Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

He traveled among the spires for an hour, and in that time he saw no one, heard nothing but a single distant explosion. A few minutes after that deep dangerous sound, his boat shuddered as a confused wave pattern passed beneath it.

Where were the sampans, the armored barges, the freighters that once swarmed through the city’s channels? The city wasn’t dead, he was sure of that. Ruiz felt nakedly vulnerable; he was certain that hidden multitudes watched him and weighed his intentions. Why didn’t they attack him? His paranoia ran wild, so that by the time he reached his destination his face had developed a painful tautness, and his shoulder muscles twitched.

The gate into Deepheart’s lagoon was still open, he saw with a surge of relief — though one phallic gate post was broken off, and the other drooped at an exhausted angle.

He passed within slowly, trying to look in all directions at once. As he recalled, the lagoon was a perfect spot for an ambush.

When last Ruiz had seen the lagoon, it had been lit by low red lights — but now it was dark as a cave, and he could see nothing at all.

He switched on the squirtboat’s spotlight. He played the beam slowly around the lagoon’s perimeter.

A great face looked back at him from the far side — the bow of a Deepheart effigy barge. It lay along the quay, half-submerged, the black water lapping over its chin. Its heavy-lidded erotic languor seemed tragically inappropriate, and a wild laugh forced its way out of Ruiz’s throat.

The sound echoed across the otherwise empty lagoon. Was Deepheart deserted? If so, his plans would need reformulating.

He heard the hum of a switched-on loudhailer an instant before the voice boomed across the lagoon. “Deltan! Show empty hands and make no sudden moves! Irresistible weapons are locked on you. What are you doing in Deepheart?”

Ruiz laughed again, this time with relief. He stood up and tugged off the Deltan helmet. He raised his hands high and shouted: “It’s Ruiz Aw. Let me in.”

Ruiz left the squirtboat moored to the quay, hidden behind the sunken barge, where it would not be immediately visible should enemies visit the lagoon.

He was met at the blast doors by a fragile-looking young woman in scarred servo-armor. He didn’t recognize her, but she opened her faceplate and spoke in a whispery voice.

“Ruiz Aw. I’m oddly happy to see you again.”

“Again?”

“It’s me, Hemerthe. Your friend from before.”

The first time Ruiz had seen Hemerthe, he had been a tall green-eyed man. “Ah,” said Ruiz. “Hemerthe. How are you?”

“Personally, well enough,” she said, her narrow face dimpling. “SeaStack has become dangerous — as you surely saw. Did you have any trouble reaching us?”

“The city was very quiet,” he said.

“Sometimes it is. At first the fighting was constant and bloody. Now it comes in great spasms that fill the channels with corpses and shattered war machines. Between times they lay low and plot the next frenzy of killing, They grow exhausted, but their ferocity doesn’t fade, at all. No one can understand it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I need to talk to the Joined. About what’s going on in SeaStack.”

“All right,” she said. “We wondered if you would return to us. Come.”

Just inside the blast doors, they passed a squad of armored men and women, crouched behind the shield of a heavy ruptor. They looked up at Ruiz through cloudy faceplates, and in their eyes he recognized suffering puzzlement.

Ruiz followed Hemerthe down the spiraling corridor into Deepheart, remembering his first visit. He and Nisa, with Dolmaero and Molnekh and the treacherous conjuror Flomel, had walked this same path, afraid and expectant.

His frame of mind then seemed, in retrospect, inexpressibly innocent, as remote and forever lost as childhood’s innocence. They had escaped from the slaver Corean and survived a trip across Sook’s violent lands. Ruiz and Nisa had found a deep closeness — never in his long life had he been as happy as he had been on that night aboard the Deepheart barge.

As he walked behind Hemerthe, he felt his mouth pull down into a strange sad shape.

Hemerthe spoke over her shoulder. “We’ve gathered the Joined to hear what you have to say. Don’t be too surprised by what you may see.”

They reached a cross-corridor, turned left, and eventually reached a set of ornate brass doors, carved in low relief. A number of naked smiling people, artfully intertwined, copulated in a variety of imaginative ways. Such cheerfully ribald icons were common in Deepheart.

Hemerthe pushed the doors open, flinging them back and raising her thin arms high. Ruiz smiled a little. They loved drama in Deepheart.

“The slayer Ruiz Aw,” Hemerthe announced, and swept one hand down to point at him with a quivering finger.

Ruiz looked up at the platform where the Joined sat in a half-dozen chairs. He felt a disorienting shock of recognition.

Nisa sat in the leftmost chair, regarding him with sleepy eyes. She looked as though she had just been roused from a nap; her hair was still pleasantly tousled.

He started forward, to sweep her up, to touch her, to feel her life — but then he remembered where he was and stopped. She was watching him with impersonal hostility — nothing more.

“Yes,” whispered Hemerthe at his side. “Jufenal wears the body of Nisa. The body has just become available and Jufenal, because of her position as leader of the Joined, had first claim. We would not have purposely arranged it so, but you arrived suddenly.”

“I see,” said Ruiz painfully. Somehow he had avoided thinking about the clones he and Nisa had given to Deepheart in return for their freedom and Deepheart’s help — even though his half-formed plans had included one of those clones.

Jufenal-Nisa stood abruptly. “What do you want here, Ruiz Aw? It was an ill day when you came to us the first time.”

The other members of Deepheart’s ruling council were nodding. Jufenal went on. “Your arrival signaled the beginning of the convulsion that is destroying SeaStack — and now rumors reach us that the pirate Lords search for a Dilvermoon slayer named Ruiz Aw. That he has something to do with this great treasure they are killing each other to find.” She gave him a look both severe and despairing. “It’s only a matter of time before they trace you to us. And what will we do then?”

Ruiz looked up at that collection of grim faces and wondered what he dared tell them. Would their unique perspective, their commitment to an extreme form of personal freedom, make them immune to the temptation of the Orpheus Machine? He sighed. It was not his nature to trust, and now what choice did he have?

“I must tell you a terrible story,” he said finally.

When he was done, when he had answered all their disbelieving questions, when he had seen skepticism replaced by horrified acceptance… a silence filled the almost empty hall.

“Why have you come to tell us this monstrous thing, Ruiz Aw? Why us ?” asked Jufenal, after a long time.

Ruiz was beginning to wonder the same thing. As he had retold the story, all the unlikely coincidences that had brought him his knowledge of the Orpheus Machine, he had begun to feel a treacherous doubt. Was any of what he believed really true, or had the events on Roderigo broken some essential part of his sanity? Had he made it all up, seeking some justification for the suffering he had endured, the death he had inflicted on so many innocents?

He shook his head. What did it matter? He must act, if there was any chance that Somnire existed and that his information was correct.

“I’ve come for your help,” said Ruiz.

Jufenal shook her lovely head, and Ruiz’s heart ached to see a gesture so much like one Nisa might make. “What help can we give? It’s all we can do to defend our lives, and we don’t know how long we’ll be able to do that.”