The priest was transparently puzzled. "You ask information from me? You, an Engineer?"
"I'm not an Engineer." Louis held his hand ready to activate the sonic fold.
But the priest only looked more bewildered. "Then why are you half-hairless? How do you fly? Have you stolen secrets from Heaven? What do you want here? Have you come to steal my congregation?"
The last question seemed the important one. "We're on our way to the rim. All we need here is information."
"Surely your answers are in Heaven."
"Don't be flippant with me," Louis said evenly.
"But you came directly from Heaven! I saw you!"
"Oh, the castle! We've gone through the castle, but it didn't tell us much. For instance, were the Engineers really hairless?"
"I have sometimes thought that they only shave, as I do. Yet your own chin seems naturally hairless."
"I depilate." Louis looked about him, at the sea of reverent golden flower-faces. "What do they believe? They don't seem to share your doubts."
"They see us talking as equals, in the language of the Engineers. I would have this continue, if it please you." Now the priest's manner seemed conspiratorial rather than hostile.
"Would that improve your standing with them? I suppose it would," said Louis. The priest really had feared to lose his congregation — as any priest might, if his god came to life and tried to take over. "Can't they understand us?"
"Perhaps one word in ten."
At this point Louis had cause to regret the efficiency of his translator disc. He could not tell if the priest was speaking the language of Zignamuclickclick. Knowing that, knowing how far the two languages had diverged since the breakdown in communications, he might have been able to date the fall of civilization.
"What was this castle called Heaven?" he asked. "Do you know?"
"The legends speak of Zrillir," said the priest, "and of how he ruled all the lands under Heaven. On this pedestal stood Zrillir's statue, which was life-sized. The lands supplied Heaven with delicacies which I could name if you like, as we learn their names by rote; but in these days they do not grow. Shall I?"
"No thanks. What happened?"
A singsong quality had crept into the man's voice. He must have heard this tale many times, and told it many times . . .
"Heaven was made when the Engineers made the world and the Arch. He who rules Heaven rules the land from edge to edge. So Zrillir ruled, for many lifetimes, throwing sunfire from Heaven when he was displeased. Then it was suspected that Zrillir could no longer throw sunfire.
"The people no longer obeyed him. They did not send food. They pulled down the statue. When Zrillir's angels dropped rocks from the heights, the people dodged and laughed.
"There came a day when the people tried to take Heaven by way of the rising stairway. But Zrillir caused the stairway to fall. Then his angels left Heaven in flying cars.
"Later it was regretted that we had lost Zrillir. The sky was always overcast; crops grew stunted. We have prayed for Zrillir's return."
"How accurate is all this, do you think?"
"I would have denied it all until this morning, when you came flying down from Heaven. You make me terribly uneasy, O Engineer. Perhaps Zrillir does indeed intend to return, and sends his bastard ahead to clear the way of false priests."
"I could shave my scalp. Would that help?"
"No. Never mind; ask your questions."
"What can you tell me about the fall of Ringworld civilization?"
The priest looked still more uneasy. "Is civilization about to fall?"
Louis sighed and — for the first time — turned to consider the altar.
The altar occupied the center of the pedestal on which they stood. It was of dark wood. Its flat rectangular surface had been carved into a relief map, with hills and rivers and a single lake, and two upward-turning edges. The other pair of edges, the short edges, were the bases of a golden paraboloid arch.
The gold of that arch was tarnished. But from the curve of its apex a small golden ball hung by a thread; and that gold was highly polished.
"Is civilization in danger? So much has happened. The sunwire, your own coming — is it sunwire? Is the sun falling on us?"
"I strongly doubt it. You mean the wire that's been falling all morning?"
"Yes. In our religious training we were taught that the sun hangs from the Arch by a very strong thread. This thread is strong. We know," said the priest. "A girl tried to pick it up and undo a tangle, and it cut through her fingers."
Louis nodded. "Nothing's falling," he said. Privately he thought: Not even the shadow squares. Even it you cut all the wires, the squares wouldn't hit the Ringworld. The Engineers would have given them an orbital aphelion inside the Ring.
He asked, without much hope, "What do you know about the transport system at the rim?" And in that instant he knew something was wrong. He'd caught something, some evidence of disaster; but what?
The priest said, "Would you mind repeating that?"
Louis did.
The priest answered, "Your thing that talks said something else the first time. Something about a restricted something."
"Funny," said Louis. And this time he heard it. The translator spoke in a different tone of voice, and it spoke at length.
"'You are using a restricted wavelength in violation -' I do not remember the rest," said the priest. "We had best end this interview. You have reawakened something ancient, something evil -" The priest stopped to listen, for Lou s translator was speaking again in the priest's language. "- 'in violation of edict twelve, interfering with maintenance.' Can your powers hold back -"
Whatever else the priest said was not translated.
For the disc suddenly turned red hot in Louis's hand. He instantly threw it as hard as he could. It was white hot and brightly glowing when it hit the pavement — without hurting anyone, as far as he could see. Then the pain backlashed him and he was half-blinded by tears.
He was able to see the priest nod to him, very formal and regal.
He nodded back, his face equally expressionless. He had never dismounted his 'cycle; now he touched the control and rose toward Heaven.
When his face could not be seen he let it snarl with the pain, and he used a word he had heard once on Wunderland, from a man who had dropped a piece of Steuben crystal a thousand years old.
CHAPTER 17 — The Eye of The Storm
The 'cycles were moving to port when they left Heaven, beneath the steel-gray lid that in these regions served as a sky. It had saved their lives above the sunflower fields. By now it was merely depressing.
Louis touched three points on the dash to lock into his present altitude. He had to watch what he was doing, because there was very little feeling in his right hand under the medicines and the spray-skin and the single white blister on each fingertip. He regarded his hand now, thinking how much worse it might have been …
Speaker appeared above the dash. "Louis, do we not wish to rise above the clouds?"
"We might miss something. We can't see the ground from up there."
"We have our maps."
"Would they show us another sunflower field?"
"You are right," Speaker said instantly. He clicked off.
Speaker and Teela, waiting in Heaven's map room while Louis braced a shaven priest far below, had spent the time well. They had sketched contour maps of their route to the rim wall, and had also sketched in the cities that showed as bright yellow patches in the magnifying screen.
Then something had taken exception to their use of a reserved frequency. Reserved by whom, for what purpose, how long ago? Why had it not objected until now? Louis suspected an abandoned machine, like the meteor guard that had shot down the Liar. Perhaps this one worked only intermittently, in spasms.