The Ringworld Throne

“We knew that. Hide in caves, the vishnishtee said. Make houses of rock? The mountain would shake rock down on our heads!”

The voice of Louis Wu said, “My companions are showing me a picture taken from tens of daywalks above you. It’s amazing how much detail you can see when you’re far enough away, Deb. The mountain you live on is kind of a flat cone, but around that tu

They waited for Louis Wu to make better sense.

“Yeah. What I mean is, the passage is older than the mountain and a lot stronger. Made of scrith, I bet. The mountain gradually settles under its own weight, but the passage stays right where it is, and vishnishtee have to keep digging the entrance again. Can you take me through?”

“No!” said Barraye and Saron and Je

Deb said, “We were cast out! If we’re seen, we will die!”

Saron said, “We have stayed on broken rock. We left no footprints and no scent. If a vishnishtee learns that we have come bearing this, we will die.”

It was Harpster who protested. “The eye of Louis Wu has come far to see so little.”

“That is as it is. Harreed, stay behind. If you find sign of us, conceal it. Harpster, are you strong enough to take Harreed’s place?”

And a voice said, “Leave the web.”

Nine hominids froze. Tegger could see no tenth. And that was not the voice of Whisper, nor the protector Bram, either, but it had the same breathy speech impediment.

The High Point People were quietly moving back through the cleft in the rock and downslope. Tegger and Warvia followed, leading the Ghouls, who by now were nearly blind in the black shadows of their hats. They left the bronze spi

Chapter 29

Collier

They were four in Hot Needle of Inquiry’s crew cabin: Bram and the Hindmost and Louis Wu, and Acolyte, in a great black coffin where their exercise space used to be. They all used the same shower and the same kitchen wall.

Sleeping arrangements weren’t a problem. The Hindmost wanted the sleeping plates, but that was all right. They’d moved the cargo plates beside the water bed. Louis used that.

He was sitting cross-legged on the bouncing surface, eating something crunchy and nutrition-free. Boredom had him eating too much. He might be getting too much painkiller, too.

Bram didn’t want him exercising alone in the lander bay. Louis had healed enough to want that. He had offered to take Bram along, teach him yoga or even some fighting techniques. Bram refused. He intended to be right here when …

What the futz was Bram expecting? Louis wondered. For most of two days he’d watched the wreckage of the refueling probe. It lay smashed on the maglev track in a window that overlaid six others—five, now—and Bram stood before it, watching.

Louis was getting cabin fever.

To ship’s port and starboard the glow of dying coals had faded to the black of cold basalt. In space that would have been stars, an infinite universe spread to either side.

Futz, he had stars. One webeye lay on the maglev track, looking down at the universe through the filigree surface. Another starscape, from the webeye Louis had sprayed onto the vacuum, had fuzzed out only hours ago.

In another window the stolen webeye moved into a smooth-bore tu

The flight deck was windows overlaid on windows, a perspective that could cross the eyes and twist them in their sockets. One was a graph like a constantly wiggling mountain range, purpose unknown. Three were replays: High Point Mountain swept past the refueling probe; the probe maneuvered until it was smashed by violet light; a protector died, his suit slashed open to vacuum.

Nothing was happening where the ruined probe lay on the maglev track. The window held Bram like a dark Dali silhouette, say Shades of Night Descending.

Louis closed his eyes and sagged back on the water bed.

Popped them open again. He’d seen blue-white light flash from one of the windows.

The light was out now, but the wrecked probe was glowing cherry-red. Something tiny was coming down the maglev track from far away, ru

It came at astronomical speed, a foot above the track: something like a floating sledge. It decelerated savagely. Something manlike dropped off the back and rolled out of view as the vehicle eased to a stop inches from the window.

The Hindmost moved up beside Bram.

The probe cooled to murky red, darker, black.

That wasn’t a sled. It was a shallow box. The bottom was black like wrought iron. The sides were so transparent as to be barely visible, but Louis could pick them out by the knobs embedded for tiedowns. Lines held tools against the sides of the box: a wand with a handle, maybe a line saw; a widemouthed thing, gun or rocket launcher or energy weapon; a pry bar; stacked boxes; skeletal metal stuff.

A window behind it showed starscape and, rising into view, a nearly empty flat surface. Louis glared and looked away. The stolen webeye had left the tu

Louis heard, “I do not understand war, but I feel Louis might.”

“Even drugged?”

“Ask.”

“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 disco

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—”