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. The 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