But why did he do that?
No time to find out. Louis went up the stairs. The puppeteer became incredibly heavy before Louis reached the bridge. He dropped Nessus beside the buried flycycle, reached for the first aid kit, rubbed the diagnostic patch onto the puppeteer's neck below the tourniquet. The puppeteer's first aid kit was still attached to the 'cycle by an umbilicus, and Louis rightly surmised that it was more complex than his own.
Presently the kitchen controls changed settings all by themselves. A few seconds later, a line snaked out of the dashboard and touched the puppeteer's neck, hunted over the skin, found a spot and sank in.
Louis shuddered. But — intravenous feeding. Nessus must be still alive.
The Improbable was aloft, though he had not felt the takeoff. Speaker was sitting on the bottom step above the landing ramp, looking down at the Heaven tower. He was cradling something carefully in both hands.
He asked, "Is the puppeteer dead?"
"No. He's lost a lot of blood." Louis sank down beside the kzin. He was bone-weary and terribly depressed. "Do puppeteers go into shock?"
"How would I know that? Shock itself is an odd mechanism. We needed centuries of study to know why you humans died so easily under torture." The kzin was clearly concentrating on something else. But he asked, "Was it the luck of Teela Brown?"
"I think so," said Louis.
"Why? How can the puppeteer's injury help Teela?"
"You'd have to see her through my eyes," said Louis. "She was very one-sided when I first met her. Like, well …"
The phrase he'd used sparked a memory, and he said, "There was a girl in a story. The hero was middle-aged and very cynical, and he went looking for her because of the myth about her.
"And when he found her he still wasn't sure that the myth was true. Not until she turned her back. Then he saw that from behind she was empty: she was the mask of a girl, a flexible mask for the whole front of a girl instead of just for a face. She couldn't be hurt, Speaker. That was what this man wanted. The women in his life kept getting hurt, and he kept thinking it was him, and finally he couldn't stand it any more."
"I understand none of this, Louis."
"Teela was like the mask of a girl when she came here. She'd never been hurt. Her personality wasn't human."
"Why is that bad?"
"Because she was designed human, before Nessus made her something else. Tanj him! Do you see what he did? He created god in his own image, his own idealized image, and he got Teela Brown.
"She's just what any puppeteer would give his soul to be. She can't be injured. She can't even be uncomfortable, unless it's for her own benefit.
"That's why she came here. The Ringworld is a lucky place for her to be, because it gives her the range of experience to become fully human. I doubt the Birthright Lotteries produced many like her. They'd have had the same luck. They'd have been aboard the Liar, except that Teela was luckier than any of them.
"Still … there must be scores of Teela Browns left on Earth! The future is going to look somewhat peculiar when they start to learn their power. The rest of us will have to learn to get out of the way quick."
Speaker asked, "What of the leaf-eater's head?"
"She can't sympathize with someone else's pain," said Louis. "Maybe she needed to see a good friend hurt. Teela's luck wouldn't care what that cost Nessus.
"Do you know where I got the tourniquet? Teela saw what I needed and found something that would serve. It's probably the first time in her life she's functioned right in an emergency."
"Why would she need to do so? Her luck should protect her from emergencies."
"She's never known that she can function in an emergency. She's never had that much reason for self-confidence. It's never been true before, either."
"Truly, I do not understand."
"Finding your limits is a part of growing up. Teela couldn't grow up, couldn't become an adult, without facing some kind of physical emergency."
"It must be a very human thing," said Speaker.
Louis interpreted the comment as an admission of total confusion. He did not attempt to answer.
The kzin added, "I wondered if we should have parked the Improbable higher than the tower the natives call Heaven. They may have considered it blasphemy. But such considerations seem futile, while the luck of Teela Brown governs events."
Louis still hadn't seen what the kzin was holding so protectively. "Did you go back for the head? If you did, you wasted your time. We can't possibly freeze it cold enough, soon enough."
"No, Louis." Speaker produced a fist-sized thing the shape of a child's top. "Do not touch it. You might lose fingers."
"Fingers? Oh." The pointed end of the teardrop-shaped thing tapered into a spike; and the point of the spike became the black thread that linked the shadow squares.
"I knew that the natives could manipulate the thread," said Speaker. "They must have done so, to string the trap that caught Nessus. I went back to see how they had done it.
"They had found one of the endpoints. I surmise that the other end is simple wire; that the wire broke in the middle when we rammed it with the Liar, but that this end tore loose from a socket on one of the shadow squares. We were lucky to get even one end."
"Too right. We can trail it behind us. The wire shouldn't get hung up on anything we can't cut through."
"Where do we go from here, Louis?"
"Starboard. Back to the Liar."
"Of course, Louis. We must return Nessus to the Liar's medical facilities. And then?"
"We'll see."
He left Speaker guarding the teardrop-shaped handle, while he went up for what was left of the electrosetting plastic. They used a double handful of the stuff to stick the handle to a wall — and then there wasn't any way to run a current. The Slaver weapon could have served, but it had been lost. It was a frustrating emergency. until Louis found that the battery in his lighter would run enough current through the plastic to set it.
That left the wire end of the teardrop exposed and pointing to port.
"I remember the bridge room as facing starboard," said Speaker. "If not, we must do it over. The wire must trail behind us.
"It might work," said Louis. He wasn't at all sure … but they certainly couldn't carry the wire. They would simply have to trail it behind them. It probably wouldn't get hung up on anything it couldn't cut through.
They found Teela and Seeker in the engine room with Prill, who was working the lifting motors.
"We're going in different directions," Teela said bluntly. "This woman says she can edge us up against the floating castle. We should be able to walk through a window straight across into the banquet hall."
"Then what? You'll be marooned, unless you can get control of the castle's lifting motors."
"Seeker says he has some knowledge of magic. I'm sure he'll work it out."
Louis would not try to talk her out of it. He was afraid to thwart Teela Brown, as he would not have tried to stop a charging bandersnatch with his bare hands. He said, "If you have any trouble figuring out the controls, just start pulling and pushing things at random."
"I'll remember," she smiled. Then, more soberly, "Take good care of Nessus."
When Seeker and Teela debarked from the Improbable twenty minutes later, it was with no more goodbye than that. Louis had thought of things to say, but had not said them. What could he tell her of her own power? She would have to learn by trial and error, while the luck itself kept her alive.