The Orpheus Machine

Chapter 9

AT first the three of them climbed through a pathless jumble of stone and scrub. Nisa followed at the hetman’s heels, stumbling frequently, but falling only occasionally. When she did, Ruiz picked her up without ceremony and gave her a light push.

The hetman’s helmet lamps shed a dim red light at their feet, just bright enough to keep them from stepping in any deep holes.

A few minutes later, they came upon a faint track. Other footpaths joined the track, which gradually grew broader and smoother, so that they were able to walk less cautiously. Walls rose up on either side, almost intact. Soon they were walking in an ancient lane, worn deep by countless footsteps.

“I don’t understand where we’re going,” whispered Nisa after a while.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Ruiz lightly. “But I’ll tell you. I’m going to consult a man-eating library. Our hosts are afraid to do it themselves.”

“Why are you doing anything for these monsters?” She seemed more puzzled than angry now. “After what they’ve done to you.”

Ruiz forced a laugh. “The hetman has no tongue, but you should remember that there’s nothing wrong with her ears. You’re not so casually attached to your life as I am to mine. But to answer your question: Why not? Is there anything you wouldn’t do to get off Sook? And after all, what did they do to me?”

She didn’t answer for a bit. When she finally spoke, her voice was very low. “They made you a butcher, Ruiz.”

“No,” he said, in a foolishly gentle tone. “I was already a butcher. They showed me what I was. That’s all they did.”

Eventually the lane led to a portal in a basalt cliff. The gate had once been impressive. A tall bronze slab, half-open and slumped from some ancient fire, hung drunkenly from corroded hinges. Carving in shallow relief had outlined the dark rectangular opening… but it had long ago worn to an unidentifiable suggestion of pattern.

The Yellowleaf paused for a moment, as if listening for some faint sound, and then went inside.

Ruiz and Nisa followed, and he held her arm firmly. He told himself that it looked right, as though he merely took precautions against her bolting… though actually he just wanted to touch her. Well, why not? In a short time they would likely both be dead or crazy and it seemed an innocent indulgence. She gave no sign that she detested his touch, though he would have found such detestation understandable. Perhaps she simply hid her feelings well.

The floor of the tunnel was damp and spotted with patches of phosphorescent slime, so he picked his way carefully, staying close to the pool of light shed by the hetman’s lamps.

Once Nisa slipped and only his grip kept her from falling. He took the opportunity to pull her a little closer — and felt a guilty twinge of pleasure.

A hundred meters inside the mountain, the roof lifted and they came into a great circular hall. A shoulder-high band of small lume panels gave a sickly green light, and the floor was dry and level.

The hall seemed full of an impalpable presence, and after a moment Ruiz recognized the sad unmistakable aura of vanished magnificence. Time pressed down from the blackness above and muffled the sound of their steps. Here Ruiz fancied that the ghosts watched more openly, disdaining concealment, as if they were specters of aristocratic rank.

Ruiz wondered how long the island had been dead. Carpets had turned to dust, the paneling on the walls had decayed to a few splinters of dark punky wood. Amazing, he thought, that the island’s machinery had survived so long untended.

“What now?” he said. His voice echoed and died.

The Yellowleaf pointed, then led the way toward the far side of the hall and a curtain wall, where three low openings glowed with a stronger light, which shone up the high walls behind.

As they neared the wall, a strong smell of death met them. It was enough like the stink of the slaughterhouse to stop Ruiz in his tracks. “No,” he said, his will deserting him.

The Yellowleaf stood by the arch of the center niche and made a peremptory gesture. Ruiz shook his head, unable to speak. He felt his face writhing with some betraying expression.

Nisa moved to stand in front of Ruiz, and she looked up into his face. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a soft voice.

“I’ve changed,” he muttered, as much to himself as to her. “Too late or too soon, but it’s happened.”

She touched his shoulder, then turned and went into the niche. Ruiz felt compelled to follow, then.

The niche seemed at first glance to be the den of some fearsome mythical beast, an ogre perhaps, or a dragon. Bones littered the floor, broken and scattered. In the center of the niche a softstone couch rose waist high.

The couch was currently occupied by a corpse in an ugly stage of decay. It wore Roderigan armor of some silvery alloy. It lay in a relaxed posture, head tipped back, arms flung wide. Maggots crawled over its exposed face, and the eyes were gone.

The Yellowleaf unceremoniously rolled the corpse aside and it fell with a clatter. The softstone was stained and crusted with the products of decomposition, and the thought that he must soon lie there made Ruiz’s skin crawl.

“Where does this go?” he asked, lifting the energy cell.

The Yellowleaf indicated a bank of circular sockets in the left-hand wall, all filled with discharged cells.

Ruiz jerked one out; it released with a cloud of dust and a waft of acidic corrosion. At The Yellowleaf’s nod, he slid the fresh cell in and gave it a turn to lock it into its contacts.

For a moment the lights wavered, and then a faint hum filled the niche.

The Yellowleaf pointed urgently to the couch.

Ruiz turned to Nisa, who stood along the wall, arms wrapped around herself. He felt an impulse to go to her, to press himself against her, to ask her to put her arms around him. He couldn’t. Even were the hetman not watching, alert to any exploitable weakness… he was too dirty, he would never be clean enough to hold Nisa, never. But he smiled and spoke cheerfully. “Keep a close eye on the hetman. Remember everything she does, so you can tell me when I come back.”

She nodded. “So you plan to come back?”

“Why not?” he said, and lay down, ignoring the stink that enfolded him, ignoring the slimy surface of the couch. He thought, This is what I deserve, to receive Death’s decaying kiss. I’ve served so faithfully.

The niche grew brighter, the hum rose up the scale.

The lights flared a brilliant white, and he was elsewhere.

Ruiz opened his eyes, which he had shut against the painful glare of the virtual’s activation. He seemed to lie on the same couch… but the carrion smell was gone, and the bones. A soft radiance streamed down, colored in a thousand subtle shades, as if by stained-glass windows high above. He squinted his eyes, but the lofty ceiling was obscured by a misty brightness.

He levered himself upright and saw that he was alone.

The niche was hung with heavy tapestries, worked with red and gold designs, angular abstractions. The floor tiles were an interlocking pattern of umber and cerulean, inlaid with sunburst medallions of polished bronze. A pure white coverlet draped the couch.

No sound penetrated the curtains, and he wondered if something stealthy waited for him out in the great hall.

He swung his feet down, but felt no great urge to get on with his business. From the grim attitude of the Roderigans, Ruiz had expected the virtual to be a dreadful place.

So far it seemed the most peaceful place he had visited since coming to Sook.

The change was so profound that he found it a little difficult to believe that his body still lay on that festering slab… and that his mind now inhabited a synthetic reality. He looked down at himself and observed that he wore a pair of white cotton trousers and a loose-sleeved open-necked shirt. On his feet were canvas sandals. His fingernails were neatly trimmed, his face smooth-shaven. The bruises and aches he had collected during his sojourn on Sook were all gone.

“Tidy folk,” he muttered. He drew a deep breath and stood up.

When he stepped out through the curtains, he saw that the beauty of the niche was only a small reflection of the glory outside.

High above, a great rose window filled the ceiling, a design of vast interlocking complexity, rivers of glowing color. It was through this window’s magnificence that the light poured down on a hall filled with concentric circles of thronelike chairs, all facing inward toward a tall central pulpit carved from the twisted white trunk of a dead tree.

He walked forward to admire the nearest of the chairs, a sinuous construction of forged black iron, set with translucent panels of russet agate, accented with pink moonstone cabochons. The small round cushion was of inky purple velvet. He felt that he could almost see its owner’s ghost, a complicated person with a strong supple mind and a stony will, sitting erect and composed.

Ruiz thought it the most interesting chair he had ever seen, until he looked at the next one. The high back was a thin curved shell of laminated wood, a lustrous lavender gray, inlaid with intricate spiraling designs in silver wire. The slender elegant legs seemed to be cast from opalescent glass, and the heavy feet were carved into the semblance of human fists, knuckles down. Ruiz touched the chair, let his fingertips slip across the warm silky texture of the wood and the cool polish of the silver. He closed his eyes, and a fanciful picture filled his mind’s eye: a beautiful woman in silks and jewels, imperious and languid.

Ruiz wandered toward the central pulpit, marveling. Each of the hundreds of chairs was a remarkable object, each showed a dazzling brilliance of craft, each seemed to cloak itself in a distinctive humanity, to announce its owner’s character in an unmistakable voice.

By the time he reached the open space at the hall’s center, his thoughts were cloudy with ghosts. He stood looking up at the pulpit, admiring the way it seemed to soar up into the light of the great rose window.

“We called it the Tree of Knowledge.” The voice was high-pitched but pleasant. “Though actually I think it was a Sook-adapted hawthorn of some sort.”

Ruiz turned to see a person standing in the dark opening at the far side of the hall. At first glance, he seemed a young boy with yellow skin and dark sloe eyes. He wore a white unisuit, and his woolly black hair was cut in fanciful puffs and spires, a sort of cranial topiary. In his left hand he held the right paw of a small doglike creature, which stood, incongruously, on its hind legs.

The boy seemed somehow as unthreatening as any being he had ever met, so Ruiz attempted to make a polite response. “The Tree of Knowledge?”

“Yes,” said the boy as he came toward Ruiz, leading the animal like a child. “We took the name from an Old Earth myth about the origin of curiosity. In that case, some barbarian god got angry with his people for tasting the fruit of the tree. Did nasty stuff to them: kicked their ungrateful curious butts out of paradise and gave them suffering and death.” He laughed softly. “We saw it as an interesting irony. We never thought it would happen to us.”

The boy held out a slender hand in greeting, which Ruiz took without thinking. “By the way,” the boy said, giving Ruiz’s hand a decisive shake and then dropping it, “I’m Somnire, your host. Welcome to all that’s left of the Great Compendium.”

“I’m Ruiz Aw,” Ruiz said, bemused by Somnire’s nonchalance. At closer sight, Somnire seemed older, though his skin was unlined and he moved with the easy grace of youth.

“Yes, I know.” Somnire stepped forward, patted the tree affectionately. “Oh, we had a lot of fine times here, no doubt about that. The dons would relax in their chairs and the stackfolk would pass among us with trays full of goodies and wine. We’d all get drunk and then we’d take turns climbing the Tree of Knowledge — each of us would tell a joke or sing a song. Pretty soon the dons would be rolling around on the floor under their chairs, fornicating joyfully, and the stackfolk would bring coverlets for afterward. There’d be music and dancing and games. Fine times…. “His black eyes went dreamy for a moment, as though he were too full of remembrance to see.

Ruiz felt somewhat confused by these confidences. “I thought this was a library.”

Somnire grinned and gave Ruiz an amused look. “Are the librarians small gray people, juiceless and timid, where you come from? Not so here! We accepted none but the best: comets in the universe of knowledge, great roaring fires of curiosity and ambition.”

“I see,” said Ruiz. He hardly knew how to respond.

Somnire chuckled, a pure melodious sound. He released the animal’s paw and it dropped to all fours, slowly and carefully, as though the movement hurt it. Ruiz saw that the twisted stumps of membranous wings sprouted from its withers. It looked up at him with its doglike eyes, and he saw no more intelligence than he would expect from a dog.

“Run along, Idirin,” said Somnire, making shooing motions at his pet. “We have business to transact.”

It laid its blunt head against Somnire’s leg for a moment, then stumped away stiffly.

Somnire watched the animal go, and a trace of sadness flitted across his childish features. “She’s too attached to me. It’s because she can’t fly with the other sarim. Perhaps I ought to put her ghost to rest, but I’m afraid I’d be too lonely without her.”

Idirin paused and looked back at her master, and then shimmered and disappeared.

Somnire straightened his shoulders abruptly and turned to Ruiz. “So! You’re here to gather data for Roderigo?”

“No,” said Ruiz. “I’m just trying to live a little longer.” He felt he had to defend that ambition, so he went on. “I have people depending on me.”

“Yes, I know,” said the boy. “I know. Actually, I’m just teasing you a little. If you were really working for Roderigo, you wouldn’t be here.” Somnire waved his hand, a gesture that took in the hall, the chairs, the rose window.

“Oh? Where would I be?”

“In Hell. Or anyway, the closest thing to Hell that a bunch of imaginative, slightly crazy folk could design. Close enough.” A grim thoughtful look settled over Somnire’s face, and suddenly he looked ancient. “Anyway. What do you think Roderigo wants to know?”

“They want to know what’s so important about the Gencha enclave in SeaStack.”

“Ah. And you? What did you come to the Compendium to learn?”

Ruiz shook his head. “How to survive. A little longer.”

“Maybe we can help you,” said Somnire.

Nisa watched as the hetman tore the armor off the decaying corpse, digging through the corruption with her gauntleted hands.

Squatting there, The Yellowleaf looked like some bright mechanical carrion bird, happily selecting the best gobbets. Nisa shuddered, and wondered what the woman searched for.

Her curiosity was satisfied a moment later, as the hetman found a long thin-bladed dagger, which she wiped clean on the corpse’s hair. Then she slipped the knife into a slot in her calf armor. The hetman looked at Nisa, her ghoulish faceplate gleaming in the dim blue light, and Nisa imagined that behind the metal she was smiling.

“I don’t think you have to worry,” Nisa said. “I think you’ve broken him. I never thought that would happen.”

The Yellowleaf shrugged and sat down, her back against the darkest wall. Nisa remembered that the hetman couldn’t speak.

Nisa looked down at Ruiz’s sleeping face. He seemed a great deal younger, as though the dream he now lived in was a pleasant one. Perhaps, she thought, that was the danger here: The dreamer might not want to wake.

She felt as if she had just awakened from a dream she would have wished to continue: the dream in which Ruiz Aw loved her.

“Would you like to see the city?” Somnire asked. “Come outside. I’ll be your tour guide and we can talk.” He put a light hand on Ruiz’s arm and tugged him gently toward the exit.

When they came to the great bronze door, Somnire touched it and it swung open. A small two-passenger flier sat between the deep walls, and Somnire led Ruiz to it.

“Let’s go,” the ancient boy said. “Don’t be afraid. I’m an excellent pilot, and besides, none of this is real.” He winked cheerfully and slid into the left-hand seat.

“So, why don’t we just sprout wings and float away?” Ruiz asked.

“Would you like that better? No? I didn’t think so. Let’s try to preserve our illusions.”

They lifted above the walls, into the sunlight, and Ruiz thought, How beautiful, how strange.

The island was a living confection. From the surf that rolled in from the blue-green sea to the crown of shining black cliffs that rose above, palaces of brilliant white stone frosted the steep slopes. Everywhere flowering plants spilled from terraces and windows and walls, and their spiciness thickened the air, so that it almost made Ruiz dizzy.

The oddest sights of the city were the great white flying buttresses that rose from the sea and swept upward in a fine vigorous curve until they met the basalt of the cliffs. These massive structures, spaced a half-kilometer apart at the base, apparently served as apartments for thousands of dwellers; windows glittered in the sun, and innumerable small balconies broke the sheer faces.

They rose higher and began to drift sideways above the palaces.

Ruiz looked down, to see more of the small animals the boy had called sarim. They sat on ledges, sunning themselves, huge iridescent wings spread — or flitted from balcony to balcony, chasing each other playfully. High above, a dozen others circled lazily in the rising air currents. The city seemed otherwise empty, and Ruiz wondered who tended the plants, until he remembered that none of this was real.

“Ah, but once it was,” Somnire said.

Ruiz jerked his head to look at the boy, full of a sudden unsettling suspicion.

“Oh, of course I know what you’re thinking,” said Somnire with a careless smile. “Your consciousness now exists in the mind of the Compendium; what would you expect? I lie to myself and pretend that I’m a man named Somnire, who once called himself the Head Librarian — but in fact I’m only a subroutine in the virtual. There are no rules for me!” He laughed. “For example…” His face shimmered, became a chitinous insectile nightmare, all fangs and spines, the eyes huge compound jewels. An instant later it returned to its pleasant youthful humanity. “See? I couldn’t have done that so easily when I was real. So, I have access to every ripple that slips across your mind. Please remember this, should you be tempted to think unkind thoughts of me.”

Ruiz sighed. He had grown terribly weary of things that weren’t what they seemed; he could barely bring himself to notice them.

“I’m sorry,” Somnire said. “I shouldn’t have done that. And I think we can help you, I really do. After all, the Compendium contains all the knowledge a thousand years of searching could collect — and what’s more powerful than knowledge? Other than guns and bombs, I mean.” Somnire’s voice had darkened. Just for an instant the beautiful city seemed to waver and Ruiz caught a glimpse of the emptiness beneath.

“Roderigo did it, you know,” Somnire went on. “That’s why we won’t help them. Roderigo and Delt. Well, they had many allies — all the folk of Sook who couldn’t stand to see knowledge freely shared — but they were the organizers, and they were the ones who broke the stones and butchered all the stackfolk.”

Ruiz felt a small curiosity. “Why would you build your library on Sook, of all places?”

“Ah! Where else? You must understand, we had only one rule: We would give any knowledge we possessed to anyone who asked for it. No pangalac world would have suffered our presence.”

Ruiz must have shown his perplexity, for Somnire laughed, a trifle bitterly, and went on. “For example: You want to build a hellbomb? We’d tell you how. You want to know where the fissionables can be bought? The price? How to arrange secure transport? Do you see why we would be unpopular? But the Shards don’t care who lives on Sook, as long as they obey the rules.”

“Oh,” said Ruiz. “Then why won’t you tell the Roderigans what they want to know?”

The ancient boy gave him a long unfriendly look. For a minute he didn’t answer; then he said, “That was then, when the Compendium was alive. We’ve since learned a certain self-protective pragmatism. The truth didn’t save us.

“Now we’re ghosts. Vengeful ghosts. You should remember that, if you want our help.”

“I will,” Ruiz said.

They flew on in silence, and Ruiz wondered if he had fatally offended the ancient boy. He didn’t care very much.

They gradually circled the island, and it appeared to Ruiz that the island must once have housed hundreds of thousands, though now all the palaces and courtyards and gardens were empty of human life. The only movement came from the sarim, who played everywhere in the deserted city.

Once a flight of the creatures winged by just below the flier, and Somnire sighed. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Sunlight glowed in the wings, throwing back a subtle prismatic dazzle.

“I suppose,” said Ruiz. “Are you alone here, except for them?”

“No, I have a few companions — though they dwindle. At one time there were many of us, most of the dons and many stackfolk.” The boy shook his head, and his face was dark and cold. “But the laws of time and energy are stronger than anything else, stronger even than all the varieties of truth we harvested here.”

“Ah,” Ruiz said, though he didn’t understand what the boy was talking about. “These stackfolk… your slaves?”

Somnire jerked around to glare at him in irritation and amusement, an odd mixture. “Slaves? There were no slaves on Dorn. The stackfolk were a race designed to care for the Compendium — they did that job better and more joyfully than any other race could have… but no one but a fool would describe them as slaves. You have an unhealthy obsession with slavery; you see slaves everywhere.” He grinned. “Look at me; do I really seem a slave?”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes,” Ruiz said. “But, no.”

“And yet my parents were stackfolk. I was a stackperson until I became a don.”

“Oh,” said Ruiz.

On the far side of the island were vast sea caves, like fanged mouths biting the ocean. Long breakwaters radiated outward from the openings. “There ships from every land on Sook docked,” Somnire said. “That was a gentler time on Sook. Before the pirate Lords had grown so great. The Blades of Namp were nothing but a mob of ragged crazies, too weak to eat any but their own. Castle Delt was only an evil dream of the SeedCorp factors, a few troops marching up and down the beach and playing soldier.” Somnire drew a deep breath, and his elaborate coiffure wobbled. “Roderigo was already strong, however.”

Abruptly the boy released the controls. “This is a foolish waste of time and energy,” he said. “Why should you care about our lost glories?”

The world shimmered and grew dim, and Ruiz felt an instant’s vertigo.

He and Somnire stood in one of the city’s courtyards. A flaming bougainvillea vine spilled down the sunniest wall, and a still pool full of cerise water lilies reflected the ancient stones on the shady side.

A tall angular woman came from a high doorway.

“This is Leel,” Somnire said. “She’ll try to make you well.”

Ruiz looked at Leel and thought of the wood and silver chair he had touched in the hall of dons. She was handsome in a spare understated way, her hair a translucent cloud, her eyes a soft earthy green, her mouth pale coral. She wore a thin artless shift that fell halfway down her slender thighs and left her arms bare.

“I’m not sick,” Ruiz said.

“Don’t be silly,” said Somnire. “Your heart is leprous with regret; your mind is hibernating. Your soul is so dark you can’t find it. You may have hard jobs to do soon. In your present state, I don’t think you could act with your former admirable ruthlessness.”

“I have no time,” said Ruiz, a little desperately.

“Time is elastic in the virtual. How long do you think you’ve been here? An hour? Two? Thirty seconds! In the niche, your enemy is searching her countryman’s carrion for his knife. The woman you love is watching your sleeping face; she has yet to form her first sad thought. So, take some time. Rest. Gather your thoughts. Your resolve.” Somnire patted his shoulder.

“Come,” said Leel in a low sweet voice, and took his hand in her cool fragile one. “It’s not as if you had any choice.” She gave him a smile so warm and unforced that he was charmed against his will.

When she drew him toward the doorway, he went without further protest.