Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

“How do you know?”

“He was working for me, and one of my enemies took his head.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.” Junior seemed genuinely distressed, as he should have been, but Ruiz detected a trace of superficiality in his clone’s reaction. What did that mean? “Did you get even, or are we waiting for the universe to do the job?” Junior asked.

“Well. I didn’t kill Albany’s murderer… but I got to watch him die. Publius it was—”

“Good!” His clone’s face showed a degree of satisfaction that Ruiz now found a bit repellent, though he agreed with Junior’s basic sentiment. “Publius, eh? I won’t ask you about him. A greater monster than any of his children.”

For some reason Ruiz felt a compulsion to tell his clone about Publius. He debated the wisdom of this only for a moment, and then he told the story: how he had assassinated Alonzo Yubere, how he had lost all his people, how Publius had betrayed him, how he had allowed Publius to die. He told all this in growing shame, but when he was done, there was nothing in his clone’s face but bland acceptance. Looking at that face, Ruiz grew a little angry, though he could find no reason for his anger.

A silence followed. Finally Ruiz spoke again. “So, have you any further wisdom for me?”

Junior smiled crookedly. “No, I guess not. I have this urge to tell you not to do anything I wouldn’t do. But I can’t decide if that would be funny, or not.” He made a wry face.

Ruiz got up. He wondered if it would be appropriate to shake hands with himself. “It is a confusing situation.” He looked down at his clone and thought, What an oddly vulnerable-looking person, for all that he has the hands of a strangler. His anger faded into a strange pity. He spoke impulsively: “The Fuckheads told me that Nisa’s data-stream address is Yubere’s stronghold. What do you think?”

Junior’s head snapped up. “Really? How interesting.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “That would seem to mean that Corean holds the stronghold. Or perhaps she did hold it, and whoever took it from her is selling off her assets.”

“Those probably aren’t all the possibilities,” said Ruiz.

“No, no. Probably not.” Junior gave him a very odd look, and Ruiz had no idea what his clone was thinking. “But if we run across Nisa while we’re breaking the Orpheus Machine… and we all survive, she’ll have a decision to make, won’t she?”

“I suppose,” said Ruiz. His mouth felt dry.

The look on his clone’s face shifted and Ruiz finally made some sense of it. It was compounded of envy and desire, embarrassment and determination. “I really don’t like it here, much,” said Junior.

“Well, I didn’t want to stay here, either.”

“Yes. If we all survive, I wonder what will happen. It occurs to me that I’m the man who rescued her from Corean. You’re the man who took her to Roderigo and then gave her back to Corean.” Junior wore a taut challenging grin.

“That’s true,” said Ruiz. He felt an abrupt rage, which he struggled to keep from reaching his face. Had he been insanely naive, to think that he could trust his other self?

Junior slumped and dropped his face into his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve lost her in a stranger way than you have. That must be why I’m acting this way.”

Ruiz’s rage disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. “I understand,” he said. “I understand.”

When he went out the door, Junior was still hiding his face in his long strangler’s hands.

Gejas stood on the bridge of the destroyer, facing into the wind of their passage, a wide grin frozen on his mouth. He fingered the bandage on his neck, where the hetmen had attached their interrogation devices. He thought of Ruiz Aw and his grin grew wider.

Down below, protected by the destroyer’s heavy armor, were ten maniples of brain-chopped cyborg slayers, cocooned in stasis pods. Steel seeds… soon they would sprout into blood and pain.

As he had known they would, the hetmen had commanded him to go to SeaStack. Through a tongue who had stared at Gejas with a fascinated revulsion, the hetmen had said: “Gejas Tongue, you have allowed your god to be murdered. In only one way can you make amends. Bring us the treasure hidden in SeaStack.”

“I will,” he had said. But in his heart he kept a thought hidden, and it had to do with Ruiz Aw. What a pleasant, warming thought it was.

Ruiz donned his newly redecorated armor, cinching the straps tight with a kind of automatic intensity. But his thoughts were far away from Deepheart and the dangerous job he was about to undertake.

For some reason he kept thinking about Nisa in the canalside fountain on the day after they had escaped from Corean. Her pale perfect body, her smile, the way the water glistened on her skin — pretty memories, almost too pretty to be real.

He shrugged, to settle the gel pads that protected his shoulder. He smoothed the skinmask over his features and looked in the mirror to check its fit. He realigned the mask slightly and nodded at his unfamiliar reflection.

He picked up his helmet. Time to go, he thought.

The waterways were as deserted as before. Ruiz drove the squirtboat through the city and met no one at all until he was within a kilometer of the Spindinny’s stack.

Then he saw something that shocked him and made him dodge into the shadowed side of the channel.

A huge old starboat swooped down from the heights, spiraling around the stacks at high speed. Ruiz recognized its jaggedly baroque style, all spines and barbs. It resembled its owners, the Shards, the ancient race who owned Sook and enforced its eccentric rules.

He caught a glimpse of a hideous alien face as the boat sped by. A loudhailer squealed, and then a synthesized voice roared, “Attention, inferior species! Shard law must be observed in every detail, no matter how your enemies press you. All weapons must be line-of-sight and non-nuclear. No surface vehicles may exceed a speed of two hundred kilometers per hour. No air travel from local twilight to local sunrise. No more than three vessels of more than ten tons standard mass shall maneuver as a group. Violators will suffer instant and terminal correction!”

The starboat disappeared behind the nearest stacks and began to repeat its message. Ruiz was amazed. Never before, to his knowledge, had the Shards descended from their orbital platforms to instruct their tenants. How volatile had the situation become? It appeared the Shards had grown anxious about their property.

He went on, exercising even more caution, and finally arrived safely at the Spindinny’s lagoon.

The lagoon was under one of the largest stacks in the city and, remarkably, was full of boats. Under the purple glare of the lagoon’s lights, the vessels revealed the marks of hard use and battle.

There were no empty berths along the quay. Ruiz passed slowly along the line of boats, which were tied two and three deep to the dock. Why this unusual gathering?

As he passed a large whaleback torpedo boat, a man came from a hatch and stood swaying on its armored deck. The man wore a threadbare shipsuit, patched with the sigils of a dozen obscure campaigns. Ruiz identified him instantly as a mercenary — his face had the hollow intensity of a man who lived by violence. He wore an elbow punchgun, which he didn’t aim directly at Ruiz.

“Hoy!” the man said. “Are you here for the meeting? Of course you are… throw me your lines; I’ll tie you off.” His voice was slurred and too loud. Drunk, thought Ruiz.

Still, a berth was a berth, so he tossed his mooring cable to the man, who wobbled over to a midships bollard and dropped it over.