Ringworld (3 page)

The lawn was one of those tended according to the ancient British formula: seed and roll for five hundred years. Five hundred years had ended in a stock market crash, after which Louis Wu had had money and a certain venerable baronial family had not. The grass was green and glossy, obviously the real thing; nobody had ever tampered with its genes in search of dubious improvements. At the bottom of the rolling green slope was a tennis court where diminutive figures ran and jumped and swung their oversized fly swatters with great energy.

"Exercise is wonderful," said Louis. "I could sit and watch it all day."

Teela's laugh surprised him. He thought idly of the millions of jokes she had never heard, the old, old ones nobody ever told any more. Of the millions of jokes Louis knew by heart, 99 percent must be obsolete. Past and present mix badly.

The bartender floated next to Louis in tilted position. Louis's head was in Teela's lap, and his need to reach the keyboard without sitting up was responsible for the bartender's tilt. He tapped an order for two mochas, caught the bulbs as they dropped from the slot, and handed one to Teela.

"You look like a girl I knew once," he said. "Ever hear of a Paula Cherenkov?"

"The cartoonist? Boston-born?"

"Yeah. Lives on We Made It, nowadays."

"My great-great grandmother. We visited her once."

"She gave me a severe case of whiplash of the heart, long ago. You could be her twin."

Teela's chuckle sent vibrations bouncing pleasantly along Louis's vertebrae. "I promise not to give you a case of whiplash of the heart if you'll tell me what it is."

Louis thought about that. The phrase was his own, created to describe to himself what had happened to him at that time. He hadn't used it often, but he'd never had to explain it. They always knew what he meant.

A calm, peaceful morning. If he went to sleep now he'd sleep for twelve hours. Fatigue poisons were giving him an exhaustion high. Teela's lap was a comfortable resting place for his head. Half of Louis's guests were women, and many of them had been his wives or lovers in other years. During the first phase of the party, he'd celebrated his birthday privately with three women, three who had been very important to him once, and vice versa.

Three? Four? No, three. And now it seemed that he was immune to whiplash of the heart. Two hundred years had left too much scar tissue on his personality. And now he rested his head idly and comfortably in the lap of a stranger who looked exactly like Paula Cherenkov.

"I fell in love with her," he said. "We'd known each other for years. We'd even dated. Then one night we got to talking, and wham. I was in love. I thought she loved me too.

"We didn't go to bed that night -- together, I mean. I asked her to marry me. She turned me down. She was working on a career. She didn't have time to get married, she said. But we planned a trip to Amazon National Park, a sort of one week ersatz honeymoon.

"The next week was all highs and lows. First, the high. I had the tickets and the hotel reservations. Did you ever fall so hard for someone that you decided you weren't worthy of him?"

"No."

"I was young. I spent two days convincing myself I was worthy of Paula Cherenkov. I did it, too. Then she called and cancelled the trip. I don't even remember why. She had some good reason.

"I took her out to dinner a couple of times that week. Nothing happened. I tried to keep from pressuring her. Chances are she never guessed the pressure I was under. I was going up and down like a yo-yo. Then she lowered the boom. She liked me. We had fun together. We should be good friends.

"I wasn't her type," said Louis. "I thought we were in love. Maybe she thought so too, for about a week. She wasn't cruel. She just didn't know what was going on."

"But what was the whiplash?"

Louis looked up at Teela Brown. Silver eyes looked blankly back, and Louis realized that she hadn't understood a word.

Louis had dealt with aliens. By instinct or by training, he had learned to sense when some concept was too foreign to be absorbed or communicated. Here was a similar, fundamental gap in translation.

What a monstrous gulf to separate Louis Wu and a twenty-year-old girl! Could he really have aged that drastically? And if so, was Louis Wu still human?

Teela, blank-eyed, waited for enlightenment.

"Tanj!" Louis cursed, and he rolled to his feet. Mud spots slid slowly down his robe and dripped off the hem.

Nessus the puppeteer was holding forth on the subject of ethics. He interrupted himself (quite literally, speaking with both mouths, to the delight of his admirers) to answer Louis's query. No, there had been no word from his agents.

Speaker-To-Animals, similarly surrounded, sprawled like a great orange hill across the grass. Two women were scratching at the for behind his ears. The odd kzinti ears, that could expand like pink chinese parasols or fold flat against the head, were spread wide; and Louis could see the design tattooed on each surface.

"So," Louis called to him. "Was I not brilliant?"

"You were," the kzin rumbled without stirring.

Louis laughed inside himself. A kzin is a fearsome beast, yes? But who can fear a kzin who is having his ears scratched? It put Louis's guests at their ease, and it put the kzin at ease too. Anything above the level of a field mouse likes having its ears matched.

"They have been taking turnabout," the kzin rumbled deeply. "A male approaches the female scratching me and observes that he would enjoy the same attention. The two go off together. Another female moves in as a replacement. How interesting it must be, to belong to a race of two sentient sexes."

"Sometimes it makes things awfully complicated."

"Indeed?"

The girt at the kzin's left shoulder -- space-black her skin was, embroidered with stars and galaxies, and her hair was the cold white stream of a comet's tail -- looked up from her work. "Teela, take over," she said gaily. "I'm hungry."

Teela knelt obligingly beside the great orange head. Louis said, "Teela Brown, meet Speaker-To-Animals. May you both be --"

From nearby came a discordant blast of music.

"-- very happy together. What was that? Oh, Nessus. What --?"

The music had come from the puppeteer's remarkable throats. Now Nessus nudged rudely between Louis and the girl. "You are Teela Jandrova Brown, ident number IKLUGGTYN?"

The girl was startled, but not frightened. "That's my name. I don't remember my ident number. What's the problem?"

"We have been combing Earth for you for nearly a week. Now I find you at a gathering I reached only by chance! I will have harsh words for my agents."

"Oh no," Louis said softly.

Teela stood up somewhat awkwardly. "I haven't been hiding, not from you and not from any other -- extraterrestrial. Now, what's the problem?"

"Hold it!" Louis stepped between Nessus and the girl. "Nessus, Teela Brown obviously isn't an explorer. Pick someone else."

"But, Louis --"

"Just a moment." The kzin was sitting up. "Louis, let the herbivore choose his own team members."

"But look at her!"

"Look at yourself, Louis. Barely two meters long, slender even for a human. Are you an explorer? Is Nessus?"

"Just what the tanj is going on?" Teela demanded.

Urgently, Nessus said, "Louis, let us retire to your office. Teela Brown, we must make a proposal to you. You are under no obligation to accept, nor even to listen, but you may find our proposal interesting."

***

The argument continued in Louis's office. "She fits my qualifications," Nessus insisted. "We must consider her."

"She can't be the only one on Earth!"

"No, Louis. Not at all. But we have been unable to contact any of the others."

"Just what am I being considered for?"

The puppeteer started to tell her. It developed that Teela Brown had no interest in space, had never even been as far as the Moon, and had no intention of going beyond the borders of known space. The second quantum hyperdrive did not arouse her cupidity. When she started to look harassed and confused, Louis broke in again.

"Nessus, just what are the qualifications Teela fits so well?"

"My agents have been seeking the descendants of winners of the Birthright Lotteries."

"I quit. You're genuinely insane."

"No, Louis. My orders come from the Hindmost himself, from the one who leads us all. His sanity is not in question. May I explain?"

***

For human beings, birth control had long been an easy matter. Nowadays a tiny crystal was inserted under the skin of the patient's forearm. The crystal took a year to dissolve. During that year the patient would be unable to conceive a child. In earlier centuries clumsier methods had been used.

Earth's population had been stabilized, about the middle of the twenty-first century, at eighteen billion. The Fertility Board, a subsection of the United Nations, made and enforced the birth control laws. For more than half a thousand years those laws had remained the same: two children to a couple, subject to the judgment of the Fertility Board. The Board decided who might be a parent how many times. The Board might award extra children to one couple, deny any children at all to another, all on the basis of desirable or undesirable genes.

"Incredible," said the kzin.

"Why? Things were getting pretty tanj crowded, with eighteen billion people trapped in a primitive technology."

"If the Patriarchy tried to force such a law on kzinti, we would exterminate the Patriarchy for its insolence."

But men were not kzinti. For half a thousand years the laws had held good. Then, two hundred years ago, had come rumors of chicanery in the Fertility Board. The scandal had ultimately resulted in drastic changes in the birth control laws:

Every human being now had the right to be a parent once, regardless of the state of his genes. In addition, the Birthrights Second and Third could come automatically: for a high tested IQ, or for proven, useful psychic powers, such as Plateau eyes or absolute direction, or for survival genes, like telepathy or natural longevity or perfect teeth.

One could buy the birthrights at a million stars a shot. Why not? The knack for making money was a tested, proven survival factor. Besides, it cut down on bribery attempts.

One could fight for the Birthrights in the arena, if one had not yet used up his Birthright First. Winner to earn his Birthrights Second and Third; loser to lose his Birthright First and his life. It evened out.

"I have seen such battles on your entertainment shows," said Speaker. "I thought they were fighting for fun."

"Nope, they're serious," said Louis. Teela giggled.

"And the lotteries?"

"It comes out short," said Nessus. "Even with boosterspice to prevent aging in humans, more die on Earth than are born in any given year ... "

And so each year the Fertility Board totaled up the year's deaths and emigrations, subtracted the year's births and immigrations, and put the resulting number of Birthrights into the New Year's Day lottery.

Anyone could enter. With luck you could have ten or twenty children -- if that was luck. Even convicted criminals could not be excluded from the Birthright Lotteries.

"I've had four children myself," said Louis Wu. "One by lottery. You'd have met three of them if you'd come twelve hours earlier."

"It sounds very strange and complex. When the population of Kzin grows too great, we --"

"Attack the nearest human world."

"Not at all, Louis. We fight each other. The more crowded we grow, the more opportunity exists for one kzin to take offense at another. Our population problem adjusts itself. We have never been within an order of magnitude of your two times eight to the tenth humans on a single planet!"

"I think I begin to get it," said Teela Brown. "My parents were both lottery winners." She laughed somewhat nervously. "Otherwise I wouldn't even have been born. Come to think of it, my grandfather --"

"All of your ancestors for five generations were born by reason of winning lottery tickets."

"Really! I never knew that!"

"The records are quite clear," Nessus assured her.

"The question remains," said Louis Wu. "So what?"

"Those-who-rule in the puppeteer fleet have speculated that the people of Earth are breeding for luck."

"Huh!"

Teela Brown leaned forward in her chair, intensely curious. Doubtless she had never before seen a mad puppeteer.

"Think of the lotteries, Louis. Think of evolution. For seven hundred years your people bred by the numbers: two birthrights per person, two children per couple. Here and there one might win a third birthright, or be refused his first on adequate grounds: diabetic genes or the like. But most of humanity had two children.

"Then the law was changed. For the past two centuries, between ten and thirteen percent of each human generation has been born by right of a winning lottery ticket. What determines who will survive and breed? On Earth, luck.

"And Teela Brown is the daughter of six generations of winning gamblers ..."

Teela was giggling helplessly.

"Come off it," said Louis Wu. "You can't breed for luck the way you breed for shaggy eyebrows!"

"Yet you breed for telepathy."

"That's not the same. Telepathy isn't a psychic power. The mechanisms in the right parietal lobe are well mapped. They just don't work for most people."

"Telepathy was once thought to be a form of psi. Now you claim that luck is not."

"Luck is luck." The situation would have been funny, as funny as Teela thought it was; but Louis realized what she did not. The puppeteer was serious. "The law of averages swings back and forth. The odds shift wrong and you're out of the game, like the dinosaurs. The dice fall your way and --"

"It is thought that some humans can direct the fall of a die."

"So I picked a bad metaphor. The point is --"

"Yes," the kzin rumbled. He had a voice to shake walls when he chose to use it. "The point is that we will accept whom Nessus chooses. You own the ship, Nessus. Where, then, is our fourth crewman?"

"Here in this room!"

"Now just a tanj minute!" Teela stood up. The silver netting flashed like real metal across her blue skin; her hair floated flaming in the draft from the air conditioner. "This whole thing is ridiculous. I'm not going anywhere. Why should I?"

"Pick someone else, Nessus. There must be millions of qualified candidates. Where's the hang-up?"

"Not millions, Louis. We have a few thousand names, and phone numbers or private transfer booth numbers for most of them. Each can claim five generations of ancestors born by virtue of winning lottery tickets."

"Well?"

Nessus began to pace the floor. "Many disqualify themselves by obvious bad luck. Of the rest, none seem to be available. When we call, they are out. When we call back, the phone computer gives us a bad connection. When we ask for any member of the Brandt family, every phone in South America rings. There have been complaints. It is very frustrating." Taptaptap, taptaptap.

Teela said, "You haven't even told me where you're going."

"I cannot name our destination, Teela. However, you may --"

"Finagle's red claws! You won't even tell us that?"

"You may examine the holo Louis Wu is carrying. That is the only information I can give you at this time."

Louis handed her the holo, the one that showed a baby-blue stripe crossing a black background behind a disc of blazing white. She took her time looking it over; and only Louis noticed how the angry blood flowed into her face.

When she spoke, she spit the words out one at a time, like the seeds of a tangerine. "This is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. You expect Louis and me to go charging out beyond known space with a kzin and a puppeteer for company, and all we know about where were going is a length of blue ribbon and a bright -spot! That's -- ridiculous!"

"I take it, then, that you refuse to join us."

The girl's eyebrows went up.

"I must have a direct answer. Soon my agents may locate another candidate."

"Yes," said Teela Brown. "Yes, I do refuse."

"Remember, then, that by human law you must keep secret the things you have been told here. You have been paid a consultant's fee."

"Who would I tell?" Teela laughed dramatically. "Who would believe me? Louis, are you really going on this ridiculous --"

"Yes." Louis was already thinking of other things, like a tactful way to get her out of the office. "But not right this minute. There's still a party going on. Look, do something for me, will you? Switch the musicmaster from tape four to tape five. Then tell anyone who asks that I'll be out in a minute."

When the door had closed behind her, Louis said, "Do me a favor. Do yourselves one, too. Let me be the judge of whether a human being is qualified for a jaunt into the unknown."

"You know what qualifications are paramount," said Nessus. "We do not yet have two candidates to choose from."

"You've got tens of thousands."

"Not really. Many disqualify themselves; others cannot be found. However, you may tell me where that human being fails to fit your own qualifications."

"She's too young."

"No candidate can qualify without being of Teela Brown's generation."

"Breeding for luck! No, never mind, I won't argue the point. I know humans crazier than that. A couple of 'em. are still here at the party. Well, you saw for yourself that she's no xenophile."

"Nor is she a xenophobe. She does not fear either of us."

"She doesn't have the spark. She isn't -- isn't --"

"She has no restlessness," said Nessus. "She is happy where she is. This is indeed a liability. There is nothing she wants. Yet how could we know this without asking?"

"Okay, pick your own candidates." Louis stalked from his office.

Behind him the puppeteer fluted, "Louis! Speaker! The signal! One of my agents has found another candidate!"

"He sure has," Louis said disgustedly. Across the living room, Teela Brown was glaring at another Pierson's puppeteer.

***

Louis woke slowly. He remembered donning a sleep headset and setting it for an hour of current. Presumably that had been an hour ago. After the set turned itself off the discomfort of having the thing on his head would have wakened him ...

It wasn't on his head.

He sat up abruptly.

"I took it off you," said Teela Brown. "You needed the sleep."

"Oh boy. What time is it?"

"A little after seventeen."

"I've been a bad host. How goes the party?"

"Down to about twenty people. Don't worry, I told them what I was doing. They all thought it was a good idea."

"Okay." Louis rolled off the bed. "Thanks. Shall we join what's left of the party?"

"I'd like to talk to you first."

He sat down again. The muzziness of sleep was slowly leaving him. He asked, "What about?"

"You're really going on this crazy trip?"

"I really am."

"I don't see why."

"I'm ten times your age," said Louis Wu. "I don't have to work for a living. I don't have the patience to be a scientist. I did some writing once, but it turned out to be hard work, which was the last thing I expected. What's left? I play a lot."

She shook her head, and firelight shivered on the walls. "It doesn't sound like playing."

Louis shrugged. "Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends. but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere."

"Shouldn't you at least know what the risk is?"

"I'm getting well paid."

"You don't need the money."

"The human race needs what the puppeteers have got. Look, Teela, you were told all about the second quantum hyperdrive ship. It's the only ship in known space that moves faster than three days to the light year. And it goes almost four hundred times that fast!"

"Who needs to fly that fast?"

Louis wasn't in the mood to deliver a lecture on the Core explosion. "Let's get back to the party."

"No, wait!"

"Okay."

Her hands were large, with long, slender fingers. They glowed in reflected light as she brushed them nervously through her burning hair. "Tanj, I'm messing this up. Louis, are you in love with anyone right now?"

That surprised him. "I don't think so."

"Do I really look like Paula Cherenkov?"

In the semidarkness of the bedroom she looked like the burning giraffe in the Dali painting. Her hair glowed by its own light, a stream of orange and yellow flame darkening to smoke. In that light the rest of Teela was shadow touched by the flickering light of her hair. But Louis's memory filled in the details: the long, perfect legs, the conical breasts, the delicate beauty of her small face. He had first seen her four days ago, on the arm of Tedron Doheny, a spindly crashlander who had journeyed to Earth for the party.

"I thought you were Paula herself," he said now. "She lives on We Made It, which is where I met Ted Doheny. When I saw you together I thought Ted and Paula had come on the same ship.

"Close up, there were differences. You've got better legs, but Paula's walk was more graceful. Paula's face was -- colder, I think. Maybe that's just memory."

From outside the door came bursts of computer music, wild and pure, strangely incomplete without the light patterns to make it whole. Teela shifted restlessly, stirring the firelight shadows on the wall.

"What have you got in mind? Remember," said Louis, "the puppeteers have thousands of candidates to choose from. They could find our fourth crewman any day, any minute. Then, off we go."

"That's all right," said Teela.

"You'll stay with me until then?"

Teela nodded her fiery head.

***

The puppeteer dropped in two days later.

Louis and Teela were out on the lawn, soaking up sunshine and playing a deadly serious game of fairy chess. Louis had spotted her a knight. Now he was regretting it. Teela alternated intellection with intuition; he could never tell which way she would jump. And she played for blood.

She was chewing gently at her underlip, considering her next move, when the servo slid up and bonged at them. Louis glanced up at the monitor screen, saw two one-eyed pythons looking out of the servo's chest. "Send him out here," he said comfortably.

Teela stood in one sudden, graceless motion. "You two may have secrets."

"Maybe. What have you got in mind?"

"Some reading to catch up on." She leveled a forefinger at him. "Don't touch that board!"

At the door she met the puppeteer coming out. She waved casually as they passed, and Nessus leapt six feet to the side. "I beg your pardon," he fluted. "You startled me."

Teela lifted an eyebrow and went inside.

The puppeteer stopped next to Louis and folded his legs under him. One head fixed on Louis; the other moved nervously, circling, covering all angles of vision. "Could the woman spy on us?"

Louis showed his surprise. "Sure. You know there's no defense against a spy beam, not in the open. So?"

"Anyone or anything could be watching us. Louis, let us go to your office."

"There ain't no justice." Louis was perfectly comfortable where he was. "Will you stop bobbing your head around, please? You act scared to death."

"I am frightened, though I know my death would matter little. How many meterorites fall to Earth in a year?"

"I wouldn't know."

"We are perilously close to the asteroid belt here. Yet it does not matter, for we have been unable to contact a fourth crew member."

"Too bad," said Louis. The puppeteer's behavior puzzled him. If Nessus had been human -- But he wasn't. "You haven't given up, I trust."

"No, but our failures have been galling. For these past four days we have been seeking a Norman Haywood KJMMCWTAD, a perfect choice for our crew."

"And?"

"His health is perfect and vigorous. His age, twenty four-and-a-third terrestrial years. Six generations of his ancestors were all born through winning lottery tickets. Best of all, he enjoys travel; he exhibits the restlessness we need.

"Naturally we tried to contact him in person. For three days my agent tracked him through a series of transfer booths, always a jump behind him, while Norman Haywood went skiing in Suisse, and surfing in Ceylon, to shops in New York, and to house parties in the Rockies and the Himalayas. Last night my agent caught up to him as he entered a passenger spacecraft bound for Jinx. The ship departed before my agent could conquer his natural fear of your jury-rigged ships."

"I've had days like that myself. Couldn't you send him a hyperwave message?"

"Louis, this voyage is supposed to be secret."

"Yah," said Louis. And he watched a python head circling, circling, searching out unseen enemies.

"We will succeed," said Nessus. "Thousands of potential crew members cannot hide forever. Can they, Louis? They do not even know we are seeking them!"

"You'll find someone. You're bound to."

"I pray that we do not! Louis, how can I do it? How can I ride with three aliens in an experimental ship designed for one pilot? It would be madness!"

"Nessus, what's really bugging you? This whole trip was your idea!"

"It was not. My orders came from those-who-lead, from two hundred light years away."

"Something's terrified you. I want to know what it is. What have you found out? Do you know what this trip is really all about? What's changed since you were ready to insult four kzinti in a public restaurant? Hey, easy, easy!"

Tle puppeteer had tucked his heads and necks between his forelegs and rolled into a ball.

"Come on," said Louis. "Come on out." He ran his hands gently along the backs of the puppeteer's necks -- the parts that showed. The puppeteer shuddered. His skin was soft, like chamois skin, and pleasant to the touch.

"Come on out of there. Nothing's going to hurt you here. I protect my guests."

The puppeteer's wail came muffled from under his belly. "I was mad. Mad! Did I really insult four kzinti?"

"Come on out. You're safe here. That's better." A flat head peeped out of the warm shadow. "Now, you see? Nothing to be afraid of."

"Four kzinti? Not three?"

"My mistake. I miscounted. It was three."

"Forgive me, Louis." The puppeteer exposed his other head as far as the eye. "My manic phase has ended. I am in the depressive leg of my cycle."

"Can you do anything about it?" Louis thought of the consequences, if Nessus should hit the wrong leg of his cycle at a crucial time.

"I can wait for it to end. I can protect myself, to the extent possible. I can try not to let it affect my judgment."

"Poor Nessus. You're sure you haven't learned anything new?"

"Do I not know enough already to terrify any sane mind?" The puppeteer stood up somewhat shakily. "Why did I meet Teela Brown? I had thought she would have departed."

"I asked her to stay with me until we find your fourth crewmate."

"Why?"

Louis had wondered about that himself. It had little to do with Paula Cherenkov. Louis had changed too much since her time; and he was not a man to force one woman into the mold of another.