The Ringworld Throne

Acolyte was learning how to solve puzzles.

Bram said, “He was a Ghoul. A carrion eater’s sense of smell is altered by evolution. What to approach, what to touch, what to put in his mouth, each is a conscious choice. A Ghoul may be more free than other protectors. He may guide his kind toward what he sees as perfection.”

They looked at the old skeleton. He had to come, Bram had said. Near seven thousand falans, he’d said. One thousand seven hundred years? And if Louis’s dawning suspicion had any basis in fact, he’d best not ask directly.

Try something indirect. “Your mate, is she still in here?”

“A

“Bram, she would have had to make those other protectors.”

“A

“Teela.”

“Teela Brown. Your mate,” Bram said. “The Hindmost has records of her, too.”

“Were you here when Teela came?”

“Yes. It was more difficult to hide from her than from the Hindmost. I watched her learn to use the Meteor Defense. I was sure she intended what a protector must: she would save the Arch from impacting the sun. What was her true intent, Louis?”

“Teela was a protector. I can’t read a protector’s mind.”

Bram asked, “If not hers, then whose?”

“You saw the records. Teela was strange.”

“Two came into the Repair Center,” Bram said. “They ate of the root. One died. The other fell into the coma that leads to the protector state. I had time to hide my presence and set up means to observe her.

“Your Teela wandered the Repair Center. It was a pleasure to watch her. She discovered things I hadn’t noticed, and ultimately came here. She played with the Meteor Defense and the telescope display.

“Then she left. I was able to track her a little as she moved to the rim wall. She used a magnetic transport system on the rim wall, much faster than the system we used, but she had an advanced pressure suit.”

“Timing?”

“Some extrasolar object impacted the sun twenty-two falans past. Storms of subatomic particles threw the Arch off balance. Louis, Teela was in a great hurry.”

Twenty-two falans ago: the Ringworld began sliding off balance about five years before Hot Needle of Inquiry’s return. “She was educated on Earth,” Louis said. “With a protector’s brain and basic physics classes, she must have seen the situation quick enough. She went to fix the attitude jet system. What would she find? A

“A

“Mmm.”

“You knew her—”

“As a woman. Bram, nobody knew Teela. She was a statistical fluke, a woman who was lucky every time luck was called for, up until Nessus drafted her for the Ringworld expedition. Any kind of normal life must have been just out of her reach.”

Acolyte said, “My father speaks of Teela sometimes. He never knew what to make of her. To the puppeteers, she was part of a breeding program, breeding for luck. Chmeee believed they succeeded.”

“No,” Bram said.

Louis said, “She’s dead, Bram. She’s no threat to you.”

“But what might a protector leave behind to shape a future she desired? We plan far ahead. Louis, have you seen what you needed to see?”

“Yeah.”

Bram flicked in, calling, “Hindmost, wake!”

But the Hindmost was awake and dancing in his cabin … dancing with three ghosts, three puppeteers too translucent to hide him. “Bram, I thought of something cute. I made a brief burn an hour ago to put the probe below the rim, out of sight of invading ships.”

“Numbers?”

The Hindmost whistled. Equations wrote rainbow lines.

Bram studied them. It was the first time Louis had seen him freeze up like that, but the equations looked complex, far beyond his own abilities. Then Bram said, “Good. Begin deceleration now.”

The Hindmost chirped. The racing rim wall opened behind him—“Stet?”

“Yes, stet, if it doesn’t hide you from me.”

–rim wall moving at a blur, its edge far above, the tops of the spill mountains far below. The probe must be about three hundred miles up, Louis thought.

The Hindmost chirped. Louis looked for results, but he couldn’t see—wait, now. Night-shadowed, the passing rim wall had picked up a blue highlight: the reflection of a small fusion drive. Floating equations told it better: some of the numbers were reeling down.

Three ghosts still danced with the Hindmost, and Louis knew them. Their hairstyles differed, but they were all Nessus.

Acolyte was gnawing on something that dripped red. It was not an appetizing sight, but Louis was suddenly starved. He tapped at the kitchen wall with one eye for the holograms.

Bram asked, “Hindmost, what do you know of Teela Brown?”

The Hindmost sang like a bronze bell. A third hologram opened behind the Hindmost: a table of contents, as best Louis could tell. The cabin was crowded with images.

Bram flared in anger. “Come here. Come here now!”

The Hindmost didn’t hesitate. He stepped and was beside them. “I intended no harm.”

“I prefer you here. Louis, Hindmost, Acolyte, I’m trying to paint a picture of a protector in my mind. I have my murky view of Cronus and I knew A

“These are records on the Lucky Human Project. My administration felt that human allies could do us good. Humans are lucky. We would make them effective by making them luckier. The experiment was local to one planet, Earth. We added a lottery to the formal qualifications that earn a birthright. We kept track of babies born through luck. We financed a social network so that the children might meet and breed.”

“Was she lucky?”

Louis wasn’t listening, definitely wasn’t listening. When he’d fought free of the Ringworld, Teela had stayed behind by her own choice. Louis had had forty years to avoid thinking about Teela Brown.

“She was a sixth-generation lottery wi

Acolyte spoke. “What if she sought a cause worth dying for?”

Louis gaped. Acolyte added, “Or what if she only wanted to be more intelligent? Like my father. Like me. Luck gave her those things.”

Bram said, “Louis?”

“Maybe. Interesting interpretation.” Forty years, and he’d never seen what was obvious to this eleven-year-old cat!

“Anything further?”

Louis closed his eyes. He could see her, touch her. “A freak accident took her away from us. Luck. When we found her, she’d found Seeker. Big, brawny explorer type, a wonderful guide, and I guess she was in love with him, too—”

“Was she your mate or his?”

“Serial polygamy. Skip it—”

“She left you for him?”

“Not just for Seeker. Bram, she’d found this—this huge toy. It never would have occurred to Teela that it was beyond her, too big to play with. That anything was beyond her.”

“She wanted to play with the Arch? Without destroying it, of course. And only a protector can do that?”

Louis rubbed his eyes.

“So you left her on the Ringworld. And then?”

“Seeker must have led her to the Map of Mars, or told her enough that she could guess the rest. She knew going in that she was entering a strange place, a place of secrets.