Procrustes (story)

"Procrustes" is an English-language science fiction short story written in 1994 by Larry Niven. It is the sixth in the series of stories about crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Crashlander (1994).

The story is retold, from the point of view of Sigmund Ausfaller, in Juggler of Worlds.

Beowulf "Bey" Shaeffer, half-dreaming, fitfully remembers events leading up to the moment he is shot with an ARM punchgun, a weapon best described as a large-caliber handgun. The recent events, and his memories leading up to them, keep replaying in his head, and Shaeffer realizes that he must be inside Carlos Wu's special autodoc, and that he must be terribly damaged.

When he finally awakens, Shaeffer learns he has been in the autodoc for four months and eleven days. He crawls out of the autodoc, feeling unbalanced, and finds himself on the same deserted island on which they had all landed, though he is alone. Moving to the center of the island, which is a shallow cone, he finds the corpse of a tall, headless man in the depression. It is not Carlos, Sharrol Janss, or Feather Filip. Shaeffer takes the boots, pants, and jacket, the latter torn front and back by a large hole. He finds a knife, a ration brick, some sunblock, and tannin pills in the pockets of the jacket. He barely manages to climb out of the cone’s depression then heads back to the autodoc to fix his ruined skin and feet; the yellow sun of Fafnir has ravaged his albino skin and the coral has cut his feet.

After falling asleep, Shaeffer dreams of the events leading up to him reawakening in the autodoc the first time. He and Sharrol had gone to a party held at Carlos’s home in the Great Barrier Reef. There they met Feather Filip. The party was to feature small dinner dishes and recreational sex. Once there, Carlos tells them that Feather is an ARM, part of the United Nations police. After a few hours of eating and sex, Feather activates a shield to keep them from being spied upon and gets to work, knowing that anyone who’d been watching would expect that Feather had something too kinky in mind to share over surveillance tapes. Carlos worries that the ARM will care what they’re saying, but Feather says they will dismisses it as “Feather coming down after a long week.”

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