He’d become ferociously hungry. He knew where to find more roots. Louis rode the cargo stack straight up to seek out a path, and saw children milling in the upland woods across the Shenthy River.
Sawur had found two big mushrooms of different species, and the children had killed a land-going crustacean as big as a rabbit. They watched with interest as Louis wrapped them in leaves and then wet clay. He dug his flash out of the lockbox on his cargo stack. With the flash on microwave, wide aperture, medium intensity, he heated the mound of clay until it puffed steam. Then he carefully locked the flash away. A dangerous thing to leave loose.
“Strill, Parald, keep the rest away from the clay. It’ll burn you. Sawur? I want to make you a parting gift.”
“Louis, are we to part?”
“The Web Dweller sent his refueling probe to spray the cliff. It must be nearby. I expect he could have it here in a few hours.” He hopped off the plates. “Let me show you this now. I’m wondering if it should go to you or to the whole village.”
The cargo plate controls were depressions on the rims, and they took some strength to move. Protector strength. Louis jabbed with a slender piece of rod held in both hands. The bottommost plate dropped from his stack and floated an inch above the grass.
Sawur asked, “Will you present it tonight? Give it to the village in charge of me and Kidada. I will be as surprised as any. Show him and me how to work it, but none other, and no visitors.”
“Stet.”
“This is a magnificent gift, Louis.”
“Sawur, you’ve given me my life. I think. Maybe.”
“Do you still doubt?”
“Give me a moment.” Louis knocked the clay off one end of his mound. The mushrooms looked and smelled done.
They tasted wonderful. He broke open the rest of the mound and found the crawler done, too. Most of the meat was in the spinnerets, and the children shared those around. The tail made one bite each for him and Sawur.
“That’s better. I’m not rational when I’m that hungry. Now look.” Louis drew a ring in the dirt. “Light takes thirty-two minutes to cross the Ringworld and come back.” He heard the translator converting times and distances.
“Really?”
“Trust me. Eight minutes for a beam from the sun to touch the Arch. Sixteen minutes across, thirty-two to cross and come back. If three starships pop up through a hole here, near the Great Ocean, and two and a half hours later they’re destroyed, and a ship lands here and is destroyed two hours later, where is the attacker?”
Sawur studied the sketch, then pointed. “Here, across the Arch. The first ships, he needed half an hour just to see them.”
“But what if it is attacked three hours later?”
Sawur said, “That would put the attacker here where you drew the Great Ocean.”
“Yeah.”
When shadow touched the sun, Louis had written a contract that ought to protect him, if a puppeteer would honor a contract.
He presented the cargo plate to Weaver Town while dinner was broiling. They acclaimed him as a mighty magician, a vashnesht. Then children wanted to ride the plate while parents were urging caution. Louis showed Kidada the setting that would hold the disk two feet high, low enough to be safe.
He watched Kidada swooping among the houses with Strill whooping in his arms, and hoped that they wouldn’t burn the thing out joyriding. One day they’d need it to lift something heavy.
The light was disappearing. Hunters had killed a predator; the meat tasted too much of cat. Weavers took slices and settled to watch the cliff as it came alight. Perched on his stack of cargo plates like a proper wizard, Louis nibbled cooked reeds and a root he’d microwaved in clay.
Puppeteers were dancing in a swirling rainbow. Louis watched with the others, then asked in Interspeak, “Are the pyrotechnics supposed to throw you off?”
“They are for loveliness. Louis, you must come to me.”
“How is it with the fearless vampire slayers?”
“I hear only voices. The cruisers have separated. Cruiser Two is gone to starboard with my webeye in the cargo shell. The Red Herders speak of an entity the male calls ‘Whisper.’ Tegger thinks Whisper has left them. Warvia thinks he dreamed. I think Whisper is our phantom protector. Louis, will you come?”
“We’ll have to reach terms—”
“I accept your contract—”
“You haven’t seen it!”
“I accept it provided you make no changes from this moment. As you’ve had no extortionate advantage, you will have written it fairly. My probe will arrive within twelve minutes.”
Louis looked at the sky. Nothing was visible yet. “Where will I pop out?”
“In your suite aboard Needle.”
Suite? It was one compartment, locked, that he had shared with a Kzin! “Contract pays me triple time during emergencies. Shall I arm myself?”
“Yes.”
“Sawur, get the children out of the water. Hindmost, land in the stream. Now, I remember crawling through the disk you mounted for refueling. It was pretty cramped.”
“I do learn, Louis! I’ve mounted a full-sized stepping disk on the side of the probe, big enough for you and your cargo plates, too.”
Louis thought, Fortunately I always keep my feathers numbered for just such emergencies. It wouldn’t have meant anything to a puppeteer. From his safe box he withdrew the flashlight-laser and a variable-knife, two powerful weapons. He set the flash for narrow, short range, high intensity. He extended the blade by two feet, then brought it back to a foot and a half.
Lose your hold on a variable-knife, the wire blade would cut whatever was close.
A violet-white light peeked above the cliff.
The refueling probe settled on fusion flame. The cavity in its nose, that was the refueling system: a filter to pass hydrogen ions, and a one-way stepping disk no wider than Louis’s hips. A much larger stepping disk had been mounted on its flank, a circular plate like an afterthought of a wing.
Weavers oohed and ahhed, then shied back from a wave of steam. The flame went out. As Louis glided above the probe, it splashed down on its flared motor, then rolled and toppled into the water.
The water dimpled above the stepping disk.
So: it was on. Louis cut the lift and dropped straight in. His peripheral vision caught a shadow leaping after him.
PART TWO — “DANCING AS FAST AS I CAN”
CHAPTER NINETEEN — THE KNOBBY MAN
Hot Needle of Inquiry had been built around a General Products #3 hull, with interior walls to separate the puppeteer captain from his alien crew. Currently the ship was more dwelling than spacecraft. Needle couldn’t exceed lightspeed because Louis Wu had cut the hyperdrive loose from its mountings, eleven years ago, for reasons that seemed good at the time. The ship itself had been embedded in magma during negotiations with the protector who had once been Teela Brown.