"A puppeteer is unique. Imagine a headless three-legged centaur wearing two Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppets on its arms, and you will have something like the right picture. But the arms are weaving necks and the puppets are real heads, flat and brainless, with wide flexible lips. The brain is under a bony hump set between the base of the neck. This puppeteer wore only its own coat of brown hair, with a mane that extended all the way up its spine to form a thick mat over the brain.
I watched with the rest as it came across the floor, not because I’d never seen a puppeteer, but because there is something beautiful about the dainty way they move on those slender legs and tiny hooves.
A puppeteers mouth are not only the most flexible speech organs around, but they also have the most sensitive hands. The tongues are forked and pointed: the wide thick lips have little finger-like knobs along the rims."
Neuton Star, Larry Niven
Neuton Star, was first published in 1968, is short story by Larry Niven. Neuton Star was publised by Ballatine Books as a collection of Niven short fiction.
Others in this series.
Edited on 5/21/23 @ 11:56 PM: I had forgotten to add quotation marks; 5/23/23 @ 12:04 PM: Added link above
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