Time was different when the sun was always straight overhead. Morning and afternoon were identical. Decisions seemed less than permanent. Reality seemed less than real. It was, Louis thought, like the instant of time spent traveling between transfer booths.
That was it. They were between transfer booths, one at the Liar, one at the rim wall. They only dreamed that they flew above flat gray land in a triangle pattern of flycycles.
They flew to port through frozen time.
How long had it been since anyone had spoken to anyone? It had been hours since Louis had signaled Teela that he wanted to talk to her. Not much later he had signaled Speaker. Lights had burned above their dashboards, ignored, as Louis ignored the light above his own.
"Enough of that," Louis said suddenly. He opened the intercom.
He caught an incredible burst of orchestral music before the puppeteer noticed him. Then -
"We must see to it that the expedition is reunited without bloodshed," said Nessus. "Have you any suggestions, Louis?"
"Yes. It's not polite to start a conversation in the middle."
"I apologize, Louis. Thank you for returning my call. How have you been?"
"Lonely and irritated, and it's all your fault. Nobody wants to talk to me."
"Can I help?"
"Maybe. Did you have anything to do with changing the Fertility Laws?"
"I headed the project."
Louis snorted. "That's the wrong answer. May you be the first victim of retroactive birth control! Teela won't ever speak to me again."
"You should not have laughed at her."
"I know. You know what scares me the most about this whole thing? Not your there-ain't no-justice arrogance," said Louis. "It's the fact that you can make decicions of that magnitude, then do something as downright stupid as, as -"
"Can Teela Brown hear us?"
"No, of course not. Tanj you, Nessus! Do you know what you've done to her?"
"If you knew her ego would be so wounded, why did you speak?"
Louis moaned. He had solved a thought-problem and immediately revealed the solution. It had not occurred to him, it would never have occurred to him, that the solution was better hidden. He didn't think that way.
The puppeteer asked, "Have you thought of a way to reunite the expedition?"
"Yes," said Louis, and he switched off.
Let the puppeteer sweat over that one.
The land sloped down and became green again.
They passed another sea, and a great triangular river delta. But the riverbed was dry, and so was the delta. Alterations in the wind currents must have dried up the source.
As Louis dipped low, it became clear that all of the haphazard, meandering channels that made up the delta had been carved permanently into the land. The Ringworld artists had not been content to let the river dig its own channels. And they had been right; the soil wasn't deep enough on the Ringworld. Artifice was necessary.
But the empty channels were ugly. Louis pursed his lips in disapproval, and flew on.
CHAPTER 14 — Interlude, With Sunflowers
Not far ahead, there were mountains.
Louis had flown all night and well into the morning. He wasn't sure how long. The motionless noon sun was a psychological trap; it either compressed or stretched time, and Louis wasn't sure which.
Emotionally, Louis was on sabbatical. He had almost forgotten the other flycycles. Flying alone over unending, endlessly changing terrain was no different from ranging alone in a singleship, beyond the known stars. Louis Wu was alone with the universe, and the universe was a plaything for Louis Wu. The most important question in the universe became: Is Louis Wu still satisfied with himself?
It came as a shock when a furry orange face formed above the dash.
"You must be tiring," said the kzin. "Do you wish me to fly?"
"I'd rather land. I'm getting cramped."
"Land, then. The controls are yours."
"I don't want to force my company on anyone." As he said it, Louis realized that he meant it. The sabbatical mood had been too easily recaptured.
"Do you feel that Teela would avoid you? You may be right. She has not called even me, though I share her shame."
"You're taking it too hard. No, wait, don't switch off."
"I wish to be alone, Louis. The leaf-eater has shamed me terribly."
"But it was so long ago! No, don't switch off; have pity on a lonely old man. Have you been watching the landscape?"
"Yes."
"Did you notice the bare regions?"
"Yes. In places erosion has cut through bedrock to the indestructible ring floor. Something must have badly upset the wind patterns a very long time ago. Such erosion cannot happen overnight, even on the Ringworld."
"Right."
"Louis, how could a civilization of such size and power fall?"
"I don't know. Let's face it: there's no way to guess, not for us. Even the puppeteers never reached the Ringworld's level of technology. How can we tell what might have knocked them back to the fist-ax level?"
"We must learn more about the natives," said Speaker-To-Animals. "Our evidence thus far indicates that they could not possibly move the ruined Liar anywhere. We must find those who can."
It was the opening Louis had hoped for. "I have some ideas on that score — an effective way to contact the natives as often as we like."
"Well?"
"I'd like to land before we talk it over."
"Land, then."
Mountains formed a high, blocky range across the path of the flycycle fleet. Their peaks and the passes between glowed with a pearly sheen Louis recognized. Winds roaring over and between the peaks had polished away the rock, exposing the framework of ring floor material.
Louis dropped the fleet toward gently rounded foothills. If his target was the mouth of a silver stream that poured out of the mountains and disappeared into a forest, itself seemingly endless, that covered the foothills like green fur.
Teela called. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
"I'm landing. I'm tired of flying. But don't hang up. I'd like to apologize."
She switched off.
Best I could hope for, Louis told himself without conviction. But she would be more willing to listen now that she knew an apology was coming.
"I got the idea from all our talk about 'playing god'," said Louis. Unfortunately he was talking only to Speaker. Teela had dismounted her 'cycle, thrown him one smoking glare and stalked off into the woods.
Speaker nodded his shaggy orange head. His ears twitched like small Chinese fans held in nervous fingers.
"We're reasonably safe on this world," Louis told him, "as long as were in the air. There's no question but that we can get where we're going. We could probably reach the rim wall without ever landing, if it came to that; or we could land only where the ring foundation pokes through. No predatory life could survive on that stuff.
"But we can't learn much without landing. We want to get off this oversized toy, and to do that we're going to need native help. It still looks as though someone is going to have to haul the Liar across four hundred thousand miles of landscape."
"Get to the point, Louis. I need exercise."
"By the time we reach the rim wall we'll want to know a lot more about the Ringworld than we do now."
"Unquestionably."
"Why not play god?"
Speaker hesitated. "You speak with literal precision?"
"Right. We're naturals for Ringworld engineers. We don't have the powers they had, but what we do have must look godlike enough to the natives. You can be the god -"
"Thank you."
"- Teela and I the acolytes. Nessus would make a good captive demon."