After a while, Einduix took his delicate little flute from his pocket and played a thready minor key melody, skillfully enough to take Ruiz’s mind from his immediate concerns. For an hour the old cook played simple variations on the same theme, and Ruiz never grew tired of listening. Finally he stopped and nodded at Ruiz, who had been his only audience — unless Nisa was still awake.
Ruiz steered southeast, and the bane-lights faded.
Just before dawn, Ruiz heard an ominous rumble — the sound of powerful engines.
The Roderigo catchboat appeared out of the darkness, showing no lights on its squat steel hull. A harsh voice spoke through its hailer, directing them to heave to and prepare to be boarded.
Ruiz threw the tiller over, feeling a terrible sense of defeat. The Roderigans would be equipped with electret snares and sticky-shock nets; resistance would be futile. He stood up, and for a moment it seemed to him that he was very tired. Perhaps the simplest solution for him was to fall backward into the sea’s embrace and let his life finally stream away from him.
“What’s happening?” asked Nisa, in a thin frightened voice. The cabin boy choked back a sob.
Ruiz drew a deep breath. Don’t be foolish, he told himself. Besides, the Roderigans probably carried seeker fish, which would drag him back to life.
“No heroics,” Gunderd whispered. “It could be worse. Some of us may live, if we submit and prove trainable.”
“Yes,” said Ruiz.
Gunderd patted his arm. “I’m sorry, Ruiz. I’d hoped for a better ending.”
Ruiz shook himself. “I know.” He tried to make himself think, to remember all he could about the Roderigan slave depots. He had never had any personal dealings with the Roderigans on any of his earlier missions to Sook; his employers were no more ethical than any other multisystem corporation, but they had some standards.
The Roderigans were notorious for their involvement in a broad spectrum of slaving activities. They maintained a breeding program for several proscribed human types, they supplied Castle Delt with mindwiped shock troops, they ran elimination trials of the most brutal sort. They covered their overhead by fattening human cattle for the cannibals of the Namp coast.
They would supply doppelgängers for any purpose, at a price. Many wealthy cowards came to Sook solely to acquire from the Roderigans a vengeance puppet of their most hated enemy. Star-crossed lovers came, bearing a lock of their beloved’s hair.
Perhaps their most notable contribution to the art of exploiting human suffering was the multiple ransom. When they acquired a major prize, the child of a particularly wealthy pangalac citizen, they often cloned a series of duplicates. After the ransom was paid and the original child was returned to its parents, the Roderigans would begin their campaign to extort further money. They would holotape the torture and execution of the first of the duplicates, and then send the recording to the parents. It was a rare parent who could dispassionately observe the destruction of a child that in all meaningful respects was his or her own.
The range and depravity of the Roderigan enterprises had required them to build extremely good defenses and even better security — more than one anguished parent had chosen to spend a fortune on the destruction of Roderigo. But apparently the hetmen still flourished on their steel and concrete island.
On the catchboat’s deck, two men in bright mirrorsuits appeared, carrying heavy grasers.
“All right,” said the taller one. “Come aboard. One at a time.”
A ladder extruded from the boat’s high topsides.
Gunderd flashed a smile at Ruiz. “If I don’t see you again… it’s been an interesting time, Ruiz Aw.”
Ruiz didn’t answer; he was concentrating on his affect. He slumped his shoulders, curved his back, allowed his hands to tremble. He let his face slacken, as if in helpless terror.
Nisa and the other Pharaohans looked at him first in amazement, and then in contempt. Even Nisa turned away from him, her mouth twisting.
Thereafter, Ruiz didn’t have to work very hard to make his eyes fill with tears.
Gunderd climbed slowly to the catchboat’s deck, where the men grabbed his arms and hustled him over to a line of vertical restraint floaters waiting along the cabinside.
They strapped him in with the efficiency of long practice and returned to the rail. “Next!” barked the talker. “Don’t drag your heels, or we’ll touch you up with the nerve lash.”
Ruiz was the last to depart the lifeboat, clinging to the ladder and fumbling as if his legs and arms would barely obey him. He almost fell over the rail, and the man who clamped his arm muttered in disgust, “Come on, what’s the matter with you? A grown man acting like a baby.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ruiz babbled. He darted a look about, and his heart sank. Along the bridge deck, automated weapons pods tracked him. Underfoot the deck showed the distinctive pattern of a stun grid. His acting abilities, such as they were, would do him no good, at least for the time being.
The restraints snapped shut around his limbs, locking him to the pallet. One of the mirrorsuited men passed a detector over the prisoners and relieved Gunderd and Ruiz of their knives.
When he came to Einduix’s flute, he shrugged and pitched it overboard. Einduix made a strangled sound of rage, and Ruiz, looking around, saw in the tiny man’s face such a deadly intent that he was genuinely shocked. But almost before Ruiz had seen that look, the cook’s face smoothed over and he smiled blandly at his captor.
An uneasy feeling touched Ruiz; apparently they all carried secrets, and perhaps none of them were what they appeared to be.
He found that he was very tired of ambiguity. Still, he had no choice but to think in those tangled terms, so when the taller Roderigan stood before him with a dataslate and asked him his name and profession, Ruiz replied in a bright, frightened voice, “Ruiz. Comfort boy, please sir.”
It seemed to Ruiz that he could feel the astonishment of the others, but no one spoke to give him away.
The Roderigan nodded, apparently unsurprised, and made an entry on his slate. “And you?” he said to Svin.
“Svin, apprentice seaman,” answered the cabin boy.
Ruiz had the impression that beneath the mirrormask, the man grinned with pointed teeth. “You’ll find the stockyards to your liking, boy. All you can eat. A short and merry life.”
He seemed pleased also to find a Pharaohan conjurer and Guildmaster in his catch. “Valuable properties,” he said.
When he asked Nisa her occupation, she tossed her beautiful head and answered, “Nisa. Princess.”
Amusement seemed to seep through the featureless glitter of the mask. “We get a lot of those, Your Majesty. Let us hope that you show talent in other areas, or you’ll be joining Svin in the stockyards.”
Gunderd spoke next. “Gunderd. Exty scholar.”
Ruiz again reminded himself not to be surprised by anything.
Finally the Roderigan stood before Einduix the cook and asked his question.
The little orange man smiled and shook his head, his incomprehension so obvious that Ruiz was automatically suspicious.
The Roderigan produced a multichannel translator and spoke into it. It regurgitated the sentence in dozens of languages, some of which were unfamiliar to Ruiz. Einduix remained cheerfully uncommunicative. After a while, the man drew a nerve lash from his mirrorsuit and shook it in the cook’s face, which prompted Einduix to shout incomprehensibly in a thin cracked voice.
“Well, what shall we do with him?” said the taller Roderigan.
“Don’t know,” said the other. “It’s certain they’d not want him in the stockyards. Perhaps he’s collectable; we’ll just mark him ‘unknown’ and leave it at that.”