“I do. You tried to tell me that we could improve interspecies relationships. All we need do was let a team of human reporters go through the museum with holo cameras.”
Louis smiled, remembering. “So I did.”
“I had my doubts.”
The House of the Patriarch’s Past had been both grand and grandiose: a huge, sprawling building formed from thick slabs of volcanic rock fused at the edges. It was all angles, and there were laser cannon mounted in four tall towers. The rooms went on and on. It had taken Chmeee and Louis two days to go through it.
The Patriarch’s official past went a long way back. Louis had seen ancient sthondat thighbones with grips worked into them, clubs used by primitive kzinti. He’d seen weapons that could have been classed as hand cannons; few humans could have lifted them. He’d seen silver-plated armor as thick as a safe door, and a two-handed ax that might have chopped down a mature redwood. He’d been talking about letting a human reporter tour the place when they came upon Harvey Mossbauer.
Harvey Mossbauer’s family had been killed and eaten during the Fourth Man–Kzin War. Many years after the truce and after a good deal of monomaniacal preparation, Mossbauer had landed alone and armed on Kzin. He had killed four kzinti males and set off a bomb in the harem of the Patriarch before the guards managed to kill him. They were hampered, Chmeee had explained, by their wish to get his hide intact.
“You call that intact?”
“But he fought. How he fought! There are tapes. We know how to honor a brave and powerful enemy, Louis.”
The stuffed skin was so scarred that you had to look twice to tell its species; but it was on a tall pedestal with a hullmetal plaque, and there was nothing around it but floor. Your average human reporter might have misunderstood, but Louis got the point. “I wonder if I can make you understand,” he said, twenty years later, a wirehead kidnapped and robbed of his droud, “how good it felt, then, to know that Harvey Mossbauer was human.”
“It is good to reminisce, but we were talking of current addiction,” Chmeee reminded him.
“Happy people don’t become current addicts. You have to actually go and get the plug implanted. I felt good that day. I felt like a hero. Do you know where Halrloprillalar was at that time?”
“Where was she?”
“The government had her. The ARM. They had lots of questions, and there wasn’t a tanj thing I could do about it. She was under my protection. I took her back to Earth with me—”
“She had you by the glands, Louis. It’s good that kzinti females aren’t sentient. You would have done anything she asked. She asked to see human space.”
“Sure, with me as native guide. It just didn’t happen. Chmeee, we took the Long Shot and Halrloprillalar home, and we turned them over to a Kzin and Earth coalition, and that’s the last we’ve seen of either one. We couldn’t even talk about it to anyone.”
“The second quantum hyperdrive motor became a Patriarch’s Secret.”
“It’s Top Secret to the United Nations, too. I don’t think they even told the other governments of human space, and they made it tanj clear I’d better not talk. And of course the Ringworld was part of the secret, because how could we have got there without the Long Shot? Which makes me wonder,” Louis said, “how the Hindmost expects to reach the Ringworld. Two hundred light-years from Earth—more, from Canyon—at three days to the light-year if he uses this ship. Do you think he’s got another Long Shot hovering somewhere?”
“You will not distract me. Why did you have a wire implanted?” Chmeee crouched, claws extended. Maybe it was a reflex, beyond conscious control—maybe.
“I left Kzin and went home,” Louis said. “I couldn’t get the ARM to let me see Prill. If I could have got a Ringworld expedition together, she would have had to go as native guide, but, tanj! I couldn’t even talk about it except to the government…and you. You weren’t interested.”
“How could I leave? I had land and a name and children coming. Kzinti females are very dependent. They need care and attention.”
“What’s happening to them now?”
“My eldest son will administer my holdings. If I leave him too long he will fight me to keep them. If—Louis! Why did you become a wirehead?”
“Some clown hit me with a tasp!”
“Urrr?”
“I was wandering through a museum in Rio when somebody made my day from behind a pillar.”
“But Nessus took a tasp to the Ringworld, to control his crew. He used it on both of us.”
“Right. How very like a Pierson’s puppeteer, to do us good by way of controlling us! The Hindmost is using the same approach now. Look, he’s got my droud under remote control, and he’s given you eternal youth, and what’s the result? We’ll do anything he tells us to, that’s what.”
“Nessus used the tasp on me, but I am not a wirehead.”
“I didn’t turn wirehead either, then. But I remembered. I was feeling like a louse, thinking about Prill—thinking about taking a sabbatical. I used to do that, take off alone in a ship and head for the edge of Known Space until I could stand people again. Until I could stand myself again. But it would have been running out on Prill. Then some clown made my day. He didn’t give me much of a jolt, but it reminded me of that tasp Nessus carried, and that was ten times as powerful. I…held off for almost a year, and then I went and got a plug put in my head.”
“I should rip that wire out of your brain.”
“There turn out to be undesirable side effects.”
Kzin, twenty years ago:
Louis Wu sprawled on a worn stone fooch and thought well of himself.
These oddly shaped stone couches called foochesth were as ubiquitous as park benches throughout the hunting parks of Kzin. They were almost kidney-shaped, built for a male kzin to lie half curled up. The kzinti hunting parks were half wild and stocked with both predators and meat animals: orange-and-yellow jungle, with the foochesth as the only touch of civilization. With a population in the hundreds of millions, the planet was crowded by kzinti standards. The parks were crowded too.
Louis had been touring the jungle since morning. He was tired. Legs dangling, he watched the populace pass before him.
Within the jungle the orange kzinti were almost invisible. One moment, nothing. The next, a quarter-ton of sentient carnivore hot on the trail of something fast and frightened. The male kzin would jerk to a stop and stare—at Louis’s closed-lip smile (because a kzin shows his teeth in challenge) and at the sign of the Patriarch’s protection on his shoulder (Louis had made sure it showed prominently). The kzin would decide it was none of his business, and leave.
Strange, how that much predator could show only as a sense of presence in the frilly yellow foliage. Watching eyes and playful murder, somewhere. Then a huge adult male and a furry, cuddly adolescent half his height were watching the intruder.
Louis had a tyro’s grasp of the Hero’s Tongue. He understood when the kzin kitten looked up at its parent and asked, “Is it good to eat?”
The adult’s eyes met Louis’s eyes. Louis let his smile widen to show the teeth.
The adult said, “No.”
In the confidence of four Man–Kzin wars plus some “incidents”—all centuries in the past, but all won by men—Louis grinned and nodded. You tell him, Daddy! It’s safer to eat white arsenic than human meat!
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Chaosium Inc. expanded the playground, making Known Space into the Ringworld role-playing game. In the process they resolved some inconsistencies and nailed down some dates. They’ve stopped publishing the game, but I’ve got my copy. It’s wonderful source material.
I’ve given you their sections on the Spill Mountain Folk and the Night People: two species I wanted to see and show more of. The Spill Mountains and their inhabitants are intrinsically interesting; but the Night People own the Ringworld, as nearly as any species does. They’d be the perfec
t choice as protectors, because every species’ welfare is their own.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
SPILL MOUNTAIN FOLK
The Spill Mountain Folk live at extremely high elevations on the slopes of inactive Spill Mountains. These isolated peaks rise some 55 kilometers [35 miles] high, and are regularly spaced along both rim walls at intervals of about 40,000 km [25,000 miles]. The Spill Mountains play an essential role in recycling the topsoil for Ringworld’s ecosystems. About two-thirds of these mountains function at greatly-reduced efficiency, or not at all—and these provide permanent habitats for hominids. The Spill Mountain Folk are adapted to life between the coldest white levels above and the towering “foothills” below, where the air becomes too dense and too warm for the Folk to breathe.
Spill Mountain Folk are well-insulated, baboon-like hominids; these often-chubby sentients bear a slight resemblance to the lion-maned Abyssinian gelada, Ethiopia’s high simian. The Folk’s truncated muzzles protrude only mildly, though, and they lack tails. Their noticeably enlarged canine teeth are not visible when the mouth is closed. Spill Mountain Folk are heavy-bodied with powerful limbs, standing on the average not far below two meters. They are covered entirely with thick, soft, golden-brown fur, and the forequarters of most older adults are cloaked in mane-like mantles of long hair. The males often have a single dark stripe 15 centimeters wide running up their backs and tapering to a point at the top of the forehead. The people of the Spill Mountains have extremely efficient, oversized lungs. At altitudes below five kilometers [or about three miles], they begin to experience hyperoxygenation and breathing discomfort—at the normal atmospheric pressure of the Ring floor, they are unable to live. These hominids did not evolve naturally: their strange physiology and metabolism derive from City Builder genetic-engineering programs, millennia ago.
Spill Mountain Folk are highly intelligent and educable, but since the Fall of Cities their isolated environment has severely restricted their activities. Long ago they worked with the City Builders to construct and operate the Rim Transport System. They later maintained the elevator tubes climbing up the rim walls, and the rim stations. Before the walls closed forever, Spill Mountain Folk were among those who loaded and serviced the great ramships. Comfortably adapted to nearly airless realms, many became seasoned spacers. Biologically, though, they were overspecialized, and they were technologically overdependent on the City Builders. They once flew between their Spill Mountain habitats on magnetic-repulsion skysleds, but for centuries now they have had to rely almost exclusively on balloons for transportation. Only a few skysleds with slow-charge solar power-packs still operate, and these are always heavily guarded and closely watched. It is known that Spill Mountain Folk worked in large numbers in the repair crews seen remounting Ringworld’s attitude-jet toroids. Some such crews were also said to be engaged in unblocking spill-pipes. For the most part, however, the people of the Spill Mountains have reverted to a technologically primitive existence. Oral traditions alone keep alive among them legends of the ancient star-travelers, and of the secrets of the interiors of the Spill Mountains. Many enclaves might be expected to resist the efforts of repair crews or of anyone else whose activities could re-awaken their slumbering mountain, rendering it uninhabitable.
Natural resources are limited in the domains of the Spill Mountain Folk, so the hoarding of treasure or the unnatural accumulation of material goods is seldom looked upon with favor. Their spirit is one of cooperation, not competition for wealth. They trade among themselves and play games not so much for personal gain as for variety and novelty. Although they’re omnivorous, their usual diet is simple. They love sweet-roots, fruit, spice nuts, sausage-plant, eggs, insects, dried fish, nectar, birds, and even larger creatures—which some enjoy catching and tearing apart by hand. Unfortunately, such delicacies can be obtained only by laborious descent to the foothills. In some areas, they use tethered-balloon trams, the baskets of which are sent down loaded with pure, clean ice-blocks and figurines. In exchange, the baskets are filled up with food by hominids living far below—Hanging People, Ghouls, Wind Walkers, and rarely, even City Builders. Most of the time Spill Mountain Folk meals consist mainly of a coarse, thick soup called brahl, which they refine from partially-processed flup in the Spill Mountain ice-floes. Brahl is organically nutritious but tasteless, an utterly monotonous staple.
Spill Mountain Folk seek diversity and innovation in family relations. They traditionally change mates every few falans, and sometimes share them without possessiveness. Long-term breeding partners are generally chosen for the variety of their experiences and imaginative skills, not because they represent security, dominance, status, or wealth. Spill Mountain Folk are adept at rishathra, but get few opportunities to practice (they thoroughly enjoyed their golden era of co-enterprise with the ancient City Builder civilization). Their dead are launched festively into the air on balloon rafts filled with figurines, ice sculptures, and ceremonial brahl bowls. Spill Mountain Folk use reflected-light signals to maintain regular contact with the Ghouls in some areas. Most know of the Healers only through grossly misrepresentative City Builder myths from before the Fall of Cities.
A Spill Mountain Folk City
The vertical habitats of the Spill Mountain Folk are carved into the great gray rocks and blocks of permafrost and dormant Spill Mountain ice floes. From a distance, an ice-rock city exhibits dozens of huge, shadowed shelves with fine threads draped between them. Close inspection reveals myriads of individual entry porticoes, window ledges, sculpted balconies and awnings—hundreds of suspended bridges strung up and down and sideways between them. Narrow, twisting stairways are also hacked into the rock and ice, running for kilometers in strange branching curves, like two-dimensional vertical mazes. A single, guarded stairway usually leads all the way down into the high foothills, to the timberline. Tethered-balloon trams sometimes parallel these solitary paths of descent through the swirling fog at the base of the Spill Mountains.
Spill Mountain Folk do not relish isolation. Their cities usually have populations of 10,000 or more. The center of each city has a large public square carved into it, though a fortuitous flat rock surface often serves the purpose. These gathering places typically are crowded with hordes of Spill Mountain dwellers. The staccato squeals, grunts, barks, chatterings, and shriller howlings of their native language quickly die, however, in the thin air. Elaborate posturing and a complex system of hand signals supplements their verbal communication, or substitutes for it. Many decorate their pelts with imaginative designs and mystical symbols. The public squares are sites of pageantry, balloon launchings, solar heated dye baths, game pavilions, trading markets, and communal spiritual centers.
There is generally a large statue in the shape of a hairy, fat, jovial baboon sculptured out of some great boulder at the back of the square, or onto the sheer rock face above. The image often represents some version of the god figure christened “Babrius” by Louis Wu. In a favorite myth, Babrius rose beyond the Rim on a great skysled, passing above the stars. He came to rest at last on a vast, fabulously varied plateau ideally suited to the tastes of Spill Mountain Folk. He hastened to return to lead his people to freedom in the marvelous new land. Abandoning his depleted skysled, he entered a large, clearly-marked elevator tube but the bubble would not descend. Instead it went up, through a confused realm of chaotic beauty. When Babrius came to his senses, he found himself a disembodied speck of immortal consciousness, peering out through the eyes of an early ancestor. All around, wherever he turned, Babrius saw himself in the eyes of others, staring back, grinning. Variety and sameness form a central duality in the philosophy and culture of the Spill Mountain Folk—they are always on the lookout for high adventure.
Each Spill Mountain is unique, because of its extreme altitude and isolation. Each has its own ecology. The cultural sketch given in the foregoing is most likely to fit Spill Mountain Folk living on the starboard rim wall w
ithin 40° of the Great Oval Ocean. Elsewhere around the Ring, they may be quite different—and of the folk living on the port rim wall Spill Mountains, nothing is known.
GHOULS [NIGHT PEOPLE]
The Ghouls (or Night People) are widespread on Ringworld. Their place in the ecology is everywhere secure. These sentient, nocturnal hominids are scavengers and morticians, carrion-eaters and bearers of information. They have mastered the domain of night—and few species care to compete for their dark realm.
From a distance the Ghouls seem horrid, supernatural blendings of human and jackal. In small, quiet packs they approach native camps on all fours to claim the day’s refuse and garbage. Hunched and half-erect, they move away at fair speeds, often carrying substantial burdens. In more civilized environments they walk about perfectly upright, on wide, flat feet, without fear, to bear away the bodies of the dead. Whenever, in rare instances, hominid cultures do begin burying or cremating their dead, hordes of Ghouls attack the living to convince them of the error of their ways. Despite occasional tension, though, peace, toleration, and a certain mutual respect usually prevail. The Night People are generally diffident and unassuming in their relations with other species; they normally show no hunger for dominance and they seldom intrude. Indeed, they are scrupulous and thorough in their understanding of and compliance with the customs and religious practices of thousands of local cultures. Ghouls seem to have a fatalistic acceptance of their place in the scheme of things, feeling that “the activities of other species rarely interfere with our own lives, and in the end they all belong to us!” Funeral traditions of the Night People themselves are not known.
Ghouls are least frequently encountered in aquatic environments, wastelands, or in other regions far from concentrations of land-dwelling hominids. They detest the habitats of Vampires.
The Night People are small, seldom even approaching the 2-meter mark. They usually have permanent mates, and frequently travel in pairs or in family groups. Their bodies are almost entirely covered with thick iron-gray or black hair. Their skin is a cooked-liver blend of dark-purple and charcoal. They smell very bad, and the foul stench of corruption gives them the breath of a basilisk. The nails of their tapered fingers and gnarled toes are as sharp and as tough as claws.