Ringworld's Children (16 page)

It seemed an astonishing suggestion. "Why would I?"

"Across the entire Ringworld Roxanny Gauthier is your only possible mate. You don't have a plan of your own, do you?"

Louis shrugged.

Acolyte asked, "Have you noticed that we have an audience?"

Louis looked around.

The ARMs, upstream, were waist deep and still talking, their body language gone conspiratorial. Louis had to pull his gaze away from her breasts. Wembleth was onshore, on his back on a warm flat rock, soaking up sunlight. Black birds whirled above the puffball forest, and a pair of horn-bearing quadrupeds were watching it all suspiciously.

"I don't see anything human."

Acolyte said, "Seven hominids. Three men, four women. I found them by smell. We should decide--"

Something had Wembleth's attention. Wembleth stood up. He shouted into the woods.

A man stepped forth. He walked past the horned beasts; the beasts didn't run. The man stopped a dozen yards from Wembleth. He spoke. His hands were at his side, conspicuous. So were Wembleth's.

They were both naked. The man towered over Wembleth. He'd be taller than Acolyte, eight feet or a little less, and as slender as the trees around them. Every part of him was elongated... but not his head. His jaw was strong and square. The hair on his head was the same color as the forest's puffball tops.

Naked in running water, the ARMs seemed at a loss. They waded upstream toward Louis and Acolyte.

"They haven't drawn their weapons," Hanuman murmured. "Louis, will they stay calm?"

He meant the ARMs, of course. Louis said, "Don't know. Someone has to tell them about rishathra."

Wembleth and the stranger were talking freely now.

Claus came in earshot. He asked, "Any suggestions?"

"Wembleth is doing fine," Louis said. "Let him talk for us. There are more locals."

"Where?"

Acolyte said, "In the trees." He pointed. "There, all six."

"He looks like a giraffe," Claus laughed.

Roxanny said, "Or a lunie." It was a rebuff.

Luis Tamasan would never have seen a citizen of Luna. Louis said, "They'll be peaceful. Look at the jaw: he's an herbivore. Probably picks fruit from these trees. We have to decide--"

"Tanj that. Our translators have to hear them." Claus waded out. The others trailed after him. Claus picked up his skintight to wipe himself dry, then dropped it, and picked up his back-pouch. If nakedness was good enough for the strangers, then Claus didn't need clothes; but the pouch held his translator, and maybe a weapon too.

Six tall, slender humanoids emerged from the tall, slender trees.
Rishathra? We still have to tell the ARMs.

Wembleth talked rapidly, waving at Acolyte and Hanuman. The tall hominids bowed deeply, and went on talking to Wembleth. Louis and Roxanny fished out their translators and joined the group.

The ARM translators were picking up some speech. It was close to what they'd learned from Wembleth, though this local language would be a long way separated from any speech heard near the Great Ocean.

Wembleth suddenly turned to Roxanny. His speech sounded no different, but the translators all reacted. "They want to know what your kind does about--" something that didn't translate. "What shall I tell them?"

Roxanny asked, "What is it?"

Wembleth tried to explain. The activity that makes women bear children? But between different kinds it doesn't? Claus and Roxanny listened, then turned to Luis for help.

Louis said, "He's using a different word, but it means rishathra. Rishathra is sex practiced outside your species but between intelligent hominids. Not a word you'd need--"

"Smart-ass boy." Claus was not amused.

It dawned on Louis that he was afraid of Claus. "No joke, Claus. It's the first thing you need to know about a new species. Look, you can always say you're mated. Monogamous."

Claus was looking at the four women. They were as tall as the men, eight feet or just under. Not lunies, not giraffes:
Elves.
They were staring as frankly as the men; but the men were looking at Roxanny, who was blushing. Louis realized he'd blushed too.

He said, "Wembleth, tell them Acolyte is not our kind at all. He doesn't rish."

Wembleth talked. One of the women laughed. Louis's translator picked up her "Think not!"

Louis said, "But we need to decide. Claus? Roxanny?"

Claus demanded, "Luis, have
you
done this?"

"Sure!" What would
Luis
say? An adolescent wouldn't admit to being a virgin! He'd exaggerate--"With more than one species--nothing like these--but I've heard more than that. Why not?" He couldn't quite look at Roxanny, or Claus either. "It's friendly, it's safe, you can't get pregnant. Infections don't usually cross the species boundary. And who else is there for me? Human women were just rumors, as far away as the stars."

Wembleth exclaimed, "Same for me! I was a lost one too. Claus, why are you having trouble with this thought? When folk meet, they always ask this question first. Some kinds use reshtra for birth control. Water dwellers--well, to them it is a joke, unless you can hold your breath far too long. Some species can't resh, or mate with any but a life partner. Some oddly shaped ones don't expect reshtra--rishathra?--only ask for politeness. Some insist. Roxanny, can't you see the Hinsh are puzzled? It's because you haven't answered."

Louis said, "Luis" being wistful, "I'd like to meet a City Builder. They're supposed to be really good at it. They built trading empires around rishathra. They even tried to go interstellar."

Claus was grinning. "What if we say no?"

"I can do that for you," Wembleth said immediately. He began to speak Hinsh.

Claus said, "Hold up, Wembleth. I'll
do
it," his eyes flicking toward Roxanny, then away.

Wembleth asked, "In company, or only two?"

Claus was startled. "Um. Company. I wouldn't know what to say to just, just one."

Roxanny Gauthier stepped close to Wembleth. She spoke fast and low. Wembleth nodded. He changed language. Now the translators were picking up a few words of Hinsh speech.

One of the women bent far over. Her long fingers wrapped around a cantaloupe-sized yellow fruit. She bit into it, rind and all, then broke it and offered pieces to Wembleth, then Claus, then the other Hinsh. Wembleth broke his further and offered fruit to Louis and Roxanny. Louis realized that they were labeling themselves. Claus and Wembleth would rish with the women, Louis and Roxanny would not. Hanuman was getting his own fruit: he would not rish.

The fruit was red inside. It tasted a little like berries.

The others took it as a signal when the strangers ate: they feasted. There was fruit all around them. They were herbivores, all right: they needed to eat a lot. They fed Wembleth and Claus, and moved into more intimate contact.

Roxanny turned her back and walked away.

Louis picked up a melon, broke it on his knee--tanj, why not?--and followed her. He had hoped to court Roxanny's attention.

She turned and waited; looked down, grinned up at him, and said, "I told Wembleth to tell them we're courting." She took half the melon and ate.

Then she stepped into him, on tiptoe, half a head taller than he, and slid the length of her down his body until she was kneeling.

With a hoarse shout, Louis pushed her into the grass and entered her.

It was not the way he would ever have treated a woman. Roxanny was astonished. She wasn't quite ready, either, but she wrapped her arms and legs around him and made him prisoner again. Louis Wu's mind went away.

When he came to himself again, he was babbling, and he wondered if he had blurted secrets. Roxanny, still holding him prisoner in the grip of her legs, was laughing. "Boy, you are eager!"

And the Hinsh had moved to surround them.

The women knelt to rish. When they mated with their men, both knelt. The men watched the strangers with their women and made graphic half-translated commentary. They found short men funny. Wembleth, the shortest, was funniest. They learned he was ticklish.

"I'm sorry, Roxanny. I lost control of myself," Louis said. It felt like he'd mated with one of the Ringworld bloodsuckers: it was that mindless, that intense. He dared not tell her about that!

She patted his cheek. "Refreshing. Nine years to go on my implant, and it's a tanj good thing."

"I'm fertile," Louis said.

" 'Course you are." She stood up, her back to him, fists on hips. "I didn't buy it. Rishathra? You haven't told me every last bit of the truth, Luis. But... shall we join them?"

What? "We're mated! You'd shock them!"

Roxanny picked up a melon, broke it in half, and offered it to an elf.

The elf was shocked. Then he laughed, knelt, and swept her against him. Louis flushed... and picked up a melon.

By dusklight--too dark to tell which fruits were perfectly ripe--the Hinsh broke off eating and rishing and mating to introduce themselves: an odd reversal of order. Their names were long and formidable.

Wembleth took Louis aside and said, "The Hinsh are like others where I have traveled. If strangers plan to stay a short time, they use short names, quick to learn. This can mean,
go away soon.
But do you see all this fruit? The wind shook hundreds of manweights of fruit to the ground. Every stranger eating means less fruit left to rot. We are welcome."

Louis
felt
welcome. But rishathra was not sex. His body knew. His body wanted Roxanny.

And Claus wanted his blood.

Night on the Ringworld was rarely too dark to see. The Hinsh didn't want sleep; they conversed. The ARMs mostly listened.

Louis asked about the horned beasts. "The grass eaters? They don't bother us, we don't bother them," a man said. Of the sky he said, "The stars used to hold their course. We could use them to tell time, if we wished. Now they're loose, wandering across the sky. Only the Vashneesht know why." They spoke of the crops they'd left behind, and of the weather. Dull people, really.

They talked about the sudden wild winds.

"The climate will change," Louis told his lady companion, whose name he'd memorized as Szeblinda. His translator would fish out all eight syllables. "You may have to follow the pufftop forests as they die off to antispin. Carry melons and drop the seeds where you want more. Other folk may be running away from the disaster. You'll have to deal with them when they get here."

"Will you stay with us, to advise?"

"We have to move faster than that. We're trying to solve it
all,"
Louis told her.

In the morning Louis found himself on a grassy hill. He stood to look about him.

The flycycles hadn't been moved from their place on the river's shore. Acolyte slept between them. Hanuman and the Earth folk were nowhere visible. The Hinsh had departed. Downslope toward the river were melon trees and broken melon shells. A puddle of orange-and-chocolate fur beside the pool had to be Acolyte.

He walked on down.

He expected the Kzin to wake as he approached, but Acolyte didn't move. His sides moved. Good: the Kzin was breathing. Now, what mischief were the ARMs up to?

Louis took a flycycle aloft.

Claus and Roxanny were on the other side of the creek, behind a hill. They were working with the heavy oblong brick she'd stowed in Louis's baggage compartment. It unfolded into something like a holoscreen keypad: the library from their little spacecraft.

Wembleth and Hanuman were peering past them into the hologram display. Roxanny saw Louis and waved. He waved back.

That didn't look like they were keeping secrets. Louis returned to the pool.

Acolyte was sitting up, stretching. He looked around him. "Where is everyone?"

"Across the river. Are you all right?"

"Well fed and well slept out. I found a small deer or something. Louis, nobody told me not to gorge. We should have arranged to stand watch."

Louis stretched. "I wondered if they'd stunned you. Hey, I slept as well as you did. The ARMs are doing something tricky, I think, but Hanuman's watching them. Shall we see?"

They took a flycycle across.

Claus awaited their descent. He said, "Luis, Acolyte, I want to interview both of you as to what you saw at the puncture. Any objection?"

Louis thought of objections, but none that Luis could back up. "Show us how it works," he said.

"Just the Kzin first," Claus said.

"We'll help each other," Louis said, and Acolyte rumbled agreement. Then Wembleth too wanted to participate. That allowed the three to play off each other in an interview that became an animated conversation.

Louis gambled that the ARMs didn't have equipment to detect lies in the tremor of a voice.
Gray Nurse
or another in the ARM fleet might.

As to what "Luis" had seen, Louis stuck close to the truth. They had been indoors: they'd missed the explosion (and Luis knew nothing of industrial antimatter). As he and Acolyte arrived from... somewhere... a great light had appeared, not much brighter than the sun, but huge. Then a glare-yellow doughnut the size of a mountain range lay blocking the region they had come to see.

He was asked about his background. He invented, but kept it terse. A twenty-year-old wouldn't have centuries of memories; he wouldn't tell stories well, and he'd be a bit shy around elders. Acolyte, who really was only twelve, was able to stick to his own memories, because Chiron (Luis said) had never confronted the half-grown Kzin. Luis speculated aloud whether the puppeteer was afraid.

And the library fascinated all three interviewees.