The Ringworld Throne (5 page)

“Have to try it.”

She watched him go.

She should never. Never. Never have mated with another man. Her mind, her
self
had washed away. in a tide of lust. What would Tarb think of her?

Mating with Tarablilliast had never been so intense.

But now her mind was flowing back. She
was
mated.

She lifted the towel to her face. The alcohol went straight to her head and cleared it, unless that was an illusion. She looked along the wall and saw big shadows, too few, but some. Hominid shapes in the black fields were also fewer, but very close. They were taller, more slender than her own species. They sang; they implored; they were bunched almost beneath the cruiser.

She climbed up and loaded her cannon.

A pale light was growing, lighter to spin. The song was over. Vala hadn’t heard a crossbow twang in some time. Vampires had become hard to find.

Unnoticed, the dreadful night had ended.

If she had ever been this tired, exhaustion must have wiped the memory clean. And here was Kaywerbrimmis asking, “Do you have any smallshot left?”

“Some. We never got our gravel.”

“Barok and Forn were both gone when I got back to the cruiser.”

Vala rubbed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

Whandernothtee and Sopashintay came up leaning on each other. Whand said, “What a night.”

Spash said, “Chit liked the singing overmuch. We had to tie him up. I think I put too much fuel, in his towel. He’s sleeping like ... like I would if I could just—“ She hugged herself. “—just stop jittering.”

Sleep. And several hundred Grass Giant males were expecting—“I couldn’t handle rishathra now,” Vala said. She’d put off the memory of mating with Kay. That could have consequences.

Kaywerbrimmis said, “Sleep in the cruisers. At least for tonight. Hello—“ His hand on her shoulder turned her around.

Company. Nine Grass Giants and a suit of silver armor had come among them. You could see their exhaustion, and smell it. The Thurl asked, “How is it with you Machine People?”

“Half of us are missing,” Valavirgillin said.

Whand said, “Thurl, we never expected so many. We thought we had weapons for anything.”

“Travelers tell that vampires
sing
us to our doom.”

Kay said, “Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”

“We were prepared for the wrong enemy. Vampire scent! We never guessed. But we’ve set the vampires running!” the Thurl boomed. “Shall we hunt them through the grass?”

Whand threw up his arms and staggered away.

Vala and Kay and Spash looked at each other. If Grass Giant warriors could still fight ... Whand was done, used up, but
someone
had to stand up for the Machine People.

They trailed the warriors down into the wet stubble.

Shapes stirred at the foot of the wall. Two hominids, naked. Crossbows and guns swung around. Arms batted them aside, voices barked.
No! Not vampires!
A big woman and a little male were helping each other to stand.

Not vampires, no. A Grass Giant woman and—“Barok!”

Sabarokaresh’s face was slack with a terror too deep to touch surface. He looked at Valavirgillin as if she were the ghost, not he. Half mad, dirty, exhausted, scarred, alive.

I thought -I- was tired!
Vala thumped his shoulder, glad to feel him solid under her hand. Where was his daughter? She didn’t ask. She said, “You must have quite a tale to tell. Later?”

The Thurl spoke to the crossbowman, Paroom. Paroom led / pulled Barok and the Grass Giant woman up the slope.

The Thurl moved at a trot, away from the wall, to starboard-spin. His people followed, and then the Machine People. A night of sleepless terror and wild mating had left them all without strength.

They passed vampire corpses. None of their beauty survived into death. A Grass Giant stopped to examine a female skewered by a crossbow. Spash stopped too./////////////////////////////

Vala remembered doing that, forty-three falans ago.
First you smell rotting flesh. Then the other scent explodes under your mind --

The Grass Giant lurched clear. He stayed head down, vomiting, then slowly straightened, still hiding his face. Spash straightened suddenly, then wobbled toward Vala and hid her face against her shoulder.

Valavirgillin said, “Spash. You haven’t
done
anything, love. It feels like you want to mate with a corpse, but that’s not your
mind
talking.”

“Not my mind. Vala, if we can’t examine them, we can’t learn about them!”

“It’s part of what makes them so scary.” Lust and the smell of rotting meat do not belong together in one brain.

Vampires near the wall had crossbow bolts in them. Farther out, they were chewed by balls or smallshot. Vala saw that Machine People had scored as many kills as a hundred times as many Grass Giants.

Two hundred paces beyond the wall, they weren’t finding vampires any more. Dead Grass Giants lay naked or half clothed, gaunt, with sunken eyes and cheeks, and savage wounds in their necks, wrists, elbows.

That slack face ... Vala had seen this woman run out into the dark hours ago. Where were the wounds? Her throat seemed untouched. Left arm thrown wide, wrist unmarred; right arm across her body, no blood on the rucked-up tunic ... Vala stepped forward and lifted her right hand.

Her armpit was torn and bloody. A Grass Giant man turned and wobbled back toward the wall, retching.

Big woman, small vampire. Couldn’t reach her neck. Spash is right, we have to learn.

Farther along, bright cloth lay near the grass border. Vala began to run, then stopped as suddenly. That was Taratarafasht’s work suit.

Vala picked it up. It was clean. No blood, no ground-in dirt. Why had Tarfa been brought so far? Where was she?

The Thurl had outrun his party by a good distance. He’d almost reached uncut grass. How much did that armor weigh? He scrambled up a ten-pace-high knoll, then paused at the top, waiting while the rest straggled up.

“No sign of vampires,” he said. “They’ve gone to cover somewhere. Travelers say they can’t stand sunlight ...?”

Kay said, “That tale’s true.”

The Thurl continued, “Then I’d say they’re gone.”

Nobody spoke.

The Thurl boomed, “Beedj!”

“Thurl!” A male trotted up: mature, bigger than most, eager, indecently energetic.

“With me, Beedj. Tarun, you’ll circle and meet us on the other side. If you’re not there I’ll assume you found a fight.”

“Yes.”

Beedj and the Thurl went one way, the rest of the Giants went the other. Vala dithered, then followed the Thurl.

The Thurl noticed her. He slowed and let her catch up. Beedj would have waited, too, but the Thurl’s gesture sent him on.

The Thurl said, “We won’t find live vampires hiding in the grass. Grass grows straight up. Night slides across the sun, but the sun never moves, not anymore. Where can a vampire hide from sunlight?”

Vala asked, “Do you remember when the sun moved?”

“I was a child. A frightening time.” He didn’t seem frightened enough, Vala thought. Louis Wu had been among these people; but what Louis had told Valavirgillin, he didn’t seem to have told them.

It’s a ring,
he said.
The Arch is the part of the ring you’re not standing on. The sun has started to wobble because the ring is off center. In several falans the ring will brush the sun. But I swear I will stop it, or die trying.

Later the sun had stopped wobbling.

Beedj was still jogging, stopping here and there to examine bodies; swinging his sword to cut a swath of grass to see what it hid; eating what he cut as he resumed his patrol. He was burning more energy than the Thurl. Vala had seen no challenge between them—easy command and easy submission—but she became sure that she was watching the next Thurl.

She nerved herself to ask, “Thurl, did an unknown hominid come among you claiming to be from a place in the sky?”

The Thurl stared. “In the
sky
?”

He could hardly have forgotten, but he might hide secrets. “A male wizard. Bald narrow face, bronze skin, straight black scalp hair, taller than my kind and narrow in the shoulders and hip.” Fingertips lifted and stretched the corners of her eyes. “Eyes like
this
. He boiled a sea hereabouts, to end a plague of mirror-flowers.”

The Thurl was nodding. “It was done by the old Thurl, with this Louis Wu’s help. But how do you come to know about that?”

“Louis Wu and I traveled together, far to port of here. Without sunlight the mirror-flowers couldn’t defend themselves, he said. The clouds, though, they never went away?”

“They never did. We seeded our grass, just as the wizard told us. Smeerps and other burrowers moved in well ahead of us. Wherever we went, we found mirror-flowers eaten at the roots. Grass doesn’t grow well in this murk,
 
so at first we had to eat mirror-flowers.

“The Reds who fed their herds from our grass in my father’s time, and fought us when we objected, they followed us into new grassland. Gleaners hunted the burrowers. Water People moved back up the rivers that the mirror-flowers had taken.”

“What of the vampires?”

“It seems they did well, too.”

Vala grimaced.

The Thurl said, “There was a region we all avoided. Vampires need refuge from daylight, a cave system, trees, anything. When the clouds came, they feared the sun less. They traveled farther from their lair. We know no more than that.”

“We should ask the Ghouls.”

“Do you Machine People talk to Ghouls?” The Thurl didn’t quite like that idea.

“They keep their own company. But Ghouls know where the dead have fallen. They must know where the vampires hunt, and where they hide during the day.”

“Ghouls only act at night. I would not know how to talk to a Ghoul.”

“It’s done.” Vala was trying to remember, but her mind wasn’t working well. Tired. “It’s done. A new religion pops up, or an old priest dies, and then it’s a rite of ordeal for the new shaman. The Ghouls must know and accept what rites he demands for the dead.”

The Bull nodded. Ghouls would carry out funeral rites for any religion, within obvious limits. “How, then?”

“You have to get their attention. Court them. Anything works, but they’re coy. That’s a test, too. A new priest won’t be taken seriously until he’s dealt with the Ghouls.”

The Bull was bristling. “*Court* them?”

“My people came here as merchants, Thurl. The Ghouls have something we want: knowledge. What do we have that the Ghouls want? Not much. Ghouls own the world, Arch and all, just ask them.”

“Court them.” It grated. “How?”

What had she heard? Tales told at night; not much in the way of business dealings. But she’d seen and talked to Ghouls. “Ghouls work the shadow farm under a cluster of floating buildings, far to port. We pay them in tools, and the City Builders give them library privileges. They’ll deal for information.”

“We don’t
know
anything.”

“Nearly true.”

“What else have we got?” The Thurl said, “Oh, Valavirgillin, this is nasty stuff.”

“What?”

The Thurl waved about him. In view were nearly a hundred vampire corpses, all lying near the wall, and half as many Grass Giant dead scattered from the crossbow limit to the uncut grass.

Beedj was examining a smaller corpse. He saw he had her attention, and he lifted the head so that Vala could see its face. It was Himapertharee, of Anthrantillin’s crew.

A shudder rippled along Vala’s spine. But the Thurl was right. She sad, “Ghouls must feed. More than that: if these thousand corpses were left to lie, there would be plague. All would blame the Ghouls. The Ghouls must come to clean up.”

“But why will they listen to me?”

Vala shook her head. It felt stuffed with cotton.

“What then,
after
we know where the vampires lair? Attack them ourselves?”

“The Ghouls might tell us that, too—“

The Thurl broke into a run. Vala saw Beedj waving, holding—what? At that moment he shook it violently, then flung it away, and hurled himself in the other direction. Where it fell, it writhed and went quiet, though Beedj was howling.

It was a living vampire.

Beedj called, “Thurl, I’m sorry. It was alive, wounded, just the bolt through its hip. I thought we might talk to it, examine it—anything—but—but the smell!”

“Calm yourself, Beedj. Was the smell sudden? You attack, it defends?”

“What, like a fart? Sometimes controlled, sometimes not? ... Thurl, I’m not sure.”

“Resume your patrol.”

Beedj’s sword slashed viciously at the grass. The Thurl walked on.

Vala had been thinking. She said, “You must set a delegation among the dead. A tent, a few of your men—“

“We’d find them sucked empty in the morning!”