Ringworld

The serene dignity in her face had not changed.

She sat down with her feet over the edge of the platform, and she watched Louis Wu. She did not shift position; neither did Louis. For several minutes they held each other's eyes.

Then she reached into one of the big pockets and produced something fist-sized and orange. She tossed it toward Louis, aiming it so that it would go past him, a few inches beyond his reach.

He recognized it as it went by him. A knobby, juicy fruit he had found on a bush two days ago. He had dropped several into the intake hopper of his kitchen, without tasting them.

The fruit splattered red across the roof of a cell. Suddenly Louis's mouth was trying to water, and he was taken with a raging thirst.

She tossed him another. It came closer this time. He could have touched it if he had tried, but he would also have overturned the 'cycle. And she knew it.

Her third shot tapped his shoulder. He clung to his two fistfuls of balloon and thought black thoughts.

Then Nessus's flycycle drifted into view.

And she smiled.

The puppeteer had been floating behind the truck-sized derelict. Upside down again, he drifted obliquely toward the viewing platform as if wafted there by a stray induced current, and, as he passed Louis, he asked, "Can you seduce her?"

Louis snarled. Then, realizing that the puppeteer really wasn't mocking him, he said, "I think she thinks I'm an animal. Forget it."

"Then we need different tactics."

Louis rubbed his forehead against the cool metal. He had seldom felt so miserable. "You're in charge," he said. "She won't buy me as an equal, but she might buy you. She won't see you as competition; you're too alien."

The puppeteer had drifted past him. Now he said something in what sounded to Louis like the language of the shaven choir-leading priest: the holy language of the Engineers.

The girl did not respond. But … she wasn't smiling exactly, but the corners of her mouth did seem to turn up slightly, and there was more animation in her eyes.

Nessus must be using low power. Very low power.

He spoke again, and this time she answered. Her voice was cool and musical, and if she sounded imperious to Louis Wu, he was predisposed to hear that quality.

The puppeteer's voice became identical to the girl's. What developed then was a language lesson.

To Louis Wu, uneasily balanced above a lethal drop, it was bound to be dull. He picked up a word here and there. At one point she tossed Nessus one of the fist-sized orange fruits, and they established that it was a thrumb. And Nessus kept it.

Suddenly she stood up and left.

Louis said, "Well?"

"She must have become bored," said Nessus. "She gave no warning."

"I'm dying of thirst. Could I have that thrumb?"

"Thrumb is the color of the peel, Louis." He edged his 'cycle alongside Louis and handed him the fruit.

Louis was only just desperate enough to free one hand. That meant he had to bite dumgh the thick peel and tear it away with his teeth. At some point he reached real fruit and bit into it. It was the best thing he had tasted in two hundred years.

When he had quite finished the fruit, he asked, "Is she coming back?"

"We may hope so. I used the tasp at low power that it might affect her below the conscious level. She will miss it. The lure will become stronger every time she sees me. Louis, should we not make her fall in love with you?"

"Forget it. She think I'm a native, a savage. Which brings up the question: what is she?"

"I could not say. She did not try to hide it, but it did not come across, either. I do not know enough language. Not yet."

CHAPTER 20 — Meat

Nessus had landed to explore the dimness below. Cut off from the intercom, Louis tried to watch what the puppeteer was doing. Eventually he gave that up.

Much later, he heard footsteps. No bells this time.

He cupped his hands and shouted downward. "Nessus!"

The sound bounced off the walls and focused itself horrendously in the apex of the cone. The puppeteer jumped to his feet, swarmed aboard his 'cycle and took off. Cast off, more likely. No doubt he had left the motor going to hold the 'cycle down against the trapping field. Now he simply cut the motor.

He was back among the hovering metal when the footsteps stopped somewhere above them.

"What the tanj is she doing?" Louis whispered.

"Patience. You could not expect her to be conditioned by one exposure to a tasp at low power."

"Try to get it into your thick, brainless heads. I can not keep my balance indefinitety!"

"You must. How can I help?"

"Water," said Louis, with a tongue like two yards of fla

"Are you thirsty? But how can I get water to you? If you turn your head you may lose your balance."

"I know. Forget it." Louis shuddered. Strange, that Louis Wu the spacer should be so afraid of heights. "How's Speaker?"

"I fear for him, Louis. He has been unconscious for uncomfortably long."

"Tanj, tanj -"

Footsteps.

She must have a mania for changing clothes, Louis thought. What she wore now was all overlapping pleats in orange and green. Like previous garments, it showed nothing at all of her shape.

She knelt at the edge of the observation platform, coolly watching them. Lows clutched his metal raft and waited for developments.

He saw her soften. Her eyes went dreamy; the corners of her small mouth turned up.

Nessus spoke.

She seemed to consider. She said something that might have been an answer.

Then she left them.

"Well?"

"We shall see."

"I get so sick of waiting."

Suddenly the puppeteer's flycycle was floating upward. Up and forward. It bumped against the edge of the observation platform like a rowboat making dock.

Nessus stepped daintily ashore.

The girl came to greet him. What she held in her left hand had to be a weapon. But with her other hand she touched the puppeteer's head, hesitated, then ran her fingernails down his secondary spine.

Nessus made a sound of deftht.

She turned and walked upstairs. Not once did she glance back. She seemed to assume that Nessus would follow like a dog; and he did.

Good, thought Louis. Be subservient. Make her trust you.

But when the oddly matched sounds of their footsteps faded away, the cell block became a tremendous tomb.

Speaker was thirty feet away across the Sargasso Sea of metal. Four padded black fingers and a puff of orange face showed around the green crash balloons. Louis had no way of getting near. The kzIn might be dead already.

Among the white bones below were at least a dozen skulls. Bones, and age, and rusted metal, and silence. Louis Wu clung to his 'cycle and waited for his strength to give out.

He was dozing, not many minutes later, when something changed. His balance shifted -

Louis's life depended on his balance. The momentary disorientation sent him into rigid panic. He looked wildly about him, moving only his eyes.

The metal vehicles were all around him, motionless. But something was moving …

A distant car bumped, screeched like tearing metal and went up.

Huh?

No. It had grounded against the upper ring of cells. The whole Sargasso was sinking uniformly through space.

One by one, noisily, the cars and flying packs docked and were left behind.

Louis's 'cycle smacked jarringly into concrete, turned half around in the turbulence of electromagnetic forces, and toppled. Louis let go and rolled clear.

Immediately he was trying to get to his feet. But he couldn't get his balance; he couldn't stay upright. His hands were claws, contorted with pain, useless. He lay panting on his side, thinking that it must already be too late. Speaker's flycycle must have landed on Speaker.