The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven

delusion and early death for any who learn to drink your fuel.”
    “Some are too weak to say, ‘Enough.’ Moonwa, you must be stronger than that.”
    “Of course. I can do that tonight, now. Enough, Kaywerbrimmis! ”
    Vala turned to see white grins large and small. Beedj said, “I wore one of your fuel wetted towels last night. It made me dizzy. It threw my aim off.”
    Kay gracefully changed the subject. “Valavirgillin, will you return to Center City, mate and raise a family?”
    “I mated,” she said.
    Kay suddenly had nothing to say.
    He didn’t know!
    What had he been thinking? That he and she would be, come formal mates? Valavirgillin said, “I made myself rich with a gift from Louis Wu of the Ball People.” How she had done that was nobody’s business, and illegal. “I mated then. Tarb’s parents were friends of my family, as is usual with us, Moonwa. He had little money, but he’s a good father, he freed me to engage in business dealings.
    “I grew restive. I remembered that Louis Wu suggested ... no. Asked if my people make tools from the sludge that remains after we distill alcohol. Plastic , he said. His talking thing would not translate, but I learned his word. He said it means shapeless. Plastic can take any shape the maker likes. That sludge is useless, nasty stuff. Clients might be grateful if we had a reason to haul it away for them.
    “So I funded a chemical laboratory.” She shrugged in the dark. “Always it cost more than anyone expected, but we got answers. There are secrets in that goo.
    “One day most of my money was gone. Tarablilliast and the children are with my sire-family, and I am here, until I can feed them again. Coriack, are you ready to take guard?”
    “Of course. Hold the thought, Whandernothtee. Vala, what’s out there?”
    “Rain. I glimpse something black and shiny, sometimes, and I hear tittering. No smell of vampires.”
    “Good.”
    Moonwa had lapsed into Grass Giant language and was making jokes that set Beedj roaring. In the gray light of morning the Gleaners spoke together, waved at the brightening land, then more or less fell over in a pile.
    “Do you think they came?” Spash asked nobody in particular, and he stepped out of the tent.
    Whand said, “I don’t care. Let’s sleep.”
    “They came,” Spash said.
    Vala stepped out.
    It was moments before she realized that one sheet was empty. Which? Far left ... six Gleaner dead. The rest were untouched.
    Beedj came forth briskly, swinging his scythe-sword. More Giants were coming down the earth wall. They conferred, then fanned out to explore, looking for evidence of what the Ghouls hod done.
    But Vala climbed up the wall to sleep in the payload shell.
    At midday she woke ravenous, with the smell of roasting meat in her nostrils. She followed the smells down to the tent.
    She found Gleaners and Machine People together. The Gleaners had been hunting. The fire they had made to cook their kills, Barok and Whand had used to make bread from local grass.
    “We eat four, five, six meals in a day,” Silack told her. “Pint says you eat once a day?”
    “Yes. But a lot. Are you finding enough meat?”
    “When your men came down to eat, ours went to hunt more. Eat what you see, the hunters will be back.”
    The flatbread was a good effort, and Vala complimented the men. Smeerp meat was good, too, if a bit lean and tough. At least the Gleaners didn’t have a habit found in other hominids: changing the flavor of meat by rubbing it with salt or herbs or berries.
    Vala wondered about breeding smeerps in other places, but all traders knew the answer to that. One hominid’s local bounty was another’s plague. With no local predators to restrict their numbers, smeerps would be eating somebody’s crops, breeding beyond their food source, then vectoring diseases when starvation weakened them.
    Meanwhile she had eaten everything in sight. Gleaners and Machine People alike were watching her in amusement. Silack said,