Ringworld

"Fingers? Oh." The pointed end of the teardrop-shaped thing tapered into a spike; and the point of the spike became the black thread that linked the shadow squares.

"I knew that the natives could manipulate the thread," said Speaker. "They must have done so, to string the trap that caught Nessus. I went back to see how they had done it.

"They had found one of the endpoints. I surmise that the other end is simple wire; that the wire broke in the middle when we rammed it with the Liar, but that this end tore loose from a socket on one of the shadow squares. We were lucky to get even one end."

"Too right. We can trail it behind us. The wire shouldn't get hung up on anything we can't cut through."

"Where do we go from here, Louis?"

"Starboard. Back to the Liar."

"Of course, Louis. We must return Nessus to the Liar's medical facilities. And then?"

"We'll see."

He left Speaker guarding the teardrop-shaped handle, while he went up for what was left of the electrosetting plastic. They used a double handful of the stuff to stick the handle to a wall — and then there wasn't any way to run a current. The Slaver weapon could have served, but it had been lost. It was a frustrating emergency. until Louis found that the battery in his lighter would run enough current through the plastic to set it.

That left the wire end of the teardrop exposed and pointing to port.

"I remember the bridge room as facing starboard," said Speaker. "If not, we must do it over. The wire must trail behind us.

"It might work," said Louis. He wasn't at all sure … but they certainly couldn't carry the wire. They would simply have to trail it behind them. It probably wouldn't get hung up on anything it couldn't cut through.

They found Teela and Seeker in the engine room with Prill, who was working the lifting motors.

"We're going in different directions," Teela said bluntly. "This woman says she can edge us up against the floating castle. We should be able to walk through a window straight across into the banquet hall."

"Then what? You'll be marooned, unless you can get control of the castle's lifting motors."

"Seeker says he has some knowledge of magic. I'm sure he'll work it out."

Louis would not try to talk her out of it. He was afraid to thwart Teela Brown, as he would not have tried to stop a charging bandersnatch with his bare hands. He said, "If you have any trouble figuring out the controls, just start pulling and pushing things at random."

"I'll remember," she smiled. Then, more soberly, "Take good care of Nessus."

When Seeker and Teela debarked from the Improbable twenty minutes later, it was with no more goodbye than that. Louis had thought of things to say, but had not said them. What could he tell her of her own power? She would have to learn by trial and error, while the luck itself kept her alive.

Over the next few hours the puppeteer's body cooled and became as dead. The lights on the first aid kit remained active, if incomprehensible. Presumably the puppeteer was in some form of suspended animation.

As the Improbable moved away to starboard the shadow square thread trailed behind, alternately taut and slack. Ancient buildings toppled in the city, cut through scores of times by tangled thread. But the knob stayed put in its bed of electrosetting plastic.

The city of the floating castle could not drop below the horizon. In the next few days it became tiny, then vague, then invisible.

Prill sat by Nessus's side, unable to help him, unwilling to leave him. Visibly, she suffered.

"We've got to do something for her," said Louis. "She's hooked on the tasp, and now it's gone and she's got to go it cold turkey. If she doesn't kill herself, shes likely to kill Nessus or me!"

"Louis, you surely don't want advice from me."

"No. No, I guess not."

To help a suffering human being, one plays good listener. Louis tried it; but he didn't have the language for it, and Prill didn't want to talk. He gritted his teeth when he was alone; but when he was with Prill he kept trying.

She was always before his eyes. His conscience might have healed if he could have stayed away from her, but she would not leave the bridge.

Gradually he was learning the language, and gradually Prill was begi

"I did think I was a god," she said. "I did. Why did I think so? I did not build the Ring. The Ring is much older than I."

Prill was learning too. She talked a pidgin, a simplified vocabulary of her obsolete language: two tenses, virtually no modifiers, exaggerated pronunciation.

"They told you so," said Louis.

"But I knew."

"Everyone wants to be god." Wants the power without the responsibility; but Louis didn't know those words.

"Then he came. Two Heads. He had machine?"

"He had tasp machine."

"Tasp," she said carefully. "I had to guess that. Tasp made him god. He lost tasp, not god any more. Is Two Heads dead?"

It was hard to tell. "He would think it stupid to be dead," said Louis.

"Stupid to get head cut off," said Prill. A joke. She'd tried to make a joke.

Prill began to take an interest in other things: sex and language lessons and the Ringworld landscape. They ran across a sprinkling of sunflowers. Prill had never seen one. Dodging the plants' frantic attempts to ray them down, they dug up a foot-high bloom and replanted it on the roof of the building. Afterward they turned hard to spinward to avoid denser sunflower concentrations.

When they ran out of food, Prill lost interest in the puppeteer. Louis pronounced her cured.

Speaker and Prill tried the God Gambit in the next native village. Louis waited apprehensively above them, hoping Speaker could carry it off, wanting to shave his head and join them. But his value as an acolyte was nil. After days of practice, he still had little facility with the language.

They came back with offerings. Food.

As days became weeks, they did it again and again. They were good at it. Speaker's fur grew longer, so that once again he was an orange fur panther, "a kind of war god." On Louis's advice he kept his ears folded flat to his head.

Being a god affected Speaker oddly. One night he spoke of it.

"It does not disturb me to play a god," he said. "It disturbs me to play a god badly."

"What do you mean?"

"They ask us questions, Louis. The women ask questions of Prill, and these she answers; and generally I can understand neither the problem nor the solution. The men should question Prill too, for Prill is human and I am not. But they question me. Me! Why must they ask an alien for help in ru

"You're a male. A god is a kind of symbol," said Louis, "even when hes real. You're a male synibol."

"Ridiculous. I do not even have external genitalia, as I assume you do."

"You're big and impressive and dangerous-looking. That automatically makes you a virility symbol. I don't think you could lose that aspect without losing your godhood entirely."

"What we need is a sound pickup, so that you can answer odd and embarrassing questions for me."

Prill surprised them. The Improbable had been a police station. In one of the storeroom Prill found a police multiple intercom set with batteries that charged off the building's power supply. When they finished, two of the six sets were working.

"You're smarter than I guessed," Louis told Prill that night. He hesitated then; but he didn't know enough of the language to be tactful. "Smarter than a ship' whore ought to be."

Prill laughed. "You foolish child! You have told me yourself that your ships move very quickly next to ours."