Ringworld

CHAPTER 4 — Speaker-To-Animals

"I want to join the expedition," Teela said into the phonescreen.

The puppeteer howled on a long-drawn E-flat note.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Excuse me," said the puppeteer. "Report to Outback Field, Australia, tomorrow at 0800. Bring personal possessions not to exceed fifty pounds Earth weight. Louis, you will do the same. Ahh -" The puppeteer raised his heads and howled.

Anxiously Louis demanded, "Are you sick?"

"No. I foresee my own death. Louis, I could wish that you had been less persuasive. Farewell. We meet at Outback Field."

The screen went dark.

"See?" Teela crowed. "See what you get for being so persuasive?"

"Me and my silver tongue. Well, I did my oratorical best. Don't blame me if you die horribly."

That night, freely falling in darkness, Louis heard her say, "I love you. I'm going with you because I love you."

"Love you too," he said with sleepy good manners. Then it percolated through, and he said, "That's what you were reserving?"

"Mm hmm."

"You're following me two hundred light years because you can't bear to let me go?"

"Yawp."

"Sleeproom, half-light," said Louis. Dim blue light filled the room.

They floated a foot apart between the sleeping plates. in preparation for space they had cleaned off the skin dyes and hair treatments of flatland style. The hair in Louis's queue was now straight and black; his scalp was gray with stubble. Yellow-brown skin tones, brown eyes with no perceptible slant, changed his image considerably.

The changes in Teela were equally drastic. Her hair was dark and wavy now, tied back from her face. Her skin was nordic-pale. Her oval face was dominated by big brown eyes and a small, serious mouth; her nose was almost unnoticeable. In the sleeping field she floated like oil on water, utterly relaxed.

"But you've never even been as far as the Moon."

She nodded.

"And I'm not the world's greatest lover. You told me that yourself."

She nodded again. There was no reticence in Teela Brown. In two days and nights she had not lied, nor shaded the truth, nor so much as dodged a question. Louis would have known. She had told him of her first two loves: the one who had lost interest in her after half a year, the other, a cousin, who had been offered a chance to emigrate to Mount Lookitthat. Louis had told her little of his own experience, and she had seemed to accept his reticence. But she had none. And she asked the damndest questions.

"Then why me?" he asked.

"I don't know," she confessed. "Could it be the charisma? You're a hero, you know."

He was the only living man to have made first contact with an alien species. Would he ever live down the Trinoc episode?

He made one more try. "Look, I know the world's greatest lover. Friend of mine. It's his hobby. He writes books about it. He's got doctorates in physiology and psychology. For the past hundred and thirty years he's been -"

Teela had her hands over her ears. "Don't" she said. "Don't."

"I just don't want you to get killed somewhere. You're too young."

She wore the puzzled look, that puzzled look, the one that meant hed used proper Interworld words in a nonsense sequence. Whiplash of the heart? Killed somewhere? Louis sighed within himself. "Sleeproom nodes merge," he said, and something happened to the sleeper field. The two regions of stable equilibrium, the anomalies which kept Louis and Teela from falling out of the field, moved together and merged into one. Louis and Teela followed, sliding "downhill" until they bumped and clung.

"I really was sleepy, Louis. But never mind …"

"Think about privacy before you drift away to dreamland. Spacecraft tend to be cramped."

"You mean we couldn't make love? Tanj, Louis, I don't care if they watch. They're aliens."

"I care."

She gave him that puzzled look. "Suppose they weren't aliens. Then would you object?"

"Yes, unless we knew them very well. Does that make me out of date?"

"A little."

"Remember that friend I mentioned? The world's greatest lover? Well, he had a colleague," said Louis, "and she taught me some things he was teaching her. You need gravity for this," he added. "Sleeproom field off." Weight returned.

"You're trying to change the subject," said Teela.

"Yes. I give up."

"Okay, but just keep one thing in mind. One thing. Your puppeteer friend might have wanted four species instead of three. You could just as easily be holding a Trinoc instead of me."

"Horrible thought. Now, we do this in three stages, starting with straddle position … "

"What's straddle position?"

"I'll show you …"

By morning Louis was glad enough that they would be traveling together. When his doubts returned it was too late. It had already been too late for some considerable time.

The Outsiders were traders in information. They bought high and they sold high, but what they bought once they sold again and again, for their trading ground was the entire galactic whorl. In the banks of human space their credit was virtually unlimited.

Presumably they had evolved on some cold, light moon of a gas giant; some world very like Nereid, Neptune's larger moon. Now they lived in the gaps between the stars, in city-sized ships whose sophistication varied enormously, from photon sails to engines theoretically impossible to human science. Where a planetary system held potential customers, and where such a system included a suitable world, the Outsiders would lease space for trade centers, rest and recreation areas, supply dumps. Half a thousand years ago they had leased Nereid.

"And that must be their major trade area," said Louis Wu. "Down there." He pointed with one hand, keeping the other on the controls of the transport ship.

Nereid was an icy, craggy plain beneath bright starlight. The sun was a fat white point giving off as much light as a full Moon; and that light illuminated a maze of low walls. There were hemispherical buildings, and a cluster of small thruster-driven ground-to-orbit ships with passenger sections open to space; but more than half the plain was covered with those low walls.

Speaker-To-Animals, hovering hugely behind Louis, said, "I would know the purpose of the maze. Defense?"

"Basking areas," said Louis. "The Outsiders live on thermoelectricity. They lie with their heads in sunlight and their tails in shadow, and the temperature difference between the two sets up a current. The walls are to make more shadow-borderlines."

Nessus had calmed down during the ten-hour flight. He trotted about the lifesystem of the transport ship, inspecting this and that, poking a head and eye into corners, tossing comments and answers to questions over his shoulder. His pressure suit, a baggy balloon with padding over the hump that concealed his brain, looked light and comfortable; the air and food regenerator packages were improbably small.

He had given them a strange moment just before takeoff. Music had played suddenly through the cabin, complex and lovely, rich in minor tones, like the sad call of a sex-maddened computer. Nessus whistled. With his twin mouths, rich in nerves and muscles appropriate to mouths which were also hands, the puppeteer was a walking orchestra.

He had insisted that Louis fly the craft, and his confidence in Louis's ability was such that he had not strapped down. Louis suspected special, secret gadgets to protect the passengers of the puppeteer-built ship.

Speaker had come aboard with a twenty-pound luggage case which, when opened, had held little more than a collapsed microwave oven for heating meat. That, and a haunch of raw something-or-other, of kzinti rather than terrestrial origin. For some reason Louis had expected the kzin's pressure suit to look like bulky medieval armor. It didn't. It was a multiple balloon, transparent, with a monstrously heavy backpack and a fishbowl helmet packed with esoteric-looking tongue controls. Though it held no identifiable weapons, the backpack had a look of battle gear, and Nessus had insisted that he store it.

The kzin had spent most of the voyage napping.

And now they all stood looking over Louis's shoulder.

"I'll drop us next to the Outsider ship," said Louis.

"No. Take us east. We have been using an isolated area to park the Long Shot."

"What for? Would the Outsiders spy on you?"

"No. The Long Shot uses fusion drives instead of thrusters. The heat of takeoffs and landings would disturb the Outsiders."

"Why Long Shot?"

"It was so named by Beowulf Shaeffer, the only sentient being ever to fly that ship. He took the only extant holographs of the Core explosion. Is not Long Shot a gambler's term?"

"Maybe he didn't expect to come back. I'd better tell you: I've never flown anything with a fusion drive. My ship rides on reactionless thrusters, just like this one."

"You must learn," said Nessus.

"Wait," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I myself have had experience with fusion-driven spacecraft. Therefore I will pilot the Long Shot."

"Impossible. The pilot's crash couch is designed to fit a human frame. The control panels follow human custom."

The kzin made angry noises deep in his throat.

"There, Louis. Ahead of us."

The Long Shot was a transparent bubble over a thousand feet in diameter. As Louis guided their craft to circle the behemoth, he could find no cubic inch of her that was not packed with the green-and-bronze machinery of hyperspace shunt motors. Her hull was a General Products #4 hull, easily recognized by one familiar with spacecraft, so big that it was commonly used only to ship entire prefab colonies. But she didn't look like a spacecraft. She was the tremendous counterpart of some primitive orbital satellite, built by a race whose limited resources and limited technology required that every smallest bit of space be used.

"And where do we sit?" Louis inquired. "On top?"

"The cabin is underneath. Land beneath the curve of the hull."

Louis brought his ship down on dark ice, then slid her carefully forward, under the bulging belly of the Long Shot.

There were lights in the lifesystem; they gleamed through the Long Shot's hull. Louis saw two tiny rooms, the lower just big enough to hold a crash couch and a mass indicator and a horseshoe-shaped bank of instruments, the upper room no larger. He felt the kzin move up behind him.

"Interesting," said the kzin. "I presume that Louis is intended to ride in the lower compartment, and we three in the upper."

"Yes. The fitting of three crash couches into so small a space gave us considerable difficulty. Each is equipped with a stasis field for maximum safety. Since we will ride in stasis, it matters little that there is no room to move about."

The kzin snorted, and Louis felt him leave his shoulder. He let the ship settle a last few inches, then snapped off a succession of switches.

"I have a point to make," he said. "Teela and I are collecting the same fee between us that Speaker-To-Animals is collecting alone."

"Do you wish additional pay? I will consider your suggestions."

"I want something you don't need any more," Louis told the puppeteer. "Something your race left behind them." He'd picked a good moment for bargaining. He didn't expect it to work, but it was certainly worth a try. "I want the location of the puppeteer planet."

Nessus's heads swung out from his shoulders, then turned back to face each other. For a moment Nessus held his own stare before asking, "Why?"

"Once upon a time the location of the puppeteer world was the most valuable secret in known space. Your own kind would have paid a fortune in blackmail to keep that secret," said Louis. "That was what made it valuable. Fortune hunters searched every G and K star in sight looking for the puppeteer world. Even now, Teela and I could sell the information to any news network for good money."

"But if that world is outside known space?"

"Ah-h-h," said Louis. "My history teacher used to wonder about that. The information would still be worth money."

"Before we depart for our ultimate destination," the puppeteer said carefully, "you will know the coordinates of the puppeteer world. I think you will find the information more surprising than useful." Again, for a heartbeat, the puppeteer peered into his own eyes.

He broke the pose. "I direct your attention to four conical projections -"

"Yeah." Louis had already noticed the open-mouthed cones, pointing outward and downward around the double cabin. "Are those the fusion motors?"

"Yes. You will find that the ship behaves very like a ship driven by reactionless thrusters, except that there is no internal gravity. Our designers had little room to spare. Concerning the operation of the quantum Il hyperdrive, there is a thing I must warn you about -"

"I have a variable-sword," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I urge calm."

It took a moment for the words to register. Then Louis turned, slowly, making no sudden gestures.

The kzin stood against a curved wall. In one clawed fist he held something like an oversized jumprope handle. Ten feet from the handle, held expertly at the level of the kzin's eyes, was a small, glowing red ball. The wire which joined ball to handle was too thin to be visible, but Louis didn't doubt it was there. Protected and made rigid by a Slaver stasis field, the wire would cut through most metals, including — if Louis should choose to hide behind it — the back of Louis's crash couch. And the kzin had chosen a position such that he could strike anywhere in the cabin.

At the kzin's feet Louis saw the unidentified haunch of alien meat. It had been ripped open, and, of course, it had been hollow.

"I would have preferred a more merciful weapon," said Speaker-To-Animals. "A stunner would have been ideal. I could not procure one in time. Louis, take your hands off the controls and put them on the back of your couch."

Louis did. He had thought of playing with the cabin gravity; but the kzin would have cut him in two if he'd tried it.

"Now, if you will all remain calm, I will tell you what will happen next."

"Tell us why," Louis suggested. He was estimating chances. The red bulb was an indicator to tell Speaker where his invisibly thin wire blade ended. But if Louis could grab that end of the blade, and keep from losing his fingers in the process — No. The bulb was too small.

"My motive should be obvious," said Speaker. The black markings around his eyes had taken on the look of a bandit's mask in a cartoon. The kzin was neither tense nor relaxed. And he stood where he was almost impossible to attack.

"I intend to give my world control of the Long Shot. With the Long Shot as a model we will build more such ships. Such ships would give us a killing superiority in the next Man-Kzin war, provided that men do not also have designs for Long Shot. Satisfactory?"

Louis made his voice sarcastic. "You couldn't be afraid of where we're going."

"No." The insult slid right past him. How would a kzin recognize sarcasm? "You will all disrobe now, so that I may know that you are unarmed. When you have done so I will request the puppeteer to don his pressure suit. We two will board the Long Shot. Louis and Teela will stay behind, but I will take your clothing and your luggage and your pressure suits. I will disable this ship. Doubtless the Outsiders, curious as to why you have not returned to Earth, will come to help you long before your lifesystem fails. Do you all understand?"

Louis Wu, relaxed and ready to take advantage of any slip the kzin might make … Louis Wu glanced at Teela Brown from the corner of his eye and saw a horrible thing. Teela was bracing herself to jump the kzin.

Speaker would cut her in two.

Loins would have to move first.

"Don't be foolish, Louis. Stand up slowly and move against the wall. You shall be the first toooo …"

Speaker let the word trail off in a kind of croon.

Louis halted his leap, caught by a thing he didn't understand.

Speaker-To-Animals threw back his big orange head and mewed: an almost supersonic squeal. He threw his arms wide, as if to embrace the universe. The wire blade of his variable-sword cut through a water tank without slowing noticeably; water began dripping out on all four sides of the tank. Speaker didn't notice. His eyes didn't see, his ears didn't hear.

"Take his weapon," said Nessus.

Louis moved. He approached cautiously, ready to duck if the variable-sword should move his way. The kzin was waving it gently, like a baton. Louis took the handle from the kzin's unresisting fist. He touched the proper stud, and the red ball retracted until it touched the handle.

"Keep it," said Nessus. He clamped his jaws on Speaker's arm and led the kzin to a crash couch. The kzin made no resistance. He was no longer making sounds; he stared into infinity, and his great furry face showed only a vast calm.

"What happened? What did you do?"

Speaker-To-Animals, totally relaxed, stared at infinity and purred.

"Watch," said Nessus. He moved carefully back from the kzin's crash couch. He held his fiat heads high and rigid, not so much pointed as aimed, and at no time did his eyes leave the kzin.

The kzin's eyes focused suddenly. They flicked from Louis, to Teela, to Nessus. Speaker-To-Animals made plaintive snarling sounds, sat upright, and switched to Interworld.

"That was very, very nice. I wish -"

He stopped, started over. "Whatever you did," he told the puppeteer, "do not do it again."

"I judged you to be a sophisticate," said Nessus. "My judgment was accurate. Only a sophisticate would fear a tasp."

Teela said, "Ah."

Louis said, "Tasp?"

The puppeteer addressed himself to Speaker-To-Animals. "You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if you make me uneasy. If you attempt violence too often, or if you startle me too often, you will soon become dependent on the tasp. Since the tasp is a surgically implanted part of me, you would have to kill me to possess it. And you would still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself."

"Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more."

"Tanj! Will somebody tell me what a tasp is?"

Louis's igriorance seemed to surprise everybody. It was Teela who answered. "It jolts the pleasure center of the brain."

"From a distance?" Louis hadn't known that that was even theoretically possible.

"Sure. It does for you just what a touch of current does for a wirehead; but you don't need to drop a wire into your brain. Usually a tasp is just small enough to aim with one hand."

"Have you ever been hit by a tasp? None of my business, of course."

Teela grinned derision for his delicacy. "Yes. I know what it feels like. A moment of — well, theres no describing it. But you don't use a tasp on yourself. You use it on someone who isn't expecting it. That's where the fun comes in. Police are always picking up taspers in the parks."

"Your tasps," said Nessus, "induce less than a second of current. Mine induces approximately ten seconds."

The effect on Speaker-To-Animals must have been formidable. But Louis saw other implications. "Oh, wow. That's beautiful. That's lovely! Who but a puppeteer would go around with a weapon that does good to the eneray?"

"Who but a prideful sophisticate would fear too much pleasure? The puppeter is quite right," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I would not risk the tasp again. Too many jolts from the puppeteer's tasp would leave me his willing slave. I, a kzin, slaved to an herbivore!"

"Let us board the Long Shot," Nessus said grandly. "We have wasted enough time on trivialities."

Louis was first aboard the Long Shot.

He was not surprised to find his feet trying to dance on Nereid's rock surface. Louis knew how to move in low gravity. But his hindbrain stupidly expected gravity to change as he entered the Long Shoes airlock. Braced for the change, he stumbled and almost fell when it didn't come.

"I know they had induced gravity then," he grumbled as he moved into the cabin. "… Oh."

The cabin was primitive. There were hard right angles everywhere, suitable for bumping knees and elbows. Everything was bulkier than necessary. Dials were badly placed …

But, more than primitive, the cabin was small. There had been induced gravity when the Long Shot was built; but, even in a ship a mile wide, there had been no room for the machinery. There was barely room for a pilot.

Instrument board and mass indicator, a kitchen slot, a crash couch, and a space behind the couch where a man might wedge himself with his head bent to the low ceiling — Louis braced himself in that space and opened the kzin's variable-sword to three feet.

Speaker-To-Animals came aboard, moving in self-conscious slow motion. He climbed past Louis without slowing, up into the overhead compartment.

The overhead compartment had been a recreation room for the ship's single pilot. Exercise machinery and a reading sereen had been ripped out, and three new crash couches installed. Speaker climbed into one of these.

Now Louis followed him up the rungs, one-handed. Keeping the variable-sword unostentatiously in sight, he closed the cover on the kzin's crash couch and flipped a knife switch.

The crash couch became a mirror-surface egg. Inside, no time would pass until Louis turned off the stasis field. If the ship should happen to ram an antimatter asteroid, even the General Products hull would be ionized vapor; but the kzin's crash couch would not lose its mirror finish.

Louis relaxed. It had all been like a kind of ritualistic dance; but its purpose was real enough. The kzin had good reason to steal the ship. The tasp had not altered that Speaker must not be given an opportunity.

Louis returned to the pilot's cabin. He used the ship-to-suit circuit. "Come on in."

Something over a hundred hours later, Louis Wu was outside the solar system.