The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 3

Ruiz Aw hurried back through the Beaster Level without incident, driven by the Art League mission-imperative that filled his mind. When he emerged into the civilized corridors of Dilvermoon, he took a tubecar to the launch complex where he kept his starboat.

The Vigia was a small boat, somewhat battered on the outside, but well maintained mechanically and luxurious within. Ruiz boarded her with a sense of homecoming, and when her hatch closed behind him, he felt safe for the first time in days.

The mission-imperative accepted his boarding as an acceptable movement toward completion of the mission he had contracted to perform, and so its compulsion relented. Ruiz felt the easing of the compulsion as a pleasurable languor, and he resolved to enjoy the sensation while it lasted. Ruiz took a snifter of good brandy into the lounge, where he sprawled comfortably in his favorite chair. He breathed a long sigh, releasing tension. He took a warming sip, then set the snifter aside and closed his eyes. He thought about Nacker’s analysis of the mission — that the Art League was willing to spend him to get even a bit of information on the poachers who were working Pharaoh. Why? True, Pharaoh was a lucrative world, but the League owned a thousand as profitable. What was it about that particular world that made it so special? Or was it something else?

Ruiz reviewed his visit to the League factor who had hired him this time. The factor was an old woman with the long face and delicate bones of a Cygnan, named Alldiusen Miktyas.

“Come in, come in,” she had said, bowing and rubbing her wrists in the Cygnan manner. “Always a delight, Citizen Aw. So happy you are available.”

Ruiz nodded carefully, and chose a chair well back from Miktyas’s desk.

“Smoke? Powder? Wet?” Miktyas indicated the bar that ran across the back other office, beneath a large holostill of the Meadows of Morrow.

Ruiz shook his head. “No, thank you. You offer a contract?”

Miktyas smiled widely, revealing small blue teeth. “Indeed, and I’m pleased to see that you have lost none of your refreshing directness. So, to business! We suffer from illegal harvesters, in a prime lowtech world we own in the center-ward fringe of the Manichaean region. You know of Pharaoh?”

Ruiz rubbed his chin and thought. “A desert Hardworld? Some sort of performers? Conjurors?”

Miktyas clapped her hands together, making a small flaccid sound. “Truly, you’re well informed. Yes! We would send you there, to gather information, and if possible, terminate the illegal harvesting, though our contract would be fulfilled if you can identify and locate the criminals, to be dealt with by the Legal Arm of our beloved employer. But there’s a healthy bonus for termination, as always.” The factor winked and laughed, her horsey face quivering with forced jollity.

Ruiz felt a bit ill, as he always did when accepting employment with the Art League. But he maintained an expression of polite interest. “What information is available?”

The factor shut off her laugh in midchortle. A gravely earnest expression descended over her features, as though a shade had been drawn down. “Well. Very little. This is why we are prepared to raise your usual rate.” The factor swiveled a screen so that Ruiz could see, touched it with skinny fingers. A swarm of amber characters flowed across it, listing the payment schedule for a hundred contingencies. Ruiz leaned forward, looked carefully at the screen. He was somewhat taken aback by the hugeness of the compensation, and a blip of suspicion crossed the horizon of his mind.

“Many of your contingencies deal with posthumous compensation,” he said, in a neutral voice.

The factor sighed heavily. “Such is the nature of your work, Citizen Aw. Not so?”

“It’s so,” Ruiz agreed.

“Should the worst occur, your heirs will be well cared for.”

Ruiz saw no reason to mention that he had no heirs. “Am I the first to study the problem? No? Then what information have your operatives gathered?”

“As I said, very little. The poachers seem to have an efficient counterintelligence organization; our people disappeared without useful trace. Naturally, you’re not to discount the possibility that they’ve infiltrated Pharaoh Upstation, or the League infrastructure on Pharaoh.”

“Naturally,” Ruiz said dryly. He considered at some length, until Miktyas squirmed impatiently.

“And so,” Miktyas said. “Your opinion?”

Ruiz leaned back. “Is there no information at all? What help can you provide?”

“We have excellent backgrounding, language learning, cartographic conditioning — the usual. We can provide you with dossiers on the illegally harvested troupes, but this information is limited. The poachers make very clean snatches. We have an extensive network of League observers in place on Pharaoh, who will assist you in any way you desire. Your budget is essentially unlimited. We’re very disturbed by this problem; we want swift and decisive action.”

Ruiz considered. “What will you require of me?”

The factor rubbed her wrists, making a dry reptilian sound. “Enhanced degree of mission-imperative, of course. A terminal contingency net — our finest Gencha work.”

Ruiz felt a lurch in his stomach, though he’d expected the death net. No one would pay that much without a guarantee of some return on their investment.

“Is that absolutely necessary? The death net?”

The factor’s face curdled with disapproval. “Must you so refer to it? The TCN is only and merely a contingency mechanism. We hope, of course, that you return in perfect health, but yours is a risky trade, and if you meet with disaster, we want to know why. We’ll be much likelier to avenge your murder, with the net transmitting the circumstances of your demise. Don’t you want that?”

Ruiz sighed. “Oh, sure. Sure. When?”

Miktyas leaned forward, her eyes alight with urgency. “Now. Today. We have the Gench practitioner waiting in the lab; it’s ready to do the installation. What do you say?”

Ruiz sat silent for a long time, considering, looking inside his heart.

Finally he said, “Why not?”

Miktyas conducted Ruiz down a dozen levels, deep into the League medical section.

The laboratory was dimly lit by red glowstrips, in deference to the nocturnal being who worked there. The Gench took no notice of their approach. It sat motionless, except for its three tiny eyespots, which appeared to circulate over its skull in random patterns. In actuality, the hairlike sensors on the creature’s scalp were simply activating and deactivating in sequences that gave the illusion of movement.

Ruiz’s gorge rose. In the humid air of the laboratory, the rotting earthworm stink of the Gench was stifling. Tufts of frizzy umber fiber sprouted from its baggy, three-legged body. The tufts clenched into hard little buttons, and then relaxed, as the factor stood before the alien.

“Your customer, good Gench,” Miktyas said, patting Ruiz’s arm. “You have the specifications?”

The Gench shifted on its stool, and its eyespots collected into a clump at the front of its skull. A vertical neck slit drooped open, and it spoke in a whispery voice. “Of course.”

“Fine, fine,” Miktyas said, rubbing her wrists. “We should begin, then.”

The Gench shrugged, a motion that ran clockwise around its body, and rose to its footpads. “As you wish.” It nodded at a human-contoured chair, and Ruiz seated himself and leaned back.

The Gench made no preparations, used nothing like the elaborate technology Nacker used later to hobble the Gench’s work. It simply stood in front of Ruiz and extruded a glistening white filament from one of its mouths. The filament stretched out, until it was as thin as a hair; then it touched Ruiz at the right temple and sank through his skin. “I remember you again,” it said, and then Ruiz’s world turned black.

He woke, as always, sooner than expected, but he kept his eyes closed and so he heard the last words that passed between the factor and the Gench practitioner.

“The work went well?” Miktyas asked anxiously.

The Gench sighed. “Well enough. This one’s mindsea is always difficult to swim in. He protects himself well, almost like one of the Real Race.”

Miktyas sniggered. “The Real Race….”

“You should be merry, if you can. We Gencha were making ourselves into gods when humans were bits of slime floating in the sea. Do you think all are like me, a trained animal in your menagerie? Elsewhere, the Gencha still Become.” Nothing in the whispery voice betrayed anger, or any other emotion, but something touched Ruiz with chilly fingers.

“Never mind that. The net is anchored, the mission-imperative implanted?”

“Yes. Your rat will run its maze, and when it dies, you will learn what it has learned. This one will project a strong signal, at least,” the Gench said.

Ruiz allowed his eyes to flutter open. The factor rushed to help him sit up. “Citizen Aw! How do you feel?”

Ruiz passed a shaky hand over his face and glanced at the Gench. It had seated itself on its stool again, and its eyespots flickered over the far side of its head, only occasionally sliding into brief view. “Well enough,” Ruiz had answered.

Ruiz now set the brandy aside and rose to his feet. The walls of the lounge were a soft cool white, as were the furnishings. The only spot of bright color glowed from a niche set into the far wall. Ruiz went toward the niche, stopped before it. Each day, the Vigia placed in the lounge niche a different thing of beauty from Ruiz’s large collection; this day it was a spirit mask from Line, its humanoid features carved from a single blue moonstone, then inlaid with swirling bands of red jelly opal.

The boat chose at random, but somehow these choices had come to have superstitious meaning for Ruiz, as though the selection were an omen. He looked down at the mask and shuddered. The moonstone mask had come to him through stupidity and misplaced trust, a souvenir of betrayal. He kept it not only for its beauty, but also to remind him of the dangers of trust.

In the course of his bloody years on that harsh world, Ruiz had fallen in love, been delivered to his enemies by his beloved, and finally learned the cynicism that now served him for a conscience.

He found himself wishing that he could withdraw from the Pharaoh contract, but at the thought, the mission-imperative stirred in his mind, pushing the wish away. He could almost feel the death net in the depths of his mind, deep-rooted, a hair-trigger cancer, waiting to kill him. “Too late,” he said to the moonstone mask. It seemed to look back at him, laughing, its empty eyeholes full of formless certainty.

He turned away, no longer capable of relaxation.

“Time to go,” he said to the Vigia.

An hour later, Dilvermoon was a fading silver glimmer in the rear screens, and Ruiz began to study. During the three-week passage to Pharaoh, Ruiz Aw took the datasoak every eight hours, filling his memory with Pharaoh — language, customs, religion, the million details he would need to slide unnoticed through that world. In recovery he slept a great deal, but when he was awake he occupied himself by studying the charts of Pharaoh’s one habitable plateau, rising high above the boiling desert that covered the remainder of Pharaoh’s surface. In the center of the plateau, long ago, the spore ship had landed its cargo of embryos, a monumental misjudgment, with so many sweet fertile worlds to choose from. But the colony had taken hold and now flourished, within peculiar constraints.

The charts glowed in the holotank, clean lines in primary colors, but Ruiz saw the images of the datasoak, superimposed on the charts. The sterile clay of the arid plateau, streaked with a million dead shades of brown and black. The scattered oases, green-purple, each centered in its lacy spread of catchment basins and collection canals, like monstrously complex spider webs.

In the murky steams below the plateau, monstrous creatures lived. Occasionally one would climb up and ravage the countryside until it expired from the rarefied atmosphere and relative cold. Eventually the Pharaohans had incorporated these monsters into their religion, as demons — and built a wall around the edge of their world to keep them out.

The Pharaohans had slowly and painfully solved the problem of the infrequent rains and limited their population growth by a ruthless program of priestly culling. Gradually their lives had grown sedentary and secure enough to permit a flowering of craft. The Pharaohans excelled at the lapidary arts, made marvelous glasses, and porcelain of great vigor and dignity. Some of these were valuable enough to warrant export. From the venom of indigenous reptiles, the Pharaohans distilled potent hallucinogens, which were in limited demand on the pangalac market — appealing to wealthy consumers who enjoyed the cachet of primitive experiences.

Their technology typified the odd mixture to be found on long-owned Hardworlds — those planets on which humanity had only an uncertain grasp on existence. Their metallurgy was relatively sophisticated. They built steam cars of good quality, but their periodic attempts to build railroads were always thwarted by League agents, to prevent them from establishing a basis for wide-scale industrial development.

But as on all worlds, the most valuable trade on Pharaoh was in people. The conjurors of Pharaoh brought enormous prices on the pangalac worlds. These performers had created a high art with their outrageous sleights — their great plays were passionate theater enhanced by feats of illusion. Legerdemain was the factor that knit together all aspects of Pharaohan life.

Conjuring constituted the only practical means of movement upward through the rigid caste system. A famous conjuror, who for some reason was not harvested by the League, had an excellent chance of ennoblement. And were he to be harvested, his fellow Pharaohans would celebrate his disappearance as a transfiguration and envy him his new status as a demigod in the Land of Reward. The Art League encouraged the development of the art in other ways. Exceptional performances were rewarded by rainstorms — produced by invisible League technology, but ostensibly the accolade of the gods. Those nomarchies rich in conjurors were therefore rich in all things.

At one point Ruiz watched a flatscreen promotional production, distributed by the Art League to potential buyers of Pharaohan conjurors.

The opening shot displayed the League’s logo, a stylized androgynous human silhouette in red on a black ground, wearing silver chains made up of linked five-pointed stars. The League anthem swelled up, a stirring orchestration featuring a large chorus.

“Welcome, Citizens,” said an assured voice, riding over the music. “This presentation is brought to you by the Art League, an autonomous nonaligned corporation, chartered on Dilvermoon and licensed on all pangalac worlds. The Art League — the foremost supplier of sapient merchandise in the galaxy for over three thousand standard years. The Art League — the foremost practitioner of the greatest art, the art of shaping sapience into usefulness.” The anthem crescendoed and concluded on a dramatic ringing note.

The logo faded, to be replaced by a shot of Pharaoh, hanging in space. The point of view zoomed in, dropped violently toward Pharaoh’s surface. “This is Pharaoh,” said the voice. “One of the League’s most interesting and unusual client worlds. Today we take you to witness one of the great religious plays called Expiations.”

Ruiz advanced the recording past the local color segment, until he reached the beginning of the performance. He listened as the voice explained that the plays served both religious and judicial purposes, in that the gods were entertained and criminals were executed in the course of the entertainment. In the major performances, the criminal was called a phoenix and was encouraged to participate willingly in the play by the hope that a sufficiently magnificent performance would lead to a resurrection after the play’s conclusion — a hope encouraged by the League’s technicians, who sometimes resuscitated and released the victim.

He advanced it again. The screen showed an Expiation in progress, the conjurors acting out their parts with the extravagant, larger-than-life gestures characteristic of precinematic theater. They performed with a hot-eyed intensity that Ruiz found disturbing, and he moved the recording forward again, stopping it at a point where the point of view had moved within the stage, revealing the activities of those who labored in the sweaty darkness, managing the apparatus that made the illusions possible. Here was a different sort of intensity — but still painful to watch, Ruiz thought. None of these folk understood that they strove only to make themselves and their fellow Pharaohans attractive to the League’s customers. The Pharaohans had forgotten their pangalac origins, except for a few vague and discredited legends concerning people from the stars. For all they knew, the universe ended at the edge of their plateau, with only the demons below and the gods above to fear.

He switched off the screen.

The most demanding, yet most pleasant moments of the passage to Pharaoh were those Ruiz spent practicing small feats of sleight of hand. These skills would be necessary when he walked Pharaoh’s dusty roads in his chosen disguise as a snake oil peddler, one of a caste of itinerant drug peddlers who customarily performed such minor tricks in the course of hawking their wares. Pangalac technology could replace skill in most instances, but there were still elementary principles of misdirection and showmanship to be absorbed.

Ruiz found an odd sense of accomplishment in mastering his few tricks, and what time he found between recovery and the next bout of datasoak, he spent polishing his skills, until he could perform his repertoire without fumbling.