She wanted to reply that she had discarded hope, but in his thin rough face she saw a great terror, held barely in check. She felt a pang of unwilling admiration for him, that in his more certain knowledge of their plight, he could still keep his wits.
“All right,” she said. “The guards took me to a small room and strapped me to a wheeled table. They sent me along a track, through a hole and into a dark place. After a while I saw a dim red light and a naked man dancing on a platform in the middle of the darkness… though I could hear no music. I was drugged, I’m sure — nothing seemed to matter very much and I felt little fear. Then my table stopped by the platform and I saw the man more clearly. I thought it was Ruiz Aw, though I couldn’t be sure. He was covered with black blood. He held a knife high. He took me by the throat, and I thought he would kill me then. I called to him and he stopped…. “She shook herself. “But I don’t believe it was Ruiz, now. The man’s face was very strange. Then he fell down; perhaps he was dying. My table took me away after a while, and the guards brought me here.”
Gunderd looked no less puzzled when she had finished. “I wonder what it means?” he said, his eyes unfocused. “I wonder—”
The doors opened with a clang, and two guards carried Ruiz in, unconscious. Old blood crusted on his body. He stank of the abattoir. She looked into his face and saw a frightening absence there, worse than just a common senselessness.
It disturbed Nisa more than the mania she had seen in the slaughterhouse.
They dumped him on a cot next to Einduix and went away.
The others looked at Nisa, as if asking her what they should do. She went in the other sleeping room and lay down. Let them deal with whatever Ruiz had become.
Up through a terrible dark dream, Ruiz Aw swam toward the light.
He dreamed he was a great monster, knee deep in the sea, his head above the last icy wisps of atmosphere, thrusting out into the cold brilliance of space. He looked down at the misty surface of the world, so far below, and laughed a wild laugh.
The texture of the dream was a mad hopelessness, compounded by a ferocious amusement — though he couldn’t say what he found so amusing.
He laughed again, a belly-bursting laugh that seemed to go on too long, until he felt the world wavering, until it seemed he had lost a lifetime’s breath. He looked down at himself and noticed the shuddering of his flesh, like the slow-motion chaos of an earthquake — and then he saw his skin begin to tear open under the wrenching of his laughter.
He expected to see the ordinary things to be found inside a body: flesh, bone, blood. But there was nothing inside him but a darkness more absolute than starless space. He stopped laughing, but it was too late. The ruptures spread, and he felt his body begin to collapse, to fall back toward the world, dissolving into shrieking tatters.
He woke flailing and gasping for air.
Dolmaero and Molnekh held him down for a moment, before releasing him and jumping back. “Be calm,” said Dolmaero. “We weren’t attacking you, Ruiz Aw.”
Ruiz realized that he had been striking at them; a welt bloomed on Molnekh’s cheek and Dolmaero had suffered a split lip.
For once, he could recall a few fragments of his dream, though already he felt the details slipping away. What did it mean, that he dreamed and remembered? Were the doors of his mind finally crumbling?
“Sorry,” he muttered.
He was sitting in a hygiene cubicle, where apparently the two Pharaohans had been trying to wash him clean. Rusty water had splashed high on the cubicle’s plastic walls, but he was still stained with the product of his labor.
He held up a trembling hand and examined the matter that caked under his fingernails.
Memory clubbed him, and he bent over, retching.
“Can we help you, Ruiz Aw?” asked Dolmaero uncertainly.
“No,” he gasped, “no. Leave me. Please!”
The two of them went out, closing the cubicle’s door behind them.
How many had he murdered? He hadn’t even kept a count. A hundred? A thousand? How many lives had he ended this time, just to save his worthless self some pain?
And Nisa? An involuntary sob forced its way past his clenched teeth. Had he killed her in a mindless involuntary spasm, or had he left her to Gejas? Surely she must be dead.
Why wasn’t Ruiz dead, too? He surely deserved to be, and the Roderigans weren’t known for capricious mercy.
He took a deep breath and leaned back against the plastic wall. He was still alive, which meant that he had a chance, however small, to make the Roderigans pay for what they had done. Comforting visions rose up in his mind’s eye: Gejas crucified on a neurostim cross, body spasming frenetically. The Yellowleaf throttled with her own slimy guts. Roderigo itself blooming into fiery beautiful destruction, its bunkers and tunnels cleansed of the horror that now inhabited it.
He tried to smile, to take some comfort from those lovely images, but he felt a curious distance from them, as if they were too far removed from any possible reality to satisfy him.
Finally he stood up and turned on the cubicle’s shower. The hot water pounded him, and he stood there, scrubbing until his skin was almost raw, until he was as clean as he would ever be.
Warm air swirled around him, and he closed his eyes, waiting without thought until he was dry.
When he emerged from the cubicle, Gunderd handed him a pair of gray coveralls. As he put them on, he looked about the room. Everyone was there but Nisa. He struggled to control his urge to cry out, to smash something. What had he expected?
“She’s in the other room,” said Gunderd.
He took two long strides and reached the door. She lay on a cot, her back to him, and he could see that she breathed.
That was enough, for the moment. He backed slowly away. If she could find refuge in sleep, he wouldn’t disturb her.
“You’re pleased,” said Gunderd. “Are you sure you should be?”
Ruiz turned to the former second mate. “What does that mean?”
Gunderd glanced uncertainly at the other Pharaohans. “Remember your suspicions?”
Ruiz couldn’t bring himself to care. His former worries seemed remote and unimportant compared to what had just happened to him on Roderigo. So what if one of them had been to the Gencha? If one of his companions had become Corean’s creature? He couldn’t imagine how such a small thing could affect him now.
“What is he talking about?” asked Dolmaero.
Ruiz sat down on the nearest cot. He didn’t want to answer, but he found the thought of continuing to deceive Dolmaero repellent, even if Dolmaero were the one who belonged to Corean. Deception was part of his old life — along with the violence, the death.
That life was gone, for better or worse. It came to him that his dreams of vengeance were just that: dreams. In his present state of mind, he would be incapable of bringing destruction to Roderigo, should an opportunity miraculously present itself. He sighed. He didn’t even care that the Roderigans were surely listening.
“Publius told me something,” Ruiz said.
Gunderd raised his eyebrows in a quizzical expression, as if he questioned the wisdom of revealing this, but he said nothing.
“What?” demanded Dolmaero.
“He told me that Corean sent one of you to the Gencha minddivers. Which one… he didn’t know, or wouldn’t say.”
A silence followed. Dolmaero seemed to sink into thought, and his broad face closed in on itself.
Finally he spoke again. “Do you believe this?”
“I didn’t,” said Ruiz. “Until someone killed the folk in the lifeboat.”
Dolmaero rubbed his face, an uncharacteristic gesture, and Ruiz saw sweat glisten on his jowls. “You spoke of this once. Long ago, it seems now.”