The Ringworld Throne

“Louis, shouldn’t I kill my teacher?”

Oh? “I’ll keep that in mind.” Louis sat up.

“No, not you, Louis! I came to you for wisdom, but Bram made me his servant. I learned from Bram by listening until I was ready to learn by freeing myself. See, I have these.”

Cronus’s weapons.

Louis said, “Most appropriate, but Bram—”

Bram fell from the ceiling. It was thirty feet to the floor, and he landed hard, rolled, and came up with two feet of blade. He tried to balance it on end as another man-shape dropped toward him.

The other’s arms swung forward. Bram leapt away as sharp objects rattled across the floor. Shuriken? The blade fell over. Bram’s enemy slammed down, rolled and bounced to his feet. He seemed made of knobs, bigger than Bram, with one arm clutched against his chest and sharp metal in the other.

Louis’s mind was still trying to catch up.

Bram must have turned a second stepping disk upside down and fixed it to the ceiling. Copying the Martians? Now the vampire protector had nearly reached the first stepping disk, with his larger attacker a long jump behind, as Acolyte surged from cover. Acolyte jabbed the iron pole at Bram’s ribs.

Bram didn’t turn. He braked for an instant. The pole went past his navel and Bram had the end. He pulled and twisted, the pole bent, and the other end cracked Acolyte across the forehead.

It slowed Bram just enough. The other was on him. He chopped at Bram’s wrist, at the foot that came at his face, elbow, the other foot, the other arm.

Bram went down flopping, with bones or tendons cut in all four limbs.

His attacker had vanished. He spoke in the trade language as spoken around Weaver Town, distorted by a protector’s usual breathy speech impediment, and Louis’s translator was only a moment behind.

“Furry People, you must stay back for now. You shall be satisfied, but this seems a good time to talk.”

Acolyte was sitting up, dazed. “Louis?”

If the other protector was still afraid of Bram, so was Louis. He couldn’t see any way to drag Acolyte to cover. His own cover wasn’t good, but he stayed where he lay. He called, “Stay back, Acolyte. I brought him here.”

“Yes,” said Bram’s attacker. The walls reflected his voice, masking its origin. “Louis Wu, why have you done that?”

Bram sat in a spreading pool of blood. He could have been trying to tie tourniquets, but he wasn’t. He’d left his weapons lying. It came to Louis that whatever was done for him, Bram would stop eating now and would be dead shortly thereafter. Protectors do that when they lose their reason to live.

Louis called into the dark. “You’d be Tunesmith?”

“And you’d be Louis Wu who boiled an ocean, but why have you made Tunesmith into this?”

Bram broke in. “My time runs short. May I borrow yours? Come, I swear you’re safe. Louis, Tunesmith has asked my question. Why did you open a stepping disk for a Ghoul whom you have never seen?”

“Forgive me,” Louis Wu said. He was having trouble concentrating. That flowery smell! He remained where he was, on his side, nursing his ruined shoulder.

He said, “Bram, you know why I judged you and A

Silence.

“Tunesmith, did you examine the skeleton?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been calling him Cronus. Cronus was your ancestor. I think even Bram saw the implication. Cronus had eighty thousand falans to breed his genetic line toward the traits he wanted. He shaped an empire with communications that reach all the way around the Arch—”

“Ring. It’s a ring,” said Tunesmith.

“Cronus extended his breeding program through an area almost too vast to describe. The Night People must number tens of billions. They’re all one species, as the vampires are not. He shaped you to be ideal protectors.”

Tunesmith said, “I see possible improvements.”

“So? Bram here is a vampire protector. We have recordings of Bram in better health, and you’ll see them. You’re his clear superior. Bigger brain. More versatile. Less reflex, more choices. Bram?”

Bram said, “He beat me. Bigger brain? He was intelligent as a breeder, of course it’s bigger now. Louis, he knows nothing. Invaders threaten. You are obliged to train him!”

“I know, Bram—”

“Contract violation or no, you must teach him. Tunesmith, trust his intent, question his judgment. Learn from the Web Dweller but do not trust until he gives you a contract.”

Louis asked, “My turn?”

“Speak.”

“Tunesmith, protectors do immense damage when they fight. Bram and his mate fixed a problem, and the protectors in charge of the rim wall right now are a local spill mountain species. We need them there. I’ll show you why when we get—” The smell. “—get back to the ship.” It was tree-of-life. “Get me out of here, Tunesmith. I can’t stay here!”

“Louis Wu, you’re much too young to respond to the smell of the roots. It’s faint here, too.”

“I’m too old! The root would kill me!” Louis rolled to his knees. He couldn’t use his right arm—“Last time I smelled this I barely got away.” With Acolyte’s help he was on his feet, and he lurched toward the stepping disk.

He had beaten current addiction once. The tree-of-life smell had turned off his mind in a moment, but he had beaten that, too. It had been much stronger eleven years ago. Only a reformed current addict could have walked away from it.

A hand like a fistful of walnuts had his wrist. “Louis Wu, I heard him use three chords and I followed him through each time. One leads to traps and a weapons cache, one to a fall from the ceiling, and the last flicks us to where we fought. Whole fields of tree-of-life grow there, where an artificial sun—”

Louis began to laugh. The smell of tree-of-life was in his brain, and the way out led to where he had fought Teela Brown!

Tunesmith watched him. He said, “Too old, but something was done to you.”

Bram was trying to laugh. It sounded awful. “I saw records. Nanotechnology. Experiment stolen from Earth, stolen again, bought by General Products from a thief on Fafnir. It’s the puppeteer’s autodoc, Louis!” His voice wasn’t built for it and his lungs were collapsing, but he laughed. “Eighty falans, Louis. Ninety. No more. Remember me!”

Tunesmith and Acolyte were both looking at Louis Wu.

The scent was in his nose, but it wasn’t pulling him. His mind was his own. But that meant …

He told them, “I was very sick. The autodoc must have healed me very thoroughly. Changed everything. Every cell.” Bram was right. Twenty years, twenty-five tops.

“You could become a protector,” Tunesmith said.

“It’s only a choice.”

Bram was dead. Maybe a protector could will his heart to stop. His last words were suspiciously apt.

“It’s an option,” Louis repeated. The strength was draining out of him.

“You’re ill,” Tunesmith said.

The Kzin helped him lie down. Tunesmith’s knobby hands probed him. The portable medkit hadn’t magically healed anything. Tendons, mesentery, a hamstring. His shoulder was badly swollen around five deep puncture wounds. Tunesmith’s arm was worse, puffed out and immobile in a sling, but the protector ignored it.

“I don’t know your kind. I don’t think you can walk, and you may have a fever soon. Louis, what would you normally do for medicine?”

“Back to the ship. Into the ’doc. Heals everything.”

Tunesmith went away, taking the Kzin with him. They were back quickly. They lifted Louis and set him down again. He rose into the air, lying flat.

“This will carry you. Signal the magic door.”

The Ghoul protector had invented the stretcher? No, they’d gone for a cargo plate and rope to pull it. Louis said, “I can’t sing the Hindmost’s programming language.”

“We’re trapped?”