The Pharoah Contract

“Because it’s better. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. The Lineans are monsters. The League is a business.” His commander’s face shifted in remembrance, until Ruiz could see only a steel mask, an inhuman shape, devoid of expression. “It’s better, Ruiz.”

…The clean fury that had impelled Ruiz to recruit from among his fellow emancipators a group to oppose both the Lineans and the Art League.

…His futile campaign, unsupported by the slaves, successful only in prolonging the agony on Line. It had ended in another treachery, one that had brought him to this slow sacrifice on the needle tree.

The last trace of the memory, one that seemed only carelessly etched into the artifact that carried it, was of the League agents who had taken Ruiz alive from the tree. There was no tinge of gratitude in the memory — only a stony acceptance.

* * *

With the geometries firmly established, Nacker extended his sensorium along the floor of Ruiz’s mind, spreading out through the concealing ooze of dead memory. Nacker came to surround the roots of the death net where they struck deep into Ruiz’s cerebral bedrock. No direct attack on the net was possible; any such efforts would be detected instantly, triggering the net. But indirectly there was much that could be done. A thin slippery film of passionate energy, drawn from Ruiz’s libidinous reserves — the essence of love-of-life — could be injected under the anchorage system of the death net. If the net was triggered, the cables would slip harmlessly for precious moments before they tore loose. The only drawback to this approach was that it would leave Ruiz, his brain buttered with sexual energy, somewhat vulnerable to romantic impulses. But nothing was ever gained without loss. Nacker found this an amusing — and personally satisfying — solution to Ruiz’s problem.

And besides, Nacker thought, no other solution would work as well.

He had chosen no easy technique. Each anchorage point had to be approached with exquisite caution. The actual insertion of the lubricant required a delicacy that only a half-dozen non-Gencha minddivers in all the pangalac worlds could have managed.

At last he was done.

But before he withdrew, Nacker treated himself to a recent memory, of Ruiz in his hideaway.

Nacker watched comfortably from behind Ruiz’s eyes as Ruiz went out onto his terrace, built at the edge of a great rift. Scattered about at the edges of the terrace were deep planters, in which bloomed flowers from a hundred worlds. Outside, nothing but raw rock; inside, the sweet smell of blossoms.

Ruiz filled a long-spouted watering can from a tap and began to water the beds, slowly and methodically. The fierce blue sun was moderated into a warm caressing light by the same boundary field that retained the terrace’s atmosphere. The only sound came from the bees that buzzed among the flowers, moving to and fro between the beds and the hive that stood in a shaded corner of the terrace.

Nacker sank more deeply into the memory, seeking Ruiz’s thoughts as he went about his task, but Ruiz seemed empty of thought, empty of emotion, existing only in the moment, and Nacker wondered how such a thing was possible.

Each time Ruiz came to him, Nacker found such a memory and marveled at it. So strange, that Ruiz Aw — feared enforcer for the Art League, a man who killed with a directness and detachment that was surely pathological — should spend his uncontracted time on an empty lifeless world tending flowers, all alone.

A very odd man. Nacker withdrew into himself and remembered a conversation he had once had with Ruiz, on one of the enforcer’s first visits to his hold.

“You’re a former slave yourself,” Nacker had said then, full of wry amusement. “How can you work as a slave catcher for the League?”

“There are worse masters. The League treats its property as well as is practical.”

“Do you feel no qualms of conscience?”

Ruiz had looked at him with neutral eyes. “Should I?”

“Well… perhaps. Some would.”

Ruiz made no comment for a long moment, then spoke in a patient voice. “Have you ever heard of Silverdollar, the ice world? It’s somewhat beyond the pangalac frontier, spin-ward. A mining planet.”

“No,” Nacker said.