Saturday, July 13, 2019
Soldier
https://hvom.blogspot.com/2019/07/louis-wu.html
Posted by Kerry Burgess at 8:49 AM
Number 878: The Farthest Man From Home
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Louis Wu
https://www.amazon.com/Ringworld-Larry-Niven-ebook/dp/B01513ZIL6
amazon
You purchased this item on July 12, 2019.
Ringworld
by Larry Niven (Author)
Kindle Edition
[ excerpt ends Posted by Kerry Burgess at 8:49 AM July 13, 2019 ]
Ringworld
Larry Niven
Chapter 1 - Larry Wu
Predictably, too many hours of his birthday were spent performing introductions. The lists of names to be memorized beforehand! Too many friends had become strangers.
And a few minutes before midnight, Louis Wu had walked into a transfer booth, dialed, and disappeared.
"I was bored stiff," said Louis Wu. "'Tell us about your last sabbatical, Louis.' 'But how can you stand to be that much alone, Louis? How clever of you to invite the Trinoc ambassador, Louis! Long time no see, Louis.' 'Hey, Louis, why does it take three Jinxians to paint a skyscraper?'"
"Why does it?"
"Why does what?"
"The Jinxians."
"Oh. It takes one to hold the paint sprayer, and two to shake the skyscraper up and down. I heard that one in kindergarten. All the dead wood of my life, all the old jokes, all in one huge house. I couldn't take it."
"You are a restless man, Louis Wu. Your sabbaticals -- it was you who originated the custom, was it not?"
"I don't remember where it started. It caught on pretty well. Most of my friends do it now."
"But not as often as you. Every forty years or thereabouts, you tire of human companionship. Then you leave the worlds of men and strike for the edge of known space. You remain outside known space, all alone in a singleship, until your need for company reasserts itself. You returned from your last sabbatical, your fourth, twenty years ago.
"You are restless, Louis Wu. On each of the worlds of human space, you have lived enough years to be known as a native. Tonight you left your own birthday party. Are you becoming restless again?"
"That would be my problem, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. My problem is one of recruiting only. Yon would be a good choice as a member of my exploration team. You take risks, but you calculate them first. You are not afraid to be alone with yourself. You are cautious enough and clever enough to be still alive after two hundred years. Because you have not neglected your medical needs, your physique is that of a man of twenty. Lastly, and most important, you seem actually to enjoy the company of aliens."
"Sure." Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts. Life got awfully boring with only humans to talk to.
Ringworld
Larry Niven
Chapter 1 - Larry Wu
"You won't tell me what it is you intend to explore," said Louis. "Will you tell me where it is?"
"It is two hundred light years from here in the direction of the Lesser Cloud."
"But it would take us nearly two years to get there at hyperdrive speeds."
"No. We have a ship which will travel considerably faster than a conventional hyperdrive craft. It will cover a light year in five-fourths of a minute."
Louis opened his mouth, but nothing came out. One and a quarter minutes?
"This should not surprise you, Louis Wu. How else could we have sent an agent to the galactic core, to learn of the chain reaction of novae? You should have deduced the existence of such a ship. If my mission is successful, I plan to turn the ship over to my crew, with blueprints with which to build more.
"This ship, then, is your ... fee, salary, what have you. You may observe its flight characteristics when we join the puppeteer migration. There you will learn what it is that we propose to explore."
Join the puppeteer migration ... "Count me in," said Louis Wu. The chance to see an entire sentient species on the move! Huge ships carrying thousands or millions of puppeteers each, whole working ecologies ...
"Good." The puppeteer stood up. "Our crew will number four. We go to choose our third member now." And he trotted into the transfer booth.
Louis slipped the cryptic holo into his pocket, and followed. In the booth he tried to read the number on the dial; for it would have told him where in the world he was. But the puppeteer dialed too fast, and they were gone.
***
Louis Wu followed the puppeteer out of the booth and into the dim, luxurious interior of a restaurant. He recognized the place by the black-and-gold decor and the space-wasteful configuration of horseshoe booths. Krushenkos, in New York.
Incredulous whispers followed in the path of the puppeteer. A human headwaiter, imperturbable as a robot, led them to a table. One of the chairs had been removed at that table and replaced by a big square pillow, which the alien placed between hip and hind hoof as it sat down.
"You were expected," Louis deduced.
"Yes. I called ahead. Krushenkos is accustomed to serving alien guests."
Now Louis noticed other alien diners: four kzinti at the next table, and a kdatlyno halfway across the room. It figured, with the United Nations Building so close. Louis dialed for a tequila sour and took it as it arrived. "This was a good thought," he said. "I'm half starved."
"We did not come to eat. We came to recruit our third member."
"Oh? In a restaurant?"
From 11/18/1976 ( Larry Niven "Ringworld" ) To 7/7/2019 is 15571 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/20/2008 ( referenced in text below here ) is 15571 days
From 7/24/2006 ( from my private journal as Kerry Burgess, July 24, 2006 ) To 7/7/2019 is 4731 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 10/16/1978 ( premiere US TV series episode "Little House on the Prairie"::"There's No Place Like Home: Part 2" ) is 4731 days
Other post by me on this topic: https://hvom.blogspot.com/2019/07/to-moon.html
https://hvom.blogspot.com/2019/07/soldier.html
twitter_anne-mcclain_07-07-2019_1.jpg
https://twitter.com/AstroAnnimal/status/1147882981459144705
Anne McClain
Verified account
@AstroAnnimal
8:00 AM - 7 Jul 2019
The screen was bigger on @Space_Station - but I’m still ready to support @USWNT at the @FIFAWWC from Earth today!! And I’m even more impressed with them now...they make gravity look easy. Take it from me, it’s not!
Posted by Kerry Burgess - H.V.O.M at 1:46 AM Friday, June 20, 2008
"Todd" stares longingly at the ships in the distance that had dumped him earlier on the planet and I wonder what he thinks he to go back to.
Soldier (1998)
20 TNTP: Thursday, June 19 11:00 PM
1998, R, *1/2, 01:38, Color, English, United States,
A soldier (Kurt Russell) trained from birth helps colonists stave off a team of genetically engineered killers.
[ excerpt ends Posted by Kerry Burgess June 20, 2008 ]
- posted by Kerry Burgess 09:41 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Saturday 13 July 2019
