The wire blade hadn't cut Louis in two. Blind luck. But his hands and wrists felt shattered, he was way off balance, and the knobby man was coming at him. Protector!
Louis rolled off the stepping disk and into a corner and started to stand up. His right wrist was a sea of pain. The left was only numb.
In the space where he had been, something huge flicked in on all fours. It stood erect, as big as an orange bear, holding a small cannon in one huge hand.
The knobby man spun and ducked and swept Louis's variable-knife past the big intruder ... the Kzin. The Kzin's weapon flew away with big clawed fingers still attached. The Kzin froze in a crouch, throttling a howl. The knobby man held the flash, too, in a clear threat.
"You don't move," it said. "Web Dweller, you don't move, either. Louis Wu, you don't move. Does your contract call for you to die?"
The knobby man's lips had withdrawn from the gums; the gums had hardened almost to bone, and jawbone had grown through in a jagged pattern. His face was hard, almost a beak. He spoke with a breathy speech impediment, but in Interspeak. How would the knobby man have learned Interspeak? Eavesdropping on the Hindmost?
*Contract?*
Reality came in waves washing past pain. Eleven years since he'd been in this much trouble. Louis said, stalling, "Yes, under conditions subject to my own sole judgment. Do you accept my contract?"
"Yes," said the knobby man.
Despite what had gone before, that was astonishing.
The Kzin male was bleeding freely from a hand sliced down to one thumb. He was hugging that arm, trying to squeeze arteries shut. His eyes were on Louis. He said, also in Interspeak, "What shall I do?"
"Raise your arm above your head. Keep squeezing the wrist. Squeeze the blood vessels. Don't try to fight. That's a protector. Hindmost, set th-- Hindmost! Nap time is over. For all of us."
The puppeteer uncurled. "Speak, Louis."
The black coffin -- "Your autodoc, you said you could set it to treat a Kzin?"
"Yes?"
"Do that. Then you can tell me what happened. I'm on triple time, by the way, because this has the authentic feel of an emergency."
The Hindmost wasn't at his best. He said, "Heal an injured strange Kzin?"
"Do it *now*."
"But Louis --"
"I'm under contract! This is for *our* benefit. Can't you see who this must be?"
The puppeteer knelt before the 'doc and began mouthing the controls.
The protector still had the flash and variable-knife. Louis couldn't think of anything to do about that, or the sudden strange Kzin, or the constant flicker of dancing puppeteers in his peripheral vision.
One tanj thing at a time!
The Kzin. "Who are you?"
"Acolyte."
"Son of Chmeee," Louis guessed. He'd forgotten how huge a Kzin male became when you stood next to him. This one couldn't be more than eleven years old, not quite full-grown. "No true name?"
"Not yet. Eldest son of Chmeee. I challenged. We fought. Father won. He told me, learn wisdom. Stalk Louis Wu. Acolyte."
"Aww ... Hindmost, how long to set the 'doc for Kzin metabolism?"
"Minutes. Give the Kzin a tourniquet."
Louis moved to the wardrobe dispenser, slowly, hands visible to the protector. His right hand and wrist were hugely swollen. He held that arm raised above his head. His left hand felt numb, but it would work, he thought.
The kitchen wall had menus for kzinti and human cuisine, diet supplements, allergy suppressants, clothing, and more. Louis hadn't seen pharmacy menus, but he didn't doubt they were there. The Hindmost had found him as a wirehead. He would not have shown him how to access recreational chemicals.
Louis dialed {Sol / Nordik / formal} and a selection of cravats. Resisting temptation, he chose an orange and yellow pattern that would look good on a Kzin. Not even his eyes moved toward the Slaver digging tool he'd taped under the dispenser port a lifetime ago.
The smell of the Kzin was faint. Acolyte must have washed himself scentless, to stalk him, Louis Wu thought. His orange fur bore three parallel ridges across the belly. Otherwise he wore Halloween markings: both ears tipped with bitter chocolate, nearly black; a broad chocolate stripe down the back, a smaller chocolate comma down his tail and leg. He was shorter than Chmeee, seven feet even, but just as wide: a hybrid. His mother would be of the archaic kzinti from the Map of Kzin.
Acolyte sat down, bringing his arm in reach. Louis bound the thick wrist with his tie, using his left hand and his teeth. The blood slowed to a dribble.
The Kzin rumbled, "Who is my attacker?"
"Tanj if I know, but if I had to guess ... Hello, knobby man?"
"Speak."
"The Hindmost and I, we both guessed that a protector must be in the RepairCenter. You've been shooting down invading ships. The timing made it obvious you were working from here. The Hindmost left stepping disks all over the place. A protector might reprogram a disk to link with this one as soon as it was turned on ..."
"Yes."
"Then pop through just ahead of me. Finicky timing. You needed me for a distraction, and you counted on puppeteer reflexes. That's interesting, isn't it, Hindmost? You had an instant to escape, but you used it to kick?"
"That old argument. Very well, I reflexively turned my back to fight -- you win."
Louis grinned. The pain wasn't so bad now, but he was drunk on endorphins. He said, "Acolyte. This is a protector. Look him over. They all have that knobby look, and they're all brilliant and dangerous."
"Looked like just another hominid." The Kzin shook his great furry head.
"How long did you watch me?" Louis asked.
"Two days now. I thought, learn from you before I show myself."
"Wisdom?"
"Father spoke of you. He believes he learned what he has of wisdom from you, and so can I. But one of the scavengers saw me."
"The boy?"
"Yes. You named him Kazarp."
"I talked to his father, too."
"The boy and I, we talked. His father was not far, listening, thinking he hides. I spoke what I knew of you. I don't know secrets worth hiding. I did not speak of the Hindmost."
"How does he think we got to the Ringworld, then?"
"You mean Arch? I said you brought a ship. I did not speak to Kazarp of instant transportation. Didn't believe Father. When you linked the transfer booths --"
"Stepping disks. Transfer booths are what we use in known space and the Patriarchy. They're a lot less sophisticated."
"-- stepping disks. I jumped. Catch Kazarp and his father by surprise. Leave them gaping. Surprise!" the Kzin whispered, and slumped. His eyes closed.
"Hindmost?"
"Ready. Bring him."
Louis set his shoulder in Acolyte's armpit and lifted. Acolyte found the strength to stand, wobbled to the surgery well, and toppled in.
Louis pulled his tourniquet loose and straightened the Kzin a bit. He found the Kzin's severed hand, and the two useless halves of the heavy metal handgun he'd carried. He picked up the half hand.
The Hindmost took it in his mouth. "Close the lid," he said, and fed the hand into another aperture. Then he folded his legs and tucked his heads between his forelegs.
Going into shock, Louis thought. The knobby man said, "Suicide?"
One head came up. "I demonstrate helplessness. This is surrender," the Hindmost said.
"Surrender, good."
The Kzin would likely be in there for days.
Louis might have fainted for an instant.
Agony snapped him awake. The protector's knobby hands were moving the bones in Louis's right w
rist. Louis's other hand closed hard on the protector's arm. He moaned and whimpered. Reality came in waves of pain.
Not before the protector withdrew did Louis think to look for the protector's weapons. Just as well. The knobby man's vest bore an amazing variety of pockets, and he saw the shape of the flash in one of those.
Now, what must he do before he fainted again?
*Contract*. He fished out his notepad and offered it to the puppeteer. "This is what you've agreed to. You should read it aloud, given that our companion has bound himself, too."
The puppeteer took the pad. His other head turned to the knobby man. "Why did you do that?"
"I need allies who are not protectors. Protectors kill each other," the knobby man said. "I can hold you to a formal promise made for mutual advantage. Read."
The Hindmost read.
The knobby man -- or woman: he was a bit shorter, a bit more slender than Teela Brown had been after she turned protector. The hairless, leathery skin, the swollen joints, the triangular face and bulging skull, all made it difficult to assign him a gender. Louis thought he could make out traces of male genitalia, but he couldn't swear to that.
Behind the impenetrable wall, a million hologram puppeteers danced. The Hindmost must have thought he'd be back among them before he missed a step.
"... if in his sole judgment the commission involves undue risk --' Sole judgment?"
Louis smiled and shrugged.
"-- undue damage -- clear violations of ethics --' Sole judgment?"
The protector asked, "Hindmost, will you bind yourself similarly?"
The Hindmost whistled indignantly. "You speak of enslavement! How can you possibly compensate me? What I offered Louis Wu was his *life*! Point taken, I accept."
Louis could hold back no longer. He asked, "Who *are* you?"
"I have not needed a name. Choose what you like."
"What's your species?"
"Vampire."
"You're kidding."
"No."
Louis was about to faint.
He'd found Teela Brown's medkit welded to the top cargo plate, long ago. He had to stand up to reach it. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he pushed his swollen right hand into the diagnosis well.
The pain went away. A readout asked him questions. Yes, he wanted to remain awake. No, he couldn't replenish supplies of various medicines ... an ominously long list.
His whole right arm seemed gone and nothing else really hurt. His mind was lucid, free to toy with the pieces of reality and try to put them back together. He had bound himself to serve a protector ... hadn't he? The *protector* had bound himself to *Louis*, to limitations on his power over Louis Wu. And the puppeteer had bound himself, and was himself bound to the protector, by Louis's contract.
He could hear what the others were saying, but the words slipped through his ears and were gone. "Require most urgently ... invaders ... beyond the Arch."
"ARM and Patriarchy ships," Louis said. "Bet." Political entities would invade: it was their nature. He had described the Ringworld for United Nations records. Chmeee had spoken to the Patriarch. What other organizations would know of the Ringworld? "Fleet of Worlds, too?"
"So poorly designed, so ill-protected?" The puppeteer fluted, "Those are not ours!"
"Are these political entities dangerous?" the knobby man asked.
The puppeteer thought they were endlessly dangerous, and said so. Louis's head was bubbling with chemicals; he did not contribute.
"Are they likely to give up their plans?"
"No. I can show you where their interstellar transports hide," the Hindmost said. "Those won't participate in an invasion. Even your sun-powered superthermal laser won't reach the farthest targets. The ships that land will be warships carrying no hyperdrive motors."
"Show me."
"From my cabin."
Louis laughed inside his head.
The unmarked stepping disk flicked only to the Hindmost's cabin, and it wouldn't pass aliens. The Hindmost would be behind an invulnerable wall. What chance was there that the knobby man would permit *that*?
*Vampire* protector. Louis made his mouth work. "What do you eat?"
"I make a vegetable mash. I have not tasted blood in twenty-eight falans," the knobby man said. "My hunger is no risk to you."
"Good," Louis said, and closed his eyes for a moment.
He heard, "Hindmost, you will only break your contract once. Show me all of the invader ships."
The Hindmost's answer was a warbling, whistling music with overtones in subsonic bass. Louis's eyes popped open to see the dancers disappear, replaced by rotating three-space star maps.
The system looked nearly empty save for the Ringworld and its shadow squares. Color-coded lights blazed far from the Ringworld's arc, and scores of smaller sparks swarmed much nearer. Louis couldn't see motion on this scale, but they seemed to be taking positions around the system, as if just becoming aware of each other.
"I must return to defend the Arch," the knobby man said. "You come."
The puppeteer shied. "But maps are only available here in Hot Needle of Inquiry!"
"I have seen them now. Come."
Louis was alone.
And the picture changed as they flicked out. In the captain's quarters was a three-dimensional circuit diagram of some kind ...
*Enough.* Louis leaned his head against the stacked cargo plates and closed his eyes.
***
He dozed, leaning against the stack of cargo plates with his arm in the medkit. Loss of balance snapped him awake from time to time.
Behind the aft wall was the lander dock, nearly empty since Teela burned the lander. Louis couldn't quite remember what else was in there. Lockers for pressure suits and armor, of course, and a stack of stepping disks. He had a vague impression that the Hindmost had made changes, eleven years' worth of fiddling.
To ship's port and ship's starboard the walls were black. Needle was embedded in black basalt: cooled magma.
A network of lines and dots floated beyond the forward wall, like an ant's nest seen by deep-radar. It teased at his mind.
Dots *there* and *there* and *there*. Those two linked, and those three. Here, a network of ten. Way off in the distance, one of the ten appeared to be two dots superimposed. Sketchy contours in the background might shape a map.
The Hindmost must be trying to show him something.
When bladder pressure was stronger than his fear of pain, Louis pulled his hand free and wobbled to the toilet. Evidently he still had a medical problem. Afterward he drank a quart of water. He ate a civilized Caesar salad for the first time in eleven years, left-handed. No more of eating whatever he could find! That, he would not mind giving up.
He examined his hand with meager satisfaction. The swelling was down; the bones seemed to be in place.
He left the machine twice more. The pattern caught his eye again as he left the recycler.
*Stepping disks!*
His subconscious must have been at work. That map defined the stepping disks the Hindmost had deployed. Several were scattered through the millions of cubic miles of RepairCenter. Four in Hot Needle of Inquiry itself. One just outside. The double-point must be the refueling probe in WeaverTown, with one disk for transport and another for hydrogen.
The Hindmost had left him this. Louis studied it, fixing it in memory, wondering at the puppeteer's motives ...
And it all popped back to dancing puppeteers as the knobby man flicked in.
The protector had something in his hand. He blew into it, watching Louis's face. Music fluttered in the air, a woodwind sound.
Louis's reaction must have be
en unsatisfactory. The protector put the thing away. He examined Louis as a primitive doctor would have, probing here and there to see what hurt. Presently he said, "Not much longer."
Louis had had a notion. He said, "My kitchen wall can be made to dispense blood."
"Will you drink first?"
"No, I won't. I'm not a vampire. Also, the Hindmost will have to rewrite the kitchen program. No, wait, let me try something."
At the kitchen wall Louis popped up a virtual keyboard for kzinti cuisine, marked in dots-and-commas, Hero's Tongue. Louis knew a little of that. He scanned through the extensive menu with the knobby man watching. {Wunderland cuisine} -- no. {Fafnir cuisine}? Not under that name. Try {sea life}. There, under the planet's kzinti name, {Shasht}. {Meat}, {drink}, too many items. Try {seek: meat/drink}. Four times. Three were soups, with as an ingredient, and that left {shreem} itself.
{OVERRIDE laws pertaining to Shasht / Fafnir, Earth, Jinx, Belt, Serpent Swarm ...}
A bulb popped into the dispenser port, filled with sluggish red fluid.
The knobby man took the bulb. He took Louis's jaw, faster than he could flinch. His grip was like iron. "You drink now," he sad.
Louis opened his mouth, obedient. The knobby man ejected a dollop of sticky red fluid into Louis's mouth. The taste was unfamiliar, but Louis recognized the smell. He swallowed anyway.
The knobby man drank, watching Louis. "You surprise me. Why would you make blood for me?"
For eleven years Louis had been eating what he could catch, or what unknown hominids would offer as food. "I'm not squeamish," Louis said.
"Yes, you are."
In truth, what he had smelled and tasted was making him nauseous. He said, "I have kept to our contract, which calls for me to act in your interest. You are in violation. I judge it wrong for me to drink human blood, and I said so."
The knobby man said, "The medkit is through with you, isn't it? You put on your pressure suit. Come with me."
"Pressure suit. Where are we going?"
The protector said nothing.
Louis grinned. He pointed through the transparent wall aft. "Vacuum gear, landing craft, airlock, anything Chmeee and I might need to get out of this ship is in the lander bay. I can't get there except by stepping disk. The Hindmost was holding us prisoner."