The Summer Thieves

by Paul Di Filippo

  The response of Bona Jebb Tipstaff was typical of the employees. The safari guide hugged Johrun in an embrace of steel, then held him at arm’s length. Tears coursed the guide’s cheeks.

  “Whatever you need, young pard, my arm or gun or guts, you’ve got it. The Soldevere and the Corvivios families—they are mine in all but name.”

  “Thank you, Jebb. That counts for everything.”

  Throughout these trials, there had been one pillar of support who upheld Johrun so intimately, so essentially, that he barely acknowledged her as a separate entity. She seemed instead some inner daimon, a stalwart bedrock fragment of his own psyche, whom he could rely on perpetually, night or day.

  Lutramella brought him meals when he forgot to eat. She sat by his bed, stroking his brow, as he tried to find sleep. She anticipated tasks that needed doing and did them. She made him shower and change his clothes. She held him while he wept. Not many words were exchanged between them, but the important things could not be said, only witnessed or enacted.

  Additionally, Lutramella kept Johrun informed of Minka’s recovery. The splice could not get in to see the woman herself, however, because of a cordon of self-appointed caretakers who stressed the need for peace and no distractions.

  The graduates of Saint Squared U—Braulio, Ox, Braheem, Trina, and Viana—had not departed with all the others. In fact, the Bastard of Bungo was the only non-family ship still on the grounds. Minka’s friends had moved into her suite and set up a round-the-clock watch on her, with regular visits from Doctor Zahkuala. Lutramella conveyed bulletins that found Minka awake and mostly sensible, but weak and with wandering attention. She was subsisting mostly on broth and juices.

  Johrun added his grief for her to the ocean of grief for their dead families, and found it hard to discern the increase.

  Then, on the third day, arrived a one-man ship dubbed The Wine of Astonishment.

  The craft, a Miran Hedgehopper, was hardened for travel in those faster-than-fast branes inimical to human life, the routes that the quick artilect drones took. Inside, Johrun later learned, was a lazarus tank to hold the passenger. The occupant of the ship would be scientifically killed prior to leaving the human universe, seeded with Smalls zeptocrobes, then revived once he or she successfully transited the death zone. The execution process was said to be excruciating, the revival more so. (And the process worked not at all in the case of everyday accidental deaths.) But such a craft could deliver its corpse at top speed wherever the revenant was needed.

  Johrun had received notice of the ship’s arrival in the Wayward’s Spinel system, and so—Lutramella by his side—he was waiting outdoors for its descent and touchdown.

  Port opened, ramp extruded. Down came the foreannounced Oz Queloz, frowning like a minor demigod frustrated in his pursuit of some mortal paramour. Smelling of some brisk peppery cologne, the Invigilator invaded Johrun’s personal space, then demanded, “What cretinous jugheaded jackass sent all my goddamn suspects away?”

  Instantly Johrun turned sick inside. He felt all the blood flow from his face and pool in his feet, which somehow nonetheless felt cold as ice. How indeed could he have been so stupid? If the destruction of Against the Whelm had been a deliberately engineered act—a terrible thought Johrun had been mostly successful in keeping at bay—then the culprit in all likelihood would have been one of the many guests, and Johrun had blithely dismissed them all from the scene of the crime, sending them scurrying to freedom. But he had only wanted to forget everything, to be alone and wallow in a black and wordless despair.

  “But I— I just—” Lutramella let out a small growl, as if she were ready to attack Queloz.

  Queloz’s full-bodied laugh belled out, and he gripped Johrun’s bicep and shook him like a rag doll. “Relax, relax! There was no way you could have enforced their stay. And every single one of your fled guests has already been met—or will be met—and plucked by my peers. This in addition to individual vitagraph workups of a density and depth and focus that simple citizens can never command. The ones we contacted were all deemed as innocent as baby chicks, and I suspect the rest will be proven clean as well.”

  Johrun relaxed a tad, and Lutramella emerged from her coiled state.

  “To be honest, my gut informs me that the sad end of your family ship was a standard failure of the strangelet drive—rare but not unknown. Believe me, the Brickers don’t publicize such things. Decillion to one odds. But then again, there are a billion flights made in the Quinary every day, so you do the math. You recall the incident of the Hannu Mora, out of Warsaw Seven, do you not? No? Two thousand souls lost just upon takeoff, much the same as in your case. Nevertheless, I had to see how you’d react to my indignant thrust, didn’t I? Were you mastermind or dupe, heinous or holy? Or somewhat admixed? Such are the primitive but potent strategies of us Invigilators, rough tactics which have not changed since the days when our species was living in caves on Gaia!”

  Johrun’s limbs loosened all the way. He did not feel relieved or disburdened from recent horrors, but somehow the presence of Queloz had lifted some tiny portion of responsibility off his back. “I— I see. Well, where do we go from here?”

  “No evidence left to parse, so it’s all face-to-face work among the staff. And I understand that the Soldevere heir is still present, with some of her old classmates?”

  “Yes, Minka and her friends are here.”

  “Perfect! Then we begin with you. I need to know of any suspicions or theories you might harbor, also any untoward incidents of the recent past. But first, I require food and drink! Being reborn always ramps up my appetites! Come, do you keep all your guests standing out forever under this unnervingly wholesome amethyst sun?”

  There followed three days of intensive questioning, commencing with Johrun.

  Johrun laid out everything that had preceded the deaths of the two families, including the assault on him in the loo. Queloz pondered the account for a long time in silence, then said, “How can we link these two disparate events? If you were the sole object of someone’s hatred, then sabotaging the ship would not harm you directly, since everyone knew you would not be on it. Contrarily, if someone wanted to remove your elder family members from existence, then why attack you earlier, and not go straight for the real targets? No, I can’t make a solid link at this point. Better to regard the attack on you as the work of some jealous or insane grudge-holder.”

  “But suppose someone just wanted to harm Danger Acres and Sweetmeats Pasturage in general?”

  “Then why murder? A step too far and cumbersome. Wouldn’t damaging your physical plant or hurting some guests or discrediting your reputation have been a better strategy? The twin corporations have not been ruined by this disaster. In fact, if you’ll permit a brutal observation, the brushwood in the line of command has been pruned. You and Minka inherit streamlined enterprises, ready for a new era of increased profits distributed into fewer pockets.”

  Johrun saw crimson, and raised a fist toward Queloz. He was stopped by the wry look on the Invigilator’s face, and calmed down.

  “Another telling jab?”

  “Precisely! Your new wisdom now qualifies you as my junior assistant in the rest of the proceedings!”

  Queloz had every Danger Acres employee into his office for an interview, then had them all back again. His initial conclusions: no complicity anywhere. Finally there remained only Minka and her nursemaids.

  As Johrun and Queloz approached Minka’s apartments, Johrun said, “Why do you not use some kind of telltale gadget in these sessions?”

  “That arms race has been won by the culprits, I fear. There is currently no machine extant that cannot be foiled by various undetectable stratagems.”

  “What of the inquestorial meshes?”

  “The meshes only measure one’s âmago, an unimpeachable but vague indicator of existential contingency, or core centrality — entanglement, so to speak, between actor and act. For instance, I ask you, under the meshes, ‘Did you ca
use the Corvivios ship to explode?’ You reply, ‘No.’ Your âmago waxes bright or wanes dim on the readouts. This indicates that you embrace my question as somehow fundamental to your life pattern or destiny. Or you flinch from it as if from a wrenching deracination, baffled and repelled. The disaster means something vital to you, or not. But what, exactly? Truth or falsity, guilt or innocence do not manifest.”

  Johrun considered this. “So on Bodenshire, my grandsire Xul would have been asked, ‘Did Honko Drowne make over the deed to Verano to you?’”

  “Precisely! And the brilliant shine of his âmago would have told the Bricker examiners all they needed to know.”

  Present for most of the other questionings, Lutramella had begged off from today’s.

  “Your fiancée disdains me, Joh. My presence would only hinder the search for truth.”

  Much as he hated to affirm this, Johrun had to admit Lutramella was correct. Reluctantly, he had left her behind.

  Queloz and Johrun gained admittance to Minka’s rooms after pinging her permission, and for the first time since that fateful day of the explosion Johrun saw his fiancée.

  Sitting up in bed among a plethora of pillows, Minka looked ghostly and thin, hollow-eyed and gray-skinned. Her lustrous hair was drab. Her quarters had a sickly smell to them. Her friends sat in various chairs, close by and across the room. Their expressions ranged from bored—Anders Braulio—to empathetic—the women and Braheem. Ox’s anomalous countenance revealed little.

  Minka made no special greeting to Johrun, but just gave a feeble nod in his direction.

  Queloz advanced to her bedside and took her hand. Another ploy, wondered Johrun, to gauge the reality of her condition, to surreptitiously measure a pulse or nervous clamminess of skin?

  “Mir Soldevere, I cannot fully express my sorrow for your loss. But with your help, I might be able to lay to rest any doubts, quibbles or phantoms that still attend the tragedy, and provide you with some small measure of solid perspective that will lead to a timely resuscitation of your life.”

  Minka’s voice matched her appearance. “Ask what you will. Nothing matters to me any longer.”

  Johrun’s heart hurt at this response, although it mirrored his own condition. His petrified emotions began to show a few cracks, to shed a few flakes of self-pity and obstinate remorse. He resolved then that he had to start to pull himself out of the trough of despondence, so that he could be a pillar of strength for Minka, and an honor to the memory of those loved ones who had perished.

  Queloz took Minka through the standard line of questioning that Johrun had heard during the other interviews. Despite general correspondences from session to session, there was always a uniquely personal slant to Queloz’s probes. Finally he concluded by asking, “And how will you proceed from here, Mir Soldevere? Will you carry forward the legacy of your family, or cast it all down?”

  “I can’t say right now. The days ahead are lost in a fog of anguish.”

  Queloz turned his attention away from Minka and toward the others.

  “If I may see each of you individually in the adjacent chamber, I believe we may be able to bring my researches to a conclusion right now.”

  One by one Minka’s classmates went off for private interrogation, Ox volunteering to go first. Johrun regarded the mute and not particularly sorrowful-looking Anders Braulio askance. Had Braulio tried to kill him during the hunt? Had he been behind the ambush in the WC, even if his had not been the actual hand that had clamped on Johrun’s throat?

  A sudden memory, buried until now by the welter of events, jumped out at Johrun. Braulio’s field of study had been strangelet engineering! Could he have somehow sabotaged the engines of Against the Whelm? Johrun practically quivered in place until Queloz emerged from interviewing Ox.

  “Vir Queloz, I need to see you outside for a moment.”

  The Invigilator lifted one eyebrow quizzically. “Indeed.”

  Out in the corridor, at some remove from Minka’s chambers, Johrun quickly spilled his thoughts. Queloz listened impartially, then said, “This is a weighty tidbit already known to me from Braulio’s vitagraph. So of course, I immediately pulled up all the pre-flight telemetry from Against the Whelm, extending back to the moment that Vir Braulio and company arrived on Verano. Audiovisual feeds and instrument dumps in toto. There is, I am frustrated to report, nothing anomalous.”

  Crestfallen, Johrun said, “I suppose the obvious solution is never the correct one.”

  “Not so. But neither is the obvious solution always the correct one.”

  Back in Minka’s suite, Queloz soon reached the end of questioning. He and Viana emerged from their privacy, and Queloz said, “I am ready to render my official report now. I stipulate that delivery of same does not stamp the case permanently solved or foreclosed. It means only that we have reached a certain plateau of knowledge. New developments or insights might cause a burst of activity at any time hence. Mir Soldevere, would you please send your friends away? You are free to share my report with anyone you wish, after I deliver it—formal copies will also post to your vambraces—but I do not desire to make a public spectacle of it now.”

  “Please, do as he asks,” Minka said.

  When the crowd had left the trio in privacy, Queloz launched into his précis.

  “Here are the background occurrences relevant to the explosion onboard Against the Whelm. First, an unknown actor known as the Redhook Combine instigated a suit against the Corvivios and Soldevere families, contesting your ownership of Verano. This campaign was the direct cause of the launching and subsequent destruction of your ship. Had there been no need to travel to Bodenshire, the ship with all your relatives onboard would not have launched. But of course, the ship would have been used at some point in the near future, to return to Sweetmeats Pasturage, at which point it might or might not have experienced an identical engine failure.

  “Second, Johrun Corvivios was assaulted the night before the launch, by an unidentified person working either alone or in cahoots with others. I do not include in my list the dangers he experienced during the recent safari, since those do not constitute a provable attempted murder, but might well have been sheer happenstance.

  “Now, can we decisively infer from these data that a plot is afoot to deprive your families of their holdings, by legal or illegal means, up to and including assassination? I fear the links cannot be forged, for lack of hard evidence. And in fact, certain factors militate against such a conclusion. The suit by Redhook must have some validity, or the Brickers would not have allowed it to be filed. Why would your opponents risk queering their judicial victory by attempting murder? And who were their agents on the planet, if all the guests, staff members, and principals have been cleared? Furthermore, if only the elder generations stood in the way, why bother attacking Johrun, the inconsequential scion? You’ll pardon that impartial description, I hope, Vir Corvivios. And why was there no similar attempt to remove young Minka from the gameboard?

  “But neither can the antithesis to this thesis be dismissed with total insouciance. In fact, your clans might very well be under attack by forces unknown, for reasons unknown. I cannot firmly endorse either interpretation of events, but only state that for the moment, I lean ever so slightly toward regarding the tragic demise of your extended families as an entropic failure of fallible Motivator technics—especially in light of similar past catastrophes. I would suggest that you pursue a suit against that arm of the Quinary, although I cannot offer sensible odds on your success.”

  Johrun digested this report. Minka seemed likewise contemplative. Johrun wished that Lutramella had been present to hear everything, and offer her advice and opinion. He would have to let her read the formal statement later.

  Minka finally spoke, with world-weary lassitude. “Your conclusions are as acceptable as any paltry deeds which one could expect from a level-headed but basically dull civil servant. Please go now, and send my friends back in.”

  Johrun stepped forward
with imploring gestures. “Minka—”

  “No, you go too, Joh.”

  Johrun and Queloz left. Braulio made a point of roughly brushing his shoulder against Johrun as they traded places.

  Down in the hauntingly empty lobby of the lodge, Queloz said, “I truly wish I could have provided greater closure, an enemy to lash out at, a face to smite in return for the blows you have suffered. But it was not within my powers. Yet you may rest assured, Vir Corvivios, that your affairs remain on my docket. I do not consider this case settled to my own satisfaction. And the itchy curiosity of an Invigilator is to be both feared by the malefactor and desired by the victim. The informational tentacles and remote effectuators of the Invigilator corps extend far and wide. If I learn of anything that will bring more certainty to your affairs, you and Mir Soldevere will hear from me at once! But now, I fear, I must die again, to be reborn where I am next needed.”

  Johrun shook Queloz’s hand and thanked him sincerely. Despite such a tenuous and frustrating ending to the official inquiry, Johrun felt they had taken one step forward toward some dimly sensed return to normality, however shattered and glued-together such a life would inescapably be.

  The two men walked together to The Wine of Astonishment. Queloz entered his ship in order to be killed and tanked for revival far away. The craft took off.

  Irrationally half-fearing another explosion, Johrun watched The Wine of Astonishment ascend until it had dwindled to a dot. He began to turn away. But then motion in the skies caught his attention.

  A small ship was dropping down to Verano. Had something made Queloz return? Johrun pinged the craft. It returned his query with its name: Due Tidings Ninety-seven.