'll have to stay here for a bit," Louis told them. "I don't know just what's going to happen. I'll send you food and bedding. Trust me." He could feel the guilt in his face as he turned quickly and stepped into the corner.

A moment later he was back in his cell-pressure suit, vest, and all.

Louis stripped himself and dialed for a set of informal pajamas. Already he felt better. He was tired, but Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok had to be provided for. The kitchen would not give him blankets. He dialed for four voluminous hooded ponchos and sent them through the stepping discs.

He reached back into his memory. What did Halrloprillalar like to eat? She was an omnivore, but she preferred fresh foods. He chose provisions for them. Through the wall he watched their dubious expressions as they examined it.

He dialed for walnuts and a pedigreed Burgundy for himself. Munching and sipping, he activated the sleeping field, tumbled into it, and stretched out in free fall to think.

Lyar Building would pay for his banditry. Had Harkabeeparolyn left the superconductor cloth behind in the library to help pay for the damage? He didn't even know that.

What was Valavirgillin doing now? Frightened for her whole species, for her whole world, and with no way to do anything about it, courtesy of Louis Wu. The woman and boy in the cargo hold must be just as frightened ... and if Louis Wu died in the next few hours, they would not survive him long.

It was all part of the price. His own life was on the line too.

Step one: Get the flashlight-laser aboard Needle. Done.

Step two: Could the Ringworld be moved back into position? In the next few hours he might prove that it was not possible. It would depend on the magnetic properties of scrith.

If the Ringworld could not be saved, then flee.

If the Ringworld could be saved, then- Step three: Make a decision. Was it possible for Chmeee and Louis Wu to return alive to known s.p.a.ce? If not, then- Step four: Mutiny.

He should have left that patch of superconductor cloth in Lyar Building itself. He should have reminded the Hindmost to disconnect the probe's stepping discs. The fact was that Louis Wa had been making some poor decisions lately. It bothered him. His next moves were going to be savagely important.

But for the moment, he would steal a few hours' sleep ... to match his other thefts.