The Emperor of Everything

Chapter 12

Corean fumed. Bad enough that Alonzo Yubere had made her wait, worse that he refused to meet with her face-to-face. She was insulted… and worried.

His nondescript face stared calmly from the holotank. “Matters are unsettled, Corean. Somehow the pirate lords have learned our secret — or enough of it to make them froth at the mouth. I’ve been threatened, and even my Gencha are restive. They’re not stupid creatures, you know. Just unworldly.”

Corean was stunned. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes. You wouldn’t know how they found out, would you?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “You have dozens of other clients, any of whom could have leaked it.” But she was very uneasy. Had Ruiz Aw somehow divined that she had been sending him and the others to SeaStack for their treatment? Maybe. But that wasn’t the central element of the secret she shared with Yubere, and the other slavers in his organization. “Do the lords know about the machine?”

Yubere’s lips writhed. “Best not to mention such things, even here,” he admonished. “No, I think not. They know only that an unnatural number of Genched slaves have recently appeared on the market, and they suppose that someone has a pack of unregistered Gencha hidden in their basement. That’s enough to drive them mad with avarice, as it is. They’ve made a connection with me, unfortunately. I may be forced to flee; you should be prepared to.”

Corean drew a deep breath. “I have unfinished business here. It’s your business too, so you’d do well to help me. That group of Pharaohan conjurors I was shipping to you for processing, do you recall? They escaped, and one of them knows I was sending him to the Gencha. And he’s not a Pharaohan, he’s a pangalac, a freelance enforcer… and a very capable individual. The longer he stays alive, the more chances he’ll have to pass along what he knows.”

Yubere leaned closer, his face suddenly keen. “What does he know?”

“Not a great deal — just that he and the others were to be processed. They escaped before the boat reached SeaStack, so he probably doesn’t know that the Gencha are here. But he’s clever; I don’t want to give him too much time to think about it.”

“What do you want of me?”

“I need a slayer. A very good slayer, someone who specializes in difficult infiltrations. And best if you can give me a Genched slayer, so there’d be no possibility of disloyalty.”

Yubere sat back, so that the tank’s focus dissolved and his face became a random pattern of primary color. He said nothing for a bit, and Corean became impatient.

“Well? Will you help?”

His face came back into focus; his eyes were luminous and Corean could almost see gears spinning in the facile mind behind those eyes. “Yes, of course. I have exactly the man you need. Leave your cyborg and your Moc; follow the mech I send. We’ll take a look at your slayer, and you can have him immediately, if you like.”

The mech took Corean to an elaborate security lock set into an ancient bulkhead. Once inside, she was searched, scanned, and deprived of all her external weapons. Finally the mech locked a neutralizer around her hand; if she tried to use the sonic knife built into her index finger, she would only succeed in blowing her hand off.

At the other end of the lock Alonzo Yubere waited for her, his unremarkable features composed, his hands folded across his stomach. “Come,” he said, and walked down the corridor.

She had never been in his stronghold before, and she looked about, frankly curious. The walls of the corridor were brushed stainless alloy, bright and clean and unadorned. The ceiling was a continuous glowpanel, the floor spongy gray tile. She fancied she could smell the decaying-earthworm stink of the Gencha who lived somewhere below, but if so, it was very faint.

They came to a series of observation rooms. Each had a one-way glass across the width of the room, and as they passed, she glanced in, taking note of the properties her fellow slavers and competitors were having processed. She saw several items which excited her avarice and her envy, but Yubere moved briskly along, so she didn’t have time for a more leisurely examination.

One of the properties in particular caught her eye. They went by that window so quickly that she couldn’t be absolutely sure of the prisoner’s identity, but she was almost certain she had seen Ivant Tildoreamors, one of the more powerful pirate lords, renowned for his ruthlessness and cruel sense of humor. She maintained the same look of innocent curiosity, but her thoughts were racing. Was Yubere Genching the pirate lords? Very dangerous, she thought, but audacious and ambitious.

At the end of the corridor was an elevator, into which Yubere led her. The door shut, and the cage dropped. For a moment Corean was touched by a cold finger of fear. She glanced at Yubere’s impassive face. Was he taking her to the Gench, had he decided at last to make her safe? No, no — the process required several days of preparation before it could be done, and her people would know that something was wrong if she did not return shortly. They could not rescue her from Yubere’s stronghold, of course, but they could spread the word of his betrayal to the other slavers in Yubere’s organization, who would surely destroy him before he could destroy their autonomy. Yubere would have considered all this… so she was safe.

But she wondered why none of this had occurred to her, before she’d allowed herself to be taken into his stronghold. Was her passion for revenge strong enough to overshadow her defensive instincts? Perhaps, but there were other reasons — good practical reasons — why Ruiz Aw needed to be dead.

The elevator jarred to a halt, and they stepped off into another and darker world. Here the walls were of some gray alloy, lumpy and showing slagged ripples, as if damaged by some ancient conflagration. Rivulets of dirty water ran down the metal; in places minerals had been deposited in masses of glittering white crystals. A single faded glowtube, fastened in uneven loops to one wall, cast a bluish light.

“Are we in the Gencha enclave?” asked Corean. The stink was stronger here.

Yubere shook his head. “No — that’s much farther down, Corean.”

“How far down does this stack go?”

“No one knows. Oh, maybe the Gencha know, but they won’t tell.”

His matter-of-fact words made her uneasy. Somehow, she had envisioned a different situation — she had assumed that Yubere kept his Gencha in tidy little cages, obedient to his whims. The realization that Yubere was not entirely in charge sent apprehensive shivers down her back. She wondered what else she didn’t know.

“How many of them are there?” she asked.

“I don’t know that either, Corean.”

“How can that be?”

He stopped abruptly. “You don’t understand my relationship with them, do you?”

She began to be angry. “Apparently not.”

He gripped her arm tightly. “Apparently not, eh? I don’t control them; I’m just a middleman. I don’t even furnish their guards… did you know that they have hundreds of people down there, folk who’ve lived in the enclave for who knows how many centuries? They’re not human anymore, how could they be?” He spoke with such hot-eyed distraction that her annoyance mutated into a stronger uneasiness. “No, not human but they will make it very difficult for the pirate lords to take the enclave, no matter how many soldiers they send down there. They’re not human, those people; they would be no better than a Gench at doing my job. So the Gencha, they use me as a go-between, an intermediary with the human city of SeaStack. They don’t trust their ability to deal with the city, but they feel sufficient congruency with me. They trust me.”

At that moment, with his face thrust close to hers, and some strange compound of desperation and pride glittering in his flat eyes, Yubere looked believably alien.

“I see,” she said.

He released her and jerked away, walking fast. “No, you don’t. Still, they do as I ask, they pay me by using their grand machine to make our puppets for us, so never complain.”

She hurried to keep up. “I’m not complaining,” she said in a subdued voice. “But… what are they doing down there?”

His voice had a curious lightness. “They say they are Becoming. What they are Becoming, I cannot guess. Gods, perhaps, or demons.”

These were Yubere’s dungeons, she eventually understood. They began to pass doorways blocked with painfields and bars. From some of those dark mouths came the rattle of chains, moans, curses. Yubere’s enemies?

When they reached their destination, she was growing tired, and oppressed by the antiquity of the dungeons. She felt the great mass of the stack over her head as a physical weight, pressing her down toward the Gencha enclave and its unpleasant mysteries. She found that her curiosity was also exhausted; all she wanted was to get her slayer and be gone.

Yubere touched a switch, and the cell lit up.

A man lay in a muscle-stimulator, eyes closed, body jerking and bunching as the machine exercised his body. His skin was stretched tight over a massive musculature; no fat masked the striated tissue. His face seemed ordinary enough, perhaps a bit small for that impressive body, but she saw something disturbing in it. She still had not decided what it was that had that effect, when Yubere spoke. “My brother Remint.”

Then she saw the resemblance, and wondered why she had not immediately noticed it.

“He was once my most valuable and trusted lieutenant,” said Yubere, almost dreamily. “Oh, what a pair we were — my intellect and his perfect murderous strength. But he lost his way, he allowed his imagination to betray his intellect. He turned traitor. I’ve saved him for special jobs, since the day he finished his processing — his first assignment was to destroy his fellow conspirators, which he did with admirable efficiency. I order him to maintain his skills, to be ready to serve. I keep him here not to imprison him, of course — what would be the point of that — but to protect him from his enemies, who are many and persistent.”

“How competent is he?”

Yubere glanced at her; he seemed a little annoyed. “There never was a slayer to match Remint. Only an unlikely stroke of fortune saved me from him, and delivered him to my vengeance.”

“So he is unlucky?” She recalled what Marmo had said about Ruiz Aw’s luck.

“Only that once,” said Yubere. “It was then, in fact, that I knew that I was a being of destiny.” For a moment he glowed, he even smiled — the first smile she had ever seen on his face.

He touched the switch again, and the bars slid aside, the painfield dimmed and faded away. “Remint,” Yubere said. “I need you.”

Remint shut off the machine and unstrapped himself. He slid out of its embrace and came toward them. He moved with a graceful economy that reminded her a bit of Ruiz Aw. His expression was distant, heavy with restrained power, taut with arrested violence — and suddenly she accepted Yubere’s evaluation of his brother’s abilities.

Remint stopped a pace away from his brother, and hatred made his face hideous.

“Yes,” said Yubere to Corean. “He still hates me — but he must serve me. Oh, of course the hatred is as synthetic as everything else that fills his head, but it feels as hot as ever, to him. And the synthetic humiliation he suffers when he must serve me… well, it’s the best the Gencha could do, which after all is quite satisfactory.”

Yubere looked up at his brother with an oddly affectionate pride. “What an engine of destruction Remint is, Corean. Did you know, he once killed a Moc in unarmed combat? It’s true the Moc was old, and suffering from a degenerative chitin disease — but still, a formidable feat. And he is much stronger now; reengineered bone and tripled muscle fiber. Monomesh embedded in his skin. Other enhancements. I think now he might even best your Moc, terrible as it is…. Anyway. Remint, you must obey this woman as you would me; unless of course she orders you to do something detrimental to my interests. But you already understand that, don’t you, brother — now and forevermore?”

Corean repressed a shudder. She had always considered Alonzo Yubere a passionless calculating man — how wrong she had been.

Only after she had taken Remint away did it occur to her to wonder what scheme or act of Yubere had caused Remint to turn against his brother.

Flomel found his new quarters no more satisfactory than his last — it was, after all, little more than a cell.

When the back door opened, and the woman in the vidscreen told him to go out and socialize with his fellow slaves, he went gladly.

He moved through the door and found himself in a vast high-ceilinged room. Little knots of people stood about, talking. Others copulated in upholstered niches along the wall, or sat at tables playing board games. Flomel curled his lip in distaste. What a frivolous people the pangalacs were — or maybe it was their slaves who were frivolous. On Pharaoh the slaves were not notably serious-minded. Probably it was the same in the wider universe.

He walked among the other prisoners, avoiding eye contact and studiously ignoring the vulgar activities of the folk in the wall niches.

Suddenly he stiffened, unable to believe his eyes. Dolmaero, Nisa, and Molnekh sat at a small table, drinking from tall glasses and watching the other slaves.

His first impulse was to rush gladly up to them, to greet them like long-lost friends, but then he remembered the way they had cooperated in the abuses the casteless slayer had inflicted on him. A rage rose up in Flomel, and he clenched his fists. For a moment he wanted to rush at them, to destroy them with his hands. Ruiz Aw was nowhere to be seen; they were unprotected. But then he controlled himself. He could be patient; soon Corean would come for him, and until then he could make himself valuable to her by learning what he could. Corean would punish them, he had no doubt. He composed himself, pasted a glad smile on his face, and rushed up to them, shouting out a cheerful greeting.

Nisa lifted her head at his shout and saw Flomel, who wore a crooked smile of such naked falsity that a chill shivered down her backbone.

“Dolmaero! Molnekh! How good to see you.” He widened that obscene smile. “And you too, Nisa, of course. Where is your gallant snake oil man?”

She could not force herself to speak. Flomel’s sudden unlooked-for appearance seemed an evil portent.

But Dolmaero answered for her, in a guardedly polite manner. “We don’t know, Master Flomel. He left us here, to find a buyer for us — or so he said. But, what an unexpected coincidence, to find you here too.”

“Yes, I’m astonished,” said Flomel. He drew up a chair and sat down uninvited. “So, he has abandoned you to your fate,” he said, triumph flickering across his face, to be instantly replaced by an almost-convincing expression of sympathetic commiseration.

“I fear so,” said Dolmaero glumly, and Nisa was moved to admiration for his thespian skills. Perhaps the Guildmaster should have been a conjuror — certainly he acted his part more convincingly than Flomel did his. On the other hand, perhaps Flomel’s hatred for Ruiz Aw was far too huge for him to entirely contain it. Dolmaero was acting from a cooler and more calculated impulse.

“Well, I never trusted his generosity — and you’ll remember how he rewarded my caution? He’s a bad one, and I’m relieved to see that you’ve come to share my opinion — though I’m sad to see us all come to such an end,” said Flomel in a voice ringing with insincerity.

Nisa had to control her urge to defend Ruiz; she clamped her lips shut and nodded jerkily.

Flomel laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she struggled not to shudder. “This disappointment must be particularly difficult for you, dear,” he said with a condescending smile.

Dolmaero must have sensed her distress, because he spoke quickly, as if to distract Flomel from the vindication he was so obviously savoring. “And what of you, Master Flomel? How did you come to be here?”

A brief confusion passed across Flomel’s face, then cleared. Nisa thought: He’s decided which lie to tell.

“It was a somewhat obscure process, Guildmaster — I admit to puzzlement. The ones who held us all took me to another and less pleasant pen, where apparently I was purchased by some great person of the city, who sent his creature to bring me here. A strange creature, who walked like a man, but had the face and mannerisms of a house cat. Very odd. What will happen to me now? I have no inkling.” Flomel appeared to reflect on his mysterious circumstances, then gave a philosophical shrug of his shoulders. “Well, we’re far from old Pharaoh. Things are very different here, eh, Molnekh?” He gave the skinny mage a good-natured dig in the ribs with his elbow.

Molnekh’s answering smile was somewhat sickly, but Flomel appeared not to notice. Flomel continued his musings. “We must adapt, it seems. So you believe that Ruiz Aw has yet to sell you? Perhaps he won’t, perhaps he intends to return for you at some later date, and keep the promises he made to you — when he needed your help. Is it possible?” A slyness flickered in Flomel’s eyes, and Nisa decided he was testing them, to see if any remnant of loyalty to Ruiz remained in them.

Dolmaero shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not. It seems we misjudged him. It now appears he was nothing more than a convincing liar.” He glanced at Nisa; she saw that he was asking for her help in convincing Flomel.

Nisa managed a nod of agreement. Perhaps Flomel would take her silence for an incapacitating rage, and not see on whom it was focused.

Flomel laughed, a cruel sound of satisfaction. It suddenly occurred to Nisa that Flomel had a secret from which he took great pleasure, and she wondered what unpleasant consequences his secret would have for them.

“Tell me,” said Ruiz. “What difficulties do you foresee in reaching Yubere?”

They had returned from the cell with the false Alonzo Yubere walking behind them in calm obedience. Now the three of them sat in Publius’s rooms, again sipping the lilac cordial. The presence of the ringer made Ruiz acutely uncomfortable, though he told himself that it was no different than keeping company with a semiautonomous mech. But mechs didn’t drink sweet liquor, smacking their lips after each sip. Mechs didn’t watch him with clear guileless eyes, apparently eager to be helpful. Mechs didn’t breathe, no heart beat in their metal breasts, their brains were cold crystal, not warm flesh. Ruiz had never been so close to a person who had undergone the Gench processing — at least not to his knowledge — and the ringer’s presence seemed to disrupt the smooth flow of reality. What did that human-shaped inhuman creature feel; were his feelings so different from the things that everyone else felt? If not, what did that say about the validity, or even the verifiability, of Ruiz’s existence?

Publius nodded at the false Yubere. “Alonzo can tell you all about his circumstances — though he’s not quite sure of some important details. Most regrettably, these include the defenses of Yubere’s stronghold, which are almost sure to be more formidable than we expect.”

Ruiz shook himself, dragged himself back from his unproductive musings. “I’d like to discuss other important details, first. I don’t want to seem untrusting… but in fact I am. How do I know you’ll keep your bargain, if I succeed in replacing Yubere with your puppet?”

Publius shook his head in mock sorrow, though his mouth kept trembling toward a fey smile. “Ruiz, Ruiz. You surprise me. We’re such old and devoted comrades. How could you suspect me of duplicity?”

This seemed so eccentrically rhetorical a question that Ruiz could think of no appropriate reply.

Publius laughed. “All right. Well, let me see…. What assurances would comfort you?”

“At present, my imagination fails me,” said Ruiz dryly. “Let’s discuss your proposal in greater detail; perhaps something will come to me.”

“Fair enough,” said Publius in a good-humored voice. “This essentially is the plan: You will penetrate Yubere’s stronghold, taking along my Yubere. Once inside, you’ll locate and dispose of the real Yubere, see that my man is securely installed, and leave. What could be simpler, what could be cleaner?”

“Forgive my suspicious nature, but… what’s to keep you from disposing of the real Ruiz Aw, after his work is done?”

Publius raised his eyebrows. “Loyalty? Gratitude?”

“Insufficient,” said Ruiz. “However… back to your plan. How do you propose we get into the stronghold?”

“Ah! Here I’ve already done much of your work. My people have located a partially sealed-off ingress, only a few hundred meters below the waterline. Our best analysis — old charts, one of Yubere’s former prisoners, and, most indisputably, identifiable waste discharged through an adjacent out-pump — indicates that the ingress connects to the lowest levels of Yubere’s holdings — though we can’t be absolutely sure. You might have to do a bit of exploring, to find your way into his space — but I have confidence in you.”

Ruiz had less confidence. “Supposing I get inside. What then?”

Publius nodded at the false Yubere, who set his snifter aside and leaned forward, an earnest look on his unremarkable face. “I’ve concentrated the majority of my security forces in the upper and most accessible levels of the stronghold, as you might expect. They consist, as far as I know, of a half squad of SeedCorp-trained shock troops, a dozen or so killmechs manufactured recently by Violencia-Muramasa, and a semisapient surveillance network installed four years ago by Clearlight Robotics. The design of the upper level secured accesses is along conventional lines, so far as I know — top-level reception area with holosim negotiation facilities, state-of-the-art security locks, and cross-channeled baffled elevator shafts. Pretty much impregnable, without the use of heavy weapons — and of course the use of weapons heavy enough to breach my defenses would bring swift reaction from the Shards.”

“I only wish my own defenses were so formidable,” said Publius. “But continue.”

The puppet nodded. “Then on the second level are barracks for my troops and mechanisms. Below that, my living quarters — also heavily defended, though less rigorously than topside. Then a level of labs and holding areas where I do my work.”

“And what might that be?” asked Ruiz.

Before the false Yubere could answer, Publius spoke up. “No need to go into that, Alonzo.”

A spasm of mindlessness twitched over the puppet’s face, was almost instantly gone. Watching, Ruiz felt a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity. It was as if the puppet had suffered a tiny disconnection from the fabric of the moment, had briefly existed in another reality.

But he mustn’t allow himself to be distracted, Ruiz decided. “No. I need to know more than you’re telling me. Besides, won’t I see what he’s up to when I come up through that level. Your attitude worries me, Publius. It’s almost as though you don’t expect me to survive.”

Publius stared malevolently at Ruiz. Finally he spoke in a grudging voice. “Oh, as you wish. Tell him, Alonzo.”

The puppet smiled genially. “I make reliable people. Or to put it another way, I make people reliable.”

A long slow moment passed, while Ruiz’s brain processed this data, while his mind was painlessly blank — and then understanding roared in. Oh, no, thought Ruiz. This is where the Gencha are, this is where Corean was sending us. This is where the League wanted me to die. The death net groaned and shuddered in the blackness at the bottom of his mind — but this time he felt its crumbling structure rupture and tear. He was for a measureless time suspended between life and death, only dimly aware of the puppet chattering on, of Publius watching him with startled concern, of the chair that held him, of the air he could no longer breathe — of the essence of himself, slipping away. His inner voice shrieked wordless warnings; he swayed and his eyes rolled up, so that all he could see was a ruddy darkness, and the stars of experience shooting across that warm nothingness.

Then it was over, and Publius was pressing him back into his chair, holding an injector in one manicured hand.

“No!” shouted Ruiz. He shoved Publius away and the monster-maker, caught by surprise, went stumbling back. “I’m all right.”

Publius held the injector ready. “You had me worried — I thought Yubere had run a ringer in on me — beat me to the slice.” He still looked undecided. “That look you had… it speaks to me of Gencha work.”

“It was Gencha work,” Ruiz said. “A death net.” He wiped at the sudden sweat beaded on his brow. He looked into himself, waiting for the weight of the net, but it was gone.

And he was still alive.

Publius was looking at him as if he had just made a sour joke. “Of course,” he sneered. “So why are you still alive?”

Ruiz laughed, a sound of shaky delight. “I wore it down, I guess. But enough of that — what lies under Yubere’s labs?”

The puppet answered as though nothing had happened. “My dungeons.”

“And below that?”

“Unknown,” interrupted Publius, before the puppet could speak. Ruiz had the definite impression that the puppet had been about to say something else, but it was pointless to press it. On the instant the puppet’s master had spoken, the puppet’s reality had changed — now the ringer believed what Publius had asserted. “In any case,” Publius continued, “the ingress you’ll use connects to the level of the dungeons, we think… so the unexplored depths of the stack are irrelevant to your mission.”

“So you say.”

“Yes, I do,” said Publius smugly.

“Let me get this straight. You intend that I should dive down — how many meters?”

“Six hundred and thirty-six,” said the puppet helpfully, eliciting a displeased glare from Publius.

“I should dive down six hundred meters, fighting off the margars and the brainborers, pry open a sealed ingress, break into Yubere’s dungeon, fight my way up to his labs — or worse, his residential level — all the time dragging your ringer with me, kill Yubere, see that the ringer is functioning properly, and get away clean. Do I have it right?”

“Exactly right, Ruiz Aw, old friend.”

“Oh fine.”

Publius snorted. “You put the worst possible face on everything — I’m astonished that you’ve survived in your profession as long as you have. Murder and pillage are inappropriate vocations for realists. But I’ve already made many of the arrangements. I have a sonar-transparent submersible ready to go — it has a clamp-on repair bay, so you won’t even get wet when you break in. You can draw on my funds to hire mercenaries, within reason — the sub holds only eight crew and passengers. Your weapons budget will be generous. What more could you want?”

“A way of preventing you from sticking a knife in my back, in the unlikely event I succeed.”

Publius sighed. “I’m open to suggestions, Ruiz.”

Ruiz sipped at the lilac liquor. “It’s a matter that requires serious thought. Let me return to my own lodgings and I’ll consider.”

Publius smiled and shook his head. “Don’t be silly, Ruiz. I can’t let you out of my control now — you’re gravid with dangerous information. I’ll have a suite prepared for you here, and you’re welcome to brainstorm to your heart’s content, or at least until tomorrow.” His expression darkened and he directed a worried look at the puppet. “The pirate lords are growing restive; who knows how much longer they’ll delay moving against Yubere. They don’t know exactly how he’s connected with the secret, and of course it’s difficult for them to make any sort of concerted effort… but they’re working themselves up to it.”

Something about this last bothered Ruiz. “What makes you think your Yubere would do better against the lords than the real one would?”

“Perceptive question, Ruiz,” said Publius, sounding a bit displeased. “I don’t know why I even try to fool you. Well, I’ll say only that I can call on resources that the real Yubere cannot — and don’t ask me to elaborate.”

Ruiz felt strangely weakened, out of control, bewildered — he could only dimly perceive the mechanisms so obviously grinding away beneath the surface Publius had presented to him. As he considered this, he grew resentful. He looked at the monster-maker and only with great difficulty did he conceal the disgust that flooded through him.

“Well,” he finally said. He made his voice light and fixed a disarming smile on his face. “I hope you’ll put me up in decent style, Emperor Publius. We who are about to die could use a good night’s sleep.”