The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 24

At the portal Corean waited, her perfect face incandescent with rage. Behind her Marmo monitored the limpet that held Flomel’s guts together. Flomel lay on a floater, breathing with effort. Flomel’s eyes were open; they rolled toward Ruiz and Nisa, and then away. A pair of Pung guards waited silently by the portal.

Ruiz released Nisa, and she stumbled away from him, her eyes large with betrayal and shock. Ruiz could only stare impassively at her, though he wanted to explain, to say something to soften the accusation in her face. One of the Pung took her by the arm and snapped a monomol leash around her neck.

Banessa stood by, massive arms folded. Ruiz went to her, and proffered the bloody pair of scissors. The giantess took them, showed them to Corean, then folded them between her huge fingers into a harmless lump of metal. She toggled a switch on her harness, and the seekers slapped back into their holsters.

Corean stepped close to Ruiz, nostrils flaring, white showing all around the irises of her eyes. “You,” she said. “Somehow this is your fault, isn’t it? I should kill you now and be done with it. Marmo was right!”

Ruiz stood mute, sure that any response he could make would turn out to be the wrong one. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that on Nisa’s face concern had replaced some of the hate, and his heart lifted slightly.

Corean stood rigid for a moment; then she lashed her hand across Ruiz’s face. Ruiz had an instantaneous vision of Corean cutting the coercer’s throat with her finger knife, and he wondered what his eyes would see after his face fell off. But it was just a stinging blow.

Corean flicked her hand, as if shaking off some unpleasant substance. “No. I’ll get some use out of you yet.”

She turned to Marmo, who looked up and said, “We’ll be able to ship the magician in a day.”

“Good, it’s not a total disaster, then. The rehearsals we’ll put back until they return. I’d feel better about the trip, though, if the Moc weren’t locked in its molting cell.” She seemed to be speaking to herself, but Ruiz pricked up his ears at the implication of a journey.

She turned to the giantess. “Banessa, you’ll be in charge of security. See that nothing like this happens again. These will go: the girl, the three conjurors, the Guildmaster. And this one.” Corean gestured at Ruiz. “That is, he’ll go if he survives the peel. Take him back under and prepare him.”

Marmo made an approving sound. “A wise decision,” he said. “I’ll see that he’s properly wired.”

Banessa fastened a collar to Ruiz. As the giantess led him away, Corean said, “Leave the girl here, with Ayam to keep an eye on her. Ayam, see that nothing further happens to the magician.”

Corean watched the readouts as Marmo guided the probes into the unknown’s skull, using an injector prosthesis. The cyborg was extremely deft at this work, and Corean had little fear that her attractive enigma would be damaged during the procedure. She wished, however, that she had spent more credit on peel technology. Her tech wasn’t state-of-the-art anymore — but what was, in a galaxy so full of diversity that no one could possibly keep abreast of every new development?

The unknown’s tattoos had almost completely faded away, leaving only traces. The body seemed recovered from the icing; the burnished copper skin had regained its glow, and the nails on the strong hands were pink and shiny.

Marmo finished. “He’s yours,” the cyborg said, and floated away.

Corean set the analog helmet on her head, taking care not to muss her hair. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and squeezed the deadman switch.

She broke through the meniscus of his mind in a thrash of bubbles. She stabilized just under the silvery surface, observing the life that teemed there. Thoughts arrowed back and forth like shoals of agile fish. Below, in the blue depths, larger artifacts undulated, rich, dark, intriguing.

Corean floated for a long time, taking in the flavor of her unknown’s mind, a savory, complex soup. The pleasure she took in this reassured her that she had made the correct decision in preserving him. “Waste not, want not,” she whispered to herself, delighted.

She got down to business.

“Who are you?” The message went rippling out like a waveform in a pond, though this was an ocean-deep pond.

The answer came back. “Ruiz Aw.”

“Ruiz, who owns you?”

“I’m a free agent, chartered out of Lanxsh.”

“What is your business?”

“I deal in select humaniform stock.”

Corean felt a tingle of satisfaction. A slaver! Ruiz’s business was the one most likely to be helpful to her, further vindication of her good sense in preserving the man.

But she was cautious, so she probed deeper, below the verbal level of Ruiz’s mind. And in corroboration she found a well-defined inversion layer of memory: the harsh images of a thousand slave pens, the unmistakable stinks of confined humanity, the sound of nerve lashes buzzing on flesh, the cries of auctioneers in the markets of a thousand worlds. The deeper she probed, the more vivid these memories became, but the experiential pressure increased even more rapidly, and soon Corean gratefully rose to a less painful level. She could not doubt the reality of those memories. And nowhere in the memories she disturbed was any trace of the Art League, no indication that Ruiz possessed the subservient, authority-oriented personality that was usually attracted to League work.

“And what were you doing on Pharaoh?”

This was an important question, and Corean watched alertly as Ruiz gathered his thoughts to answer. “I was there to steal magicians. I didn’t expect to be taken myself.” The response contained dense undertones of fear, embarrassment, caution, and an intense desire to avoid punishment.

Corean laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, projecting reassurance. “It’s all for the best.” She felt Ruiz’s mind relax slightly. She took up a different line of inquiry. “Why did you save the phoenix?”

Ruiz’s mind roiled with unmistakably genuine confusion. “I don’t know. But… she performed so well in the play. And she is good to look at. It must have seemed a waste, though I don’t remember much of the time after the boat caught me.”

This was not so satisfying a response. “And Corean,” she asked acidly, “is she good to look at?”

“Yes,” came the answer instantly. A red tincture of lust stained Ruiz’s depths, washing away her irritation at his previous answer.

Satisfied, Corean released the deadman switch and returned to her own body. She sat for a moment, admiring Ruiz Aw, thinking about what they would do together when he returned from the Enclave. She told herself that the pleasure would be as great as it might be now, that any other difference she might feel existed only in her own perceptions. But, she wondered, was a toothless tiger still beautiful?

Ruiz woke to the sound of quarreling Pharaohans. He was on the familiar dirty cot in the house of the casteless. That he was awake was proof that his shell persona had survived Corean’s peel. He seemed to be spending an unreasonable amount of time unconscious, though, an unhappy thought that touched off a reverie of self-pity, in which Ruiz gave himself over to feeling herded about by an unkind fate. This assignment had been characterized from the beginning by a distressing lack of control on his part. In retrospect, he had planned his escape attempt through the marinarium with a ludicrous degree of optimism, and the execution of the plan… the kindest observer would probably have described his efforts as having a certain hysterical exuberance.

The only sweet spots in the whole fiasco were the times he had spent with Nisa, who was a living symbol of Ruiz’s current ineptitude.

He sat up, his stiff muscles protesting.

No, Nisa was more than a symbol. She might hate him now, but she was intelligent; perhaps she would listen to his explanations. He went out into the square.

Most of the troupe seemed to be there, except for Flomel and Nisa. The elders formed a gesticulating circle, with Dolmaero at the center. The two lesser conjurors listened at the edge of the group of arguing elders. The others stood around in sullen groups, whispering.

“Quiet!” Dolmaero’s face was red; Ruiz had never seen him look so exasperated. “It makes no difference what you would or would not do. Do you not yet grasp the situation? We are owned!”

A fish-faced elder spluttered, “Owned? We’re not slaves; we belong to an honorable guild. How can we be owned?”

Dolmaero looked as if he regretted his outburst of candor. “Well, perhaps owned is not the correct term, Edgerd. But we are at least prisoners, can you argue that?”

“No, but whose fault is that? You’re our Guildmaster; why have you done nothing to protest our status? What use, to have a Guildmaster who can do nothing for his guildsmen?” Edgerd clenched his scrawny fists. A mutter of agreement ran around the plaza.

No one had yet noticed Ruiz in the shadow of the doorway, and he did nothing to draw attention. The air of the plaza was charged with incipient violence.

A heavy-shouldered youth with the tattoos of an assistant lizard tamer pushed forward. His meaty face was tight with frustration. “Yes!” he shouted, and Dolmaero drew back. “What use indeed. We live in these hovels, we are forced to eat this alien sludge; now they force us to rush this new production into being, without proper sacrifices and observances, without any firm payment schedule, without any of the customary relaxations and stimulants to which we, as artists of the first rank, are entitled. And why?”

“Tell us, Nusquial.” Other shouts of encouragement came from the crowd.

“Because we gave the finest performance ever seen in the southern nomarchies? Because our fates are harvested away from the soil of Pharaoh? Because we’ve fallen among demons? No! I don’t believe it!”

Ruiz was fascinated. Nusquial had obviously been erroneously trained as a beastmaster. The boy had a fine gift of rhetoric. The Pharaohans were captivated, eager to hear his words.

“No!” Nusquial shouted “I say it’s because our Guildmaster, the once-Honorable Dolmaero, has failed us. Has he interceded with the demons who hold us captive? Has he? Has he requested those comforts that are our just due? Why must we simply accept the miserly dole that Dolmaero seems to think proper? There is strength in our unity; that is the message that a hundred generations of our guildfellows send us. It’s our power not to perform that Dolmaero will not use.”

Nusquial jumped forward and took Dolmaero by the arm. The Guildmaster recoiled in shock, but the husky lizard tamer held him fast.

Nusquial’s face burned with violent energy. The two conjurors drew away, putting distance between themselves and whatever unpleasantness might occur. Nusquial dragged Dolmaero through the circle of elders, toward the west wall of the plaza, and Ruiz noticed that some of the elders seemed troubled. But the other members of the troupe seemed united in their anger with Dolmaero.

Reluctantly Ruiz followed. His natural inclinations and training urged him not to get involved. But he felt an unnerving certainty that he would be wise to act. In the first place, Dolmaero was an intelligent, resourceful man, and the troupe would need such a leader very badly in years to come. And Dolmaero had been kind to Ruiz. In the second place, if the troupe destroyed a valuable member of Corean’s new property, her rage would fall heavily on the troupe. Some would inevitably splash on Ruiz, if he made no effort to head off the disaster.

Nusquial shoved Dolmaero up against the wall, stepped back, and took up a piece of rubble. Dolmaero held himself straight, maintaining an impressive but useless dignity; all eyes were on Nusquial. The crowd pushed close. Nusquial held the chunk of stone high, like a trophy. He didn’t notice Ruiz threading the crowd behind him. “With this,” Nusquial declaimed, “we make a change for the better. With this, we wipe out the stain on our honor, in the time-honored manner. With this, we show our captors what manner of men we are.” Before Ruiz could reach him, he threw the stone with all his strength. Dolmaero ducked away, but the stone glanced off the polished top of his head, and the Guildmaster went to his knees, blood sheeting over his face.

Others bent for stones. In the midst of this, Ruiz tapped Nusquial lightly on the shoulder. Nusquial turned, his face full of feral excitement. Ruiz hit him two slashing blows, one on each ear, so quickly that the sound of the blows merged. Nusquial’s eyes went dim, and he fell like a tree, to lay face up in the dirt, quivering.

In the sudden silence, Ruiz stepped forward. He looked down at the prone lizard tamer, then nudged him tentatively with a toe. Nusquial lay as if dead. Ruiz drew back his foot and kicked him in the ribs. The sound of breaking bone shivered the air.

Ruiz turned to the crowd. “Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly. He slowly scanned the circle of white faces; no one seemed disposed to be rash. Ruiz smiled.

“A bit of wisdom, paraphrased from an ancient sage of the Home Worlds,” he said. “‘Let he who is without good sense cast the next stone.’”

A clatter of dropped masonry sounded in the plaza, and the crowd evaporated.

Dolmaero, on his knees, was trying to find a way to stand up. Ruiz helped him over to the shady side of the stage. He settled Dolmaero there on a bit of scaffolding erected by the stage painters, and went for a clean cloth and a basin of water.

Dolmaero said nothing while Ruiz wiped his face, though he winced and vented a small curse when Ruiz clamped his fingers down on the wound to stop the oozing blood.

When Ruiz was finished, Dolmaero lifted weary eyes to him. “Once again, you’ve saved the rubes from their own foolishness.”

Ruiz shrugged, smiling. It wasn’t the sort of remark that called for a response. After a bit, Dolmaero smiled back. “Not,” he said, “that I’m ungrateful. But tell me, what made you exert yourself?”

“The same thing that should be motivating your flock, Guildmaster. The fear of Corean’s displeasure.”

Dolmaero nodded. “Yes. In my own provincial way, I’ve stumbled on that truth. Strange that something so beautiful should be so deadly, eh?”

Ruiz laughed. “I’ll point this out, though doubtless you’ve already noticed: Many of the deadliest things are beautiful. For example, take the Lady Nisa.”

“Nisa? I would have thought her utterly harmless, except to herself.”

“Harmless? Ask Flomel about that when next you see him. She took up a pair of sewing scissors and did a thorough job of airing his innards.”

Dolmaero’s eyebrows climbed to the top of his forehead. “So the mage is dead?”

“No. The quacks here are very good. And fast. I have it on good authority that we’ll all be traveling together soon. Where, I don’t know.”

Dolmaero digested this information at length. Finally he said, “You’re a source of strange predictions, Wuhiya.”

“Call me Ruiz,” Ruiz said.

“Ruiz, then. Is that truly your name? Never mind. Your tattoos have washed away, I see.”

Ruiz rubbed at his face. “So. Well, I apologize for any offense my naked face may give.”

Dolmaero clapped him on the back and grinned broadly. “You could paint yourself blue and eat with your feet, without offending me in the slightest. I’m truly in your debt. Besides, a naked face frightens. I would guess that causing fear is part of your trade. Whatever that might be.”

Dolmaero got up, puffing with the effort. “But now,” he told Ruiz, “I’ll have to see to young Nusquial. He was always a hothead, which is why I made him a lizard man when he wanted to be a mage. Some don’t wear power as well as you wear yours.” He went off across the square, before Ruiz could ask him where Nisa might be found.

But he found her easily enough, in the bathhouse, attended by three ancient women — gowners, Ruiz supposed. Nisa stood on a low stool, while the women tried the drape of a rich red velvet against her. Bolts of other fine fabrics lay about in disarray. When Ruiz entered, the gowners failed to notice him at first, and he watched as they pinned and marked and debated in shrill cackles. Nisa looked at him, her arms lifted from her sides to accommodate the gowners, her face set, her eyes distant.

Against the cistern, Ayam lounged, watching the gowning. Ruiz glared at it, but it gazed back blandly, undisturbed.

When the gowners finally looked around and noticed Ruiz in the shadow of the entryway, they dropped their fabrics and pins and chalks and tapes, and fled out the back door with a chorus of small wheezy shrieks.

Ruiz hoped their hearts were strong. He had no wish to cause any further casualties among the properties of Corean.

“May we speak?” he asked.

She regarded him with little apparent interest, then spoke in a slow detached voice. “Why not? You’ve frightened away the couts. Besides, you can do as you please; you’ve demonstrated that, have you not?”

Ruiz stepped closer. Nisa still held her arms out rigidly, as if she had forgotten that they belonged to her. Ruiz saw that her pupils were pinpoints; she must be almost blind in the dimness of the bathhouse. He felt a surge of anger. “Has the philterer been busy already?”

“Yes. It’s better this way.” A spark of faraway amusement lit her face for a moment. “But I think they’ll not be as happy with my performance this time.”

Ruiz looked into her face, saw nothing more of Nisa there. In her present state, there was no point to explaining his actions outside the paddock. Better to wait for a time when she could understand, if she would. Besides, Ayam was Corean’s creature, sure to report, with an unflattering twist, anything he might say to Nisa. He turned and left.

A dozen Pung guards came for them in the morning. They were herded into the center of the plaza: Ruiz, Nisa and the Dilvermooner, the two assistant mages, and Dolmaero.

Kroel, the mage who had taken the part of Menk, god of slavery, struggled briefly with the Pung who had collected him. The Pung touched him lightly with the nerve lash, and Kroel fell to the ground howling and writhing. Kroel was a short broad-chested man with heavy features and tattoos in an antique, mannered style.

The other mage, Molnekh, a cheerfully cadaverous man, helped Kroel to his feet and dusted him off. “Now, now,” said Molnekh, “is this dignified?”

“Dignified!” Kroel was still whimpering. “Dignified, you say? What is dignified about this abuse? I believed when we were reunited with the troupe that our torments were ending.”

“I, too, was hopeful,” Molnekh said, facing the Pung and baring his long yellow teeth in a fawning smile. The Pung gestured with its lash, and the two joined the others without farther incident.

Shortly, Banessa came through the portal. Behind her a Pung dragged a truly wretched creature, a humanoid of indeterminate age and gender, in the last stages of starvation or some wasting disease, hairless, clad in nondescript rags. The giantess carried a handful of coded monomol detention collars, and Ruiz’s heart fell.

“Attention,” said Banessa. “You’ll be going on a short journey. You must all wear these security devices — no exceptions.”

“Excuse me, large person,” said Dolmaero. “Can you tell us where we’re going?”

“That’s irrelevant,” the giantess said. “The name would mean nothing to you.”

But Ayam giggled and said, “I can tell you a little. You’ll be going deep into the ground. You’ll meet some fascinating people, and when you come back up, you’ll be so nice, so cooperative. The Gench—”

Banessa swung her huge fist at the herman and knocked it down. “Shut up,” she said.

Ruiz barely noticed. His knees had gone weak, and he could feel the wrenching movement of the death net in the depths of his mind. A terrible tension filled him, as though the net had been set to trigger at the first mention of the Gencha. He remembered, dimly, what Nacker had said: “…a silver bullet, aimed at some monster…”

He was dizzy with the effort of resisting the net. Dolmaero noticed his distress and took his arm. “Are you unwell?” Dolmaero asked.

No! he shouted at the net. Wait! Just a while longer. I’m going there, I’m going, and I’ll be able to learn where they are.

As though the net had heard him, it stopped its slide toward oblivion, so abruptly that for a long moment Ruiz seemed to hang over an abyss, looking down into endless blackness. His vision dimmed, and he could hear nothing.

Then it was over and he was standing in the square again.

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking off Dolmaero’s hand. “Nothing wrong.”

But things had gone terribly wrong. He knew now why he had been sent to Pharaoh. The League was interested in the curtailment of poachers, true enough. But the League was far more interested in catching rogue Gencha, who were vastly more valuable than any human stock. The League had known that he would end up on Sook. And once he had reached Sook, they had hoped he would be sent to the rogue Gencha practitioners, who specialized in the making of organic machines from living beings.

He would die before that happened to him, for which he was thankful, but the others would come back from the enclave without souls, without that inner direction that marks all sapient beings. For the rest of their lives, they would exist only to please their owners.

He couldn’t bear to look at his fellow prisoners.

One after the other, the entire group was collared, except for Ayam. The herman stood apart from the rest, smiling.

Ruiz touched the slick monomol that circled his neck snugly. It was not a highly sophisticated tech; for that he could be grateful. It carried a locator beacon, a sedative ject, and a decap explosive. With a little time and the right tools, he might be able to get it off. He fed himself hope, as though he were a small fragile fire. He gradually regained a bit of his mental equilibrium.

Banessa carried the control console hung on a ribbon of lavender velvet between her enormous breasts. Ruiz wondered how her thick fingers could accurately work the delicate controls of the unit. He discovered the answer when she activated the collars. She flexed her hand and slender claws of bright metal slid from the ends of her fingers. With these, the giantess tapped away, and Ruiz felt a thrumming vibration as his collar activated.

Banessa’s tiny dead eyes rested on each of them in turn. “A demonstration,” she said. “You must learn this lesson.” She tipped back the head of the starveling with the butt of her nerve lash. Around its neck was a collar like theirs. Its eyes rolled back in its head, and it slumped, almost falling when Banessa took away her lash.

“First,” she said, “the collar will tell us where you are, so no matter how far you flee, we’ll catch you. Second, if we don’t want to take the trouble to catch you, we’ll do this.” She gestured to the Pung, who pushed the wretch away. The slave stumbled and staggered a half-dozen paces away; then Banessa clicked a claw against her console.

They heard a small report, like an ax hitting a log of some hard ringing wood. The slave’s head popped off. The body fell, the head rolled away, and a small flow of blood sank into the sand.

“Remember this,” Banessa said, dropping the console back between her breasts. She retracted her claws, then gestured to the Pung guards. “We’ll go to the airboat.”

Everyone stepped lively.