Larry Niven: The Ringworld Engineers

“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 space 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.”

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 spacesuits, 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 space 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 soufflé, 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 spaceport ledge. What did we find? The deceleration rings are too big to move. Could he want something from a Ringworlder spacecraft?”

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.