Ruiz didn’t know what to say. The bumboat nudged the sub’s flank and beeped insistently. “Thanks,” he finally said, and stepped into the bumboat. He looked back at Albany as the bumboat backed water and drew away.
Albany waved and spoke in a low voice that carried across the water. “Good luck, Ruiz. Find what you need.”
The bumboat beeped again, inquisitively. “The Celadon Wind’s ingress,” Ruiz told it, and it carried him away.
Ruiz joined a procession of odd persons, walking up the ramp toward the Celadon Wind’s gate. To his right were a pair of old pirates, much scarred, wearing typically gaudy flamesilk shipsuits, arms affectionately linked, whispering endearments into each other’s dirty ears. To his left, uncomfortably close, was some sort of barbarian from a desert world, muffled in black robes, from which came the clink and rattle of many weapons. Ruiz edged away slightly, and slowed his pace so that the man passed him in a waft of ancient sweat and strong hashish. Farther up the ramp was a gang of devolved beasters, a half-dozen men and women with thick, crusty skin and swinish white-tusked faces. They skipped along like schoolchildren on an outing.
Just ahead walked a tall slender woman, naked except for steel-scaled slippers and a great mane of pale hair, confined by a headband set with pigeonblood rubies. In other circumstances, Ruiz might have been distracted by the pleasant rhythms of her movements.
But all he could think of was the terrible efficiency with which Remint disposed of his enemies. It was foolish to worry that he might meet the slayer in the fabularium; no one could be that stupid, or arrogant. But this was the beginning of a trail that might lead to Remint, and Ruiz was growing more and more afraid of the slayer. He felt his heartbeat pick up, he felt sweat break on his forehead, though the ramp was cooled by powerful ventilators, and he cursed himself for this weakness, which might lead not only to his own destruction, but to Nisa’s as well — if she still lived.
As he approached the top of the ramp, he managed to suppress the worst of his panic, though he could still feel it at the edges of his mind. He shook his head and tried to unobtrusively shrug some of the tension from his shoulders.
The gate was a tall structure of simulated stone, set against the metal wall of the fabularium. The deeply carved arch displayed elements of a hundred mythic traditions — most of the human persons who might pass beneath it would find some familiar imagery in the carvings. Old Earth gods sported with Jaworld dybbuks and Androsian chickcharneys. Avatars of the Serpent Mystery coiled about icons of the Chlorophyllic Eye. Nilotic succubi clung lasciviously to Dead God saints. The effect was of riotous chaos.
In the center of the arch was an inscription in some archaic Old Earth script Ruiz could not read.
To the side stood a tall Moc bondwarrior in a jewel-encrusted cape — the gatekeeper. A strategically placed spotlight struck an eye-hurting glitter from the cape, but Ruiz noticed that the cape was designed not to hamper the creature’s movements. With a carefully proclamatory gesture, it raised a vocalizer and then activated what was obviously a canned speech. “You may keep your weapons,” the vocalizer sang in a sweet androgynous voice. “But remember! Within, you are subject to the law of the Celadon Wind. Attempt to maim… and you will be maimed. Attempt to kill… and you will be killed. We possess the latest semi-sentient security devices, so do not think to circumvent our vigilance.”
“I won’t,” said Ruiz in a wistfully hopeful tone, and passed into the Celadon Wind.
Chapter 21
Corean arrived at the adjacent joypalace just before Ruiz walked up the ramp into the fabularium. The joypalace was a run-down operation, its lobby dirty, threadbare, and at that moment devoid of customers. A person of indeterminate species sat behind a cloudy armorglass security enclosure, reading an ancient printed book. It ignored Corean and her guide as they walked toward the elevators.
Her guide tapped at a scuffed steel door in a long, dimly lit hall, and it opened a crack. An armored man scanned her briefly before admitting her.
Immediately she felt Remint’s increased intensity. He was bent over a spyscreen in the darkest corner of the tawdry suite. He ignored her entrance for a moment, then he lifted his passionless gaze. He made no gesture of greeting.
A pair of joyboys huddled together on the greasy plastic-covered bed, their painted eyes huge with terror, arms wrapped tightly around each other. They looked at Corean with an abject hope, as if they thought she might either release them or use them in their accustomed manner. She wondered why Remint hadn’t simply killed them and stuffed the bodies in a closet. Perhaps he anticipated a long wait and didn’t want to stink the place up. It occurred to her that the joyboys probably thought they were playing some actual part in these events, that their presence here was in some way significant. Something about the thought made her briefly uneasy, for reasons she didn’t care to examine.
“He’s here,” Remint said in his uninflected voice.
She hurried across the room, and tried to shoulder him away from the screen. It was like pushing at a stony mountainside. Then he moved back and she could see Ruiz Aw, walking up a steel ramp behind a beautiful naked woman. His dark face revealed nothing but a calm alertness; she tried and failed to imagine what he was thinking.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
“I can’t touch him there, or in the Wind. The Wind caters to the most dangerous beings in SeaStack — they’re ready for anything. Had Ruiz Aw been smart enough to hide his people in the Wind, I could never have taken them from him… though they might have been driven mad by the mythagogues, had he left them there too long.”
“So how do you propose to get him out?”
“I believe I know where he will look for me.”
“And where is that?” Corean asked sharply. She was feeling a growing impatience with Remint’s uninformative pronouncements.
Remint didn’t answer for a moment. “In my old dreams. There I have concealed my hook.”
The Celadon Wind was an impressive establishment, compared to other fabularia Ruiz had visited. The entrance hall formed a long narrow amphitheater. Customers strolled along the white-tiled floor, while pale translucent holoimages of thousands of gods and demons watched silently from the tiered seats that rose up to the ceiling far above. At the far end was a white colonnade through which the customers passed into the area of the fabularium they had chosen. The light was dim and red, and the air was doubtless thick with pheromonic influencers; Ruiz felt his mood become darker and more volatile.
As he approached the colonnade, he shook himself, as if to shrug away all those dangerous virtues he had lately rediscovered: mercy, empathy, loyalty… love. Remint would know none of these, and now he must become as much like Remint as possible, if he hoped to follow the slayer’s path into the fabularium.
Ruiz made his mind cold, his heart small; he tried to turn back time and become again the deadly thing he once had been.
He succeeded, after a fashion.
The colonnade’s seven arches were each topped by an animated holoimage that related to the sort of myths to be found within that section of the fabularium.
Ruiz stopped and looked up at the images.
After a bit he found his attention most strongly attracted to the arch that displayed a Kali-like goddess, whose four hands held a knife, a garrote, a graser, and a pulse gun. The arms waved sinuously, tracing a pattern that soon seemed deliciously seductive, and on the goddess’s black face was a smile that wavered between sweetness and ferocity. Her features were strong, almost crude, and her eyes bulged with a barely contained mania. Her six dark breasts were exposed and exquisitely shaped. They floated entrancingly with her movements, as though they were made of some lighter-than-air substance, much finer than mere flesh.