Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,1
mounted on flexible, slender necks. Over most of its startling frame, the skin was white and glove-soft; but a thick, coarse brown mane ran from between the beast’s necks, back along its spine, to cover the complex-looking hip joint of the hind leg. The two forelegs were set wide apart, so that the beast’s small, clawed hooves formed almost an equilateral triangle.
Louis guessed that the thing was an alien animal. In those flat heads there would be no room for brains. But he noticed the hump that rose between the bases of the necks, where the mane became a thick protective mop…and a memory floated up from eighteen decades behind him.
This was a puppeteer, a Pierson’s puppeteer. Its brain and skull were under the hump. It was not an animal; it was at least as intelligent as a man. And its eyes, one to a head in deep bone sockets, stared fixedly at Louis Wu from two directions.
Louis tried the door. Locked.
He was locked out, not in. He could dial and vanish. But it never occurred to him. One does not meet a Pierson’s puppeteer every day. The species had been gone from known space for longer than Louis Wu had been alive.
Louis said, “Can I help you?”
“You can,” said the alien…
…in a voice to spark adolescent dreams. Had Louis visualized a woman to go with that voice, she would have been Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe, and Lorelei Huntz, rolled into one.
“Tanj!” The curse seemed more than usually appropriate. There Ain’t No Justice! That such a voice should belong to a two-headed alien of indeterminate sex!
“Be not frightened,” said the alien. “Know that you can escape if need be.”
“In college there were pictures of things like you. You’ve been gone a long time…or so we thought.”
“When my species fled known space, I was not among them,” the puppeteer replied. “I remained in known space, for my species had need of me here.”
“Where have you been hiding? And where on Earth are we?”
“That need not concern you. Are you Louis Wu, MMGREWPLH?”
“You knew that? You were after me, in particular?”
“Yes. We found it possible to manipulate this world’s network of transfer booths.”
It could be done, Louis realized. It would take a fortune in bribe money, but it could be done. But—“Why?”
“That will take some explanation—”
“Aren’t you going to let me out of here?”
The Puppeteer considered. “I suppose I must. First you should know that I have protection. My armament would stop you should you attack me.”
Louis Wu made a sound of disgust. “Why would I do that?”
The puppeteer made no answer.
“Now I remember. You’re cowards. Your whole ethical system is based on cowardice.”
“Inaccurate as it is, that judgment will serve us.”
“Well, it could be worse,” Louis conceded. Every sentient species had its quirks. Surely the puppeteer would be easier to deal with than the racially paranoid Trinocs, or the kzinti with their hair-trigger killer instincts, or the sessile Grogs with their…disturbing substitute for hands.
The sight of the puppeteer had jarred loose a whole atticfull of dusty memories. Mixed with data on the puppeteers and their commercial empire, their interactions with humanity, their sudden and shocking disappearance—mixed with these were the taste of Louis’s first tobacco cigarette, the feel of typewriter keys under clumsy, untrained fingers, lists of Interworld vocabulary to be memorized, the sound and taste of English, the uncertainties and embarrassments of extreme youth. He’d studied the puppeteers during a college history course, then forgotten about them for one hundred and eighty years. Incredible, that a man’s mind could retain so much!
“I’ll stay in here,” he told the puppeteer, “if it makes you more comfortable.”
“No. We must meet.”
Muscles bunched and twitched beneath its creamy skin as the puppeteer nerved itself. Then the door to the transfer booth clicked open. Louis Wu stepped into the room.
The puppeteer backed away a few paces.
Louis dropped into a chair, more for the puppeteer’s comfort than for his own. He would look more harmless sitting down. The chair was of standard make, a self-adjusting masseur chair, strictly for humans. Louis noticed a faint scent now, reminiscent both of a spice shelf and of a chemistry set, more pleasant than otherwise.
The alien rested on its folded hind leg. “You wonder why I brought you here. This will take some explanation. What do you know of my species?”
“It’s been a long time since college. You had a commercial empire once, didn’t you? What we like to call ‘known space’ was just a part of it.