“But Louis Wu had gone alone and jumped in front of the midnight line, warmly pursued by the new day”… Larry Nive’s Ringworld
Tithi Luadthong/Alamy
In Beirut’s night, in one of a number of general transfer stalls, Louis Wu flipped to reality.
His foot length tail was as white and shiny as artificial snow. His skin and depiled scalp were chrome yellow; The irises in his eyes were gold; His dress was royal blue with a golden steroptic dragon superprimposeed. The moment he showed up, he smiled broadly and showed pearl, perfect, perfect standard lighter. Smiling and waving. But the smile was already fading, and in Momille it was gone and the case of his face was like a rubber mask that melts. Louis Wu showed his age.
For a few moments he saw Beirut stream past him: the people flickered into the boats from unknown places; The crowds flowing past him on foot, now that the Slidewalks had been turned off the night. Then the unclean began to beat twenty -three. Louis Wu directed his shoulders and stepped out to join the world.
I resht, where your party was still fully going, it was already the morning after his birthday. Here in Beirut it was an hour earlier. In a bad outdoor restaurant Louis Bough Rounds of Raki and encouraged to sing by songs in Arabic and Lterworld. He traveled before midnight to Budapest.
Had they yet realized he had gone out to his own party? They assume a woman had gone with him that he would be back in a few hours. But Louis Wu had gone alone and jumped in front of the midnight line, warmly pursued by the new day. Twenty-four hours were not long for a man’s two hundredth birthday.
They could come together without him. Louis’s friends could take care of herself. In this regard, Louis’s standards were inflexible.
In Budapest were wine and athletic dancers, natives, who teased him as a tourist with money, tourists who thought he was a wealthy native. He danced the dancers and he drank the wines and he left before midnight.
In Munich he went.
The air was warm and clean; It sometimes cleared of the vapors from his head. He went the bright lit Glidewalks and added his own pace to their ten-mile per day. Hour speed. It happened to him that every city in the world had sliding migrations and that they all move ten miles per hour.
The thought was intolerable. Not new; Just intolerable. Louis wu so howe thoroughly beirut takes munich and resht
… and San Francisco and Topka and London and Amsterdam. The stores along the Slidewalks sold the same products in all the cities of the world. These citizens who passed him tonight, so everyone out, trained everyone. Not Americans or Germans or Egyptians, but Master Flatlanders.
For three and a half centuries, the transfer stalls had made this the endless series of land. They covered the world in a net on instant journey. The difference between Moscow and Sydney was at the time and a tenth star coin. Inevitably, the cities had mixed for centuries, unity names were only relics of the past.
San Francisco and San Diego were the northern and southern ends of a scattered coastal town. But how many people knew which end was which one? Tanj get these days.
Pessimistic thinking, for a man’s two hundredth birthday.
But the mix of cities was real. Louis had seen it the hap. All irrationalities in place and time and customs that are mixed to a great rationality in the city, all over the world, like a fucking gray pasta. Did anyone talk today Deutsch, English, Francais, Espafiol? All spoke lterworld. Style in body pain all changed at ounces all over the world in an outrageous wave. Time for another Sabbath day? Into the unknown, alone in a singleship, with his skin and eyes and hair their own color, a beard that grows randomly over the face …
“Nuts,” Louis said to himself. “I just got back from a Sabbath day.” Twenty years ago.
But it was wearing against midnight. Louis Wu found a transfer stall, inserted his credit card in the gap and called Seville.
He appeared in a sunlit space.
This extract is reproduced with the permission of Ringworld By Larry Niven, published by Gollancz. This novel is the latest choice for the new Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read with us here.
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