The Ringworld Throne

“You went to some effort to get Louis Wu’s spy thing. You thought to keep that secret from me, I expect, but how?”

A Ghoul’s shrug looked like she’d disjointed both shoulders. “How were we to know we couldn’t just peel the web off and roll it up and walk off? But it’s embedded in the brick, and so we must reveal our need. Valavirgillin, we will buy your cruiser.” She named a sum. “Payable in Center City, by any local Night People concern, when you return.”

“Sold.” The money was at the low end of reasonable, and so what? Long before she could return to get it, Grieving Tube would have fuel to simply take Cruiser Two. “I may have to explain this to my superiors. Will your people back me up?”

“Your associates may learn as much as I will reveal to you tonight. Some secrets we keep. But let us gorge first, Boss. Isn’t your meal prepared yet?”

Foranayeedli bellowed two words in Vala’s Center City tongue. “Boss! Eat!”

Hunger sank sharp teeth into Valavirgillin’s belly. “That’s my secret name,” she told Grieving Tube; and she went.

Part Two

“Dancing as Fast as I Can”

Chapter 18

Costs and Schedules

Even the Sailing People had retired. Now only a pair of heat shadows in grass, and Louis Wu, remained to watch the Hindmost’s dance.

The pace was brisk now, but the Hindmost never seemed to run short of breath. “This isn’t over, Louis. I heard some of what they told the Red Herders. They spoke of spill mountains and problems with a scrith surface.”

“Use the webeye. Ask them where they’re going.”

“No, I will reserve that one secret. Let them struggle for a time before I speak. Let me see how urgently they want your attention.”

“Mine?”

“Louis Wu who boiled an ocean, O Subtlest One. They know nothing of the Hindmost. Louis, you’re showing marked signs of deterioration. Do you want medical attention?”

“Yes,” Louis Wu said.

The Hindmost said, “Very well. My risk and effort involved in sending you my refueling probe must be compensated. You’ve had a free hand—”

Louis waved it off. “Don’t risk your probe, you might need it. I’ll go back the way I came, back down the Shenthy River valley. There are mistakes I don’t need to make twice, so it’ll go a little faster. I was eleven years coming, I’d be nine years returning, maybe less. It’ll give you time to move your ’doc to crew quarters.”

“Louis, I have mounted a stepping disk on my refueling probe. In one turn of the Ringworld it can reach you. In an instant you’ll be aboard.”

“That probe is your fuel source, Hindmost, and I—”

“I have refueled Hot Needle of Inquiry, which in any case is still embedded in cooled lava.”

“—and I dare not think what price you would ask for its use. Anyway, you’ll want to move your ’doc into crew quarters or the lander bay—”

“I have done that.” The window shifted, and Louis was looking into the cabin that he hadn’t seen in eleven years. A huge coffin occupied what had been his and Chmeee’s exercise space.

Well, futz. The Hindmost was eager. Louis said, “I left Hidden Patriarch a few thousand miles downstream. Didn’t you leave a stepping disk aboard? I can be there in seven or eight falans.”

“Two years? Louis, matters are becoming urgent. The Ringworld seems infested with protectors.”

“Oh?” All i

“Before she died, Teela said she had left one living Ghoul protector in charge on the rim wall. I can verify that the Repair Crew is still active.”

“Show me,” Louis said.

The window in the cliff pa

The rim wall was a frieze: mountain shapes relief-carved into a continuous wall the color of Earth’s moon. Bands of night swept along its length, their motion barely visible. Spill mountains stood as tiny cones five to seven miles tall along its base. Along the top of this stretch of the rim wall, twenty faint violet flames pointed toward the stars.

The Hindmost said, “These are the rim ramjets as they were when we first saw them. I was testing a webeye camera, the same that the Ghouls now hold. Here, five years later, six years ago—”

The same view, night again, but the ghost flames had gone out. “The Ringworld was back in place by then,” Louis said.

“Oh, yes. But I kept track. Louis, can’t you see the attitude jets?” The view zoomed. Now Louis could make out the dark mouths of spillpipes high above the spill mountains, and ghostly shapes much larger than he’d guessed. Pairs of copper-colored toroids circled the tiny wasp waists of twenty-one double cones of fine wire: huge, skeletal Bussard ramjets.

“Six years ago?”

“Six before I noticed. Caught up in the dance, I might have lost track for as much as—” Hesitation. “—a falan?”

Lonely to the point of madness, lost in a dance with ghosts. The poor herdbeast, once all-powerful, now all alone, rejected by his kind.

Louis shook it off. “So someone mounted the twenty-first motor, the one we found on the spaceport ledge.”

“Yes, but copied it first! Here, less than two years ago …” Twenty-three motors, and a twenty-fourth with skewed orientation, not yet mounted. Louis couldn’t see what was moving it; he only saw minute adjustments in position.

“My webeye has no more definition than this. But new motors are being manufactured and set in their cradles on the rim wall. Is this not evidence for a protector?”

“More than one,” Louis said. “Manufacture, transport, placement, supervision.”

Hesitation again. “Louis, some hominids go in herds or tribes, but my records suggest that protectors do not. I believe I could monitor all these activities. So could a protector.”

“Mmm. And defense?”

“But a second protector is using the Meteor Defense to destroy invading ships!”

“Stet.”

“And what of the unseen creature following the Red Herder?”

“No, I won’t give you that one. A Ghoul spying on other Ghouls. Local politics.”

“Louis, think. We saw him enter the vampire sanctuary! He must be a protector if the vampire scent doesn’t affect him.”

“… Stet. What was he doing in there, do you think?”

“Protecting the Red Herder, it seemed. He may be of that species. Our next sight of him would have been the river, I expect.”

“Yeah. Self-effacing he was, and you can’t do that when you’re covered with vampire scent. But we won’t see him because your camera is lying in the cargo hold of a—”

“Three protectors, Louis. Six to eight, if your guess is right. War among Pak protectors made a radioactive waste of their own world.”

“I see your point,” Louis said placidly.

“Protectors of divergent species would leave fragments of the Ringworld falling to interstellar space. Louis, we ca

“Maybe they’ll cooperate,” Louis said. “Ringworld hominids do get along. Different species don’t use the same resources, and they all cooperate with Ghouls. Once you’re in that mode, you can get along with anyone.”

“There was war between Red Herders and Grass Giants.”

“Futz, Hindmost, they both wanted the grass!”

“I feel the situation is urgent.”

Louis stretched. His joints creaked, and tendons were protesting even this afternoon’s moderate exercise.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Send your refueling probe to where I left Hidden Patriarch. It’ll make a nice big target for you. I’ll move back downstream and see if our City Builder friends want to join us again. Eight falans, two Earth years, one of yours. Then, if we can come to an agreement, I’ll accept your medical attentions.”