Part 10 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+rt 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.”