The Emperor of Everything

Durban shouldered eagerly past him. The personamatrix scarab he wore at the base of his skull gave him the reflexive cruelty and decisiveness of his totem. He glanced at Ruiz, bright-eyed and smiling. The wolverine that filled his brain looked out of Durban’s human eyes, happy to be going where it might fulfill its vicious impulses.

Durban went through with a supple twist of his body, and Ruiz held his breath, waiting for the sound of ambush, or automated anti-intruder weaponry. But nothing came, and after a moment Durban whispered, “Come.”

“Huxley,” Ruiz said to the cyborg with the antisurveillance gear. “Get in, set up.” Next, Ruiz sent in the scar-faced ex-gladiator and one of the flankers, then gestured at the puppet. The false Yubere smiled his empty smile and went.

Ruiz went back into the sub, checked to see that the controls were adequately locked against tampering, and that the sub’s security systems were set to self-destruct should anyone attempt to enter before Ruiz returned. The Gench crouched in the darkest corner, and Ruiz dialed the lights to a softer level. “We’ll be back as soon as possible,” he told it, and it made a hissing sound of assent.

“If Publius attempts to contact you, you will be much safer if you do not respond,” he said.

“I will remember,” it said. “At present, you seem more trustworthy than Publius. So far you have been truthful; I detect the scent-signatures of many members of the Real Race.”

A shudder of apprehension wavered through Ruiz. “How many?”

“More than I could separate — more than I knew still existed anywhere. I am very young and my knowledge is small, but… very many. Perhaps when you return, you will allow me to go to them.”

“If conditions permit,” Ruiz said.

“I understand.”

The tunnel was three meters in height. In the helmet lamps his team wore, its rough alloy walls seemed to curve slightly to the left. Ruiz consulted with Albany, who monitored a tiny scattershot radarscreen on his forearm. “What do you see?” asked Ruiz.

“No activity in my range,” said Albany, brow furrowed in concentration. “I get dropouts every thirty-three meters — must be adits of some sort, without doors.”

Ruiz set his people in motion — the beaster in front, the flankers drifting back and forth in a reciprocating pattern, the nameless gladiator trailing well back. He held the false Yubere’s leash; just ahead of him walked Huxley the cyborg with his antisurveillance gear. Just behind Ruiz, Albany trudged along under his load of detectors.

“Helmet mikes only, minimum range,” said Ruiz. “Be stealthy, everyone.”

Seven pairs of eyes gleamed at him from the dark; each pair but one carried some unique message: anticipation, curiosity, fear.

The puppet seemed impossibly placid.

Ruiz looked back at Albany. “You’re the navigator,” he said.

“Let’s trot,” said Albany. “I’ll let you know when we’re lost.”

They followed the empty tunnel for several kilometers, and Albany confirmed Ruiz’s impression that they were rising slightly. “That’s the right way, boss,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“I guess,” Ruiz said. They were following a navigation bead provided by Publius; its telltales blinked green in Albany’s dataslate.

At regular intervals they passed open doorways, edged by ovals of some silvery alloy. At the first of these, Durban had paused for a moment, then dropped to his belly and risked a peek over the threshold. “Empty storeroom,” he said, and went on. So far all the doorways had proven similarly innocuous.

At the three-and-a-half-kilometer mark, Albany froze in midstep. “Activity,” he whispered, and the rest of the team stopped abruptly. “I’m getting just a taste of electromagnetics… some sort of ranging pulse, maybe.”

Huxley tapped at his dataslate. “Not enough to go on,” the cyborg said in a grating bass. “I need to get closer.”

Ruiz considered, then called in one of the pinbeamers. “Chou, you and Durban convoy Huxley and Albany forward, till they get a better shape of what’s coming up. Be quiet — don’t use the helmet comms outside the fifty-meter range.”

She nodded, and the four of them slid into the gloom. In a few moments they disappeared around the curve of the tunnel. For a dozen heartbeats longer Ruiz could make out the reflection of their helmet lamps, and then there was nothing but darkness ahead.

Ruiz waited, the puppet’s leash in one hand, a plasma projector in the other. The remaining pinbeamer crouched against the tunnel wall fifteen meters ahead, the gladiator waited even farther behind them, just inside a storeroom doorway.

“We have a little privacy,” said the false Yubere. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what the Gench did to me. Publius said nothing to me about any additional modifications.”

“Publius doesn’t tell you everything, apparently.”

“No, of course not. Still it seems strange. Are you sure it wasn’t your idea?”

“If it was, would I tell you?”