He had an uneasy moment when he signaled the bay to evacuate and open a takeoff slot. Would the bay respond?
A field flashed down the bay, squeezing the exterior air into the far end; Ruiz felt the field’s passage as a tug at his viscera. The outer clamshell cracked open, and the stars blazed through.
Ruiz sat back. “Take us out,” he told the Vigia, and she answered with a sweet harmonious tone, the sound of her engines. The boat swooped through the opening clamshell into free space, and Ruiz felt a sudden lightening of his spirit.
He accelerated around the curve of the world, crossed the terminator into the sunlight, and slowed for descent.
Chapter 5
Ruiz dropped into the murky steams of the uninhabitable lowlands, a hundred kilometers from the edge of the great plateau on which the Pharaohan culture had survived. The Pharaohans called the lands beneath the mists Hell, and Ruiz could see why. The temperature in the depths was just under the boiling point of water, the atmosphere was unbreathable, and the animals that lived in Hell were tough, dangerous, and as hideous as the most vividly imagined demons.
He guided the Vigia through the corrosive mists, until he hovered five hundred meters below the lip of the plateau, safe from the eyes of the Pharaohan priesthood, which maintained observatories along the top of the escarpment.
Then he considered the recent events. An attempt had been made to expunge him before he could begin his mission. The poachers therefore conspired with persons on the League’s orbital platform. But who? The factor? The Dilvermooner was Ruiz’s first and obvious choice; but the obvious choice wasn’t always the right one. In an organization as far-flung as the League, interunit chicanery was an unfortunate constant. There could have been a half-dozen factions vying for advantage on the platform, which — like any other strategic outpost — boiled with intrigue. It might have been a one-man operation — just the tech, instructed to watch for League agents and then to take a run at arranging a fatal accident. Or… he suddenly wished he had not been so frank with Auliss Moncipor. Or it might indeed have been the factor, in which case Ruiz was still in considerable danger.
He devoted some thought to the matter, while the Vigia hovered in the steamy dark; then he issued orders and the boat began to move. As the Vigia passed around the perimeter of the plateau, she dropped radio repeaters at irregular intervals. The repeaters took up stations in the clouds.
Four hours later the Vigia had completed her circuit of the plateau. Ruiz touched the vidscreen, entered the factor’s personal code. The signal flashed around the repeater string, beamed upward when it reached a randomly selected point, then jumped to another. Prinfilic answered immediately. “Hello? Ruiz Aw? Is that you?” The factor looked slightly rumpled, as though the hours since Ruiz’s departure had been unpleasantly eventful.
Ruiz allowed the vid to transmit his image. “Yes, Ruiz Aw here.”
“Where’s here? I can’t seem to get a fix on your position.”
“Well. Just a precaution. Did you find the dead assassin?”
Prinfilic’s eyes wavered slightly. “Yes,” it said. “Assassin, you say?”
“Didn’t you find the block of crystal?”
Prinfilic’s odd smooth face went a shade paler. “Crystal? What crystal?”
Ruiz watched the herman closely. Either Prinfilic was a superb actor — not inconceivable — or the factor was not entirely in control of the situation on the platform.
“The crystal that I picked out of Vigia’s ass and left by the body. It was gone?”
Prinfilic drew a deep breath, and a muscle jumped in its jaw. “It was gone.”
Ruiz smiled. “Then you have a problem, too, I’d guess. At any rate, I’m forced to adopt a policy of compartmentalization. Apparently elements inimical to the League are operating in your organization. Would you agree?”
The factor glared from the screen, looking a little wild-eyed. But after a moment it nodded its elegant head. “So it seems.”
“Here’s how I must proceed, Factor. I’ll dispatch a message drone to Dilvermoon, in case those inimical elements should detonate the crystal before you can find it. Meanwhile, I’ll begin my investigations here on the surface. You for your part must immediately institute a blackout of orbit-to-surface communications. You understand the necessity for this?”
The factor was now visibly verging on hysteria. “But, my quotas—”
Ruiz cut him off. “This isn’t open to discussion. If the channels remain open, who knows what dangerous instructions might reach those enemies I must deal with here below? The Vigia will monitor the spectrum, and release another drone, should anyone aboard the platform violate this order. Signify that you understand.”
For a moment, Ruiz thought Prinfilic would defy him, but then the factor nodded, face suddenly grim.
Ruiz cut the transmission.
Ruiz slept for a few hours, waiting for dark, and then prepared his disguise with meticulous care. He applied a long-term depilatory to his scalp. He instructed the medunit to apply the temporary tattoos he had chosen during the passage to Pharaoh, then endured the prickly sensations of the inkjets as they passed over his head. Afterward, he looked into the mirror and saw a barbaric stranger. The tattoos swirled over his skull in sinuous fine-lined patterns of clear red and dark magenta, curled down past his brows, emphasizing the sharp jut of cheekbone, the blade of his nose. Narrow eyes glared back at him, glittering with metallic intensity. He tried to smile at himself, but the effort lacked conviction and the smile never spread beyond his mouth. After a moment it metamorphosed into a snarl.
Ruiz shook himself and turned away from the mirror. He dressed in the bizarre finery of a snake oil peddler, many-colored layers of shredded and braided fabric, following the premise that the best disguise is often the most outlandish. The eye, he had found, slips uncritically over the details of an amazing sight. He was confident that no one would identify him as an offworlder. He congratulated himself that his tattoos were artful, and his own coppery skin and black eyes were fortuitously similar to the Pharaohan norm. He donned a half-dozen cheap-looking silver rings — microdevices which would enable him to perform the small illusions that were part of the obligatory social acts on Pharaoh. He applied kohl to his eyes, pasted a beauty star to his cheek, and attached earrings of silver and jet. Among his rags, he hid various weapons and tools, all disguised as Pharaohan religious objects — amulets, fetishes, icons.
When Ruiz was finally ready, he took up the special staff he’d designed and built in the Vigia’s workshop, put into his pouch a little splinter gun — disguised as a conjuror’s wand — and then shrugged into his merchandise pack, which contained a good supply of the poison-derived drugs that would be his stock-in-trade. He trudged through the Vigia to the air lock. Standing in the lock, he gave the boat her final instructions. He breathed in the smells of pangalac civilization one last time, metal and plastic and ozone, machine oil and disinfectant.
He took a disposable rebreather and a set of climbing hooks from a locker. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go up. Hover just under the cloud line.”
Ruiz felt the tug of acceleration, as the Vigia swooped upward. He strapped the rebreather to his face and the climbing hooks to his feet.
Then the Vigia stopped and the lock fell open, the ramp just touching the face of the cliff. The corrosive steams of Hell rolled into the lock, and Ruiz darted out, leaping onto the cliffside, hooks humming. The hooks thrust steel rods into the crumbling rock and supported his weight. He turned to look at the Vigia, but she had already retracted her ramp and dropped down into the concealing murk, to wait for his return.