The Emperor of Everything

Dolmaero had never attempted to use this knowledge against Ruiz, and Ruiz was still grateful. He felt a degree of cautious friendship for the Guildmaster, despite their disparate origins — and despite the risks inherent in friendships formed under such precarious circumstances.

Dolmaero’s brooding eyes fixed on Ruiz. “You seem cheerful; I envy you your light heart. Too many questions burden mine.”

Ruiz regarded Dolmaero uneasily. In Nisa’s case, affection ruled him — but his responsibilities to the other prisoners seemed less well defined. Perhaps, however, he owed Dolmaero some degree of explanation. “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said to Dolmaero. “What do you want to know?”

Dolmaero sighed. “I fear I don’t know enough about our situation even to ask the right questions. Still… where did Corean mean to send us, before you killed her giant henchwoman and disabled the machine man? Do you know?”

“Yes.” The subject filled Ruiz with unpleasant sensations — a crawling sensation along his spine, a queasiness in his stomach, a sudden film of sweat on his forehead. In the depths of his mind, the death net twitched, reminded him that it would kill him if he fell into the tentacles of the Gencha. He shuddered. “Yes. Corean was sending us to the Gencha, so that we might be made safe.”

“Made safe?” Dolmaero looked dubious, as if he felt certain that Ruiz Aw could never be rendered harmless.

“The Gencha… they’re aliens, much stranger than the Pung who ran the slave pen. They’re repulsive creatures, but that’s not the reason I fear them. They’ve devoted centuries to the study of human mentation. They know us too well; they can make a person do or be anything.”

“And for us?”

“The process is sometimes called deconstruction. If we’re taken down into the Gencha enclave, they’ll tear down our minds and rebuild them in a form that would make us perfect slaves. Our primary loyalty would no longer be to our selves, but to Corean — or to whoever purchased us from her.”

“It sounds complicated,” Molnekh said. “Surely there are less troublesome ways of controlling slaves. On Pharaoh we manage well enough. If a slave is rebellious, we crucify him, or stake him out in the waste, or use him in an unsanctified Expiation. The other slaves watch and learn.”

Ruiz frowned. Sometimes he forgot that the others came from a primitive client world, that their cultural matrix was alien. He found it especially disturbing that Nisa was nodding her lovely head, apparently finding Molnekh’s statement reasonable and obvious.

But then it occurred to him that his own ethical standards were more theoretical than actual. At the thought, he was suddenly quite depressed. He might find the idea of crucifying slaves barbaric; still, Ruiz Aw destroyed innocent lives in the course of every job he did. Many had died since his arrival on Pharaoh, beginning with the Watcher on the Worldwall, whom he’d been forced to kill. Then Denklar the innkeeper, Relia the doxy, Rontleses the coercer — their deaths stained his hands. And after his capture and transport to Sook, the list of his victims grew too long to count. Sometimes Ruiz Aw saw himself as a sort of random merciless plague, constantly mutating, incurable.

Something must have shown in his face, because Nisa spoke, voice full of concern. “What is it, Ruiz? Perhaps this new way is kinder, but on Pharaoh we don’t have the means to rebuild minds.”

“Kinder?” Ruiz laughed bitterly. “No. The Gencha build human-shaped puppets — they’re no longer real people. The Gencha would make me into a flesh machine. And the worst thing is, I wouldn’t even know it; I’d think I was still the same person. But if one day my owner told me to open my belly and drape my guts over the shrubbery, I’d think it was a perfectly reasonable request and I’d do it happily. Even then I wouldn’t know that I’d lost my self.”

A silence ensued, as each considered the ugly picture Ruiz had painted. Even Flomel, who had studiously ignored the conversation, looked shaken.

After a while, Dolmaero looked up. He rubbed his heavy jaw, scratched his tattooed head. “Well,” he began hesitantly. “I mean no disrespect, but I can’t understand why, if the Gencha can do as you say… why they don’t rule the human universe. Or do they?”

Ruiz was once again surprised by the Guildmaster’s grasp of the situation. “A good question, Dolmaero. The Gencha don’t do this thing easily — the effort of fully deconstructing a human substantially decreases the Gench’s vitality, and recovery is lengthy and somewhat uncertain. They can perform smaller mental modifications with much less damage to their health.”

It occurred to Ruiz to wonder how Corean was able to arrange for the processing of five slaves such as he and his companions were — and why she would be willing to pay the astronomical fees such services surely demanded. He found, however, that it was difficult for him to consider any matter connected with the Gencha — it made his head hurt.