The Orpheus Machine

Chapter 11

Leel was sweet and fierce and tender. She made love with such a desperate intensity that Ruiz forgot his suspicions, finally convinced that there was nothing merciful in her passion. She was everything a lover ought to be, and Ruiz burned away his sadness in her fire.

When they eventually drew apart, resting in a tangle of sheets and pillows, he felt a small healing begin in his heart.

She rolled her long sweat-slick body over his and took his face between her hands. She looked into his eyes and smiled. “So, did we please each other?” she asked, in a voice like winter sunshine.

“It seemed so to me,” he answered.

She put her head down on his chest. “To me as well,” she whispered.

Before long her breathing softened and became regular. A little while later he drifted into sleep, his arm across her back, his fingers brushing the elegant rise of her buttocks — and his last stumbling, slightly wistful thought was, This is far too pleasant to be anything but imaginary.

Ruiz lifted his head to find himself sitting on a bench in Leel’s courtyard. Beside him sat Somnire, wearing an ornate silver and garnet crown, his hair dressed in lank braids. Around the Librarian’s shoulders was an ermine cloak. At his feet lay the maimed sarim, watching Ruiz with its wise dog eyes.

The water in the little pond was black and the bougainvillea dead.

“So,” said Somnire, smiling. “How are you?”

A shudder of distaste ran through Ruiz. “Don’t you know?”

“No. Leel made me promise not to peek, during or after. A funny girl, she was.”

“Was? What’s happened to Leel?” Ruiz felt a sort of sick dread.

The smile disappeared, and Somnire looked very old and very tired, despite his boyish face. “Leel is dead, Ruiz.”

“I thought you were all dead,” said Ruiz in a low voice.

“Well, of course we are, of course, but there are several levels of death here, and I’m sorry to say that Leel has descended to a lower one.”

“I don’t understand.” Ruiz rose and would have run back into Leel’s house, but the frail-seeming boy put a restraining hand on his arm, and it was as if he had been gripped by a killmech’s steel claw.

“Leel is gone,” Somnire said gently. “Her house is full of empty rooms and dust. Sit down and I’ll explain.”

Ruiz sat numbly.

“It’s time and energy, Ruiz, Time and energy,” Somnire said. “When the virtual was built, its designers thought of it as an emergency data backup system, not as a refuge for dead librarians.

“The virtual is powered by magma taps, with the bulk of the energy earmarked to maintain static data storage. The personality support functions are less well endowed, since they were merely a convenience for users, none of whom were expected to reside for long within the virtual.

“The tap that powers the remaining personalities is failing, very slowly… but steadily. Occasionally we have a lottery, to see who goes into cold storage. The winner’s pattern is retired, to be resurrected if ever we get a new source of energy. Leel won the last lottery — or lost it, you would say. She was nearly ready when you arrived.”

Ruiz absorbed the information gradually. At last he glanced down at the Librarian’s pet and said, “Why didn’t you put the sarim into storage and let Leel stay a little longer?”

Somnire looked down at Idirin and his eyes glittered with what Ruiz saw to be tears. “It’s an idea I’ve several times proposed. And in fact, most of the island’s sarim are in cold storage. They were our dearest symbol, beautiful fliers who gifted us with their grace and loyalty… the other dons couldn’t bear to see the virtual completely emptied of them. Anyway, they’re simple creatures, they’re dim candles to the fiery furnace of a human being’s personality, so it doesn’t cost us much to keep a few of them flying.”

“I see,” said Ruiz. He felt a terrible weight of disoriented denial. Only a few minutes ago, he had lain in Leel’s bed; he could still feel the comforting weight of her body. “And I thought I’d left the monsters outside.”

“Monsters? You call us monsters, you who have been on Roderigo? All we did was take you in and give you a respite, some breathing room.”

“Why?” asked Ruiz. “Why did you go to the trouble, you and Leel?”

Somnire seemed almost haggard. “Leel’s reasons were different from mine. I told you I was a vengeful ghost.” He made a swirling gesture with his hand, and a concrete-lined pit opened up at Ruiz’s feet.

Ruiz looked down and saw two long-legged reptilian creatures tearing at each other in a bloody blur.

“Lervals,” said Somnire. “People bet on the outcome. At first they simply dumped the lervals into the pit and let them fight to the death. But then the handlers discovered that if they separated the creatures after ninety seconds and returned them to the company of their packmates between rounds, the lervals would fight much harder and much longer, until they were nothing but clots of raw meat. It’s a little like what the Roderigans were doing when they spared your folk. All I had for you… was Leel.”

The pit closed, became the flagstones of the courtyard again.

“I see,” said Ruiz. He began to feel a slow hot anger.

“Do you? I want you to be my weapon against the Roderigans. I’ve waited centuries for you, and I would have put your edge to the grindstone any way I could. You were dying, looking for a place to lie down and rot. Not much use to me or anyone else. Now you’re mending. Look in your heart and tell me I’m wrong.”

Ruiz could not. “What were Leel’s reasons?”

Somnire shrugged and spoke slowly. “Leel was exactly who she seemed to be: a sweet loving person, who helped me only because she couldn’t see how it could harm you. And because she thought you a beautiful animal, too fine to be allowed to die of a broken heart.”

A little twisty wind swirled through the courtyard, scattering the dead leaves.

“Couldn’t you have let her say good-bye?” Ruiz asked finally. “Did you have to take her while I slept?”

“She chose the time, Ruiz.”

Ruiz felt a moment of vertigo; then he and Somnire stood on a slender high-arched bridge above a foggy chasm. Both ends of the bridge were lost in misty darkness; the light was vague and sourceless.

The bridge seemed too fantastic to be real, built of lacey black wrought-iron, as delicate as a spider web. Ruiz grabbed at the slim guardrails, and the whole bridge quivered.

“It’s safe,” said Somnire over his shoulder. “Let’s go. We need to get down to business, Ruiz Aw.”

Ruiz moved carefully, still clinging to the rails. He looked down at the roiling mist and fancied that he could see ominous shapes, almost recognizable. The mist swirled, threatened to coalesce.

“Don’t look down,” said Somnire. “It’s one of my safeguards, in case the Roderigans somehow managed to inject an independent entity into the virtual. I don’t know how they could do that, but why take chances?”

Ruiz fixed his eyes on Somnire’s ermine-clad back until they reached the far pier.

They stepped down onto a path paved with opalescent glass, lit from beneath. The glass rang under their feet, as though each slab of glass were a great gong.

“I like a little drama,” said Somnire.

A hundred paces took them to a brazen door, carved with a many-times-life-size portrait of Somnire.

The carving’s eyes appeared to be of flesh, and they fixed a bloodshot disapproving gaze on Ruiz as they approached the door. Ruiz almost expected the carving to speak, but it remained mute, even when Somnire reached up and tweaked its large nose.

The door swung open on a well-lit room filled with flat-screens and holotanks. Somnire led the way inside and sat down before a big dataslate. He took off his crown and set it aside.

“So, welcome to my inner sanctum,” Somnire said.

Ruiz wondered why he had ever thought the Librarian a boy. The smooth youthful face was alight with an ancient craftiness. A thousand years of cunning seemed to glow in Somnire’s dark eyes, and the Librarian had an almost hysterically cheerful look.

“And why not?” Somnire asked. “How often do I get to stick Roderigo in the eye with a sharp stick? Why shouldn’t I take delight where I may? You must strive to do the same!”

“I’ll try,” said Ruiz, a bit resentfully. He still couldn’t get used to the way Somnire responded to his thoughts instead of to his words.

“You try, yes,” said Somnire. He seemed to shake himself, and then he spoke in a less gleeful tone. “I suppose the armor is the first problem. Can’t make an omelet if you can’t break an egg.”

“What?” Ruiz didn’t understand the reference, but Somnire was bent over the screen, tracing the columns with a finger.

“Why do you use the screen? It seems a pointless rigmarole. Why not just pull the data from its matrix directly?” Ruiz still felt a degree of annoyance with the Librarian.

Somnire grinned his strange ambivalent grin. “I do it for your comfort. Would you rather fly the electron storm with me, blowing through the decaying synapses of the machine, formless and elemental? Ah… forgive my occasional lapses into purple speech — a hazard of my occupation.” He laughed darkly, and turned his attention back to the screen. “It’s all right with me, if you’re brave enough, but I should tell you that we sometimes drive our enemies mad in exactly that way. They become holy fools, of course… fortunately none of our enemies have any respect for holy fools, so they never learn to use their fools against us.”

“Never mind,” said Ruiz meekly.

“Ah,” said Somnire. “Here it is. She’s wearing Axolotl Light Intertribal armor, Mark IV version. Roderigo is frugal. Old, old equipment, but very good. She’s probably had the armor since she was a girl. Axolotl went out of business before we did.” He sighed. “Anyway. Designed for use in urban guerrilla conflicts. Twisted carbon monomol fiber. Most effective against light energy weapons and highspeed low-mass projectiles like splinter guns. Tough stuff.”

“She let me search her for concealed weapons,” Ruiz said. “The articulation under her ribs looked weak.”

The screen flickered, showed an image of the armor. It expanded into individual components, each tagged with stress engineering data. Somnire tapped the rib plating with a delicate finger. “No. You might break them open with a crowbar, but there’s nothing strong enough in the niche. Besides, I don’t think she’ll sit still while you pry.”

“Probably not,” Ruiz agreed sadly.

“Hmmm,” said Somnire. “Let’s take a different approach.” He pressed at the screen’s touchpoints, and the armor was replaced by the still image of an old man with a harsh dark face and the slashing cheek cicatrices of a Madeline Wreaker. “General Savin,” said Somnire. “He’s one of millions of personalities recorded in the Library’s Anthroreplicant files. A military genius. He fought a notable campaign on Juneau almost three thousand years ago. The rebels were equipped with Axolotls. Let’s see what advice he can give us.”

The screen flickered, and then the old man moved, raised his sunken eyes to Ruiz. “What? What do you want?”

“The Axolotl Mark IV. How do I disable a woman wearing it? Bare-handed?” asked Ruiz.

“Almost impossible.” The old man stared intently into Ruiz’s eyes, as if seeking something.

“Wait,” said Somnire to Ruiz. “Did I tell you that she found a wireblade on the corpse? She has it in her right calf sheath. Could you get it, if you surprised her?”

“Possibly,” said Ruiz. “But she’s alert, quick, and probably very strong.”

General Savin grunted. “With a wireblade, there might be a chance. The helmet latches on the Mark IV are less than optimal — their cams were slightly weakened by the fanciful carving on the helmet’s faceplate.”

The old man disappeared, was replaced by an image of a soldier wearing the armor — though the legs and arms were banded with bright primary colors and the torso had a blue and yellow flag painted across the chest. A pointer appeared, touched the helmet at its lateral attachment points.

The general’s voice continued: “A sharp blow here, at a fairly precise angle of one hundred and ten degrees to the column of the neck and with a slight anterior component, has been known to loosen the latch sufficiently to allow a knife between helmet and seat.” A red arrow appeared, pointed at the latch to show the proper vector; the image rotated to show the arrow from three angles. The vector fired and the helmet cocked up a centimeter on that side.

“So?” asked Somnire.

Ruiz nodded.

Somnire turned back to the screen and the old man reappeared. “Anything else, General?”

“The Mark IV was not designed for hand-to-hand. Get the helmet loose; then you might be able to break her neck, if you can hit her with a sufficiently massive club, or use her own weight against some immovable object.”

“We’ll keep it in mind, General,” said Somnire, and without ceremony he switched off the screen.

Ruiz fancied that the general had worn a faintly desperate expression, as though he didn’t want to return to the dreamless limbo of the files.

“They don’t know where they are,” said Somnire, still reading his mind. “We don’t let them wake long enough to think about it.”

Ruiz had an uncomfortable thought. “Is that where Leel has gone?”

“Yes,” said Somnire. “But I won’t call her back from her rest, just so you can say good-bye. That wasn’t her wish.”

“I see,” said Ruiz unhappily. “Well, now what?”

“Now we send you back to your body, so you can have a go at the hetman.” Somnire lifted his arm and a large brass chronometer appeared on his wrist. “Been about four minutes since you entered the virtual, real time. She won’t be expecting you back so soon. Most of their people we keep for days, just to inflict as much madness as possible on them.” The chronometer wiggled and disappeared in a puff of pink smoke.

“I’m curious; why do the Roderigans keep coming to the virtual, if all they ever take away is madness?”

Somnire laughed rather maliciously. “Oh, we don’t always destroy them completely — and sometimes we give them some relatively harmless scrap of information. Just enough to keep them from destroying the inducer and sealing us off forever. And we do what we can to keep Roderigo and Delt at each other’s throats.”

“Oh,” said Ruiz. “Well, do you know the answers to their questions? What’s going on under Yubere’s fortress? Are you going to give me anything to bargain with, if I can’t deal with the hetman? She promised me transport off Sook if I could get the information. Or can you give me a plausible lie — something to work with?”

“Are you still mad? Roderigo would never keep its bargain.” Somnire gave him a hard, somewhat unfriendly look. “I have great hopes for you, but you may fail. The information they seek is too important to give you, unless you can kill or incapacitate The Yellowleaf. As for fooling Roderigo… a callow hope indeed.”

Ruiz reluctantly saw the sense of it. Still, more than The Yellowleaf stood between him and escape. “But if I can best her… what then?”

Somnire grew agitated and, throwing off his ermine robe, paced back and forth among the holocubes and flat-screens, muttering to himself. Finally he threw up his arms and said, “All right. I’ve been living at a much higher rate than you since the moment I left you at Leel’s, so that I’ve had a week to wrestle with my conscience — which isn’t what it once was, not at all. It’s a terribly dangerous secret, more dangerous than you can possibly understand now. But it’s out, it’s surely out. The things your friend Publius told you, the conflict in SeaStack, the slavers conspiracy — all these things convince me that the secret is out.

“A disaster if the Roderigans find out for sure… but also a disaster if anyone else finds out.” Somnire fixed Ruiz with a baleful gaze. “I don’t admire you, Ruiz. You’re what I abhorred above all else, a man of violence. For all the changes that have touched you lately, you’re still a murderer. Your heart is open to me. You’d kill me in an instant if it would save you and your friends. Oh, you’d rationalize it until it didn’t seem like murder, if you could: ‘He’s just a pattern in the machine, not really alive,’ and so forth, but you’d do it, rationale or not.”

But then the fire went out of Somnire’s eyes and his shoulders sagged. “Still, there’s some decency in you. Even I must admit that. So. If you’re successful against The Yellowleaf, I’ll give you the secret, and you must do with it what your violent heart tells you to do. You may find unexpected help among the ruins, so be alert.” He took Ruiz by the arm and tugged him toward the nearest holotank. “Look,” he said, and brought the tank to glowing life.

Ruiz saw the niche, in half-life-size scale. His body lay on the softstone slab, apparently resting in easy slumber — though at first his body seemed as motionless as death. Then Ruiz detected a slight slow rise of the chest, and Nisa, who had been standing beside his body, facing away, commenced a painfully slow turn toward his viewpoint. “Time differential,” he said in realization.

“Yes, yes,” said Somnire. “Didn’t I say so?”

“So you did.” Ruiz stepped quickly to the far side of the holotank, so that he could see Nisa’s face. She was looking down at his body as she turned, and there was an unmistakably tender expression on her patrician features.

Ruiz felt a pleasant pain in his heart.

He glanced past Nisa and saw The Yellowleaf sitting against the far wall, ghoulmask glinting in the uncertain light.

A serious doubt struck him. “What about surveillance devices? It’ll do me no good to kill the hetman if her guards come running in a moment later. Gejas surely has a man outside the cave.”

“Probably,” said Somnire. “But no spy devices are permitted in the cave — if we detect any, the virtual won’t activate. If any appear after activation, we shut the field down abruptly, which almost always kills the visitor. They’ve learned to respect our notions of privacy, over the centuries.”

“Oh,” said Ruiz. He turned his gaze once more to Nisa and felt himself smiling foolishly.

“All right, Ruiz — pay attention,” said Somnire impatiently. “First neck-breaking, then happy reunions. The order of your universe, I suppose. Now do pay attention.” The Librarian produced a light wand and used it to point to a particular heap of bones and rubbish in the darkest corner of the niche. “If you survive, look here. There’s an inductor helmet, voice only, hidden here. Put it on; we’ll talk. I won’t bring you back into the virtual — that costs too much energy and the cell you brought is long since exhausted.”

“All right,” said Ruiz, still looking at Nisa, who had begun a gesture that would eventually become a pat on his arm. Her expression was shifting by subtle degrees toward worry.

Somnire snorted, his youthful features wearing an incongruously cynical cast. “Ruiz. You must concentrate on the task at hand. I’ll leave you for five minutes. Gather your will, make your plans, compose yourself. Lie down so that you won’t jerk about when I return you to your body.”

Ruiz pulled his attention away from Nisa. “Yes. Well, I’ll do my best.”

Somnire regarded him seriously for a long moment. “Good luck, then,” he said finally, and before the sound of his voice had entirely died away, he was gone.

IT HURT. RUIZ couldn’t entirely suppress a hiss of pain when he returned to his body. It was as if all his bones had been broken and reset, all his joints dislocated and restored.

Agony turned his muscles to nerveless jelly for long heartbeats. When the first twitch of returning control shuddered through him, he turned his head and saw The Yellowleaf rising, her hand dropping toward the hidden wireblade.

He thought of his time in the slaughterhouse, and the madness that had swept him away. He could still feel it, a great infected bruise under the lucid surface of his mind.

He closed his eyes and let the madness well up, a black volcano erupting from his holomnemonic ocean, belching red horror. He released his face, felt it turn monstrously gleeful.

Terrible sounds forced their way from his throat, and he opened his eyes again. The Yellowleaf was sliding her wireblade back into its calf sheath, her body relaxing into disappointment.

He couldn’t look at Nisa, but he heard a broken-off sob, and a soft “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

The Yellowleaf came closer, and he let the madness dance. But underneath it, he pitted his muscles against themselves, flexor against extensor, a motionless clenching that drove blood and life into them. Sweat broke on his face and his lips writhed back from his teeth.

The Yellowleaf raised her gauntleted hands toward his neck, as though reaching for his carotids.

He waited until her body passed the balance point and her hands had almost touched his neck.

He exploded from the table, all the madness compressed into that one movement, expelled from him in one tearing burst.

He struck her breastplate with his shoulder, driving upward so that she lifted from her feet for a precious instant, could not gather her strength against him. The heel of his right hand smashed upward against the side of her helmet, and he felt the latch break, a tiny triumphant snick. But the helmet stayed on, held by the remaining latches, and now The Yellowleaf got her feet under her and rotated, snapping her armored forearm around, catching him under his still-raised arm.

The pain took his breath for a moment and she thrust him back. He wondered if his ribs were broken, but the thought fled as the hetman bent, quick as a snake, for her wireblade. It came from its sheath with a sizzling metallic sound, and she flicked it up, reversing it with easy dexterity, so that the needle tip plunged toward his heart.

At the last instant, he parried the stroke, but the impact of his unprotected wrist against her armor made his hand go limp and numb.

He was losing, he was losing. After all that they had gone through, he was going to die. He grabbed desperately at The Yellowleaf’s knife hand, managed to get it locked between his damaged left wrist and his right. He clung to it with all his strength, but she was stronger. She bent him backward over the softstone slab, she put her other hand behind her knifehand, and pressed him down until the tip of the knife trembled over his breastbone, and he knew it was all over. The ghoul carved into her helmet leered at Ruiz like a demon welcoming him to Hell. The armorglass eyeslots winked blue light. His strength ebbed.

A glittering blur caught the corner of his eye, just before it crashed into The Yellowleaf’s helmet. Her helmet cocked over farther, and the pressure of the knife lessened. Then the hetman tried to pull loose, but Ruiz clung to the wristlock he’d achieved — and again something smashed into her helmet, making an even louder sound.

Ruiz felt a great astonished delight. The force of the mysterious blow had twisted the hetman’s helmet to the side, too far to the side, and he felt the first tremors as the hetman lost control of her muscles. The wireblade fell loose; the hetman’s knees buckled.

He shoved, and the body crashed down, legs jerking, making a terrible clatter amid the bones.

Ruiz turned and saw Nisa, still holding aloft one of the corpse’s long greaves, as if she meant to make sure of the hetman.

“She’s dead,” Ruiz said.

Nisa lowered the piece of alloy slowly, then let it fall from her hands. “Good,” she said in a muffled voice.

Ruiz massaged his wrist as the hetman’s corpse grew still. “That was well done,” he finally said.

Nisa didn’t answer at first. Finally she turned toward him and spoke in an almost inaudible voice. “Are you badly hurt?”

Ruiz flexed his left hand; the numbness was fading. He lifted his right arm and winced. He might well have a broken rib or two. He probed with his fingers, but discovered no evidence of splintering. He could still function, as long as he took no more heavy blows on that side. “I’ll live,” he said.

“That’s good,” said Nisa neutrally.

Ruiz bent, ignoring the pain in his ribs, and picked up the wireblade. Nisa took a step backward.

“What?” he asked, bewildered by her fearful expression.

She took a deep breath. “You should have seen your face when you woke. Anyone might have been frightened.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “I suppose so. But I would never hurt you intentionally.”

“Is that true?” she asked, unsmiling.

“It’s true.”

She wrapped her arms about herself, as if she were cold, and he noticed that the air had grown chill and damp.

“Well,” he said. “We won’t be here much longer.”

Ruiz went to the corner and threw aside the rubbish. Underneath, he found the tarnished wire mesh of the inductor helmet.

He lifted it up and wondered if Somnire planned some trick. Certainly the Librarian was devious enough. Perhaps Somnire was content with The Yellowleaf’s destruction; perhaps he meant now to get rid of the evidence. If Ruiz were retaken by the Roderigans and brainpeeled, he would reveal the Compendium’s adamant hostility to the hetmen. From Somnire’s viewpoint, it might be safer to eliminate that possibility.

Even worse, Somnire might now impart some knowledge to Ruiz that would burden him with yet another responsibility. His strong impulse was to drop the helmet and run away.

But where would he run to? Were there any hiding places on the island where he and Nisa would be safe? He imagined Gejas’s ferocity when The Yellowleaf’s corpse was discovered. A shudder ran through him.

And beyond all pragmatic concerns, did he owe Somnire something? Or Leel? He had entered the virtual as a cunning madman; he had returned as a human being — or as much of a human being as he had ever been.

“What’s that?” asked Nisa, pointing to the helmet.

“Trouble.” Ruiz sighed. But finally he lifted the helmet and set it on his head.