Larry Niven: Ringworld

"But it would take us nearly two years to get there at hyperdrive speeds."

"No. We have a ship which will travel considerably faster than a conventional hyperdrive craft. It will cover a light year in five-fourths of a minute."

Louis opened his mouth, but nothing came out. One and a quarter minutes?

"This should not surprise you, Louis Wu. How else could we have sent an agent to the galactic core, to learn of the chain reaction of novae? You should have deduced the existence of such a ship. If my mission is successful, I plan to turn the ship over to my crew, with blueprints with which to build more.

"This ship, then, is your … fee, salary, what have you. You may observe its flight characteristics when we join the puppeteer migration. There you will learn what it is that we propose to explore."

Join the puppeteer ndgration … "Count me in," said Louis Wu. The chance to see an entire sentient species on the move! Huge ships carrying thousands or millions of puppeteers each, whole working ecologies …

"Good." The puppeteer stood up. "Our crew will number four. We go to choose our third member now." And he trotted into the transfer booth.

Louis slipped the cryptic holo into his pocket, and followed. In the booth he tried to read the number on the dial; for it would have told him where in the world he was. But the puppeteer dialed too fast, and they were gone.

Louis Wu followed the puppeteer out of the booth and into the dim, luxurious interior of a restaurant. He recognized the place by the black-and-gold decor and the space-wasteful configuration of horseshoe booths. Krushenkos, in New York.

Incredulous whispers followed in the path of the puppeteer. A human headwaiter, imperturbable as a robot, led them to a table. One of the chairs had been removed at that table and replaced by a big square pillow, which the alien placed between hip and hind hoof as it sat down.

"You were expected," Louis deduced.

"Yes. I called ahead. Krushenkos is accustomed to serving alien guests."

Now Louis noticed other alien diners: four kzinti at the next table, and a kdatlyno halfway across the room. It figured, with the Umted Nations Building so close. Louis dialed for a tequila sour and took it as it arrived. "This was a good thought," he said. "I'm half starved."

"We did not come to eat. We came to recruit our third member."

"Oh? In a restaurant?"

The puppeteer raised its voice to answer, but what it said was not an answer. "You never met my kzin, Kchula-Rrit? I keep it as a pet."

Louies tequila tried to go down the wrong way. At the table behind the puppeteer, four walls of orange far were each and every one a kzin; and as the puppeteer spoke, they all turned with their needle teeth bared. It looked like a smile, but on a kzin that rictus is not a smile.

The -Rrit name belongs to the family of the Patriarch of Kzin. Louis, downing the rest of his drink, decided that it didn't matter The insult would have been mortal regardless, and you could only be eaten once.

The nearest kzin stood up.

Rich orange fur, with black markings over the eyes, covered what might have been a very fat tabby cat eight feet tall. The fat was muscle, smooth and powerful and oddly arranged over an equally odd skeleton. On hands like black leather gloves, sharpened and polished claws slid out of their sheaths.

A quarter of a ton of sentient carnivore stooped over the puppeteer and said, "Tell me now, why do you think that you can insult the Patriarch of Kzin and live?"

The puppeteer answered immediately, and without a tremor in its voice. "It was I who, on a world which circles Beta Lyrae, kicked a kzin called Chuft-Captain in the belly with my hind hoof, breaking three struts of his endoskeletal structure. I have need of a kzin of courage."

"Continue," said the kzin of the black eyes. Despite limitations imposed by the structure of his mouth, the kzin's Interworld was excellent. But his voice showed no sign of the rage he must have felt. For all the emotion shown by kzinti or puppeteer, Louis might have been watching some time-dulled ritual.

But the meat set before the kzinti was blood-raw and steaming; it had been flash-heated to body temperature just before serving. And all of the kzinti were smiling.

"This human and I," said the puppeteer, "will explore a place such as no kzin has ever dreamed. We will need a kzin in our crew. Dare a kzin follow where a puppeteer leads?"

"It has been said that puppeteers were plant-eaters, that they would lead away from battle and not toward it."

"You shall judge. Your fee, if you survive, will be the plans for a new and valuable type of spacecraft, plus a model of the ship itself. You may consider this fee to be extreme hazard pay."

The puppeteer, Louis thought, was sparing no pains to insult the kzinti. One never offers a kzin hazard pay. The kzin is not supposed to have noticed the danger!

But the kzin's only remark was, "I accept."

The other three kzinti snarled at him.

The first kzin snarled back.

One kzin alone sounded like a catfight. Four kzinti in heated argument sounded like a major feline war, with atonics. Sonic deadeners went on automatically in the restaurant, and the snarls became remote, but they went on.

Louis ordered another drink. Considering what he knew of kzinti history, these four must have remarkable restraint. The puppeteer still lived.

The argument died away, and the four kzinti turned back. He of the black eye-markings said, "What is your name?"

"I take the human name of Nessus," said the puppeteer. "My true name is -" Orchestral music flowed for an instant from the puppeteer's remarkable throats.

"Well and good, Nessus. You must understand that we four constitute a kzinti embassy to Earth. This is Harch, that is Ftanss, he with the yellow striping is Hroth. I, being only an apprentice and a kzin of low family, bear no name. I am styled by my profession: Speaker-To-Animals."

Louis bridled.

"Our problem is that we are needed here. Delicate negotiations … but these are not your concern. It has been decided that I alone can be replaced. If your new kind of ship proves worth having, I will join you. Otherwise I must prove my courage another way."

"Satisfactory," said the puppeteer, and rose.

Louis remained seated. He asked, "What is the kzinti form of your title?"

"In the Hero's Tongue -" The kzin snarled on a rising note.

"Then why didn't you give that as your title? Was it a deliberate insult?"

"Yes," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I was angered."

Accustomed to his own standards of tact, Louis had expected the kzin to lie. Then Louis would have pretended to believe him, and the kzin would have been more polite in future … too late to back out now. Louis hesitated a fraction of a second before he said, "And what is the custom?"

"We must fight bare-handed — as soon as you deliver the challenge. Or one of us must apologize."

Louis stood up. He was committing suicide; but he'd known tanj well what the custom was. "I challenge you," he said. "Tooth against tooth, claw against fingernail, since we cannot share a universe in peace."

Without lifting his head, the kzin who had been called Hroth spoke up. "I must apologize for my comrade, Speaker-To-Animals."

Louis said, "Huh?"

"This is my function," said the kzin with the yellow striping. "To be found in situations where one must apologize or fight is kzinti nature. We know what happens when we fight. Today our numbers are less than an eighth of what they were when kzin first met man. Our colony worlds are your colony worlds, our slave species are freed and taught human technology and human ethics. When we must apologize or fight, it is my function to apologize."

Louis sat down. It seemed that he would live. He said, "I wouldn't have your job for anything."