The spill mountain village looked like a great blotchy cross seen from almost overhead. Houses were white of a different shade from the snowfields: sloped roofs under a snow blanket, strung out along ledges on a background of naked rock and snow laced with dark paths, sparsely patterned along twenty miles and more. Factories and warehouses crossed that band vertically, much more closely clustered, running from six to ten thousand feet high. At top and bottom were angular blobs of bright orange and bits of other colors, too.
Bram's temper was under tight control. "You were needed. I feared the probe would pass before you returned. Can you see why that might be a concern?"
"Not ... yes."
Then Louis saw, too. Three bright silver squares: three of the oversized cargo plates. One was bare; one was loaded with cargo, hard to see for what it was. The third, a brown square with a bright rim: the Machine People cruiser still riding its cargo plate. It was tethered at the upper dock next to a naked rock cliff painted bright orange, and two patches of yellow and orange and cobalt blue: deflated balloons.
"That was a quick ride," Louis said.
Daylight swept upon them at 770 miles per second. The view flashed bright, then dimmed to truer colors.
Acolyte reminded them: "They have their own webeye."
The Hindmost popped up a window next to the probe's -- four now. They were now seeing through the bow of the cruiser.
Here were Red Herders muffled in lovely furs striped gray and white. Louis only glimpsed red hands in long loose sleeves, flat noses and dark eyes deep within hoods, but who else could they be? The Fearless Vampire Slayers. Several larger furry shapes must be Spill Mountain People. Their hands were broad, with thick, stubby fingers. Glimpses of faces inside hoods were silver-gray, like the hands.
They panted out puffs of frost as they worked. Red hands and brown hands gripped the fuzzy edges of the window, and the view wobbled.
The Hindmost said, "The probe will be well past before we can slow. Shall I bring it back for another view?"
Bram said, "Why? We have our view. Hindmost, we're closing on the near end of the rim wall transport rail, and possible witnesses. Take the probe over the rim when you can."
"Aye aye. Twelve minutes."
The probe was in full daylight now, leaving the village far aft. The dismounted webeye was in jerky motion, carried along footholds and handholds chopped in stone. Windows overlaid on windows.
Bram asked, "Where have you been?"
Louis answered. "The time to check a pressure suit --"
"Yes. Report."
"-- is before you're breathing vacuum --"
"You used a checklist. I use my mind."
"And your first mistake will be memorable."
"Report."
"I can't speak for a puppeteer's suit. Ours will keep us alive for two falans. We refilled and recharged everything fillable and chargeable. The Hindmost still has six stepping disks not in use, and we can recycle some of what we're using now. We can put webeyes anywhere. There aren't any weapons in the lander bay. I assume you've stored them somewhere. You decide what you want us to be carrying. We couldn't think of anything else to check."
Bram said nothing.
Hidden Patriarch's crow's nest showed no change, and the Hindmost whistle-bonged that window off. The refueling probe ran along a rim wall touched with violet. The next window over rolled wobbling along a path that had become more than a rock climb, downhill toward rectangular patches of snow.
The Hindmost said, "You were dying."
"Did you see ... never mind," Louis said. "Show me that medical report."
The puppeteer chimed. Louis Wu's medical record partly blocked both windows. "There, it's in Interspeak."
Chemical ... major restructure ... diverticulosis ... tanj. "You can get used to what age does to you, Hindmost. Old people used to say, 'If you can wake up in the morning with nothing hurting anywhere, it's a sign that you have died in the night.'"
"Not funny."
"But even an idiot might guess something's wrong when he starts pissing gas with his urine."
"I would have thought it rude to observe you at such a time."
"I am much relieved. Even so, would you have noticed?" Louis read further. "Diverticulosis, that's little blowout patches on your colon -- *my* colon. Diverticuli [sic -- should be "Diverticula"] can hurt you lots of ways. Mine seems to have extended far enough to attach itself to my bladder. Then it got infected and blew through. That left a tube connecting my colon and my bladder. A fistula."
"What did you think?"
"I had the medkit. It was giving me antibiotics. For a couple of days I hoped ... well, bacteria can get into a human bladder and make gas, but antibiotics would have cleared that up. So I knew I needed a plumber."
Acolyte didn't usually stare directly into anyone's eyes, but he did now. His ears were folded out of sight. "You were dying? Dying when you refused the Hindmost's offers?"
"Yes. Hindmost, if you'd known, would you have accepted my contract?"
"Not a serious question. Louis, I'm expressing admiration. You are a scary negotiator."
"*Thank* you."
Bram said, "Please restore our view from the probe ... *Thank* you. In six minutes we'll move up the rim wall and cross to the outside. I trust we won't lose the signal, Hindmost?"
"Scrith stops a percentage of neutrinos. Implied is some kind of nuclear reaction ongoing in the Ringworld floor, but the signal will dwindle predictably and I can compensate."
Bram said, "Good. Is my suit in order?"
"It's my spare, after all," Louis said. "Take whichever suit feels lucky to you. I'll take the other."
The probe was slowing, slowing.
"Now?"
"Now."
Chapter 26 -
The Dockyard
HIGH POINT, A.D. 2893
The cruiser and its cargo plate rose through the night. Warvia and Tegger clung to each other in the payload shell. Fear of heights was a terrible thing. They both shrieked when they felt the bump, then laughed because they were still alive.
Leaving the protection of the payload shell was an ordeal. They gasped and shivered in the thin, cold air. The sun was just peeping around a shadow square.
The Ghouls blinked in the growing daylight and crawled into the payload shell to sleep.
Harpster had brought them down at the higher of two orange-splashed cliffs, alongside another floating plate and three baskets attached to collapsed balloons.
The village was stirring. Downslope and to the sides, furred shapes moved out from snow-roofed houses to forage in the tilted lands beyond.
Even to a nomad like Tegger, this wasn't a large village. Then again, it was nearly invisible. The roofs were rectangles of snow on a snowfield; you picked them out by their shadows.
Five locals were trudging uphill to meet the visitors from below. A raptor-beaked bird circled about them. The Red Herders watched them come, but they couldn't see anything inside their furs. They carried water bags and more furs.
The water was heated. It tasted wonderful. Warvia and Tegger struggled into furs in frantic haste, pulling them closed until only their noses showed. That and their gasping seemed to amuse the Spill Mountain People.
"Na, na, it's lovely day!" Saron sang in a nearly impenetrable accent. "You walk in blizzard. Teach you respect mountain!"
They walked around the wood and iron cruiser, paying no attention to the floating plate it rode on.
The five Spill Mountain People looked like barrels sheathed in layers of white- and-gray-striped fur. Saron's fur was different: striped white and greenish-brown, with a hood that had been some ferocious creature's head. H
er rank must be distinctive, Tegger thought, and decided that Saron was a woman. She was the smallest of the five. Her voice gave no clue and her furs hid all details.
Saron was studying the bronze spinnerweb and its stone backing. She asked, "Is this the eye?"
Warvia said, "Yes. Saron, we don't know what to do next."
"We were told Night People would come. Where are they?"
"Sleeping. It isn't night yet."
Saron laughed. "My mother told me it was only a way of speaking. They come out at night?"
The Reds nodded.
The bird hovered above them, riding the wind, then suddenly dropped far downslope. It struck talons first, and rose with something struggling in its beak.
Deb asked, "What must the eye see?"
Tegger and Warvia had no idea. This must have been obvious, and Deb answered herself. "The mirror and the passage. Take the eye with us. Does it talk?"
"No."
"How do you know it sees?"
"Ask Harpster and Grieving Tube."
Warvia said, "I'm going to cover them. They could freeze to death up here."
"Good," Jennawil said, and they carried furs into the payload shell.
Harreed and Barraye were at work dismounting the bronze web and its backing. Tegger had decided they were men. Though they peered out of their hoods in frank astonishment at the Red Herders, they were silent. It seemed the women did all the talking.
Tegger tried to help them. As he scuttled sideways carrying one edge of the stone-backed web, he found himself gasping, suffocating. Deb and Jennawil moved in to help. Tegger got out of their way, fighting for breath.
"You're feeble," Saron decided.
Tegger tried to quiet his gasping. "We can walk."
"Your lungs don't find enough air. You will be stronger tomorrow. Today you must rest."
The four picked up the web and began to climb, angling downhill, toward the snow-roofed houses. Saron walked ahead to point out footholds to Warvia and Tegger, ready to steady them if they slipped.
The bird dropped onto the leather pad that crossed Deb's shoulders. Deb staggered and swore at it in some alien language, and it rose again.
Spill Mountain People seemed incredibly surefooted.
Tegger and Warvia walked with their arms around each other, trying to stay upright. They'd been in motion too long. The mountain seemed to sway beneath them. The wind searched out every tiniest gap in their furs. Tegger peeped out of his hood through slitted eyes, blinking away tears.
He had some of his breath back. He asked Deb, "That was your own tongue, yes? How did you learn the trade speech?"
Deb's vowels and consonants were distorted. He had to catch the sense above the shrilling of the wind. "Night People say, tell you everything. But you, you tell the flatland vishnishtee nothing. Keep our secrets. Yes?"
Tegger didn't know the word, but Warvia caught it. She told him, "Vashnesht," enunciating it properly, and told the others, "Yes."
Vashnesht: protectors. Keep secrets from the protectors from below the spill mountains. "Yes," said Tegger.
Deb said, "Teela came from below, from the flats. A strange person, all knobs, could not resh. You understand, reshtra? Could not. Nothing there. She let us look.
"She taught us to speak. We knew the speech of the mirrors, but we spoke it wrong. Teela taught us, then told us teach the people who ride the balloons.
"Then she went through the passage. Came back seventy falans later, no change in her. We thought she was a vishnishtee, but now we *knew*."
They were passing houses now: rectilinear houses made of wood that must have been imported from the forest below. They'd picked up an entourage of curious children: eyes peeking out from fur hoods, and chattering that came in puffs of fog. Warvia was trying to answer them.
Tegger asked, "May we speak to this Teela?"
"Teela went below again, since forty falans or more," Deb said.
"More," Saron said flatly.
Jennawil asked, "What do you know of reshtra?"
Tegger looked at Warvia. Warvia temporized. "How can you know of rishathra? Do you have other visitors from below?"
The locals laughed, even the men. Deb said, "Not from below, but from sideways! Folk visit from nearby mountains --"
"But they're all Spill Mountain People, aren't they?"
"Wairbeea, the people of the mountains are not all one kind. We are High Point. Saron --"
Here, a door. Tegger eased Warvia in ahead of him. The bird settled on Deb's shoulder as she entered.
This narrow space was not the house proper, only a tiny anteroom supported by wooden beams and lines with hooks for furs. Doors at the far end opened opposite each other.
Now the furs started to come off. The two species stared at one another, fiercely curious.
High Point People were broad through the torso, broad across the face, with wide mouths and deep-set eyes. Their hair and -- on the men -- beards were curly and dark. Beneath their furs was cloth enclosing their torsos to the elbows and knees, and below the cuffs, a good deal of curly hair.
Deb was a strong woman in middle age. The bird, Skreepu, belonged to Deb. So did the identical-looking young men, Harreed and Barraye: they were her sons. Jennawil was a young woman mated to Barraye.
And Saron was a woman, deep of voice, old and deeply wrinkled. Something about her jaw, her hands: Warvia asked, "Are you of High Point?"
"No, from Two Peaks. A balloon carried us to High Point, far past Short One, where we wanted to visit. The wind blows wrong here. We could not return. The rest flew on, exploring, but I found my man Makray persuasive. He cannot have more children, I have had mine, why not?"
While Deb removed her fur and hung it, Skreepu clung to the leather patch. When Saron led the rest into the main house, the great bird lifted and followed them.
The ceiling was high. Furniture was minimal. There was a high perch for the bird, two low tables, no chairs. This was half of the visitors' house, divided from the other half by the long anteroom. Tegger wondered if he would meet whatever visitors were living on the other side.
The men propped the bronze web against the wall. Then the High Pointers settled cross-legged in a circle that left space for their visitors.
"This is your place, the visitors' house," Saron said. "It is warm enough for most who come, but you may want to sleep in fur."
Jennawil waved about her. "We are High Point. Next spinward call themselves Eagle Folk. Noses like beaks. They're smaller than we are and not as strong, but their balloons are best we have seen, and they sell balloons to other folk. We can get children with them, but so rarely that we resh with little risk.
"To antispin are Ice People. They live higher and the cold hurts them less. Mazarestch got a boy by an Ice People man. The way she tells it, their exertion moved mountain. The boy Jarth can forage higher than any of his peers.
"Visitors come from far spin and antispin. We welcome them all and resh with them, too, but we get no children together. They tell us it is the same for them. Reshtra is for different kinds, mating is between two of a kind. Folk of near mountains can mate, those from too far cannot. Teela told us that our foreparents must have traveled from mountain to mountain, changing as we went.
"And you?"
Warvia was laughing too hard to speak, less amused than embarrassed, Tegger thought. He tried to put an answer together. "On the flat land travel is easy. We have all species mixed. We see every possible way of rishathra. We Red Herders travel with the animals we tend, for all of our lives. We cannot rish. We only mate once."
He could not tell how they were reacting to that: their faces were too unfamiliar. He said, "But some kinds rish f
or pleasure, some for trade contracts or to end a war or to postpone a child. We hear of Weed Gatherers, near mindless, who rish very nicely, convenient for ones who won't take the time to -- to court. Water People will rish with anyone who can hold his or her breath for long enough, but few there are --"
"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."