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 shipâs 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 hadnât needed anything like his two years head start.
The novels had an odd flavor, a nest of unspoken assumptions that he couldnât quite pin down, until he asked Brennan about it.
Brennan had an eidetic memory and a fine grasp of subtleties. âPartly itâs a Belter thing,â he told Roy. âThey know theyâre in an artificial environment, and they feel protective toward it. This bit in The Shortest Day, where Ingram gets shot for walking on the grassâthatâs a direct steal from something that happened early in Home history. Youâll see it in Livermoreâs biography. As for their burial customs, thatâs probably left over from the early days. Remember, the first hundred people who died on Home knew each other like you knew your brother. Anyoneâs death was important in those days, to everyone in the world.â
âYah, when you put it like thatâ¦and theyâve got more room, too. They donât need crematoriums.â
âGood point. Thereâs endless useless land, useless until itâs 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.â
Roy thought the idea over, and decided he liked it. How could you lose? Until the Pak arrived.
âThese Homers donât seem particularly warlike,â he said. âWeâre going to have to get them on a war footing before the Pak scouts find Home. Somehow.â
But Brennan wouldnât talk about that. âAll our information is ten to a hundred years old. I donât know enough about Home as it is now. We donât know how the politics have gone. Iâve got some ideasâ¦but mainly weâll be playing it by ear.â He slapped Roy on the back: a sensation like being hit by a sackful of walnuts. âCheer up. We may never get there at all.â
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 Royâs face.
They held long discussions on philosophy and politics and the paths mankind was taking.
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