Ruiz considered forcing the tongue to fetch the limpet. But then he realized that a tiny traitorous sliver of hope had embedded itself in his heart. He didn’t want to risk driving the man to a violence The Yellowleaf might not be quick enough to stop. He looked at Dolmaero; the Guild-master seemed no worse, but perhaps he should get the limpet without delay.
So he went to the landwalker and dug out the limpet. It was of Dilvermoon manufacture, a model with which he was familiar. He quickly activated it and slapped it on Dolmaero’s chest.
The indicators trembled to life, showing an orange-red on several of the scales. Dolmaero looked down, pop-eyed, as the limpet sent several hair-thin sensor wires into his skin.
“What…?” he gasped. Then the limpet took control of his laboring heart and dulled the pain. He looked more frightened than relieved.
Ruiz watched the indicators fade toward amber, then chartreuse. “You’ll be all right,” he told Dolmaero. “Your heart is strong. Rest for a bit. Don’t touch the limpet.” Dolmaero nodded, eyes still too large.
Ruiz rose and went over to Gejas. “Why are we stopping here?” he asked.
Gejas didn’t look at him. “The virtual won’t open until local midnight,” the tongue said, in a thin colorless voice.
Chapter 8
Ruiz found a smooth stone and sat. He watched the guards as they set up the camp, and out of the corner of his eye he watched Nisa. She leaned against a low gray-barked tree and gazed out over the way they had come. Molnekh and Gunderd joined Dolmaero on his rock; Molnekh looked at the limpet with bright curious eyes. “Don’t touch it,” warned Ruiz.
Molnekh nodded easily, but he still seemed fascinated by the pangalac device.
Gejas activated the chameleon gauze, and the hollow fell into an artificial twilight.
Ruiz shivered. In the sunlight, the day had seemed warm.
Gejas set out various sensors around the campsite’s perimeter and assembled an elaborate security console in the center of the camp. Over the console a self-erecting weapons arch rose; on top was a heavy ruptor and a brace of antipersonnel grasers. Ruiz was a little surprised by the thoroughness of these precautions. He shrugged. Perhaps this simply reflected a habitual paranoia.
The guards triggered self-inflating shelters, low bubbles of shiny green plastic. From one of the landwalkers, they brought a field autochef; its battered olive chassis reminded Ruiz of a hundred other such machines, machines that had fed him on a hundred long-ago battlegrounds.
He felt a sudden sad nostalgia for the single-minded boy he had once been, the boy who had been able to destroy his enemies with such a clear conscience. He’d felt clean then, so clean, so sure of the rightness of his various lost causes.
He looked down at his hands, which would never be clean again.
Ruiz got up and went to the perimeter, a few feet from Nisa, who still stood looking out over the ruins below.
He was surprised when she spoke. “What’s happened to you, Ruiz?” she asked.
“You couldn’t understand,” he said, attempting to match her detachment.
He made the mistake of glancing at her, and saw that her eyes were swimming with barely restrained tears. “I didn’t really believe you’d ever hurt me,” she said, looking down.
His gaze fell on a strand of audiovisual sensors almost at his feet. He took a deep breath. “Things have changed. I’ve changed.” He made his voice as cold as he could.
He turned away and saw Gejas watching him with smiling assessment.
The Yellowleaf disappeared into her shelter when the guards served lunch — a bland hash of reconstituted vegetables with a slab of gray seedbread.
Ruiz sat apart from the others while he ate. He couldn’t display any human feeling for them; Gejas was too alert. Already he might have made a fatal mistake in speaking politely to Nisa. He must wear a face of mad unpredictability, of black nihilist joy — and he must, to the best of his ability, feel that way. Any other face would give Gejas irresistible leverage.
When he had finished the tasteless food, he sailed the plate away, as if without thought. It struck the weapons arch just above Gejas’s head, and Ruiz turned to give the Roderigan a wide grin.
Gejas glared. A bit of hash decorated his shoulder; he flicked it away with a look of distaste. “Rather than playing silly games, you should be resting, slayer. Midnight will arrive before you know it, and you’ll need all your strength.”
Ruiz got up and swaggered toward the tongue. “Oh? Perhaps I’ll join The Yellowleaf in her shelter. She might find me entertaining.”
Gejas laughed uneasily. “Perhaps. But not in the way you mean. You wouldn’t find her attentions pleasant, I think. No, restrain your ambitions; go to your own shelter. I’ll put the primitive woman in with you.” He showed his teeth in an approximation of a smile. “The stockyard drugs have doubtless worn off by now, and you may breed to your heart’s content.”
Ruiz twisted his face into a contemptuous mask. “Your master’s mouth is tongueless; with such a disadvantage she couldn’t be very good in bed, eh? I’ll leave it to you to go sniffing after the bitch.” He glanced at Nisa without focusing his eyes on her. “My slave is untrained and shows little natural aptitude, so I’ll rest alone.”
He was reassured to see that Gejas once again regarded him with baffled rage. He nodded affably and went into one of the shelters.
Ruiz lay on the pallet, teeth clenched, refusing to feel anything. The afternoon passed slowly.
Ruiz Aw emerged into the cold twilight, exhausted. He saw that his people sat around a glowpoint the guards had set up in the center of the camp, warming their hands at its feeble heat. A few tiny blue lights hung from the chameleon gauze, shedding a wan light. Someone had moved Einduix’s stretcher close to the glowpoint, but the cook was apparently still comatose.
Gejas stood at his security console, studying its readouts intently.
The Yellowleaf stood at the perimeter, looking out at the black mountains. Obeying some dim impulse, Ruiz approached her.
As he came up behind her, The Yellowleaf turned abruptly, her weapons jingling against her armor. She regarded him with her usual opacity.
He fought a sudden urge to attack her. She was, he was sure, as strong, as quick as he was — and she was thoroughly armed. Even if by some stealthy miracle he succeeded in wringing her neck, Gejas would destroy him an instant later.
So he adopted an insolent smile and said, “Time to bargain.”
If she reacted at all, he couldn’t see it. Her face was disconcerting in its unreadability.
Gejas relinquished his console to one of the guards and came trotting over. “What is this?” he asked in a breathless voice. “You must not speak to The Yellowleaf directly — that is disrespectful and will bring severe punishment.”
Ruiz laughed. “I’ve already been severely punished. Therefore I must perform sufficient disrespectful acts to balance our accounts. Not so?” He turned to Gejas. “We’re a long way from even, tongue.”
Gejas frowned. “You should stop this foolishness. We have serious matters to discuss.”
“Indeed we do,” Ruiz said. “What will you offer me for my help? And please, not my life, nor the lives of my worthless companions. Something better.”
Gejas watched The Yellowleaf’s face. “The Yellowleaf asks: Why do you hold them in such low esteem?”
The question surprised Ruiz a little, but he let all the bitterness in him boil up and answer for him. “Why? Let me tell you about them.” His voice swelled into a shout. He turned and saw that the others were watching, wide-eyed. “Look at them! Let me number their virtues. There’s Gunderd, a failed scholar hiding from his inadequacies, playing make-believe sailor. His only noticeable skill is cheating at cards. There’s his cook, the small orange vegetable there, whom we dragged along just to annoy you. There’s Molnekh the all-consuming, a gangly dirtworld norp, a walking appetite who to my knowledge has never spoken a sentence more intelligent than ‘Feed me.’ And Dolmaero, his loyal dirtworld dog, a snake oil addict, a dour lump of a man who hasn’t smiled more than twice since I’ve known him.”