by Larry Niven
Beyond the edge of the ledge was a line of vertical rings: the deceleration track for incoming ships.
Here: a blur of maglev track with stars showing faintly through. Whisper must have set her sled moving, Louis decided. Built up considerable speed, too, while he slept. It had to be Whisper; who else would have sprayed a webeye?
Here: a sluggishly drifting starscape seen through a filigree maglev track, and a tiny green blinking cursor. “I found a spacecraft,” the Hindmost said.
“Show me.”
The puppeteer sang and the view zoomed hugely, to a blurred view of something more crowbar than ship. Little winged spacecraft ran its length like aphids on a twig. At the near end, a big drive cone and/or plasma cannon drifted past.
“Another ARM ship,” Louis said. “Good catch.”
Bram had left the dining hall.
The Hindmost noticed motion along the maglev track. He chimed. The window reversed to show the other side of Whisper’s webeye.
That wasn’t the sled Whisper had been using. It was a vast dark plane. Cable rose in loops of varying thickness and varying curvatures, branching like arteries, reaching around and up and out of sight. A slender pillar rose out of the center.
Whisper’s handhold was on the narrowest of these loops. She was floating in close foreground, with one hand on a cable as thick as her fist.
It seemed a fantasy, like some ancient book cover. The only item Louis could recognize was welded just behind Whisper: the stepping disk off the refueling probe.
Louis realized that his mind wasn’t tracking. What he needed was breakfast.
Muscles in his back, groin, right hamstring, and some transverse muscles under his ribs protested when he moved to the kitchen wall. Lifting a Kzin, even a Kzin not quite grown … “Remember, I’m a trained professional,” he muttered. “Don’t try this stunt in Earth gravity.” He dialed up a pastiche omelet, papaya, grapefruit, bread.
“Louis?”
“Nothing. Is Acolyte ready to come out?”
The Hindmost looked. “Yes—”
“Wait.” Louis tapped an order. “Let’s pacify him with haunch of mammal.”
***
Acolyte sat up fast and found himself looking at a rack of beef ribs. He took it and found the Hindmost behind it. He said, “Your munificence as host must be legendary,” and began to tear ribs apart.
The Hindmost said, “Your father came to us as an ambassador. He’s taught you well.”
Acolyte waggled his ears and kept eating.
The puppeteer dialed up a big bowl of grassy stuff, but it only stopped one mouth at a time. For Acolyte’s benefit, he described the deaths on the maglev track, singing up visual displays, with Louis filling in a word here and there. The puppeteer didn’t grasp strategy. One thing Acolyte wasn’t hearing was that Bram had begun treating his alien serfs as prisoners.
Acolyte dropped a big white imitation bone into the recycler. “Louis, are you healthy?”
“I’m not ready to race you again, not just yet.”
“You did well. What it cost you … you did well. I think my main nerve trunk was broken. Shall I put you in the ’doc?”
“No no no, it’s all coming to a head! Look—” Louis waved through the webeye window, at Whisper floating motionless above an infinite field of superconductor. His mind had had time to digest a little of that weird picture, and he spoke for the puppeteer as well as the adolescent Kzin. “Whisper’s in free fall. That means we’re looking at a vehicle moving at seven hundred seventy miles per second, antispinward. It’s a vehicle even if it has to stretch the full width of the maglev track. Two hundred feet wide and maybe longer than that.
“Those loops—Acolyte, you were in the ’doc when Bram was hinting around. You’re looking at the barest fringes of a rim wall ramjet. Lovecraft’s team had one all ready to go. Whisper’s holding it hostage.”
Whisper was looking back, watching the webeye. Bram must have told her what it was.
Bram flicked in. He was wearing Louis’s pressure suit with the helmet back. He looked at his allies; glanced into the windows; then turned to the kitchen. “Louis, Acolyte, Hindmost. What news?”
“As you see,” the Hindmost said. “An ARM carrier vessel orbits a hundred million miles out from the Ringworld’s underside. How will you deal with it?”
“Not yet.” Bram turned back to the windows. Now Whisper was clinging like a frightened monkey to the loop of superconductor.
“She’s begun deceleration. Acolyte, do you understand? We hope that King will consider a rim ramjet and the large sled too valuable to destroy.”
“Louis explained.”
Bram said, “Whisper expects me. What do you need of me before I go?”
The puppeteer bleated, “Give me access to the stepping disks!”
“Not quite yet, Hindmost.”
Louis asked, “What kind of opposition …”
“King has a long supply line. He’ll have a few spill mountain protectors. He will rotate them frequently unless he prefers to watch them die. They must scent their own kind, to know whom they protect, or else protect all beneath the Arch. King reserves that for himself.”
“Not many, then.”
“None, it may be. King’s own hands may serve him. The rim wall ramjet motors cannot be moved by muscle. In any case, I don’t fear the High Point protectors. If they see a clear victory, they will finish the loser. The victor holds their people ransom.”
Louis said, “Give us a hint. If you and Whisper are killed, what do we do?”
“Your contract. Protect all beneath the Arch.” Bram lowered his faceplate and fixed it in place. He was gone, a virtual particle in motion, and the port and starboard walls were glowing bright orange with the heat of the momentum exchange.
***
Tiny bottles popped into the kitchen well. The Hindmost inserted them one by one into the little medkit on the cargo plate stack. “Antibiotics,” he said.
“Thanks, Hindmost. I must have been clean out.”
More bottles. “Pain blockers.”
Whisper wasn’t in sight on the barge. She’d been conspicuous enough until now. She’d shown herself to King’s telescopes, with King’s treasure displayed vastly behind her. What was she playing at now?
Was she high in that cone of superconducting cable? How well did vampires climb?
Under the maglev barge?
The view ahead hadn’t changed. The track ran on and on. The barge and its unwieldy cargo might be decelerating, but even at high gee it would take awhile. Louis wondered if Whisper was planning to ram the terminus. King might be wondering the same thing.
Nah. In ten hours at 770 miles/second, she’d covered around twenty-four million miles. But the track ran for two hundred million miles, and where in that length was her target? She couldn’t give King that much time to shoot at her.
Where, for that matter, was King? The vampire protector could be anywhere, if he’d trained High Point protectors to mount the ramjets for him. What was that?
Maglev sled, the small variety, almost lost on the vast track. Coming straight toward the window. Now veering from side to side, and slowing … matching speed with the barge … contact, and five matching pressure suits were past the webeye before Louis could blink. The Hindmost whistle-chimed, the view reversed, and … gone. They had already disappeared into the maze of coils.
Five matching pressure suits would be five spill mountain protectors, stet? They’d guard the ramjet, protect it from stray effects of a battle, serving both sides. For King, they would also serve as a distraction.
And anyone who had ever watched a magic act might guess that one of the five was King himself, his suit bulked out with additional weapons or armor.
Where were they?
Action far aft. Louis couldn’t make it out. This was going to be frustrating, he thought. He glanced at the Kzin: would Acolyte freak out? But he was watching with the patience of a cat at a mouse hole.
Traces of motion, distant flashes of light … and two maglev sleds were weaving through the coils! Sporadic flashes of light followed them. They dipped below view, then rose. One struck a coil and rebounded into an actinic blast, crashed into another coil and was out, over the edge of the track, gone. The other …
“Clever,” Louis whispered, and lowered his gaze to the bed of the barge. But there was nothing to be seen.
The Hindmost said, “Louis?”
“Whisper had the little sleds following the barge, right aft where King couldn’t see them. I only saw two, but maybe there were more, all slaved to the one she was in, and which one is that? Now she’s dipped them and rolled clear and sent them up again for King to shoot at. Even if King’s figured it out by now, it puts her in two places, and Whisper knows where he is. And I could be completely wrong.”
“The barge will stop soon. Then the dueling field expands, stet, Louis?”
“Ye gods, you’re right. If—”
Bram flicked in.
Light slashed where he had been, but Bram was among the superconductor loops and firing back with Louis’s flash. Light flared among the loops, a storm of energy beams. Bram stood up, holding his suit together with one hand.
The first beam hadn’t missed. It was hellishly intense, having gotten through the laser shielding on Louis’s suit.
Now two tiny man-shapes were firing among the loops, leaping, firing, chewing up the ramjet.
Louis said, “I just—” and stopped.
“Share it,” Acolyte spat.
“Light doesn’t hurt a superconductor. They’re all three using light-weapons. If King had known …”
Bram would be dead if he didn’t get to safety soon. He’d taken cover behind a thick loop of ramjet and was watching, just watching. Likely Bram had no better idea than he did, Louis thought, as to which man-shape was Whisper, which was King. He’d done what he could.
One combatant flared like a sun and dissolved.
The other flared brighter and was gone faster. Four shapes leaped like fleas, a pincer closing on Bram.
Louis started to laugh.
Bram ran for the stepping disk. He blazed like a sun and then he was gone, here, off the stepping disk, throwing back his helmet, pulling in air in great gasps. His pressure suit glowed dull red in spots. He stripped it away, keeping the gloves on until he was clear of the rest, hurled the suit into the shower and turned it on.
Louis was still laughing.
And Acolyte seemed to be smiling widely, but on a kzinti that was no smile. He said, “One of you will tell me what happened.”
“Whisper is dead and I am alone,” Bram said. “Is there more to know? King’s protector servants were to guard the ramjet and the barge while we fought. But we three came to fight war on a superconducting field, under superconducting coils. We all chose energy weapons. Stet, Acolyte? The Arch lives by the rim ramjets! We are protectors!”
Acolyte said, “Stet.”
“Four protector servants saw that none of us could harm the transport or the ramjet. Whisper and I thought they would kill the losers. But they saw two dying and one unwary, and they struck to free themselves from us entirely! I must have seemed easy meat,” Bram said. “Witless ones. If they saw me flick in, couldn’t they guess I’d flick out?”
Bram looked at the webeye windows glowing in the Hindmost’s cabin. Four protectors in High Point pressure suits gathered around the stepping disk. Their helmet lights blinked heliograph patterns. One looked up into the window. Then all four eased around out of view.
The window went to moiré patterns.
“That won’t save them,” Bram said, and turned. “Hindmost, why was a link made between Weaver Town and the Meteor Defense room?”
The puppeteer said, “Ask Louis Wu.”
“Louis?”
One does not reproach a Pierson’s puppeteer for cowardice. Louis barely glanced at the Hindmost. “It’s the morals clause, Bram. I’ve judged you unfit to rule the Ringworld.”
Bram’s hand was a vise on Louis’s left shoulder, lifting. Louis could see the Kzin bristling, trying to decide whether to interfere. The protector said, “By what unjustifiable arrogance could a breeder—It’s Teela, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“She forced you to kill her. She forced you to kill hundreds of millions of Spill Mountain Folk in order to push the Arch back into place. Of course she had to die to save the hostages she had given me. Of course the Arch would have impacted the sun without plasma to feed the rim ramjets. But why did she impose these tasks on you?”
“All right. Why?”
Bram had set Louis on his feet, but his grip hadn’t relaxed. “I’ve read your record from the ship’s computer. You open problems, then abandon them—”
Louis believed he was prepared to die, but this was turning weird. “What problems, Bram?”
“You found a dangerous alien species in interstellar space. You opened negotiations, you showed their way to your world, then left professional ambassadors to try to deal with them. Teela Brown you carried to the Ringworld, then left to another’s care—”
“Tanj dammit, Bram, she made her own choice!”
“Halrloprillalar you brought to Earth, then allowed the ARM to take her. She died.”
Louis was silent.
“Despite Teela, still you have ignored your responsibility for forty-three falans. Only the fear of death brought you back here. But you understood her message, didn’t you, Louis?”
“That is completely–”
“You must judge the Ringworld’s safety. She trusted your wisdom, Louis, and not her own. She was half right, half bright.”
The Hindmost spoke from safety behind the kitchen wall. “Teela wasn’t wise. Protectors are not wise. Their motives don’t come from the forebrain, Louis. She may have been just wise enough.”
“Hindmost, that’s ridiculous,” Louis said. “Bram, I’m naturally arrogant. You’re being too clever. Bright people do a lot of that.”
“What shall I do about the protectors who killed my mate?”
“We’ll ask the High Point People if we can please talk to a protector. We’ll tell them they’re in charge of the rim. Bram, spill mountain protectors have every interest in protecting the Ringworld from any danger. Anything that happens hurts the rim wall first, and who should know that better than they do?”
Bram blinked. He said, “Yes. Next. I have ruled in the Repair Center for more than seven thousand falans. How do you judge me—”
“I know what you did. The dates, Bram, the dates. You didn’t even try to hide them!”
“You talk to too many kinds. You’ve traveled too far. How could I lie? You might have learned.”
“I am,” Acolyte said, “bewildered.”
Louis had nearly forgotten the Kzin. He said, “He and Whisper searched for the mysterious master protector for—how long, Bram? Hundreds of falans? But it wasn’t enough, even using the telescope display in the Repair Center. The Ringworld is too big. But if you know where a protector will be, you can be there first. A disaster lures protectors. Like Bram. You’ll have to do something about that ARM carrier ship, won’t you, Bram?”
“Yes.”
“Whisper and Bram found a large mass falling toward the Ringworld. That was all they needed. Cronus would have to do something about that. He’d come to the Repair Center. Whisper and Bram would be ready. Stet, Bram?”
Silence.
“Maybe Cronus knew how to stop the impact. Bram and Whisper would have waited, right? See if he could do it. But Bram knew something was wrong—”
“Louis, we think it was his habit. His first move was to set up defenses. We—We couldn’t. Couldn’t.”
Bram’s fingers were sinking into Louis’s shoulder, drawing blood.
Louis said, “You killed him before he could finish.”
“We moved almost too late! He and we stalked each other. He and we had mapped these vast spaces and set traps.” Bram was sp
eaking to Acolyte now, telling of a duel to one who loved such tales. “Anne was crippled for a lifetime. I still don’t know how he shattered my leg and hip in the dark. We killed him.”
Louis said, “And then?”
“He didn’t know, either. Louis, we searched his tools, he brought nothing.”
“Whatever he had, he never got to use it. You and Whisper, you had no ideas at all.”
Bram said, “Acolyte—”
“You let Fist-of-God hit the Ringworld!”
“Acolyte! An enemy waits for me in the Meteor Defense room. Here is your wtsai. Go and kill my enemy.”
“Yes,” Acolyte said.
Bram whistle-trilled into his eccentric flute. The Kzin stepped forward and flicked out. Louis tried to follow, but Bram’s fingers were sunk deep in his shoulder.
Louis said, “You bloodsucking freemother.”
“You know where I must be, but I decide the rest. Come.” Bram and Louis were on the stepping disk and gone.
Chapter 31
The Ringworld Throne
They flicked into the gloom of the Meteor Defense, and Louis was flying, hurled away.
He tried to land rolling. He glimpsed Bram flicking out in a burst of mad flute-oboe music. Something monstrous and shadowy was leaping at Louis, and something much faster scuttled toward them both.
Louis landed on his right shoulder, where a vampire protector had sunk dirty claws deep into the sinew and muscle. Louis cried out and kept rolling, and the first attacker landed almost on top of him. The second fended off a reflexive kick from an orange-furred leg and was at the stepping disk. He played a snatch of flute-oboe music and was gone.
The first attacker swept him up and rolled them another ten feet into shadow. “Louis?”
Louis’s shoulder was screaming. He pulled in great lungfuls of air. His nose was full of the smell of Kzin. “Acolyte,” he said.
“I intend to kill Bram,” the Kzin said.
“He may be dead already.” Smell of Kzin and something else. What? “Did that other one try to kill you? You were supposed to die to distract him. So was I, I think.”
