Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,5

snarled on a rising note.

“Then why didn’t you give that as your title? Was it a deliberate insult?”

“Yes,” said Speaker-To-Animals. “I was angered.”

Accustomed to his own standards of tact, Louis had expected the kzin to lie. Then Louis would have pretended to believe him, and the kzin would have been more polite in future…too late to back out now. Louis hesitated a fraction of a second before he said, “And what is the custom?”

“We must fight bare-handed—as soon as you deliver the challenge. Or one of us must apologize.”

Louis stood up. He was committing suicide; but he’d known tanj well what the custom was. “I challenge you,” he said. “Tooth against tooth, claw against fingernail, since we cannot share a universe in peace.”

Without lifting his head, the kzin who had been called Hroth spoke up. “I must apologize for my comrade, Speaker-To-Animals.”

Louis said, “Huh?”

“This is my function,” said the kzin with the yellow striping. “To be found in situations where one must apologize or fight is kzinti nature. We know what happens when we fight. Today our numbers are less than an eighth of what they were when kzin first met man. Our colony worlds are your colony worlds, our slave species are freed and taught human technology and human ethics. When we must apologize or fight, it is my function to apologize.”

Louis sat down. It seemed that he would live. He said, “I wouldn’t have your job for anything.”

“Obviously not, if you would fight a kzin barehanded. But the Patriarch judges me useless for any other purpose. My intelligence is low, my health is bad, my coordination terrible. How else can I keep my name?”

Louis sipped at his drink and wished for someone to change the subject. He found the humble kzin embarrassing.

“Let us eat,” said the one called Speaker-To-Animals. “Unless our mission is urgent, Nessus.”

“Not at all. Our crew is not yet complete. My colleagues will call me when they have located a qualified fourth crewman. By all means let us eat.”

Speaker-To-Animals said one thing more before he turned back to his table. “Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.”

“You scream and you leap,” said Louis. “Great.”

C H A P T E R 2

And His Motley Crew

Louis Wu knew people who closed their eyes when they used a transfer booth. The jump in scenery gave them vertigo. To Louis this was nonsense; but then, some of his friends were much odder than that.

He kept his eyes open as he dialed. The watching aliens vanished. Someone called, “Hi! He’s back!”

A mob formed around the door. Louis forced it open against them. “Finagle fool you all! Didn’t any of you go home?” He spread his arms to engulf them, then pushed forward like a snowplow, forcing them back. “Clear the door, you boors! I’ve more guests coming.”

“Great!” a voice shouted in his ear. Anonymous hands took his hand and forced the fingers around a drinking bulb. Louis hugged the seven or eight of his invited guests within the circle of his arms and smiled at his welcome.

Louis Wu. From a distance he was an oriental, with pale yellow skin and flowing white hair. His rich blue robe was carelessly draped, so that it should have hampered his movements; but it didn’t.

Close up, it was all a fraud. His skin was not pale yellow-brown, but a smooth chrome yellow, the color of a comic-book Fu Manchu. His queue was too thick; it was not the white of age, but sheer clean white with a subliminal touch of blue, the color of dwarf star sunlight. As with all flatlanders, cosmetic dyes were the colors of Louis Wu.

A flatlander. You could tell at a glance. His features were neither Caucasian nor Mongoloid nor Negroid, though there were traces of all three: a uniform blend which must have required centuries. In a gravitational pull of 9.98 meters/second, his stance was unconsciously natural. He gripped a drinking bulb and smiled around at his guests.

As it happened, he was smiling into a pair of reflective silver eyes an inch from his own.

One Teela Brown had somehow ended up nose to nose and breast to breast with him. Her skin was blue with a netting of silver threads; her coiffure was streaming bonfire flames; her eyes were convex mirrors. She was twenty years old. Louis had talked to her earlier. Her conversation was shallow, full of clichés and easy enthusiasms; but