Ruiz stood mute, sure that any response he could make would turn out to be the wrong one. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that on Nisa’s face concern had replaced some of the hate, and his heart lifted slightly.
Corean stood rigid for a moment; then she lashed her hand across Ruiz’s face. Ruiz had an instantaneous vision of Corean cutting the coercer’s throat with her finger knife, and he wondered what his eyes would see after his face fell off. But it was just a stinging blow.
Corean flicked her hand, as if shaking off some unpleasant substance. “No. I’ll get some use out of you yet.”
She turned to Marmo, who looked up and said, “We’ll be able to ship the magician in a day.”
“Good, it’s not a total disaster, then. The rehearsals we’ll put back until they return. I’d feel better about the trip, though, if the Moc weren’t locked in its molting cell.” She seemed to be speaking to herself, but Ruiz pricked up his ears at the implication of a journey.
She turned to the giantess. “Banessa, you’ll be in charge of security. See that nothing like this happens again. These will go: the girl, the three conjurors, the Guildmaster. And this one.” Corean gestured at Ruiz. “That is, he’ll go if he survives the peel. Take him back under and prepare him.”
Marmo made an approving sound. “A wise decision,” he said. “I’ll see that he’s properly wired.”
Banessa fastened a collar to Ruiz. As the giantess led him away, Corean said, “Leave the girl here, with Ayam to keep an eye on her. Ayam, see that nothing further happens to the magician.”
Corean watched the readouts as Marmo guided the probes into the unknown’s skull, using an injector prosthesis. The cyborg was extremely deft at this work, and Corean had little fear that her attractive enigma would be damaged during the procedure. She wished, however, that she had spent more credit on peel technology. Her tech wasn’t state-of-the-art anymore — but what was, in a galaxy so full of diversity that no one could possibly keep abreast of every new development?
The unknown’s tattoos had almost completely faded away, leaving only traces. The body seemed recovered from the icing; the burnished copper skin had regained its glow, and the nails on the strong hands were pink and shiny.
Marmo finished. “He’s yours,” the cyborg said, and floated away.
Corean set the analog helmet on her head, taking care not to muss her hair. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and squeezed the deadman switch.
She broke through the meniscus of his mind in a thrash of bubbles. She stabilized just under the silvery surface, observing the life that teemed there. Thoughts arrowed back and forth like shoals of agile fish. Below, in the blue depths, larger artifacts undulated, rich, dark, intriguing.
Corean floated for a long time, taking in the flavor of her unknown’s mind, a savory, complex soup. The pleasure she took in this reassured her that she had made the correct decision in preserving him. “Waste not, want not,” she whispered to herself, delighted.
She got down to business.
“Who are you?” The message went rippling out like a waveform in a pond, though this was an ocean-deep pond.
The answer came back. “Ruiz Aw.”
“Ruiz, who owns you?”
“I’m a free agent, chartered out of Lanxsh.”
“What is your business?”
“I deal in select humaniform stock.”
Corean felt a tingle of satisfaction. A slaver! Ruiz’s business was the one most likely to be helpful to her, further vindication of her good sense in preserving the man.
But she was cautious, so she probed deeper, below the verbal level of Ruiz’s mind. And in corroboration she found a well-defined inversion layer of memory: the harsh images of a thousand slave pens, the unmistakable stinks of confined humanity, the sound of nerve lashes buzzing on flesh, the cries of auctioneers in the markets of a thousand worlds. The deeper she probed, the more vivid these memories became, but the experiential pressure increased even more rapidly, and soon Corean gratefully rose to a less painful level. She could not doubt the reality of those memories. And nowhere in the memories she disturbed was any trace of the Art League, no indication that Ruiz possessed the subservient, authority-oriented personality that was usually attracted to League work.
“And what were you doing on Pharaoh?”
This was an important question, and Corean watched alertly as Ruiz gathered his thoughts to answer. “I was there to steal magicians. I didn’t expect to be taken myself.” The response contained dense undertones of fear, embarrassment, caution, and an intense desire to avoid punishment.
Corean laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, projecting reassurance. “It’s all for the best.” She felt Ruiz’s mind relax slightly. She took up a different line of inquiry. “Why did you save the phoenix?”
Ruiz’s mind roiled with unmistakably genuine confusion. “I don’t know. But… she performed so well in the play. And she is good to look at. It must have seemed a waste, though I don’t remember much of the time after the boat caught me.”
This was not so satisfying a response. “And Corean,” she asked acidly, “is she good to look at?”
“Yes,” came the answer instantly. A red tincture of lust stained Ruiz’s depths, washing away her irritation at his previous answer.
Satisfied, Corean released the deadman switch and returned to her own body. She sat for a moment, admiring Ruiz Aw, thinking about what they would do together when he returned from the Enclave. She told herself that the pleasure would be as great as it might be now, that any other difference she might feel existed only in her own perceptions. But, she wondered, was a toothless tiger still beautiful?
Ruiz woke to the sound of quarreling Pharaohans. He was on the familiar dirty cot in the house of the casteless. That he was awake was proof that his shell persona had survived Corean’s peel. He seemed to be spending an unreasonable amount of time unconscious, though, an unhappy thought that touched off a reverie of self-pity, in which Ruiz gave himself over to feeling herded about by an unkind fate. This assignment had been characterized from the beginning by a distressing lack of control on his part. In retrospect, he had planned his escape attempt through the marinarium with a ludicrous degree of optimism, and the execution of the plan… the kindest observer would probably have described his efforts as having a certain hysterical exuberance.
The only sweet spots in the whole fiasco were the times he had spent with Nisa, who was a living symbol of Ruiz’s current ineptitude.
He sat up, his stiff muscles protesting.
No, Nisa was more than a symbol. She might hate him now, but she was intelligent; perhaps she would listen to his explanations. He went out into the square.
Most of the troupe seemed to be there, except for Flomel and Nisa. The elders formed a gesticulating circle, with Dolmaero at the center. The two lesser conjurors listened at the edge of the group of arguing elders. The others stood around in sullen groups, whispering.
“Quiet!” Dolmaero’s face was red; Ruiz had never seen him look so exasperated. “It makes no difference what you would or would not do. Do you not yet grasp the situation? We are owned!”
A fish-faced elder spluttered, “Owned? We’re not slaves; we belong to an honorable guild. How can we be owned?”
Dolmaero looked as if he regretted his outburst of candor. “Well, perhaps owned is not the correct term, Edgerd. But we are at least prisoners, can you argue that?”
“No, but whose fault is that? You’re our Guildmaster; why have you done nothing to protest our status? What use, to have a Guildmaster who can do nothing for his guildsmen?” Edgerd clenched his scrawny fists. A mutter of agreement ran around the plaza.