Part 8 (2/2)
”Even to us, we are told.”
”What about diseases? Parasites?”
None of the natives knew what he meant! Fleas, hookworm, mosquitoes, measles, gangrene: there was nothing like that on the Ringworld. Of course he should have guessed that. The Ringworld engineers just hadn't brought them. He was startled nonetheless. He wondered if he might have brought disease to the Ringworld for the first time ... and decided that he had not. The autodoc would have cured him of anything dangerous.
But the natives were that much like civilized humans. They grew old, but not sick.
Chapter 10 -.
The G.o.d Gambit Hours before nightfall, Louis was exhausted.
Ginjerofer offered them the use of a hut, but Chmeee and Louis elected to sleep in the lander. Louis fell between the sleeping plates while Chmeee was still setting up defenses.
He woke in the dead of night.
Chmeee had activated the image amplifier before he went to sleep. The landscape glowed bright as a rainy day. The daylit rectangles of the Arch were like ceiling light panels: too bright to do more than glance at. But most of the nearer Great Ocean was in shadow.
The Great Oceans lured him. They were flamboyant. They should not have been. If Louis was right about the Ringworld engineers, flamboyance was not their style. They built with simplicity and efficiency, and they planned in very long time spans, and they fought wars.
But the Ringworld was flamboyant in its own way, and impossible to defend. Why hadn't they built a lot of little Ringworlds instead? And why the Great Oceans? They didn't fit either.
He could be wrong from the start. That had happened before! Yet the evidence- Was there something moving in the gra.s.s?
Louis activated the infrared scanner.
They glowed by their own heat. They were bigger than dogs, like a blend of human and jackal: horrid supernatural things in this unnatural light. Louis spent a moment locating the sonic stun cannon in the lander's turret and another swinging it toward the interlopers. Four of them, moving on all fours through the gra.s.s.
They stopped not far from the huts. They were there for some minutes. Then they moved off, and now they were hunched half erect. Louis turned off the infrared scanner.
In augmented Archlight it was clear: they were carrying the day's garbage, the remains of the feast. Ghouls. The meat probably wasn't ripe enough for them yet.
Yellow eyes in his peripheral vision: Chmeee was wide-awake. Louis said, ”The Ringworld's old. A hundred thousand years at least.”
”What makes you say that?”
”The Ringworld engineers wouldn't have brought jackals. There's been time enough for some branch of the hominids to fit that niche in the ecology.”
”A hundred thousand years wouldn't be enough,” said Chmeee.
”It might. I wonder what else the engineers didn't bring. They didn't bring mosquitoes.”
”You are facetious. But they would not have brought bloodsuckers of any kind.”
”No. Or sharks, or cougars.” Louis laughed. ”Or skunks. What else? Venomous snakes? Mammals couldn't live like snakes. I don't think any mammals secrete poison in their mouths.”
”Louis, it would take millions of years for hominids to evolve in so many directions. We must consider whether they evolved on the Ringworld at all!”
”They did, unless I'm completely wrong. As for how long it took, there's a small matter of mathematics. If we a.s.sume they started evolving a hundred thousand years ago, from a base popu...” Louis let the sentence trail off.
A good distance away-moving at fair speed, considering their burdens-the jackal-hominids suddenly stopped, turned back, seemed to pose for a moment, then dropped into the gra.s.s and vanished. A touch of the infrared sensor showed four glowing spots fanning out and away.
”Company to spinward,” Chmeee said quietly.
The newcomers were big. They were Chmeee's size, and they weren't trying to hide. Forty bearded giants marched through the night as if they owned it. They were armed and armored. They moved in a wedge formation, with bowmen on the forward arms of the triangle and swordsmen inside, and the one fully armored man at the point. Others had plates of thick leather to guard arms and torsos, but that one, the biggest of the giants, wore metal: a gleaming sh.e.l.l that bulged at elbows, knuckles, shoulders, knees, hips. The forward-jutting mask was open, with a pale beard and wide nose showing inside.
”I was right. I was right all along. But why a Ringworld? Why did they build a Ringworld? How in Finagle's Name did they expect to defend it?”
Chmeee finished swinging the stun cannon around. ”Louis, what are you talking about?”
”The armor. Look at the armor. Haven't you ever been in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute? And you saw the pressure suits in the Ringworlder s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.”
”Uurrr ... yes. We have a more immediate problem.”
”Don't shoot yet. I want to see ... Yeah, I was right. They're going past the village.”
”Would you say that the little red ones are our allies? It was only coincidence that we met them first.”
”I'd say they are. Tentatively.”
The microphone picked up a high-pitched scream, interrupted by a bellow. The archers drew arrows simultaneously, fitted them to bows. Two small red sentries were bounding toward the huts at impressive speed. They were ignored.
”Fire,” Louis said softly.
The arrows went wild. The giants crumpled. Two or three green elephants bellowed and tried to get to their feet, paused, then settled back. One had a couple of arrows in its flank.
”They were after the herd,” Chmeee said.
”Yeah. We don't really want them slaughtered, do we? Tell you what, you stay here with the stun cannon and I'll go out and negotiate.”
”I don't take your orders, Louis.”
”Do you have other suggestions?”
”No. Save at least one giant to answer questions.”
This one had fallen on his back. He was not just bearded, he was maned: only his eyes and nose showed in a ma.s.s of golden hair that spilled over face and head and shoulders. Ginjerofer squatted and forced his mouth open with two small hands. The warrior's jaw was ma.s.sive. His teeth were flat-topped molars, well worn down. All of them.
”See,” Ginjerofer said, ”a plant-eater. They wanted to kill the herd, to take their gra.s.s.”
Louis shook his head. ”I wouldn't have thought the compet.i.tion would be so fierce.”
”We didn't know. But they come from spinward, where our herds have cropped the gra.s.s close. Thank you for killing them, Louis. We must have a great feast.”
Louis's stomach lurched. ”They're only sleeping. And they've got minds, like you, like me.”
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