Thunder boomed and echoed within the cell block. A brilliant point the color of lightning appeared high on the wall, just beneath the ceiling. It moved slowly clockwise, leaving a redly glowing trail.
"Cut chunks," Louis directed. "If that mass lets go all at once, we'll be shaken loose like fleas on a shaven dog."
Speaker obligingly changed the angle of his cutting.
Still, the building lurched when the first chunk of cable and construction plastic fell away. Louis hugged the floor. Through the gap he saw sunlight, and city, and people.
He did not have a view straight down until half a dozen masses had been cut loose.
He saw an altar of wood, and a model of silvery metal whose shape was a flat rectangle surmounted by a parabolic arch. It was there for an instant, before a mass of cell block structure struck next to it and splashed fragments in all directions. Then it was sawdust and crumpled tinsel. But the people had fled long since.
"People!" he complained to Nessus. "In the heart of an empty city, miles from the fields! That's an all-day round trip. What were they doing there?"
"They worship the goddess Halrloprillalar. They are Prill's food source."
"Ah. Offerings."
"Of course. What difference does it make, Louis?"
"They might have been hit."
"Perhaps some of them were."
"And I thought I saw Teela down there. Just for an instant."
"Nonsense, Louis. Shall we test our motive power?"
The puppeteer's flycycle was buried in a gelatinous mound of translucent plastic. Nessus stood alongside the exposed control panel. The bay window gave them an imposing view of the city: the docks, the flat-sided towers of the Civic Center, the spreading jungle that had probably been a park. All several thousand feet below.
Louis struck an attitude: parade rest. An inspiration to his crew, the heroic commander stands astride the bridge. The damaged rocket motors may explode at the first touch of thrust; but it must be tried. The kzinti battleships must be stopped before they reach Earth!
"It'll never work," said Louis Wu.
"Why not, Louis? The stresses should not exceed -"
"A flying castle, for Finagle's sake! I only just realized how insane the whole thing is. We must have been out of our minds! Tootling home in the upper half of a skyscraper -" The building shifted then, and Louis staggered. Nessus had started the thruster.
The city drifted past the bay window, gathering speed. Acceleration eased off. It had never been higher than a foot per second squared. Top speed seemed to be about one hundred miles per hour, and the castle was rock steady.
"We centered the flycycle correctly," said Nessus. "The floor is level, as you will note, and the structure shows no tendency to rotate."
"It's still silly."
"Nothing that works is silly. And now, where shall we go?"
Louis was silent.
"Where shall we go, Louis? Speaker and I have no plans. What direction, Louis?"
"Starboard."
"Very well. Directly starboard?"
"Right. We've got to get past the Eye storm. Then turn forty-five degrees or so to antispinward."
"Do you seek the city of the tower called Heaven?"
"Yes. Can you find it?"
"That should be no problem, Louis. Three hours flying time brought us here; we should be back at the tower in thirty hours. And then?"
"Depends."
The picture was so vivid. It was pure deduction and imagination, yet — so vivid. Louis Wu tended to daydream in color.
So vivid. But was it real?
It was frightening, how suddenly his confidence in the flying tower had leaked away. Yet the tower was flying. It didn't need Louis Wu to make it go.
"The leaf-eater seems content to follow your lead," said Speaker.
The flycycle hummed quietly to itself a few feet away. Landscape flowed past the bay window. The Eye storm was off to the side, its gray gaze large and daunting.
"The leaf-eater's out of his mind," said Louis. "I take it you've got better sense."
"Not at all. If you have a goal, I am content to follow you. But if it may involve fighting, I should know something about it."
"Um."
"I should know something about it regardless, in order to decide whether it will involve fighting."
"Well put."
Speaker waited.
"We're going after the shadow square wire," said Louis. "Remember the wire we ran into after the meteor defenses wrecked us? Later it started falling over the city of the floating tower, loop after loop, endlessly. There should be at least tens of thousands of miles of it, more than we could possibly need for what I've got in mind."
"What do you have in mind, Louis?"
"Getting hold of the shadow square wire. Odds are the natives will just give it to us, if Prill asks politely, and if Nessus uses the tasp."
"And after that?"
"After that, we'll find out just how crazy I am."
The tower moved to starboard like a steamship of the sky. Starships were never so roomy. As for ships of the air, there was nothing comparable in known space. Six decks to climb around in! Luxury!
There were luxuries missing. The food supply aboard the flyscraper consisted of frozen meat, perishable fruit, and the kitchen of Nessus's flycycle. Food for puppeteers lacked nourishment for humans, according to Nessus. Thus Louis's breakfast and lunch were meat broiled by a flashlight-laser, and knobbly red fruit.
And there was no water.
And no coffee.
Prill was persuaded to find some bottles of an alcoholic beverage. They held a belated christening ceremony in the bridge room, with Speaker courteously backed into a far corner and Prill hovering warily near the door. Nobody would accept Louis's suggestion of the name Improbable; and so there were four christenings, in order, in four different languages.
The beverage was … well, sour. Speaker couldn't take it, and Nessus didn't try. But Prill consumed one bottle, sealed the others, and put them carefully away.
The christening became a language lesson. Louis learned a few of the rudiments of the Ringworld Engineer's speech. He found that Speaker was learning much faster than he was. It figured. Speaker and Nessus had both been trained to deal with human languages, modes of thinking, limitations in speech and hearing. This was only more of the same.
They broke for dinner. Again Nessus ate alone, using his flycycle kitchen, while Louis and Prill ate broiled meat and Speaker ate raw, elsewhere.
Afterward the language lesson went on. Louis hated it. The others were so far ahead of him that he felt like a cretin.
"But Louis, we must learn the language. Oar rate of travel is low, and we must forage for our food. Frequently we will need to deal with natives."
"I know. I never liked languages."
Darkness fell. Even this far from the Eye storm, cloud cover was complete, and the night was like the inside of a dragon!s mouth. Louis called a halt to the lesson. He was tired and irritable and vastly unsure of himself. The others left him to his rest.
They would be passing the Eye storm in about ten hours.
He was floating at the edge of a restless sleep when Prill came back. He felt hands stroking him lasciviously, and he reached out.
She backed out of reach. She spoke in her own language, but simplified it into a pidgin for Louis's understanding.
"You are leader?"
Bleary-eyed, Louis considered. "Yes," he said, because the actual situation was too complex.
"Make the two-headed one give me his machine."
"What?" Louis fumbled for words. "His which?"