Ringworld r-1

by Larry Niven

  Louis struck an attitude: parade rest. An inspiration to his crew, the heroic commander stands astride the bridge. The damaged rocket motors may explode at the first touch of thrust; but it must be tried. The kzinti battleships must be stopped before they reach Earth!

  "It'll never work," said Louis Wu.

  "Why not, Louis? The stresses should not exceed -"

  "A flying castle, for Finagle's sake! I only just realized how insane the whole thing is. We must have been out of our minds! Tootling home in the upper half of a skyscraper -" The building shifted then, and Louis staggered. Nessus had started the thruster.

  The city drifted past the bay window, gathering speed. Acceleration eased off. It had never been higher than a foot per second squared. Top speed seemed to be about one hundred miles per hour, and the castle was rock steady.

  "We centered the flycycle correctly," said Nessus. "The floor is level, as you will note, and the structure shows no tendency to rotate."

  "It's still silly."

  "Nothing that works is silly. And now, where shall we go?"

  Louis was silent.

  "Where shall we go, Louis? Speaker and I have no plans. What direction, Louis?"

  "Starboard."

  "Very well. Directly starboard?"

  "Right. We've got to get past the Eye storm. Then turn forty-five degrees or so to antispinward."

  "Do you seek the city of the tower called Heaven?"

  "Yes. Can you find it?"

  "That should be no problem, Louis. Three hours flying time brought us here; we should be back at the tower in thirty hours. And then?"

  "Depends."

  * * *

  The picture was so vivid. It was pure deduction and imagination, yet — so vivid. Louis Wu tended to daydream in color.

  So vivid. But was it real?

  It was frightening, how suddenly his confidence in the flying tower had leaked away. Yet the tower was flying. It didn't need Louis Wu to make it go.

  * * *

  "The leaf-eater seems content to follow your lead," said Speaker.

  The flycycle hummed quietly to itself a few feet away. Landscape flowed past the bay window. The Eye storm was off to the side, its gray gaze large and daunting.

  "The leaf-eater's out of his mind," said Louis. "I take it you've got better sense."

  "Not at all. If you have a goal, I am content to follow you. But if it may involve fighting, I should know something about it."

  "Um."

  "I should know something about it regardless, in order to decide whether it will involve fighting."

  "Well put."

  Speaker waited.

  "We're going after the shadow square wire," said Louis. "Remember the wire we ran into after the meteor defenses wrecked us? Later it started falling over the city of the floating tower, loop after loop, endlessly. There should be at least tens of thousands of miles of it, more than we could possibly need for what I've got in mind."

  "What do you have in mind, Louis?"

  "Getting hold of the shadow square wire. Odds are the natives will just give it to us, if Prill asks politely, and if Nessus uses the tasp."

  "And after that?"

  "After that, we'll find out just how crazy I am."

  * * *

  The tower moved to starboard like a steamship of the sky. Starships were never so roomy. As for ships of the air, there was nothing comparable in known space. Six decks to climb around in! Luxury!

  There were luxuries missing. The food supply aboard the flyscraper consisted of frozen meat, perishable fruit, and the kitchen of Nessus's flycycle. Food for puppeteers lacked nourishment for humans, according to Nessus. Thus Louis's breakfast and lunch were meat broiled by a flashlight-laser, and knobbly red fruit.

  And there was no water.

  And no coffee.

  Prill was persuaded to find some bottles of an alcoholic beverage. They held a belated christening ceremony in the bridge room, with Speaker courteously backed into a far corner and Prill hovering warily near the door. Nobody would accept Louis's suggestion of the name Improbable; and so there were four christenings, in order, in four different languages.

  The beverage was … well, sour. Speaker couldn't take it, and Nessus didn't try. But Prill consumed one bottle, sealed the others, and put them carefully away.

  The christening became a language lesson. Louis learned a few of the rudiments of the Ringworld Engineer's speech. He found that Speaker was learning much faster than he was. It figured. Speaker and Nessus had both been trained to deal with human languages, modes of thinking, limitations in speech and hearing. This was only more of the same.

  They broke for dinner. Again Nessus ate alone, using his flycycle kitchen, while Louis and Prill ate broiled meat and Speaker ate raw, elsewhere.

  Afterward the language lesson went on. Louis hated it. The others were so far ahead of him that he felt like a cretin.

  "But Louis, we must learn the language. Oar rate of travel is low, and we must forage for our food. Frequently we will need to deal with natives."

  "I know. I never liked languages."

  Darkness fell. Even this far from the Eye storm, cloud cover was complete, and the night was like the inside of a dragon!s mouth. Louis called a halt to the lesson. He was tired and irritable and vastly unsure of himself. The others left him to his rest.

  They would be passing the Eye storm in about ten hours.

  * * *

  He was floating at the edge of a restless sleep when Prill came back. He felt hands stroking him lasciviously, and he reached out.

  She backed out of reach. She spoke in her own language, but simplified it into a pidgin for Louis's understanding.

  "You are leader?"

  Bleary-eyed, Louis considered. "Yes," he said, because the actual situation was too complex.

  "Make the two-headed one give me his machine."

  "What?" Louis fumbled for words. "His which?"

  "The machine that make me happy. I want it. You take it from him."

  Louis laughed, for he thought he understood her.

  "You want me? You take it," Prill said angrily.

  The puppeteer had something she wanted. She had no lever to use on him, for he was not a man. Louis Wu was the only man around. Her power would bend him to her will. It had always worked before; for was she not a goddess?

  Perhaps Louis's hair had misled her. She may have assumed that he was one of the hairy lower class, by his bare face perhaps half Engineer, but no more. Then he must have been born after the Fall of the Cities. No youth drug. He must be in the first flush of youth.

  "You were quite right," Louis said in his own tongue. Prill's fists clenched in anger, for his mockery was clear. "A thirty-year-old man would be putty in your hands. But I'm older than that." And he laughed again.

  "The machine. Where does he keep it?" In the darkness she leaned toward him, all lovely suggestive shadow. Her scalp gleamed softly; her black hair spilled over her shoulder. The breath caught in Louis's throat.

  He found the words to say, "Glue against his bone, under skin. One head."

  Prill made a sound like a growl. She must have understood; the gadget was surgically implanted. She turned and left.

  Louis thought briefly of following her. He wanted her more than he was willing to admit. But she would own him if he let her, and her motives did not jibe with Louis Wu's.

  * * *

  The whistle of the wind rose gradually. Louis's sleep became shallow … and merged into an erotic dream.

  His eyes opened.

  Prill knelt facing him, straddling him like a succubus. Her fingers moved lightly over the skin of his chest and belly. Her hips moved rhythmically, and Louis moved in response. She was playing him like a musical instrument.

  "When I finish I will own you," she crooned. The pleasure showed in her voice, but it was not the pleasure of a woman taking pleasure from a man. It was the thrill of wielding power.

  Her touch was a joy as thick as s
yrup. She knew a terribly ancient secret: that every woman is born with a tasp, and that its power is without limit if she can learn to use it. She would use it and withhold it, use it and withhold it, until Louis begged for the right to serve her …

  Something changed in her. Her face could not show it; but he heard the crooning sound of her pleasure, and he felt the change in her motion. She moved, and they came together, and the slam! that rolled across them then seemed entirely subjective.

  She lay beside him all that night. Occasionally they woke and made love, and went back to sleep. If Prill felt disappointment at these times, she did not show it, or Louis did not see it. He knew only that she was no longer playing him like an instrument. They were playing a duet.

  Something had happened to Prill. He suspected what it was.

  * * *

  The morning dawned gray and stormy. Wind howled around the ancient building. Rain lashed the bay window of the bridge, and stormed through broken windows higher up. The Improbable was very close to the Eye storm.

  Louis dressed and left the bridge.

  He saw Nessus in the hallway. "You!" he shouted.

  The puppeteer shied. "Yes, Louis?"

  "What did you do to Prill last night?"

  "Show proper gratitude, Louis. She was trying to control you, to condition you into subservience. I heard."

  "You used the tasp on her!"

  "I gave her three seconds at half-power while you were engaged in reproductive activity. Now it is she who is conditioned."

  "You monster! You egotistical monster!"

  "Come no closer, Louis."

  "Prill is a human woman with free will!"

  "What of your own free will?"

  "It was in no danger! She can't control me!"

  "Is there something else bothering you? Louis, you are not the first human couple I have watched in reproductive activity. We felt that we must know all about your species. Come no closer, Louis."

  "You hadn't the right!" Certainly Louis never intended harm to the puppeteer. He clenched his fists in rage, but he did not intend to use them. In rage he stepped forward -

  Then Louis was in ecstasy.

  In the heart of the purest joy he had ever known, Louis know that Nessus was using the tasp on him. Without allowing himself to realize the consequences, Louis kicked out and up.

  He used all the strength he could divert from his enjoyment of the tasp. It was not great, but he used it, and he kicked the puppeteer in the larynx, beneath the left jaw.

  The consequences were hideous. Nessus said, "Glup!" and stumbled back, and turned off the tasp.

  And turned off the tasp!

  The weight of all the sorrow that men are heir to came down on the shoulders of Louis Wu. Louis turned his back on the puppeteer and walked away. He wanted to weep; but more than that, he wanted the puppeteer not to see his face.

  * * *

  He wandered at random, seeing only his own inner blackness. It was only coincidence that brought him to the stairwell.

  He had kaown full well what he was doing to Prill. Balanced over a drop of ninety feet, he had been eager enough to see Nessus use the tasp on Prill. He had seen wireheads; he knew what it did to them.

  Conditioned! Like an experimental pet! And she knew! Last night had been her last valiant attempt to break loose from the power of the tasp.

  Now Louis had felt what she was fighting.

  "I shouldn't have done it," said Louis Wu. "I take it back." Even in black despair, that was funny. You can't take back such a choice.

  It was coincidence that he went down the stairwell instead of up. Or his hindbrain may have remembered a slam! that his forebrain had hardly noticed.

  The wind roared around him, hurling rain from every direction, as he reached the platform. It took some of his attention outside himself. He was losing the grief that came with the loss of the tasp.

  Once Louis Wu had sworn to live forever.

  Now, much later, he knew that obligations went with such a decision.

  "Got to cure her," he said. "How? No physical withdrawal symptoms … but that won't help her if she decides to walk out of a broken window. How do I cure myself?" For some minor part of him still cried for the tasp, and would never stop.

  The addiction was nothing more than a below-threshold memory. Strand her somewhere with her supply of youth drug, and the memory would fade …

  "Tanj. We need her." She knew too much about the engine room of the Improbable. She couldn't be spared.

  He'd just have to get Nessus to stop using the tasp. Watch her for awhile. She'd be awfully depressed at first …

  Abruptly Louis's mind registered what his eyes had been seeing for some time.

  The car was twenty feet below the observation platform. A cleanly-designed maroon dart with narrow slits for windows, it hovered without power in the roaring wind, caught in an electromagnetic trap nobody had remembered to turn off.

  Louis looked once, hard, to be sure that there was a face behind the windscreen. Then he ran upstairs shouting for Prill.

  He didn't know the words. But he took her by the elbow and pulled her downstairs and showed her. She nodded and went back up to use the police trap adjustments.

  The maroon dart moved tight up against the edge of the platform. The first occupant crawled out, using both hands to hang on, for the wind was howling like a fiend.

  It was Teela Brown. Louis felt little surprise.

  And the second occupant was so blatantly type-cast that he burst out laughing. Teela looked surprised and hurt.

  * * *

  They were passing the Eye storm. The wind roared up through the stairwell that led to the observation platform. It whistled throught the corridors of the first floor, and howled through broken windows higher up. The halls ran with rain.

  Teela and her escort and the crew of the Improbable sat about Louis's bedroom, the bridge. Teela's brawny escort talked gravely with Prill in one corner; though Prill kept a wary eye on Speaker-To-Animals and another on the bay window. But the others surrounded Teela as she told her tale.

  The police device had blown most of the machinery in Teela's flycycle. The locator, the intercom, the sonic fold, and the kitchen all burned out at once.

  Teela was still alive because the sonic fold had had a built-in standing-wave characteristic. She had felt the sudden wind and had hit the retrofield immediately, before the Mach 2 wind could tear her head off. In seconds she had dropped below the municipal upper speed limit. The trap field had been about to blow her drive; it refrained. The wind was tolerable by the time it broke through the stabilizing effect of the sonic fold.

  But Teela was nothing like stable. She had brushed death too closely in the Eye storm. This second attack had followed too quickly. She guided the flycycle down, searching in the dark for a place to land.

  There was a tiled mall surrounded by shops. It had lights: oval doors that glowed bright orange. The 'cycle landed hard, but by then she didn't care. She was down.

  She was dismounting when the vehicle rose again. The motion threw her head over heels. She rose to her hands and knees, shaking her head. When she looked up the flycycle was a dwindling dumbbell shape.

  Teela began to cry.

  "You must have broken a parking law," said Louis.

  "I didn't care why it happened. I felt -" She didn't have the words, but she tried anyway. "I wanted to tell someone I was lost. But there wasn't anyone. So I sat down on one of the stone benches and cried.

  "I cried for hours. I was afraid to move away, because I knew you'd be coming for me. Then — he came." Teela nodded at her escort. "He was surprised to find me there. He asked me something — I couldn't understand. But he tried to comfort me. I was glad he was there, even if he couldn't do anything."

  Louis nodded. Teela would trust anybody. She would inevitably seek help or comfort from the first stranger to come along. And she would be perfectly safe in doing so.

  Her escort was unusual.

&
nbsp; He was a hero. You could tell. You didn't need to see him fighting dragons. You need only see the muscles, the height, the black metal sword. The strong features, uncannily like the wire-sculpture face in the castle called Heaven. The courteous way he talked to Prill, apparently without realizing that she was of the opposite sex. Because she was another man's woman?

  He was clean-shaven. No, that was improbable. More likely he was half Engineer. His hair was long and ash blond and not too clean, and the hairline shaped a noble brow. Around his waist was a kind of kirtle, the skin of some animal.

  "He fed me," Teela said. "He took care of me. Four men tried to jump us yesterday, and he fought them off with just his sword! And he's learned a lot of Interworld in just a couple of days."

  "Has he?"

  "He's had a lot of practice with languages."

  "This was the most unkindest cut of all."

  "What?"

  "Never mind. Go on."

  "He's old, Louis. He got a massive dose of something like boosterspice, long ago. He says he took it from an evil magician. He's so old that his grandparents remembered the Fall of the Cities.

  "Do you know what he's doing?"

  Her smile became impish. "He's on a kind of quest. Long ago he took an oath that he would walk to the base of the Arch. He's doing that. He's been doing it for hundreds of years."

  "The base of the Arch?"

  Teela nodded. She was smiling very prettily, and she obviously appreciated the joke, but in her eyes there was something more.

  Louis had seen love in Teela's eyes, but never tenderness.

  "You're proud of him for it! You little idiot, don't you know there isn't any Arch?"

  "I know that, Louis."

  "Then why don't you tell him?"

  "If you tell him, I'll hate you. Hes spent too much of his life doing this. And he does good. He knows a few simple skills, and he carries them around the Ringworld as he travels to spinward."

  "How much information can he carry? He can't be too intelligent."