Ray Aldridge - The Emperor of Everything

Maybe they could confuse the trail — go down the canal a couple of hours and kick Flomel off the raft, run him into the woods to divert the snifters. No — without a good deal of luck — and an improbably degree of incompetence on Corean’s part — that would be no more than a brief delaying tactic. All their scent-signatures were surely on file in Corean’s computers and accessible to her sniffers. She would either ignore Flomel, or split off a portion of her forces to catch him.

Idly, he flipped a twig into the dark water. It lay there for an instant, and then he felt a high-frequency vibration in the curb. He jumped up and stood back, but not before he saw the twig shatter and then dissolve in a swirling pool of foam. The vibration ceased.

He abandoned the idea of a raft, as well as several barely formed ideas about using the canal as a hiding place.

He walked a few paces south along the curb and saw that there was ample concealment away from the landing. It would be no trouble to jump to the deck of a passing barge from here, if the barge wasn’t moving too fast and wasn’t defended with automatic weaponry or too many guards.

As this thought passed through his mind, he heard the mutter of an engine and looked north, to see a barge moving sedately toward him in the near channel. He stepped back into a clump of bushes and waited.

As it came closer, he saw that it apparently carried no passengers or crew. In fact, it seemed to be an automated cargo carrier, heavily armored against pilferage, but showing no obvious armament. Its back was featureless steel, rounded at the topsides.

It seemed perfect. When it drew abreast of his hiding place and he had still seen no defenses, he accepted the risk and leaped aboard. The barge was moving deceptively fast, and he stumbled before catching his balance.

Nothing struck him down, to his astonishment.

He turned and looked at the landing, receding behind him, the trees closing in around the waterway. Safe, he thought. With any luck, Corean would never catch him — her sniffers would have to search both banks of the canal, which they would do at a speed that in all likelihood would be slower than the speed with which he was now fleeing. If the barge didn’t carry him into a fatally hostile situation, he’d survive.

The glow of happiness he felt faded almost instantly.

Nisa. And the others, but mainly: Nisa. The sunny landing had become just a bright spot in the shadowy tunnel of green. No, don’t be foolish, he told himself. They’d had no chance before — what had changed? If he got off the barge, who knew when another might happen along? It could be days. Or weeks. Long before that, his hide would be decorating Corean’s apartment.

But there was Nisa. He couldn’t be sure what Corean would do to Nisa and the other escapees, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. In his mind’s eye he could see the others reaching the landing, to find him gone. What would they think had happened? Flomel would know, he was sure — this was exactly the sort of thing Flomel would do, if he got the chance.

He sighed and turned to leap back to the bank. He saw a space between the trees and jumped — and as he did, the mission-imperative rose up in his mind and shrieked that he was doing the wrong thing.

He almost fell into the canal, but he made the bank and fell rolling. The mission-imperative hurt him terribly. It couldn’t kill him, as the death net could — but it could hurt him. What it was saying, in wordless waves of pain, was: “Ruiz Aw, you have deviated from the accomplishment of the mission you promised to perform for the Art League.”

Ruiz lay sprawled, shuddering with pain, teeth clenched on a scream, until the mission-imperative ceased its punishment. After a time he sat up, still shaky. Never again, he promised himself. Never again would he allow anyone to tamper with his mind, to install another’s agenda in place of his own.

When he was strong enough, he stood and began walking the bank, back to the landing.

The others had arrived when he reached the clearing. They stood in a tight apprehensive knot at the foot of the landing, looking about uncertainly. They didn’t see him immediately.

He paused behind the last clump of concealing brambles and watched for a moment. Dolmaero’s broad face showed a mixture of anxiety and disillusionment. Molnekh glanced about, looking blandly alert. Flomel, still tethered to the leash Dolmaero held, wore a face full of malevolent triumph.

Nisa stood slightly apart from the others, and she seemed to be striving for calm and confidence.

She’s been defending me, he thought, and his heart melted, just a little.

Ruiz stepped out and they jumped.

“Hello,” he said.

He took a malicious pleasure in watching Flomel’s face fall, but the light in Nisa’s face was a far better reward.

“We feared for you,” said Dolmaero with a rare cautious smile.

Molnekh grinned, an oddly macabre expression in that skeletal face. “Oh, certainly we did — but perhaps we felt a bit of anxiety about our own selves.”

Ruiz laughed. “Nonsense. We’re all far too brave for such emotions.”

Nisa hugged him. “I wasn’t worried,” she said.

“You’re too optimistic, Noble Person,” Ruiz said, in what must have been an odd tone, for she looked confused momentarily.

“Well, thank you. Anyway, this may be good luck,” Ruiz continued, indicating the canal.

“What is it?” Molnekh asked. The Pharaohan came from a world in which water was far too rare and precious to leave open to the air.

“It’s a ‘canal,’” he said, using the pangalac word. “It’s a low-energy transport system. Things called ‘barges’ float along it, propelled by internal engines or pushed by barges specially designed for that purpose.”

“It seems an oddly complicated system, in a place where one may as easily soar through the air,” remarked Dolmaero, as if he couldn’t quite believe in such an eccentric concept.

“Perhaps,” said Ruiz. “But it works reliably, uses little energy, and provides a safe and picturesque means of travel. For example, we wouldn’t have crashed into a mountainside, had we traveled by barge.”

“A point,” Dolmaero conceded.

“And how do we summon one of these barges?” demanded Flomel.

Ruiz smiled a bit sadly. “You’ve cut to the heart of our present difficulty, I fear. We have no means of calling up a barge — we must hope that one happens by before Corean catches up with us.”

Flomel snorted contemptuously. The others looked stricken, except for Nisa, who perhaps had come to rely too greatly on Ruiz’s luck.

“It’s not so bad,” Ruiz said. “One passed through just a few minutes ago. I rode it a short distance, to see if it was feasible.”

“So that’s where you were?” Dolmaero looked just the smallest bit skeptical, and Ruiz realized: He knows me better than any of the others, even Nisa.

“Yes. The barges move rapidly, but not so fast that we won’t be able to jump aboard — provided that their decks are undefended, as the last one was.”

“Meanwhile, what shall we do? Shall we eat? It’s lunch-time.” Molnekh looked cheerfully famished.

“Why not?”

They sat on the landing’s steps and ate the last of Corean’s food. Ruiz tried to clear his mind of the unpleasantnesses that, it seemed, must soon occur. He had no reasonable hope that another barge would pass through before Corean caught up with them; still, why deny the sweetness of the moment. The sun was warm on his back, and Nisa sat close to him, her thigh pressed comfortably against his. It was possible that Corean would not arrive until tomorrow morning — if not, he hoped to enjoy another night in Nisa’s arms. It seemed a worthwhile way of spending his last night.