The Emperor of Everything

Ruiz looked up. A dot resolved into the tiny figure of a person, falling in a boneless tumble. An instant later Ruiz saw that it was a woman, her face obscured by long dark hair, streaming in the wind of her descent.

Then she dropped past, somewhat closer to the far side of the pit than to Ruiz, so that he never got a clear look at her. She disappeared soundlessly into the red depths.

He was shaken by a sudden illogical conviction that he had just seen Nisa falling to her death. No, no…. She was safe, back in the pen. He cursed himself for his foolishness. The universe was full of slender black-haired women; it was supreme arrogance to believe that this one was in any way connected to Ruiz Aw.

“Feeding the Gencha,” said Albany.

“I guess so,” said Ruiz in a somewhat shaky voice. The Gencha were carrion feeders, able to assimilate the decay products of almost any hydrocarbon-based life. He didn’t want to think what it must be like at the bottom of the pit. This is just like a goblin tale, Nisa, he thought, and then somehow he was able to put aside his horror and apprehension. The hero always rescues the princess, he told himself.

The cyborg extended his probes and lowered a sensor to the track. He studied the output, then proffered a datacable to Albany, who plugged it into his own array of detectors.

“Hey,” said Albany. “I think someone’s coming down the slow way.”

Huxley reeled in his probes again, and the others dispersed back down the tunnel, so as not to project too obvious an infrared profile.

Ruiz had handed the puppet’s leash to one of the pinbeamers. Now he, Huxley, and Albany were the only ones remaining at the lip of the tunnel.

A thin singing reached Ruiz’s ears. He looked up and saw the tram far above, descending swiftly, circulating around the wall of the pit at a speed that stressed the rail enough to produce the sound.

When the tram had descended to a point just above them on the opposite wall, Ruiz peered at it through the tiny photomultiplier telescope that Albany handed him. He saw a bare framework of girders cantilevered out from the rail, sliding on frictionless impellor bushings. Between the ends lay six pallets, to which a half-dozen persons were secured. The passengers’ heads lolled with every jolt of the tram; apparently they were anesthetized. A Dirm of gigantic proportions sat at each end of the contrivance, each staring in opposite directions, grasers held ready. Before one of them was a control panel, from which projected various levers and switches. Their alien skulls displayed prominent scars, of a pattern Ruiz recognized.

Albany grunted. “Pithed Dirms,” he said. “Your man got the big money, eh?”

Ruiz shrugged. “They wouldn’t hire us expensive cutthroats just to snuff a pauper.”

“True. Well, we can snip them right off their seats; the real trick will come after we grease them — catching the tram before it gets away. It’s moving pretty fast.”

“Let’s wait until they come back,” said Ruiz.

“Well of course.” Albany looked mildly insulted. “Do I look like a tourist who’s just dying to visit Gencha Wonderland?”

Ruiz smiled. “No. How do you think we should do it?”

Albany rubbed his jaw speculatively. “We got a small problem. The Jahworld sisters are acrophobic — I guess you didn’t think that would matter when you probed them. I don’t know how much good they’re going to do us out there.”

Ruiz considered. “If our employer’s given us accurate data — aside from the existence of this hole, which he didn’t know existed — then we may be able to slip in the target’s back door, and we may not need everyone. We’ll leave the sisters here in the tunnel to keep our bolthole open.”

“Lot of ifs, Ruiz,” said Albany.

The tram swept around the side of the pit. Ruiz turned to Huxley. “Get everything you can, scan the contraption for deadman switches, uplinks, antiboarding devices — you know what to look for. I don’t know how long a round-trip takes, but when they get back, we’ll have to be ready for them.”

They waited silently while Huxley worked with his probes. The tram passed beneath them and Ruiz half expected the Dirm to lift their alien heads and see him — but they stared stolidly at nothing.

When they were gone with their cargo of sleeping victims, Ruiz turned to Huxley. “What did you get?”

“I can’t be sure I got everything, but… there are deadman switches, inductively monitoring the first Dirm’s vital signs. No problem there, if Moh or Chou can still shoot. The switches seem inadequately armored — a pinbeam through the central solenoids ought to fuse them open. Stupid design, really — the main uplink transponder seemed to be housed in an impenetrable block of monomol armor, but the remotes are vulnerable.”

“What else?”