“Water People?”
“Live under liquid water, Barraye. I guess you don’t have many of those.”
Laughter. Jennawil asked Warvia, “You don’t rish, but only you listen?”
“What else is there for my kind when visitors come? But you’ll want to speak to the Night People when they wake.”
Tegger saw Jennawil trying to keep a straight face.
“Please understand,” Saron said, “we have only resh with species from near mountains. Spill mountain species, all of us, all very like each other even if we cannot get children. You…” She searched for words and found none.
A bit strange? Very queer? Demons from below? Before the silence could grow yet less comfortable, Warvia said, “We hear that protectors can pierce any secret. How can you hope to hide anything?”
“From flatland vishnishtee,” Deb said.
Saron explained. “Vishnishtee are a danger. Teela told us so, the Night People tell us, and the legends tell us, too. But the passage belongs to High Point. The passage is of interest to vishnishtee. The passage pierces the rim wall. They can go out of the world through the passage if they wear their balloon suits and helms with windows. The Night People don’t like to draw attention from vishnishtee.”
“You have protectors here?”
It seemed clear that Saron was speaking for the bronze web as well as Tegger and Warvia. “Three flatland vishnishtee rule the passage. More: they have taken some of us away, older ones, and some of those come back to us as vishnishtee.
“When the Death Light shone, the flatland vishnishtee showed us how to hide. Sod or rock is enough to stop the light that shines through fur and flesh, but better was to hide in the passage itself. Makray was hunting when the Death Light shone,” Saron said. “Half a day from shelter, and no vishnishtee to tell him he wanted it.”
Deb said, “Many of us went to hunt, or were caught out. One of every three died. Odd and feeble children were born after. All the mountains about tell the same tale, and only we and the mountains nearby had vishnishtee to give warning. Flatland vishnishtee are not wholly evil.”
Tegger asked, “Death Light?”
But none of the High Pointers chose to hear, and Tegger didn’t ask again. Saron said, “High Point vishnishtee serve the flatland vishnishtee to keep us safe. But they will not tell the flatland vishnishtee where we have the mirror, and those will not learn of themselves. They are good at knowing secrets, but the mountains are not theirs.”
Warvia sighed. “The Night People will be very glad of your answers. We’ve traveled vastly to find them. No doubt they’ll have better questions.”
“And Louis Wu,” Deb said. “Or is he only a tale?”
“Where did you hear it?”
“From message mirrors and from Teela.”
Tegger said, “Louis Wu boiled an ocean. The City Builder Halrloprillalar traded and rished with him. Louis Wu is real, but is he on the other side of that spinnerweb? Deb, I need sleep.”
Warvia said, “Yes!”
Jennawil expressed the others’ surprise. “It is the middle of the day.”
“We worked through the night. Breathing is labor,” Warvia said.
“Let them sleep now,” Saron ordered. “We go. Teegr, Wairbeea, will you wake when the Night People do?”
Tegger could hardly keep his thoughts together or his eyes apart. “We may hope.”
“Food behind that door. Flup, we forgot! What do you eat?”
“Freshly killed meat,” Warvia said.
“Behind those little doors-no, never mind. Skreepu will find you something. Sleep well.” The High Point People filed out.
They had to look behind the little doors, and that let half the heat out of the house. Opening the little doors revealed food-visitor food, plants and old meat, not Red Herder food-and snowscape seen through wooden slats. Bars to keep away predators, and the great outside to keep food cold.
Warvia and Tegger curled together, fur beneath them, fur above. They’d set their clothes aside to air. They were warm enough, but Tegger could feel the cold at his nose. He could hear knocking behind the wall as the High Pointers donned their furs.
He was near sleep when Warvia said, “Whisper would have better questions.”
He said, “Whisper was only my madness.”
“Mine, too. Whisper taught me things—”
“What?”
Warvia whispered in his ear. “She was with us on the air sled, beneath the cruiser. She taught me about speed so that our speed would not drive me mad. She keeps herself a secret, Tegger. I don’t want the web to hear us.”
They’d propped the web upright against a wall. Tegger looked at the web, propped against a wall with a view of the whole room, and laughed. “If the web is no more than a slice of stone—”
“We will all seem great fools.”
“What does Whisper look like?”
“I never saw. Perhaps a wayspirit with no body at all.”
“What did she teach? No, don’t tell me now. We should sleep.”
“Why did you say we cannot rish? Was it the way they look?”
“No. They’re no stranger than Sand People. My mind saw me in Jennawil’s arms, gasping like a beached fish—”
Warvia laughed deliciously against his ear.
“Then I remembered that they talk with-talk for-the Ghoul empire. We would be famous. Did you want to settle somewhere, someday, where no Red Herder has heard of Red Herders who rish with every species under the Arch?”
“We never did that!”
“Tales grow in the telling. They are mighty tellers, the Ghoul empire, and these Spill Mountain People speak their words for them, and you and I destroyed the biggest nest of vampires beneath the Arch.”
“Yes.”
“You were thinking—”
“They are new to this. They have only rished with peoples very like them. Love, would you like to teach rishathra, if only once?”
They slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN — LOVECRAFT
The probe tilted over and rose at ten gravities straight up, closing on the rim wall. The blue highlight converged, then went out. The probe coasted, rising.
The Ringworld’s edge was narrow. The probe rose a few hundred feet higher, and arced over. A puff of fusion flame hatted its fall and set it drifting toward the shadowed back of a black wall that seemed to reach to the heavens.
It slowed. Hovered. The probe spat.
A window popped up to overlay the others. It showed the probe hovering on indigo flame; then the probe dropped away and it showed only starlight.
The Hindmost said, “I give you a webeye window beyond the rim wall.”
“We need a view from the underside. Get us that,” Bram commanded.
“Aye aye.” But the Hindmost was doing nothing.
“Hindmost!”
“The probe already has my instructions. Motors off. Rotate. I want a view.”
The probe was turning as it fell. The view turned: black rim wall, sunglare, starscape… a silver thread was shining against the star-spattered black below the falling probe.
“That!” Louis said. “See it? You need a burn or we’ll hit it.”
“Burn, aye aye.” A burst of woodwinds, then, “What is it?”
“Not a spaceport ledge, it’s too narrow.”
They waited through the lightspeed delay. The silver thread was growing larger, clearer. Now it seemed banded, like a silver earthworm. Eleven minutes…
The probe’s spin stopped. Window displays tremored: the probe was thrusting, flaring in X-ray light.
Nova light blasted through the hologram window.