by Larry Niven
The men began to tilt the mirror up and down. It was mounted on hinges. Jennawil stood behind Tegger and pointed along the rim.
Toward the next spill mountain.
A highlight played on the mountain's flank, falling and rising as the men tilted the mirror.
Tegger asked, "How does it work?"
Jennawil laughed. "Ah, the Night People haven't told you everything! Sun mirrors flash a code known to us and Night People. They carry news between mountains, but also news of flatlands to mountains and back to flatlands."
That explained much. The Ghouls had always known too much about the weather, the Shadow Nest, the bronze spinnerweb itself.
The four took up the eye of Louis Wu again. "Around this jut of rock," Saron said, "and up."
***
"We've been discussing your problem, Grieving Tube and I. We think we have an answer," Harpster said.
Tegger had been thinking, too. "It's like being crushed between two bulls. If we go too far, we doom our children. If we settle too close to Ginjerofer's route, we'll hear tales about ourselves."
"We're too conspicuous," Warvia said, "too easy to recognize. When visitors tell of the vampire slayers who learned rishathra, that will be us."
Harpster was grinning with all his spade teeth. "Suppose there was an old story," Harpster said. "Once upon a time all hominids were monogamous. No man looked at a woman who was not his mate, and she would not look aside from him. War happened when hominids met.
"Then came two heroes who saw that hominids could live otherwise. They invented rishathra and ended a war. They spread it like a ministry --"
Warvia cried, "Harpster, was there really such a tale?"
"Not yet."
"Oh."
"The Night People are selective about whom we speak to, but you must not think we're silent. You've seen the sun mirrors. Those are our voice. You know that every priest must know how to dispose of his dead. Priests must talk to us."
The route had become steeper, and they were all huffing now. "We can spread the tale from several directions," Grieving Tube said. "Only the old women remember the legend, or the old men. The tale tells of heroes of their own species who invented rishathra and ended war, and it tells that their own species has practiced rishathra ever since. Details are different among different species. When a variation appears in which the heroes were Red Herders who ended a war to gain allies against vampires --"
"It's just a story." Tegger laughed. He was starting to believe it would work. "Only a story. Warvia?"
"Maybe," she said. "Maybe. It's worth a try. We can lie, love, as long as we don't have to lie to each other."
***
A rock as big as the tallest city building had split vertically, and the High Point People were leading them through the split. Ribbons of color ran through the rock. "Ice did this," Deb said. "Water soaks into rock. Freezes. Melts and freezes again."
The wind shrilled through, icy, tearing at any bit of exposed skin. Tearing at eyes. Tegger walked blind, feeling his way, following Warvia, though her eyes were closed, too.
A big hand on his chest stopped him. He opened his eyes into slits.
Finally, here it was, a place to hide from the wind: a rock tunnel into the mountain. But they'd stopped within the cleft, with the tunnel's mouth barely in view. From the cleft a slope of shattered rock ran up to a rough rock entrance.
Barraye spoke for the first time. "Teegr, that is not shelter."
He asked, "Why not? Monsters inside?"
"Yes. Vishnishtee."
They set the web on its rim and propped it to face the opening. Barraye had gone silent again. Saron said, "Louis Wu, can you see?"
The bronze web spoke. "Yeah, barely. How deep is that thing?"
"We think that this is passage through the high mountain. None of us have gone that far."
"You've been inside?"
Deb spoke. "Most of High Point and near a hundred of airborne visitors hid in the passage when the Death Light shone. We could only hunt at night. After the Death Light faded, we were cast out and forbidden to return."
A breathy voice said, "Describe the vishnishtee."
Tegger's eyes met Warvia's. That voice from the web must be the vashnesht, Bram, but it sounded very like Whisper.
"The vishnishtee cared for us," Deb said, "but none of us ever saw one."
"What, never?"
"But sometimes one of us would disappear. There was a limit to how far we could go down the passage. We knew there was death in the passage, but there was death outside, too."
"Couldn't you make your own shelters? Rock would stop radiation ... stop the Death Light."
"We knew that. Hide in caves, the vishnishtee said. Make houses of rock? The mountain would shake rock down on our heads!"
The voice of Louis Wu said, "My companions are showing me a picture taken from tens of daywalks above you. It's amazing how much detail you can see when you're far enough away, Deb. The mountain you live on is kind of a flat cone, but around that tunnel, it's like a sand castle piled against a wall with a pipe poking out of it."
They waited for Louis Wu to make better sense.
"Yeah. What I mean is, the passage is older than the mountain and a lot stronger. Made of scrith, I bet. The mountain gradually settles under its own weight, but the passage stays right where it is, and vishnishtee have to keep digging the entrance again. Can you take me through?"
"No!" said Barraye and Saron and Jennawil.
Deb said, "We were cast out! If we're seen, we will die!"
Saron said, "We have stayed on broken rock. We left no footprints and no scent. If a vishnishtee learns that we have come bearing *this*, we will die."
It was Harpster who protested. "The eye of Louis Wu has come far to see so little."
"That is as it is. Harreed, stay behind. If you find sign of us, conceal it. Harpster, are you strong enough to take Harreed's place?"
And a voice said, "Leave the web."
Nine hominids froze. Tegger could see no tenth. And that was not the voice of Whisper, nor the protector Bram, either, but it had the same breathy speech impediment.
The High Point People were quietly moving back through the cleft in the rock and downslope. Tegger and Warvia followed, leading the Ghouls, who by now were nearly blind in the black shadows of their hats. They left the bronze spinnerweb propped in the cleft and didn't look back.
Chapter 29 -
Collier
They were four in Hot Needle of Inquiry's crew cabin: Bram and the Hindmost and Louis Wu, and Acolyte, in a great black coffin where their exercise space used to be. They all used the same shower and the same kitchen wall.
Sleeping arrangements weren't a problem. The Hindmost wanted the sleeping plates, but that was all right. They'd moved the cargo plates beside the water bed. Louis used that.
He was sitting cross-legged on the bouncing surface, eating something crunchy and nutrition-free. Boredom had him eating too much. He might be getting too much painkiller, too.
Bram didn't want him exercising alone in the lander bay. Louis had healed enough to want that. He had offered to take Bram along, teach him yoga or even some fighting techniques. Bram refused. He intended to be *right here* when ...
What the futz was Bram expecting? Louis wondered. For most of two days he'd watched the wreckage of the refueling probe. It lay smashed on the maglev track in a window that overlaid six others -- five, now -- and Bram stood before it, watching.
Louis was getting cabin fever.
To ship's port and starboard the glow of dying coals had faded to the black of cold basalt. In space that would have been stars, an infinite universe spread
to either side.
Futz, he *had* stars. One webeye lay on the maglev track, looking down at the universe through the filigree surface. Another starscape, from the webeye Louis had sprayed onto the vacuum, had fuzzed out only hours ago.
In another window the stolen webeye moved into a smooth-bore tunnel, stopped in what was clearly an airlock for several hours, then moved on through several doors, past piles of strange equipment vaguely glimpsed, and stopped again. Louis had never seen what was carrying it, nor heard that voice again.
The flight deck was windows overlaid on windows, a perspective that could cross the eyes and twist them in their sockets. One was a graph like a constantly wiggling mountain range, purpose unknown. Three were replays: High Point Mountain swept past the refueling probe; the probe maneuvered until it was smashed by violet light; a protector died, his suit slashed open to vacuum.
Nothing was happening where the ruined probe lay on the maglev track. The window held Bram like a dark Dali silhouette, say _Shades of Night Descending_.
Louis closed his eyes and sagged back on the water bed.
Popped them open again. He'd seen blue-white light flash from one of the windows.
The light was out now, but the wrecked probe was glowing cherry-red. Something tiny was coming down the maglev track from far away, running straight into the window.
It came at astronomical speed, a foot above the track: something like a floating sledge. It decelerated savagely. Something manlike dropped off the back and rolled out of view as the vehicle eased to a stop inches from the window.
The Hindmost moved up beside Bram.
The probe cooled to murky red, darker, black.
That wasn't a sled. It was a shallow box. The bottom was black like wrought iron. The sides were so transparent as to be barely visible, but Louis could pick them out by the knobs embedded for tiedowns. Lines held tools against the sides of the box: a wand with a handle, maybe a line saw; a widemouthed thing, gun or rocket launcher or energy weapon; a pry bar; stacked boxes; skeletal metal stuff.
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 h
e 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.
