Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

The remaining soldier died just as swiftly.

Nisa was afraid to look at Ruiz, afraid that she would see him destroyed as thoroughly as the two soldiers had been. But when she finally turned back, he was rising from the ground, holding a huge weapon, which he had apparently concealed behind his back.

Corean holstered her weapon, from which vapor swirled, and then took off her helmet. Nisa saw the dead-ness in her face.

Ruiz came toward her slowly, as if he could not believe in Nisa’s reality. “Are you really there?” he asked, voice muffled by his helmet and some wary potent emotion. But still… his voice.

“Yes,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. He leaped aboard the tram and gestured at the slaver, a peremptory motion to which Corean instantly responded, boarding the tram and taking the other seat. Ruiz threw the lever and the tram gathered speed, sliding up the rail toward the darkness above.

Not until they were all aboard the submarine, casting off from the air lock, did he finally remove his helmet. He was different again, she thought. His eyes were terribly weary, but somehow soft. His face seemed both older and more innocent.

“Hello,” he whispered. “We must be very quiet.” He pointed to the surface.

“Hello,” she said. Her own eyes filled, so that his face was only a dark shimmer in the sub’s red light. She smiled at him and touched his stubbled face. The smile spread from her mouth to her heart.

Ruiz allowed the sub to drift with the deep cold currents, content to escape slowly and silently. From the sea above them came explosions and hissing jet drives and the metallic agony of sinking vessels as the sea crushed them.

Dolmaero had patted his back and squeezed his hand, broad face shining with the pleasure of their escape. Even Flomel, whose treachery and arrogance had given Ruiz so many difficulties, nodded and gave him a small but seemingly genuine smile.

He sent Corean to a dark corner, so that he wouldn’t have to look at his handiwork. “She’s harmless, now,” he whispered to the Pharaohans.

While he waited for the sub to drift clear of the battle, he watched Nisa, who returned his regard with identical concentration. Occasionally he checked his chronometer, waiting for the time when the Machine’s destruction would be broadcast.

Ten minutes before that moment, he judged it safe to start his engines. He pushed away from SeaStack with all the speed he could muster. Gradually he brought the sub closer to the surface, where he could further increase the speed with which they fled SeaStack.

When Ruiz Aw’s face appeared on the screen, Gejas Tongue dropped what he was doing and gave all his attention to the slayer’s cold dark face. He noted that the slayer’s eyes shimmered with the mindfire’s madness, and he thought, Ruiz Aw isn’t enjoying himself.

The small pleasure of that perception evaporated as Ruiz Aw began to speak. “Listen, people of SeaStack. I promised to destroy the Orpheus Machine; I’m about to honor that promise.” He stood aside slightly, so that Gejas could see something dreadful behind him.

The dreadful thing wailed and swayed, but Ruiz Aw’s voice rose above that noise. “In a few moments the Orpheus Machine dies. You may not believe the evidence of this broadcast — but the Gencha will allow you to verify this event. So send observers, unarmed, and the Gencha will escort them to the remains of the Machine. There will be very little left, not enough for analysis, so abandon your dreams of domination. It’s over.”

Ruiz Aw stepped out of the picture, leaving Gejas to look at the Machine.

A minute or two passed, but Gejas failed to notice the passage of time. He was waiting for Ruiz Aw to return, to explain the real situation.

When the mines detonated, and he watched the Machine dissolve into scrap metal and shattered flesh, Gejas at first could not understand what he had seen.

A few minutes trailed by. The sounds of battle faded, until he was alone with his thoughts and his failure. His heart had turned into a small hard stone. He remembered The Yellowleaf. Her beauty and strength. The ugliness of her death.

His thoughts ran in shrinking circles, full of raging sorrow. Ruiz Aw had slain a god. No matter what else, Ruiz Aw must not be allowed to escape, to go unpunished. Gejas could not delay; Ruiz Aw was at this moment climbing out of Hell. He must act, to preclude any possibility of Ruiz Aw’s survival.

Running as fast as he could, Gejas descended to the destroyer’s engine room, where the black gang maintained the fusor that powered the ship. He approached the fusor’s control panel and began to nudge the fusor toward instability.

After the technician on duty tried to stop him, he killed the man without really noticing the act.

He charmed away the safeguards one by one. When the reaction trembled over the line into irretrievability and the alarms rang continuously, he had time for one last smile.

As they passed through SeaStack’s abandoned perimeter, Ruiz had released a tiny sensor buoy, which trailed on a filament just under the surface. Occasionally Ruiz checked the buoy for evidence of pursuit.

He happened to be watching when the image turned white and then failed. A few moments later a shock passed through the water they traveled through, a sensation somehow different from any other they had felt beneath the battle. The hull rang, a pure bell-like sound.

“What was that?” Ruiz muttered, amazed. He released another buoy and looked back to see a great white cloud hovering over SeaStack. Several of the stacks had collapsed; as he watched, another leaned slowly into the boiling base of the cloud.

He noticed a number of small aircraft swirling around the cloud, a swarm of angry insects. Shards.

“Oh, they’re going to be angry,” whispered Ruiz. He hastily cut the sensor buoy loose, hoping he hadn’t been noticed, and took the sub down to a safer depth.

Some hours later, he surfaced and the sub fled across the ocean on its foils, making rainbows of spray.

Two days later they reached the mouth of the Soaam River, where they found a safe harbor and a buyer for the submarine. The small market town of Boca del’Infierno was abuzz with the news from SeaStack — and of the subsequent events on Roderigo.

“Just a hole burning in the sea now, Roderigo,” said the plump innkeeper in whose pleasant establishment they stayed while Ruiz bargained for an airboat. “The Shards punished the hetmen severely, they did. They say the spot will steam for a year.”

Ruiz shook his head in theatrical disbelief. “You don’t say,” he said, wide-eyed.

“I do indeed say,” said the innkeeper with obvious satisfaction. “High time, too, if you ask me.”

Ruiz could afford separate rooms for them — though his room adjoined Nisa’s. He put Corean in Flomel’s room, since he didn’t quite trust the conjuror. “She’s perfectly harmless,” he told Flomel, who accepted the slaver’s strange presence without protest.

He left the door to Nisa’s room unlocked, and waited in an uncomfortable chair. He felt no urge to sleep, though he was very tired. Remembrance possessed him, and he thought back over all the strange events that had led his life to this place.

She came through the door an hour after midnight, carrying a tiny oil lamp, not unlike the one that Dolmaero had given him so long ago, to light the empty House of the Alone.

The warm glow lit her face and glimmered in the sleek darkness of her hair. She held out her hand.

He took it gratefully.

In the morning, after breakfast, Ruiz and Nisa went out into the square, to find Flomel performing sleights for a small audience of amazed yokels, while Corean watched silently. After a while Dolmaero came out, picking his teeth. The Guildmaster assumed an approving expression and watched Flomel’s technique closely.