The Pharoah Contract

“You’ll make it your job to get to the bottom of this, Marmo. And we’ll have to stop burning the culls; we’d better keep them until we know who put the thing on her. Meanwhile, keep her with the others. She’s handsome, for a Pharaohan; we’ll find an appropriate use for her.” Corean threw the limpet to the deck, crushed it under her heel.

The limpet expired with a brief mournful buzz.

Ruiz looked away before his interest could be noticed.

The rack began to move. As it slid out of the droneship onto a donut-wheeled transporter, he saw the next rack tipping out for inspection.

* * *

Outside, Corean fixed Marmo with malevolent eyes. “It’s the pretty snake oil man. He has a dangerous face.”

“I’ll kill him immediately,” said Marmo in subdued tones.

“Idiot! What if he’s a League agent? What if he carries the death net?”

“We’ll freeze him down and put him on a long-hauler.”

“No. We need to know more. Watch him. Maybe he’ll show us what he is.”

* * *

The landing ring was heavily hardened, so that Ruiz Aw could see nothing but concrete and steel, lit by glaring blue spotlights. The roof was a furled iris of black metal. Standing about the ship were dozens of small gray humaniform aliens, members of a species not immediately familiar to Ruiz Aw. They were squat and powerfully muscled, with loose warty skin, and a crest of faded magenta quills atop their broad flat heads. They wore ragged uniforms of great former splendor and carried themselves with careful dignity. Ruiz searched his memory. Pung? The name seemed right, but he could recall no details.

They released him from the transport rack after carefully leashing him with a nerve collar. They marked his palm with a temporary stock number and conducted him to an elevator, which dropped deep into the depths of the compound, to a solitary cell carved from the bedrock. Instead of bars, a crystal plate hummed and snapped in the doorway, a constant edgy sound. Repellent waveforms made it difficult to approach the door, and Ruiz knew that touching the crystal would bring excruciating pain. It was a simple secure setup, and Ruiz’s professional approval was aroused, to his personal irritation. The only furnishings were a bed of softstone, a nutrition tap, and a drain in one corner. They gave him no clothing, but the temperature in the cell had been set to the human comfort range.

As the effects of the trank gas wore off, Ruiz finally remembered his actions immediately after the snatch. He was overcome by panic, which he allowed to rage unchecked for a therapeutic interval. How, he asked himself, how could he have been so foolish and impulsive as to revive the phoenix? How?

Eventually, he reasserted control. Nothing connected him to the phoenix. The rest of his pangalac technology, like all League covert gear, had been designed to resist analysis, to reject fingerprints, and to gene-scramble telltale tissue. Presumably it was working, or he would already be identified as the interloper. Even if he were to be identified as a pangalac, his case wasn’t hopeless; his shield persona, that of a minor free-lance slaver, would survive any but the most skillful brainpeel.

If his captors knew who and what he was, then he was already dead. But it served no useful purpose to consider that particular possibility, so he must put it from his mind and act as though he had a fair chance of survival. True, he was without his usual resources, but certainly his case might be worse. After an hour had passed, he grew bored and then curious about the other prisoners.

He stood as close to the doorway as comfort allowed, looking across the bright corridor to the opposite cell. At random intervals the other cell’s closure field fell briefly into phase with his own, and he could see his fellow prisoner, the senior of the conjurors who had performed at Bidderum. The conjuror’s hard black eyes fixed on Ruiz’s with an expression so malevolent that Ruiz stepped back, then away, out of sight.

More hours passed. Ruiz roamed the confines of his cell, using the few amenities, always conscious of the possibility of observation. With that in mind, he acted the terrified primitive — but one capable of restraining his hysteria. Ruiz was not anxious to be labeled a nonteachable. He’d been too impressed with Corean’s casual culling of her slaves.

Ruiz could find no memory of a slaver named Corean — not surprising, in spite of the large amounts of credit that Ruiz had spent on datasoaking. There were, after all, countless slavers among the pangalac worlds. But not many could afford a face like hers, and Ruiz surmised that it was an unregistered work of the great lineamentor who had carved it. That in itself was an indication of the wealth and power of Corean; vast amounts of both would be required to coerce an artist of that stature to work anonymously. It was a somewhat intimidating thing to muse on.