The Pharoah Contract

Not a muscle in Ruiz’s body was capable of movement. Silent impellers inserted into strategic vessels oxygenated and circulated his blood. No sound or light or any other sensation reached him; the only active neural tissue in his body was in his brain. It was a particularly helpless feeling. Ruiz concentrated on armoring himself down into a hard dense kernel of personality.

Inside his head, Ruiz heard the synthetic voice of Nacker. It growled up from subsonic rumbles, and then squalled into the upper range, as Nacker experimented, seeking perfect resonance. “Testing. One and a-two and a-three and a-four — who does Ruiz Aw adore?”

Ruiz would have ground his teeth, had that been possible.

Nacker chuckled. “So, Ruiz,” he said, “you’re anxious? Very well, already I sense the death net. A particularly powerful one. Are you sure your employers have told you everything you should know about this assignment?”

“Meaning what?” The thought lifted away from Ruiz, flew up into blackness, where Nacker intercepted it.

“The League appears to be extraordinarily concerned that their interest not be revealed and that they get something, some bit of information, however small, when the net collapses and sends its data home. You’re going to die and transmit at the first drop of the shoe…. The death scenarios are remarkably all-encompassing, far more extensive than would be warranted by a simple game of poacher catching. I would guess, my friend, that you are a silver bullet. Aimed at some hidden monster.”

Ruiz was silent. Here was an unpleasant discovery, indeed. “What can you do?”

“As always, Ruiz, quite a lot. I say without modesty that no one else could help you significantly; the League’s done a very thorough job. Can it be that they suspect your loyalty, at last?” Ruiz heard a synthetic chuckle, an insectile scraping at the unprotected surface of his mind. “No, no, of course not, you’re their best, true? It was unkind of me to bring up uncertainty at such a vulnerable moment.” Nacker became businesslike. “So. The death net, like all Gencha work, cannot be completely subverted. I can blunt the urgency of the compulsion — give you, perhaps, time to change the parameters of the situation enough to gain a respite. But you’ll still die, if you can’t wiggle free from the trigger situation in time. Or I can to some extent degrade the death net’s operant synapses so that if the net is triggered you may only become extremely ill, rather than irrevocably dead. In that case, the net will send no data home, and also you will experience substantial personality decay, should you survive. Please choose.” Nacker’s last statement was made in formal tones.

Ruiz considered. The decision Nacker required pivoted on a philosophical point: Was anything worse than death? Some would answer no, without hesitation. But he suspected that not many of these absolutists worked for ruthless corporate entities like the Art League or had Ruiz’s wide experience of life on the League’s client worlds. Ruiz could without effort imagine countless scenarios in which he would prefer death. On the other hand, it was Ruiz’s love of his own life that had brought him down here to Nacker, through the dangers of Beaster Level, and the deadlier dangers that would confront him should the League ever get a whiff of his presence here.

Still… if he ever found himself helpless in the hands of his enemies, the Ruiz Aw that might recover from an aborted death net would no longer be Ruiz Aw, but a stranger. He had known victims of botched minddiving. They navigated the unsteady currents of their constricted lives carefully, slack-faced and dim-eyed, objects of pity and revulsion. He would prefer a definite death to such an uncertain approximation of life.

“Slow the trigger ramp of the set as much as you can, but leave the synapses alone.”

“As you say. I’ll have to cohere some touchstone memories until I get my bearings.” Nacker’s voice took on a strong tinge of disapproval. “You will insist on autodiving, against all professional advice. Paranoia, paranoia, Ruiz. Each time I swim you, the geometries are new. You have so many areas locked down or self-circuited. It’s a wonder even the Gench can get a net to stick.”

“It never seems to have any trouble. And it doesn’t talk as much, either.”

“Go away, now,” Nacker said, and Ruiz poured down into his deepest, safest place.

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