Under the maglev barge?
The view ahead hadn’t changed. The track ran on and on. The barge and its unwieldy cargo might be decelerating, but even at high gee it would take awhile. Louis wondered if Whisper was planning to ram the terminus. King might be wondering the same thing.
Nah. In ten hours at 770 miles/second, she’d covered around twenty-four million miles. But the track ran for two hundred million miles, and where in that length was her target? She couldn’t give King that much time to shoot at her.
Where, for that matter, was King? The vampire protector could be anywhere, if he’d trained High Point protectors to mount the ramjets for him. What was that?
Maglev sled, the small variety, almost lost on the vast track. Coming straight toward the window. Now veering from side to side, and slowing … matching speed with the barge … contact, and five matching pressure suits were past the webeye before Louis could blink. The Hindmost whistle-chimed, the view reversed, and … gone. They had already disappeared into the maze of coils.
Five matching pressure suits would be five spill mountain protectors, stet? They’d guard the ramjet, protect it from stray effects of a battle, serving both sides. For King, they would also serve as a distraction.
And anyone who had ever watched a magic act might guess that one of the five was King himself, his suit bulked out with additional weapons or armor.
Where were they?
Action far aft. Louis couldn’t make it out. This was going to be frustrating, he thought. He glanced at the Kzin: would Acolyte freak out? But he was watching with the patience of a cat at a mouse hole.
Traces of motion, distant flashes of light … and two maglev sleds were weaving through the coils! Sporadic flashes of light followed them. They dipped below view, then rose. One struck a coil and rebounded into an actinic blast, crashed into another coil and was out, over the edge of the track, gone. The other …
“Clever,” Louis whispered, and lowered his gaze to the bed of the barge. But there was nothing to be seen.
The Hindmost said, “Louis?”
“Whisper had the little sleds following the barge, right aft where King couldn’t see them. I only saw two, but maybe there were more, all slaved to the one she was in, and which one is that? Now she’s dipped them and rolled clear and sent them up again for King to shoot at. Even if King’s figured it out by now, it puts her in two places, and Whisper knows where he is. And I could be completely wrong.”
“The barge will stop soon. Then the dueling field expands, stet, Louis?”
“Ye gods, you’re right. If—”
Bram flicked in.
Light slashed where he had been, but Bram was among the superconductor loops and firing back with Louis’s flash. Light flared among the loops, a storm of energy beams. Bram stood up, holding his suit together with one hand.
The first beam hadn’t missed. It was hellishly intense, having gotten through the laser shielding on Louis’s suit.
Now two tiny man-shapes were firing among the loops, leaping, firing, chewing up the ramjet.
Louis said, “I just—” and stopped.
“Share it,” Acolyte spat.
“Light doesn’t hurt a superconductor. They’re all three using light-weapons. If King had known …”
Bram would be dead if he didn’t get to safety soon. He’d taken cover behind a thick loop of ramjet and was watching, just watching. Likely Bram had no better idea than he did, Louis thought, as to which man-shape was Whisper, which was King. He’d done what he could.
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 moiré 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?”