The Orpheus Machine

Chapter 4

When Ruiz Aw woke, the sky was black except for a few dim stars and the glittering pinpoints of the Shard orbital platforms. He felt a small cold surprise that he was still on Sook. Had he awakened from some unremembered dream of another, better place?

He sat up and happened to nudge against Nisa, who was huddled motionless by the gunwale, wrapped in a square of canvas against the night wind. She accepted the contact for a moment, then jerked away. Ruiz felt a disproportionate sense of isolation. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Nisa. Truly.” It seemed an awkward speech — he didn’t want to think it was necessary to reassure her of his good intentions.

“I know,” she said, in a soft neutral voice.

In the darkness he couldn’t see her expression.

“Truly,” he said again, but this time she didn’t answer.

He waited a moment longer; then, feeling foolish, he made his way aft, climbing carefully over the snoring forms of Dolmaero and Molnekh. Perched on a midships thwart, Einduix the cook nodded affably. It occurred to Ruiz that he had never seen the little orange man sleep.

Svin slept by Gunderd, looking so much like a puppy at its master’s feet that Ruiz smiled. The mate still held the boat on its course, though the wind had dropped and the boat moved sedately at best. “Ruiz Aw,” he said. “At last. For a while there I thought I’d have to send someone to wake you. I was wondering whose loss would be more bearable, should the messenger step on one of your vipers. A difficult decision: Svin is useless, of course, but at least he’s never tried to poison me.”

Gunderd seemed to speak with unforced geniality. Ruiz settled himself and took the tiller. He noticed that the course was south of east, an odd direction for their purposes. “What’s going on, Gunderd?”

“Look to the north. Do you see the loom of the bane-lights on Roderigo?”

Ruiz looked and saw a glimmer of cold pale green on the horizon, wavering at the edge of visibility. He felt a sudden hollowness in his stomach, and the curious sensation of sweat breaking out on his brow, though the air was cool. “Ah,” he said.

“Ah?” said Gunderd. “You’re a cool one. When I saw it, I resurrected my father’s gods and started to pray — hoping that perhaps they’d established a franchise on Sook. After all, they’re water gods, and we sail through a substance that resembles water, at least superficially.”

Ruiz was forced to laugh.

Gunderd’s discolored teeth gleamed in the darkness.

Ruiz looked again at the bane-lights. “How did we come so close? Your course appeared to give Roderigo a good offing.”

Gunderd’s smile disappeared. “The nav console is dead, Ruiz, but before it died, it seemed to show us well off. Two explanations occur: a strong uncharted current after the unit died — not improbable — or… the possibility that the Roderigo hetmen detected us and slaved the console to their purposes.”

“Oh no,” said Ruiz.

“Indeed,” said Gunderd. “Indeed.”

“What can we do?”

“Not much. Hope it was a current. Flee with as much alacrity as the wind allows. Get religion.”

“Ah.”

Gunderd snorted. “You’re no conversationalist, whatever your other talents. I go now to slumber; it may be my last night as a free man. Steer the course, and wake me at dawn, unless the wind shifts.”

He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and appeared to be asleep in moments.

After a while, Einduix took his delicate little flute from his pocket and played a thready minor key melody, skillfully enough to take Ruiz’s mind from his immediate concerns. For an hour the old cook played simple variations on the same theme, and Ruiz never grew tired of listening. Finally he stopped and nodded at Ruiz, who had been his only audience — unless Nisa was still awake.

Ruiz steered southeast, and the bane-lights faded.

Just before dawn, Ruiz heard an ominous rumble — the sound of powerful engines.

The Roderigo catchboat appeared out of the darkness, showing no lights on its squat steel hull. A harsh voice spoke through its hailer, directing them to heave to and prepare to be boarded.

Ruiz threw the tiller over, feeling a terrible sense of defeat. The Roderigans would be equipped with electret snares and sticky-shock nets; resistance would be futile. He stood up, and for a moment it seemed to him that he was very tired. Perhaps the simplest solution for him was to fall backward into the sea’s embrace and let his life finally stream away from him.

“What’s happening?” asked Nisa, in a thin frightened voice. The cabin boy choked back a sob.

Ruiz drew a deep breath. Don’t be foolish, he told himself. Besides, the Roderigans probably carried seeker fish, which would drag him back to life.

“No heroics,” Gunderd whispered. “It could be worse. Some of us may live, if we submit and prove trainable.”

“Yes,” said Ruiz.

Gunderd patted his arm. “I’m sorry, Ruiz. I’d hoped for a better ending.”

Ruiz shook himself. “I know.” He tried to make himself think, to remember all he could about the Roderigan slave depots. He had never had any personal dealings with the Roderigans on any of his earlier missions to Sook; his employers were no more ethical than any other multisystem corporation, but they had some standards.

The Roderigans were notorious for their involvement in a broad spectrum of slaving activities. They maintained a breeding program for several proscribed human types, they supplied Castle Delt with mindwiped shock troops, they ran elimination trials of the most brutal sort. They covered their overhead by fattening human cattle for the cannibals of the Namp coast.

They would supply doppelgängers for any purpose, at a price. Many wealthy cowards came to Sook solely to acquire from the Roderigans a vengeance puppet of their most hated enemy. Star-crossed lovers came, bearing a lock of their beloved’s hair.

Perhaps their most notable contribution to the art of exploiting human suffering was the multiple ransom. When they acquired a major prize, the child of a particularly wealthy pangalac citizen, they often cloned a series of duplicates. After the ransom was paid and the original child was returned to its parents, the Roderigans would begin their campaign to extort further money. They would holotape the torture and execution of the first of the duplicates, and then send the recording to the parents. It was a rare parent who could dispassionately observe the destruction of a child that in all meaningful respects was his or her own.

The range and depravity of the Roderigan enterprises had required them to build extremely good defenses and even better security — more than one anguished parent had chosen to spend a fortune on the destruction of Roderigo. But apparently the hetmen still flourished on their steel and concrete island.

On the catchboat’s deck, two men in bright mirrorsuits appeared, carrying heavy grasers.

“All right,” said the taller one. “Come aboard. One at a time.”

A ladder extruded from the boat’s high topsides.

Gunderd flashed a smile at Ruiz. “If I don’t see you again… it’s been an interesting time, Ruiz Aw.”

Ruiz didn’t answer; he was concentrating on his affect. He slumped his shoulders, curved his back, allowed his hands to tremble. He let his face slacken, as if in helpless terror.

Nisa and the other Pharaohans looked at him first in amazement, and then in contempt. Even Nisa turned away from him, her mouth twisting.

Thereafter, Ruiz didn’t have to work very hard to make his eyes fill with tears.

Gunderd climbed slowly to the catchboat’s deck, where the men grabbed his arms and hustled him over to a line of vertical restraint floaters waiting along the cabinside.

They strapped him in with the efficiency of long practice and returned to the rail. “Next!” barked the talker. “Don’t drag your heels, or we’ll touch you up with the nerve lash.”

Ruiz was the last to depart the lifeboat, clinging to the ladder and fumbling as if his legs and arms would barely obey him. He almost fell over the rail, and the man who clamped his arm muttered in disgust, “Come on, what’s the matter with you? A grown man acting like a baby.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ruiz babbled. He darted a look about, and his heart sank. Along the bridge deck, automated weapons pods tracked him. Underfoot the deck showed the distinctive pattern of a stun grid. His acting abilities, such as they were, would do him no good, at least for the time being.

The restraints snapped shut around his limbs, locking him to the pallet. One of the mirrorsuited men passed a detector over the prisoners and relieved Gunderd and Ruiz of their knives.

When he came to Einduix’s flute, he shrugged and pitched it overboard. Einduix made a strangled sound of rage, and Ruiz, looking around, saw in the tiny man’s face such a deadly intent that he was genuinely shocked. But almost before Ruiz had seen that look, the cook’s face smoothed over and he smiled blandly at his captor.

An uneasy feeling touched Ruiz; apparently they all carried secrets, and perhaps none of them were what they appeared to be.

He found that he was very tired of ambiguity. Still, he had no choice but to think in those tangled terms, so when the taller Roderigan stood before him with a dataslate and asked him his name and profession, Ruiz replied in a bright, frightened voice, “Ruiz. Comfort boy, please sir.”

It seemed to Ruiz that he could feel the astonishment of the others, but no one spoke to give him away.

The Roderigan nodded, apparently unsurprised, and made an entry on his slate. “And you?” he said to Svin.

“Svin, apprentice seaman,” answered the cabin boy.

Ruiz had the impression that beneath the mirrormask, the man grinned with pointed teeth. “You’ll find the stockyards to your liking, boy. All you can eat. A short and merry life.”

He seemed pleased also to find a Pharaohan conjurer and Guildmaster in his catch. “Valuable properties,” he said.

When he asked Nisa her occupation, she tossed her beautiful head and answered, “Nisa. Princess.”

Amusement seemed to seep through the featureless glitter of the mask. “We get a lot of those, Your Majesty. Let us hope that you show talent in other areas, or you’ll be joining Svin in the stockyards.”

Gunderd spoke next. “Gunderd. Exty scholar.”

Ruiz again reminded himself not to be surprised by anything.

Finally the Roderigan stood before Einduix the cook and asked his question.

The little orange man smiled and shook his head, his incomprehension so obvious that Ruiz was automatically suspicious.

The Roderigan produced a multichannel translator and spoke into it. It regurgitated the sentence in dozens of languages, some of which were unfamiliar to Ruiz. Einduix remained cheerfully uncommunicative. After a while, the man drew a nerve lash from his mirrorsuit and shook it in the cook’s face, which prompted Einduix to shout incomprehensibly in a thin cracked voice.

“Well, what shall we do with him?” said the taller Roderigan.

“Don’t know,” said the other. “It’s certain they’d not want him in the stockyards. Perhaps he’s collectable; we’ll just mark him ‘unknown’ and leave it at that.”

“As you say.”

The man with the dataslate touched his wrist and the restraint floaters rose up and moved toward an armored hatch that peeled open in the side deck.

Ruiz Aw was the first to go down into the below-decks darkness. A familiar stench filled his nostrils: the smell of the slavehold, compounded of organic substances and the unmistakable bouquet of hopeless misery.

The hold was dank and lit only by red glowplates. After the Roderigans had secured them to bulkhead racks and gone away, no one said anything for a while. The catchboat’s engines revved and the boat began to pitch up and down in the seaway.

Finally Nisa started to speak. “Why did—”

She was interrupted by Gunderd, who spoke in a loud jovial voice. “Well, well; now we are embarked on a new and exciting life. Our careers will be whatever we can make of them, and we must never forget that our new supervisors will weigh every aspect of our behavior, so as to find the best possible use for our talents. Why, even now they probably listen and evaluate. And why not?”

Ruiz realized with a small start of surprise that Gunderd had not yet given up, that he hoped that Ruiz Aw, slayer extraordinary, might arrange a miracle and get them away from Roderigo alive.

Svin spoke in a small voice. “And what of me? My career is to be the stockyard. What does that mean, do you think?”

The cabin boy meant nothing to Ruiz Aw, but he pitied Svin. He didn’t know what to say.

Gunderd answered in the same cheerfully brassy voice he always used with Svin. “Who can say? Perhaps that is their term for their holding area, where they keep folk whose talents have yet to be gauged. Be content; if anyone can find a use for you, the Roderigans surely will.”

The cabin boy seemed somewhat heartened by Gunderd’s attempt to comfort him, though Svin would have to be improbably stupid to swallow Gunderd’s words completely, Ruiz thought. The hold had such an air of malevolent purpose; Ruiz could almost feel the ghosts of former passengers, crowding around him, touching him with cold bloodless fingers.

He shivered and tried to form a plan. Nothing came to him; he could only hope that somewhere along the line, the Roderigans would think him harmless and relax their security sufficiently to give him an opening. Unfortunately, everything he had ever heard about the Roderigans led to pessimistic thoughts. Many assassins had been sent against the Roderigan hetmen, for millions had reason to hate them. But as far as Ruiz knew, the hetmen lived as long as they chose, until the weight of their deeds bore them down into extinction.

In less than an hour, the drone of the engines dropped in pitch and the motion eased, as if they had come onto the smooth water of a harbor. The engines rumbled to an idle and then stopped. They heard the clatter of people on deck, shouted commands, the whine of windlass motors.

Finally the sounds fell away, replaced by an ominous silence.

The hatch slid open, admitting a harsh ray of sunlight.

“Good-bye, everyone,” said Gunderd. “I’ll miss your company. Even the vipers. Even Svin. Even, gods help me, Einduix the poisoner.”

“Good-bye,” said Ruiz, in a suitably tremulous voice.

No one else seemed inclined to farewells.

In the hatch appeared a pair of magnificently embroidered margar-web boots, followed by their owner, a woman in the black shipsuit of a Roderigan hetman.

She descended the access ladder with sinuous grace and turned to inspect the prisoners. For a moment she stood in the light, as if to permit their admiration.

Despite his certain knowledge that she was a great monster, Ruiz felt compelled to an abstract admiration. She had a dark harsh face, framed by an artfully wild tangle of hair falling below her shoulders. At the crown her hair was an arterial red, muting to rusty brown at midlength. At the ends it was as black as Nisa’s. Ruiz suddenly realized that the hetman’s coloring recapitulated the progressive hues of drying blood.

She wore a cluster of rubies and tiny white feathers from her right ear, and on one high cheekbone a triple chevron of thin white scars. Her body was strong and spare, without any apparent softness.

The impression was of barbaric splendor. Someone spoke in a soft detached voice. “Light.”

Overhead lamps came on, so that brilliance filled the hold and Ruiz was blinded for a moment.

When he could see again, the hetman stood before Ruiz’s floater, staring at him with stony black eyes. Another Roderigan had joined her, a man of great apparent age, white-haired and wrinkled, his body knotty with wiry muscle. He had a clever vulpine air, and eyes that darted everywhere. Ruiz identified him as the hetman’s personal tongue and security chief.

“I am Gejas,” said the man, in that incongruously gentle voice. “I speak for your new keeper, The Yellowleaf.” He made a courtly half-bow to the hetman.

She nodded and turned, to give each prisoner a deliberate expressionless look. Then she returned her cold gaze to Ruiz, who had no difficulty in adopting a look of barely restrained terror. He told himself there was no special malevolence in her attention, but he wondered why she was so single-mindedly focused on him.

A minute passed with excruciating slowness. Ruiz found her face baffling — if there was any expression at all, it appeared to be a sort of rapacious curiosity. She finally turned away and went back up the ladder, moving with a powerful agile grace. Ruiz felt an involuntary shudder run through him. He thought, She’s probably as dangerous as any creature on Sook.

Gejas waited until the hetman’s boots had disappeared before he spoke again. “Roderigo’s pens overflow with stock at the moment. You will all therefore be held in our intake area until training slots open up. It is my job to teach you to survive this initial procedure. Your survival is probable, providing you follow this simple rule.”

He gave them a small chill smile. “Never attempt to harm or disobey or annoy any Roderigan. Or you will die. Does anyone not understand? Are there any questions?”

Svin said in a small tremulous voice, “Sir? I—”

Gejas moved so quickly that even Ruiz was surprised, and before Svin could speak another word, Gejas had dexterously opened his throat, using a small sonic knife. A single spurt of blood escaped the wound before Gejas attached a self-sealing drain, which pumped away the cabin boy’s blood as quickly as it flowed, down a thin clear tube, into a receptacle at the foot of the rack.

Unable to look away, Ruiz watched the boy’s white, horrified face. Svin wheezed and choked, unable even to scream; apparently Gejas’s skillful knife had destroyed his larynx. His arms jerked in their restraints, a little blood trickled from his mouth, and then his eyes went dull, his body relaxed.

“So,” said Gejas. “A useful lesson here. The wise trainee asks no questions; he simply does what is required. A few of you may think yourselves more valuable than this person, who was destined to be meat in any case — but you should remember that there is always an empty hook waiting for you in the holds of our freezer ships. Roderigo is rich, and will survive even if we must sell your carcass to the Blades for a pittance.”

Gejas smiled again, projecting an air of repellent charm. “Now, you go to Intake. You will go sleeping; security requires that no one see more of us than is absolutely necessary.” He touched a control pad at his wrist, and an injector at Ruiz’s shoulder sighed.

Ruiz made no effort to fight the darkness.

Corean felt a huge bubble of joy well up in her chest, squeezing her heart, almost painfully. “They have him?” she asked again, breathlessly.

Marmo shifted uneasily, his ancient servomotors whining. “But consider carefully. The hetmen have set an absurd price on Ruiz Aw; furthermore, they are demanding you come to Roderigo to claim him. How can we know their purpose in this? Why will they not simply ship your properties back to you?”

Corean regarded Marmo with impatience. “We must take precautions, of course; I’m not so foolish as to show up at Roderigo, hat in hand, trusting in the hetmen’s good faith. As to the price, they must know that the Lords want him. And they’re a cautious folk, by all accounts — which may be why they want to sell him away from SeaStack, where the Lords can’t try to steal him. But none of that matters. I’d climb down the throat of Hell to get Ruiz Aw.”

“Reassuring, to hear that,” Marmo said dryly. The old cyborg turned away, his chassis catching a dull gleam from the overhead light. “And what is your plan? I must tell you, Corean, I’m not so brave as your esteemed self. The Roderigans frighten me; you will have to have a very good scheme before I will agree to go with you.”

Corean felt an astonishment as vast as the joy she had felt on hearing of Ruiz Aw’s capture. In all the years he had served her, Marmo had never spoken so to her.