Ruiz found it almost inconceivable that Remint had managed to penetrate Publius’s stronghold alone, but the evidence was compelling. He didn’t want to think about what it must have been like during the night, when Publius had sent his people into the maze.
Ruiz moved more cautiously as he neared the center of the maze, pausing frequently to listen for any sign that any of Publius’s defenses remained active. He detected nothing to alarm him, a condition he found intrinsically alarming.
The devastation at the security ingress was even more impressive. Apparently Remint had fought his way through the maze carrying racks of searbombs and ladder-charges. The ingress was split open, its armor ripped up into long splinters around a hole where the elevator had been.
Ruiz crept to the edge of the hole and peered over. The alloy of the shaft bore the indentations of scaling hooks, which evidently Remint had used to climb down to Publius’s labs. Ruiz took a deep breath. He had no hooks; his only way down appeared to be a slender maintenance ladder, severely damaged by the blasts that had opened the shaft. In places it hung loose, twisted and broken. In other places it had half-melted and sagged against the wall.
He wanted to give up, to go back out to the sunlight and the crates of turnips, to forget everything that had gone before, to change his name and become another person, someone who wouldn’t have to go down to whatever waited at the bottom of the shaft.
But the way to Nisa led down; Publius was still his prime ticket into Yubere’s stronghold. He wondered if she still lived, and if she did, what she thought of Ruiz Aw. Did she hate him, as seemed most likely?
He shook his head, thrust the cudgel through his belt, and started down.
Ruiz could scarcely believe that he had survived the descent when he finally reached the bottom of the shaft. Twice he had slipped and caught himself after a short fall. Once a section of ladder had broken away from its supports and smashed him against the shaft wall, almost shaking him loose. But none of his scrapes seemed serious, though his injured shoulder was throbbing again.
The shaft wall was ripped open at three levels, as if Remint had set his charges to distract Publius’s remaining people and divide their attention. From the perfect stillness of Publius’s formerly busy laboratories, Ruiz deduced that Remint’s ploy had succeeded.
He began to worry that Remint had already killed Publius, or tormented him into uselessness. “Now you think of this?” he whispered to himself.
Pointless, he thought wryly, to start relying on logic at this late date.
So he entered the dead laboratories.
The silence was intimidating. Ruiz moved stealthily through the level, slipping from one place of concealment to the next, pausing frequently to strain his senses for any indication that Publius’s security forces were still functioning. He heard nothing.
Here and there he saw the bodies of technicians, who had evidently been armed with makeshift weapons — knives and clubs — and sent against Remint. From one of these he retrieved a knife with a long thin blade, which he bound to his forearm with a rag, so that the hilt lay above his wrist. None of the clubs seemed as suitable as the farmer’s cudgel, so he kept it ready in his hand.
A few of these latest victims had lived long enough to drag themselves under lab benches, or behind concealing machinery. Had Remint lost some fraction of his efficiency… was he beginning to tire? Might he have taken wounds? This seemed a cheerful conjecture, and Ruiz’s spirits rose slightly.
When he heard the ring of steel on steel, he became even more cautious, but he soon discovered that the sound came from the sunken amphitheater that Publius had pointed out on his first visit. The little ursine warriors still slashed at each other with dazzling speed; evidently the events in the laboratory had not distracted them from their inbred ferocity. There were still quite a lot of them; perhaps this was a later generation of the elimination trials.
He looked down at them for a moment, almost envying them their uncomplicated passions.
Ruiz went on a few steps, and then paused by the tanks that held Publius’s insurance clones. On an impulse, he slid up the screen that kept the tanks comfortably dark.
The three copies of the monster-maker stirred uneasily, flexing their soft bodies and pawing clumsily at their eyes. Ruiz felt an intensity of hatred that made it difficult for him to draw a breath. That the three clones were in the strictest sense innocent of Publius’s crimes seemed an insignificant and abstract fact.
He considered the possibility of taking one of the clones — but the clone would have no knowledge of Publius’s current arrangements, nor would it look like Publius. Almost certainly the false Yubere wouldn’t recognize the clone’s authority.
He bent and touched the control slate, and the nutrient fluid that kept them alive started to drain silently into the sump.
They began to writhe and then to pound at the thick glass that trapped them. The nearest one forced his puffy eyes open and glared at Ruiz, mouthing words that Ruiz could not hear.
He slid down the screen and left them to expire in the dark.
He heard the thud of Remint’s boots against the tiled floor just in time to dart behind a nearby lab bench.
From that doubtful concealment, he watched, heart pounding, as Remint appeared from an access corridor, towing a floater on which a man lay, bound with wide straps. Ruiz couldn’t identify the man at first, but then the man lifted his hands as high as the straps would permit, and made a theatrical gesture that belonged unmistakably to Publius. So the monster-maker still lived.
Ruiz was pleased to see that Remint appeared seriously battered. The slayer’s armor was shattered and bloody over his left thigh, and he walked with a perceptible limp. The armor had separated slightly over his left shoulder, and his left arm hung stiffly, as if the armor had locked at the elbow, though the hand still clutched a splinter gun. He carried a sonic knife in his right hand, and the floater’s tow line was hitched to a ring at his armored waist.
Even damaged as he was, Remint still possessed that unstoppable quality. Compared to the Genched slayer, Ruiz felt himself puny, a negligible opponent. What could he possibly do against such a dire creature?
An idea came to Ruiz, just as Remint passed between him and the sunken amphitheater. Ruiz had no time to carefully consider the idea’s merits and pitfalls. He had to act instantly, and almost before the idea had fully formed, he sprang from his hiding place and dashed toward the floater.
Remint began to react to his charge when he was still two meters from the head of the floater. The slayer twisted back toward Ruiz, his gun arm rising with only a bit less than his usual uncanny speed. Ruiz ignored the gun and concentrated on hitting the floater with all his power and weight, getting his forearm up to cushion some of the shock of the blow against his shoulder, driving through the floater with his legs even after the blinding pain of the impact.
The floater jolted forward, striking Remint first on his gun arm, throwing off his aim, so that the burst of splinters went wide. Then the floater’s chrome chassis smacked into Remint’s midsection, driving him back, and his calves caught the low wall around the sunken amphitheater.
Ruiz vaulted onto the floater, swinging the cudgel with all his strength. Remint was toppling backward, but brought the gun down as he fell.
The cudgel caught the back of Remint’s hand before he could fire. The gun flew away in a high arc and dropped into the pit.