Limits by Larry Niven Page A

had it, right?” I asked. “So tell me something. Why did you do it? I was sure you were putting Jill on. I know you intended to go with the shuttle. So why?”
    “Chandeliers,” Jack said.
    “Chandeliers?”
    “You were there. Firestone Gems will sell you flawless blue-whites. A chandelier of them for the price of half a year’s salary.”
    “And—”
    “What the fuck do you think I did with my stash?” Jack screamed.
    Stash. His ill-gotten gains from the Mafia. Stashed as blue-white di a monds.
    Funny. Fun-nee. So why wasn’t I laughing?
    Because the bastard had kidnapped me, that’s why. When he found his stash was worthless and he wasn’t rich, and he’d probably face a jail term he couldn’t bribe his way out of, he’d run as far away as a man could go. And taken me with him.
    I crawled over to my doorway. My suit lay there in a sprawl. I fumbled through it to the equipment belt.
    “What are you doing?” Halfey yelled.
    “You’ll see.” I found the reaction pistol. I went through my pockets, carefully, until I found a ballpoint pen.
    “Hey! No!” Jack yelled.
    “I’m a public benefactor, I am,” I told him. I took aim and fired. He tumbled backwards.
     
    There are always people who want to revise history. No hero is so great that someone won’t take a shot at him. Not even Jack Halfey.
    Fortunately I missed.

A TEARDROP FALLS
    Two miles up, the thick air of Harvest thinned to Earth-normal pressure. The sky was a peculiar blue, but blue. It was unbreathable still, but there was oxygen, ten percent and growing. One of the biological factories showed against white cloudscape, to nice effect, in view of a floating camera. The camera showed a tremendous rippling balloon in the shape of an inverted teardrop, blowing green bubbles from its tip. Hilary Gage watched the view with a sense of pride.
    Not that he would want to visit Harvest, ever. Multicolored slimes i n fected shallow tidal pools near the poles. Green sticky stuff floated in the primordial atmosphere. If it drifted too low it burned to ash. The planet was slimy. Changes were exceedingly slow. Mistakes took years to demonstrate themselves and decades to eradicate.
    Hilary Gage preferred the outer moon.
    One day this planet would be a world . Even then, Hilary Gage would not join the colonists. Hilary Gage was a computer program.
     
    Gage would never have volunteered for the Harvest Project unless the alternative was death.
    Death by old age.
    He was aware, rumor-fashion, that other worlds were leery of advanced computers. They were too much like the berserker machines. But the tens of thousands of human worlds varied enormously among themselves; and there were places the berserkers had never reached. The extermination machines had been mere rumor in the Channith region since before Channith was se t tled. Nobody really doubted their existence, but…
    But for some purposes, computers were indecently convenient; and some projects required artificial intelligence.
    The computer wasn’t really an escape. Hilary Gage must have died years ago. Perhaps his last thoughts had been of an immortal computer program.
    The computer was not a new one. Its programming had included two previous personalities…who had eventually changed their minds and asked that they be erased.
    Gage could understand that. Entertainments were in his files. When he reached for them they were there, beginning to end, like vivid memories. Chess games could survive that, and some poetry, but what of a detective novel? A football game? A livey?
    Gage made his own entertainment.
    He had not summoned up his poem for these past ten days. He was su r prised and pleased at his self-control. Perhaps now he could study it with fresh eyes…?
    Wrong. The entire work blinked into his mind in an instant. It was as if he had finished reading it a millisecond ago. What was normally an asset to Hilary—his flawless memory—was a hindrance now.
    Over the years the poem had grown to