The Pharoah Contract

Ruiz was silent. Not in his most pessimistic appraisal of Nisa’s future had it occurred to him that he’d saved her only to play the phoenix once again. But now that he considered it, it made perfect sense. She had been brilliant in the play. And she could be so again, for many more performances, until her sensorium was so damaged by the death trauma that she could no longer act her part. Long before that, Nisa would lust for the peace of a real death.

“Many times,” Ruiz answered, giving much away, but at that moment not caring. “Tell me, Dolmaero, when do your rehearsals begin?”

“Soon, I think. Master Flomel mentioned that the stage would be brought within the week. There will be a period of repair and restaging; then we begin. Perhaps the girl will return then.”

Dolmaero watched Ruiz struggle with his thoughts, and Dolmaero’s small bright eyes softened in sympathy. He patted Ruiz’s arm gently, then heaved his bulk up and went away.

* * *

That evening, Ruiz filled only one plate. The house of the casteless seemed very empty. Just before dark, a boy brought a small oil lamp to the door. “From Master Dolmaero,” he said, and handed it to Ruiz. Ruiz was touched by the Guildmaster’s gift, and he burned the lamp far into the night, sitting on Nisa’s cot and watching the tiny flame. But when the last of the oil burned away and the lamp went out, he rose from the cot and went out to walk the wall. His nocturnal explorations were aided by the absence of any other explorers; the Pharaohans did not go outside their walls after sunset. On Pharaoh, many hungry creatures hunted by night. He went about his business under the assumption that no one watched the paddock; if they did, he couldn’t understand why he had not already been taken.

Again, he found the section of wall where the snapfields occasionally failed. The failure was random, occurring once or twice an hour. The duration of the failure averaged between fifteen and forty-five seconds. Twice that night, however, the failure lasted less than ten seconds. If Ruiz were caught at the top of the wall when the field resumed, he would fall off the wall in pieces. It wasn’t an optimum escape route, but it was, so far, the only possibility he’d found. Of course, the other side of the wall might just be another paddock, not an access corridor. Ruiz could think of no good way to tell in advance; the harsh buzz of the fields made listening impossible.

It took him all the next day to braid a rope from the leather fragments he found in the house of the casteless. That night, he tied to the rope a slender stick, weighted at one end with a rock. He went to the defective section of the wall. When the first failure occurred, he heaved the stick over the top of the wall, hoping that no one watched from the other side. He pulled the stick back slowly. By watching the arcing tip of the stick, faintly visible against the starfields as it tilted over the rounded top, he was able to determine that the wall top was smoothly curved, innocent of angles where a grapple might catch. He sighed and pulled the rope down.

On the next darkening of the field, he tried it again, and before the field returned he got a fairly good idea of the shape of the wall top. Just for good measure he tried it one more time, but this time the field returned prematurely, and the rope fell down minus the stick. Ruiz heard it hit the ground on the other side, and he cursed. He could only hope that no one would notice the stick, with its tag of homemade rope, or pay enough attention to it to wonder where it had come from.

His next task was to fashion a hook that fit the contour of the wall top closely enough to hold his weight. This took the better part of a day. Ruiz cobbled it together from bits of wood salvaged from the cots, and bound the hook into rigidity with strips of wet rawhide. He dried the assemblage on the roof, in the hot sun. When he was finished, he had an object that looked as if it had been sawn from the end of a giant shepherd’s staff. Ruiz attached the braided leather rope and his escape apparatus was complete.

The drawback to this particular technique, he thought, was that the hook couldn’t be tested in advance. Once Ruiz managed to hang the hook on the top of the wall, he’d have to go up the rope to retrieve it.

So it was time to decide. Should he go immediately, escaping into the unknown territory of the compound, or should he remain in the paddock awhile longer, mending his strength? Complicating the decision was Ruiz’s completely impractical urge to see Nisa again, though there was nothing he could do for her that wouldn’t jeopardize the job he’d been hired to do, to say nothing of his life. He could not even give her a merciful death without accepting certain exposure. She was a valuable part of the troupe; Corean would take a dangerous interest in any harm that befell Nisa.