The Ringworld Engineers Part 2

"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 s.p.a.ce 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."

"How did you come to the gash on Warhead?"

"Oh, that. Maybe I was paranoid, but look: Halrloprillalar vanished into the ARM building and never came out. Here Louis Wu was turning wirehead, and no telling whom the silly flatlander might tell secrets to. I thought I'd better run. Canyon's easy to land a ship on without being noticed."

"I expect the Hindmost found it so."

"Chmeee, give me the droud or let me sleep or kill me. I'm fresh out of motivation."

"Sleep, then."

Chapter 3 -.

Ghost Among the Crew It was good to wake floating between sleeping plates ... until Louis remembered.

Chmeee was tearing at a joint of raw red meat. Wunderland often made these food recyclers to serve more than one species. The kzin stopped eating long enough to say, "Every piece of equipment aboard was built by humans, or could have been built by humans. Even the hull could have been bought on any human world."

Like a baby in its womb, Louis floated in free fall, his eyes closed and his knees drawn up. But there was no way to forget where he was. He said, "I thought the big lander had a Jinxian look. Made to order, but on Jinx. What about your bed? Kzinti?"

"Artificial fiber. Made to resemble the pelt of a kzin, and sold in secret, no doubt, to humans with an odd sense of humor. I would find pleasure in hunting down the manufacturer."

Louis reached out and tripped the field control switch. The sleeping field collapsed, lowering him gently to the floor.

It was night outside: sharp white stars overhead and a landscape that was formless velvet black. Even if they could get to s.p.a.cesuits, the canyon could be halfway around the planet. Or just beyond that black ridge projecting into the starscape; but how would he know?

The recycler kitchen had two keyboards, one with directions in Interworld and one in the Hero's Tongue. And two toilets on opposite sides. Louis would have preferred a less explicit arrangement. He dialed for a breakfast that would test the kitchen's repertoire.

The kzin snarled, "Does the situation interest you at all, Louis?"

"Look beneath your feet."

The kzin knelt. "Urrr ... yes. Puppeteers built the hyperdrive shunt. This is the ship in which the Hindmost fled from the Fleet of Worlds."

"You forgot the stepping discs, too. The puppeteers don't use them anywhere but on their own world. Now we find the Hindmost sending human agents to get me, on stepping discs."

"The Hindmost must have stolen them and the ship and little else. His funds may have been owed to General Products and never claimed. Louis, I do not believe the Hindmost has puppeteer support. We should try to reach the puppeteer fleet."

"Chmeee, there are bound to be microphones in here."

"Should I watch my speech for this leaf-eater?"

"All right, let's look at it." The depression he was feeling came out as bitter sarcasm, and why not? Chmeee had his droud. "A puppeteer has indulged a whim for kidnapping men and kzinti. Naturally the honest puppeteers will be horrified. Are they really going to let us run home and tell the Patriarch? Who has no doubt been doing his best to build more Long Shots, which could reach the puppeteer fleet in just over four hours plus acceleration time to match velocities-say, three months at three gravities-"

"*Enough*, Louis!"

"Tanj, if you wanted to start a war you had your chance! According to Nessus, the puppeteers meddled in the First Man-Kzin War, in our favor. Now hold it. Do not tell me whether you told anyone else."

"Drop the subject now."

"Sure. Only, it just hit me-" and because the conversation might be recorded, Louis spoke partly for the Hindmost's benefit. "You and I and the Hindmost are the only ones in known s.p.a.ce who know what the puppeteers have been doing, besides anyone either of us might have told."

"If we should be lost on the Ringworld, would the Hindmost mourn forever? I see your point. But the Hindmost might not even know that Nessus was indiscreet."

He'll know if he plays this back, Louis thought. My fault. I should watch my speech for a leaf-eater? He attacked his meal with some ferocity.

He had chosen for both simplicity and complexity: half a grapefruit, a chocolate souffl' [souffle], broiled moa breast, Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee topped with whipped cream. Most of it was good; only the whipped cream was unconvincing. But what could you say about the moa? A twenty-fourth-century geneticist had recreated the moa, or so he'd claimed, and the recycler kitchen produced an imitation of that. It had a good texture and tasted like rich bird meat.

It was nothing like being under the wire.

He had learned to live with this part-time depression. It existed only by contrast with the wire; Louis believed that it was the normal state of being for humanity. Being imprisoned by a mad alien for peculiar purposes didn't make it that much worse. What made the black morning so terrible was that Louis Wu was going to have to give up the droud.

Finished, he dumped the dirty dishes into the toilet. He asked, "What will you take for the droud?"

Chmeee snorted. "What do you have for trade?"

"Promises made on my word of honor. And a good set of informal pajamas."

Chmeee's tail slashed at the air. "You were a useful companion once. What will you be if I give you the droud? A browsing beast. I will keep the droud."

Louis began his exercises.

One-hand push-ups were easy in half a gravity. One hundred on each hand were not. The dorsal curve of the hull was too low for some of his routines. Two hundred scissors jumps, touching extended fingers to extended toes- Chmeee watched curiously. Presently he said, "I wonder why the Hindmost lost his honors."

Louis didn't answer. Suspended horizontally with toes under the bottom sleeping-field plate and a platter under his calves, he was doing very slow sit-ups.

"And what he expects to find on the s.p.a.ceport ledge. What did we find? The deceleration rings are too big move. Could he want something from a Ringworlder s.p.a.cecraft?"

Louis dialed for a pair of moa drumsticks. He wiped them of grease and began juggling them: oversized Indian clubs. Sweat formed in big droplets before reluctantly moving down his face and torso.

Chmeee's tail lashed. His large pink ears folded back, offering no purchase to an enemy. Chmeee was angry. That was his problem.

The puppeteer flicked into existence, one impervious wall away. It had changed the style of its mane, subst.i.tuting points of light for the opals ... and it was alone. It studied the situation for a moment. It said, "Use the droud, Louis."

"I don't have that option." Louis discarded the weights. "Where's Prill?"

The puppeteer said, "Chmeee, give Louis the droud."

"Where's Halrloprillalar?"

A tremendous furry arm enclosed Louis's throat. Louis kicked backward, putting his whole body into it. The kzin grunted. With curious gentleness he inserted the droud into its socket.

"All right," Louis said. The kzin let him go and he sat down. He'd guessed already, and so had the kzin, of course. Louis began to realize how much he had wanted to see Prill ... to see her free of the ARM ... to see her.

"Halrloprillalar is dead. My agents cheated me," the puppeteer said. "They have known that the Ringworld native was dead for eighteen standard years. I could stay to root them out wherever they have hidden, but it might take another eighteen years. Or eighteen hundred! Human s.p.a.ce is too big. Let them keep their stolen money."

Louis nodded, smiling, knowing that this was going to hurt when he removed the droud. He heard Chmeee ask, "How did she die?"

"She could not tolerate boosterspice. The United Nations now believes that she was not quite human. She aged very rapidly. A year and five months after reaching Earth, she was dead."

"Already dead," Louis mused. "When I was on Kzin ..." But there was a puzzle here. "She had her own longevity drug. Better than boosterspice. We brought a cryoflask home with us."

"It was stolen. I know nothing more."

Stolen? But Prill had never walked the streets of Earth, to meet common thieves. United Nations scientists might have opened the flask to a.n.a.lyze the stuff, but they wouldn't need more than a microgram ... He might never know. And afterward they had kept her, to take her knowledge before she died.

This was definitely going to hurt. But not yet.

"We need not delay longer." The puppeteer settled itself in its padded bench. "You will travel in stasis, to conserve resources. I have an auxiliary fuel tank to be dropped before we enter hypers.p.a.ce. We will arrive fully fueled. Chmeee, would you name our ship?"

Chmeee demanded, "Do you propose to explore blindly, then?"

"Only the s.p.a.ceport ledge, and no further. Would you name our ship?"

"I name it Hot Needle of Inquiry."

Louis smiled and wondered if the puppeteer recognized the term. Their ship was now named for a kzinti instrument of torture. The puppeteer mouthed two k.n.o.bs and brought them together.

Chapter 4 -.

Off Center Louis sagged as his weight suddenly doubled. The black Canyonscape was gone. It must be invisible in the starscape now, a changed starscape in which one star, directly underfoot, shone brighter than all the rest. The Hindmost disengaged itself from crash web and pilot's bench. The puppeteer had changed too. It moved as if tired, and its mane-differently styled now-seemed not to have been set for some time.

Current didn't deaden the brain. Louis could see the obvious: that he and Chmeee must have spent two years in stasis, while the puppeteer flew Needle alone through hypers.p.a.ce; that known s.p.a.ce, a bubble of explored star systems some forty light-years in radius, must be far behind them; that Hot Needle of Inquiry was built to be flown by a Pierson's puppeteer, with all other pa.s.sengers in stasis, and only a puppeteer's mercy would ever return them. That he had seen a human being for the last time, and Halrloprillalar was dead of Louis Wu's carelessness, and he was going to feel terribly lonely when the droud came out of his head, which would be soon. None of that mattered while the tiny current still trickled into his brain.

He saw no drive flame. Hot Needle of Inquiry must be moving on reactionless thrusters alone.

Liar's designers had mounted the ship's motors on its great delta wing. Something like a tremendous laser blast had fired on them as they pa.s.sed above the Ringworld, and the motors had been burned off. The Hindmost would not have repeated that mistake, Louis thought. Needle's thrusters would be mounted inside the impervious hull.

Chmeee asked, "How long until we can land?"

"We can be ready to dock in five days. I was unable to take advanced drive systems from the Fleet of Worlds. With human-built machinery we can decelerate only at twenty gravities. Do you find the cabin gravity comfortable?"

"A bit light. One Earth gravity?"

"One Ringworld gravity, point nine nine two Earth gravity."

"Leave it as it is. Hindmost, you gave us no instruments. I would like to study the Ringworld."

The puppeteer pondered the point. "Your lander vehicle includes a telescope, but it would not point straight down. Wait several moments." The puppeteer turned to its instrument board. One head turned back and spoke in the hissing-spitting-snarling accents of the Hero's Tongue.

Chmeee said, "Use Interworld. Let Louis listen, at least."

The puppeteer did. "It is good to speak again in any language. I was lonely. There, I give you a projection from Needle's telescope."

An image appeared below Louis Wu's feet: a rectangle, with no borderlines, in which the Ringworld sun and the stars around it were suddenly far larger. Louis blocked the sun with his hand and searched. The Ringworld was there: a thread of baby blue forming a half-circle.

Picture fifty feet of baby-blue Christmas ribbon one inch wide. String it in a circle, on edge on the floor, and put a candle in the middle. Now expand the scale: The Ringworld was a ribbon of unreasonably strong material, a million miles wide and six hundred million miles long, strung in a circle ninety-five million miles in radius with a sun at the center. The ring spun at seven hundred and seventy miles per second, fast enough to produce one gravity of centrifugal force outward. The unknown Ringworld engineers had layered the inner surface with soil and oceans and an atmosphere. They had raised walls a thousand miles high at each rim to hold the air inside. Presumably air leaked over the rim walls anyway, but not quickly. An inner ring of twenty rectangular shadow squares, occupying what would have been the orbit of Mercury in Sol system, gave a thirty-hour day and night cycle to the Ringworld.

The Ringworld was six hundred million million square miles of habitable planet. Three million times the area of the Earth.

Louis and Speaker-To-Animals and Nessus and Teela Brown had traveled across the Ringworld for almost a year: two hundred thousand miles across the width, then back to the point where Liar had crashed. A fifth of the width. It hardly made them experts. Could any thinking being ever have claimed to be an expert on the Ringworld?

But they had examined one of the s.p.a.ceport ledges on the outside of the rim wall. If the Hindmost spoke the truth, they would need no more. Land on the s.p.a.ceport ledge, pick up whatever the Hindmost expected to find, and go. Fast! Because- Because within the rectangular telescope image that the Hindmost had set before them, it was painfully obvious. The baby-blue arc of Ringworld-the color of three million Earthlike worlds, too far away for detail to show, but banded with midnight blue from the shadow squares-was well off center from its sun.

"We didn't know this," Chmeee said. "We spent a Kzin year on the structure and did not know this. How could we not?"

The puppeteer said, "The Ringworld could not have been off center when you were here. It was twenty-three years ago."

Louis nodded. To speak would be distracting. Only the joy of the wire now held away horror for the fate of the Ringworld natives, fear and guilt for himself. The Hindmost continued, "The Ringworld structure is unstable in the plane of its...o...b..t. Surely you knew?"

"No!"