The Ringworld Throne

“I wonder if the Night People were watching.”

“I wondered, too,” Tegger said. And then the whisper of unca

They dozed. When each knew that the other couldn’t sleep, they mated again. And tried to sleep again. When the outline of the door was a white glow, Warvia asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes. Are you going out?

“No.”

The door opened on halfdawn light. The Ghouls shambled in. The door closed. “We’re moving well along,” Harpster said, and Tegger heard relief and fatigue in his voice. “Warvia, Tegger, are you all right?”

“Scared,” Warvia said.

Tegger asked, “Shouldn’t someone be steering?”

Grieving Tube said, “The air sled rides lines buried in the scrith. We can’t get lost.”

Tegger said, “If the air sled went astray, it would kill us so fast that we’d barely know it.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“How do you know?”

Harpster growled. Grieving Tube said, “Let us sleep.”

Since they’d left the vampires behind, the Night People had been sleeping in the payload shell. The smell was rich. Warvia huddled against her mate and tried not to think of the smell of Ghouls, or her hunger, or the vibration in the iron around her.

She uncurled and stood up. “I’m going to hunt up a meal. Shall I bring you back something?”

“Yes.”

They had left the eternal clouds far behind. The day was ablaze. The land streamed past, pulling Warvia’s eyes with it. Warvia dropped from the cruiser and loped over to the piled sand, keeping her gaze always toward her feet.

No shrieker guards came.

Warvia found an entrance hole and tickled it with a stick. A fat shrieker popped out and screamed at her. She snatched it, broke its neck and ate voraciously.

She couldn’t keep from looking. The land had become a vast forest. The tops of huge trees were all far below, all converging and disappearing behind the sky sled. The motion threw her balance off, making her dizzy.

She made herself circle the cargo tray and tickle another opening. When a defender appeared, she snatched it and wrapped it in her skirt.

She was stepping onto the ru

The shrieker fell and scampered free. Warvia jumped straight backward, her spear poised to kill. That wasn’t Tegger, and the Ghouls were fast asleep …

The deck was clear. Whatever had spoken must be aboard the cruiser.

Or under it? The space under there was black. Warvia adjusted her stance, a bit farther from the cruiser. Had she imagined …?

“Show yourself!”

“Warvia, I dare not. It’s Whisper.”

Whisper? “Tegger called you a wayspirit. He thought he imagined you.”

The voice said, “I will not speak to Tegger again. Warvia, I hope you will not babble of me to Tegger nor to the Night People. I could be killed and the Arch itself may fall if anyone takes notice of me.”

“Yes, my mate said you were secretive. Whisper? Why tell me?”

“May we talk a little?”

“I’d rather be inside.”

“I know. Warvia, we’re traveling at just under the speed of sound. That’s not very fast at all. When an object strikes the world from outside, it moves three hundred times as fast, with ninety thousand times the energy.”

“Really.” The thought was shattering. But why? Had she thought the speed of sound was instantaneous?

“Light travels much faster than sound. You’ve seen that yourself. Lightning, then thunder,” the voice said.

It didn’t occur to her to doubt a wayspirit. Anyone who could speak such things must really know what she was talking about. She asked, “Why not go faster than sound? Couldn’t we hear each other?”

“It’s the speed of sound in air, Warvia. If we make the air go with us, the sound in the air goes with us, too.”

“Oh.”

“The air sled is doing what the universe says it must. It can go to only one place, and then it will touch softly as a feather.”

Warvia asked again, “Why tell me?”

“When you know what is happening, it can’t frighten you. Of course there are exceptions, but the sky sled isn’t one. It flies in a kind of invisible groove, a pattern of magnetic fields. It ca

“Pattern of …?”

“I will teach you about magnets and gravity and inertia. Inertia is the force that pulls you against the inside of the spi

“Is that real, too, what the Night People say? The Arch is a ring?”

“Yes. Gravity is a force you need hardly notice, but it holds the sun together so that it can burn. Magnets allow the sun’s rind to be manipulated, to defend the Arch against things falling from outside. I will teach you more, if you come in daylight.”

“Why?”

“You and Tegger are frightened. If you understand what’s happening here, your fright will go away. If you lose your fright, so will Tegger. You will not go mad.”

“Tegger,” she said, and looked around her. “Tegger must be starving.” She couldn’t find the shrieker she’d dropped. She went back to the shrieker village, holding her eyes to the deck. Nearly the speed of sound: how fast was that in daywalks?

A shrieker came when she tickled a tu

Chapter 22

The Net

… Coffin!

Louis tried to push the lid away. The lid didn’t want to move that fast. He pulled his knees up to set his feet and thrust upward, then roll-dived out from under the half-raised lid. Hit the floor. Kept rolling and stood up in a crouch.

Not a coffin, he remembered, but he was on an adrenaline high, with good reason to stay in motion. What had been happening while he was in the box?

His ankle stung. He’d kicked something. Ignore it.

The strangest thing about his waking was the way he felt.

In their early twenties, Louis and a dozen friends had run an ancient martial arts teaching program. A few dropped out when the computer had them hitting each other in the face. Louis had stuck with it, play-fighting for ten months. Then it all turned stale, and two hundred years went by, and …

It didn’t feel like waking from steep or surgery. He felt more like a fighter halfway through a yogatsu match he knows he can win. Absolutely charged up, seething with adrenaline and energy.

Great! Bring ‘em on!

Motion! He whirled around. His hands felt naked.

Beyond the forward wall, rocky rolling terrain flashed past on either side, too fast for detail. Needle must be moving like a hypersonic shuttle at ground level. And the view was toward the captain’s cabin—

Only a picture. None of those great rocks was about to mash him into jelly. The black basalt walls to left and right, the lander bay behind him, were all quite motionless.

The thing he’d kicked was a block of stone in the forward-starboard corner of crew quarters. He’d never seen that before. It looked completely inert and harmless: a roughly dressed granite cube as tall as his knee.

He was alone.

Louis understood why Bram had left Acolyte in an induced coma until he could attend to him. Waking alone, a Kzin might set traps and barriers, or force the wardrobe and kitchen systems to produce weapons. But Louis did not understand why Bram had left him to wake alone.

How fast did a protector learn? Bram had observed him for … hmm? Up to three days, if he’d tapped into the webeye camera at Weaver Town. Could Bram already know me well enough to trust me?

Not likely! Bram hadn’t done this. The Hindmost must have reset the ’doc to open when his treatment was finished.

Now, what was the Hindmost trying to show him? Louis wondered. Did the protector know what kind of show the Hindmost had ru