The Ringworld Engineers Part 36

"With a protector in his ship, just a wall away?"

"Didn't he have a kzin trapped in that same room? That wall is General Products huff. I'd say the Hindmost reached to turn off the stepping discs. He was a little slow."

Chmeee thought it over. "We have the disintegrator."

"And only two flying belts. Let's see, how far are we from Needle? Around two thousand miles, almost back the way we came. Futz."

"What does a human do for a broken arm?"

"Splint." Louis got up. It was not easy to keep moving. He found a length of aluminum bar and had to be reminded what he wanted it for. They had nothing for bindings but superconductor cloth. Harkabeeparolyn's arm was swelling ominously. Louis bound her arm. He used the black thread to sew st.i.tches where Chmeee had been most deeply gashed.

They could both die without treatment, and there wasn't any treatment. And Louis might sit down and die, the way he was feeling. Keep moving. Futz, it won't hurt any less if you stop moving. You've got to get over this sometime. Why not now?

"Got to rig a sling between the flying belts. What can we use? Superconductor isn't strong enough."

"We must find something. Louis, I am too badly wounded to scout."

"We don't need to. Help me get this suit off Harkabeeparolyn."

He used the laser. He cut away the front of the pressure suit. He sliced the loose fabric into strips. He punched holes around the edges of what was left of the suit, and threaded strips of the rubberized fabric through it. The other ends he tied to the straps of his flying belt.

The suit had become a Harkabeeparolyn-shaped sling. They put her back into it. She was docile now, but she wouldn't speak.

Chmeee said, "Clever."

"Thank you. Can you fly?"

"I don't know."

"Try it. If you have to drop out and you feel better later, you'll still have a flying belt. Maybe we'll find a landmark big enough that I can come back for you and find you again."

They set off down the corridor that had brought them here. Chmeee's gashes were bleeding again, and Louis knew he was hurting. Three minutes into their journey they came to a disc six feet across, floating a foot in the air and piled with gear. They settled beside it.

"We might have known. Teela's cargo disc, by another of those interesting coincidences," Louis said.

"Another part of her game?"

"Yeah. If we lived, we'd find it." Everything on the disc was strange to the eye, alien, except a heavy box whose bolts had been melted off. "Do you remember this? It's the medical kit off Teela's flycycle.

"It won't help a kzin. And the medicines are twenty-three Earth years old."

"Better than nothing, for her. You, you've got allergy pills, and there's nothing here to infect you. We're not close enough to the Map of Kzin to get kzinti bacteria."

The kzin looked bad. He shouldn't have been standing up. He asked, "Can you learn these controls? I don't trust myself to try them."

Louis shook his head. "Why bother? You and Harkabeeparolyn get on the disc. It's already floating. I'll tow it. You sleep."

"Good."

"Get her attached to the pocket 'doc first. And tie yourselves to the control post, both of you."

Chapter 33 -.

1.5 X 10 EXP 12.

Both of them slept through the next thirty hours while Louis towed the disc. His ribs on the right side were one great red-and-purple bruise.

He stopped when he saw that Harkabeeparolyn was awake.

She babbled of the terrible compulsion that had gripped her, of the horror and delight of the insidious evil that was tree-of-life. Louis had been trying not to think about it. She waxed poetic as h.e.l.l, and she wouldn't shut up, and Louis wouldn't tell her to. She needed to talk.

She wanted the comfort of Louis's arms around her, and he could give her that too.

He also hooked Teela's old 'doc to his own arm for an hour. When the agony in his ribs had receded a little, and when he felt a little less woozy, he gave it back. There was still enough pain to distract him from a smell that was still with him. His flying belt might have brushed against tree-of-life. Or else ... perhaps it was in his head. Forever.

Chmeee had grown delirious. Louis made Harkabeeparolyn wear Chmeee's impact armor. Teela had torn it open in the fight, but it was better than skin for a woman who planned to lie next to a delirious kzin.

The armor probably saved her life at least once, when Chmeee slashed at her because she looked too much like Teela. She tended the kzin as best she could, feeding him water and nutrient from her pressure-suit helmet. By the fourth day Chmeee was rational, but still weak ... and ravenous. The syrup in a human's pressure suit wasn't enough.

It took them four days in all to reach the approximate position of Needle, and another day cutting through walls until they found a solid block of fused basalt.

A week after it had solidified, the rock was still warm. Louis left his floating disc and pa.s.sengers far down the tunnel down which Teela had towed Needle. He had his pressure-suit helmet on, with clean air blowing into it, when he held the disintegrator two-handed and pressed the trigger.

A hurricane of dust blew back at him. A tunnel formed ahead of him, and he walked into it.

There was nothing to see, and no sound but the howl of basalt disintegrating and blowing past him, and lightning somewhere behind him where the electron charges were rea.s.serting their prerogatives. Just how much lava had Teela poured? It seemed he'd been at this for hours.

He b.u.mped into something.

Yeah. He was looking through a window into a strange place. A living room, with couches and a floating coffee table. But everything looked soft, somehow; there wasn't a sharp edge or a hard surface anywhere-nothing that any living thing could b.u.mp a knee against. Through a further window he could see huge buildings, and a glimpse of black sky between. Pierson's puppeteers swarmed in the streets. Everything was upside down.

That which he had taken for one of the couches wasn't. Louis used his flashlight-laser at low intensity. He flicked it on and off. For a good minute nothing happened. Then a flattish white head and neck, emerging to drink from a shallow bowl, jerked in amazement and darted back under its belly.

Louis waited.

The puppeteer stood up. He led Louis around the hull-slowly, because Louis had to make his path with the disintegrator-to where he had placed a stepping-disc transmitter on the outside of the hull. Louis nodded. He went back for his companions.

Ten minutes later he was inside. Eleven minutes later, he and Harkabeeparolyn were eating like kzinti. Chmeee's hunger was beyond description. Kawaresksenjajok watched him in awe. Harkabeeparolyn hadn't even noticed.

Ship's morning, for a s.p.a.cecraft buried in congealed lava, tens of miles beneath the sunlight.

"Our medical facilities are crippled," the Hindmost said. "Chmeee and Harkabeeparolyn must heal as best they can."

He was on the flight deck, speaking via the intercom system; and that might or might-not have been significant. Teela was gone, and the Ringworld might survive. The puppeteer suddenly had a long, long life span to protect. Rubbing shoulders with aliens was contraindicated.

"I have lost contact with both the lander and the probe," the puppeteer said. "The meteor defense flared at about the time the lander stopped sending, for whatever significance that may have. Signals from the damaged probe stopped just after Teela Brown tried to invade Needle."

Chmeee had slept (on the water bed, quite alone) and eaten. His restored pelt would bear interesting scars once again, but the wounds were healing. He said, "Teela must have destroyed the probe as soon as she saw it. She could not force herself to leave a dangerous enemy behind her."

"Behind her? Who?"

"Hindmost, she called you more dangerous than a kzin. A tactical ploy, to insult us both, no doubt."

"Did she indeed." Two flat heads looked into each other's eyes for a moment. "Well. Our resources have dwindled to Needle itself and a single probe. We left that probe on a peak near the floating city. It still has working sensors, and I have signaled it to return, in case we think of a use for it. We should have it available in six local days.

"Meanwhile we seem to have our original problem back, with additional clues and additional complications. How to restore the Ringworld's stability? We believe that we are in the right place to begin," the Hindmost said. "Don't we? Teela's behavior, inconsistent for a being of acknowledged intelligence ..."

Louis Wu made no comment. Louis was quiet this morning.

Kawaresksenjajok and Harkabeeparolyn sat cross-legged against a wall, close enough that their arms were touching. Harkabeeparolyn's arm was padded and in a sling. From time to time the boy glanced at her. She puzzled and worried him. She was running on painkillers, of course, but that wasn't enough to account for her torpor. Louis knew he ought to talk to the boy ... if he knew what to say.

The City Builders had slept in the cargo hold. Fear of falling would have kept Harkabeeparolyn out of the sleeping field in any case. She had offered rishathra, without urgency, when Louis joined them for breakfast. "But be careful of my arm, Luweewu."

Refusing s.e.x took tact in Louis's culture. He had told her that he was afraid of jarring her arm, which he was. It was equally true that he couldn't seem to work up an interest. He wondered if tree-of-life had affected him so. But he sensed no l.u.s.t in himself for yellow roots, nor even for a wire trickling electric current.

This morning he seemed to have no strong urges at all.

Fifteen hundred billion people ...

The Hindmost said, "Let us accept Louis's judgment regarding Teela Brown. Teela brought us here. Her intent matched our own. She gave us as many clues as she could. But what clues? She was fighting both sides of a battle. Was it important for her to create three more protectors, then kill two of them? Louis?"

Louis, lost in thought, felt four sharp points p.r.i.c.k his skin above the carotid artery. He said, "Sorry?"

The Hindmost started to repeat himself. Louis shook his head violently. "She killed them with the meteor defense. She fired the meteor defense, twice, at targets other than our vitally necessary selves. We were allowed to watch it without being in stasis at the time. Just another message."

Chmeee asked, "Do you a.s.sume that she could have chosen other weapons?"

"Weapons, times, circ.u.mstances, number of operating protectors-she had considerable choice."

"Are you playing games with us now, Louis? If you know something, why not tell us?"

Louis's guilty glance at the City Builders showed Harkabeeparolyn trying to stay awake, Kawaresksenjajok listening intently. A pair of self-elected heroes waiting their chance to help save the world. Tanj. He said, "One point five trillion people."

"To save twenty-eight point five trillion, and ourselves."

"You didn't get to know them, Chmeee. Not as many, anyway. I was hoping one of you would think of this. I've been thrashing around in my head trying to see some-"

"Know them? Know who?"

"Valavirgillin. Ginjerofer. The king giant. Mar Korssil. Laliskareerlyar and Fortaralisplyar. Herders, Gra.s.s Giants, Amphibians, Hanging People, Night People, Night Hunters ... We're supposed to kill 5 percent to save 95 percent. Don't those numbers sound familiar to you?"

It was the puppeteer who answered. "The Ringworld's att.i.tude jet system is 5 percent functional. Teela's repair crew remounted them over 5 percent of the arc of the Ringworld. Are these the people who must die, Louis? The people on that arc?"

Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok stared in disbelief. Louis spread his arms, helpless. "I'm sorry."

The boy cried, "Luweewu! Why?"

"I promised," said Louis. "If I hadn't promised maybe I'd have a decision to make. I told Valavirgillin I'd save the Ringworld no matter what it took. I promised I'd save her, too, if I could, but I can't. We don't have time to find her. The longer we wait, the bigger the force pushing the Ringworld off center. So she's on the arc. So's the floating city, and the Machine People empire, and the little red carnivores and the Gra.s.s Giants. So they die."

Harkabeeparolyn beat the heels of her hands together. "But this is everyone we know in the world, even by reputation!"

"Me too."

"But this leaves nothing worth saving! Why must they die? How?"

"Dead is dead," said Louis. Then, "Radiation poisoning. Fifteen hundred billion people of twenty or thirty species. But only if we do everything exactly right. First we have to find out where we are."

The Puppeteer asked reasonably, "Where do we need to be?"

"Two places. Places that control the meteor defense. We have to be able to guide the plasma jets, the solar flares. And we have to disconnect the subsystem that causes the plasma jet to lase."

"I have already found these places," the Hindmost said. "While you were gone, the meteor defense fired, possibly to destroy the lander. Magnetic effects scrambled half my sensor equipment. Nonetheless I traced the origin of the impulse. The ma.s.sive currents in the Ringworld floor that make and manipulate solar flares derive from a point beneath the north pole of the Map of Mars."

Chmeee said, "Perhaps the equipment must be cooled-"

"Futz that! What about the laser effect?"

"Activity there came hours later: smaller electrical effects, patterned. I told you of this source. It is just over our heads, by ship's orientation."

"I take it we must disconnect this system," Chmeee said.

Louis snorted. "It's easy. I could do it with a flashlight-laser or a bomb or the disintegrator. Learning how to make solar flares will be the hard part. The controls probably weren't designed for idiots, and we don't have too much time."

"And afterward?"

"Then we put a blowtorch against inhabited land."

"Louis! Details!"

He would be speaking a death sentence for a score of species.

Kawaresksenjajok wouldn't show his face. Harkabeeparolyn's face was set like stone. She said, "Do what you must."

He did. "The att.i.tude jet system is only 5 percent operational."

Chmeee waited.

"Operating fuel is hot protons streaming from the sun. The solar wind."

The puppeteer said, "Ah. We flare the sun to multiply the fuel intake by a factor of twenty. Life forms beneath the flare die or mutate drastically. Thrust increases by the same factor. The att.i.tude jets either take us to safety or explode."

"We don't really have time to redesign them, Hindmost."