The Swimmers had moved on, but the Sailors and their ship were still in port. They’d caught a few fish and started the fire. By halfnight the antelope was nearly done.
Half seen between the huts, tonight the window in the cliff showed the Ringworld edge-to-edge, a checked blue and white band with black sky along either edge.
Where in tanj were the fearless vampire hunters?
Louis set his assortment of roots to roast at the edge of the coals. Children and adults were abuzz with questions.
“It’s the Arch,” he told them. “Tonight the Web Dweller must be looking all the way across to the opposite edge. See, there’s the edge of the sun itself, and that’s part of one of the shadow squares that hide the sun at night. All that patchy white is clouds. No, you can’t see them moving. If they moved as fast as that, the wind would blow the landscape right off the scrith foundation! Those glittering dots and curves and lines, if you can make them out, those are seas and rivers.”
“He’s showing the stars larger, too” old Kidada said. “What’s that moving one? And, Louis, what is the Web Dweller trying to tell you?”
Off the edges of the Arch, all of the bright stars were adrift. The brightest was moving crosswise to the rest. Louis had been watching it. It slowed as it approached the rim wall. It was on the rim wall, turning a stretch of the rim into a brilliant blue-white line … and it went out.
Louis said, “He’s trying to tell me that another invader has come under the Arch.”
Parald sliced off meat and passed it to Kidada, then Sawur, then a sudden crowd. Wheek offered Louis a fish on a stick. Weavers and Sailors took their meals and moved through the huts to the cliff side.
I show you the Ringworld invaded; come and talk. I do not show you Valavirgillin alive or dead; you must ask.
Louis accepted a slice of antelope and, eating two-handed, followed Parald.
The Weavers sat on tables and the sand, watching. Sawur made room for him on a table.
Within the webeye window, a shadow square crossed the sun. Details became clearer, sharper.
Brilliant light flared on the rim wall. Over the next several minutes the point moved inward, above the Ringworld surface; dimmed; blurred; went out.
Dull stuff, but they watched. Louis wondered if Weavers would become addicted to passive entertainment.
The clouds were moving now. Vast wind patterns showed their shapes in fast-forward. A tiny pale hourglass sucked streamlines at both ends: a hurricane on its side, a meteor puncture hole.
Fast-forward, a solar prominence rose past the rim of the shadow square. A shock wave of green brilliance rose up the plume. Then a burning green star delicately touched the rim wall at the point where the earlier star had rested. The green star walked off the rim and blurred as it intersected clouds.
As the last sliver of sun vanished overhead, the Weavers all streamed off to their huts, chattering in excitement punctuated by yawns. Louis watched in astonishment. These Weavers were really diurnal.
Before the Hindmost could decide to speak in front of them, Louis strolled back to the fire. He raked two roots out of the coals.
One was acrid. One wasn’t bad. He didn’t always eat this well.
The Sailors had remained. One came to join him. “That show is for you, isn’t it?”
Louis looked back. Within the Hindmost’s window, the green star had gone out.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” Louis said. “Wheek, did he speak to you?”
“No. He frightens me.”
The Hindmost’s message seemed clear enough. Fusion drive: invading spacecraft. ARM and Patriarchy and the Fleet of Worlds all knew of the Ringworld. Each had had time to mount expeditions. Or the invader might be a returning City Builder craft, or someone else entirely.
The automatic Meteor Defense wouldn’t react if an invader moved slowly. Some entity was actively killing ships.
The killer had a problem, too. Lightspeed. The invader had landed light-minutes from the second Great Ocean, but the attack had come hours slow. A solar plume must be ejected, the superthermal laser effect must propagate along the plasma, and it all took time; but there was still that lightspeed delay. The prey might still escape.
The Hindmost would be extremely eager to find a hyperdrive ship undamaged.
Low music was playing through distant branches. Wheek had gone to his boat. Louis raked a third root from the fire. He slit it, then pushed on the ends to open it. Live steam, and a smell not too different from a sweet potato.
He wondered if he’d found wild tree-of-life. No matter. The soil wouldn’t have enough thallium; the plant wouldn’t support the virus that caused the change; and cooking would kill it anyway. Louis took his time eating, then went toward Sawur’s wicker hut.
The music seemed to grow louder. Strange stuff, with qualities of wind and humming strings. He stopped outside Sawur’s wicker hut to listen.
The music stopped. A voice said, “Will you not speak to the Web Dweller?”
“Not tonight,” Louis said, and looked around him. The voice was a child’s, with a bit of a speech impediment. Tonight was foggy, but Ringworld nights were bright, and he should have seen something, Louis thought.
“Will you show yourself?”
A nightmare rose out of low brush, too near. Lank hair covered its body, the color of the night. Big spade teeth forced an exaggerated grin. Long arms, big hands; a miniature harp in one hand.
The Ghoul seemed male, but a kilt hid that. Sparse facial hair, flat chest: a child, boy or girl.
“Nice kilt,” Louis said.
“Nice backpouch. Weaver work is loved all through the Shenthy River valley.”
Louis knew that: he had seen Weaver work tens of thousands of miles downstream. He asked, “Do you do security work for the Weavers?”
“Sec…?”
“Guard their possessions by night.”
“Yes, we stop thieves.”
“But you’re not paid for normal, ah …”
In lieu of answer—was there a word for garbage disposal plus funeral service?—the child blew into the handle of his harp while his fingers played across the holes and tweaked the strings. He played a tune on his tootling, twanging instrument, then held it out. “Do you have a name for this?”
“Illegitimate child of a harp and a kazoo. A kazarp?”
“Then I am Kazarp,” the Ghoul said. “Are you Louis Wu?”
“How–”
“We know that you boiled an ocean, far up the Arch—” Kazarp pointed. “—there. You vanish for forty-one falans, and we find you here.”
“Kazarp, your communications are awesome. How is it done?” Louis didn’t expect an answer. Ghouls had their secrets.
“Sunlight and mirrors,” Kazarp said. “Was the Web Dweller your friend once?”
“Ally. Not friend. It’s complicated.”
The pointy-faced hominid examined Louis. Louis was trying to ignore the smell of a carrion eater’s breath. The child asked, “Would you have spoken to father?”
“Maybe. How old are you?”
“Near forty falans.”
Ten years. “How old is your father?”
“A hundred fifty.”
“In falans I’m about a thousand,” Louis Wu said. He decided that the child was too easy to notice. A distraction? Was his father eavesdropping?
Well, then, how to tell this? Should he? Louis said, “The Web Dweller, the big cat, two City Builders, and me. We saved everything under the Arch.”
Kazarp said nothing. Some wanderers must be great liars, Louis thought. He said, “We had a plan. But it would kill s-s-some … it would kill many of the people we were trying to save. I’m as guilty as I thought the Web Dweller was, and I hated him for it. Now I find out that the Web Dweller saved many more than I realized.”
“Then you must thank him. And apologize?”
“I did that, Kazarp. Kazarp, I expect we’ll talk again, but my species needs sleep. If your father wants to talk, a Ghoul could certainly find me.” Louis knelt to enter the wicker house.