The Pharoah Contract

The factor glared from the screen, looking a little wild-eyed. But after a moment it nodded its elegant head. “So it seems.”

“Here’s how I must proceed, Factor. I’ll dispatch a message drone to Dilvermoon, in case those inimical elements should detonate the crystal before you can find it. Meanwhile, I’ll begin my investigations here on the surface. You for your part must immediately institute a blackout of orbit-to-surface communications. You understand the necessity for this?”

The factor was now visibly verging on hysteria. “But, my quotas—”

Ruiz cut him off. “This isn’t open to discussion. If the channels remain open, who knows what dangerous instructions might reach those enemies I must deal with here below? The Vigia will monitor the spectrum, and release another drone, should anyone aboard the platform violate this order. Signify that you understand.”

For a moment, Ruiz thought Prinfilic would defy him, but then the factor nodded, face suddenly grim.

Ruiz cut the transmission.

* * *

Ruiz slept for a few hours, waiting for dark, and then prepared his disguise with meticulous care. He applied a long-term depilatory to his scalp. He instructed the medunit to apply the temporary tattoos he had chosen during the passage to Pharaoh, then endured the prickly sensations of the inkjets as they passed over his head. Afterward, he looked into the mirror and saw a barbaric stranger. The tattoos swirled over his skull in sinuous fine-lined patterns of clear red and dark magenta, curled down past his brows, emphasizing the sharp jut of cheekbone, the blade of his nose. Narrow eyes glared back at him, glittering with metallic intensity. He tried to smile at himself, but the effort lacked conviction and the smile never spread beyond his mouth. After a moment it metamorphosed into a snarl.

Ruiz shook himself and turned away from the mirror. He dressed in the bizarre finery of a snake oil peddler, many-colored layers of shredded and braided fabric, following the premise that the best disguise is often the most outlandish. The eye, he had found, slips uncritically over the details of an amazing sight. He was confident that no one would identify him as an offworlder. He congratulated himself that his tattoos were artful, and his own coppery skin and black eyes were fortuitously similar to the Pharaohan norm. He donned a half-dozen cheap-looking silver rings — microdevices which would enable him to perform the small illusions that were part of the obligatory social acts on Pharaoh. He applied kohl to his eyes, pasted a beauty star to his cheek, and attached earrings of silver and jet. Among his rags, he hid various weapons and tools, all disguised as Pharaohan religious objects — amulets, fetishes, icons.

When Ruiz was finally ready, he took up the special staff he’d designed and built in the Vigia’s workshop, put into his pouch a little splinter gun — disguised as a conjuror’s wand — and then shrugged into his merchandise pack, which contained a good supply of the poison-derived drugs that would be his stock-in-trade. He trudged through the Vigia to the air lock. Standing in the lock, he gave the boat her final instructions. He breathed in the smells of pangalac civilization one last time, metal and plastic and ozone, machine oil and disinfectant.

He took a disposable rebreather and a set of climbing hooks from a locker. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go up. Hover just under the cloud line.”

Ruiz felt the tug of acceleration, as the Vigia swooped upward. He strapped the rebreather to his face and the climbing hooks to his feet.

Then the Vigia stopped and the lock fell open, the ramp just touching the face of the cliff. The corrosive steams of Hell rolled into the lock, and Ruiz darted out, leaping onto the cliffside, hooks humming. The hooks thrust steel rods into the crumbling rock and supported his weight. He turned to look at the Vigia, but she had already retracted her ramp and dropped down into the concealing murk, to wait for his return.

* * *

He moved up the few meters to the top of the clouds and paused. Cautiously he raised his head above the murk, into the clear Pharaohan night. Two of Pharaoh’s three small moons rode high in the sky, giving enough light that Ruiz could easily see the Worldwall above him, and the nearest demonwatch tower, a hundred meters to his left, cantilevered out from the wall.