Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

The only sound Ruiz heard was the low sobbing sounds that Nisa’s clone was making, a sorrowful music coming down the link.

He looked down at his dead self for a time, wondering. Why had Junior come back? Surely he must have understood the probabilities of the situation — that at best he would be saving his rival for Nisa’s love, that at worst he would find an ugly death. Why?

After a while an explanation came to him. Junior had been duplicated in the uncomfortable cusp of Ruiz Aw’s changed life, halfway between the cynical machine he had been for so long and the human being he was still becoming. His clone must have acted with only the dimmest understanding of the motives that now drove Ruiz Aw. But he had acted, and in an honorable and decent way. Ruiz felt a kind of twisted crippled pride… and a great sorrowing anger.

He got up and went back to Corean. He pulled a heat-sealer from his waist rack and temporarily melted the wrists of her armor together behind her back, just in case she was feigning unconsciousness.

He raised his eyes to the Orpheus Machine.

A VERY strange sound came from the Machine’s hiding place, a sound so strange that Ruiz at first could not identify it.

Then he understood that it was laughing, nervously and from a multitude of throats.

“Come out,” Ruiz said. “Now!”

The laughter slid seamlessly into an eerie moan, but the armored door opened and the Machine came forth, edging into the light unsteadily.

Were it not so monstrous a thing, Ruiz might have been moved to pity. Its health had deteriorated; it was not the sleek horror it had once been. Wrinkled flesh sagged from its bones, and here and there meat had sloughed away from its metal chassis. Among the hundreds of feet that moved it, many were hanging dead and half-decayed, nothing but dragging bones and scraps of sinew. Even the metal was corroded, and only a few of the Gencha segments still showed active sensory tufts.

“What may I do for you, new master?” it asked in a voice that broke and bubbled.

A rustle behind him made Ruiz whirl — but it was only the Gench. Evidently the creature had survived the Moc’s return, a fact which pleased Ruiz a little.

“Do not trust your eyes, Ruiz Aw,” the Gench said. “The Machine is old, but still strong. Here in its lair, we cannot entirely suppress its power to project a semblance.”

Ruiz shook his head. “What do you see?” he asked Nisa’s clone.

“A hideous thing. I cannot begin to describe it… but it does not seem weak to me.”

“Thank you.” He stepped forward and slapped the first mine against the thing’s chassis, triggered its lock-on barbs. They punched into the metal with a pneumatic clang, releasing a puff of vapor. The Machine screamed, a terrible many-voiced harmony.

Ruiz took out the next mine. “Don’t move,” he ordered.

“Oh, please, master,” sobbed the Machine. “Don’t do this foolish thing.” Its tongue came out, and the hands patted entreatingly at Ruiz, leaving trails of slime on his armor.

“Please please,” it said. “Don’t take my poor miserable life, such as it is. I’m only a tool, like a gun or a mech; I can only do what I’m told. Monsters have ordered me to do monstrous work. Is that my fault? No! No!”

Ruiz fixed another mine to the Machine. The mindfire seemed to have thickened inside his skull, so that everything was too bright, too loud, too painful. “Is the mine attached to metal?” he asked Nisa’s clone.

“Yes,” she answered. “But the metal bleeds red. Does that matter?”

“No,” said Ruiz.

“Oh please,” said the Machine. “You’re no monster; you could make a new universe with my help. Think! Think, please. What do you hate most? I see it written in your soul — you hate slavery. A monstrous institution, no question. I understand these things. Who is more enslaved than I?”

Ruiz felt a dizzy uncertainty, but he went on to another patch of bare alloy and set another mine. “You’re wrong,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m as monstrous a person as you’re ever likely to meet.”

The Machine made a high squeal of terror. “Oh, stop,” it implored. “No no no. You’re missing the great opportunity of your life, throwing it away like so much garbage. You hate the Art League? Their commerce in humanity? We could crush it, set a thousand worlds free. Think!”

Ruiz raised his last mine, then lowered it. “It’s too late, anyway,” he said, thinking of the soldiers who fought far above.

“No, no. Not at all.” The Machine’s voice strengthened, became sure and sweet, swelled with confidence. “You’re too tired to think straight; that’s why you’re trying to destroy humanity’s best chance for happiness. Listen to me: I’m your hostage against those who will come; you’ve secured me against all your enemies. You’ll have your finger on the trigger, you’ll demand men to defend us, in exchange for my services. Whoever comes will be afraid to risk destroying me — they’ll give us men. We’ll make them safe forever; they’ll be the beginning of our army. And you’re clever, much brighter than the slaver Corean was. Such an idiot she was. Soon you’ll best your enemies and we can get on with making the universe free.”

“Roderigo first,” said Ruiz slowly, staring at the last mine, but not seeing it. Instead he saw worlds throwing off their ancient chains, rising into the sunlight of a new age. The mindfire consumed him, and lovely visions filled his universe: the laughter of freed slaves, the smiles of children, humanity sailing the void between the stars, safe and certain. He saw the wounds of humanity heal, the lifeblood no longer draining from humanity’s heart.

He saw Gejas the Tongue, begging for mercy, begging to keep his soul, and he saw Ruiz Aw laughing and tearing it from his enemy. He closed his eyes, so as to see this prophecy more clearly.

He felt bright laughter well up in his chest. “Beautiful,” he said.

“Yes!” sang the Orpheus Machine. “And look! See who has come?”

Ruiz turned to the arch. His heart thumped. Nisa stood there, looking lost. He remembered that he still wore his helmet; naturally she did not recognize him.

He reached up to unlatch the helmet. But a small voice spoke against the roaring joy that filled him.

He didn’t want to listen, but the voice, though small and sorrowing, was insistent. “Ruiz?” it said. “Ruiz? What are you looking at? I don’t see anything there. Ruiz?”

The joy turned cold and heavy within him, and Nisa’s ghost wavered into a warm shimmer… and then was gone.

“You’ve gone much too far, Machine,” Ruiz said grimly, and set his last mine.

The Orpheus Machine made a panicky gobbling sound, then broke into an unintelligible babble. The babble resolved gradually into desperate words. “An honest misstep. I was just trying to show you how we could bemuse your enemies, when they come. And what about freedom ? Can you turn your back on the universe?”

“I think I must,” said Ruiz.

“No! No, you can’t!”

Ruiz stepped back from the Machine’s despairing face and tuned the mines to the transmitter on his forearm, so that he could detonate them remotely. “I cannot be the Emperor of Everything,” he said, regret filling his heart. “I’m much too much less than a god.”

The Gench still waited patiently by the far arch. Ruiz beckoned, and it came slowly forward. “A favor; will you do me one?” he asked.

“If I can.”

“You can.” Ruiz went to Corean, who still seemed unconscious. He stripped off a gauntlet and put his hand to the pulse in her neck. It was slow and strong. He put the gauntlet back on, got a grip on the neck flange of her armor.