She first assumed that Ruiz Aw would be sufficiently clever to offer his wares under false names and provenances, to prevent her from tracing the offerings before he had sold them and gone his way. So she set up the search parameters to select for lowtech Hardworld inhabitants with performance art skills. She was sure that Ruiz would be unable to resist the temptation to get a good price for his prizes, and if he sold them as unskilled primitives, he’d get next to nothing for the men — though the woman would bring a decent price from the downlevel harlotries.
The open market in SeaStack was vast, however, and she paged through a hundred images and stat sheets without success — every slaver in SeaStack seemed to be overstocked on primitive performers: raindancers from Pueblo, flame-singers from Hell II, beastbreakers from Silverdollar, passionplayers from GoldenEye.
Her eyelids were drooping, and she’d seen only a fraction of the catalog. Just before she gave up, she decided to see if for once Ruiz Aw had been stupid. This time she searched with a single new screening parameter: merchandise originating on Pharaoh. Instantly, the hard arrogant face of Flomel appeared in the holotank, gazing disdainfully at nothing.
She clapped her hands in delight, and read the stat sheet. When she reached the ownership line, she frowned. An entity called Deepheart Corporation now owned Flomel — Ruiz Aw had been unnaturally quick again. Still, she would enter a preemptive bid on Flomel, and tomorrow she would wring him dry of any useful information. She tapped the transfer codes into her dataslate, and was rewarded by seeing the ownership line ripple and display her name.
Thus encouraged, she continued her search, and was surprised to find no mention of the others. Was Marmo right, after all? Had Ruiz again done the utterly unpredictable, and set his companions free? Or even more inexplicably, was Ruiz continuing to protect them?
No. She shook her head in vigorous denial. He couldn’t possibly be that foolish, and so she would soon regain her property.
And then she would find Ruiz Aw.
Chapter 11
Ruiz was very close to the center of Publius’s labyrinth now. He had taken a hundred turns, walked for kilometers. He had seen no other monsters, and now he no longer expected to encounter any; the monster-maker used his failures to patrol the outer passages of the maze, thus discouraging uninvited visitors. But he prohibited these creatures from returning to the laboratories where they’d been born, so as not to repulse the paying customers who came to see his marvels.
The lighting had improved; the moss was supplemented now by an occasional glowplate, and the floors were cleaner and drier. Ruiz began to worry about his reception. Would Publius even agree to see him — or would he simply have Ruiz ejected or killed? He became so involved in this unhappy speculation that he was a little slow to notice the oncoming shuffle of many feet, and he almost collided with a party of merchants, who were evidently just leaving the inner sanctum with their purchases.
He slipped into a dark side passage, just an instant before the point guard came around a curve. He stepped to the wall and became still.
They did not see him, and he was unimpressed with the party’s vigilance — he could have effortlessly killed the half-dozen guards and taken their merchandise, which was carried in two large cloth-shrouded cages, by eight sweating Utter bearers. The three merchants were Grasicians in elaborate pink bell-suits, wearing fashionable jeweled masks and carrying pomanders against the stench of the corridors.
Ruiz wondered what horrors they had bought from Publius.
When they were gone, he went on, and shortly reached the high-ceilinged rotunda at the center of the labyrinth.
The lighting here was mercilessly bright, and a trio of Dirm bondguards waited at Publius’s security lock, a monocrete and armor structure over the elevator that would carry Ruiz down into Publius’s domain.
They instantly aimed heavy grasers at Ruiz’s chest. He stopped, raised his arms, displayed his empty hands, then clasped his hands atop his head. “I’m here to see Publius,” he called, and waited.
“Name?” demanded one Dirm.
“Ruiz Aw.”
“Purpose of visit?”
“Business.”
At the mention of business, the Dirms relaxed fractionally. The one who had spoken to Ruiz whispered into a lapel communicator.
After a moment, it raised its weapon and gestured for Ruiz to approach, but the others’ aim never wavered.
The first Dirm slung its graser when Ruiz reached him, and expertly patted him down, relieving Ruiz efficiently of most of his arsenal of personal weapons. Then it used an odor analyzer/detector to deprive him of the rest.
When it was satisfied that he was as innocuous as possible, it stepped back and said, “You may reclaim your possessions on your return.”
Ruiz fervently hoped he would return — and that he would return wearing the same shape that he now wore. But all he said was “Thank you.”
It nodded and pressed a switch on its controller armlet. The armored blast door slid aside, then the decorative grill of the elevator. Ruiz stepped inside, and watched the grill slide shut. The gleaming palladium filigree suddenly resolved into a montage of howling faces, almost human faces, stretched into bizarre shapes by terror.
Ruiz shivered, and wondered if he had been wise to seek out Publius.
But it was too late, so he concentrated on refining his story as he dropped swiftly down into the roots of the stack. He seemed to fall forever, and he began to worry that Publius planned to dump him into the unexplored levels below his laboratories.
The elevator decelerated violently enough to make Ruiz’s knees buckle a little — probably a little joke. Publius had an eccentric and relentless sense of humor.
The doors slid aside, to reveal Publius standing in the foyer with arms spread in welcome. Or he thought it must be Publius, though the body Publius wore was unfamiliar — a tall lean body with a supercilious aristocratic face. Surely it was Publius; who else had that uniquely demented gleam in his eye?
“Ruiz,” shouted Publius gladly. “Can it be? My old friend, come to visit me at long last?”
Ruiz stepped cautiously from the elevator. “Publius?”
“Who else?”
Ruiz allowed Publius to fling his arms around him, and managed a brief embrace in return. Publius apparently didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm; he held Ruiz by the shoulders and examined him, eyebrows jiggling up and down with curiosity.
“Still beautiful, I see,” he said to Ruiz approvingly. “You’re wasted as a leg-breaker for the League. I always tell you this, I know, but I’ll tell you again: find a way to become notorious, then sell your clones. You’d be a rich body-source in no time. I’d buy one myself, make a pretty snakeweasel of you, sell you to some wealthy old woman for a lapdog.”
Ruiz swallowed his revulsion. “I’m not a League contractor anymore, Publius.”
Publius laughed, a low-pitched sound, oddly reminiscent of water draining into a sewer. “Oh, sure. Don’t worry. I’d never tell anyone you’re League — though I don’t blame you for being cautious — this is SeaStack, after all.”
“No, truly,” said Ruiz. “I’ll never work for them again.”
“Oh? I’m astonished — an adrenaline addict like you, swearing off murder and pillage and high wages? What in the world has happened? Are you dying? Have you fallen in love?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Ruiz, straining for conviction.
“You’re right, you’re right. What could I have been thinking of?” Publius laughed again. “You’re the famous Ruiz Aw, a paragon of mindless self-sufficiency, never tempted by the softer things of life, ruthlessly devoted to your own intermittently flexible code of ethics.” There was a sour undertone to Publius’s voice now, and Ruiz feared that he was remembering their time on Line, when Ruiz had deserted the cadre of freelance emancipators commanded by Publius.