The Emperor of Everything

He shook his head — he was indulging in pointless emotions. Each of the beings he had destroyed during this night’s work had been as alive as Huxley, and their lives had been just as important, in their own eyes.

As the puppet had said, dead was dead.

Ruiz helped Albany remove Huxley’s undamaged detectors, and slung most of the gear from his own armor. “I guess I’ll have to do Huxley’s job for a while,” he said.

Albany stood up wearily. “Yeah. Your army’s getting a little thin, Ruiz.”

A minute passed, then another brace of Dirm guards entered at a trot and slid to a stop, heads swiveling to take in the carnage. They started to snatch at the grasers they carried slung across their scaly chests, but Yubere spoke sharply. “Wait,” he said, raising a peremptory hand. “These are friends — they saved me from a treachery. You are to escort them to the downlevel security lock, then return here to clean up the mess. And see that the comm room is adequately restaffed. Guard the safety of our friends with your lives; we owe them much. And we intend to repay them.” A glitter of malevolence returned briefly to Yubere’s eyes.

“Thank you,” Ruiz said for effect. “Happy to help. By the way, did you know that life is a stiletto vine that blooms only once?”

When he spoke the code phrase that the Gench had tied into the puppet’s volitional network, Yubere slumped slightly, and a light went out of his eyes. He would be unable to make any decision, no matter how small, until Ruiz spoke the counterphrase. He would be unable even to decide to follow Publius’s orders. If for some reason Ruiz failed to speak it, Yubere would sit here until he starved, unless his people dared to carry him to a medunit to be fed intravenously.

“Well,” said Ruiz. “Good-bye, and good luck.”

The Dirm convoyed Ruiz and Albany to the lock, eyes rolling with suppressed panic. They seemed to have accepted the new Yubere’s identity without reservation — but they were a credulous species, another reason why they were popular cannon fodder. They bowed Ruiz and Albany into the lock and left at a quick trot.

When the inner door closed, Albany said, “So far so good. What did you do to the puppet?”

“Cut his strings, until we can get away. It gives us a deal point with our employer.”

“I wish you’d done it a little sooner.”

“I could only do it once. I’m sorry.”

Albany shrugged. “Well, it’s a tough business, and I know you’re sorry. What now?”

“Let’s run,” Ruiz said, and began to trot back down the long corridor.

The bits of the dismembered Moc were still twitching when they reached the tram platform ten minutes later. Ruiz looked at it and shivered. The face of Durban’s corpse had acquired a greasy bluish pallor; the dead eyes still glared, but without heat. Ruiz felt a pang of uncustomary squeamishness at the thought of riding down the tramway with the corpse, but there was no practical way to remove it from the tanglefoot.

Ruiz disarmed the satchel charge and then they stepped carefully aboard the tram. Ruiz sat in the driver’s chair. It took him only a moment to decipher the controls and start the tram sliding back down its rail.

To pass the time, he busied himself with Huxley’s detectors, getting them set up, ready to sniff out any activity below — just in case some of the alien tunnel dwellers decided to revenge themselves on the tram, or — an unpleasant notion — Publius had arranged some sort of trap for them on their return. It occurred to him that he hadn’t explicitly directed the Jahworld sisters to keep a watch down the tunnel, in case a surprise appeared from that direction. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He worried that if such an unfortunate event happened, the sisters would be too preoccupied with their horror of the pit’s depths to be paying much attention to what was going on behind them.

Perhaps, he thought, he was being excessively paranoid. On the other hand, Publius, a man with a vast talent for making enemies, was still alive after all these years — which argued for his thoroughness, and deviousness.

The danger was that Publius might kill him without giving Ruiz an opportunity to reveal his meddling with Publius’s puppet. Ruiz had to hope after he revealed this perfidy that Publius’s avarice would overtop his outrage.

“What’s wrong?” Albany asked.

“Probably nothing,” Ruiz answered.

“I don’t much like the sound of that,” said Albany.

Ruiz smiled at him. “I don’t blame you for that. I’m sorry to have involved you in such a mess, Albany.”

“No you’re not,” said Albany, but he smiled too.

The trip passed without incident, though Ruiz saw more furtive movement at the various openings, as if the dwellers within were curious about the unusual activity on the tramway. No one actually appeared, and Ruiz resisted the temptation to use his scope — he didn’t want to seem overly interested in things that weren’t any of his business.