“If I lived where the League could easily reach me, they’d burn me out, as you well know, Ruiz. They think I’m almost as good as the Gencha. We know better, eh? And as to my tardiness, why, I moved as quickly as I could in safety. I’d never deliberately expose you to danger. Or at least danger you couldn’t handle. Anyway, it was most entertaining, watching you at your work.” A sweet laugh rang out.
Nacker’s motives were impossible to fathom, Ruiz thought. Nacker was rumored to be a vastly wealthy being, so it wasn’t just the money Ruiz paid that impelled Nacker to help him. The minddiver seemed to like Ruiz, but what of that? Or perhaps the minddiver hated the Art League and enjoyed tweaking the League’s nose. In any case, it was fortunate that Nacker was willing to perform his indispensable services for Ruiz. Six times before, Ruiz had visited the minddiver, and six times the work had been satisfactory. Nacker was reputed to be trustworthy; Ruiz’s extensive investigations had uncovered no instance in which Nacker had betrayed a client to the League.
“And so,” Nacker continued, “you carry the death net? You wish the standard arrangement? Good. Kaum will conduct you to the infirmary, and after, we’ll begin.” Nacker’s throne floated silently out of the lock.
Chapter 2
Nacker’s infirmary was complete and comfortable. The patient had a wide choice of diversions: sensiedreams, holodrama, a small euphorium, surrogames of all varieties. Ruiz Aw was in no mood to be diverted, however, so he sat and glared at the inoffensive Kaum as the Dirm bondguard clamped a therapeutic coupling around the damaged knee. The coupling’s diagnostic slate immediately lit with red-tagged assessments.
Kaum’s moonstone eyes grew large, and the purple membranes of his ears stiffened with surprise, as he tapped at the slate. “Whooo, Ruiz, you was running on fumes, there.” The Dirm eased the coupling into a more comfortable position with exaggerated care.
“Uh-huh,” answered Ruiz in a poisonous monotone. Ruiz was still irritated with Nacker, and by extension all that belonged to Nacker. There was no reason but Nacker’s whim for the additional injuries Ruiz had suffered in Nacker’s dooryard.
Ruiz needed Nacker, unfortunately. Without Nacker, he would never have taken the job on Pharaoh. He sighed.
Kaum daubed Ruiz’s wounds with replicant gel, and covered them with stim pads. “That should do it, Ruiz.” The Dirm bondguard’s normally placid eyes showed hurt when he straightened up. “Give it two hours, or three. You’ll be feeling better.”
Ruiz felt a twinge of guilt; Kaum was a good-natured being. His reptiloid race — if not terribly quick-witted — was loyal and strong and uninclined to gratuitous violence, which was why they were always in demand as low-level muscle. Ruiz managed a wry smile. “Thanks, Kaum. I feel a little better already.” He patted the Dirm’s massive arm.
Kaum seemed happier for Ruiz’s feeble pleasantry, and he smiled in the manner of his kind, flaring the nostrils at the top of his skull. “Don’t mention it, Ruiz. Always happy to do for a cutie like you.” Kaum tweaked Ruiz’s cheek gently with fingers like scaly sausages and lumbered away.
Ruiz repressed a shudder. “Hey, Kaum,” he called. “When’s Nacker going to be ready?” He couldn’t afford an extended stay in Nacker’s hold; the League would soon notice his absence.
Kaum paused at the door. “As soon as you’re out of pain. He’s considerate, in his way.”
Ruiz lay back against the couch. “I guess so.”
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.”