The Ringworld Engineers Read online

  Louis Wu had not seen a Pierson’s puppeteer in twenty-two years. He thought it quite lovely.

  And it had appeared from nowhere. This time Louis had seen it blink into existence in the middle of his yellow grass rug. He had worried needlessly; the ARM had not been involved at all. The problem of the Canyonite burglars was solved.

  “Stepping discs!” Louis cried joyfully. He launched himself at the alien. This would be easy, puppeteers were cowards—

  The stunner glowed orange. Louis Wu spilled onto the carpet, every muscle limp. His heart labored. Black spots formed before his eyes.

  The puppeteer stepped delicately around the two dead men. It looked down at him from two directions; and then it reached for him. Two sets of flat-topped teeth clamped on his wrists, not hard enough to hurt. The puppeteer dragged him backward across the rug and set him down.

  The apartment vanished.

  It could not be said that Louis Wu was worried. He felt no such unpleasant sensation. Dispassionately (for the uniform joy in the wire allows an abstraction of thought normally impossible to mortals) he was readjusting his world picture.

  He had seen the system of stepping discs on the Pierson’s puppeteers’ home world. It was an open teleportation system, far superior to the closed transfer booths used on the human worlds.

  Apparently a puppeteer had had stepping discs installed in Louis’s apartment; had sent two Canyonites to fetch him; when that failed, had come himself. The puppeteers must want him badly.

  That was doubly reassuring. The ARM was not involved at all. And puppeteers had a million years of tradition to back their philosophy of enlightened cowardice. They could hardly want his life; they could have had it more cheaply, with less risk. He should find it easy to cow them.

  He was still lying on a patch of yellow grass and binding mat. It must have been sitting on the stepping disc. There was a huge orange fur pillow across the room from him ... no, it was a kzin slumped with his eyes open, asleep or paralyzed or dead—and in fact it was Speaker. Louis was glad to see him.

  They were in a spacecraft, a General Products hull. Beyond the transparent walls space-bright sunlight glared off sharp-edged lunar rocks. A patch of green-and-violet lichen told him he was still on Canyon.

  But he wasn’t worried.

  The puppeteer released his wrists. Ornaments glittered in its mane: not natural jewels, but something like black opals. One flat brainless head bent and pulled the droud out of the plug in Louis’s skull. The puppeteer stepped onto a rectangular plate and vanished, with the droud.

  Chapter 2 -

  Press Gang

  The kzin’s eyes had been watching him for some time. Now the paralyzed kzin cleared his throat experimentally and rumbled, “Loo-ee Woo.”

  “Uh,” said Louis. He had been thinking of killing himself, but there was no way. He could barely wiggle his fingers.

  “Louis, urr you wirehead?”

  “Ungle,” said Louis, to buy time. It worked. The kzin gave up the effort. And Louis—whose only real concern was for his missing droud—Louis followed an old reflex. He looked around him to learn just how bad his situation was.

  The hexagon of indoor grass under him marked the stepping-disc receiver. A black circle beyond would be the transmitter. Otherwise the floor was transparent, as were the portside hull and the aft wall.

  The hyperdrive shunt ran nearly the length of the ship, beneath the floor. Louis had to recognize the machinery from first principles. It was not of human manufacture; it had the half-melted look of most puppeteer construction. So: the ship had faster-than-light capability. It seemed he was slated for a long trip.

  Through the aft wall Louis could see into a cargo hold with a curved hatch in the side. The hold was nearly filled by a skewed cone thirty feet tall and twice that long. The peak was a turret with ports for weapons and/or sensing instruments. Below the turret, a wraparound window. Lower still, a hatch that would drop to form a ramp.

  It was a lander, an exploration vehicle. Human-built, Louis thought, and custom-built. It had none of that half-melted look. Beyond the lander he glimpsed a silver wall, probably a fuel tank.

  He had not yet seen a door into his own compartment.

  With some effort Louis flopped his head to the other side. Now he was looking forward into the ship’s flight deck. A big section of the ship was opaque green wall, but he could see past it to a curved array of screens, dials with tiny close-set numbers, knobs shaped to a puppeteer’s jaws. The pilot’s control couch was a padded bench with crash webbing and indentations for the hip and shoulders of a Pierson’s puppeteer. There was no door in that wall.

  To starboard—well, their cell was at least fairly large. He saw a shower, a pair of sleeping plates, and an expanse of rich fur covering what might be a kzin’s water bed, and between them a bulky structure Louis recognized as a food recycler and dispenser, of Wunderland make. Beyond the beds was more green wall and no airlock, and that took care of that. They were in a box with no openings.

  The ship was puppeteer-built: a General Products #3 hull, a cylinder flattened along the belly and rounded at the ends. The puppeteer trading empire had sold millions of such ships. They were advertised as invulnerable to any threat save gravity and visible light. About the time Louis Wu was being born, the puppeteer species had fled known space on a dash for the Clouds of Magellan. Now, two hundred odd years later, you still saw General Products hulls everywhere. Some had had a dozen generations of owners.

  Twenty-three years ago, the puppeteer-built spacecraft Liar had crashed into the Ringworld surface at seven hundred and seventy miles per second. A stasis field had protected Louis and the other passengers—and the hull wasn’t even scratched.

  “You’re a kzin warrior,” Louis said. His lips were thick and numb. “Can you batter your way through a General Products hull?”

  “No,” said Speaker. (*Not* Speaker. Chmeee!)

  “It was worth asking. Chmeee, what are you doing on Canyon?”

  “I was sent a message. Louis Wu is in the gash on Warhead, living under the wire. There were holograms for proof. Do you know what you look like under the wire? A marine plant, with fronds stirring at the whim of the current.”

  Louis found there were tears dripping down his nose. “Tanj. Tanj for torment. Why did you come?”

  “I wanted to tell you what a worthless thing you are.”

  “Who sent that message?”

  “I didn’t know. It must have been the puppeteer. It wanted us both. Louis, is your brain so ruined that you did not notice that the puppeteer—“

  “Isn’t Nessus. Right. But did you see the way it keeps its mane? That ornate hair style must cost it an hour a day, easy. If I’d seen it on the puppeteer world, I’d think its rank was high.”

  “Well?”

  “No sane puppeteer would risk its life to interstellar travel. The puppeteers took their entire world with them, not to mention four farming worlds; they’re going hundreds of thousands of years at sublight speeds, just because they don’t trust spaceships. Whoever this one is, it’s crazy, just like any puppeteer ever seen by humans. I don’t know what to expect from it,” said Louis Wu. “But it’s back.”

  The puppeteer was on the flight deck, on a hexagonal stepping disc, watching them through the wall. It spoke in a woman’s voice, a lovely contralto. “Can you hear me?”

  Chmeee lurched away from the wall, held his feet for an instant, then dropped to all fours and charged. He thudded hard against the wall. Any puppeteer should have flinched, but this one didn’t. It said, “Our expedition is almost assembled. We lack only one member of our Crew.”

  Louis found he could roll over, and he did. He said, “Back up and start from the beginning. You’ve got us in a box, you don�
�t have to hide anything. Who are you?”

  “You may choose any name for me that pleases you.”

  “What are you? What do you need from us?”

  The puppeteer hesitated. Then, “I was Hindmost to my world. I was mate to the one you knew as Nessus. Now I am neither. I need you as crew for a return expedition to the Ringworld, to restore my status.”

  Chmeee said, “We will not serve you.”

  Louis asked, “Is Nessus all right?”

  “I thank you for your concern. Nessus is healthy in mind and body The shock he suffered on the Ringworld was just what was needed to restore his sanity. He is at home taking care of our two children.”

  What Nessus had suffered, Louis thought, would have shocked anybody. Ringworld natives had cut off one of his heads. If Louis and Teela had not thought of using a tourniquet on the alien’s throat, Nessus would have bled to death. “I take it you transplanted a new head onto him.”

  “Of course.”

  Chmeee said, “You would not be here if you were not insane. Why would your trillion puppeteers elect a damaged mind to rule them?”

  “I do not consider myself insane.” The puppeteer’s hind leg flexed restlessly. (Its faces, if they showed any expression at all, showed only loose-lipped idiocy.) “Please do not refer to this again. I served my species well, and four Hindmosts served well before me, before the Conservative faction found power to replace my faction. They are wrong. I will prove it. We will go to the Ringworld and find treasure beyond their puny understanding.”

  “To kidnap a kzin,” Chmeee rumbled, “is probably a mistake.” His long claws were extended.

  The puppeteer looked at them through the wall. “You would not have come. Louis would not have come. You had your status and your name. Louis had his droud. Our fourth member was a prisoner. My agents inform me that she has been freed and is on her way to us.”

  Louis laughed bitterly. All humor was bitter without the droud. “You really don’t have much imagination, do you? It’s just like the first expedition. Me, Chmeee, a puppeteer, and a woman. Who’s the woman? Another Teela Brown?”

  “No! Nessus was terrified of Teela Brown—with reason, I believe. I’ve stolen Halrloprillalar from the mouths of the ARM. We will have a Ringworld native guide. As for the character of our expedition, why would I discard a winning strategy? You did escape the Ringworld.”

  “All but Teela.”

  “Teela stayed of her own choice.”

  The kzin said, “We were paid for our efforts. We brought home a spacecraft capable of crossing a light-year in one point two five minutes. That ship bought me my name and my status. What can you offer us now, to compare with that?”

  “Many things. Can you move now, Chmeee?”

  The kzin stood up. He seemed to have shaken off most of the effects of the stunner. Louis was still dizzy and numb in the extremities.

  “Are you in health? Is there dizziness or ache or nausea?”

  “Why so anxious, root-eater? You left me in an autodoc for over an hour. I lack coordination and I am hungry, nothing worse.”

  “Good. We were able to test the substance only so far. Very well, Chmeee, you have your payment. Boosterspice is the medicine that has kept Louis Wu young and strong for two hundred and twenty-three years. My people have developed an analogue for kzinti. You may take the formula home to the Kzinti Patriarchy when our mission is complete.”

  Chmeee seemed nonplussed. “I will grow young? This muck is in me already?”

  “Yes.”

  “We could have developed such a thing ourselves. We did not want it.”

  “I need you young and strong. Chmeee, there is no great danger in our mission! I don’t plan to land on the Ringworld itself, only on the spaceport ledge! You may share any knowledge we find, and so will you, Louis. As for your immediate reward—“

  What appeared on the stepping disc was Louis Wu’s droud. The casing had been opened and resealed. Louis’s heart leaped.

  “Don’t use it yet,” Chmeee said, and it was an order.

  “All right. Hindmost, how long were you watching me?”

  “Fifteen years ago I found you in the canyon. My agents were already at work on Earth, trying to free Halrloprillalar. They were having little success. I installed stepping discs in your apartment and waited for the proper time. I go now to enlist our native guide.” The puppeteer mouthed something in the array of controls, walked forward, and was gone.

  “Do not use the droud,” Chmeee said.

  “Whatever you say.” Louis turned his back. He would know he’d gone crazy when his need for the wire impelled him to attack a kzin. At least one good thing might come out of this ... and he clung hard to that thought.

  He’d been able to do nothing for Halrloprillalar.

  Halrloprillalar had been thousands of years old when she joined Louis and Nessus and Speaker-To-Animals in their search for a way off the Ringworld. The natives who lived beneath her floating police station had been treating her as a sky-living goddess. The whole team had played that game—living as gods to the natives, with Halrloprillalar’s help—while they wended their way back to the wrecked Liar. And she and Louis had been in love.

  The Ringworld natives, the three forms that the team had met, had all been related to humanity, but not quite human. Halrloprillalar was nearly bald, and had lips no more everted than a monkey’s. Sometimes the very old seek nothing but variety in their love affairs. Louis had wondered if that was happening to him. He could see character flaws in Prill ... but, tanj! He had his own collection.

  And he owed Halrloprillalar. They had needed her help, and Nessus had used a puppeteer’s peculiar brand of force on her. Nessus had conditioned her with a tasp. Louis had let him do it.

  She had returned with Louis to human space. She had gone with him into the UN offices in Berlin, and had never come out. If the Hindmost could break her loose and return her to her home, it was more than Louis Wu could do for her.

  Chmeee said, “I think the puppeteer must be lying. Delusions of grandeur. Why would puppeteers allow one of unsound mind to rule them?”

  “They won’t try it themselves. Risk. Uneasy sits the butt that bears the boss. For puppeteers it makes a kind of sense, picking the brightest of a tiny percentage of megalomaniacs ... Or look at it from the other side: a line of Hindmost teaching the rest of the population to keep their heads down—don’t try for too much power, it isn’t safe. It could work either way.”

  “You think he told the truth?”

  “I don’t know enough. What if he is lying? He’s got us.”

  “He’s got you,” said the kzin. “He’s got you by the wire. Why aren’t you ashamed?”

  Louis was ashamed. He was fighting to keep the shame from crippling his mind, locking him in black despair. He had no way out of this physical box: walls and floor and ceiling were part of a General Products bull. But there were elements ...

  “If you’re still thinking about breaking out,” he said, “you’d better think about this. You’ll be getting young. He wouldn’t have lied about that; there wouldn’t be any point. What happens when you get young?”

  “Bigger appetite. More stamina. A tendency to fight, and you’d better worry about that, Louis.”

  Chmeee had gained bulk as he aged. The black “spectacle” marks around his eyes were nearly all gray, and there was some gray elsewhere. Hard muscle showed when he moved; no sensible younger kzin would fight him. But what mattered were the scars. The fur and a good deal of skin had been burned off over more than half of Chmeee’s body the last time Chmeee had seen the Ringworld. Twenty-three years later the fur had grown back, but it grew in ragged tufts above the scar tissue.

  “Boosterspice heals sca
rs,” Louis said. “Your fur will grow out smooth. No white in it either.”

  “Well, then, I will be prettier.” The tail slashed air. “I must kill the leaf-eater. Scars are like memories. We do not have them removed.”

  “How are you going to prove you’re Chmeee?”

  The tail froze. Chmeee looked at him.

  “He’s got me by the wire.” Louis had reservations regarding that remark, but he could be speaking for a microphone. A puppeteer would not ignore the possibility of mutiny. “He’s got you by the harem, and the land, and the privileges, and the name that belongs to Chmeee the aging hero. The Patriarch may not believe your story, not unless you’ve got kzinti boosterspice and the Hindmost’s word to back you up.”

  “Be silent.”

  It was all suddenly too much for Louis Wu. He reached for the droud, and the kzin pounced. Chmeee turned the black plastic case in a black-and-orange hand.

  “As you like,” Louis said. He flopped on his back. He was short of sleep anyway ...

  “How did you come to be a wirehead? How?”

  “I,” said Louis, and “What you’ve got to understand,” and “Remember the last time we met?”

  “Yes. Few humans have been invited to Kzin itself. You deserved the honor, then.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I did. Do you remember showing me the House of the Patriarch’s Past?”

  “I do. You tried to tell me that we could improve interspecies relationships. All we need do was let a team of human reporters go through the museum with holo cameras.”

  Louis smiled, remembering. “So I did.”

  “I had my doubts.”

  The House of the Patriarch’s Past had been both grand and grandiose: a huge, sprawling building formed from thick slabs of volcanic rock fused at the edges. It was all angles, and there were laser cannon mounted in four tall towers. The rooms went on and on. It had taken Chmeee and Louis two days to go through it.