Protector by Larry Niven by Niven Larry

Author:Niven, Larry [Niven, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Amazon: B01N0DICWU
Goodreads: 160152283
Publisher: Futura Publications
Published: 1973-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

At this point relativity would begin to screw up the dating. Roy decided to go by ship’s time, given that he would have to live through it.

2344 AD, April: Pak ships sighted altering course.

2344 AD, July: Truesdale out of stasis.

HYPOTHETICAL

2345 AD, September: Meet first Pak ships.

2346 AD, March: Right angle turn (?) Lose Pak scouts.

2350 AD: Arrive Home. Adjust calendars.

Roy studied Home. Over many decades there had been considerable message laser traffic between Earth and Home. There were travelogues and biographies and novels and studies of the native life. Brennan had already read it all; at his reading speed he hadn’t needed anything like his two years head start.

The novels had an odd flavor, a nest of unspoken assumptions that he couldn’t quite pin down, until he asked Brennan about it.

Brennan had an eidetic memory and a fine grasp of subtleties. “Partly it’s a Belter thing,” he told Roy. “They know they’re in an artificial environment, and they feel protective toward it. This bit in The Shortest Day, where Ingram gets shot for walking on the grass—that’s a direct steal from something that happened early in Home history. You’ll see it in Livermore’s biography. As for their burial customs, that’s probably left over from the early days. Remember, the first hundred people who died on Home knew each other like you knew your brother. Anyone’s death was important in those days, to everyone in the world.”

“Yah, when you put it like that…and they’ve got more room, too. They don’t need crematoriums.”

“Good point. There’s endless useless land, useless until it’s fertilized somehow. The bigger the graveyard grows, the more it shows the human conquest of Home. Especially when trees and grass start growing where nothing ever grew before.”

Roy thought the idea over, and decided he liked it. How could you lose? Until the Pak arrived.

“These Homers don’t seem particularly warlike,” he said. “We’re going to have to get them on a war footing before the Pak scouts find Home. Somehow.”

But Brennan wouldn’t talk about that. “All our information is ten to a hundred years old. I don’t know enough about Home as it is now. We don’t know how the politics have gone. I’ve got some ideas…but mainly we’ll be playing it by ear.” He slapped Roy on the back: a sensation like being hit by a sackful of walnuts. “Cheer up. We may never get there at all.”

Brennan was a wordy bastard when he had the time. More: he was making a clear effort to keep Roy entertained. Perhaps he was entertaining himself as well. It was all very well to talk of a Pak spending eight hundred years sitting in a crash couch; but Brennan had been raised human.

They played games, using analog programs set up in the computer. Brennan always won at chess, checkers, Scrabble and the like. But gin and dominoes were games hard to learn, easy to master. They stuck to those. Brennan still won more than his share, perhaps because he could read Roy’s face.

They held long discussions on philosophy and politics and the paths mankind was taking.

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