Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,54
might add that if the ring has lost all of its great secrets, we might still find machinery at the spaceport. Working machinery, machinery which can be repaired.”
But which rim was closer?
“Teela’s right,” Louis said suddenly. “Let’s get to work. At night we’ll be able to see further.”
Hours of hard labor followed. They moved machinery, sorted it out, lowered heavy items by wire from the ship’s airlock. The sudden shifts of gravity posed problems, but none of the equipment was particularly fragile.
Sometime during those hours, Louis caught Teela in the ship while the aliens were outside. “You’ve been looking like someone poisoned your favorite orchid-thing. Care to talk about it?”
She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. Her lips, he saw, were perfect for pouting. She was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly.
“Then I’ll talk. When you went out the lock without a pressure suit, I dressed you down good. Fifteen minutes later you tried to climb a slope of congealing lava wearing nothing but ship-slippers.”
“You wanted me to burn my feet!”
“That’s right. Don’t look so surprised. We need you. We don’t want you killed. I want you to learn to be careful. You never learned before, so you’ll have to learn now. You’ll remember your sore feet longer than you remember my lectures.”
“Need me! That’s a laugh. You know why Nessus brought me here. I’m a good luck charm that failed.”
“I’ll grant you blew that one. As a good luck charm, you’re fired. Come on, smile. We need you. We need you to keep me happy, so I don’t rape Nessus. We need you to do all the heavy work while we lie about in the sun. We need you to make intelligent suggestions.”
She forced a smile. It broke apart and she was crying. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed against him, wrackingly, her fingernails digging hard into his back.
It was not exactly the first time a woman had cried on Louis Wu; but Teela probably had more reason than most. Louis held her, rubbing his fingers along the muscles of her back in a half-automatic attempt at a massage, and waited it out.
She talked into the material of his pressure suit. “How was I to know the rock would burn me?”
“Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile.”
“But it hurt!”
“The rock turned on you. It attacked you. Listen,” he pleaded. “You’ve got to learn to think paranoid. Think like Nessus.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how he thinks. I don’t understand him at all.” She raised her tear-stained face. “I don’t understand you.”
“Yah.” He ran his thumbs hard along the edges of her shoulder blades, then down her vertebrae. “Listen,” he said presently. “Suppose I said the universe is my enemy. Would you think I was nuts?”
She nodded vigorously, angrily.
“The universe is against me,” said Louis Wu. “The universe hates me. The universe makes no provision for a two-hundred-year-old man.
“What is it that shapes a species? Evolution, isn’t it? Evolution gives Speaker his night vision and his balance. Evolution gives Nessus the reflex that turns his back on danger. Evolution turns a man’s sex off at fifty or sixty. Then evolution quits.
“Because evolution is through with any organism once that organism is too old to breed. You follow me?”
“Sure. You’re too old to breed,” she mocked him bitterly.
“Right. A few centuries ago some biological engineers carved up the genes of a ragweed and produced boosterspice. As a direct result, I am two hundred years old and still healthy. But not because the universe loves me.
“The universe hates me,” said Louis Wu. “It’s tried to kill me many times. I wish I could show you the scars. It’ll keep trying, too.”
“Because you’re too old to breed.”
“Finagle in hysterics, woman! You’re the one who doesn’t know how to take care of herself! We’re in unknown territory; we don’t know the rules, and we don’t know what we might meet. If you try to walk on hot lava, you could get more than sore feet next time. Stay alert. You understand me?”
“No,” said Teela. “No.”
Later, after she had washed her face, they carried the fourth flycycle into the airlock. For half an hour the aliens had left them alone. Had they decided to avoid two humans dealing with strictly human problems? Maybe, maybe.
Between high walls of black lava stretched an infinite strip of ring foundation material as flat as a polished tabletop. In the foreground,