Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,48

Luck isn’t psi. Luck is statistics, and you’re a mathematical fluke. Out of forty-three billion human beings in known space, it would have been surprising if Nessus hadn’t found someone like you. Don’t you see what he did?

“He took the group of people who were descendants of winners of the Birthright Lotteries. He says there were thousands, but it’s a good bet that if he hadn’t found what he was after in those thousands, he would have started looking through the larger group of people with one or more ancestors born through the Lotteries. That gives him tens of millions of choices…”

“What was he after?”

“You. He took his several thousand people and started eliminating the unlucky ones. Here a man broke his finger when he was thirteen. This girl had personality problems. That one had acne. This man gets in fights and loses. That one won a fight, but lost the lawsuit. This guy flew model rockets until he burnt a thumbnail off. This girl loses constantly at roulette…You see? You’re the girl who’s always won. The toast never falls on the buttered side.”

Teela was looking thoughtful. “It’s a probability thing then. But, Louis, I don’t always win at roulette.”

“But you never lost enough to hurt you.”

“N-no.”

“That’s what Nessus looked for.”

“You’re saying I’m some kind of freak.”

“No, tanj it! I’m saying you’re not. Nessus kept eliminating candidates who were unlucky, until he wound up with you. He thinks found some basic principle. All he’s really found is the far end of a normal curve.

“Probability theory says you exist. It also says that the next time you flip a coin, your chances of losing are just as good as mine: fifty-fifty, because Lady Luck has no memory at all.”

Teela dropped into a chair. “A fine good luck charm I turned out to be. Poor Nessus. I failed him.”

“Serves him right.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “We could check it out.”

“What?”

“Dial a piece of toast. Start flipping it.”

The shadow square was blacker than black, of the expensively achieved, definitive black used in high school blackbody experiments. One corner notched an acute angle into the blue broken line of the Ringworld. With that notch as a mark, a brain and eye could sketch in the rest of it, a narrow oblong of space-blackness, suspiciously void of stars. Already it cut off a good chunk of sky; and it was growing.

Louis wore bulbous goggles of a material that developed black spots under the impact of too much vertically impinging light. Polarization in the hull was no longer enough. Speaker, who was in the control room controlling whatever was left to control, also wore a pair. They had found two separate leases, each on a short strap, and managed to force them on Nessus.

To Louis’s goggled eyes, the sun, twelve million miles distant, was a blurred rim of flame around a wide, solid black disc. Everything was hot to the touch. The breathing-air plant was a howling wind.

Teela opened her cabin door and hastily shut it again. Presently she reappeared wearing goggles. She joined Louis at the lounge table.

The shadow square was a looming absence. It was as if a wet cloth had swept across a blackboard, erasing a swath of chalk-mark stars.

The howl of the air plant made speech impossible.

How would it dump the heat, out here where the sun was a looming furnace? It couldn’t, Louis decided. It must be storing the heat. Somewhere in the breathing-air circuit was a point as hot as a star, growing hotter by the second.

One more thing to worry about.

The black oblong continued to swell.

It was the size that made it seem to approach so slowly. The shadow square was as broad as the sun, nearly a million miles across, and much longer: two-and-a-half million miles long. Almost suddenly, it became tremendous. Its edge slid across the sun, and there was darkness.

The shadow square covered half the universe. Its borders were indefinite, black-on-black, terrible to see.

Part of the ship glowed white behind the block of cabins. The air plant was radiating waste heat while it had the chance. Louis shrugged and turned back to watch the shadow square.

The scream of breathing-air stopped. It left a ringing in the ears.

“Well,” Teela said awkwardly.

Speaker came out of the control room. “A pity the scope screen is no longer connected to anything. There are so many questions it could answer.”

“Like what?” Louis half-shouted.

“Why are the shadow squares moving at more than orbital velocity? Are they indeed power generators for the