by Larry Niven
“Help how, you crazy woman? Look: you go back to the Library. Find out where the immortality drug came from before the Fall of the Cities. That’s the place we’re looking for. If there’s any way to move the world without the big motors, that’s where we’ll find the controls.”
She shook her head. “I don’t … How can you know that?”
“It’s their home base. The pro—the Ringworld engineers had to have certain plants growing somewhere close … Tanj … I’m guessing. I’m only guessing. Tanj dammit!” Louis held his head. It was throbbing like a big drum. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I was kidnapped!”
Harkabeeparolyn swung herself out from the probe and dropped. Her coarse blue robe was damp with sweat. She looked a good deal like Halrloprillalar. “I can help. I can read to you.”
“We’ve got a machine for that.”
She came closer. The weapon drooped as if forgotten. “We did it to ourselves, didn’t we? My people took the world’s steering motors for our starships. Can I help set that right?”
The Hindmost said, “Louis, the woman cannot return. The stepping disc in the first probe is still a transmitter. Is that a weapon in her hands?”
“Harkabeeparolyn, give me that.”
She did. Louis held the projectile weapon awkwardly. It looked to be of Machine People make.
The Hindmost told him, “Carry it to the forward left corner of the cargo bay. The transmitter is there.”
“I don’t see it.”
“I painted it over. Set the weapon in the corner and step back. Woman, hold your place!”
Louis obeyed. The gun disappeared. Louis almost missed a flick of motion beyond the hull as the weapon dropped onto the spaceport ledge. The Hindmost had set a stepping-disc receiver on the outside of the hull.
Louis marveled. There were elements of Renaissance Italy in the puppeteer’s paranoia.
“Good. Next—Louis! Another!”
A brown-fuzzed scalp poked out of the probe. It was the boy from the map room, stark naked and dripping wet and on the verge of toppling out as he stretched to look about him. His eyes were big with wonder. He was just the right age for confrontation with magic.
Louis bellowed, “Hindmost! Turn off those stepping discs now!”
“I have. I should have earlier. Who is this?”
“A librarian child. He’s got a six-syllable name and I can’t remember it.”
“Kawaresksenjajok,” the boy shouted, smiling. “Where are we, Luweewu? What are we doing here?”
“Finagle only knows.”
“Louis! I will not have these aliens on my ship!”
“If you’re thinking of spacing them, forget it. I won’t allow it.”
“Then they must stay in the cargo hold, and so will you. I think you planned this, you and Chmeee. I should never have trusted either of you.”
“You never did.”
“Repeat, please?”
“We’ll starve in here.”
There was a longish pause. Kawaresksenjajok dropped lithely from the probe. He and Harkabeeparolyn engaged in furious whispering.
“You may return to your cell,” the Hindmost said suddenly. “They may stay here. I will leave a stepping-disc link open so that you may feed them. This may work out very well.”
“How?”
“Louis, it is good that some Ringworld natives survive.”
The Ringworlders weren’t close enough to hear Louis’s translator. He said, “You’re not thinking of giving up now, are you? What’s in these tapes could take us straight to the magic transmutation device.”
“Yes, Louis. And the wealth from the Maps of several worlds may be in Chmeee’s hands right now. We may count on distance to protect us for two or three days, no more. We must go soon.”
The natives looked around at Louis’s approach. He said, “Harkabeeparolyn, help me carry the reading machine.”
Ten minutes later the spools and the reading machine and the severed screen were with the Hindmost on the flight deck. Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok awaited further orders.
“You’ll have to stay here for a bit,” Louis told them. “I don’t know just what’s going to happen. I’ll send you food and bedding. Trust me.” He could feel the guilt in his face as he turned quickly and stepped into the corner.
A moment later he was back in his cell—pressure suit, vest, and all.
***
Louis stripped himself and dialed for a set of informal pajamas. Already he felt better. He was tired, but Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok had to be provided for. The kitchen would not give him blankets. He dialed for four voluminous hooded ponchos and sent them through the stepping discs.
He reached back into his memory. What did Halrloprillalar like to eat? She was an omnivore, but she preferred fresh foods. He chose provisions for them. Through the wall he watched their dubious expressions as they examined it.
He dialed for walnuts and a pedigreed Burgundy for himself. Munching and sipping, he activated the sleeping field, tumbled into it, and stretched out in free fall to think.
Lyar Building would pay for his banditry. Had Harkabeeparolyn left the superconductor cloth behind in the library to help pay for the damage? He didn’t even know that.
What was Valavirgillin doing now? Frightened for her whole species, for her whole world, and with no way to do anything about it, courtesy of Louis Wu. The woman and boy in the cargo hold must be just as frightened … and if Louis Wu died in the next few hours, they would not survive him long.
It was all part of the price. His own life was on the line too.
Step one: Get the flashlight-laser aboard Needle. Done.
Step two: Could the Ringworld be moved back into position? In the next few hours he might prove that it was not possible. It would depend on the magnetic properties of scrith.
If the Ringworld could not be saved, then flee.
If the Ringworld could be saved, then—
Step three: Make a decision. Was it possible for Chmeee and Louis Wu to return alive to known space? If not, then—
Step four: Mutiny.
He should have left that patch of superconductor cloth in Lyar Building itself. He should have reminded the Hindmost to disconnect the probe’s stepping discs. The fact was that Louis Wu had been making some poor decisions lately. It bothered him. His next moves were going to be savagely important.
But for the moment, he would steal a few hours’ sleep … to match his other thefts.
***
Voices, dimly heard. Louis stirred, and turned in free fall, and looked about him.
Beyond the aft wall, Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok were in animated conversation with the ceiling. To Louis it was gibberish. He didn’t have his translator. But the City Builders were pointing into a rectangular hologram floating outside the hull, blocking part of the spaceport ledge.
Through that “window” Louis could see the sunlit courtyard of a gray stone castle. Rough-hewn stone in big masses; lots of right angles. The only windows were vertical arrow slits. Some kind of ivy was crawling up one of the walls. Luxuriant pale-yellow ivy with scarlet veins.
Louis pushed himself out of the field.
The puppeteer was at his bench on the flight deck. Today his mane was a cloudy phosphorescent glow. He turned one head at Louis’s approach. “Louis, I trust you are rested?”
“Yah, and I needed it, too. Any progress?”
“I was able to repair the reading machine. Needle’s computer doesn’t know enough of the City Builder tongue to read tapes about physics. I hope to pick up a vocabulary by talking to the natives.”
“How much longer? I’ve got some questions about the Ringworld’s general design.” Could the Ringworld floor, the whole six hundred million million square miles of it, be used to manipulate the Ringworld’s position electromagnetically? If he could know for sure!
“Ten to twenty hours, I think. We all need to rest occasionally.”
Too long, Louis th
ought, with the repair crew coming down their throats. Too bad. “Where’s the picture coming from? The lander?”
“Yes.”
“Can we get a message to Chmeee?”
“No.”
“Why not? He must be carrying his translator.”
“I made the mistake of turning the translator function off by way of coercion. He isn’t carrying it.”
“What happened?” Louis asked. “What’s he doing in a medieval castle?”
The Hindmost said, “It has been twenty hours since Chmeee reached the Map of Kzin. I’ve told you how he made his reconnaissance flight, how he allowed kzinti aircraft to attack him, how he landed on the great ship and waited while they continued their attacks. The attacks lasted some six hours before Chmeee himself broke off and flew elsewhere. I wish I understood what he hoped to gain, Louis.”
“I don’t know either, really. Go on.”
“The aircraft followed him some way, then turned back. Chmeee continued to search. He found a stretch of wilderness with a small, walled stone castle on the highest peak. He landed in the courtyard. He was attacked, of course, but the defenders had nothing but swords and bows and the like. When they were well assembled around the lander, he sprayed them with stun cannon. Then he—”
“Hold it.”
A kzin sprinted out of one of the rounded arches and across the gray flagstones, moving toward the hologram window at a four-legged dead run. It had to be Chmeee; he was wearing impact armor. An arrow protruded from his eye, a long wooden arrow with papery leaves for feathering.
Other kzinti ran behind him,, waving swords and maces. Arrows fell from the slit windows and glanced from his impact armor. As Chmeee reached the lander’s airlock, a thread of light lashed from a window. The laser beam chewed flame from the flagstones, then focused on the lander. Chmeee had disappeared. The beam held … then snuffed out as the slit window exploded in red and white flame.
“Careless,” the Hindmost murmured. “Giving such a weapon to enemies!” His other mouth nibbled at the controls. He switched to an inside camera. Louis watched Chmeee lock the airlock, then stagger toward the autodoc, struggling to take off his impact armor, dropping it as he moved. The kzin’s leg was gashed beneath the armor. He heaved the lid of the autodoc up and more or less fell inside.
“Tanj! He hasn’t turned the monitors on! Hindmost, we’ve got to help him.”
“How, Louis? If you tried to reach him via stepping discs, you would be heated to fusion temperatures. Between your velocity and the lander’s—”
“Yah.” The Great Ocean was thirty-five degrees around the curve of the Ringworld. The kinetic energy difference would be enough to blast a city. There was no way to help.
Chmeee lay bleeding.
Suddenly he cried out. He half turned over. His thick fingers stabbed at the autodoc’s keyboard. He heaved himself on his back, reached up and pulled the cover closed.
“Good enough,” Louis said. The arrow had entered the socket at a sharp outward angle. It might have missed destroying brain tissue … or it might not. “He was careless, all right. Okay, go on.”
“Chmeee used stun cannon to irradiate the entire castle. Then he spent three hours loading unconscious kzinti onto repulser platforms and taking them outside. He barred the gates. He went away, into the castle. For nine hours I saw nothing of him. Why are you grinning?”
“He didn’t take any females outside, did he?”
“No. I think I see.”
“He was tanj lucky to get his armor on fast enough. He got that slash on his leg before he finished.”
“It does seem that Chmeee is no threat to me.”
He’d be in the ‘doc twenty to forty hours, Louis estimated. Now it was Louis Wa’s decision alone. “There’s something we ought to discuss with him, but I guess there’s no help for it. Hindmost, please record the following conversation. Send it to the lander on a looped tape. I want it in Chmeee’s ears when he wakes up.”
The puppeteer reached behind him; he seemed to chew at the control panel. “Done. What is it we are to discuss?”
“Chmeee and I haven’t been able to make ourselves believe that you’ll take us back to known space. Or even that you can.”
The puppeteer peered at him from two directions. His flat heads spread wide, giving him binocular effect, the better to study his dubious ally and possible enemy. He asked, “Why should I not, Louis?”
“First, we know too much. Second, you don’t have any reason to go back to any world in known space. With or without the magic transmuter, the place you want to be is the Fleet of Worlds.”
Muscles in the puppeteer’s hindquarters flexed restlessly. (That was the leg a puppeteer fought with: turn your back on the enemy, zero in with wide-spaced eyes, kick!) He said, “Would that be so bad?”
“It might be better than staying here,” Louis conceded. “What did you have in mind?”
“We can make your lives very comfortable. You know that we have the kzinti longevity drug. We can supply boosterspice, too. There is room in Needle for hominid and kzinti females, and in fact we have a City Builder female aboard. You would travel in stasis, so crowding is not a problem. You and your entourage may settle on one of the four farming worlds of the Fleet. You would virtually own it.”
“What if we got bored with the pastoral life?”
“Nonsense. You would have access to the libraries of the home world. Access to knowledge humanity has wondered about since first we revealed ourselves! The Fleet is moving through space at nearly lightspeed, eventually to reach the Clouds of Magellan. With us you will escape the galactic core explosion. Likely we will need you to explore … interesting territories ahead of our path.”
“You mean dangerous.”
“What else would I mean?”
Louis was more tempted than he would have expected. How would Chmeee take such an offer? Vengeance postponed? A chance to damage the puppeteer home world in some indefinite future? Or simple cowardice?
He asked, “Is this offer contingent on our finding a magic transmuter?”
“No. Your talents are needed regardless. However … any promise I make now would be more easily carried out under an Experimentalist regime. Conservatives might not recognize your value, let alone Chmeee’s.”
That was nicely phrased, Louis conceded. “Speaking of Chmeee—”
“The kzin has defected, but I leave my offer open to him. He has found kzinti females to save. Perhaps you can persuade him.”
“I wonder.”
“And after all, you may see your worlds again. In a thousand years, known space may have forgotten the puppeteers. Mere decades will have passed for you, falling near lightspeed with the Fleet of Worlds.”
“I want time to think it over. I’ll put it to Chmeee when I get the chance.” Louis glanced behind him. The City Builders were watching him. It was a pity he couldn’t consult them, because he was deciding their fate too.
But he had decided. “What I’d like to do next,” he said, “is move on to the Great Ocean. We could come up through Fist-of-God Mountain and go slowly enough—”
“I have no intention of moving the Needle at all. There may be threats other than the meteor defense, and surely it is enough!”
“I’ll bet I can change your mind. Do you remember finding a rig for hoisting the Bussard ramjets on the rim wall? Have a look at that rig now.”
For a moment the puppeteer remained frozen. Then he whirled and was out of sight behind the opaque wall of his quarters.
And that ought to keep him busy long enough.
***
At his leisure Louis Wu moved to his pile of discarded clothing and equipment. He fished the flashlight-laser out of his vest. Step four: coming up. A pity his autodoc was in the lander, a hundred million miles out of reach. He might need it soon.
There was certainly flare shielding on the outer hall of Needle. Every ship had that, at least on the windows. Under the impact of too much light, flare sh
ielding became a mirror, and maybe saved the pilot’s eyesight.
It stopped solar flares, and it stopped lasers. If the Hindmost had set impervious walls between himself and his captive crew, surely he would have coated the entire flight deck with shielding.
But what about the floor?
Louis knelt. The hyperdrive motor ran the whole length of the ship; it was bronze colored, with some copper and hullmetal. Puppeteer machinery, with all angles rounded, it looked half melted already. Louis angled the flashlight-laser into it and fired through the transparent floor.
Light glared back from the bronze surface. Metal vapor spewed. Liquid metal ran. Louis let the beam chew deep, then played it around, burning or melting anything that looked interesting. A pity he’d never studied hyperdrive system engineering.
The laser grew warm in his hand. He’d been at this for some minutes. He shifted the beam to one of the six mountings that held the motor suspended in its vacuum chamber. It didn’t melt; it softened and settled. He attacked another. The motor’s great mass sagged and twisted.
The narrow beam flickered, strobelike, then faded. Battery dead. Louis tossed the flashlight-laser away from him, remembering that the puppeteer could make it explode in his hand.
He strolled to the forward wall of his cage. The puppeteer wasn’t in sight, but presently Louis heard the sound of a steam calliope dying in agony.
The puppeteer trotted around the opaque green section and stood facing him. Muscles quivered beneath his skin.
“Come,” said Louis Wu, “let us reason together.”
Without haste, the puppeteer tucked both heads beneath his forelegs and let his legs fold under him.
Chapter 24
Counterproposal
Louis Wu woke clearheaded and hungry. For a few minutes he rested, savoring free fall; then he reached out and killed the field. His watch said he’d slept seven hours.
Needle’s guests were sleeping beneath one of the tremendous clamps that had held the lander in place during flight. The white-haired woman slept restlessly, tangled in her ponchos, with one bare leg sticking out. The brown-haired boy slept like a baby.
