Ringworld

There were luxuries missing. The food supply aboard the flyscraper consisted of frozen meat, perishable fruit, and the kitchen of Nessus's flycycle. Food for puppeteers lacked nourishment for humans, according to Nessus. Thus Louis's breakfast and lunch were meat broiled by a flashlight-laser, and knobbly red fruit.

And there was no water.

And no coffee.

Prill was persuaded to find some bottles of an alcoholic beverage. They held a belated christening ceremony in the bridge room, with Speaker courteously backed into a far corner and Prill hovering warily near the door. Nobody would accept Louis's suggestion of the name Improbable; and so there were four christenings, in order, in four different languages.

The beverage was … well, sour. Speaker couldn't take it, and Nessus didn't try. But Prill consumed one bottle, sealed the others, and put them carefully away.

The christening became a language lesson. Louis learned a few of the rudiments of the Ringworld Engineer's speech. He found that Speaker was learning much faster than he was. It figured. Speaker and Nessus had both been trained to deal with human languages, modes of thinking, limitations in speech and hearing. This was only more of the same.

They broke for di

Afterward the language lesson went on. Louis hated it. The others were so far ahead of him that he felt like a cretin.

"But Louis, we must learn the language. Oar rate of travel is low, and we must forage for our food. Frequently we will need to deal with natives."

"I know. I never liked languages."

Darkness fell. Even this far from the Eye storm, cloud cover was complete, and the night was like the inside of a dragon!s mouth. Louis called a halt to the lesson. He was tired and irritable and vastly unsure of himself. The others left him to his rest.

They would be passing the Eye storm in about ten hours.

He was floating at the edge of a restless sleep when Prill came back. He felt hands stroking him lasciviously, and he reached out.

She backed out of reach. She spoke in her own language, but simplified it into a pidgin for Louis's understanding.

"You are leader?"

Bleary-eyed, Louis considered. "Yes," he said, because the actual situation was too complex.

"Make the two-headed one give me his machine."

"What?" Louis fumbled for words. "His which?"

"The machine that make me happy. I want it. You take it from him."

Louis laughed, for he thought he understood her.

"You want me? You take it," Prill said angrily.

The puppeteer had something she wanted. She had no lever to use on him, for he was not a man. Louis Wu was the only man around. Her power would bend him to her will. It had always worked before; for was she not a goddess?

Perhaps Louis's hair had misled her. She may have assumed that he was one of the hairy lower class, by his bare face perhaps half Engineer, but no more. Then he must have been born after the Fall of the Cities. No youth drug. He must be in the first flush of youth.

"You were quite right," Louis said in his own tongue. Prill's fists clenched in anger, for his mockery was clear. "A thirty-year-old man would be putty in your hands. But I'm older than that." And he laughed again.

"The machine. Where does he keep it?" In the darkness she leaned toward him, all lovely suggestive shadow. Her scalp gleamed softly; her black hair spilled over her shoulder. The breath caught in Louis's throat.

He found the words to say, "Glue against his bone, under skin. One head."

Prill made a sound like a growl. She must have understood; the gadget was surgically implanted. She turned and left.

Louis thought briefly of following her. He wanted her more than he was willing to admit. But she would own him if he let her, and her motives did not jibe with Louis Wu's.

The whistle of the wind rose gradually. Louis's sleep became shallow … and merged into an erotic dream.

His eyes opened.

Prill knelt facing him, straddling him like a succubus. Her fingers moved lightly over the skin of his chest and belly. Her hips moved rhythmically, and Louis moved in response. She was playing him like a musical instrument.

"When I finish I will own you," she crooned. The pleasure showed in her voice, but it was not the pleasure of a woman taking pleasure from a man. It was the thrill of wielding power.

Her touch was a joy as thick as syrup. She knew a terribly ancient secret: that every woman is born with a tasp, and that its power is without limit if she can learn to use it. She would use it and withhold it, use it and withhold it, until Louis begged for the right to serve her …

Something changed in her. Her face could not show it; but he heard the crooning sound of her pleasure, and he felt the change in her motion. She moved, and they came together, and the slam! that rolled across them then seemed entirely subjective.

She lay beside him all that night. Occasionally they woke and made love, and went back to sleep. If Prill felt disappointment at these times, she did not show it, or Louis did not see it. He knew only that she was no longer playing him like an instrument. They were playing a duet.

Something had happened to Prill. He suspected what it was.

The morning dawned gray and stormy. Wind howled around the ancient building. Rain lashed the bay window of the bridge, and stormed through broken windows higher up. The Improbable was very close to the Eye storm.

Louis dressed and left the bridge.

He saw Nessus in the hallway. "You!" he shouted.

The puppeteer shied. "Yes, Louis?"

"What did you do to Prill last night?"

"Show proper gratitude, Louis. She was trying to control you, to condition you into subservience. I heard."

"You used the tasp on her!"

"I gave her three seconds at half-power while you were engaged in reproductive activity. Now it is she who is conditioned."

"You monster! You egotistical monster!"

"Come no closer, Louis."

"Prill is a human woman with free will!"

"What of your own free will?"

"It was in no danger! She can't control me!"

"Is there something else bothering you? Louis, you are not the first human couple I have watched in reproductive activity. We felt that we must know all about your species. Come no closer, Louis."

"You hadn't the right!" Certainly Louis never intended harm to the puppeteer. He clenched his fists in rage, but he did not intend to use them. In rage he stepped forward -

Then Louis was in ecstasy.

In the heart of the purest joy he had ever known, Louis know that Nessus was using the tasp on him. Without allowing himself to realize the consequences, Louis kicked out and up.

He used all the strength he could divert from his enjoyment of the tasp. It was not great, but he used it, and he kicked the puppeteer in the larynx, beneath the left jaw.

The consequences were hideous. Nessus said, "Glup!" and stumbled back, and turned off the tasp.

And turned off the tasp!

The weight of all the sorrow that men are heir to came down on the shoulders of Louis Wu. Louis turned his back on the puppeteer and walked away. He wanted to weep; but more than that, he wanted the puppeteer not to see his face.

He wandered at random, seeing only his own i