The Ringworld Throne (44 page)

A window behind it showed starscape and, rising into view, a nearly empty flat surface. Louis glared and looked away. The stolen webeye had left the tunnel and entered some kind of open elevator, at the worst possible time.

Louis heard, “I do not understand war, but I feel Louis might.”

“Even drugged?”

“Ask.”

“Louis, are you awake?”

“Of course I’m awake, Bram!”

“This is a duel among protectors—“

“Medieval Japanese,” Louis said thickly. Despite what he’d said, the drugs had him wanting to doze. “Hide and stab. Win any way you can. They didn’t duel like Europeans.”

“Yes, you understand. Do you see why this second intruder is still alive?”

“No ... wait.” The newcomer moved in a crouched and jerky strut, examining the slagged probe. It was the knobby shape of a Ringworld pressure suit, and wide through the torso, like the one Whisper was wearing; but it
fit
.

The newcomer found marks on the probe where a stepping disk had been attached. Its head snapped up, and in a flash it was gone.

But Louis had glimpsed its face. “Spill mountain protector. Whisper must see that, too. It’s a slave, stet, Bram? There must be a master, the protector in charge of the maglev track. The master sent him.”

A window lurched, then rolled over and over, showing the black underside of the Ringworld, then stars streaming past, Ringworld, stars ... The protector’s servant had cleared the maglev rail by rolling the ruined probe into space.

Now the main window was backing up. The spill mountain protector jumped free.

Louis said, “The first one, the one that died, he left a maglev sled on the track. Acolyte sprayed his webeye on the sled. That’s what we’re watching. Somebody has to get the probe and the sled off the track. So here’s a spill mountain protector to dump the probe, and he’s sent the first sled back where it came from, down to the spaceport ledge. Problem solved. Now he’s boarding his own sled ... there it goes back up the track to wherever
he
came from.”

Bram said, “You do understand.”

“Whisper’s started something she can’t stop.”

“She’s guessed that I sent the probe,” Bram said. “She doesn’t want my enemies to study it.”

“She can’t know how many there are.”

“She might extrapolate. Begin with Teela Brown—“

“Yeah. It all begins with Teela.” The pain had gone far away. Louis felt himself floating. Better disconnect himself from the medkit, clear his head.

The webeye window’s motion stopped. Then it, too, began gliding up the track.

Whisper was using it to follow the other sled.

“Teela made protectors to help her mount motors,” Bram said. “A spill mountain protector might be trusted, because Teela could hold his species at ransom. A Ghoul protector might consider that his species already owns all beneath the Arch, and act only to preserve it. A vampire—“

“Starts fresh. A protector born with a blank mind, and Teela right there to teach.
You
said that.”

“Yes. Shall we call him Dracula?”

“Mary Shelley.”

“Why am I lecturing a drug-stupefied breeder?”

“I think Teela would pick a woman to be a protector. Three women.”

Bram shrugged widely. “Stet. I don’t know the name, but stet. Mary-Shelley made blood-children, protectors of her own vampire species, and hid them from Teela. When Teela returned to the Map of Mars, two protectors followed. Only the Ghoul remained on the rim.

“Mary-Shelley must have known that her brood would kill and replace the Ghoul. She would rule the rim through them. The spill mountain protector may have guessed that Teela planned to bathe the rim in solar flame. He fought to protect his kind. But Teela killed both.

“Now we must ask, how many are Mary-Shelley’s brood?”

The Hindmost said, “Manufacture, acquisition, transport, mounting, supply.”

“Three, I think,” Bram said. “Manufacture would use repair facilities already in place at a spaceport. If a ship comes, manufacture becomes acquisition. As for supply, no protector would allow another to control what he needs. Stet? Three. Lovecraft to build, Collier for transport, King above them all to mount the motors.”

Louis smiled.
Bram had remembered who Mary Shelley was!

The Hindmost said, “My kind would be a hundred strong, for the company alone.”

“And my kind,” Bram said, “would each design his own domain to run without his help. There were Spill Mountain People at hand. Let them build and move and mount, while Lovecraft and Collier and King lurk to pounce.”

Louis asked, “You think they were expecting Whisper?”

“Whisper, or each other, or me, or invaders from the stars. Do you think us too stupid to extrapolate planets from what we can see of the universe? Anne perceived protectors in place on the rim, each ready to kill her. Wherever she’s been or whatever she’s done since, she’s reached the rim unnoticed by me or by them. She’s killed Lovecraft already.”

“She makes a pretty good target for Collier, though. Hindmost? Can you read the back of a webeye camera?”

“Louis? I don’t unde—glass, he sprayed it on glass.” A pipe organ cried in pain. “Done, but wait eleven minutes.”

Eleven minutes later the window suddenly faced back along the maglev track, into the bed of the sled.

Louis made out some dim shapes suggestive of tools. Nothing big enough to hide a protector. Where was Whisper?

The picture reversed again—and the first sled was slowing.

The second sled began to slow, too.

Louis heard woodwinds scream, and saw the Hindmost’s heads jump bolt upright. That wasn’t the Hindmost’s song. It was Bram and his musical sculpture, and he was already setting it aside. He went to the stepping disk and flicked out.

Louis said, “Did you see that?”

“He’s gone,” said the Hindmost.

“Where? Why?”

“You tell me. Louis Wu understands duels, stet? Would you take food?” The Hindmost stood beside him, holding a flask.

Louis took it and sipped. Broth. “That’s good.”

Sanity check: the granite block was back in place and the Hindmost was in the crew cabin, still trapped, like Louis himself.

Louis said, “He’s gone where he’ll need a pressure suit. For now he’s nowhere. Hindmost, if you turned off the stepping desk system, where would Bram be?”

“Safeties prevent me.”

“What if we just blast the system with a flashlight-laser? Tanj, no, he’s
got
the flash
and
the variable-knife—“

“The system is buried in the hull, Louis.”

“Then shift his flick to Mons Olympus! Where does he
think
he’s going, anyway? He may be there already. Summon up that map.”

The Hindmost made music.

Nothing happened.

“I’m locked out,” the Hindmost said. “Bram has learned my programming language. He’s wrested control of the stepping disks from me.” His legs folded under him. His heads tucked under his forelegs.

Louis tried lifting the edge of the stepping disk. It wouldn’t move. Bram had taken full control. Those tanj concerts weren’t entertainment. They were Bram practicing with his handmade instruments until he could duplicate the Hindmost’s musical speech.

Something was happening: the webeye window jittered and shook. Louis shouted, “Hindmost! Turn the picture around! It’s looking the wrong way!”

The puppeteer didn’t move.

The window skewed sideways, hit the side of the track, and bounced away spinning. Whatever had attacked the sled was having its effect.

The puppeteer was unfolding himself.

The maglev sled hit the other wall hard. The picture juttered and slid. When it came to a stop, it was looking at nothing but silver filigree.

The puppeteer whistled and the picture reversed. Now starlight showed them walls of shattered crystal. Bullets had chewed the sled into lace, and the tools in the bed had been showered with glass slivers.

Most of these things had been unrecognizable. Now they were junk, with one exception.

Seeing Acolyte and him flick in and out, Louis thought, would have told Whisper about stepping disks. She must have ripped the stepping disk off the probe and tossed it into the sled, for there it was, unharmed.

Three pressure suits leaped into the sled in the same instant. Two fired sprays of projectiles at anything big, then hurled anything hurlable in a rapid search for a protector hiding in wreckage. But Whisper was nowhere.

Two protectors picked up the stepping disk and held it on edge so that the third could inspect its underside. They turned it to show the upper surface. The vampire must have thought it more dangerous than useful, because he adjusted his weapon and fired a bright, narrow beam at it.

The beam lashed straight up out of the cabin’s main stepping disk and began to char the ceiling.

Though Louis couldn’t remember jumping for cover, he and the Hindmost were now curled intimately behind the recycler wall. The Hindmost didn’t look like he intended to uncurl.

Louis poked his head around.

The vampire protector had picked up the stepping disk and was trying to hurl it over the edge of the track.

The disk was suddenly too heavy, as an intruder’s weight slammed it down.

The intruder—Bram! -- lashed out as the other leapt away. The other vampire—Collier? -- fell and separated, cut in half by six feet of wire in a stasis field. Both ends of him spewed fog. But Collier’s torso still had arms, and one came around with the bulky light-weapon.

Bram’s variable-knife licked out again. The light-weapon fell.

No telling where Whisper had come from, but she was there. Two spill mountain protectors faced two vampire protectors.

The puppeteer was still in something like a catatonic state. Louis tried to follow what was happening in the webeye window. It wasn’t simple.

The spill mountain protectors hadn’t attacked.

Whisper was wearing one of their suits; she’d be able to talk to them. Louis could hear Bram’s breath huffing with recent exertion, but he wasn’t talking. He wouldn’t have the right kind of suit radio.

He was blinking his helmet lamp at Whisper.

Tanj, that must be the Ghouls’ heliograph language! Louis realized. And now the others were using helmet lamps, too.

It went on and on, and presently an agreement was reached.

The spill mountain protectors picked up the ruined sled with some difficulty. Bram gave his weapon to Whisper and helped them throw the sled over the rim and into space.

They dropped the stepping disk into the undamaged maglev sled. The two vampire protectors got in, then the spill mountain protectors. The sled began to move back
down
the track. As the sled began to pull away, Bram puffed a webeye onto the track, then another onto the sled.

Then Bram sang the song of an orchestra being gunned down by terrorists.

He stepped on the disk and flicked out, gone,
here
. As the light through the webeye window showed his going, Bram walked off the stepping disk, lifting his helmet. Something like a fat burl flute was in his hard beak of a mouth.

When a puppeteer is upset, he loses control, not of speech, but of emotional signals. The Hindmost’s song was as pure as wind chimes. “You’ve learned my programming language.”

Bram put the flute away. “Our contract does not preclude such a thing.”

“I am disturbed.”

“Did you follow what you saw? No? Of Mary-Shelley’s blood-children, we’ve killed Lovecraft and Collier. Collier’s servants tell us that Lovecraft’s servants are ready to load cargo. We expect that they will aid us. Now only King remains. When King is dead, Whisper will control the rim and I the Repair Center, and then we may accomplish something.”

The kitchen delivered a flask, and Bram drank deeply. Louis noticed he was carrying the big light-weapon. That thing would probably kill everyone in the cabin if it was fired.

Bram looked at him. “Louis Wu, what would you do now?”

“Well, she’s
got
to kill King. Too late for anything else. Me? My suit would keep me alive for two falans, so
I
don’t have to board a sled and rev it up to seven hundred seventy miles per second and then let King shoot at me.
I
might come back to this side of the rim, then climb up the wall from here.”

“You would lose all surprise.”

“He still—“

Bram waved it away. “Anne’s suit won’t last that long.”

“Mph.”
Cargo
, Bram had said. “Well, if I had something King wanted, I could put it on the sled with me. Of course he’d have to
know
I had it. What does King want?”

“Never mind, Louis. I thought it worth seeking a different viewpoint.” Bram whistled at the stepping disk system, then flicked out.

“*Now* where’s he gone? Hindmost, are you still locked out?”

“I can’t use stepping disks. I can find him.”

“Do it.”