Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

“I’ll get him up.” She reached toward her console.

“There is no need.” With a clatter of hooves, a Puppeteer cantered onto the bridge. His hide was off-white with scattered tan spots, and his dark brown mane was unkempt. His eyes didn’t match: one was red and the other yellow. “Louis!”

“Nessus!” Louis greeted back. “You look well.”

“Two heads are better than one.” Nessus trembled. “I should have guessed I would find you here. And is … is…”

The captain had stiffened at the mention of Louis’s true name. She interrupted Nessus’ nervous stammer. “You introduced yourself as Nathan Graynor.”

“One and the same,” Nessus assured her. “I am surprised you remember, Louis.”

Remember what? Louis wondered. And we met at my two hundredth futzy birthday, and now I look maybe twenty. How did he recognize me so quickly? And why doesn’t Hindmost come in and show himself?

For the last question, at least, Louis had a guess: Hindmost chose to reunite in person. “You’re right, Nessus. I have company aboard.”

“We should rendezvous, Julia,” Nessus said. “These are old friends.”

The New Terran vessel, like most ships in the area, had no normal-space velocity worth mentioning. “We’ll need time to match velocities,” Louis said. “We’re doing about point eight light speed.”

Julia took a while making up her mind. “What’s your location, Louis?”

Hindmost didn’t object so Louis transmitted Long Shot ’s coordinates. The AI knew the New Terran navigational conventions, too. “What about matching our velocities, Captain?”

“Be right back,” Julia said. The holo froze.

Hindmost’s Voice reported, “They’ve gone to hyperspace. We’ve lost comm.”

“How far are, were, they from us?” Louis asked.

“A few seconds by standard hyperdrive.” Pause. “They are here.”

The holo unfroze and Julia said, “Matching course and speed … now.”

A small ship hung, immobile, in Long Shot ’s main view port.

Outsider ships could start and stop in an instant, and Louis had seen a Puppeteer ship match speeds with the Fleet in about an hour. Before Hindmost had shanghaied Louis, he had never heard of a human world with similar technology.

The New Terrans — whoever they were — looked more and more interesting.

Louis stepped from Long Shot to Endurance — into a skinny, cylindrical, clear-walled isolation booth. The entire booth floor was a stepping disc, and another disc sat on the deck just outside.

Stepping discs had tiny control switches inset on their rims, but the tiny booth left him nowhere to stand but on the disc. He could not get at its controls, even if he had known the address of the other disc.

“Déjà vu, Louis?” Nessus asked.

Huh? Louis sensed more to the odd greeting than meeting each other after many years. He rapped on the booth wall. “I’ve had friendlier welcomes.”

“Blame me.” With some kind of a handgun dangling from her belt, Julia emerged from a dim corner of the cargo hold. “The eyeball check was a final precaution. Nessus, you may extricate our guest.”

Eyeball check? Precursor language or not, Louis thought he might have to link in Hindmost’s Voice to translate to and from English. Blame me was plain enough, though. He waited to be let out.

In Nessus’ sash, some gadget made a pocket bulge. Nessus plunged a head into the pocket —

And Louis found himself standing outside the booth.

He and Hindmost had scattered stepping discs around the Ringworld and across Long Shot, and Hindmost had never mentioned that the discs could be controlled from a distance. Somehow it didn’t surprise Louis that the Puppeteer had kept a trick in reserve.

“Welcome aboard, Louis. I’m Julia Byerley-Mancini, captain of this ship. If half what I’ve heard is true, you have some interesting stories to tell.”

“And I won’t mind telling them,” Louis said. “Nessus. Someone is waiting for you aboard Long Shot. Someone with whom you shared a special night at the ballet.”

“It has been a long time.” Nessus shivered. “I need a moment to compose myself.”

“Go when you’re ready,” Julia said.

“I’d like to see your ship,” Louis said.

“Let’s see Nessus off first.”

She wants Nessus to leave, Louis realized. What else was going on?

With a tremulous and somehow eager glissando, Nessus stepped onto the disc and disappeared.

“How about that tour?” Louis asked.

“Soon.” Julia eyed him appraisingly. “You could pilot this ship to Earth, couldn’t you? Or tell me where to find it.”

“No problem. Earth is about two hundred light-years from here, mostly to galactic south. Based on Earth years, that is. I’ll show you on a star chart.”

Beaming, she said, “Then this mission has been a brilliant success.”

“And I wouldn’t mind seeing your world. I’ve been called something of a tourist.”

“New Terra will be our next stop. I sense Nessus won’t be coming back with us.”

“My guess is he won’t.” Begging the question: would he go with Julia to this new world? Louis had been looking forward to exploring the Fleet. Free will could be a terrible thing.

“Louis, there’s someone aboard waiting to see you. ”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” he said.

“Nevertheless.” Julia turned toward the door. “Wait here, please.”

Through the door Julia left ajar, Louis heard two indistinct voices. Two women’s voices. Who could he know here?

The door swung open and a tall, white-haired woman entered. Did New Terra not have boosterspice? Maybe she wasn’t the oldest person Louis had ever seen, but she looked the oldest. She had a quiet, mature grace about her.

She shuffled toward him, hope and confusion — and anger? — flickering in her eyes. “It is you. Louis, it’s been more than a century and you haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid I don’t know — ”

She caught him across the jaw with a right hook. “You no-good bastard.”

NESSUS STEPPED INTO A NARROW CORRIDOR. “Hello?” he called. His voices echoed a bit.

“Here.” A mere chord of welcome, but laden with undertunes.

Nessus edged toward the voices. He remembered them well, but after so long apart, how could he know ?

By being together. That’s how.

He rounded a corner into a small room. And standing there —

“Nessus. I had dared to hope it was you on that ship.”

Years of worry melted away. Nessus bounded forward joyfully, chanting, “Baedeker. Baedeker.”

LOUIS LET HIMSELF be escorted to Endurance ’s compact relax room. Alice insisted they knew each other and glowered at his denials.

He synthed brandy for himself. “Can I get you something?”

“Coffee.” She smiled sadly. “I don’t suppose you remember how I take it.”

“Sorry.” He’d said that a lot since meeting her.

“A dash of milk, no sugar.” She sat at the small table, looking lost in thought, till he handed her a drink bulb. “Our last evening together was dinner at our favorite restaurant.”

“On New Terra?”

“Of course, New Terra. You made a terrible scene, blaming Sigmund for ruining your family’s life.”

Nothing like that had happened to Louis, nor did he know anyone named Sigmund, but he had stopped denying things because Alice refused to listen. She was old and her memories confused.

Even so, she packed a mean punch.