As they were buckling on the last of their weapons and surveillance gear, Ruiz turned to Junior and patted his clone on his armored shoulder. “I’m grateful to you, Ruiz Aw,” said Ruiz to the clone.
The clone shrugged away the hand, and pulled his helmet on so that his face was hidden. “Think nothing of it,” the clone said over the close-range comm.
Ruiz felt a cold sense of rejection. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and latched down his own helmet.
“Don’t be, Dad,” said the clone. “You can’t help it if you like me better than I like you.”
Ruiz was still puzzling over the meaning of that, when the lock cycled open and filled the chamber with foulness. Ruiz smelled ordinary decay, but worse was the dead earthworm stink of the Gencha. Ruiz quickly toggled his armor’s filtration system, and the worst of the odor gradually cleared from his nostrils, though it left a lingering taint in his mouth.
“High body count?” asked Junior, as he moved ahead with his sensors.
“I guess so,” said Ruiz.
They reached the great central pit of the stack without incident. The remnants of the acrophobic sisters still lay there, though stripped of their armor and looking as if animals had worried at their flesh. The vilest stink came from a small heap of Publius’s monsters, who lay where Publius had apparently killed them in a fit of pique. In the reddish light that glimmered from the tunnel walls, the dead shapes formed a dreadful sculptural mass, black and hideous.
Ruiz ignored the corpses while he waited for Junior to report from the rim of the tunnel. He remembered the faces of those who had accompanied him on his last venture into the stack. Albany Euphrates, Huxley the Nomun clone, Durban the beaster, the sisters Chou and Moh, the nameless ex-gladiator… all dead and forgotten, except by Ruiz Aw. That train of thought afflicted him with a melancholy inertia, so he stopped it and began to check over his weapons, one more time. The ritual, so familiar, calmed him, and he finally felt ready for whatever was to come.
The clone came back at a trot. “I can’t find any signs of surveillance in the pit — the spectra seem dead. It’s weird. The tramway shows fairly steady use; the rail is bright, if that means anything.”
“No movement in the pit?”
“Not that I could tell,” said the clone. “Maybe some life back in the tunnels — the walls are like cheese, especially deeper in the pit. So, what do we do now?”
“Wait a moment,” said Ruiz, and sat down, slinging his ruptor across his back. He took a deep breath, activated the camera, and switched on the link.
A small voice whispered in his ear. “Ruiz? I see you. Or is that my fellow clone?”
Ruiz felt tears come to his eyes, so that his vision blurred for a moment. For some reason, he hadn’t expected Nisa’s clone to speak with her own voice. “I’m here,” he said, using the private channel. “I’m here.”
Gejas had secured Yubere’s security rotunda with little difficulty, and now he set up his command center in the shattered remnants of the kiosk that had guarded the drop shafts. His cyborgs were fighting their way through the secondary defenses just above the stronghold, encountering better-organized resistance.
One of his monitors crackled and cleared to show the steel face of a squad commander, who stared calmly into its wrist camera. “Gejas Tongue,” it said in its uninflected voice. “A report.”
“Report, then,” answered Gejas.
“A setback. Three of my fighters rendered dysfunctional by a Moc of high lineage and great ferocity. The creature irresistible in our present configuration. Ten fighters unable to lay down sufficiently comprehensive firing pattern.”
Gejas cursed. A Moc! An unexpected obstacle, indeed. He was about to instruct the commander to amalgamate his squad with a nearby unit, when a blur crossed the screen and the viewpoint slammed sideways.
The image shuddered and grew still. The screen showed a twitching metal foot, kicking feebly at the plastic tile. The foot grew still, and a puddle of hydraulic fluid mingled with blood spread across the corridor floor.
Gejas turned away and issued instructions to his remaining squad commanders. The squads condensed into larger units and progress slowed. The Moc became more cautious and was able to make only an occasional kill.
Another monitor chimed at Gejas, but he ignored it. It was only Roderigo, trying to question his tactics, trying to find out why he was attacking the stronghold of Alonzo Yubere.
Gejas grinned. He knew what he was doing and he had no time for the hetmen and their complaints. It was as if The Yellowleaf’s ghost dwelled in his mind’s eye, the strong beautiful face still vital, still telling him what he must do. He watched her. He was almost content.
Ruiz and the clone laid out their climbing gear just inside the tunnel. “I’m afraid of heights,” Nisa whispered in his ear.
“You can look away from the screen,” Ruiz replied.
“No,” she said. “If you can stand to be there, I can stand to watch.”
She sounded so heartbreakingly like herself. So true, so strong. “Well, everyone’s afraid of something,” he said.
Ruiz fired a piton into a crevice at the edge of the pit and hooked his descender line to it. He thought of the last time he had stood here, waiting. That time he had ridden the tram upward, spiraling around the sides of the pit to the fortress of Alonzo Yubere high above. There Ruiz had killed Yubere in the slaver’s beautiful bathtub. A simple piece of work, it seemed in retrospect — though it had failed to purchase Publius’s willing assistance.
He wished he were going up again.
He stood for a long moment looking out into the haze that filled that great emptiness, and then looked down at the dull red glow below. It seemed to him the glow had dimmed perceptibly since the last time he had stood there. “Gencha heaven,” he said out loud.
“What?” asked his clone.
“Nothing. Just nattering,” said Ruiz, and, turning about, began to lower himself down the wall.
When he reached the rail, he set another piton and waited for his clone. Junior swayed down the face with a lithe grace that Ruiz had to admire, even though it was his own.
When his clone hung suspended above the rail, Ruiz got out the railrider and shackled the device to a recessed pad eye on the chestplate of his armor. Junior did the same.
“Well,” said Ruiz. “Let’s try it.” He swung out and over the rail and dropped to the face just below it. He reached out and set the railrider over the polished alloy of the rail and, tightening a knurled knob, cranked the rider into a shape that conformed perfectly to the rail’s cross-section. He locked the rider into that shape and gingerly slid it back and forth a few centimeters — the almost frictionless lining of the rider made no sound.
Junior had his antennae extended in all directions and an inductance sensor almost touching the rail. He examined the screens strapped to his left forearm, and after a moment said, “Nothing. Hard to believe, but no one’s watching, as far as I can tell.”
“All right,” said Ruiz. “Get rigged, and we’ll go.”
Junior put away his sensors and lowered himself to Ruiz’s level. In a moment his rider was attached.
Ruiz jerked a tab from his climbing gear, and the descending lines and pitons puffed into dust. He dropped with a jolt, to hang from the rider’s tether, his hand on the brake lever at his chest. Junior destroyed the remaining evidence of their presence, and dangled from his own rider a few meters up the rail.