Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

When his cyborgs found the woman bound in the maintenance niche, he went to see. “Hello,” he said to her, instantly certain that this was a meeting ordained by fate. He called for a chair, and got out the black leather pouch that held his instruments of persuasion.

“You won’t need those,” she said, as he laid out the glittering hooks and knives in a neat little row.

“No?” he asked, in a soft attentive voice. But he used them anyway. Why take a chance?

When he was done, after he had learned so much more about Ruiz Aw than he had hoped to learn, he felt an abstract gratitude toward the lump of screaming bleeding meat that the woman had become.

“Put it out of its misery,” he said to the cyborg as he left.

Ruiz returned to Deephcart’s moorage without incident, to find his clone standing on the narrow deck of a small, heavily armored submarine.

“Hello, Dad,” said Junior, raising a hand in sardonic greeting. “What do you think?”

Ruiz motored slowly along the flank of the sub, noting the rust weeping from the vents, the chipped anti-fouling paint along the waterline, the other small signs of neglect. He shook his head.

Junior, pacing along the deck, laughed. “She’s in better shape than appearances would indicate, I think. Though I’m no expert. Tell me, were you provident enough to take a course in ship surveying since you made me?”

“No,” said Ruiz regretfully.

“Too bad,” said the clone. “I’m in better shape, too. I’ve finally settled into my new body. It feels good.” He shrugged elaborately, as if enjoying the play of muscle and bone. “It almost seems to fit better than my old one. I can’t help wondering who would win, if we wrestled.”

Ruiz smiled. “Let’s hope we never get a chance to find out, Junior.”

He tied up his squirtboat to the quay and went ashore. He took off his helmet and breathed deeply, grateful to have survived his trip into the Spindinny.

After a minute he went down the quay and vaulted aboard the sub. “Show me what we have,” he said.

When they were ready to go, a small group assembled just inside the blast doors, to see them off.

Ruiz, searched the unfamiliar faces, wondering if one of them hid the mind of Nisa. No one seemed at all familiar, except for Hemerthe, who had assumed the body of a beautiful elderly woman. Her dark skin stretched tight and polished over lovely bones, and her long white hair fell down her still-straight back in fanciful curls, gathered with a blue ribbon.

Hemerthe gave Ruiz a hug and a kiss, and then turned to the clone. “Come back to us,” Hemerthe said earnestly to Junior.

The clone smiled but made no reply.

As they went out to the quay, the blast doors ground shut behind them. It seemed to Ruiz that there was a certain finality in the clang the doors made when they met their sills.

The two of them boarded the sub and spent a few minutes stowing weapons and other gear. When it was time to start the engines, Ruiz swung himself into the commander’s chair without thinking.

Junior smiled wryly, but he buckled himself into the copilot seat with no other sign of resentment.

Immediately outside Deepheart’s lagoon, Ruiz submerged and set the planes to force them into a steep dive. “The Lords will have their antennae out,” he said. “We’ll go as deep as we can and then switch to noiseless propulsion.”

Junior nodded in somber agreement. He tapped the datascreen and called up a chart showing deep currents. “Design limit is seven hundred meters, Dad. Look.” He pointed to a thin orange line that slid sinuously around the roots of the city, winding in the general direction of the Yubere stronghold. “Insert us into this current and we could drift at five fifty, and draw no attention at all. The last two kilometers we’d have to shift streams, but it’s our best shot.”

“You’re right,” said Ruiz. He had been about to call up the current chart. He was somewhat distressed that his clone had beaten him to it. What did it mean, if anything?

Junior was still thinking a bit faster. “All these currents are wind-driven,” he said, and called up a weather module. “Strong southeast wind for the last two days — the current should be running strong.”

When they reached the level of the current, Junior’s prediction was borne out, and Ruiz shut down the engines.

An hour after they began their silent drift, they detected a large surface vessel, thrashing along their course at high speed.

Ruiz sank back in his chair, expecting the worst — but the vessel went on without pause.

When the roderigan destroyer crashed through the sill of Yubere’s lagoon and began shedding cyborgs, Corean’s first incredulous thought was, How did they find me so fast?

She locked Yubere’s remaining exterior weaponry on the destroyer, but before she could fire, tracer beams touched her emplacements, followed instantly by grasers that melted her weapons into useless slag.

A moment later, the destroyer hailed her on one of the trade frequencies. She shut down her transmitters so the Roderigans wouldn’t be able to see her. But her screen displayed the mad face of Gejas the tongue, eyes bright with anticipation. “Ruiz?” called the Roderigan. “Are you there yet?”

She was abruptly furious. Her heart pounded and her vision went a little blurry with the power of her rage. Ruiz? He thought Ruiz was coming here? The Roderigans weren’t even after her?

She slapped at a switch and opened the channel, so that he could see her. She had the satisfaction of seeing surprise on the Roderigan’s narrow face. But an instant later the surprise was replaced by hideous gloating satisfaction. “You too?” breathed the tongue in delight. “Oh, I have been very lucky today.”

Corean cursed and shut down the channel, already regretting her foolish gesture. She turned to the Dirm bondguard who waited behind her and told it to withdraw her forces to the second line of defense.

Her mantraps on the first level killed only a handful of the cyborgs, and she began to be afraid.

With some difficulty, Ruiz and his clone found the air lock he had left welded to the ingress, 600 meters below the entrance to Yubere’s stronghold. When he had mated the submarine to the ingress, Ruiz shut down the maneuvering jets. He sat back in the seat and tried to gather his thoughts, but he found himself distracted by the ominous creak of the sea’s pressure.

“So,” said Junior. “What are our chances?”

Ruiz sighed. “Pretty good, I think. As far as I know, everyone who knows about this ingress is dead. So I assume no one will be guarding the tunnel, unless Publius left someone to watch.”

Junior shook his head. “If you’d asked me to guess who might reach out from the grave and do us under, the name of Publius would come to mind first.”

“True,” said Ruiz glumly. “Well, time to get ready, kid.”

The clone gave him a strange twisted smile, and Ruiz felt an odd shock of recognition. He knew how that smile felt from the inside, but he’d had no idea what a bitter shape his mouth could make. One thought led to another: Why did that smile seem so strange to him now? Ruiz put on his helmet to cover his face, to hide it, lest it assume some shape even stranger than his clone’s face had taken.

As they were buckling on the last of their weapons and surveillance gear, Ruiz turned to Junior and patted his clone on his armored shoulder. “I’m grateful to you, Ruiz Aw,” said Ruiz to the clone.

The clone shrugged away the hand, and pulled his helmet on so that his face was hidden. “Think nothing of it,” the clone said over the close-range comm.

Ruiz felt a cold sense of rejection. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and latched down his own helmet.