One of the first buildings they approached was a dining hall, and Ruiz directed Bolard toward it, prompted by a sudden gnawing in his stomach. Long hours had passed since his last meal of pseudo-Pharaohan cuisine, and his exertions since then had been considerable.
When they emerged in the hall’s air space, the bond layer flowed away from them in sparkling rivulets. Ruiz took a deep breath, more satisfying than the rapid, shallow respiration that the bond layer demanded, and the odor of rich pangalac foods filled his nostrils. They were alone in the hall, except for a dozen robot servitors who waited by the dispensers. “Come, Bolard, I will try Preall’s table,” Ruiz said.
Bolard looked more enthusiastic than he had since he had made the mistake of speaking to Ruiz. “A fine idea, Scion,” he said, licking his lips. Ruiz guessed that Bolard was one of those fat folk who perpetually hungered, despite the availability of appetite conditioning, because such conditioning made gluttony no longer enjoyable. And here was Ruiz, ostensibly an irascible Macchias, the perfect excuse for indulging. Ruiz could almost hear Bolard explaining the situation to himself: But the Scion might have been fatally offended, had I not joined him at the table….
Well, Ruiz was not one to deny his victims their pleasures, as long as he wasn’t inconvenienced. He fell to eating with insistent enthusiasm, and encouraged his prisoner to do the same. Soon Bolard’s good humor was restored. Preall served a fine banquet, with choice food from many pangalac worlds, brought by the robots in unending rivers: rare meats, savory sauces, pastries light as sugared air.
Ruiz tasted a bit of everything, but refrained from gorging. Matters were proceeding suitably, but should an emergency arise, he must not be comatose with food and drink. Besides, an unbidden memory arose, of the phoenix play and the devouring mouth of the god of gods and the banquet that appeared as magically as this one did. That led to the memory of Nisa lying still with the stiletto vine violating her flesh.
Dark thoughts diminished the pleasure of his dinner.
Ruiz grew morose as his appetite waned, and Bolard noticed. “Well, Scion,” Bolard said timidly, “what would you like to see now?” The factor wiped greasy hands. “Perhaps the game rooms? The euphorium, or… would you like to visit Lord Preall’s peach pit? The harlots are imaginative and skillful, they say.”
Ruiz spoke sourly. “At present, none of those appeal.” Time, he thought, to restore the fat factor to a malleable terror. He leaned close to Bolard, spoke with a leer. “Let us return to the subject of killing. Tell me, Bolard, is artistry available, not simple butchery?”
Bolard’s chins trembled. “Oddly enough, Scion, I believe that the night’s entertainment commences soon.”
Ruiz was not surprised. The culture had the flavor of a barbarian conceit, where intensity in all the emotions was encouraged, where any number of abstract concepts such as honor and status and duty were artificially elevated to a higher status than life. “Take me to the place,” Ruiz said, with a barely perceptible touch of weariness.
Bolard was pompous, but he was no fool, and a calculating sidelong glance told Ruiz that Bolard was thinking too much, and that Ruiz had made a serious mistake in revealing any distaste.
But Bolard smiled and said, “This way, then, Scion.”
He smiled with a very near approximation of his original servile smile, but Ruiz resolved to keep a close eye on Bolard.
At that moment a burly scarfaced man in the somber uniform of the Lawbirth proctors stepped up into the hall. He looked at Ruiz as if inviting conversation. Ruiz looked back at the uniformed man with as unsociable a glare as he could summon, and after a moment the man turned away, shrugging.
Reentering the fluid, Ruiz and his guide swam downward, toward the roots of the city.
Marmo watched with one eye, as the spy bead showed the unknown as he and his captive went deeper.
Marmo’s ploy had been a long shot, so he was not unduly frustrated by its failure. Had the unknown rushed up to the false proctor with his tale of being kidnapped, then the proctor, who was one of Corean’s best coercers, could have burned down the unknown without further ado. But the unknown was apparently not an innocent bystander; he knew he was on Sook, where no pangalac law reached.
The unknown was clever and resourceful, but all humans were fools in Marmo’s eyes, which was why he served a woman who in her own way was no more human than Marmo, who had managed to burn away most of his soft, fallible flesh in several centuries of pirating among the stars. Sometimes he wished he were still plying his former trade, which was cleaner in some ways than his present one. But age comes to all beings, and this was a useful and amusing form of retirement.
There were undignified aspects to his present employment, of course. He chafed, for example, under Corean’s instructions not to act against the unknown, who had demonstrated an amazing arrogance. It was, after all, Marmo’s expertise that the man had circumvented, not once, but several times. He had resisted the stunfield; he had attached a limpet to cargo that should have been spaced before the ship had left Pharaoh’s system; he had managed to get aboard in the first place. It all cast an uncomplimentary light on Marmo’s expertise. Corean had said little after her first outburst, but Marmo was sensitive regarding his handling of the ship, or any of the other mechanisms in his care. They were, after all, his brothers and sisters. So he watched carefully with one eye, and with the other he watched the progress of the endless game he played against his own coprocessors.
His interest quickened when he saw the unknown and his guide disappear into the vault of resurrection.
Ruiz and bolard sank through a deep pit faced with black granite, through a dim murky layer of brown-tinted fluid, and then into a vast spherical arena. Bright air-filled galleries lined the inner surface, and they were full of folk, both dwellers of Thera and visitors of many races. Held at the center of the arena by slender pylons, a roughly spherical, multifaceted form of pitted metal rotated sluggishly in the current that constantly flowed, around and around. Each facet held a narrow door, proportioned to pass a full-grown person. There were dozens of facets.
“Scion, you would honor me by sharing my personal box.” Bolard led him to a fluid lock, and from there into a corridor that spiraled through the skin of the arena.
Bolard’s box was rather smaller than the majority of those Ruiz had glimpsed, but it was comfortable enough, with a wide couch that looked out through a crystal band into the arena.
Bolard ushered Ruiz inside with much ceremony, but to Ruiz’s straining ears, there was a false note to Bolard’s subservience. No matter, Ruiz thought, he’d just have to keep a close eye on the factor until a way out presented itself.
“The entertainment begins now,” Bolard said, with a raspy grunt of anticipation.
A circular door at the bottom of the arena irised open, and the combatants floated up into sight. These were two of the handsome, haughty women of the drowned city. They wore iridium mirrors on their left forearms and carried energy projectors in their right hands. Otherwise they were naked, but for spiderweb skin designs in orange biolume. Ruiz watched their faces, but could detect no sign of fear.
They scissored their legs slowly, until they’d risen to the level of the equatorial viewing boxes, and faced each other across ten meters of fluid. At the sounding of a deep thrumming tone, the duel began.
It was ugly. The projectors fired a short-range heat beam. Each woman at first deflected the beams of her opponent with great skill, but before long, beams began to miss the mirrors and strike flesh. The meat cooked from their bones while they still lived and struggled. After a time the combatants concentrated only on protecting their eyes and the muscles that pointed the projectors and squeezed the triggers.