“How kind of you to point this out. However, we’re well armed.” She patted the sub’s wide weapons console. “The Roderigans believe we’re in a lightly armored little seabus — they won’t be expecting this. We have the Moc, if it comes to hand-to-hand. We have the Genched Pharaohan in place, if treachery is required. And Ruiz has no reason to suspect that we’re the ones who’ve been hired to ‘transport’ him.” She shrugged. “What can go wrong?”
“I’ve heard that question before,” Marmo muttered. “Usually on the eve of some great disaster.”
“The Yellowleaf asks: Will you come into the shelter, so we can discuss the information you must obtain from the virtual?”
Ruiz nodded and followed the hetman into her shelter, Gejas at his heels.
As he lifted the flap to go inside, he saw that the guards had begun to serve dinner.
The Pharaohans had turned away, but Gunderd grinned and gave him a wink.
Inside, The Yellowleaf indicated a low chair, and Ruiz sat.
The hetman took a chair across a small glowpoint, but Gejas stood. “The Yellowleaf states: The data we require has to do with the Gencha enclave which exists under the fortress of Alonzo Yubere, in SeaStack.”
Ruiz heard this with no great surprise; he no longer expected anything else. It was as if his existence had become some sort of inept drama, which kept returning doggedly to the same unsolvable problem. “I see,” he said.
“The Yellowleaf elaborates: We wish to know four things. One, how many Gencha live in the enclave? Two, what defenses protect the enclave? Three, why have these defenses never been penetrated and the enclave raided? Four — and most important — what is the great secret connected with the enclave? Can you remember these things?”
“Yes,” said Ruiz. “What makes you think this knowledge lies in the virtual? What if it doesn’t?”
“The Yellowleaf promises: If you fail, you will be given to Gejas for his amusement.”
Ruiz laughed. “An effective threat indeed. Well, then, tell me what I need to know about the virtual.”
“The Yellowleaf states: Very little. In a little while, you’ll set out for a certain cave on the mountainside. There at midnight the virtual field will envelope you. Your mind will dream with the virtual — it will be as if you have returned to the days of Dorn’s glory, when the island was encrusted with libraries and the villas of the keepers. Or so our information leads us to believe.”
The Yellowleaf stood abruptly and began to remove her weapons, laying them on an armory rack. The process took several minutes. When she was finished, she turned and raised her arms.
“The Yellowleaf permits you to examine her for compliance.”
Ruiz got up and approached the hetman reluctantly. He felt the same reluctance to touch The Yellowleaf that he might have felt toward a venomous insect. But he forced himself to loosen the latches of her armor and slip his hands inside.
It struck him as terribly unnatural that she should possess so human a body — tautly muscular, but with small soft breasts. The bizarre intimacy of the moment made his stomach heave uneasily. This was the creature who had ordered him to the slaughterhouse — what odd perversity of fate now caused him to caress her as a lover might? He felt slightly dizzy, but finished, finding nothing.
He noticed that the armor seemed slightly vulnerable over the lower ribs, where it was segmented for mobility. He filed the datum away for later consideration.
“Give me your hands,” Ruiz said.
With barely perceptible reluctance, she held them out. He examined them carefully and, in place of the left index finger’s last joint, found the too-regular shape of a one-shot graser.
“Kill it,” he told Gejas.
The tongue opened his mouth to protest, but apparently read agreement in the hetman’s face. He took a pinbeam from the rack and did the job.
A tiny plume of steam jetted from The Yellowleaf’s finger; a faint smell of cooking meat hung in the air for a moment.
The hetman took her helmet from the rack and settled it over her head. Gejas scurried to her and helped her refasten her latches.
The helmet, of silvery alloy, covered her head completely, replacing her enigmatic face with the image of a grinning snaggle-toothed ghoul, artfully carved in an exaggerated surreal style. She drew on beautifully made alloy gauntlets. When she was done, only the tangled black ends of her mane remained unprotected by her armor.
“So, how do you read her face now?” Ruiz asked Gejas. “Is she as jolly as she seems?”
“Shut up,” snarled Gejas, apparently on his own. “Outside.”
“Choose your man,” Gejas said, gesturing at the other prisoners.
In the wan blue light, the camp seemed a tableau of accusing faces and cold eyes. Only Gunderd appeared at all amiable. Perhaps, Ruiz thought, events had already diverged so greatly from the scholar’s gloomy expectations that he now looked forward to the next amazing incongruity.
If so, Gunderd wouldn’t be disappointed. Ruiz gazed at the others, and considered: Who would best guard his interests while he dreamed in the virtual? Gunderd might be the most capable, but what could he do against the armored hetman?
If they’d seen through his invective, the Pharaohans might still be loyal — except for the one who wasn’t.
Then an odd thought came to him… and then matured almost instantly into a plan. He turned it over in his mind; except for the possibility that one of the Pharaohans was a Gencha puppet, what was wrong with the scheme? Nothing obvious, he thought, suppressing an impulse to grin. “I’ll take the dirtworld princess,” Ruiz said.
Gejas responded with gratifying astonishment. “What good will she do you?”
Ruiz shrugged. “She’s somewhat observant, easily frightened, and naturally suspicious. All I want from her is an accurate account of your hetman’s doings while I’m in the virtual.”
Nisa stood up, her face set in angry lines.
The tongue’s mouth pursed, as though he had detected a smell, faint but very bad. “You plan some trick; so much is certain. It won’t work.”
“Probably not,” said Ruiz, adopting his most lunatic smile.
“And don’t think to run away. The Yellowleaf would catch you; she is very fast. Besides, we have very good tracking tech; this is my personal specialty.” Gejas patted his security console affectionately.
The Yellowleaf made an impatient gesture. Gejas ducked his head. “Time for you to go,” he said, pointing up the dark mountainside. He picked up a metal canister by its sling and proffered it to Ruiz. “Here,” Gejas said. “An energy cell; you’ll need to connect it to the virtual’s receptacle. Payment in advance — the only sort the virtual recognizes.”
“I wonder why,” Ruiz muttered, but accepted the cell and slung it over his shoulder. He turned to Nisa. “Come with me.”
She glared at him for a long moment, and he was afraid she would refuse to go, and that he would have to force her.
But then her face crumpled. She looked down at her feet, shuffled forward.
His heart felt as if it were being crushed between two cold stones, but he kept his voice light and easy. “So. Shall we go?”
At that moment Gunderd laughed and pointed to the landwalker that held Einduix’s litter. “Look! The cook awakens. Guard your victuals, everyone.”
It was true. The small orange man had somehow unfastened the straps securing him to the litter and was crawling out from under the landwalker, eyes still cloudy. He looked up at Ruiz and smiled, an odd rueful expression.
Then his arms seemed to lose what little strength they had, and he sagged, still smiling.