A world out of time by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven [Niven, Larry]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, General, Fiction, Space Opera, Adventure, Fantasy, Science fiction; American, Short Stories, Non-Classifiable, Nonfiction - General
ISBN: 9780345257505
Publisher: New York : Ballantine Books, 1977, c1976.
Published: 1976-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

III

Corbell's voice was a rusty, querulous whine. He didn't like it. It was interfering with his search.

It said, "All right, Corbell! You won the argument. If your medicines were better you wouldn't have tried to steal mine. Now let's talk!"

It wasn't much of a search. He had hoped that Mirelly-Lyra might have stored food in her car. But he'd opened the glove compartment, and he'd looked under the seats, and where else was there? Slit the upholstery?

Corbell was hungry.

"You'll find the talking switch on the far right of the panel. Just push it upward. Corbell?"

Sure. And then you'll track me down and- But Corbell was tempted. He could ask her about food. He could ask her how to turn off the receiver.

The car zipped over the waves toward whatever destination its idiot brain had read from Corbell's spastic directions. Beneath the edges of a thick gray-black cloud deck, the sun and crescent Jupiter had drifted apart along the horizon. The sun was lower now, its underside flattened.

Something lifted out of the red sunglare. He thought it was a bottle-nosed dolphin until its size registered. It was halfway to the horizon, and lifting like a blimp released! Its head tilted just a bit, and it looked him over while it slowly settled back into the frothing red sea.

A dolphin the size of a whale. So we killed the whales off after all, he thought. And later there was an ecological niche. .

"I must guess you're hearing me, Corbell. I'm tracking you toward the southernmost continent, toward what used to be the Boys' capital city. You can't lose me from your path because you can't leave your car. Talk to me."

It seemed she was tracking him anyway. He flipped the switch up and said, "Is there any food aboard this car?"

"Hello, Corbell. If you try to steal my drugs again you will kill yourself. I've placed traps."

"Then I won't."

"Then we will be searching in separate places.~ I give you a year to find the dictator immortality. I wish I could give more, but you know my condition. If you will find the drug, I will become your woman. Otherwise I will kill you."

He laughed. "A difficult choice."

"You have not seen me when I was beautiful. I am the only woman for you, Corbell. There are no others left."

"Don't count on too much. Peerssa says I'm low on sex urge." That upset her. "Have you never desired women, Corbell?"

"I was married for twenty-two years."

"What is married?"

"Mated. Under contract."

"Was there sex? Did you enjoy it?"

Suddenly Corbel missed Mirabelle terribly. He mourned her, not because she was dead, but because she was gone. And her other half went on and on, through a world grown more and more hallucinatory. . . . If only he could have talked it over with Mirabelle!

"In sex and in all ways, our life was purest ecstasy, as is usual in marriage," Corbell said with a flippancy he did not feel. "I'm sorry I brought it up."

"I had to know."

Just

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