Ringworld - Larry Niven Page 0,75
mind showed in her face, and her face was like her eyes: tightly closed.
He kept trying. “What the puppeteers did, they did a long time ago. Can’t you forgive and forget?”
“No!” She rolled away from him, out from under the heated coveralls and into the icy water. Louis hesitated, then followed her. A cold, wet shock…he surfaced…Teela was back at her place beneath the waterfall.
Smiling in invitation. How could her moods change so suddenly?
He swam to her.
“That’s a charming way to tell a man to shut up!” he laughed. She couldn’t possibly have heard him. He couldn’t hear himself, with the water pounding down around him. But Teela laughed back, equally soundlessly, and reached for him.
“They were stupid arguments anyway!” he screamed.
The water was cold, cold. Teela was the only warmth. They knelt clasping each other, supported by rough, shallow underwater rock.
Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could run away from problems.
They walked back toward the ’cycles, shivering a little within their heated cocoons. Louis didn’t speak. He had realized a thing about Teela Brown.
She had never learned how to reject. She could not say no and make it stick. She could not deliver reproofs of calculated intensity, humorous or jabbing or deadly vicious, as other women could. Teela Brown had not been hurt socially, not often enough to learn these things.
Louis could browbeat her until doomsday, and she would never know how to stop him. But she could hate him for it. And so he remained silent, for that reason and for another.
He didn’t want to hurt her.
They walked in silence, holding hands, making love-play with their fingers.
“All right.” she said suddenly. “If you can talk Speaker into it, you can bring Nessus back.”
“Thanks,” said Louis. He showed his surprise.
“It’s only for the Long Shot,” she said. “Besides, you can’t do it.”
There was time for a meal and for formal exercises: pushups and situps, and for informal exercises: tree climbing.
Presently Speaker returned to the ’cycles. His mouth was not bloody. At his ’cycle he dialed, not for an allergy pill, but for a wet brick-shaped slab of warm liver. The mighty hunter returns, Louis thought, keeping his mouth firmly shut.
The sky had been overcast when they landed. It was still overcast, a uniform leaden gray, as they took off. And Louis resumed his argument by intercom.
“But it was so long ago!”
“A point of honor is not affected by time, Louis, though of course you would not know that. Further, the consequences of the act are very much with us. Why did Nessus select a kzin to travel with him?”
“He told us that.”
“Why did he select Teela Brown? The Hindmost must have instructed Nessus to learn if humans have inherited psychic luck. He was also to learn if kzinti have become docile. He chose me because as ambassador to a characteristically arrogant species, I am likely to demonstrate the docility his people seek.”
“I’d thought of that too.” Louis had carried the idea even further. Had Nessus been instructed to mention starseed lures, in order to gauge Speaker’s reactions?
“It matters not. I say that I am not docile.”
“Will you stop using that word? It warps your thinking.”
“Louis, why do you intercede for the puppeteer? Why do you wish his company?”
Good questions, Louis thought. Certainly the puppeteer deserved to sweat a little. And if what Louis suspected was true, Nessus was in no danger at all.
Was it only that Louis Wu liked aliens?
Or was it more general than that? A puppeteer was different. Difference was important. A man of Louis Wu’s age would get bored with life itself, without variety. To Louis the company of aliens was a vital necessity.
The ’cycles rose, following the slope of the mountains.
“Viewpoints,” said Louis Wu. “We’re in a strange environment, stranger than any world of men or kzinti. We may need all the insights we can bring to bear, just to figure out what’s going on.”
Teela applauded without sound. Nicely argued! Louis winked back. A very human conversation; Speaker couldn’t possibly read its meaning.
The kzin was saying, “I do not need a puppeteer to explain the world to me. My own eyes, nose, ears are sufficient.”
“That’s moot. But you do need the Long Shot. We all need the techniques that ship represents.”
“For profit? An unworthy motive.”
“Tanjit, that’s not fair! The Long Shot is for the entire human race, and the kzinti too!”
“A quibble. Though the profit is not to you alone,