"Very. Nessus, I am not happy."
"Neither am I," said Louis Wu.
He had not missed the fact that both aliens were still speaking Interworld. They could have had privacy by using the Hero's Tongue. They had preferred to include the humans — and quite rightly, for it was Louis Wu's quarrel, too.
"You used us," he said. "You used us just as thoroughly as you used the kzinti."
"But to our detriment," Speaker objected.
"A number of men were killed in the Man-Kzin Wars."
"Louis, get off his back!" Teela Brown entered the lists of battle. "Tanjit, if it hadn't been for the puppeteers, we'd all be kzinti slaves! They kept the kzinti from destroying civilization!"
Speaker smiled and said, "We had a civilization, too."
The puppeteer was a silent, ghostly image, a one-eyed python poised to strike. Presumably the other mouth was steering his 'cycle, which by now was a good distance away.
"The puppeteers used us," said Louis Wu. "They used us as a tool, a tool to evolve the kzinti."
"But it worked!" Teela insisted.
The sound was almost a snore, a low and ominous snarl. By now nobody could have mistaken Speaker's expression for a smile.
"It did work!" Teela flared. "You're a peaceful race now, Speaker. You can get along with -"
"Be silent, man!"
"With your equals," she finished generously. "You haven't attacked another species in -"
The kzin produced the modified Slaver digging tool and held it before the intercom so that Teela could see it. She stopped talking suddenly.
"It could have been us," said Louis.
He had their attention. "It could have been us," he repeated. "If the puppeteers had wanted to breed humans for some trait …" He stopped. "Oh," he said. "Teela. Sure."
The puppeteer did not react.
Teela shifted under Louis's stare. "What's the matter, Louis? Louis!"
"Sorry. Something just occurred to me … Nessus, speak to us. Speak to us of the Fertility Laws."
"Louis, have you gone crazy?"
"Uurrr," said Speaker-to-Animals. "I would have thought of that myself, given time. Nessus?"
"Yes," said Nessus.
The puppeteees 'cycle was a silver mote, still dwindling to port. It was almost lost against a larger, vaguer bright point ahead, somewhat more distant from the fleet than any two points can be on Earth. The puppeteees intercom image wore the unchanging, unreadable silly face produced by a flat triangular skull and loose, prehensile lips. He could not look dangerous, this one.
"You meddled with the Fertility Laws of Earth."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"We like humans. We trust humans. We have dealt profitably with humans. It is to our advantage to encourage humans, since they will certainly reach the Lesser Cloud before we do."
"Wonderful. You like us. So?"
"We sought to improve you genetically. But what should we improve? Not your intelligence. Intelligence is not your great strength. Nor is your sense of self-preservation, nor your durability, nor your fighting talents."
"So you decided to make us lucky," said Louis. And he began to laugh.
Teela got it then. Her eyes went round and horrified. She tried to say something, but it came out as a squeak.
"Of course," said Nessus. "Please stop laughing, Louis. The decision was sensible. Your species has been incredibly lucky. Your history reads like a series of hair-breath escapes, from intraspecies atomic war, from pollution of your planet with industrial wastes, from ecological upsets, from dangerously massive asteroids, from the vagaries of your mildly variable sun, and even from the Core explosion, which you discovered only by the merost accident. Louis, why are you still laughing?"
Louis was still laughing because he was looking at Teela. Teela was blushing furiously. Her eyes shifted as if seeking a place to hide. It is not pleasant to realize that one is part of a genetics experiment.
"And so we changed the Fertility Laws of Earth. It was surprisingly easy. Our withdrawal from known space caused a stock market crash. Economic manipulation ruined several members of the Fertility Board. We bribed some of these, blackmailed others with the threat of debtor's prison, then used corruption in the Fertility Board as publicity to force a change. It was a hideously expensive undertaking, but quite safe, and partially successful. We were able to introduce the Birthright Lotteries. We hoped to produce a strain of unusually lucky humans."
"Monster!" Teela shouted. "Monster!"
Speaker had sheathed his Slaver digging tool. He said, "Teela, you did not complain when you learned that the puppeteers had manipulated the heredity of my race. They sought to produce a docde kzin To that end they bred us as a biologist breeds stheets, killing the defectives, keeping others. You gloated that this crime was to the benefit of your species. Now you complain. Why?"
Teela, weeping with rage, cut herself out of the intercom.
"A docile kzin," Speaker repeated. "You sought to produce a docile kzin, Nessus. If you think you have produced a docile kzin, come and rejoin us."
The puppeteer did not answer. Somewhere far ahead of the fleet, the silver point of his 'cycle had become too small to see.
"You do not wish to rejoin our fleet? But how can I protect you from this unknown land unless you rejoin the fleet? But I do not blame you. You do well to be wary," said the kzin. His claws were showing, needle-sharp and slightly curved. "Your attempt to produce a lucky human was also a failure."
"No," said Nessus via intercom. "We produced lucky humans. I could not contact them for this ill-fated expedition. They were too lucky."
"You have played god with both our species. Do not attempt to rejoin us."
"I will remain in intercom contact."
Speaker's image disappeared.
"Louis, Speaker has cut me off," said Nessus. "If I have something to tell him, I must pass it through you."
"Fine," said Louis, and cut him off. Almost instantly a tiny light burned where the puppeteer's ghost-head had been. The puppeteer wanted to talk.
Tanj upon him.
Later that day they crossed a sea the size of the Mediterranean. Lows dipped to investigate, and found that the other 'cycles followed him down. The Beet, then, was still under his guidance, despite the fact that nobody would speak to him.
The shoreline was a single city, and the city was a ruin. Aside from the docks, it did not differ in kind from Zignamuclickclick. Louis did not land. There was nothing to be learned here.
Afterward the land sloped gradually upward, always upward, until ears popped and pressure sensors dropped. The green land became brown scrub, then high desert tundra, then miles and miles of bare rock, then -
Along half a thousand miles' of ridgeback mountain peak, the winds had scraped away scrub and sod and rock. Nothing was left but an exposed backbone of ring foundation material, translucent gray and hideous.
Sloppy upkeep. No Ringworld engineer would have permitted such a thing. The Ringworld civilization, then, must have begun to die long ago. The process would have started here, with bare spots poking through the facade in the places where nobody went …
Far ahead of the fleet, in the direction Nessus had gone, was an extensive shiny spot in the landscape. At a guess, it was thirty to fifty thousand miles away. A great shiny spot as big as Australia.
More exposed ring floor? Vast, shiny areas of ring foundation poking through once-fertile soil, soil that dies and dries and blows away when the river systems break down. The fall of Zignamuclickclick, the universal power failure, must have been the last stage of the breakdown.
How long had it taken? Ten thousand years?
Longer?
"Tanjit! I wish I could talk it over with someone. It might be important." Louis scowled at the landscape.