Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

He got out the small dataslate into which he had transcribed his memories of Somnire’s directions. He strapped it to his wrist and consulted the pattern of glowing lines.

“I think we’re here,” he said, with incomplete assurance. He pointed to a magenta squiggle. “Third cave from the north, right?”

“I think so,” said the clone.

“All right,” said Ruiz. “You go first. Take the second left-hand tunnel down. And keep your sensors twitching. According to Somnire, the defenses are mainly topological. We don’t want to spend the rest of our lives wandering around in here, hallucinating our heads off.”

Junior rose cautiously and peered over the barricade. “No. We don’t. By the way — Somnire’s information was very old, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Ruiz.

They met the official welcoming party before they reached the first junction.

First Ruiz heard the shuffle of bare feet, and then the whisper of incomprehensible voices.

The two of them crouched behind a pile of rubble so ancient that it had lost its stink. “What now?” said Junior.

Ruiz shrugged and made sure his ruptor was charged.

A procession came around an angle in the tunnel — a dozen of the semi-human dwellers and three Gencha. The Gencha moved in the midst of the humans, a loose formation that had a ritually protective quality. The humans kept no particular order, seeming to circulate randomly around the Gencha. Ruiz watched for a moment before he realized that the humans were moving in a pattern similar to the movement of the eye spots on the Gencha’s squashy skulls.

Ruiz sank down, trying to be invisible.

The leading human carried a staff, a long sharp-pointed bar of silvery metal, topped with a gilded carving of a Gench. He stopped and planted his staff before him. The procession straggled to a halt behind him.

“Unauthorized visitors!” he said sternly, and then giggled madly. His gaze twitched back and forth, unfocused. His forehead was shingled with eyelids, in three parallel horizontal rows. These opened, fluttering their lashes, but there were no eyes beneath, just shallow pits. “Unauthorized visitors,” he said again. “Come out — you cannot hide from us! Your smell distends our nostrils; our nasal cavities ache with the pressure of your presence.”

Junior gave a low laugh.

“Come out!” the spokesman demanded. When Ruiz and his clone stayed put, the spokesman turned toward the largest of the Gencha, a gesture so like that of a confused dog that Ruiz felt a pang of pitying anger.

The Gench made a low chirping sound at the man, who turned back with renewed confidence. “Come out; we will refrain from tearing your flesh from your bones and will even treat you as guests.”

“Bighearted bunch,” said Junior, and raised his pinbeam. Ruiz looked at his clone and thought, Are my teeth really so long and sharp? Do I look quite so much like a rabid wolf? He shook his head violently, trying to clear his vision.

“No, wait,” said Ruiz. He considered the situation as carefully as the moment allowed and then said, “Stay down. If they attack me, then chop them up.”

He stood slowly, holding his ruptor ready.

“Ah!” said the spokesman, looking at Ruiz as if surprised to see him. “You display the rudiments of mannerly behavior. Your companion is crippled in the legs, yes? So that he cannot stand? No matter. We ask you: Why are you here? Without the tram, without prisoners for the Soulstealer, without the scent of authorization?”

Ruiz considered the proper response to these questions. Guile was often of no use with a madman, unless one exactly understood the nature of his madness. But what could he do but try? “We come to see the Soulstealer, as it is accounted to be one of the wonders of the universe.”

“Rude visitors!” shouted the man. “Tourists who kill the locals as their first act of admiration? I think not. No, no — it’s plain now you’re here to take the Soulstealer for your own. Plain, plain — Yubere warned us that men would come, in hard shells and bearing terrible weapons. To steal our glory, the means by which we will remake the universe. To steal our future — what crime is more terrible? But now we know you and your evil!” He raised his staff and threw it point first toward Ruiz.

Ruiz dodged to the side and the staff flew harmlessly past. Junior rose up and put beams through the spokesman and the largest Gench.

The rest of the procession wavered and then was gone, like switched-off lamps.

Only one body lay on the littered floor of the tunnel — the man with the eyelids on his forehead.

Ruiz and his clone approached the body carefully, but the man was dead.

Junior nudged him with a toe. “What’s going on?”

“We’re starting to see things. It’ll get worse the deeper we go.” He looked again at his clone’s glittering ferocity and thought, It’s just an hallucination. I don’t really look like that.

“How long will we be here?”

Ruiz shrugged. “As long as it takes, I guess.” He switched to Nisa’s clone’s channel. “Nisa? What did you see?”

“A deformed man harangued you, threw a stick at you. Then your clone killed him.” Her voice had a muted, repulsed quality.

“I see.” Ruiz had not expected the mindfire to begin so soon. He closed his faceplate and vents. He had to hope that they would find the Orpheus Machine before they ran out of oxygen and had to open their vents. Junior started to do the same, but Ruiz made a gesture of negation. “Wait,” he said.

He came to a decision. “Nisa? Time to transmit this channel to SeaStack.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Oh, yes.” He turned to Junior. “You have the speech? Good. Take off your helmet.”

Gejas felt a sweet warmth where his heart had once been, before the slayer Ruiz Aw had torn it out. The stronghold was all but his; in a few minutes the scattered resistance would be wiped clean.

At first he ignored the presence of the destroyer’s commander, who stood at the door, waiting to be recognized. Gejas sensed some unpleasant knowledge in the commander, knowledge which he was for the moment unwilling to accept.

But after a minute the commander stepped in uninvited and spoke. “Gejas Tongue: a development.” The commander stepped to an auxiliary screen, tapped at its data-slate. “This was received in a general broadcast just a few minutes ago.” He cued the screen.

Gejas saw Ruiz Aw, wearing armor, holding his helmet under his arm. It was Ruiz Aw, but somehow different, smooth-faced and confident, miraculously untouched by the pain Roderigo had given him. It was unnerving, as if the man was invulnerable, unstoppable. The slayer stood in a dark-walled tunnel, lit by a dim red light. At his feet was a grotesque corpse. “It surely must be him,” whispered Gejas. “All the signs are there.”

“Folk of SeaStack,” said Ruiz Aw. “I’m making this broadcast from far beneath the fortress of the late Alonzo Yubere. Down here, their presence unsuspected by most of Sook, dwell a great number of Gencha and their formerly human servants. I’m here because of a treasure called the Orpheus Machine — a device for performing mass deconstructions, formerly under the control of Alonzo Yubere and Publius the monster maker. I, Ruiz Aw, intend to destroy it.” Ruiz Aw paused and smiled a humorless smile. “I’ll report my progress at appropriate intervals.”

Ruiz Aw replaced his helmet and latched down the seals. Just before he closed the faceplate, he winked at Gejas.

He unslung a pinbeam and moved away down the tunnel, and the camera followed him for a moment before the transmission ended.

Gejas felt his mouth drop open. He had found the treasure Roderigo had sent him to find. He had found the creature who had slain The Yellowleaf. He opened his mouth wider, to laugh.