One combatant flared like a sun and dissolved.
The other flared brighter and was gone faster. Four shapes leaped like fleas, a pincer closing on Bram.
Louis started to laugh.
Bram ran for the stepping disk. He blazed like a sun and then he was gone, *here*, off the stepping disk, throwing back his helmet, pulling in air in great gasps. His pressure suit glowed dull red in spots. He stripped it away, keeping the gloves on until he was clear of the rest, hurled the suit into the shower and turned it on.
Louis was still laughing.
And Acolyte seemed to be smiling widely, but on a kzinti that was no smile. He said, "One of you will tell me what happened."
"Whisper is dead and I am alone," Bram said. "Is there more to know? King's protector servants were to guard the ramjet and the barge while we fought. But we three came to fight war on a superconducting field, under superconducting coils. We all chose energy weapons. Stet, Acolyte? The Arch lives by the rim ramjets! We are protectors!"
Acolyte said, "Stet."
"Four protector servants saw that none of us could harm the transport or the ramjet. Whisper and I thought they would kill the losers. But they saw two dying and one unwary, and they struck to free themselves from us entirely! I must have seemed easy meat," Bram said. "Witless ones. If they saw me flick in, couldn't they guess I'd flick out?"
Bram looked at the webeye windows glowing in the Hindmost's cabin. Four protectors in High Point pressure suits gathered around the stepping disk. Their helmet lights blinked heliograph patterns. One looked up into the window. Then all four eased around out of view.
The window went to moire patterns.
"That won't save them," Bram said, and turned. "Hindmost, why was a link made between Weaver Town and the Meteor Defense room?"
The puppeteer said, "Ask Louis Wu."
"Louis?"
One does not reproach a Pierson's puppeteer for cowardice. Louis barely glanced at the Hindmost. "It's the morals clause, Bram. I've judged you unfit to rule the Ringworld."
Bram's hand was a vise on Louis's left shoulder, lifting. Louis could see the Kzin bristling, trying to decide whether to interfere. The protector said, "By what unjustifiable arrogance could a breeder -- It's Teela, isn't it?"
"What?"
"She forced you to kill her. She forced you to kill hundreds of millions of Spill Mountain Folk in order to push the Arch back into place. Of course she had to die to save the hostages she had given me. Of course the Arch would have impacted the sun without plasma to feed the rim ramjets. But why did she impose these tasks on *you*?"
"All right. Why?"
Bram had set Louis on his feet, but his grip hadn't relaxed. "I've read your record from the ship's computer. You open problems, then abandon them --"
Louis believed he was prepared to die, but this was turning weird. "What problems, Bram?"
"You found a dangerous alien species in interstellar space. You opened negotiations, you showed their way to your world, then left professional ambassadors to try to deal with them. Teela Brown you carried to the Ringworld, then left to another's care --"
"Tanj dammit, Bram, she made her own choice!"
"Halrloprillalar you brought to Earth, then allowed the ARM to take her. She died."
Louis was silent.
"Despite Teela, still you have ignored your responsibility for forty-three falans. Only the fear of death brought you back here. But you understood her message, didn't you, Louis?"
"That is *completely* --"
"You must judge the Ringworld's safety. She trusted your wisdom, Louis, and not her own. She was half right, half bright."
The Hindmost spoke from safety behind the kitchen wall. "Teela wasn't wise. Protectors are not wise. Their motives don't come from the forebrain, Louis. She may have been just wise enough."
"Hindmost, that's ridiculous," Louis said. "Bram, I'm naturally arrogant. You're being too clever. Bright people do a lot of that."
"What shall I do about the protectors who killed my mate?"
"We'll ask the High Point People if we can please talk to a protector. We'll tell them they're in charge of the rim. Bram, spill mountain protectors have every interest in protecting the Ringworld from any danger. Anything that happens hurts the rim wall first, and who should know that better than they do?"
Bram blinked. He said, "Yes. Next. I have ruled in the Repair Center for more than seven thousand falans. How do you judge me --"
"I know what you did. The dates, Bram, the dates. You didn't even try to hide them!"
"You talk to too many kinds. You've traveled too far. How could I lie? You might have learned."
"I am," Acolyte said, "bewildered."
Louis had nearly forgotten the Kzin. He said, "He and Whisper searched for the mysterious master protector for -- how long, Bram? Hundreds of falans? But it wasn't enough, even using the telescope display in the Repair Center. The Ringworld is too big. But if you know where a protector will be, you can be there first. A disaster lures protectors. Like Bram. You'll have to do something about that ARM carrier ship, won't you, Bram?"
"Yes."
"Whisper and Bram found a large mass falling toward the Ringworld. That was all they needed. Cronus would have to do something about that. He'd come to the Repair Center. Whisper and Bram would be ready. Stet, Bram?"
Silence.
"Maybe Cronus knew how to stop the impact. Bram and Whisper would have waited, right? See if he could do it. But Bram knew something was wrong --"
"Louis, we think it was his habit. His first move was to set up defenses. We -- We couldn't. Couldn't."
Bram's fingers were sinking into Louis's shoulder, drawing blood.
Louis said, "You killed him before he could finish."
"We moved almost too late! He and we stalked each other. He and we had mapped these vast spaces and set traps." Bram was speaking to Acolyte now, telling of a duel to one who loved such tales. "Anne was crippled for a lifetime. I still don't know how he shattered my leg and hip in the dark. We killed him."
Louis said, "And then?"
"He didn't know, either. Louis, we searched his tools, he brought *nothing*."
"Whatever he had, he never got to use it. You and Whisper, you had no ideas at all."
Bram said, "Acolyte --"
"You let Fist-of-God hit the Ringworld!"
"Acolyte! An enemy waits for me in the Meteor Defense room. Here is your wtsai. Go and kill my enemy."
"Yes," Acolyte said.
Bram whistle-trilled into his eccentric flute. The Kzin stepped forward and flicked out. Louis tried to follow, but Bram's fingers were sunk deep in his shoulder.
Louis said, "You bloodsucking freemother."
"You know where I must be, but I decide the rest. Come." Bram and Louis were on the stepping disk and gone.
Chapter 31 -
The Ringworld Throne
They flicked into the gloom of the Meteor Defense, and Louis was flying, hurled away.
He tried to land rolling. He glimpsed Bram flicking out in a burst of mad flute-oboe music. Something monstrous and shadowy was leaping at Louis, and something much faster scuttled toward them both.
Louis landed on his right shoulder, where a vampire protector had sunk dirty claws deep into the sinew and muscle. Louis cried out and kept rolling, and the first attacker landed almost on top of him. The second fended off a reflexive kick from an orange-furred leg and was at the stepping disk. He played a snatch of flute-oboe music and was gone.
The first attacker swept him up and rolled them another ten feet into shadow. "Louis?"
Louis's shoulder was screaming. He pulled in grea
t lungfuls of air. His nose was full of the smell of Kzin. "Acolyte," he said.
"I intend to kill Bram," the Kzin said.
"He may be dead already." *Smell of Kzin and something else. What?* "Did that other one try to kill you? You were supposed to die to distract him. So was I, I think."
"I didn't scent him until he leapt. He must have judged me harmless."
"Are you offended?"
"Louis, where is Bram?"
"Anywhere. Bram controls the stepping disks. There must be twenty or so scattered through the RepairCenter."
"Yes, he whistles them up, but that other got through before Bram could change the flick, don't you think?"
"What I'm thinking," Louis said, "is that Bram went through and then changed the flick to Mons Olympus, or the rim, or Hell. Then the other one copied Bram's command and changed it back."
"Then we're missing a fine battle."
What was he smelling? Flowers, something flowery, pulled at Louis's attention and made it hard to think. The Kzin's smell was far stronger ... and his fur had hard lumps. Wait, now, that was a throwing knife, and that was a long metal pole with chisel-sharpened ends.
Louis said, "You probably can't kill Bram. For that matter, wasn't he teaching you?"
"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 WeaverTown, 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 Anne unfit to hold the RepairCenter. I haven't heard you say I was wrong. We could argue before Tunesmith and let him judge. Bram?"
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?"
"Not quite."
They set him down. Tunesmith said, "Louis, what shall I do to find my son?"
"Oh ... tanj. I totally forgot Kazarp in all this. Would he hang around the Weavers? Does he have relatives in the area?"
"There were Night People with us when I flicked in. They can return him to his mother. My fear is that he may have followed me."
"Aw, futz! No, wait, you'd smell him. Knowing your own gene line is built into your brain. Tunesmith, he'll know me. Better send me. Don't go yourself."
"I would terrify him. Louis, shall I play random chords?"
"And test them how? Bram set traps. Tunesmith, we don't *need* the stepping disks. I led us back to Needle once before, on foot, without the Hindmost's help. Dug a tunnel. *That's* still in place."