She was as perfectly disguised as he could have hoped. In fact, had the hetman’s mutilated corpse not lain between them, he might have thought The Yellowleaf still regarded him through the eyeslots of the ghoul mask. Nisa’s regal carriage seemed an eerily close approximation of the hetman’s style, so close that it gave him a shiver.
“Listen,” he said. “You must walk as if you owned the world, as if everyone else was shit on your shoes. Can you do it?”
“Of course,” she said. “I remind you: For most of my life this was my attitude exactly — until quite recently, in fact.”
“I forgot,” he said, smiling more broadly. “Well, good, then. The other thing you must remember is this: Never speak. When we come out into the open, the Roderigans may have a spy bead or long-range monitors on us, so we must play our roles to perfection. No matter what happens, no matter what I do, remember to act as the hetman would.”
“I’ll remember.” There was a short silence; then she spoke again. “I’m pleased to see you more yourself, Ruiz Aw. You’ve seemed so cold, so distant, since we left SeaStack — I hardly knew what to say to you. Something good must have happened in your dream world — something that healed you a little.” Her voice had a somewhat ambiguous quality, as if she were pleased but also apprehensive.
“Yes… a pleasant dream,” Ruiz said, thinking of Leel and her serene imaginary life. He hoped Nisa wouldn’t question him further. Though he was tired of telling lies, even kind ones, he could see no point in telling her of Leel.
But she didn’t ask anything else, and after a moment he said, “Time to go. You lead, I’ll follow.” Then he had her knot another decayed length of rope around his wrists so that he would seem to have his hands bound behind his back. With care, the rope wouldn’t break before the time was right.
“One last thing,” he said. “If things go badly, if I’m killed or captured, try to get away. The armor should protect you from most long-range weapons, short of a direct ruptor hit. You’ll have a chance.” He didn’t suggest any good place she might run to; probably there was no place of refuge on the island. Still, he wanted her to live as long as she could.
She nodded, the ghoul mask gleaming.
Gejas walked nervously back and forth beneath the weapons arch, pausing occasionally to glance at his surveillance screens.
His tracking screen signaled him with a low chime when The Yellowleaf’s implant began to move. It seemed very soon; he had expected to camp in the hills for several days at least. He waited impatiently before another screen, which displayed the transmission from a spy bead hovering on the slope above the tunnel.
When The Yellowleaf emerged from the tunnel leading the madman on a choke rope, he felt a wave of relief wash through him. He wondered briefly what had become of the primitive woman, but then his attention was attracted by a subtle wrongness in The Yellowleaf’s movement. She seemed to walk with a slightly easier, more sexual motion, as though her hips had been oiled. The relief he had felt was replaced by a furious envy. She had obviously indulged herself, had required the madman to please her, there in the cave of the virtual.
He told himself that he was angry because she had so casually risked Roderigo’s interests. What if the madman had hurt her, or escaped? He was quick and strong — and dangerous as only the utterly reckless could be. But now Ruiz Aw hung his head and stumbled, as if exhausted.
When Gejas began to wonder exactly what The Yellow-leaf and the madman had done together, he turned abruptly from the surveillance screen and shouted to the nearest guard. “Get the landwalkers ready. We meet the hetman on the beach.”
He went to the center of the encampment, where the prisoners huddled around a glowpoint, attempting to stay warm. The little orange subhuman still lay on the ground, eyes half-open, obviously too weak to walk.
“Up,” Gejas said. “We go.”
The fat old Pharaohan gestured toward the orange one. “What of him, Master?”
He would have harvested any ordinary prisoner who asked such a question, but he restrained the impulse, remembering that the Pharaohan was part of the bait they were dangling before the slaver Corean. “Leave him,” he said, and turned away.
Outside, the night was clear, and the starlight bright enough to illuminate the path.
By the time Ruiz and Nisa reached the site of the encampment, the Roderigans and the other prisoners had been gone for a long time. Besides the beaten-down scrub, the only evidence of their presence was a bit of rubbish — food wrappers, discarded ammo packaging, scraps of paper — and the prostrate body of Einduix the cook. At first Ruiz thought the little orange man must be dead, but as they passed, Einduix rolled over and showed Ruiz a feeble smile. On Einduix’s chest, Ruiz caught the glitter of the limpet — Dolmaero must have given it to the cook.
Ruiz resisted an impulse to stop. He didn’t know what he might have done for the former sea cook — perhaps nothing — but in any case he couldn’t risk an act that Gejas might perceive as uncharacteristic. Surely stopping to aid a discarded prisoner was not the sort of thing that would ever occur to The Yellowleaf.
Nisa played her role well, not even glancing aside as they passed Einduix.
Ruiz was certain that they were watched. The more he thought about it, the more foolishly optimistic his plan seemed. Could a man like Gejas, who for a lifetime had studied the hetman with an obsessive intensity, be deceived? Ruiz found it increasingly easy to play the demoralized prisoner; unfortunately, his performance was not the crucial one.
They continued down the path toward the water, and now Ruiz heard a rustle to one side. He presumed this indicated the presence of one of the mirrorsuited Roderigan guards.
With all his heart, he hoped that the guard would be incautious enough to approach them before they reached the beach.
Corean watched the beach through her light-multiplier. The ghostly figures of the Roderigan party had appeared ten minutes before, and now they had settled on a terrace just above the high-water mark. Four landwalkers were arrayed in a defensive formation, and she saw a fairly sophisticated weapons arch visible above the alloy backs of the machines.
“Not too bad,” she said, chewing distractedly on her lip. “We seem to have the firepower edge. But where is he?”
Marmo shook his head stiffly, engrossed in his perpetual processor games. Lately the old cyborged pirate seemed less and less interested in the real world. Corean wondered if he had finally become a liability. She contemplated him for a moment, and he glanced up sharply.
Still alert, then, she thought, and returned her attention to the multiplier. “Where is he?” she whispered.
Dawn glimmered just below the eastern horizon when Ruiz and Nisa stood atop the last foothill ridge and looked down at the beach, where Gejas had reestablished the camp. Under the weapons arch, the tiny figure of Gejas hovered over the dim blue glow of his screens. The three remaining prisoners waited fifty meters down the beach, in a little dismal huddle.
“Let me catch my breath, please, Master,” Ruiz said in pleading tones — just in case anyone was listening. He collapsed dramatically to his knees and hung his head. The path here went through deep beach grass, which now rose chest-high on Ruiz.
Nisa nodded, a disinterested gesture. Ruiz was a little surprised that she made such a convincing hetman. But then he recalled the first time he had ever seen her, when she had played the goddess Hashupit so well. That day in dusty Bidderum seemed a very long time ago now… it might almost have happened to someone else.