The Emperor of Everything

“Let’s go,” he said.

The submarine drifted silently down through the black SeaStack depths, feeling its way through the murk using passive sonar. Several times Ruiz heard the surging thresh of a margar passing nearby, and the sonar constantly picked up the sounds of smaller life forms, the engines of other, less clandestine subs, and the passage of surface craft. The sonar analyzed the reflectance patterns of these vibrations and constructed a ghostly green image of the stack’s underwater wall, projecting it in the holotank. It marked their own position with a red dot, which seemed to crawl down the vast wall at an almost-imperceptible rate. Ruiz watched intently for a while, then satisfied that the sub’s autopilot was functioning properly, he went aft through the cramped cargo hold where the slayers sat with their equipment. He beckoned to Albany, who got up and followed him into the private cabin where the Gench and the false Yubere waited.

“You’re the trapman, Albany,” Ruiz said. “Look at the madcollars and tell me if they’re straight.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Albany. He began to lay out the probes and analyzers of the trapman’s trade.

Half an hour later, he rose from an examination of the Gench’s collar, wrinkling his nose against the Gench’s stink. “This one is gimmicked,” Albany said. “There’s a monomolecular film over the receptor port, which would have filtered out the destruct signal. When your boss kills you, the Gench won’t die.”

Ruiz shook his head. Publius’s greed was monumental; he wasn’t even willing to sacrifice his little Gench to expunge Ruiz. He felt a bit insulted. He reached up to the overhead and activated a videocam. “Let’s make a record of this,” he said. “It might come in handy, later. Can you clear the filter?”

“No problem.” Albany applied an atomic eroder to the collar, set a timer.

Ruiz addressed the Gench, who received Albany’s attentions impassively. “Did you know of this trick?”

“No. But I am a valuable property; it seems logical that my owner would attempt to protect me. Do you plan to inform him that his trick is discovered?”

Ruiz grunted noncommittally. When Albany had pronounced the collar functional, he said, “Do me a favor, Albany. Take the ringer and go forward for a while. Entertain him however you like, but don’t bruise him up too much.”

Albany took the false Yubere by the arm. The ringer smiled placidly and went without protest. Ruiz shut the pressure door behind them and spun down the lockwheel. He switched off the camera.

“We must confer,” he said to the Gench.

Nisa, holding her back straight, sat chained to a bare steel bench in the back of Remint’s sled. Beside her, Flomel muttered curses: at her, at Ruiz Aw, at the unkind fate that had led him to this unhappy end.

“Shut up,” she finally snapped, wearied by his endless sniveling. “Must you carry on in such a contemptible manner?”

Flomel glared at her. “Slut… it’s you who should be silent. It’s your fault all this happened. The casteless slayer was seduced in Bidderum — thus he threw himself onto the stage and our dooms were sealed. If not for him, we would even now be performing for the princes of the pangalac worlds.”

Dolmaero, who sat back to back with Nisa, made a sound of disbelief. “Unlikely, Master Flomel. And our minds would no longer belong to us, had Ruiz Aw not interfered.”

“How much longer will they belong to us, anyway?” asked Flomel. “Besides, if I’d never learned that my mind had been remade, why would I care? It doesn’t sound so terrible to me.”

“It wouldn’t,” said Molnekh dryly.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Flomel hotly.

“You’ve always been more devoted to the appearances of things than to their actuality. It served you well when we were conjurors — that was the nature of our art. But now we’re slaves.” Molnekh seemed grimmer than Nisa had ever known him to be. She realized unhappily how much comfort she had taken from his dependable cheerfulness.

Flomel nattered on, oblivious, pronouncing ever more imaginative curses on Ruiz Aw’s head, until Nisa could no longer keep silent.

“You should be ashamed,” she said. “Ruiz allowed you to live when the rest of us would have killed you. If he hadn’t been merciful, you wouldn’t have been able to inform Corean of our whereabouts. We’d still be back at the pens, and Ruiz would have come to take us away from this terrible world.”

At that, the massive man who was piloting the boat turned his head and spoke tersely. “You’re wrong,” Remint said.

“What do you mean?” Nisa said stiffly. Remint was a frightening person; he seemed a stylized icon of destruction, not quite human. In the pen, she had watched him coolly kill dozens of the pen’s security troops; he had never displayed any expression but intense concentration.

“Flomel didn’t betray you,” said Remint. “How do you think we found Flomel?”

“How?” demanded Nisa, feeling a sudden dreadful anticipation.