“A moment,” said Ruiz. “Don’t be afraid,” he told the child in as soothing a tone as he could manage. He brushed away the tears, then held the small face between his hands.
The boy gave him a tentative smile, and Ruiz smiled back. He slipped his long assassin’s fingers up under the ears, pressed down on the arteries.
The blue eyes went dreamy; the lids flickered shut.
Ruiz held the pressure a moment longer — not long enough to stop the child’s heart — then picked up the knife and did the rest of the work.
“Don’t you feel better now, Ruiz Aw?” said Gejas, and laughed.
The gurney jolted into motion and took the meat away. Ruiz went to his chair and sat. Time seemed to have stopped. He succeeded in thinking about nothing at all.
A few minutes later his next job arrived and he did it.
After a few hours the faces blurred together, became the same hopeless nonhuman shape, nothing but a landmark for his knife.
The submarine scraped along the side of the stack, eight hundred meters under the surface. Corean nudged the controls, sweat glistening on her expensive face. Marmo played his endless games against his own processors, in a shadowed corner of the small chamber.
The sub came away from the stone, and Corean fed a tiny bit more power to the silent impellers. “Better,” she said.
Marmo looked up from his screen. “Will we survive, then?”
“Of course,” she answered. “Haven’t we always?”
Marmo glanced up at the steel deckhead, as if observing the carnage that raged at the surface, throughout the ancient marine city of SeaStack. “Thousands are even now saying the same thing. They’ll be dead soon.”
She gave him a glance compounded of vexation and impatience. “We’re smarter, stronger, luckier.”
“No one is as lucky as Ruiz Aw,” Marmo said heavily. “If by some miracle we get out of SeaStack, let’s run for the north launch rings, go back to the Blacktear Pens, collect our belongings, and leave Sook. Doesn’t that plan have a certain beautiful momentum? Don’t you want to live?”
“Not without Ruiz Aw to entertain me,” she said shortly.
She looked at the old cyborged pirate and saw in his half-mech face a look that she had detected with increasing frequency over the last weeks. You’re mad, it said.
But Marmo apparently knew better than to say such a thing out loud; he went back to his games.
Nisa’s worst expectations had proven prophetic. Again Ruiz Aw had taken her to a terrible place and left her alone.
The stockyard seemed the most dreadful place yet — suffused by such an atmosphere of hopeless brutality that she found it almost impossible to retain any shred of hope that Ruiz Aw would once again find a way for them to survive. His small miracles seemed insignificant beside the horror of the stockyard — the function of which she had gradually come to understand. At first she had refused to believe that people could be as depraved as the Roderigans appeared to be; after all, they seemed human.
Gunderd instructed her. “They’re not human, Nisa-the-princess. Oh, at any time in the history of the human race, creatures have walked among us that were nonhuman by any reasonable standard: joykillers, for example, who have been with us since we came down from the trees. But Roderigo is one of those places where inhumanity has been institutionalized. Venerated. It’s passed beyond aberration here.”
She could only shake her head, perplexed.
The day after they had taken Ruiz away, three hugely fat men had visited her little group.
They stood above her, staring down with small cruel eyes. “Yes,” said the largest. “You are still beautiful. You will come with us and entertain us in our last days. We are ripe.”
She felt somehow more naked under their cold stare. “No,” she said, drawing up her knees. She turned to Gunderd. “I thought you said there were no rapists here, that the hetmen medicated the air.”
Gunderd shrugged.
The fat men looked scornful. The largest one spoke again. “We would not so waste our precious remaining time. We will play more interesting games.” He reached down for her, and she scuttled away.
Abruptly Molnekh jumped up and moved in front of the fat man. “Go away. You can’t have her.”
The fat man chortled in mild amusement. “Don’t be foolish, stick man. Those who watch might punish us… but only if we break your bones badly enough to keep you from crawling to the hoppers, or injure your innards so that you can’t eat. Otherwise we can hurt you all we like, which we’ll do if you obstruct us in any way. We are ripe — ripeness has its privileges.”
Molnekh seemed serious to the point of grimness, quite unlike his usual genial self. “You can’t have her. She’s a famous slayer’s woman. If you annoy her, he’ll break your bones, and worse — without regard for the feelings of those who watch.” He turned to the others. “Think! What will Ruiz Aw do to us, if we allow her to be molested.”
Gunderd rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A good point.” He stood and faced the fat men. “Go away,” he told them.
Dolmaero also rose, glowering and clenching his fists.
They slowly backed away, bewildered hurt on their great shiny faces. “This is incorrect,” said one, before he turned and shuffled off. “We are ripe….”
Somehow she found it impossible to feel any real gratitude toward the others, though she knew she owed it.
Gejas and the Yellowleaf watched the screen in her apartments, deep under Roderigo. The screen enhanced the dimness of the slaughterhouse, transmuting its grays and blacks into brilliant fluorescing colors.
Ruiz Aw filled the screen, moving in a slow jerky dance, as if to some unheard music. His body was an electric sapphire, and the blood that covered his arms and chest was a smoky crimson, the color of dying lava. In one hand he held his knife, a violet flame; this he used to draw complicated symbols in the air.
Gejas felt The Yellowleaf’s dissatisfaction, a cold wind on his mind. “Don’t worry, Master,” he said, with as much sincerity as he owned. “The indices remain stable — he’s not as mad as he seems.”
She turned and gave him a dark-eyed look, full of meaning. He heard her words as clearly as if she had whispered them in his ear: You must hope that you are correct. If he is broken, we lose a great opportunity.
“He has always been a murderer, Master. We force him to embrace his true identity. One day he will thank us for his liberation, and he will be a fine tool indeed.”
She nodded, a tiny inclination of her noble head, and he felt bathed in the watchful warmth of her confidence.
Ruiz Aw had hidden himself a long way away from the grotesque actions of his body, the carrion stench of the slaughterhouse, the blood. His hiding spot was warm and bright, full of sweet rich music, and had the clean vital scent of flowers, but otherwise his sanctuary had no physical attributes. He felt safe there, but he wasn’t entirely happy… he was alone. Occasionally he wondered why he couldn’t have company, and then his thoughts strayed into a darker place, where the face of a beautiful woman could be seen through a haze of uneasiness.
He always pulled himself away from that image, with as much shame as fear.
Now and again, he was forced to watch his body perform an awful act, and for a bit he couldn’t quite believe in his sanctuary — not while his victims groaned, not while their blood spattered over him.
But the jobs were soon finished and the evidence carried away into darkness, so that he could forget again.
Time passed slowly in the dim red light of the stockyard. Nisa slept, woke for a few endless hours, slept again. The others visited the feed hoppers, but she had no appetite. Dolmaero brought her a handful of pellets, but the food lay beside her on the plastic riser, untouched.