Part 25 (2/2)
Harkabeeparolyn shook her head violently. Her voice rose. ”Please, we don't have time. I'm sorry, Kawa! We want to hear more, we need to know more, but-the world, the sun! Louis, I never should have doubted you. What can we do to help?”
The Hindmost said, ”Read to me.”
Kawaresksenjajok lay on his back, watching the back of the world roll past him.
Needle ran beneath a featureless black roof in which the Hindmost had set two hologram ”windows.” One wide rectangle showed a light-amplified view; the other examined the Ringworld's underside by infrared light. In infrared the underside of day still glowed brighter than night-shadowed land; and rivers and seas were dark by day and light by night.
”Like the back of a mask, see?” Louis kept his voice down to avoid interrupting Harkabeeparolyn. ”That branching river chain: see how it stands out? The seas bulge too. And that line of dents-that's a whole mountain range.”
”Are your worlds like that?”
”Oh, no. On one of my worlds all that would be solid underneath, and the surface would be happening by accident. Here the world was sculpted. Look, the seas are all the same depth, and they're s.p.a.ced out so there's enough water everywhere.”
”Somebody carved the world like a bas relief?”
”Just like that.”
”Luweewu, that's scary. What were they like?”
”They thought big, and they loved their children, and they looked like suits of armor.” Louis decided not to say more about the protectors.
The boy pointed. ”What's that?”
”I don't know.” It was a dimple in the Ringworld's underside ... with fog in it. ”I think it's a meteor puncture. There'll be an eye storm above it.”
The reading screen was on the flight deck, facing Harkabeeparolyn through the wall. The Hindmost had repaired the damage and added a braided cable that led into the control panel. As Harkabeeparolyn read aloud, the s.h.i.+p's computer was reading the tape and correlating it to her voice and to its own stored knowledge of Halrloprillalar's tongue. That tongue would have changed over the centuries, but not too much, not in a literate society. Hopefully the computer could take over soon.
As for the Hindmost, he had disappeared into the hidden section. The alien had suffered repeated shocks. Louis didn't begrudge him time off for hysterics.
Needle continued to accelerate. Presently the inverse landscape was speeding past almost too fast for detail. And Harkabeeparolyn's voice was becoming throaty. Time for a lunch break, Louis decided.
A problem emerged. Louis dialed filets mignons and baked potatoes, with Brie and French bread to follow. The boy stared in horror. So did the woman, but at Louis Wu.
”I'm sorry. I forgot. I keep thinking of you as omnivores.”
”Omnivores, yes. We eat plants and flesh both,” the librarian said. ”But not decayed food!”
”Don't get so upset. There's no bacteria involved.” Properly aged steak, milk attacked by mold ... Louis dumped their plates into the toilet and dialed again. Fruit, crudit's [crudites] with a separate sour-cream dip which he dumped, and seafood, including sas.h.i.+mi. His guests had never seen salt-water fish before. They liked it, but it made them thirsty.
And watching Louis eat made them unhappy. What was he supposed to do, starve?
They might starve. Where would he get fresh red meat for them? Why, from Chmeee's side of the autokitchen, of course. Broil it with the laser on wide beam, high intensity. He'd have to get the Hindmost to recharge the laser. That might not be easy, considering the last use to which he'd put it.
Another problem: they might be consuming too much salt. Louis didn't know what to do about that. Maybe the Hindmost could reset the autokitchen controls.
After lunch Harkabeeparolyn went back to her reading. By now the Ringworld was streaming past too fast for detail. Kawaresksenjajok flicked restlessly from cell to cargo hold and back again.
Louis, too, was restive. He should be studying: reviewing the records of the first voyage, or of Chmeee's adventures to date on the Map of Kzin. But the Hindmost wasn't available.
Gradually he became aware of another source of discomfort.
He l.u.s.ted after the librarian.
He loved her voice. She'd been talking for hours, yet the lilt was still there. She'd told him that she sometimes read to blind children: children without sight. Louis got queasy just thinking about it. He liked her dignity and her courage. He liked the way the robe outlined her shape; and he'd glimpsed her nakedness.
It had been years since Louis Wu had loved a strictly human woman. Harkabeeparolyn came too close. And she wasn't having any. When the puppeteer finally rejoined them, Louis was glad of the distraction.
They talked quietly in Interworld, below the sound of Harkabeeparolyn reading to the computer.
”Where did they come from, these amateur repairmen?” Louis wondered. ”Who on the Ringworld would know enough to remount the att.i.tude jets? Yet they don't seem to know that it's not enough.”
”Let them alone,” the Hindmost said.
”Maybe they know it's not enough? Maybe the poor bleeders just can't think of anything else to do. And there's the question of where they got their equipment. It could have come from the Repair Center.”
”We face enough complications now. Let them alone.”
”For once I think you're right. But I can't help wondering. Teela Brown got her schooling in human s.p.a.ce. Big s.p.a.ce-built structures are nothing new to her. She'd know what it meant when the sun started sliding around.”
”Could Teela Brown have organized so large an effort?”
”Maybe not. But Seeker would be with her. Was Seeker in your tapes? He was a Ringworld native, and maybe immortal. Teela found him. A little crazy, but he could have done the organizing. He was a king more than once, he said.”
”Teela Brown was a failed experiment. We tried to breed a lucky human being, feeling that puppeteer a.s.sociates would share the luck. Teela may or may not have been lucky, but her luck was surely not contagious. We do not want to meet Teela Brown.”
Louis s.h.i.+vered. ”No.”
”Then we must avoid the attention of the repair crew.”
”Add a postscript to the tape you're sending to Chmeee,” Louis said. ”Louis Wu rejects your offer of sanctuary on the Fleet of Worlds. Louis Wu has taken command of Hot Needle of Inquiry and has destroyed the hyperdrive motor. That should shake him up.”
”It did that for me. Louis, my sensors will not penetrate scrith. Your message will have to wait.”
”How long until we reach him?”
”About forty hours. I have accelerated to a thousand miles per second. At this velocity it takes more than five gravities of acceleration to hold us in our path.”
”We can take thirty gravities. You're being overcautious.”
”I'm aware of your opinion.”
”You don't take orders worth a tanj,” Louis said. ”Either.”
Chapter 25 -.
<script>