Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

“I don’t want anything you can’t give.” He looked down at his hands. “I need an armored submarine. Weapons. A light flatscreen camera with a transceiver powerful enough to be received here — even if the cam is a thousand meters down in the roots of a stack.”

Jufenal looked puzzled. “Why a camera? I had not thought you so eager for fame.”

Ruiz laughed bitterly. “No. Of the things left to me, anonymity is what I value most. But the camera will serve two purposes. I’ll be going down into the Gencha enclave. To survive there, I may have to abandon what shreds of sanity remain to me, and I’ll need someone at the other end of the link to tell me which things really exist — and which are hallucinations.” He looked at Jufenal. “The second purpose is yours. The camera can document the destruction of the Orpheus Machine, so that the pirates will cease their struggles and SeaStack will survive.”

“If you succeed,” said Jufenal. “And is that the entirety of your list?”

“No,” said Ruiz. “I don’t think I can do it alone. I want to borrow the use of my clone. Body and personality. I need someone I can trust at my back.”

Jufenal blinked. “You regard yourself as trustworthy?”

Ruiz shrugged. “I’ve tried not to betray myself… not always succeeding, I’ll admit. Is what I propose so different?”

“I’m not sure; it’s a confusing idea,” said Jufenal. “Well, you must give us time to discuss these requests. Go with Hemerthe; she’ll get you a room and see to your other needs.” The familiar wonderful face grew stern. “If you plan some treachery, control the urge. You cannot evade our surveillance.”

“I plan no treacheries against Deepheart,” said Ruiz in a small tired voice.

Hemerthe conducted him to a small suite. “Here, the hygienic facilities,” she said, indicating an oval door. “Here, an autochef; ask for anything you like.”

She gave him a warm smile. “Here, the bedroom,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Come, we’ll see if the bed’s comfortable.”

There was nothing but kindness and uncomplicated desire in her voice, Ruiz was sure — but he felt no interest at all.

“I’m sure it’s comfortable enough for someone as tired as I am, Hemerthe,” he said, trying to smile at her as pleasantly as she had smiled at him.

Apparently he succeeded in his attempt at tact — or else she wasn’t unduly sensitive. “Sleep well, then,” she said, and went out.

When she was gone, he sat down in the lounger and looked about in a sort of bemused amazement. He saw all around him the conveniences of civilized pangalac life; it was as if the monstrous realities of Roderigo and Dorn had been nothing but bad dreams.

He had a very unsettling thought, sitting there safe and at least temporarily at rest. Why, he wondered, have I so many times left my comfortable retreat on the empty world, my flowers and my vistas? What had he ever accomplished, beyond the ending of a few evil lives — and far too many innocent ones? What had driven him here to Sook, where he must attempt to do a job that all the pirates in SeaStack had failed to do?

He shook his head slowly. Bizarre beyond words, his life had been… and had he ever really noticed that before?

Ruiz felt smaller and less significant at that moment, than he could ever remember feeling. A long time passed before he could get up and go wash the stink of the Deltan armor from his body.

As tired as he was, he slept only a few hours before restlessness drove him from his bed.

He wandered aimlessly about the suite, idly shuffling through his memories. He ordered a meal: noodles with fish and mushrooms, a meal from his childhood. It tasted not at all as he remembered, but it was good and he felt a little better.

He discovered a datalink screen concealed behind a framed print, and to his amazement it responded to his touch.

His surprise diminished somewhat when he saw that it was locked to input only — he could observe the data-stream, but post no responses. The security people of Deepheart were subtle, he thought. He could send no treacherous messages, but they could monitor what he viewed, and thereby glean clues to his purposes.

“Well, why not?” he said. He focused the screen’s retrieval algorithm on the latest offerings in the SeaStack slave market. He began to page through the offerings, surprised at how few items appeared in each category. The disturbances had severely curtailed business, evidently.

A new image formed, and Ruiz’s heart thumped.

It was Nisa, staring moodily from the screen. In her lovely eyes was a look he recognized: controlled anger.

Was this some cruel Deepheart trick? He shook his head violently and looked at the datatag at the bottom of the page.

Member of Pharaohan royalty, it said. Perfect health, well-developed sexual skills, intelligent, biddable. Biddable? Ruiz smiled and read more. Available for viewing. Make appointment.

A datastream address followed, a code which meant nothing to Ruiz. He attempted to search for a real-world address, but the limited capacity of the screen defeated him. Finally he made a note of the code and sat back, looking at her face.

If this wasn’t just some manipulation by Deepheart, then Nisa was alive and in SeaStack. Did it change anything?

Finally he sighed and said, “No.” The task he had set himself must still come first. If by some miracle he survived the trip down into the enclave, then he could go find her.

“I’m sorry, beloved,” he said to her, and shut off the screen.

In the late Alonzo Yubere’s dungeon, the sound of fighting was only a distant thunder. To Nisa’s ears, it was no louder than the storms that sometimes rumbled through the steams of Hell, far below the edge of the world where she had been born.

She had not seen the slaver Corean since their return to the Yubere stronghold.

Corean had thrust her into this small room. “I’ll get around to you, slut,” Corean had said, smiling in an odd lopsided manner. “Now I’ve other things to do.” She had slammed the steel grate and locked it and gone away.

Nisa was glad to see Corean go, despite the unpleasant promise implied in her parting words. The slaver had acquired a brittle volatility of manner, since killing the old cyborg; no longer was she the calm confident murderer she had once seemed. Whatever sanity Corean had once possessed seemed lost forever.

Nisa speculated that the old pirate had meant a great deal more to Corean than the slaver had understood.

She had little else to do but speculate. Her cell was reasonably comfortable, if bare. The light never changed. The food was some bland anonymous paste, the water tasted faintly of some astringent chemical.

So she spent her time thinking about the strange circumstances that had brought her here, and inevitably her thoughts centered on Ruiz Aw, that strange, strange man.

It occurred to her after a while that he had meant a great deal more to her than she had realized. In retrospect, it seemed to her that she had been very foolish to treat him so coldly during the last days of their time together.

She imagined how it could have been. Aboard the Loracca, they might have spent several nights together, several precious nights. Would those nights have been as wonderful as the night aboard the Deepheart barge?

She shook her head. Perhaps not — how could anything surpass that? But what did it matter, these subtle degrees of perfection? Now, in this barren dusty room, when she would never see Ruiz Aw again… just to touch him, to hear his voice, to see his quirky smile — these impossibilities now seemed terribly dear. Her memories of him glowed more vividly than all the things she recalled from her former life on Pharaoh.