Ringworld

CHAPTER 12 — Fist-of-God

They had landed in a pocket of wild country surrounded by low hills. With the hills hiding the mock-horizon, and the glow of the Arch drowned by daylight, it might have been a scene on any human world. The grass was not precisely grass, but it was green, and it made a carpet over places that should have been covered by grass. There were soil and rocks, and bushes which grew green foliage and which were gnarled in almost the right ways.

The vegetation, as Louis had remarked, was eerily Earth-like. There were bushes where one would expect bushes, bare spots where one would expect bare spots. According to instruments in 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. Tbe 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 about Ringworld plants?"

"They seem very like the life of Earth, as I told you. However, some of the forms seem more specialized than one would expect."

"More evolved, you mean?"

"Perhaps. Again, perhaps a specialized form has more room to grow, even within its limited environment, here on the Ringworld. The important point is that the plants and insects are similar enough to attack us."

"And vice versa?"

"Oh, yes. A few forms are edible for me, a few others will fit your own belly. You will have to test them individually, first for poisons and then for taste. But any plant we find can safely be used by the kitchen on your 'cycle."

"We won't starve, then."

"This single advantage hardly compensates for the danger. If only our engineers had thought to pack a starseed lure aboard the Liar! This entire trek would have been unnecessary."

"A starseed lure?"

"A simple device, invented thousands of years ago. It causes the local sun to emit electromagnetic signals that attract starseeds. Had we such a device, we could lure a starseed to this star, then communicate our problem to any Outsider ship that followed it inward."

"But starseeds travel at a lot less than lightspeed. It might take years!"

"But think, Louis. However long we waited, we would not have had to leave the safety of the ship!"

"To you this is a full life?" Louis snorted. And he glanced at Speaker, fixed on Speaker, locked eyes with Speaker.

Speaker-To-Animals, curled on the ground some distance away, was staring back at him and grinning like an Alice-in-Wonderland Cheshire Cat. For a long moment they locked eyes; and then the kzin stood up with seeming leisure, sprang, and vanished into the alien bushes.

Louis turned back. Somehow he knew that something important had happened. But what? And why? He shrugged it away.

Straddling the contoured saddle of her 'cycle, Teela seemed braced for acceleration … as if she were still flying. Louis remembered the few times he had been hypnotized by a therapist. It had felt a lot like play-acting. Cushioned in a rosy absence of responsibility, he had known that it was all a game he was playing with the hypnotist. He could break free at any time. But somehow one never did.

Teela's eyes cleared suddenly. She shook her head, turned and saw them. "Louis! How did we get down?"

"The usual way."

"Help me down." She put her arms out like a child on a wall. Louis put his hands on her waist and lifted her from the 'cycle. The touch of her was a thrill along his back and an opening warmth in his groin and solar plexus. He left his hands where they were.

"The last I remember, we were a mile in the air," Teela said.

"From now on, keep your eyes off the horizon."

"What did I do, fall asleep at the wheel?" She laughed and tossed her head, so that her hair became a great soft black cloud. "And you all panicked. I'm sorry, Louis. Where's Speaker?"

"Chasing a rabbit," said Louis. "Hey, why don't we get some exercise ourselves, now we've got the chance?"

"How about a walk in the woods?"

"Good idea." He met her eyes and saw that they had read each other's thoughts. He reached into his 'cycles luggage bin and produced a blanket. "Ready."

"You amaze me," said Nessus. "No known sentient species copulates as often as you do. Go, then. Use caution where you sit. Remember that unfamiliar life-forms are about."

"Did you know," said Louis, "that naked once meant the same thing as unprotected?"

For it seemed to him that he was removing his safety with his clothes. The Ringworld had a functioning biosphere, ripe, no doubt, with bugs and bacteria and toothy things built to eat protoplasmic meat.

"No," said Teela. She stood naked on the blanket and stretched her arms to the noon sun. "It feels good. Do you know that I've never seen you naked in daylight?"

"Likewise. I might add that you look tanj good that way. Here, let me show you something." He half-raised a hand to his hairless chest. "Tanjit -"

"I don't see anything."

"It's gone. That's the trouble with boosterspice. No memories. The scars disappear, and after a while …" He traced a line across his chest; but there was nothing under his fingertip.

"A Gummidgy reacher tore a strip off me from shoulder to navel, four inches wide and half an inch deep. His next pass would have split me in two. He decided to swallow what he had of me first. I must have been deadly poison to him, because he curled up in a shrieking ball and died.

"Now there's nothing. Not a mark on me anywhere."

"Poor Louis. But I don't have any marks either."

"But you're a statistical anomaly, and furthermore you're only twenty years old."

"Oh."

"Mmm. You are smooth."

"Any other missing memories?"

"I made a mistake with a mining beam once …" He guided her hand.

Presently Louis rolled onto his back, and Teela impaled herself as she straddled his hips. They looked at each other for a long, brilliant, unbearable moment before they began to move.

Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory …

… Something the size of a rabbit shot out of the trees, scampered across Louis's chest and was gone into the undergrowth. An instant later, Speaker-To-Animals bounded into view. "Excuse me," the kzin called, and was gone, hot on the scent.

When they reconvened at the 'cycles, the fur around Speaker's mouth was stained red. "For the first time in my life," he proclaimed with quiet satisfaction, "I have hunted for my food, using no more weapons than my own teeth and claws."

But he followed Nessus's advice and took a broad-spectrum allergy pill.

"It is time we discussed the natives," said Nessus.

Toola looked startled. "Natives?"

Louis explained.

"But why did we run? How could they have hurt us? Were they really human?"

Louis answered the last question, because it had been bothering him. "I don't see how they could have been. What would human beings be doing this far from human space?"

"There is no possible doubt of that," Speaker interjected. "Trust your senses, Louis. We may find that their race differs from yours or Teela's. But they are human."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I smell them, Louis. The scent reached me when we turned off the sonic folds. Far away, thinly spread, a vast multitude of human beings. Trust my nose, Louis."

Louis accepted it. The kzinti nose was worn by a hunting carnivore. He suggested, "Parallel evolution?"

"Nonsense," said Nessus.

"Right." The human shape was convenient for a toolmaker, but no more so than other configurations. Minds came in all kinds of bodies.

"We are wasting time," said Speaker-To-Animals. "The problem is not how men arrived here. The problem is one of first contact. For us, every contact will be a first contact."

He was right, Louis realized. The 'cycles moved faster than any information-sending service the natives were likely to have. Unless they had semaphores …

Speaker continued, "We need to know something of the behavior of humans in the savage state. Louis? Teela?"

"I know a little anthropology," said Louis.

"Then when we make contact, you will speak for us. Let us hope that our autopilot makes an adequate translator. We will contact the first humans we find."

They were barely in the air, it seemed, when the forest gave way to a checkerboard of cultivated fields. Seconds later, Teela spotted the city.

It resembled some earthly cities of previous centuries. There were a great many buildings a few stories tall, packed shoulder to shoulder in a continuous mass. A few tall, slender towers rose above the mass, and these were joined together by winding groundcar ramps: definitely not a feature of earthly cities. Earth's cities of that era had tended to heliports instead.

"Perhaps our search ends here," Speaker suggested hopefully.

"Bet you it's empty," said Louis.

He was only guessing, but he was right. It became obvious as they flew over.

In its day the city must have been terrible in its beauty. One feature it had which would have been the envy of any city in known space. Many of the buildings had not rested on the ground at all, but had floated in the air, joined to the ground and to other buildings by ramps and elevator towers. Freed of gravity, freed of vertical and horizontal restrictions, these floating dream-castles had come in all shapes and a wide choice of sizes.

Now four flycycles flew over the wreckage. Every floating building had smashed lower buildings when it fell, so that all was shattered brick and glass and concrete, torn steel, twisted ramps and elevator towers still reaching into the air.

It made Louis wonder again about the natives. Human engineers didn't build air-castles; they were too safety-conscious.

"They must have fallen all at once," said Nessus. "I see no sign of attempted repairs. A power failure, no doubt. Speaker, would kzinti build so foolishly?"

"We do not love heights so well. Humans might, if they did not so love their lives."

"Boosterspice," Louis exclaimed. "That's the answer. They didn't have boosterspice."

"Yes, that might make them less safety-conscious. They would have less of life to protect," the puppeteer spewlated. "That seems ominous, does it not? If they think less of their own lives, they will think less of ours."

"You're borrowing trouble."

"We will know soon enough. Speaker, do you see that last building, the tall, cream-colored one with the broken windows -"

They had passed over it while the puppeteer spoke. Louis, who was taking his turn at flying the 'cycles, circled for another look.

"I was right. You see, Speaker? Smoke."

The building was an artistically twisted and sculpted pillar some twenty stories tall. Its windows were rows of black ovals. Most of the windows of the ground floor were covered. The few that ware open poured thin gray smoke into the wind.

The tower stood ankle-deep among one- and two-story homes. A row of those houses had been smashed flat by a rolling cylinder which must have fallen from the sky. But the rolling wreckage had disintegrated into concrete rubble before it reached that single tower.

The back of the tower was the edge of the city. Beyond were only rectangles of cultivation. Humanoid figures were running in from the fields even as the flycycles settled.

Buildings which had looked whole from high up were obvious wrecks at rooftop level. Nothing was untouched. The power failure and its accompanying disasters must have occurred generations ago. Then had come vandalism, rain, all the various corrosions caused by small life-forms, oxidation of metals, and something more. Something that in Earth's prehistoric past had left village mounds for later archeologists to browse thrmgh.

The city-dwellers had not restored their city after the power failure. Neither had they moved away. They had lived on in the ruins.

And the garbage of their living had accumulated about them.

Garbage. Empty boxes. Wind-borne dust. Inedible parts of food, bones, and things comparable to carrot leaves and corn cobs. Broken tools. It built up, when people were too lazy or too hard-worked to haul the rubbish away. It built up, and the parts softened and merged, and the pile settled under its own weight, and was compressed further by heavy feet, year by year, generation by genetation.

The original entrance to the tower was already buried. Ground level had risen that far. As the flycycles settled on hard-packed dirt, ten feet above what had once been a parking area for large ground-bound vehicles, five humanoid natives strode in solemn dignity through a second-story window.

The window was a double bay window, easily large enough to accommodate such a procession. Its sill and lintel were decorated with thirty or forty human-looking skulls. Louis could see no obvious pattern to their arrangement.

The five walked toward the 'cycles. As they came near they hesitated, in visible doubt as to who was in charge. They, too, looked human, but not very. Clearly they belonged to no known race of man.

The five were all shorter than Louis Wu by six inches or more. Where it showed, their skin was very light, almost ghost-white in contrast to Teela's merely Nordic pink or Louis's darker yellow-brown. They tended to short torsos and long legs. They walked with their arms identically folded; and their fingers were extraordinarily long and tapering, so that any of the five would have been a born surgeon in the days when men still performed surgery.

Their hair was more extraordinary than their hands. On all five dignitaries, it was the same shade of ash blond. They wore their hair and beards combed but uncut; and their beards covered their faces entirely, except for the eyes.

Needless to say, they all looked alike.

"They're so hairy!" Teela whispered.

"Stay on your vehicles," Speaker ordered in a low voice. "Wait until they reach us. Then dismount. I assume we are an wearing our communicator discs?"

Louis wore his inside his left wrist. The discs were linked to the autopilot aboard the Liar. They should work over such a distance, and the Liar's autopilot should be able to translate any new language.

But there was no way to test the tanj things except in action. And there were all those skulls …

Other natives were pouring into the former parking lot. Most of them halted at the sight of the confrontation-in-progress, so that the crowd formed a wide rough circle well outside the region of action. A normal crowd would have grumbled to itself in speculation and wagers and arguments. This crowd was unnaturaily silent.

Perhaps the presence of an audience forced the dignitaries to decide. They chose to approach Louis Wu.

The five … they didn't really look allke. They differed in height. All were thin, but one was almost a skeleton, and one almost had muscles. Four wore shapeless, almost colorless brown robes, a fifth wore a robe, of similar cut — cut from a similar blanket? — but in a faded pink pattern.

The one who spoke was the thinnest of them. A blue tattooed bird adorned the back of his hand.

Louis answered.

The tattooed one made a short speech. That was luck. The autopilot would need data before it could begin a translation.

Louis replied.

The tattooed man spoke again. His four companions maintained their dignified silence. So, incredibly, did their audience.

Presently the discs were filling in words and phrases …

He thought later that the silence should have Upped him off It was their stance that fooled him. There was the wide ring of the crowd, and the four hairy men in robes, all standing in a row; and the man with the tattooed hand, talking.

"We call the mountain Fist-of-God." He was pointing directly starboard. "Why? Why not, if it please you, engineer?" He must have meant the big mountain, the one they had left behind with the ship. By now it was entirely concealed by haze and distance.

Louis listened and learned. The autopilot made a dandy translator. Gradually a picture built up, a picture of a farming village living in the ruins of what had once been a mighty city…

"True, Zignamuclickclick is no longer as great as it once was. Yet our dwellings are far superior to what we could make for ourselves. Where a roof is open to the sky, still the lower floor will remain dry during a short rainstorm. The buildings of the city are easy to keep warm. In time of war, they are easily defended and difficult to burn down.

"So it is, engineer, that though we go in the morning to work our fields, at night we return to our dwellings along the edge of Zignamuclickclick. Why should we strain to make now homes when the old ones serve better?"

Two terrifying aliens and two almost-humans, unbearded and unnaturally tall; all four riding wingless metal birds, speaking gibberish from their mouths and sense from metal discs … small wonder if the natives had taken them for the Ringworld builders. Louis did nothing to correct the impression. An explanation of their origin would have taken days, and the team was here to learn, not to teach.

"This tower, engineer, is our seat of government. We rule more than a thousand people here. Could we raise a better palace than this tower? We have blocked off the upper stories so that the sections we use will retain heat. Once we defended the tower by dropping rubble from upper floors. I remember that our worst problem was the fear of high places …

"Yet we long for the return of the days of wonder, when our city held a thousand thousand people, and buildings floated in the air. We hope that you will choose to bring back those days. It is said that in the days of wonder, even this very world was bent to its present shape. Perhaps you will deign to say if it is true?"

"It's true enough," said Louis.

"And shall those days return?"

Louis made an answer he hoped was noncommittal. He sensed the other's disappointment, or guessed it.

Reading the hairy man's expression was not easy. Gestures are a kind of code; and the spokesman's gestures were not those of any terrestrial culture. Tightly-curled platinum hair hid his entire face, except for the eyes, which were brown and soft. But eyes hold little expression, contrary to public opinion.

His voice was almost a chant, almost a recital of poetry. The autopilot was translating Louis's words into a similar chant, though it spoke to Louis in a conversational tone. Louis could hear the other translator discs whistling softly in Puppeteer, snarling quietly in the Hero's Tongue.

Louis put questions …

"No, engineer, we are not a bloodthirsty people. We make war rarely. The skulls? They lie underfoot wherever one walks in Zignamuclickclick. They have been there since the fall of the city, it is said. We use them for decoration and for their symbolic significance." The spokesman solemnly raised his hand with its back to Louis, presenting the bird tattoo.

Amd everyone in sight shouted, "-!"

The word was not translated.

It was the first time anyone but the spokesman had said anything at all.

Louis had missed something, and he knew it. Unfortunately there wasn't time to worry about it.

"Show us a wonder," the spokesman was saying. "We doubt not your power. But you may not pass this way again. We would have a memory to pass to our children."

Louis considered. They'd already flown like birds; that trick would not impress twice. What about manna from the kitchen slots? But even Earthborn humans varied in their tolerance of certain food. The difference between food and garbage was mostly cultural. Some ate locusts with honey, others broiled snails; one man's cheese was another's rotted milk. Best not chance it. What about the flashlight-laser?

As Louis reached into his 'cyclies cargo slot, the first edge of a shadow square touched the rim of the sun. Darkness would make his demonstration all the more impressive.

With aperture wide and power low, he turned the light first on the spokesman, then on his four co-rulers, last on the faces of the crowd. If they were impressed, they hid it well. Hiding his disappointment, Louis aimed the implement high.

The figurine which was his target jutted from the tower's roof. It was like a modernized, surrealistic gargoyle. Loulies thumb moved, and the gargoyle glowed yellow-white. His index finger shifted, and the beam narrowed to a pencil of green light. The gargoyle sprouted a white-hot navel.

Louis waited for the applause.

"Yon fight with light," said the man with the tattooed hand. "Surely this is forbidden."

The crowd shouted, and was as suddenly silent.

"We did not know it," said Louis. "We apologize."

"Did not know it? How could you not know it? Did you not raise the Arch in sign of the Covenant with Man?"

"What arch is that?"

The hairy man's face was hidden, but his astonishment was evident. "The Arch over the world, O Builder!"

Louis understood then. He started to laugh.

The hairy man punched him unskillfully in the nose.

The blow was light, for the hairy man was slight and his hands were fragile. But it hurt.

Louis was not used to pain. Most people of his century had never felt pain more severe than that of a stubbed toe. Anaesthetics were too prevalent, medical help was too easily available. The pain of a skiier's broken leg usually lasted seconds, not minutes, and the memory was often suppressed as an intolerable trauma. Knowledge of the fighting disciplines, karate, judo, jujitsu, and boxing, had been illegal since long before Louis Wu was born. Louis Wu was a lousy warrior. He could face death, but not pain.

The blow hurt. Louis screamed and dropped his flashlight-laser.

The audience converged. Two hundred infuriated hairy men became a thousand demons; and things weren't nearly as funny as they had been a minute ago.

The reed-thin spokesman had wrapped both arms around Louis Wu, pinioning him with hysterical strength. Louis, equally hysterical, broke free with one frantic lunge. He was on his 'cycle, his hand was on the lift lever, when reason prevailed.

The other 'cycles were slaved to his. If he took off they would take off, with or without their passengers.

Louis looked about him.

Teela Brown was already in the air. From overhead she watched the fight, her eyebrows puckered in concern. She had not thought of trying to help.

Speaker was in furious motion. He'd already felled half a dozen enemies. As Louis watched, the kzin swung his flashlight-laser and smashed a man's skull.

The hairy men milled about him in an indecisive circle.

Long-fingered hands were trying to pull Louis from his seat. They were winning, though Louis gripped the saddle with hands and knees. Belatedly he thought to switch on the sonic fold.

The natives shrieked as they were snatched away.

Someone was still on Louis's back. Louis pulled him away, let him drop, flipped the sonic fold off and then on again to eject him. He scanned the ex-parking lot for Nessus.

Nessus was trying to reach his 'cycle. The natives seemed to fear his alien shape. Only one blocked his way; but that one was armed with a metal rod from some old machine.

As Louis located them, the man swung the rod at the puppeteer's head.

Nessus snatched his head back. He spun on his forelegs, putting his back to danger, but facing away from his flycycle.

The puppeteer's own flight reflex had killed him — unless Speaker or Louis could help him in time. Louis opened his mouth to shout, and the Puppeteer completed his motion.

Louis closed his mouth.

The puppeteer turned to his cycle. Nobody tried to stop him. His hind hoof left bloody footprints across the hard-packed dirt.

Speaker's circle of admirers were still out of his reach. The kzin spat at their feet — not a kzinti gesture but a human one — turned and mounted his 'cycle. His flashlight-laser was gory up to the elbow of his left hand.

The native who had tried to stop Nessus lay where he had fallen. Blood pooled lavishly about him.

The others were in the air. Louis took off after them. From afar he saw what Speaker was doing, and he called, "Hold it! That's not necessary."

Speaker had drawn the modified digging tool. He said, "Does it have to be necessary?"

But he had stayed his hand. "Don't do it," Louis implored him. "It'd be murder. How can they hurt us now? Throw rocks at us?"

"They may use your flashlight-laser against us."

"They can't use it at all. There's a taboo."

"So said the spokesman. Do you believe him?"

"Yeah."

Speaker put his weapon away. (Louis sighed in relief; hed expected the kzin to level the city.) "How would such a taboo evolve? A war of energy weapons?"

"Or a bandit armed with the Ringworld's last laser cannon. Too bad there's nobody to ask."

"Your nose is bleeding."

Now that he came to think about it, Louiss nose stung painfully. He slaved his 'cycle to Speaker's and set about making medical repairs. Below, a churning, baffled lynch mob swarmed at the outskirts of Zignamuclickclick.