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 great 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 Repair Center.”
“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 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.