Ringworld (14 page)

"Look behind us," he said. "See that dust trail? Any idea what it might be?"

"Of course. It must be the vaporized rock from our meteoric landing, recondensed in the atmosphere. It has not had time to settle out of so large a volume."

"I was thinking of dust storms ... Tanj forever, look how far we slid!" For the dust trail was at least a couple of thousand miles long, if it was as far away as the ship.

Sky and earth were two flat plates, infinitely wide, pressed together; and men were microbes crawling between the plates ...

"Our air pressure has increased."

Louis pulled his eyes away from the vanishing point. "What did you say?"

"Look at your pressure gauge. We must have been at least two miles above our present level when we landed."

Louis dialed a ration brick for breakfast. "Is the air pressure important?"

"We must observe all things in an unfamiliar environment. One never knows what detail might be crucial. For instance, the mountain which we chose as a landmark bulks large behind us. It must be even larger than we thought. Again, what of that silver-shining point ahead of us?"

"There?"

"Almost at the hypothetical horizon line, Louis. Directly ahead."

It was like searching out a single detail in a map seen edge-on. Louis found it anyway: a bright mirror-gleam, just large enough to be more than a point.

"Reflected sunlight. What could it be? A glass city?"

"Improbable."

Louis laughed. "You're too polite. It's as big as a glass city, though. Or an acre of mirrors. Maybe it's a big telescope, reflector type."

"Then it has probably been abandoned."

"How so?"

"We know that this civilization has returned to savagery. Why else would they allow vast regions to return to desert?"

Once Louis had believed that argument. Now ... "You may be oversimplifying. The Ringworld's bigger than we realized. I think there's room here for savagery and civilization and anything in between."

"Civilization tends to spread, Louis."

"Yeah."

They'd find out about the bright point, anyway. It was directly in their path.

***

There wasn't any coffee spigot.

Louis was swallowing the last of his breakfast brick when he noticed two green lights glowing on his dashboard. They puzzled him until he remembered switching Teela and Speaker out of the intercom last night. He switched them back in.

"Good morning," said Speaker. "Did you see the dawn, Louis? It was artistically stimulating."

"I saw it. Morning, Teela."

Teela didn't answer.

Louis looked more closely. Teela was fascinated, rapt, like one who has reached Nirvana.

"Nessus, have you been using your tasp on my woman?"

"No, Louis. Why should I?"

"How long has she been like this?"

"Like what?" Speaker demanded. "She has not been communicative recently, if that is what you mean."

"I mean her expression, tanjit!" Teela's image, poised on his dashboard, looked at infinity through the bulk of Louis's head. She was quietly, thoroughly happy.

"She seems relaxed," said the kzin, "and in no discomfort. The finer nuances of human expression --"

"Never mind that. Land us, will you? She's got Plateau trance."

"I do not understand."

"Just land us."

They fell from a mile up. Louis endured a queasy period of free fall before Speaker gave them thrust again. He watched Teela's image for her reaction, but he saw none. She was serene and undisturbed. The corners of her mouth turned very slightly up.

Louis fumed as they dropped. He knew something about hypnosis: bits and oddments of information such as a man will collect over two hundred years of watching tridee. If only he could remember ...

Greens and browns resolved into field and forest and a silver thread of stream. It was lush, wild country below them, the kind of country flatlanders expect to find on a colony world, more's the pity.

"Try to put us in a valley," Louis told Speaker. "I'd like to get her out of sight of the horizon."

"Very well. I suggest that you and Nessus cut yourselves out of autopilot and follow me down on manual. I will land Teela myseff."

The diamond of flycycles broke up and re-formed. Speaker moved port-and-spinward, toward the stream Louis had spotted earlier. The others followed.

They were still dropping as they crossed the stream. Speaker turned spinward to follow its course. By now he was virtually crawling through the air, moving just above the treetops. He watched for a stretch of bank not blocked by trees.

"The plants seem very Earthlike," said Louis. The aliens made noises of agreement.

They rounded a curve of stream.

The natives were in the middle of a broad section of stream. They were working a fishing net. As the line of 'cycles came into view the natives looked up. For a long moment they did nothing more than let go of the net while they stared upward with their mouths open.

Louis, Speaker, and Nessus all reacted in the same way. They took off straight upward. The natives dwindled to points; the stream to a winding silver thread. The lush, wild forest blurred into green-browns.

"Put yourselves on autopilot," Speaker ordered, in an unmistakable tone of command. "I will land us elsewhere."

He must have learned that tone of command -- strictly for use in dealing with humans. The duties of an ambassador, Louis mused, were various indeed.

Teela had apparently noticed nothing at all.

Louis said, "Well?"

"They were men," said Nessus.

"They were, weren't they? I thought I might be hallucinating. How would men get here?"

But nobody tried to answer.

They had landed in a pocket of wild country surrounded by low hills. With the hills hiding the mock-horizon, and the glow of the Arch drowned by daylight, it might have been a scene on any human world. The grass was not precisely grass, but it was green, and it made a carpet over places that should have been covered by grass. There were soil and rocks, and bushes which grew green foliage and which were gnarled in almost the right ways.

The vegetation, as Louis had remarked, was eerily Earth-like. There were bushes where one would expect bushes, bare spots where one would expect bare spots. According to instruments in the scooters, the plants were earthly even at the molecular level. As Louis and Speaker were related by some remote viral ancestor, so the trees of this world could claim both as brother.

There was a plant that would have made a nice hedge/fence. It looked like wood; but it grew up at forty-five degrees, sprouted a crown of leaves, dropped back at the same angle, sprouted a cluster of roots, rose again at forty-five degrees ... Louis had seen something like it on Gummidgy; but this row of triangles was glossy-green and bark-brown, the colors of Earth life. Louis called it elbow root.

Nessus moved about within the little pocket of forest, collecting plants and insects for testing in the compact laboratory of his scooter. He wore his vacuum suit, a transparent balloon with three boots and two glove / mouthpieces. Nothing of the Ringworld could attack him without piercing that barrier: not a predator, not an insect, not a gram of pollen nor a fungus spore nor a virus molecule.

Teela Brown sat astride her flycycle with her larger-than-delicate hands resting lightly on the controls. The corners of her month curved slightly upward. She was poised against a flycycle's acceleration, relaxed yet alert setting off the lines and curves of her body as if she were posing for a figure study. Her green eyes looked through Louis Wu, and through a barrier of low hills, to see infinity at the Ringworld's abstract horizon.

"I do not understand," said Speaker. "Exactly what is the trouble? She is not asleep, yet she is curiously unresponsive."

"Highway hypnosis," said Louis Wu. "She'll come out of it by herself."

"Then she is in no danger?"

"Not now. I was afraid she might fall off her 'cycle, or do something crazy with the controls. She's safe enough on the ground."

"But why does she take so little interest in us?"

Louis tried to explain.

***

In the asteroid belt of Sol, men spend half their lives guiding singleships among the rocks. They take their positions from the stars. For hours at a time a Belt miner will watch the stars: the bright quick arcs which are fusion-driven singleships, the slow, drifting lights which are nearby asteroids, and the fixed points which are stars and galaxies.

A man can lose his soul among the white stars. Much later, he may realize that his body has acted for him, guiding his ship while his mind traveled in realms he cannot remember. They call it the far look. It is dangerous. A man's soul does not always return.

On the great flat plateau on Mount Lookitthat, a man may stand at the void edge and look down on infinity. Tbe mountain is only forty miles tall; but a human eye, tracing the mountain's fluted side, finds infinity on the solid mist that hides the mountain's base.

The void mist is white and featureless and uniform. It stretches without change from the mountain's fluted flank to the world's horizon. The emptiness can snatch at a man's mind and hold it, so that he stands frozen and rapt at the edge of eternity until someone comes to lead him away. They call it Plateau trance.

Then there is the Ringworld horizon ...

"But it's all self-hypnosis," said Louis. He looked into the girl's eyes. She stirred restlessly. "I could probably bring her out of it, but why risk it? Let her sleep."

"I do not understand hypnosis," said Speaker-To-Animals. "I know of it, but I do not understand it."

Louis nodded. "I'm not surprised. Kzinti wouldn't make good hypnotic subjects. Neither would puppeteers, for that matter." For Nessus had given over his collecting of samples of alien life and quietly joined them.

"We can study what we cannot understand," said the puppeteer. "We know that there is something in a man that does not want to make decisions. A part of him wants someone else to tell him what to do. A good hypnotic subject is a trusting person with a good ability to concentrate. His act of surrender to the hypnotist is the beginning of his hypnosis."

"But what is hypnosis?"

"An induced state of monomania."

"But why would a subject go into monomania?"

Nessus apparently had no answer.

Louis said, "Because he trusts the hypnotist."

Speaker shook his great head and turned away.

"Such trust in another is insane. I confess I do not understand hypnosis," said Nessus. "Do you, Louis?"

"Not entirely."

"I am relieved," said the puppeteer, and he looked for a moment into his own eyes, a pair of pythons inspecting each other. "I could not trust one who could understand nonsense."

"What have you found out about Ringworld plants?"

"They seem very like the life of Earth, as I told you. However, some of the forms seem more specialized than one would expect."

"More evolved, you mean?"

"Perhaps. Again, perhaps a specialized form has more room to grow, even within its limited environment, here on the Ringworld. The important point is that the plants and insects are similar enough to attack us."

"And vice versa?"

"Oh, yes. A few forms are edible for me, a few others will fit your own belly. You will have to test them individually, first for poisons and then for taste. But any plant we find can safely be used by the kitchen on your 'cycle."

"We won't starve, then."

"This single advantage hardly compensates for the danger. If only our engineers had thought to pack a starseed lure aboard the Liar! This entire trek would have been unnecessary."

"A starseed lure?"

"A simple device, invented thousands of years ago. It causes the local sun to emit electromagnetic signals that attract starseeds. Had we such a device, we could lure a starseed to this star, then communicate our problem to any Outsider ship that followed it inward."

"But starseeds travel at a lot less than lightspeed. It might take years!"

"But think, Louis. However long we waited, we would not have had to leave the safety of the ship!"

"To you this is a full life?" Louis snorted. And he glanced at Speaker, fixed on Speaker, locked eyes with Speaker.

Speaker-To-Animals, curled on the ground some distance away, was staring back at him and grinning like an Alice-in-Wonderland Cheshire Cat. For a long moment they locked eyes; and then the kzin stood up with seeming leisure, sprang, and vanished into the alien bushes.

Louis turned back. Somehow he knew that something important had happened. But what? And why? He shrugged it away.

Straddling the contoured saddle of her 'cycle, Teela seemed braced for acceleration ... as if she were still flying. Louis remembered the few times he had been hypnotized by a therapist. It had felt a lot like play-acting. Cushioned in a rosy absence of responsibility, he had known that it was all a game he was playing with the hypnotist. He could break free at any time. But somehow one never did.

Teela's eyes cleared suddenly. She shook her head, turned and saw them. "Louis! How did we get down?"

"The usual way."

"Help me down." She put her arms out like a child on a wall. Louis put his hands on her waist and lifted her from the 'cycle. The touch of her was a thrill along his back and an opening warmth in his groin and solar plexus. He left his hands where they were.

"The last I remember, we were a mile in the air," Teela said.

"From now on, keep your eyes off the horizon."

"What did I do, fall asleep at the wheel?" She laughed and tossed her head, so that her hair became a great soft black cloud. "And you all panicked. I'm sorry, Louis. Where's Speaker?"

"Chasing a rabbit," said Louis. "Hey, why don't we get some exercise ourselves, now we've got the chance?"

"How about a walk in the woods?"

"Good idea." He met her eyes and saw that they had read each other's thoughts. He reached into his 'cycles luggage bin and produced a blanket. "Ready."

"You amaze me," said Nessus. "No known sentient species copulates as often as you do. Go, then. Use caution where you sit. Remember that unfamiliar life-forms are about."

***

"Did you know," said Louis, "that naked once meant the same thing as unprotected?"

For it seemed to him that he was removing his safety with his clothes. The Ringworld had a functioning biosphere, ripe, no doubt, with bugs and bacteria and toothy things built to eat protoplasmic meat.

"No," said Teela. She stood naked on the blanket and stretched her arms to the noon sun. "It feels good. Do you know that I've never seen you naked in daylight?"

"Likewise. I might add that you look tanj good that way. Here, let me show you something." He half-raised a hand to his hairless chest. "Tanjit --"

"I don't see anything."

"It's gone. That's the trouble with boosterspice. No memories. The scars disappear, and after a while ..." He traced a line across his chest; but there was nothing under his fingertip.

"A Gummidgy reacher tore a strip off me from shoulder to navel, four inches wide and half an inch deep. His next pass would have split me in two. He decided to swallow what he had of me first. I must have been deadly poison to him, because he curled up in a shrieking ball and died.

"Now there's nothing. Not a mark on me anywhere."

"Poor Louis. But I don't have any marks either."

"But you're a statistical anomaly, and furthermore you're only twenty years old."

"Oh."

"Mmm. You are smooth."

"Any other missing memories?"

"I made a mistake with a mining beam once ..." He guided her hand.

Presently Louis rolled onto his back, and Teela impaled herself as she straddled his hips. They looked at each other for a long, brilliant, unbearable moment before they began to move.

Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory ...

... Something the size of a rabbit shot out of the trees, scampered across Louis's chest and was gone into the undergrowth. An instant later, Speaker-To-Animals bounded into view. "Excuse me," the kzin called, and was gone, hot on the scent.

***

When they reconvened at the 'cycles, the fur around Speaker's mouth was stained red. "For the first time in my life," he proclaimed with quiet satisfaction, "I have hunted for my food, using no more weapons than my own teeth and claws."

But he followed Nessus's advice and took a broad-spectrum allergy pill.

"It is time we discussed the natives," said Nessus.

Toola looked startled. "Natives?"

Louis explained.

"But why did we run? How could they have hurt us? Were they really human?"

Louis answered the last question, because it had been bothering him. "I don't see how they could have been. What would human beings be doing this far from human space?"

"There is no possible doubt of that," Speaker interjected. "Trust your senses, Louis. We may find that their race differs from yours or Teela's. But they are human."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I smell them, Louis. The scent reached me when we turned off the sonic folds. Far away, thinly spread, a vast multitude of human beings. Trust my nose, Louis."

Louis accepted it. The kzinti nose was worn by a hunting carnivore. He suggested, "Parallel evolution?"

"Nonsense," said Nessus.

"Right." The human shape was convenient for a toolmaker, but no more so than other configurations. Minds came in all kinds of bodies.

"We are wasting time," said Speaker-To-Animals. "The problem is not how men arrived here. The problem is one of first contact. For us, every contact will be a first contact."

He was right, Louis realized. The 'cycles moved faster than any information-sending service the natives were likely to have. Unless they had semaphores ...

Speaker continued, "We need to know something of the behavior of humans in the savage state. Louis? Teela?"

"I know a little anthropology," said Louis.

"Then when we make contact, you will speak for us. Let us hope that our autopilot makes an adequate translator. We will contact the first humans we find."

***

They were barely in the air, it seemed, when the forest gave way to a checkerboard of cultivated fields. Seconds later, Teela spotted the city.

It resembled some earthly cities of previous centuries. There were a great many buildings a few stories tall, packed shoulder to shoulder in a continuous mass. A few tall, slender towers rose above the mass, and these were joined together by winding groundcar ramps: definitely not a feature of earthly cities. Earth's cities of that era had tended to heliports instead.

"Perhaps our search ends here," Speaker suggested hopefully.

"Bet you it's empty," said Louis.

He was only guessing, but he was right. It became obvious as they flew over.

In its day the city must have been terrible in its beauty. One feature it had which would have been the envy of any city in known space. Many of the buildings had not rested on the ground at all, but had floated in the air, joined to the ground and to other buildings by ramps and elevator towers. Freed of gravity, freed of vertical and horizontal restrictions, these floating dream-castles had come in all shapes and a wide choice of sizes.

Now four flycycles flew over the wreckage. Every floating building had smashed lower buildings when it fell, so that all was shattered brick and glass and concrete, torn steel, twisted ramps and elevator towers still reaching into the air.

It made Louis wonder again about the natives. Human engineers didn't build air-castles; they were too safety-conscious.

"They must have fallen all at once," said Nessus. "I see no sign of attempted repairs. A power failure, no doubt. Speaker, would kzinti build so foolishly?"