The Ringworld Throne

“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.