Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

“Why should I believe you?” said Kroone, but his voice shook.

“Can your armor’s transceivers access the SeaStack general datastream? Tune in. See what they’re saying.” Ruiz spoke in a voice of calm patient reason.

A minute passed. Then Kroone spoke in a weak frightened voice. “We’re as good as dead.”

“Not so!” Ruiz now sounded quite cheerful. “Not so at all. If we can come to an agreement, I’ll take you to a secret egress from the stack, where a sub awaits to take us away from this unpleasant place. But time escapes us on swift feet, and you must decide. How intense are your loyalties to the slaver?”

Another short silence ensued. Finally Kroone spoke. “They do not extend past the line between life and death.”

“A reasonable attitude! Let me make you aware of one more fact. In my helmet is a charge of explosive; wired to the charge is a neural deadman switch. Betray me and we all die, because you will not find the egress without me.”

“Understood,” said Kroone heavily. “But why do you need us? If you can kill us and get away, why not just do so?”

“Several good reasons,” said Ruiz Aw. “One, I value these prisoners and would not wish them to be injured in the skirmish. Two, a crowd of monsters has recently assembled to cut me off from the pit; we must fight our way through them. Three, maybe I couldn’t kill all of you. Who knows? Castle Delt manufactures efficient killers.”

“At least you acknowledge this truth,” said Kroone. “All right. We’ll agree to your bargain. Come out; we’ll arrange the details.”

An armored man stepped cautiously from behind a curtain wall at the back of the cavern. To Nisa’s drugged eyes, Ruiz Aw seemed no different from any of the other armored men who rose from their hiding places. No different at all — and this perception darkened, just a little, the hope that had taken root in her heart.

Abruptly Molnekh stood up. He stared hotly at Ruiz Aw, then at Kroone, who were slowly approaching each other in the center of the cavern.

In the next instant, the conjuror was running for the ladder shaft, his long legs moving much faster than Nisa would have thought possible. Ruiz Aw seemed oddly slow to react, as if he didn’t remember that Molnekh was a traitor.

Nisa didn’t have time to think it through. “Molnekh is Genched,” she shouted. “He’s going to warn Corean.”

Ruiz raised his weapon, and a line of green sparkling light struck through Molnekh’s narrow back. He tumbled along the ground, tried to crawl to the edge of the shaft, but his strength failed him and he died scrabbling toward his goal.

“I’d forgotten,” Kroone said in a shaken voice.

“Once again I thank you, Noble Lady,” said Ruiz. But his voice was oddly detached… and had a sadly formal undertone. “Treachery is no business for the bemused.” He turned from Molnekh’s corpse and began to confer in low tones with Kroone, and Nisa felt a great puzzlement. What was wrong with Ruiz Aw? What was he talking about?

She soon forgot to wonder, as the illusions clouded her mind again.

Before they left, Ruiz made Kroone unleash them from the coffle.

He even freed Flomel, to Nisa’s astonishment — almost as if he had forgotten all the dreadful things Flomel had done.

Flomel rubbed his neck and looked innocently grateful, and oddly enough, Nisa believed that he was showing his true face.

“Then anyone can change,” she said to herself.

Corean ran behind the Moc, which followed close on the heels of the grotesque Soosen. The servitor was staggering a bit, gasping — obviously the pace was too quick for her. But Corean felt no fatigue at all, and the weight of the ruptor strapped to her arm was nothing, a deadly feather.

She called to Soosen. “Run, monster. If we fail to catch Ruiz Aw, I’ll take you away from here, out into the cold universe alone, where you’ll never smell another Gench as long as you live.”

Soosen threw a terrified glance back over her shoulder, and Corean laughed aloud.

Ruiz Aw followed the blood trail, and with every step he drew closer to the wounded person he pursued. Now he began to catch glimpses of a thin woman, who limped around each new turning of the tunnel with a little more desperation, with an increasingly frightened face. She seemed at first glimpse to be as human as Ruiz — but when he got a little closer, he saw that chevrons of pink mucus membrane decorated her back, gleaming wetly in the red light. The design gave her back the look of some odd crustacean, its alien flesh bulging beneath a segmented carapace of human skin.

Her wound was bleeding less, he saw when he was almost on her, though her leg seemed to be stiffening. Her gait had become a lunging shuffle. He slung his ruptor and prepared to seize her. He felt a sickness in his stomach; would she tell him where to find the Orpheus Machine, or would he be forced to torment the information from her?

He wasn’t sure he could do it. Despite his sealed armor, he suddenly smelled the ancient familiar scent of blood. A black memory of the Roderigo slaughterhouse slipped through his mind.

He was ten meters behind her when the Gench stepped out from a side passage, blocking his path.

“Stop, please,” it said as Ruiz skidded to a halt, almost losing his balance on the slippery tunnel floor. He shifted his ruptor, ready to fire. It made no aggressive movement.

The respite had apparently given Ruiz’s victim fresh energy; she vanished around the next corner with renewed speed.

He started to dodge past the Gench; their alien physiologies and psyches reportedly made Gencha difficult to torture — and how would one judge the truth of their admissions? But it spoke again. “Ruiz Aw. Wait. I would speak with you, to your advantage. Let the servitor go; it could provide no significant assistance to you in its present state of hysteria.”

Ruiz was so startled by this remarkable speech that he forgot all about the escaping woman. “You know me?”

“Yes. You do not remember me? I feel no surprise. I was the young Gench you freed from Publius the monster maker. I have an opportunity to redress this imbalance of gratitudes now.”

In his astonishment, Ruiz allowed the muzzle of his ruptor to drop for a moment, then jerked it up. “How? But more to the point, why? Gratitude is a human response.”

“No matter. I have other reasons. So. I will lead you to the thing the humans above call the Orpheus Machine. We must go quickly; the human Corean and her great warrior are close behind us. And two of her human killers.” Its eyespots scurried around to the far side of its skull.

Ruiz hesitated, looking down the tunnel. “Give me a reason to believe you.” He recalled an uncomfortable fact: he had once lectured this young Gench on the correspondence between sapience and the capacity for treachery.

A quiver ran through the Gench’s sacklike body. “Above, they fight for control of this Machine. Not so?”

“Yes.”

“And will they stop before they have it? Even if they must scour the stack down to bedrock, and slay everything that dwells within?”

“No,” admitted Ruiz.

“Then it is not our treasure, but our doom.” The Gench extruded a tentacle from one of its mouths; the tentacle lifted a small dataslate, apparently looted from the sump. “And did you mean what you said in your broadcast? That you will destroy the Machine?”

“I’ll try,” said Ruiz, who had passed beyond astonishment.

“Then if I wish to survive, I must aid you. As before. Though I must warn you, the Machine is persuasive and will argue forcefully for its life, so that you may lose your resolve.”

“And do any of your fellow Gencha think as you do?”