"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.

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.