The Ringworld Throne

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.”

Two windows showed moire patterns: webeyes destroyed in the battle. The Hindmost sang them out, then popped one up in their place. It began flicking past other views. Weaver Town. Hidden Patriarch: the foremast crow’s nest.

The Hindmost sang flutes and percussion. He said, “I’ve begun a search program. If invaders come using familiar craft, we’ll know it in minutes.”

“Good.” Louis pointed at the window half obscured by that one. “I hope you were recording that.”

“Yes.”

The stolen webeye had reached the spaceport ledge. Tiny starlit pressure suits walked through vacuum toward a structure too huge to show its shape. It took them forever to round the curve of it.

Bigger yet: a pair of golden toroids mounted on tall gantries. It took Louis a moment to see the rest of it.

Cables were growing out of the toroids, spreading like a growing plant, narrowing at the ends to invisibly fine wire.

“Stet. They’re actually making new motors.”

The Hindmost said, “I’ve wondered if the wire frames are an innovation. My records show no more than the toroids.”

“Interesting notion, but maybe the City Builders took just the toroids. That wire frame could be awkward if you wanted to land a ship.”

The shifting window showed Hidden Patriarch’s aft crow’s nest; then the kitchen and two adult City Builders and three children. Where had the older children been hiding, Louis wondered, that he hadn’t met them? But they were all moving out the door. And now they came chattering back with Bram between them.

Bram had stripped off his suit. He stretched out on a bench. Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok began a massage.

Bones and swollen joints and no fat anywhere. “He looks like a tanj skeleton now,” Louis said.

Bram seemed asleep.

“If Bram thinks there’s time for that, he’s likely right. Hindmost, let’s get Acolyte out of that box and me