The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 21

Ruiz kept a tight grip on Bolard’s plump arm as they left the box and followed a ring corridor built into the arena’s shell. As they walked, other departing guests joined them, until the corridor was crowded with weary revelers. They gave Ruiz no more than an occasional curious glance. Ruiz contained his disgust.

Ruiz saw that the merchant’s doubts were flourishing. Even a less astute observer might have developed reservations by this time. In any case, the merchant was still afraid of him, and that was the important thing, more important than shoring up the Macchias identity. The fear showed in Bolard’s rolling eye, in the sweat that beaded on his neck, in the way he hunched his shoulders, as if fearing the impact of a knife.

Ruiz decided to accelerate Bolard’s doubts and fears, and he adopted a different persona, that of a dangerous maniac. Now Ruiz began to roll his own eyes, and smiled wickedly — and, with the sort of antic enthusiasm favored by madmen, said things like “Bolard, I like you!” or “Aren’t we having a fine time?” And then he would clout Bolard on the back or give him a bone-cracking hug.

Bolard’s answering smile grew sicklier each time.

A hundred meters ahead, the ring corridor came to an end at a ramp, where the guests were stepping onto waiting freefloat platforms. These sank from sight, to be replaced by empties. At the ramp two large men waited. They wore matching tunics and trousers of a subtly military cut. Ruiz identified them immediately as security, and he tightened his grip on Bolard, who squeaked.

Ruiz’s leisurely pace, however, did not alter as they approached the guards. “Tell me of your ship,” he said to Bolard, giving Bolard’s arm another squeeze.

“It’s a Terratonic Personal, Scion. Not fancy, but it suits me. Another time perhaps, I can show you about, if you like, though there’s not that much to see.”

Ruiz cursed under his breath. The fat merchant’s boat was only an insystem runabout, not much good to Ruiz. It had doubtless been dropped from a stellar ferry. Even if Ruiz got the boat into the atmosphere, escape would be uncertain. He’d still have to find a friendly launch ring and convince Sook’s alien owners to permit him to wait aboard one of their platforms until a League vessel called. He wrenched his thoughts away from the problem and gave his attention to the immediate problem: the guards.

The guards were too well trained to oppress the guests with impolitely direct glances, but their eyes missed very little. Their body language betrayed a rising tension as he and Bolard approached the bubble ramp.

“Friend Bolard,” Ruiz spoke into the merchant’s ear. “Do you have anything to tell me? Think carefully!”

“Whatever do you mean, Scion?” Bolard’s voice cracked in alarm.

“I mean this: You would certainly want to help us avoid any trouble, would you not? After all, we’d surely face it together, eh? Two such comrades as we?”

The guards were definitely alerted by some anomaly. They loosened the nerve lashes that they wore holstered at their belts, making the movement seem a casual meaningless gesture. They drifted apart, so that no attack could reach both of them in the same instant. They no longer glanced at Ruiz, even indirectly — a failure in subtlety, Ruiz thought.

And yet they did not seem fearful or overly anxious, as if the situation they saw developing was one they dealt with every day. The readiness seemed more a routine response pattern than the result of any genuine alarm.

“What is it, Bolard? What do they know?” Ruiz asked. Bolard was silent, but his face gleamed with sweat. Ruiz transferred his grip on Bolard’s arm to the other hand and draped a friendly arm across the merchant’s pudgy shoulders.

Ruiz smiled the most terrible smile in his repertoire. “I’m about to hurt you, Bolard. Don’t stumble, or cry out, or I’ll kill you now.” Ruiz dug two fingers into the factor’s ear. He twisted the ear, exerting a fair amount of his strength. Bolard did stumble, but he stifled a gasp. Ruiz stole a glance at the guards, who were only a dozen meters away. They took no apparent notice. Ruiz released the pressure on Bolard’s ear.

The merchant drew a shuddering breath. “They think you’re a dweller from the city. You don’t carry a guest implant, do you? Please, don’t hurt me again. There’s no way you’ll get past them. Release me and I’ll use my influence, I’ll help…. Please.”

So they thought Bolard was trying to smuggle out a prettyboy. That misconception gave Ruiz an acceptable edge; the guards would be expecting trouble from Bolard, not Ruiz. As they drew abreast of the security men, Ruiz stroked Bolard’s round head affectionately.

One guard stepped forward, a flat-faced man with oddly colorless eyes. “Sir,” said the guard, reaching out a detaining hand to Bolard, “did you know that the Dwellers Below are not permitted to leave the city by this route?”

Bolard opened his mouth to protest his innocence, as Ruiz acted.

He shoved Bolard into the guard with enough force to send them both crashing down into a flailing heap and leaped toward the other guard. The heel of Ruiz’s hand smashed into the guard’s sternum before the guard had the nerve lash halfway clear of its holster. The guard jolted back, thumped into the wall, and fell bonelessly to the floor, unconscious or dead.

The nerve lash rolled free, and for an instant, Ruiz was terrified that it would get away from him. But his lunging fingers closed on the lash just in time to prevent it from skittering on down the hall.

Ruiz bounded to his feet as the first guard threw Bolard to the side. Ruiz whirled his lash to extrude the clinger-stingers to maximum length, shoved the vernier up with enough force to jam it at lethal output, and pegged it straight into the horrified face of the guard. The stingers struck and wrapped tight; the lash made an ugly thrumming buzz. The guard managed one stifled shriek as the lash burned out his brain — and then he fell back dead.

The other guests huddled against the walls, looking everywhere but at the bodies on the floor. The ones who were still close to the arena fled back inside, and Ruiz surmised that he had very little time before the management learned of the events in the corridor. He scooped up the other nerve lash and thrust it through his belt, after making sure that the safety was securely locked down.

Bolard lay on the floor and stared up at Ruiz. The whites of the merchant’s eyes showed all around, and the look on Bolard’s face had gone beyond mere terror. “Who… what are you?”

“Just another pretty face,” Ruiz said cheerfully. He hauled Bolard roughly to his feet. “Shall we go, sweetie?”

Ruiz dragged Bolard along at the best speed the fat merchant could manage, to the bubble ramp. They stepped onto a waiting freefloater, and sank slowly toward the hangar floor.

Corean was back, tousled attractively with sleep. She tore her eyes from the screen reluctantly. “He’s good, amazingly good. It’s a mortal shame we’ve got to terminate him, don’t you agree? At least in the abstract?”

“You know my opinion. It hasn’t changed,” Marmo replied. The cyborg was at a tactical dataslate, metal fingers tapping, directing Corean’s Moc into position.

Corean favored him with a sour look. “Yes, of course, Marmo. Necessity rules us. Still, don’t you feel even a tinge of regret that we must destroy such a beautiful animal?”

“No.”

Corean sighed. “Your circuits hold no poetry, Marmo. But in practical terms, then. What if he is not a League agent? What if we could secure his loyalty? What then?”

Marmo looked up, and Corean could read no emotion in that metal beetle-back of a face. “Impractical,” Marmo said. “Risky.”

The platform dropped through the upper reaches of Lord Preall’s guest hangar, too slowly to suit Ruiz. He possessed no long-range weapon; if the Lord’s men attacked him now, it was all over. But Ruiz saw nothing to alarm him, beyond the line of curious faces that hung over the ramp, watching their descent. No one followed.

But a moment before the platform landed on the durcrete floor of the hangar, a distant alarm bell began to ring. A moment later it was joined by a cacophony of other bells, sirens, whistles, horns — and the approaching sound of feet running in military sync. Ruiz jerked Bolard from the bubble to a temporary shelter under the burnished wing of a Uriel Jumpshuttle parked close to the lower bubble ramp.

The hangar was divided into heavily hardened revetments, half-arches made from gigantic monomol pipe. At first Ruiz couldn’t imagine why the owner had provided his guests with parking spaces that would deflect the power of a small antimat grenade. Then he realized that the revetments were designed to contain destruction within their walls. Apparently Preall had enemies clever enough to use a guest’s spaceboat to smuggle a bomb into Preall’s playpen.

The craft of departing guests still moved swiftly along the taxiways, their immediate destination a great tunnel cut through the far wall of the hangar. Ruiz presumed that the tunnel led eventually to the surface outside the pens.

Bolard was staring at nothing, and Ruiz realized that he was losing the merchant to shock. He gave Bolard a shake, hard enough to make Bolard’s teeth click. “Where is it?”

Ruiz hissed. He shook the merchant again. “Where is your boat?”

Bolard was slow in answering. Ruiz considered breaking a finger, or otherwise stimulating the merchant, but then Bolard said, “The next row over, almost to the end.”

Too far, it might be too far, but Ruiz had little choice. There were few successful spaceboat thieves; so valuable an object as a spaceboat would be protected by extremely sophisticated devices. If Ruiz attempted to board one of the closer crafts, he would not only fail to get it moving, but in all likelihood he would be captured and held for disposal by the boat’s security systems. It came down to time; Ruiz might attempt to take a boat without the owner’s cooperation, had he enough time, but time was presently in short supply.

“Is anyone aboard?” Ruiz demanded.

“No, no one is aboard.” The question seemed to heighten Bolard’s anxiety.

“Come,” Ruiz said, and forced the merchant to his feet.

They ran along the edge of the revetments. At any moment, Ruiz expected to feel the hot touch of a particle beam, cooking through his body. Surely Preall must have automated security in the hangar, though Ruiz had seen nothing that looked like a weapons emplacement on the ride down.

Bolard began to gasp, shrill whistling sounds of distress, clutching at his chest. “Stop,” Bolard sobbed, “please, my heart bursts, please, stop.”

Ruiz dragged him along. “Die later. Run now.”

The sound of pursuing feet was louder now, and Ruiz glanced back over his shoulder. He saw a squad of security men spreading out behind him; all seemed to be armed only with nerve lashes. Ruiz mentally applauded the caution shown by the owner of this little entertainment complex. Presumably Preall was so concerned with the possibility of assassination that he permitted no heavy weapons within his preserves.

Miraculously, they appeared to have a chance of reaching Bolard’s Terratonic. And in the same moment Ruiz made that optimistic assessment, he spotted a boat of the right make three revetments up, a somewhat battered specimen recently recolored with a coat of garish red patina. “That the one?” Ruiz asked.

Bolard’s face was purple; the merchant was beyond speech, but he nodded weakly.

“Rest soon, rest soon. Hang on, friend Bolard, and all will be well,” Ruiz said, getting a fresh grip on the merchant and hauling with renewed vigor. They reached the revetment that sheltered Bolard’s craft, just as the pursuing security men got close enough to start throwing immobilizer-gas grenades. The first of these fell short, but the bursts of fast-dissipating green vapor were dire signals of what was shortly to come. Ruiz himself might resist the gas for seconds, but Bolard would go stiff the instant the vapors touched him. And Ruiz still needed the merchant.

There was a personnel gate set into the kinetic mesh that curtained both ends of the revetment. Ruiz snatched at Bolard’s wrist, jammed the merchant’s palm against the entry idplate there.

The gate cycled aside with infuriating languor, but as soon as it was open enough, Ruiz dragged Bolard in. The merchant got stuck briefly, then popped through as the gate widened and Ruiz yanked. Ruiz hit the closure and the gate reversed, almost in the face of the approaching security men. The kinetic mesh was fine enough to prevent the guards from throwing more immobilizer grenades, and Ruiz had a few moments respite.

“Come on, come on!” Ruiz hustled the merchant toward the Terratonic, taking most of Bolard’s weight. Bolard’s feet paddled weakly at the ground as they neared the boat.

The Terratonic had a standard idplex sensor beside the lock, and Ruiz hoped it was as straightforward as it appeared. He propped Bolard up before the idplex, and said, “Now, friend Bolard, get us in. Quickly! I’m not patient.” To emphasize his point, Ruiz twisted cruelly at Bolard’s wrist. The merchant’s head snapped up, and he pawed at the idplex, punching in the access code.

“Good, good. Continue,” Ruiz said, giving Bolard an encouraging pat.

Bolard turned eyes to him that were devoid of hope. “You’ll kill me anyway,” he said.

“No… how could you think so? I don’t want to hurt you, but if I must, I must. All will be well; just get us inside.” Ruiz threw an apprehensive glance at the kinetic mesh. The security men were attempting to attach a master-image to the idplate. In a moment they would succeed.

Bolard smiled ingratiatingly, a ghastly expression. “Yes,” he said, “I trust you….”

He staggered, and then stepped up and put his eye against a sensor. Apparently Bolard favored the retinal holotattoo as a means of identification, not a bad choice, technically speaking. Disconnection from the optical nerve would destroy the image, so a knowledgeable thief could not simply gouge out the merchant’s eye and present the gobbet to the idplex.

The moment that it took the idplex to recognize and respond to Bolard seemed to stretch into an eternity. Ruiz’s body sang with adrenaline. The security men finally got the masterimage locked onto the idplate of the revetment as the airlock plug withdrew, and Ruiz boosted Bolard inside. Ruiz scrambled after. He hit the closure bar just as the security men burst into the revetment.

As the lock snapped shut, Ruiz waved cheerfully at the guards, who showed clenched faces and brandished useless nerve lashes.

“All right,” Ruiz said to Bolard, who watched him with bulging eyes, “to the cockpit.”

Corean thumped Marmo’s console in her excitement. “There,” she said, “didn’t I tell you? He evaded Preall’s best men; he hardly worked up a sweat. Don’t you find it interesting, Marmo? To watch a man like that?”

“I find it unsettling, more than anything else. Besides, he looked pretty sweaty to me, and he relied overmuch on luck, in my opinion. Now it’s up to us. And if Preall’s men had taken him, we’d be worse off than we were before we started this, ah, impetuous maneuver.” Marmo floated quietly, projecting noninvolvement.

“You’re a dry stick, Marmo,” Corean said, sitting back, as the spaceboat pulled out of the revetment, scattering the guards. “Is the Moc ready for him?”

“It waits in the control room at the end of the egress tunnel, as you ordered.” Marmo shifted on his floater. “Tell me, what will you do if he carries the death net, and manages to expire before the Moc freezes him?”

Corean grew less animated. “The Sinverguenza is always ready. I’ll take what I can, and leave. They won’t catch me easily. And I would give up this face, if I had to. What would you do, Marmo? Would you come with me?”

“I? Who knows?”

Ruiz directed the boat along the taxiway. He could see no sign of barriers at this end of the exit tunnel; perhaps they were at the other end, if any existed. That would make strategic sense, and was a hurdle he’d have to leap when he reached it.

In moments he entered the brightly lit entrance. The guards had fallen behind, and now, as Ruiz glanced at the rear vision screen, he saw them stopped at the tunnel apron, a forlorn group. Ahead the lights abruptly ended, and the tunnel became pitch black. Ruiz lit the running lights, locked the boat’s pilot to the guidance strip, pushed the speed up to maximum taxi, and turned to Bolard, who slumped in the cockpit’s jump seat. The merchant’s color was better and his breathing was quieter, but Bolard’s eyes still had a glaze of hopelessness.

“So,” Ruiz began, in conversational tones, “how do you feel?”

For a moment Bolard didn’t answer, and Ruiz thought the merchant might abandon dignity completely and weep. But then Bolard seemed to collect himself. “I’m better, though still near death, I think.”

“Nonsense. I don’t want your life. Help me to escape, and you’ll be rewarded handsomely for your inconvenience.”

Bolard grew less apathetic. “Reward? And to what authority would I apply for this reward?”

“For your own safety, I won’t say yet. Rest assured of this: Cooperation will bring generosity; obstruction will bring pain.”

Bolard probed at his tender ear. “Yes, I see.”

Ruiz smiled disarmingly. “Let’s put that unpleasantness from our minds now. Together we’ll succeed; together we’ll enjoy the fruits of success. Tell me, what weapons do you carry on board?”

“Weapons?” Bolard seemed genuinely puzzled. “A factor has no use for weapons. We trade only on Peacebond worlds.”

“Oh? Then what are you doing on Sook?”

“A much-needed vacation. And I remind you that a pangalac being on legitimate business here need have little fear of violence, if he follows proper procedure.”

“True,” Ruiz agreed. And offhand, he could think of no business that was considered illegitimate by the Shards, the aliens who enforced the laws of Sook from their orbital platforms.

Bolard appeared to be projecting injured innocence with suspicious energy. Ruiz eyed him sharply, and switched tacks. “How long before we reach the end of the tunnel?”

“Perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes, at our present speed — which seems excessive to me, by the way.”

“The boat’s pilot keeps us moving at the same speed as the traffic ahead of us,” Ruiz pointed out. “The guilty seem to be fleeing. What can you tell me about the security systems at the far end?”

“Very little. The tunnel surfaces at a launch ring, out in the jungle. There are maintenance buildings there, but no other facilities that I noticed.”

“You observed no barriers, no blast doors?”

Bolard shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The boat was on auto from the time I left the Shard platform. I’m no pilot. Perhaps there are such things there; I don’t know.”

Ruiz considered. The launch ring would be unavailable to him, of course, but with any luck he could make a run overland until he found a ring that was willing to heave him out of Sook’s gravity well. He rose from the command chair. “Come, Bolard, let’s take a look around your little boat. I understand that some Terratonics have been modified to carry small cargos. That right?”

Bolard went pale again. Ruiz had to lift him to his feet and march him back to the passenger lounge of the Terratonic.

The boat had indeed been modified for cargo, and when Ruiz saw the cargo secured in the converted hold, he lost what little sympathy he had retained for the fat merchant. Crammed into the former lounge was a stasis rack, filled with six frozen members of the Cleve culture, and Ruiz was certain that they were three pairs of matched hereditary enemies. Ruiz now saw the reason why Preall kept his culture here on Sook; not because it was stolen, though it might be, or because Preall’s guests craved the privacy of a Sook address, but because Preall was violating copyright laws by selling off bootleg clones of the culture.

“Naughty,” Ruiz said, shaking a monitory finger at Bolard. Then he took the merchant by the collar and completed his search of the boat. Unfortunately, Ruiz discovered that the merchant had been telling the truth about weaponry. There was nothing useful on board.

Back in the cockpit, Ruiz settled Bolard in the jump seat again, then secured the merchant carefully to the seat with a roll of adhesive restraint webbing from a supply locker in the hold. Bolard’s eyes showed relief at this indication that Ruiz planned no immediate mayhem. He would have spoken, but Ruiz stretched a piece of webbing across his mouth and patted him reassuringly on the head.

“Well, now we’ll just have to wait and see what develops,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz sat back, clearing his mind. The boat rolled down the tunnel on its pneumatic casters, and the minutes passed.

Ruiz saw a tiny glitter of light far ahead. They approached the end of the tunnel rapidly, and the light swelled into a half-disk. A boat, the last one ahead of Ruiz’s, climbed over the edge and disappeared into the glare. Ruiz thought to himself, I might just make it out. How strange. Then the half-circle became a crescent, narrower and narrower, as a blast door levered shut. Ruiz pounded the control panel with his fist, hard enough to make the dust rise from the crevices. “Shit,” he said.

The opening shrank to a thin arc of light and then closed completely. Ruiz knocked the controls back into manual and slowed the boat. He boosted the running lights as high as they would go, and rolled to a stop before the massive blast door.

He saw no activity. To one side, a maintenance corridor opened in the meltstone tunnel lining. An illuminated sign read: emergency personnel egress. To Ruiz’s eye, it might as well have read; Ruiz Aw trap. He sighed. What other choice did he have? No matter what reception Preall had managed to arrange for him, Ruiz would have to leave the pleasantly appointed cockpit of the Terratonic. He turned to Bolard. “Well, friend Bolard, our paths part at last.”

Bolard’s eyes bulged and he struggled against the webbing. “No, no,” Ruiz said soothingly, “don’t worry.” He grasped Bolard’s fat neck with both hands, his fingers probing for the carotids. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you. You’ll sleep for a while. I’ll leave the air lock open for Preall’s men; they’ll eventually get here.” Ruiz bore down. Bolard relaxed and slipped into unconsciousness, a look of sheepish gratitude on his broad face. When the merchant was thoroughly under, Ruiz broke his neck with a quick twist.

“I don’t know why I didn’t just let you be afraid,” he told the dead man, thinking of the ones who slept in the hold.