Ruiz disarmed the satchel charge and then they stepped carefully aboard the tram. Ruiz sat in the driver’s chair. It took him only a moment to decipher the controls and start the tram sliding back down its rail.
To pass the time, he busied himself with Huxley’s detectors, getting them set up, ready to sniff out any activity below — just in case some of the alien tunnel dwellers decided to revenge themselves on the tram, or — an unpleasant notion — Publius had arranged some sort of trap for them on their return. It occurred to him that he hadn’t explicitly directed the Jahworld sisters to keep a watch down the tunnel, in case a surprise appeared from that direction. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He worried that if such an unfortunate event happened, the sisters would be too preoccupied with their horror of the pit’s depths to be paying much attention to what was going on behind them.
Perhaps, he thought, he was being excessively paranoid. On the other hand, Publius, a man with a vast talent for making enemies, was still alive after all these years — which argued for his thoroughness, and deviousness.
The danger was that Publius might kill him without giving Ruiz an opportunity to reveal his meddling with Publius’s puppet. Ruiz had to hope after he revealed this perfidy that Publius’s avarice would overtop his outrage.
“What’s wrong?” Albany asked.
“Probably nothing,” Ruiz answered.
“I don’t much like the sound of that,” said Albany.
Ruiz smiled at him. “I don’t blame you for that. I’m sorry to have involved you in such a mess, Albany.”
“No you’re not,” said Albany, but he smiled too.
The trip passed without incident, though Ruiz saw more furtive movement at the various openings, as if the dwellers within were curious about the unusual activity on the tramway. No one actually appeared, and Ruiz resisted the temptation to use his scope — he didn’t want to seem overly interested in things that weren’t any of his business.
When they were only a few hundred meters above the tunnel mouth, Ruiz brought out the scope and looked down and across the pit. He brought the dark opening into focus and saw Chou standing at the very lip, waving cheerfully, helmet visor carelessly open. The scope’s resolution was insufficient for Ruiz to make out her expression with exactitude.
Ruiz folded the scope and hung it from his armor. “Shit,” he said.
“What?”
“I think the sisters are dead — and that means Publius is waiting for us. But at least he didn’t kill us on sight. He likes to gloat — it’s one of his biggest weaknesses, and it’ll bring him to grief one of these days. I hope.”
Ruiz chewed at his lip, then set his helmet mike for long-range comm. “Publius? Are you listening? If you kill me now, you’ve lost. I don’t buy Chou’s act; she and her sister were extreme acrophobes.”
A few moments passed; then Chou stepped back and folded up like a doll. “What do you mean, I’ve lost?” Publius spoke in a taut whisper. “You’re mine now, Ruiz. You can’t get away. If you go back up, I’ll just call my new Yubere and have him intercept you. Or maybe I’ll just fire a seeker at you and be done with it — though I’d hate to have my tram damaged.”
Ruiz sighed. He’d hoped that the worst was over, but nothing was easy, with Publius — the monster-maker was a match for him in guile, maybe more than a match. He took a deep breath and took out his boot gun, a little pepperbox that fired armor-piercing explosive pellets. He held it to the side of his head, aimed so that if he triggered it, his brain would be reduced to such dissociated pulp that Publius would never be able to sift any memories from it.
Publius’s voice filled his helmet. “What a silly person you are. Do you imagine I care whether or not I actually get to carve on you? Or that my little Gench goes pop when you do? I have much bigger fish to fry; I’ll just scrape up a few bits and clone you for later amusement.”
“That’ll be nice,” said Ruiz. “But you still don’t understand. Have you tried to contact Yubere yet?”
“No,” said Publius, his voice betraying just the tiniest degree of uncertainty. “Why? Were you unsuccessful? And if so, why shouldn’t I kill you. And by the way, where is my Gench?”
Ruiz noted with some satisfaction that Publius had apparently not broken into the sub. “I left it on the sub.”
“Oh? Wasn’t that incautious of you?”
“Not really. In the first place, how could you think me so stupid as to not understand that one Gench more or less was a matter of indifference to you? In the second place, I’m not wearing your madcollar. In the third place, I used the Gench to gimmick your puppet. Kill me and you’ll never get a bit of use out of him, even though he’s sitting in his control room, as we speak, in command of the stronghold.”
A terribly ominous silence ensued, broken only by the sound of heavy breathing.
Finally Publius spoke, and his voice was full of a cold controlled fury that frightened Ruiz more than all his flamboyant threats had. “Why should I believe you?”
“Call Yubere.”
“And if you failed? The real Yubere will learn who acted against him, and even I don’t care to face Yubere in open war.”
“That’s a problem, isn’t it?” Ruiz struggled to maintain a cool indifferent tone.
More time passed, and the tram slid onward, closer and closer to the tunnel. “What should I do?” asked Albany.
Ruiz cut back the comm to close range, so that he could speak to Albany without Publius hearing. “Nothing. Either he wants whatever he’s got cooked up more than he wants to get even — or we’re dead. Or worse. You might want to jump, or take off your head with the graser, rather than let Publius take you in restorable condition.”
“He’s that bad?”
“Worse.”
They approached the tunnel, and Ruiz cut the speed, keeping the pepperbox pressed to his head. They glided to a stop directly under the tunnel mouth and waited.
A horrid sound came from the tunnel. It didn’t sound like the sort of noise a human being could make; it sounded more like some great predator, a lion, or perhaps some mad monstrous bear. At first Ruiz couldn’t identify it, but then he understood that Publius had gotten confirmation and was roaring with rage.
It ceased abruptly. A big killmech with a scarred carapace came to the edge and lowered a cable equipped with magnetic shackles. Ruiz lifted his arm and guided a shackle to his chestplate.
Albany looked at him, his face pale. “Is this a good idea, Ruiz?” His voice was shaky; he seemed to have lost his cheerful bravado in the face of Publius’s crazy rage.
“I don’t know what choice we have, Albany. Down is the Gencha, up is Yubere’s people, who are probably starting to wonder what’s wrong with their master. They’ll be nervous, and looking for answers we don’t have.”
“I guess you’re right,” Albany said dubiously.
“I don’t know about that, but I’ve got a little leverage with Publius, who has his heart set on this scheme of his. I don’t think he’ll kill us as long as he has hope that it will still work.”
Albany looked up at the killmech. “I sure hope this turns out to be worth it.” He shackled the cable to his armor, and the killmech began to reel them up.
Chapter 18
Chou lay in a heap, the roughly patched holes in her armor now obvious. The alloy and black plastic device clinging to her back was the corpse-walker Publius had used to animate her body during his attempt to bring them in quietly.
The killmech led them deeper into the tunnel, and they passed Moh’s body, huddled into the angle between wall and floor, as if she had died still terrified of the pit.
Publius had established a small camp, well away from the pit and its stinks. Now he sat at his portable picnic table, hunched over his lunch, studying the image in his flatscreen vid. “What did you do to my boy, Ruiz?” he asked in conversational tones. Ruiz looked over his shoulder, to see the new Yubere, standing where they had left him. His face seemed calm, but Ruiz imagined that he could see a trace of some cold abstract anguish in the dull eyes.