"They do," said Louis. "They move faster than light."

"I think you improve the tale," she laughed. "Our theory says that this cannot be."

"Maybe we use different theories."

She seemed taken aback. Louis had learned to read her involuntary muscle movements rather than her virtually blank face. But she said, "Boredom can be dangerous when a ship takes years to cross between worlds. The ways to amuse must be many and all different. To be a ship's whore needs knowledge of medicine of mind and body, plus love of many men, plus a rare ability to converse. We must know something of the working of the ship, so that we will not cause accidents. We must be healthy. By rule of guild we must learn to play a musical instrument."

Louis gaped. Prill laughed musically, and touched him here and there …

The intercom system worked beautifully, despite the fact that the ear plugs were designed for human rather than kzinti ears. Louis developed an ability to think on his feet, operating as the man behind the war god. When he made mistakes, he could tell himself that the Improbable was still faster than the maximum rate of travel of news on the Ringworld. Every contact was a first contact.

Months passed.

The land was slowly rising, slowly becoming barren.

Fist-of-God was visible by daylight and growing larger every day The routine had settled into Louis's thinking. It took some some time to realize what was happening.

It was broad daylight when he went to Prill. "There's something you should know," he said. "Do you know about induced current?" And he explained what he meant.

Then, "Very small electrical currents can be applied to a brain, to produce pleasure or pain directly." He explained that.

And finally, "This is how a tasp works."

That had taken about twenty minutes. Prill said, "I knew that he had a machine. Why describe it now?"

"We're leaving civilization. We won't find many more villages, or even food sources, until we reach our spacecraft. I wanted you to know about the tasp before you decided anything."

"Decided what?"

"Shall we let you off at the next village? Or would you like to ride with us to the Liar, then take the Improbable? We can give you food there too."

"There is room for me aboard the Liar," she said with assurance.

"Sure, but -"

"I am sick of savages. I want to go to civilization."

"You might have trouble learning our ways. For one thing, they grow hair like mine." Louis's hair had grown out long and thick. He had cut the queue. "You'll need a wig."

Prill made a face. "I can adjust." She laughed suddenly. "Would you ride home alone, without me? Ihe big orange one cannot substitute for a woman."

"That's the one argument that always works."

"I can help your world, Louis. Your people know little about sex."

Which statement Louis prudently let slide.

CHAPTER 24 — Fist-of-God

The land grew dry and the air grew thin. Fist-of-God seemed to flee before them. The fruit was gone, and the meat supply was dwindling. This was the barren upward slope that culminated in Fist-of-God itself, a desert Louis had once estimated was larger than the Earth.

Wind whistled around the edges and corners of the Improbable. By now they were almost directly to spinward of the great mountain. The Arch glowed blue and sharpedged, the stars were hard, vivid points.

Speaker looked upward through the big bay window. "Louis, can you locate the galactic core from here?"

"What for? We know where we are."

"Do it anyway."

Louis had tentatively identified some stars, had guessed at certain distorted constellations, in the months he had spent beneath this sky. "There, I think. Behind the Arch."

"Just so. The galactic core lies in the plane of the Ringworld."

"I said that."

"Remember that the Ringworld foundation material will stop neutrinos, Louis. Presumably it will stop other subatomic particles." The kzin was plainly getting at something.

"… That's right. The Ringworld is immune to the Core explosion! When did you figure this out?"

"Just now. I had placed the Core some time ago."

"You'd get some scattering. Heavy radiation around the rim walls."

"But the luck of Teela Brown would place her away from the rim walls when the wave front arrives."

"Twenty thousand years …" Louis was appalled. "Finagle's bright smile! How can anyone think in such terms?"

"Sickness and death are always bad luck, Louis. By our assumptions, Teela Brown should live forever."

"But … right. She's not thinking in those terms. It's her luck, hovering over us all like a puppet master."

Nessus had been a corpse at room temperature for two months now. He did not decay. The lights on his first aid kit remained alight, and even changed on occasion. It was his only sign of life.

Louis was gazing at the puppeteer, minutes later, when two thoughts rubbed together. "Puppeteer," he said softly.

"Louis?"

"I just wondered if the puppeteers didn't get their name by playing god with the species around them. They've treated humans and kzinti like puppets; there's no denying that."

"But Teela's luck made a puppet of Nessus."

"We've all been playing god at various levels." Louis nodded at Prill, who was catching perhaps every third word. "Prill and you and me. How did it feel, Speaker? Were you a good god or a bad one?"

"I cannot know. The species was not my own, though I have studied human extensively. I stopped a war, you will remember. I pointed out to each side that it must lose. That had been three weeks ago."

"Yeah. My idea."

"Of course."

"Now you'll have to play god again. To kzinti," said Louis.

"I do not understand."

"Nessus and the other puppeteers have been playing planned breeding games on humans and kzinti. They deliberately brought about a situation in which natural selection would favor a peaceable kzin. Right?"

"Yes."

"What would happen if the Patriarchy learned of this?"

"War," said the kzin. "A heavily provisioned fleet would attack the puppeteer worlds after a two-year flight. Perhaps humanity would join us. Surely the puppeteers have insulted you as badly."

"Surely they have. And then?"

"Then the leaf-eaters would exterminate my species down to the last kitten. Louis, I do not intend to tell anybody anything concerning starseed lures and puppeteer breeding plans. Can I persuade you to keep silence?"

"Right."

"Is this what you meant by playing god to my species?"

"That, and one more thing," said Louis. "The Long Shot. Do you still want to steal it?"

"Perhaps," said the kzin.

"You can't do it," said Louis. "But let's assume you could. Then what?"

"Then the Patriarchy would have the second quantum hyperdrive."

"And?"

Prill seemed to be aware that something crucial was happening. She watched them as if ready to stop a fight.

"Soon we would have warships capable of crossing a light year in one-and-one-quarter minutes. We would dominate known space, enslave every species within our reach."

"And then?"

"Then it ends. This is precisely our ambition, Louis."

"No. You'd keep conquering. With a drive that good, you'd move outward in all directions, spreading thin, taking every world you found. You'd conquer more than you could hold … and in all that expanded space you'd find something really dangerous. The puppeteer fleet. Another Ringworld, but at the height of its power. Another Slaver race just starting its expansion. Bandersnatchi with hands, grogs with feet, kdatlyno with guns."

"Scare images."

"You've seen the Ringworld. You've seen the puppeteer worlds. There must be more, in the space you could reach with the puppeteer hyperdrive."