by Larry Niven
Louis shrugged.
Acolyte asked, "Have you noticed that we have an audience?"
Louis looked around.
The ARMs, upstream, were waist deep and still talking, their body language gone conspiratorial. Louis had to pull his gaze away from her breasts. Wembleth was onshore, on his back on a warm flat rock, soaking up sunlight. Black birds whirled above the puffball forest, and a pair of horn-bearing quadrupeds were watching it all suspiciously.
"I dont see anything human."
Acolyte said, "Seven hominids. Three men, four women. I found them by smell. We should decide—"
Something had Wembleths attention. Wembleth stood up. He shouted into the woods.
A man stepped forth. He walked past the horned beasts; the beasts didnt run. The man stopped a dozen yards from Wembleth. He spoke. His hands were at his side, conspicuous. So were Wembleths.
They were both naked. The man towered over Wembleth. Hed be taller than Acolyte, eight feet or a little less, and as slender as the trees around them. Every part of him was elongated… but not his head. His jaw was strong and square. The hair on his head was the same color as the forests puffball tops.
Naked in running water, the ARMs seemed at a loss. They waded upstream toward Louis and Acolyte.
"They havent drawn their weapons," Hanuman murmured. "Louis, will they stay calm?"
He meant the ARMs, of course. Louis said, "Dont know. Someone has to tell them about rishathra."
Wembleth and the stranger were talking freely now.
Claus came in earshot. He asked, "Any suggestions?"
"Wembleth is doing fine," Louis said. "Let him talk for us. There are more locals."
"Where?"
Acolyte said, "In the trees." He pointed. "There, all six."
"He looks like a giraffe," Claus laughed.
Roxanny said, "Or a lunie." It was a rebuff.
Luis Tamasan would never have seen a citizen of Luna. Louis said, "Theyll be peaceful. Look at the jaw: hes an herbivore. Probably picks fruit from these trees. We have to decide—"
"Tanj that. Our translators have to hear them." Claus waded out. The others trailed after him. Claus picked up his skintight to wipe himself dry, then dropped it, and picked up his back-pouch. If nakedness was good enough for the strangers, then Claus didnt need clothes; but the pouch held his translator, and maybe a weapon too.
Six tall, slender humanoids emerged from the tall, slender trees. Rishathra? We still have to tell the ARMs.
Wembleth talked rapidly, waving at Acolyte and Hanuman. The tall hominids bowed deeply, and went on talking to Wembleth. Louis and Roxanny fished out their translators and joined the group.
The ARM translators were picking up some speech. It was close to what theyd learned from Wembleth, though this local language would be a long way separated from any speech heard near the Great Ocean.
Wembleth suddenly turned to Roxanny. His speech sounded no different, but the translators all reacted. "They want to know what your kind does about—" something that didnt translate. "What shall I tell them?"
Roxanny asked, "What is it?"
Wembleth tried to explain. The activity that makes women bear children? But between different kinds it doesnt? Claus and Roxanny listened, then turned to Luis for help.
Louis said, "Hes using a different word, but it means rishathra. Rishathra is sex practiced outside your species but between intelligent hominids. Not a word youd need—"
"Smart-ass boy." Claus was not amused.
It dawned on Louis that he was afraid of Claus. "No joke, Claus. Its the first thing you need to know about a new species. Look, you can always say youre mated. Monogamous."
Claus was looking at the four women. They were as tall as the men, eight feet or just under. Not lunies, not giraffes: Elves. They were staring as frankly as the men; but the men were looking at Roxanny, who was blushing. Louis realized hed blushed too.
He said, "Wembleth, tell them Acolyte is not our kind at all. He doesnt rish."
Wembleth talked. One of the women laughed. Louiss translator picked up her "Think not!"
Louis said, "But we need to decide. Claus? Roxanny?"
Claus demanded, "Luis, have you done this?"
"Sure!" What would Luis say? An adolescent wouldnt admit to being a virgin! Hed exaggerate — "With more than one species — nothing like these — but Ive heard more than that. Why not?" He couldnt quite look at Roxanny, or Claus either. "Its friendly, its safe, you cant get pregnant. Infections dont usually cross the species boundary. And who else is there for me? Human women were just rumors, as far away as the stars."
Wembleth exclaimed, "Same for me! I was a lost one too. Claus, why are you having trouble with this thought? When folk meet, they always ask this question first. Some kinds use reshtra for birth control. Water dwellers — well, to them it is a joke, unless you can hold your breath far too long. Some species cant resh, or mate with any but a life partner. Some oddly shaped ones dont expect reshtra — rishathra? — only ask for politeness. Some insist. Roxanny, cant you see the Hinsh are puzzled? Its because you havent answered."
Louis said, "Luis" being wistful, "Id like to meet a City Builder. Theyre supposed to be really good at it. They built trading empires around rishathra. They even tried to go interstellar."
Claus was grinning. "What if we say no?"
"I can do that for you," Wembleth said immediately. He began to speak Hinsh.
Claus said, "Hold up, Wembleth. Ill do it," his eyes flicking toward Roxanny, then away.
Wembleth asked, "In company, or only two?"
Claus was startled. "Um. Company. I wouldnt know what to say to just, just one."
Roxanny Gauthier stepped close to Wembleth. She spoke fast and low. Wembleth nodded. He changed language. Now the translators were picking up a few words of Hinsh speech.
One of the women bent far over. Her long fingers wrapped around a cantaloupe-sized yellow fruit. She bit into it, rind and all, then broke it and offered pieces to Wembleth, then Claus, then the other Hinsh. Wembleth broke his further and offered fruit to Louis and Roxanny. Louis realized that they were labeling themselves. Claus and Wembleth would rish with the women, Louis and Roxanny would not. Hanuman was getting his own fruit: he would not rish.
Do they rish with carnivores? Not by offering melon. But this ritual would eliminate Ghouls, and maybe they want that.
The fruit was red inside. It tasted a little like berries.
The others took it as a signal when the strangers ate: they feasted. There was fruit all around them. They were herbivores, all right: they needed to eat a lot. They fed Wembleth and Claus, and moved into more intimate contact.
Roxanny turned her back and walked away.
Louis picked up a melon, broke it on his knee — tanj, why not? — and followed her. He had hoped to court Roxannys attention.
She turned and waited; looked down, grinned up at him, and said, "I told Wembleth to tell them were courting." She took half the melon and ate.
Then she stepped into him, on tiptoe, half a head taller than he, and slid the length of her down his body until she was kneeling.
With a hoarse shout, Louis pushed her into the grass and entered her.
It was not the way he would ever have treated a woman. Roxanny was astonished. She wasnt quite ready, either, but she wrapped her arms and legs around him and made him prisoner again. Louis Wus mind went away.
When he came to himself again, he was babbling, and he wondered if he had blurted secrets. Roxanny, still holding him prisoner in the grip of her legs, was laughing. "Boy, you are eager!"
And the Hinsh had moved to surround them.
The women knelt to rish. When they mated with their men, both knelt. The men watched the strangers with their women and made graphic half-translated commentary. They found short men funny. Wembleth, the shortest, was funniest. They learned he was ticklish.
"Im sorry, Roxanny. I lost control of myself," Louis said. It felt like hed mat
ed with one of the Ringworld bloodsuckers: it was that mindless, that intense. He dared not tell her about that!
She patted his cheek. "Refreshing. Nine years to go on my implant, and its a tanj good thing."
"Im fertile," Louis said.
" Course you are." She stood up, her back to him, fists on hips. "I didnt buy it. Rishathra? You havent told me every last bit of the truth, Luis. But… shall we join them?"
What? "Were mated! Youd shock them!"
Roxanny picked up a melon, broke it in half, and offered it to an elf.
The elf was shocked. Then he laughed, knelt, and swept her against him. Louis flushed… and picked up a melon.
By dusklight — too dark to tell which fruits were perfectly ripe — the Hinsh broke off eating and rishing and mating to introduce themselves: an odd reversal of order. Their names were long and formidable.
Wembleth took Louis aside and said, "The Hinsh are like others where I have traveled. If strangers plan to stay a short time, they use short names, quick to learn. This can mean, go away soon. But do you see all this fruit? The wind shook hundreds of manweights of fruit to the ground. Every stranger eating means less fruit left to rot. We are welcome."
Louis felt welcome. But rishathra was not sex. His body knew. His body wanted Roxanny.
And Claus wanted his blood.
Night on the Ringworld was rarely too dark to see. The Hinsh didnt want sleep; they conversed. The ARMs mostly listened.
Louis asked about the horned beasts. "The grass eaters? They dont bother us, we dont bother them," a man said. Of the sky he said, "The stars used to hold their course. We could use them to tell time, if we wished. Now theyre loose, wandering across the sky. Only the Vashneesht know why." They spoke of the crops theyd left behind, and of the weather. Dull people, really.
They talked about the sudden wild winds.
"The climate will change," Louis told his lady companion, whose name hed memorized as Szeblinda. His translator would fish out all eight syllables. "You may have to follow the pufftop forests as they die off to antispin. Carry melons and drop the seeds where you want more. Other folk may be running away from the disaster. Youll have to deal with them when they get here."
"Will you stay with us, to advise?"
"We have to move faster than that. Were trying to solve it all," Louis told her.
CHAPTER 13
Gray Nurse
In the morning Louis found himself on a grassy hill. He stood to look about him.
The flycycles hadnt been moved from their place on the rivers shore. Acolyte slept between them. Hanuman and the Earth folk were nowhere visible. The Hinsh had departed. Downslope toward the river were melon trees and broken melon shells. A puddle of orange-and-chocolate fur beside the pool had to be Acolyte.
He walked on down.
He expected the Kzin to wake as he approached, but Acolyte didnt move. His sides moved. Good: the Kzin was breathing. Now, what mischief were the ARMs up to?
Louis took a flycycle aloft.
Claus and Roxanny were on the other side of the creek, behind a hill. They were working with the heavy oblong brick shed stowed in Louiss baggage compartment. It unfolded into something like a holoscreen keypad: the library from their little spacecraft.
Wembleth and Hanuman were peering past them into the hologram display. Roxanny saw Louis and waved. He waved back.
That didnt look like they were keeping secrets. Louis returned to the pool.
Acolyte was sitting up, stretching. He looked around him. "Where is everyone?"
"Across the river. Are you all right?"
"Well fed and well slept out. I found a small deer or something. Louis, nobody told me not to gorge. We should have arranged to stand watch."
Louis stretched. "I wondered if theyd stunned you. Hey, I slept as well as you did. The ARMs are doing something tricky, I think, but Hanumans watching them. Shall we see?"
They took a flycycle across.
Claus awaited their descent. He said, "Luis, Acolyte, I want to interview both of you as to what you saw at the puncture. Any objection?"
Louis thought of objections, but none that Luis could back up. "Show us how it works," he said.
"Just the Kzin first," Claus said.
"Well help each other," Louis said, and Acolyte rumbled agreement. Then Wembleth too wanted to participate. That allowed the three to play off each other in an interview that became an animated conversation.
Louis gambled that the ARMs didnt have equipment to detect lies in the tremor of a voice. Gray Nurse or another in the ARM fleet might.
As to what "Luis" had seen, Louis stuck close to the truth. They had been indoors: theyd missed the explosion (and Luis knew nothing of industrial antimatter). As he and Acolyte arrived from… somewhere… a great light had appeared, not much brighter than the sun, but huge. Then a glare-yellow doughnut the size of a mountain range lay blocking the region they had come to see.
He was asked about his background. He invented, but kept it terse. A twenty-year-old wouldnt have centuries of memories; he wouldnt tell stories well, and hed be a bit shy around elders. Acolyte, who really was only twelve, was able to stick to his own memories, because Chiron (Luis said) had never confronted the half-grown Kzin. Luis speculated aloud whether the puppeteer was afraid.
And the library fascinated all three interviewees.
Protector — 1) Adult stage of the Pak species, where the line runs from child to breeder to adult. 2) Hominids in general are descended from Pak. They too have a breeder stage, at which they usually spend their lives, and an adult stage rarely achieved. 3 Archaic -
If Claus or Roxanny looked up a reference, Wembleth, Luis, and Acolyte crowded in to look. So did Hanuman, though he was generally ignored. Roxanny didnt like to be near him; he favored Claus, and Claus treated him as a pet.
There were hot buttons everywhere in the text.
Piersons puppeteers — A species of great industrial power and sophistication, once common through known space and beyond, now thought to be fleeing the galactic core explosion. See General Products company. Physiology…
Core explosion — Thought to be a rash of supernovae… due to reach Earth in twenty thousand years. Inadequately studied.
General Products — A company once owned and run by Piersons puppeteers. In human space they sold almost nothing but spacecraft hulls.
Known space — Those regions of the galaxys Major Arm thought to be explored and understood by known sapient species.
Ringworld life forms are little understood. Ecologies tend to familiar patterns, but no trained biologist has had opportunity to investigate.
Mammals —
Hominids — Related to the genus Hominidae on Earth. Probably all such species derive from Pak breeders imported from the galactic core, subsequently evolved in many directions.
Louis Wu — {rotating hologram}
"Now give us some privacy," Roxanny said without looking up.
Louis and Acolyte backed away. Hanuman climbed into Clauss lap. Claus scratched the anthropoids head, and didnt seem to notice its high cranial capacity or the ridge on top. The interview had lasted nearly two hours.
Louis and Acolyte settled beside the flycycle. Louis deployed the kitchen. Acolyte said, "Hanuman wants the library."
"Tunesmith will too." Louis passed the Kzin a squeeze of broth.
"One flycycle would hold all three of us if Hanuman rides my lap or yours," Acolyte said. "Hanuman learns fast. He might already know all he needs to run the library. Then we go, unless you truly want the ARM woman as mate."
"Good plan. We go when Hanumans ready," Louis said. He sucked at a squeeze of green tea. He was not nearly so sure as he sounded.
The library codes might not be easy to crack.
The ARM might not let them go easily.
Anything could happen. The ARMs were in a shouting match, though Louis and Acolyte were too far away to make it out. Then Claus was back at work with the library, Wembleth and
Hanuman were peering over his shoulder, and Roxanny strode briskly toward the flycycles. "Luis!" she said with a whip in her voice.
Louis offered her a squeezebulb. Roxanny looked startled. "Oh! Thank you. Weve been in touch with Gray Nurse."
"And?"
She glanced at Acolyte. "Lets go somewhere," she said.
She led them across the river on stepping stones, then behind some low bushes. Sitting, they were hidden. Louis kissed her. She accepted the kiss without response, then asked, "Do you still want rescue? Do you want to visit Earth?"
"Last time I didnt have a choice."
Shrug. "Youd be very valuable. I could try to get you citizenship"
"Roxanny, my father was an illegal birth." He wanted that established, Luis Tamasan isnt registered, before she tried to look up an imaginary man. "Citizenship in what? What does it mean?"
He listened carefully to her answers. There would be changes in civilization since his departure. It sounded like there were more laws, more restrictions. Maybe only in Sol system.
Luis wouldnt know — "Birthright? Roxanny, what is a birthright?"
"Ill find it for you in the library. Basically, youre born with one or two birthrights depending on — tanj — mostly on your genetic pattern. If youre healthy, you probably have two birthrights. You can lose it, or get more. Two birthrights make a child."
Louis Wu had used up his birthrights. Faking his ID would involve faking that, and the penalties were draconian. He said, "It doesnt sound like I want to settle on Earth."
"No, given a bastard father. Its the most interesting world, though."
It was just possible, he thought, that Luis Tamasan could become a whole new person. If he settled We Made It or Home, why would anyone ever try to connect his gene pattern to a Louis Wu? He could pay taxes. Learn a new profession. Marry — "What are our odds of getting to space?"
"We know where a puncture is, if the whoever — the wizard — hasnt closed it."
"The Phantom Weaver."
She shrugged. "Whatever you like. Gray Nurse can fire projectiles at a puncture from underneath. Thatll tell us if its been closed. Beyond that, who knows? Will Acolyte go along with this?"