The Emperor of Everything

Chapter 11

Ruiz was very close to the center of Publius’s labyrinth now. He had taken a hundred turns, walked for kilometers. He had seen no other monsters, and now he no longer expected to encounter any; the monster-maker used his failures to patrol the outer passages of the maze, thus discouraging uninvited visitors. But he prohibited these creatures from returning to the laboratories where they’d been born, so as not to repulse the paying customers who came to see his marvels.

The lighting had improved; the moss was supplemented now by an occasional glowplate, and the floors were cleaner and drier. Ruiz began to worry about his reception. Would Publius even agree to see him — or would he simply have Ruiz ejected or killed? He became so involved in this unhappy speculation that he was a little slow to notice the oncoming shuffle of many feet, and he almost collided with a party of merchants, who were evidently just leaving the inner sanctum with their purchases.

He slipped into a dark side passage, just an instant before the point guard came around a curve. He stepped to the wall and became still.

They did not see him, and he was unimpressed with the party’s vigilance — he could have effortlessly killed the half-dozen guards and taken their merchandise, which was carried in two large cloth-shrouded cages, by eight sweating Utter bearers. The three merchants were Grasicians in elaborate pink bell-suits, wearing fashionable jeweled masks and carrying pomanders against the stench of the corridors.

Ruiz wondered what horrors they had bought from Publius.

When they were gone, he went on, and shortly reached the high-ceilinged rotunda at the center of the labyrinth.

The lighting here was mercilessly bright, and a trio of Dirm bondguards waited at Publius’s security lock, a monocrete and armor structure over the elevator that would carry Ruiz down into Publius’s domain.

They instantly aimed heavy grasers at Ruiz’s chest. He stopped, raised his arms, displayed his empty hands, then clasped his hands atop his head. “I’m here to see Publius,” he called, and waited.

“Name?” demanded one Dirm.

“Ruiz Aw.”

“Purpose of visit?”

“Business.”

At the mention of business, the Dirms relaxed fractionally. The one who had spoken to Ruiz whispered into a lapel communicator.

After a moment, it raised its weapon and gestured for Ruiz to approach, but the others’ aim never wavered.

The first Dirm slung its graser when Ruiz reached him, and expertly patted him down, relieving Ruiz efficiently of most of his arsenal of personal weapons. Then it used an odor analyzer/detector to deprive him of the rest.

When it was satisfied that he was as innocuous as possible, it stepped back and said, “You may reclaim your possessions on your return.”

Ruiz fervently hoped he would return — and that he would return wearing the same shape that he now wore. But all he said was “Thank you.”

It nodded and pressed a switch on its controller armlet. The armored blast door slid aside, then the decorative grill of the elevator. Ruiz stepped inside, and watched the grill slide shut. The gleaming palladium filigree suddenly resolved into a montage of howling faces, almost human faces, stretched into bizarre shapes by terror.

Ruiz shivered, and wondered if he had been wise to seek out Publius.

But it was too late, so he concentrated on refining his story as he dropped swiftly down into the roots of the stack. He seemed to fall forever, and he began to worry that Publius planned to dump him into the unexplored levels below his laboratories.

The elevator decelerated violently enough to make Ruiz’s knees buckle a little — probably a little joke. Publius had an eccentric and relentless sense of humor.

The doors slid aside, to reveal Publius standing in the foyer with arms spread in welcome. Or he thought it must be Publius, though the body Publius wore was unfamiliar — a tall lean body with a supercilious aristocratic face. Surely it was Publius; who else had that uniquely demented gleam in his eye?

“Ruiz,” shouted Publius gladly. “Can it be? My old friend, come to visit me at long last?”

Ruiz stepped cautiously from the elevator. “Publius?”

“Who else?”

Ruiz allowed Publius to fling his arms around him, and managed a brief embrace in return. Publius apparently didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm; he held Ruiz by the shoulders and examined him, eyebrows jiggling up and down with curiosity.

“Still beautiful, I see,” he said to Ruiz approvingly. “You’re wasted as a leg-breaker for the League. I always tell you this, I know, but I’ll tell you again: find a way to become notorious, then sell your clones. You’d be a rich body-source in no time. I’d buy one myself, make a pretty snakeweasel of you, sell you to some wealthy old woman for a lapdog.”

Ruiz swallowed his revulsion. “I’m not a League contractor anymore, Publius.”

Publius laughed, a low-pitched sound, oddly reminiscent of water draining into a sewer. “Oh, sure. Don’t worry. I’d never tell anyone you’re League — though I don’t blame you for being cautious — this is SeaStack, after all.”

“No, truly,” said Ruiz. “I’ll never work for them again.”

“Oh? I’m astonished — an adrenaline addict like you, swearing off murder and pillage and high wages? What in the world has happened? Are you dying? Have you fallen in love?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ruiz, straining for conviction.

“You’re right, you’re right. What could I have been thinking of?” Publius laughed again. “You’re the famous Ruiz Aw, a paragon of mindless self-sufficiency, never tempted by the softer things of life, ruthlessly devoted to your own intermittently flexible code of ethics.” There was a sour undertone to Publius’s voice now, and Ruiz feared that he was remembering their time on Line, when Ruiz had deserted the cadre of freelance emancipators commanded by Publius.

“Ah…” said Ruiz, grasping for a diversion. “How have you been?”

“Well might you ask,” shouted Publius in a booming voice. “How long has it been since the last time you came crawling to blackmail me into doing you yet another favor? Thirty years? Forty? Much has happened, my art has flowered, my fortunes have waxed, my power is substantially enhanced, though not enough, never enough.” Publius had discarded his pose of good humor, and his ugly essence shone through his new flesh. “But what’s that to you, eh? What do you want of me now, Ruiz Aw? Old friend.”

“Nothing too elaborate, Publius,” said Ruiz. He strove to show no fear or resentment, though he was terrified.

“No? I’m astonished. So, what is this ‘nothing too elaborate’? And what can you pay for it?”

Ruiz took a deep breath. “I need transport up to the Shard platforms, for myself and three slaves. I can pay a fair price.”

Publius made an airy gesture of dismissal. “Nothing more than that? The simplest thing!” His face writhed into a mask of disbelief. “Are you mad? What makes you think I could do such a thing for you. The pirate lords are currently in the grip of a massive paranoiac hysteria; did you not know this? My customers fume in their hostelries, unable to leave, and their goods stink up the place until the customers are driven to try to return them. I’ve had to kill a baker’s dozen of complainers in the last twomonth alone — can’t have them tarnishing my reputation.”

“I hadn’t realized,” said Ruiz dismally.

“Just got into town, eh? Well, how grand that you thought of me first. Come, come… we’ll tour the labs and talk.” Publius pasted a grotesquely sly look on his face and winked, apparently finished with his brief rant. “Things are never so bad as they might become, eh?”

He put his arm around Ruiz’s shoulders, and tugged him from the foyer, into a world of white tiles, stainless steel, and horror.

Publius’s laboratories were extensive, covering thousands of square meters — and always teeming with activity. The monster-maker’s creative passion was only matched by his lust for wealth; the two drives conspired to push the labs to their maximum output. It always astonished Ruiz that the pangalac worlds’ appetite for monsters could keep pace with Publius’s mania for production — it was another illustration of the ungraspable immensity of the universe and the unknowable diversity of the countless folk who crowded it.

Publius led him past a railed-off pit arena, in the depths of which dozens of stocky ursine warriors hacked and stabbed at each other with long knives — snarling, white fangs gleaming, inhumanly quick. “Elimination trials,” Publius said, by way of explanation. “We started with over two hundred experimental scions. In another day or so, the best will emerge — though we’ll run the trial a few more times, to eliminate the possibility of flukes. But they’ll do well for some berserker prince on a rich Hardworld, won’t they?” He beamed in a parody of fatherly pride. “They’ll have to wear muzzles, perhaps, but nothing’s perfect. On the other hand… you’re good with a pigsticker, aren’t you, Ruiz? You wouldn’t last two seconds against the feeblest of these.”

Against a great support column was a bank of upright vitro tanks, their contents concealed by a screen. Publius paused here and slid the screen up, revealing three adult humans, two men and a woman. These had the puffy formlessness that characterized tank-grown clones, before they were decanted and conditioned, but Ruiz could see that they would be handsome. All of them had Publius’s coloring, and suddenly Ruiz realized what they were.

“Yes,” said Publius. “They’re me. Insurance. If I ever go, they’ll be decanted and set at each other. The strongest one gets my identity.”

Ruiz was horrified. What if they decided to cooperate? Could the universe survive a triad of Publiuses?

Technicians scurried past, shoulders hunched and eyes down, as if they feared their employer as much as Ruiz did.

They passed a series of one-way windowed cubicles, each containing a different variety of joyperson. Some of them seemed to be no more than human men and women, their somatypes modified toward some animal standard. There was a slender languid lizard girl, who groomed her eyescales with a long forked tongue. In the next cell was a young boy with a face like a mastiff, his body muscular and bowlegged. They passed an armless woman with a bald shapeless head, her soft white skin glistening with mucus. An androgynous creature stroked feathery antennae; it had a segmented thorax and a tubular proboscis curled on its chest.

But others were much stranger. They appeared to partake of the characteristics of aliens for which no analogue existed on Old Earth — though Ruiz knew that their genetic material derived primarily from human DNA. Publius was a purist in that way. He averted his gaze from latticed tentacles, stony silicoid carapaces, pulsing masses of stringy yellow fiber. There was even a lumpy creature covered with Gench sensor tufts, gasping through trilateral mouth slits. The symmetry was maintained with three plump breasts, three vaginas.

The Gench-like creature made him shudder, and a wave of disorientation passed over him. He felt the death net stir… and then stabilize. He had avoided thinking about the Gencha since his arrival in SeaStack, apparently for good reason. He wondered how many more near misses he could stand, before either the net decayed or he lost interest in survival.

“Samples. See anything you’d like to try?” Publius slapped him on the back, laughed his strange bubbling laugh. “No, no, I’m teasing you; I know you’re a devoted prude.”

They passed surgeries, in which white-coated technicians operated lamarckers, carving cloned bodies into new shapes. Other spaces held DNA keyboards, where Publius’s employees created new races of monsters, for clients who were willing to pay extra for reproductive functionality. Banks of half-gestated clones floated in clear nutrient baths, autogurneys trundled back and forth, some carrying grotesque corpses, others bearing anesthetized monsters in various stages of completion.

And over all, thick enough to gag Ruiz, was the special stink he associated with Publius and his works, a miasma of organic stenches and chemical wafts, of riotous life and casual death, of creativity and dread.

Finally they reached the apartments Publius used when in residence at his laboratories, and they passed from frenetic activity into silent isolation.

Publius slid the lock shut, and turned to Ruiz, a look of weary contempt blooming on his face.

“So, will you threaten me again? Will you never grow tired of hanging over my head, a ruination waiting to strike me? You cannot live forever; have you no mercy?”

Ruiz adopted a humble tone of voice. “You gave me no choice, Publius. If I failed to take precautions, you would instantly destroy me. I regret as much as you do that you confided your origins to me — had you not, you wouldn’t hate me so virulently, and I wouldn’t be forced to threaten you.”

Long ago, over a campfire on Line, a badly wounded and delirious Publius had told Ruiz his greatest secret — that he had been born in a Dilvermoon Holding Ark and was not, as he had claimed, the bastard of a noble Jahworld family. Ruiz had never completely understood the intensity with which Publius defended his pretentions, but he had realized their importance to Publius when the monster-maker tried to murder him, years later. In self-preservation, he had filed a posthumous memorandum, which would be broadcast over the public datastreams, in the event of his death or disappearance.

In later years, he had begun to worry that Publius had lived with the possibility of exposure for so long that it no longer gave Ruiz any leverage over him. “Truly, I wish you could convince me that my precautions are unnecessary.”

Publius grunted. He moved across the rug-covered floor of his public room, and took glasses and a decanter from a cabinet. He poured, offered a snifter of pale lilac liquor to Ruiz. “Well, at least you can drink with me without fear of poisoning. Few can, eh?”

Ruiz nodded and sipped.

“I’m such a bad boy,” said Publius, sitting on a deep-cushioned sofa and gesturing Ruiz to a nearby chair. “Now: escape. Where’s your expensive little starboat? The Vigia, isn’t it? My memory is a wonder!”

“Hidden on a faraway world. I arrived on Sook a stowaway.”

“Somehow that seems appropriate,” said Publius. His eyes had lost some of their customary fey brilliance; he seemed a more ordinary man, for the moment. “And what was your mission, if it’s no great secret?”

Ruiz shrugged. “Not anymore. I was hired to sniff out a poacher on a League Hardworld.”

“And did you succeed? No, a foolish question, eh? You never fail, do you?”

“I know who the poacher is,” said Ruiz.

“You see, I was right.” Publius took a mouthful of liquor and swilled it around noisily before swallowing. “So, let us suppose you get up to the Shard platforms — you then plan to take commercial transport?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Well, as I said, the pirate lords are hysterical, at the moment. They’ve apparently stumbled across a big secret…. They don’t know what to do about it. Some argue for destruction, others for exploitation. Does it surprise you to learn that I know the secret too?”

Ruiz shook his head.

Publius laughed his odd laugh. “Nothing about me surprises you, does it? Perhaps that’s why I don’t squash you like the insignificant bug you are; you help me to maintain a certain perspective. I’m going to exploit the secret, of course, if I can get my hands on it. Tell me, how does this sound: Emperor Publius, the Emperor of Everything?”

Ruiz hardly knew what to say. “What’s the secret?” he asked, finally.

Publius giggled. “Why, it’s a secret; didn’t you hear me?”

“Oh.”

Publius adopted a businesslike expression. “Now, I don’t say it’s impossible to leave SeaStack now, but it’s exceedingly difficult. Expensive. Dangerous. I might be able to help you — but you must perform a service for me first. No, don’t bother to wave your terrible revelation at me. I no longer care; I’ve outgrown my origins by so vast a margin that it no longer matters what they were.” Publius smiled a rapacious smile. “Such a promising omen, that you should arrive after all these years, just as I need someone exactly like you.”

Ruiz grew suddenly weak with apprehension. “What,” he croaked, “do you want me to do?”

“The simplest thing, for a slayer like you,” Publius said. “I want you to kill a man.”

In the morning, Corean took Lensh and Marmo into SeaStack’s major auction pit — the proctors refused to allow the Moc inside, so she left it outside the security lock.

Flomel was being kept in one of the small independent pens adjacent to the pit, so she went there first, satisfied the ident processor that she was Flomel’s new owner, and opened the door to Flomel’s holding cell.

The conjuror was sitting on his narrow bunk, shoulders slumped in dejection, when the door moved aside. He glanced up, saw Corean.

A range of unexpected emotions slid across his face. She had expected to see terror and abasement, instead he appeared first astonished, then delighted.

“Noble Lady!” he said in glad tones. “I knew you would come.”

Corean was a bit taken aback. Either Flomel was much cleverer than she had supposed, or he had absolutely no grasp of the situation. In either case, she was willing to play along. “Did you?”

“Oh, yes. I knew you wouldn’t abandon me. The others were corrupted by that snake oil vagrant, but not me. I know Ruiz Aw for what he is, a casteless slayer, a thief, a troublemaker. I knew my faith would be rewarded… and here you are.”

Corean smiled. She was willing to accept his cooperation, though she had intended to punish Flomel — if not for any part he might have taken in the theft of her boat, then for his simple presence when the deed occurred. But she could be flexible, she could defer his punishment. She sat beside Flomel, patted his knee. “Tell me all about it,” she said.

Corean required all her meager store of patience to listen to Flomel’s account. The conjuror’s recollections included constant references to the outrages perpetrated on his dignity. Several times Corean had to interrupt before Flomel entirely lost the thread of his narrative. He seemed unable to grasp that she was uninterested in his personal feelings, but she summoned all the forebearance she possessed, and continued to smile and nod sympathetically at appropriate points.

When Flomel told about the judging in Deepheart, her interest quickened.

“He flailed about, convulsing and drooling in a most vulgar manner,” said Flomel. “There he revealed his low origins again. Perhaps he’s dead; he was very still when they took him out, and his face was a bit blue.”

“Wait,” she said. “Try to remember — did they rush him out, or was it a leisurely process?”

Flomel frowned. “What difference would that make?”

She ran out of tolerance. She shot out a hand and gripped Flomel by the throat, squeezed with the augmented muscles of her slender fingers. He tried to speak, could only wheeze. He half raised his hands, as if to claw at her, and she clamped down a little tighter, so that his eyes bulged. “You,” she said, “are my property. You do not ask me for explanations. Do you understand?”

He nodded painfully. She eased the pressure on his throat slightly. “So, tell,” she said.

“Fast,” he gasped. “They took him out quickly.”

She released him, and stood. “Then he’s probably still alive. I think I would feel it if he died — we’re connected now, somehow. Perhaps it’s my need for satisfaction…. What else, Flomel?”

He rubbed at his throat and coughed. “There’s not much else to tell, Lady. They took me to my room, and in the morning brought me to this place. I didn’t see the others again, and you’re the first person I’ve seen here.”

She turned away from him and spoke musingly to Marmo. “I wonder… is he still in Deepheart? What did you find out about them, Marmo?”

“I spent last night hooked into the datastream, but useful information is difficult to come by. They’re a self-development corporation, chartered on Dilvermoon but entirely contained within their facility here. They espouse a cult of sexual diversity….”

“I’m not interested in their philosophy, Marmo. What I want to know is: How well defended is their facility? How difficult to infiltrate?”

Marmo was silent for a moment. “Recall what I said about useful information. But I can infer a probability: They are well defended. In the nearly two thousand standard years since the present facilities were completed, the data-stream records no successful hostile incursions into Deepheart. This is somewhat surprising, since they are reputedly a very wealthy corporation; presumably they would attract the avarice of the pirate lords.”

“Discouraging,” said Corean, thinking. She refused to accept that Ruiz had found a hiding place where she could not reach him. “But we must do what we can, eh, Marmo? Come, let’s visit a friend.”

She turned to Lensh. “Collar the mage and take him to a suitable holding pen; Diamond Bob’s has a good reputation. Then meet us back at the hotel.”

Ruiz leaned back, set his goblet carefully aside. “I’m not an assassin,” he said.

“Oh?” said Publius, bright-eyed. “Since when?”

“I’ve never been an assassin.”

“Oh, of course not, of course not. But you were always willing to kill anything that got in the way of your job, whatever it might be. Tell me, how many corpses have you left behind this trip out?”

Ruiz had no answer.

Publius laughed in a jolly manner. “You see? What difference does one corpse more or less make? Eh? And I assure you, he’s a very evil man, almost as evil as I am — he deserves killing almost as much as I do. Help me out, and I’ll get you offplanet, no matter what it takes, money or time or blood. But if you won’t do this little favor for me, I’ll take you and chop you up and make toys out of your pieces. I’m tired of worrying about your foolish little blackmail; a man like you will eventually perish, probably sooner rather than later, so why not get it over with? In a hundred years, who will care? Not I.”

Ruiz tensed his muscles and prepared to leap at Publius. The monster-maker had once been formidable, but perhaps his skills had deteriorated, perhaps Ruiz could subdue him, could hold him hostage until he had escaped the laboratories.

Publius raised his hand in an odd gesture, and stunner muzzles slid from the wall behind him, pointed at Ruiz. “Don’t be silly, old friend — and please, don’t make me wonder if you consider me so stupid as to sit and chat with you, protected by nothing but your famous goodwill. I must tell you, I’d be terribly insulted, if I ever imagined you thought such a thing. And you know what a temper I have.”

Ruiz sagged back in his chair. A feeling of futility came over him; what had he expected? That he would walk in and Publius would help him, out of the nonexistent goodness of his monstrous heart? Foolish, foolish.

“Who is the man?” Ruiz asked.

Publius stood gracefully and beckoned. “Come. I’ll show him to you.”

Ruiz stood with Publius, looking into an observation cell. He saw a man of medium height and build, dressed in a moderately fashionable unisuit. His face was unremarkable, even-featured, neither plump nor thin. His hair was an indeterminate color, neither brown nor blond, cut in a conventional style. He sat in a comfortable chair, face almost expressionless, except for a subtle quality of alertness. Ruiz wondered if he was a spy of some sort — he looked the part to perfection.

“Who is he?” Ruiz asked.

“His name is Alonzo Yubere.”

Ruiz was puzzled. “Why would you require my assistance? There he sits; why not just kill him yourself?”

Publius smiled and malicious delight spread over his face. “Oh, it’s not this Alonzo Yubere I want you to kill. No, no. It’s the other Alonzo Yubere, the one who controls the secret. You know, the secret that’s so inflamed the pirates.”

Ruiz assumed a look of bland indifference.

“You see, this Yubere is actually an old servant of mine, torn down and rebuilt in this undistinguished form. Alas, poor Hedrin — he served me well, but I had greater need of his body than he did. I long ago had Hedrin Genched, by the way. Everyone needs at least one henchman he can trust. So his loyalty, even in this new form, is absolute.”

“Ah,” said Ruiz noncommittally.

“Do you begin to understand? It’s an old idea, of course — replace the key person with a duplicate who belongs to you. But you know how tediously exact ident procedures can be these days, so it isn’t often tried anymore, and is less often successful. And Yubere is the most careful of men; his ident data was very difficult to come by. But,” said Publius, holding out his hands and wiggling the fingers, “my virtuosity with flesh and spirit has become prodigious, more than adequate to the task, and Hedrin has become Yubere, in every aspect but his basic loyalties.”

“I see. Still, why not simply buy an assassin in the market?”

Publius clapped him on the shoulder. “That was my plan, until you appeared on my doorstep, as if by magic. And who am I to sneer at Fate’s gifts? Besides, I have vast faith in your skills; if it’s possible to get to Yubere, you’re definitely the one who can do it.”