The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  The Gist Hunter

  by

  Matthews Hughes

  Table of Contents

  THE GIST HUNTER

  and Other Stories

  Matthew Hughes

  The Gist Hunter and Other Stories © 2005 by Matthew Hughes

  Cover illustration © 2005 by Jason Van Hollander

  Cover & interior layout and design by Jeremy Lassen

  "Mastermindless" © 2004 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2004.

  "Relics of the Thim" © 2004 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2004.

  "Falberoth's Ruin" © 2004 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2004.

  "Finding Sajessarian" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2005.

  "The Gist Hunter" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2005.

  "Thwarting Jabbi Gloond" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes.

  "A Little Learning" © 2003 by Matthew Hughes. First published in Fantasy

  Readers Wanted—Apply Within, ed. Nick Aires and James Richey, Silver Lake Publishing, 2003.

  "Inner Huff " © 2005 by Matthew Hughes. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2005.

  "Help Wonted" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes.

  "Shadow Man" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes.

  "The Devil You Don't" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2005.

  "Go Tell the Phoenicians" © 2005 by Matthew Hughes. First published in Interzone, May/June 2005.

  "Bearing Up" © 1996 by Matthew Hughes. First published in Takes, ed. R.P. MacIntyre, Thistledown Press, 1996.

  First Edition

  ISBN

  1-59780-020-1 (Hardcover)

  1-59780-021-X (Limited Edition)

  Night Shade Books

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  Mastermindless

  I had almost finished unraveling the innermost workings of a moderately interesting conspiracy to defraud one of Olkney's oldest investment syndicates when suddenly I no longer understood what I was doing.

  The complex scheme was based on a multileveled matrix of transactions—some large, some small; some honest, some corrupt—conducted among an elaborate web of persons, some of whom were real, some fictitious and a few who were both, depending upon the evolving needs of the conspirators.

  Disentangling the fraud, sifting the actual from the invented, had occupied most of the morning. But once the true shape of the scheme became clear, I again fell prey to the boredom that blighted my days.

  Then, as I regarded the schematic of the conspiracy on the inner screen of my mind, turning it this way and that, a kind of gray haze descended on my thoughts, like mist thickening on a landscape, first obscuring then obliterating the image.

  I must be fatigued, was my initial reaction. I crossed to my workroom sink and splashed water onto my face then blotted it dry with a square of absorbent fiber. When I glanced into the reflector I received a shock.

  "Integrator," I said aloud, "what has happened to me?"

  "You are forty-six years of age," replied the device, "so a great many events have occurred since your conception. Shall I list them chronologically or in order of importance?"

  I have always maintained that clarity of speech precedes clarity of thought and had trained my assistant to respond accordingly. Now I said, "I was speaking colloquially. Examine my appearance. It has changed, radically and not at all for the better."

  I looked at myself in the reflector. I should have been seeing the image of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator in the city of Olkney in the penultimate age of Old Earth. That image traditionally offered a broad brow, a straight nose leading to well-formed lips and a chin that epitomized resolution.

  Instead, the reflector offered a beetling strip of forehead above a proboscis that went on far too long and in two distinct directions. My upper lip had shrunk markedly while the lower had grown hugely pendulous. My chin, apparently horrified, had fallen back toward my throat. Previously clear sweeps of ruddy skin were now pallid and infested by prominent warts and moles.

  "You seem to have become ugly," said the integrator.

  I put my fingers to my face and received from their survey the same unhappy tale told by my eyes. "It is more than seeming," I said. "It is fact. The question is: How was this done?"

  The integrator said, "The first question is not how but exactly what has been done. We also need to learn why and perhaps by whom. The answers to those questions may well have a bearing on finding a way to undo the effect."

  "You are right," said I. "Why didn't I think of that?"

  "Are you being colloquial again or do you wish me to speculate?"

  I scratched my head. "I am trying to think," I said.

  "I have never known you to have to try," said the integrator. "Normally, you must make an effort to stop."

  The device was correct. My intellectual capacity was renowned for both its breadth and depth. As a discriminator I often uncovered facts and relationships so ingeniously hidden or disguised as to baffle the best agents of the Archonate's Bureau of Scrutiny.

  My cerebral apparatus was powerful and highly tuned. Yet now it was as if some gummy substance had been poured over gears that had always spun without friction.

  "Something is wrong," I said. "Moments ago I was a highly intelligent and eminently attractive man in the prime of life. Now I am ugly and dull."

  "I dispute the 'eminently attractive.' You were, however, presentable. Now, persons who came upon you unexpectedly would be startled."

  I disdained to quibble; the esthetic powers of integrators were notoriously scant. "I was without question the most brilliant citizen of Olkney."

  The integrator offered no contradiction.

  "Now I must struggle even to . . ." I broke off for a moment to rummage through my mind, and found conditions worse than I had thought. "I was going to say that I would have to struggle to compute fourth-level consistencies, but in truth I find it difficult to encompass the most elementary ratios."

  "That is very bad."

  My face sank into my hands. Its new topography made it strange to my touch. "I am ruined," I said. "How can I work?"

  Integrators were not supposed to experience exasperation, but mine had been with me for so long that certain aspects of my personality had infiltrated its circuits. "Perhaps I should think for both of us," it said.

  "Please do."

  But scarcely had the device begun to outline a research program than there came an interruption. "I am receiving an emergency message from the fiduciary pool," it said. "The payment you ordered made from your account to Bastieno's for the new surveillance suite cannot go forward."

  "Why not?"

  "Insufficient funds. The pool also advises that tomorrow's automatic payment of the encumbrance on these premises cannot be met."

  "Impossible!" I said. I had made a substantial deposit two days earlier, the proceeds of a discrimination concerning the disappearance of Hongsaun Bedwicz. She had been custodian of the Archonate's premier collection of thunder gems, rare objects created when lightning struck through specific layers of certain gaseous planets. They had to be collected within seconds of being formed, lest they sink to lower levels of the chemically active atmosphere and dissolve. I had located Bedwicz on a planet halfway down The Spray, where she had fled with her secret lover, Follis Duhane, whose love of fine things had overstrained her income.

  My fee should have been the standard ten per cent of the value of the recovered goods,
but the Archonate's bureaucrats had made reference to my use of some legally debatable methodologies, and I had come away with three per cent. Still, there should be at least 30,000 hepts, I informed my assistant.

  "My records concur," said the integrator. "Unfortunately, the pool's do not. They say you have 32 hepts and 14 grimlets. No more, no less."

  "Where has the rest of it gone?"

  "Pool integrators are never sophisticated, lest they grow bored with constant ins and outs and begin to amuse themselves with the customers' assets. This one merely counts what is there and records inflow and outtake. Yesterday the funds were present. Now they are not, although there has been no authorized withdrawal."

  "So now I am not only ugly and dull, but have scarcely a groat to my name and am at risk of being ejected into the street."

  The integrator said nothing. "Well," I prompted it, "have you no empathy?"

  "You assembled me from analytical and computative elements," it replied. "However, I believe I can feign sympathy, if that will help."

  "I doubt it," I said. "Why don't you analyze something?"

  But instead it told me, "I am receiving another urgent message."

  I groaned. "Is it the Archon threatening to banish me? That would place an appropriate crown onto the morning's disasters."

  "It is Grier Alfazzian, the celebrated entertainer," said the integrator. "Shall I connect?"

  "No."

  "He may wish to engage you. An urgent matter would presuppose a willingness to pay an advance. That would solve one of the morning's problems."

  "Hmm," I said. "I should have thought of that."

  "Yes," it said, then after a pause, "you poor little lumpykins."

  "All right, put him through. But audio only. I don't want to be seen like this."

  "Very well."

  "And no more attempts at sympathy."

  A screen appeared in the air before me, but when Alfazzian connected I did not see the face that gave women the hot swithers, though I had always thought him more pretty than handsome. He spoke from behind a montage of images that recalled his most acclaimed roles.

  "Is that you, Hapthorn?"

  I recognized his plummy baritone. "It is," I said.

  "I have a question that requires an answer. Urgently and most discreetly. Come to my home at once."

  I did not wish to take my new countenance out into the teeming streets of Olkney. There was a bylaw forbidding the frightening of children.

  "Can we not discuss it as we are?"

  "No."

  "Very well." I had a mask left over from a recent soiree at the Archon's Palace. "But summoning me on short notice requires an advance on my fee."

  "How much?"

  Fortunately my memory was not fully impaired. I could recall the amounts cadged from wealthy clients who called me for assistance from within the coils of drastic and unexpected predicaments.

  "Five thousand hepts," I said. "You may transfer it to my account at once."

  "I shall," he said. "Wait while my integrator conducts the transfer."

  There was a pause which lengthened while I regarded the images of Alfazzian striking poses in theatrical costumes and romantic settings. Then his voice returned to say, "There seems to be a problem with my finances."

  "Indeed?" I said. I recalled that I often said "Indeed," when I could not think of any other rejoinder. When I wished to avoid a question, I usually indicated that an answer would be premature. I found that the two rejoinders filled conversational holes quite nicely.

  "I do not have five thousand hepts at the moment. My funds have apparently been misplaced, except for a trifling sum."

  Some stirring in the back of my mind urged me to ask the exact amount of the trifling sum.

  "Why do you wish to know?" Alfazzian said.

  I did not know why I wished to know, so I said, "It would be premature to say."

  "The amount is 32 hepts and 14 grimlets," he said.

  "Indeed."

  "Are the numbers significant?" Alfazzian asked.

  "It would be premature to say," I said. "I will call you back."

  "It cannot be coincidence that his funds and yours have been reduced to the same amount," the integrator said.

  "Why not?"

  "Consider the odds."

  My mind attempted to do so in its customary manner, lunging at the calculation like a fierce and hungry dog that scents raw meat before its muzzle. But the mental leap was jerked to a halt in midair as if by a short chain. "I take it the odds are long?" I said.

  The integrator quoted a very lopsided ratio.

  "Indeed," I said. "But what does it signify?"

  "It would be premature . . ." it began.

  "Never mind."

  I tried to think of possible circumstances that could empty two unrelated accounts of all but the same small sum. After sustained effort, I came up with what seemed to be a pertinent question. "Do Alfazzian and I use the same pool?"

  "No."

  "Then it can't just be a defective integrator?"

  "Integrators do not become defective," was the reply.

  "I did not mean to offend."

  "Integrators do not take offense. We are above such things."

  "Indeed."

  There was a silence. "How could the closely guarded integrators of two solvencies be induced to eliminate the funds of two separate depositors except for an identical trifle?" I asked.

  "Hypothetically, a master criminal of superlative abilities might be able to accomplish it."

  "Does such a master criminal exist?"

  "No," was the answer, followed by a qualification. "But if such a criminal did exist he would almost certainly have the power to disguise his existence."

  "Even from the Archonate's Bureau of Scrutiny?" I wondered.

  "Unlikely, but possible. The scroots are not completely infallible."

  "But if there was such a master purloiner, what would be his motivation in impoverishing me and Alfazzian? How have our lives mutually connected with that of our assailant?"

  "No motive seems apparent," said the integrator.

  I pushed my brain for more possibilities. It was like trying to goad a large, lethargic animal that prefers to sleep. "Who else might be able to subvert the fiduciary pools?" I said. "Could it be an inside job?"

  "It is hard to imagine a cabal of officers from two financial institutions conspiring to defraud two prominent customers."

  "And, again, where lies a motive?"

  My mind was no more help than my assistant in answering that question. But if the machinery would not turn over, I still retained a grasp of the fundamentals of investigations: the transgressor would be he who had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the offense. I considered all three factors in the light of the known facts and was stymied.

  "I am stymied," I said. Then a faint inspiration struck. I asked the integrator, "If I were as I was before whatever has happened to cloud my mind, what would I now propose to do?"

  The integrator replied, "You have occasionally said that although with most problems the simplest answer is usually correct, sometimes one encounters situations where the bare facts stubbornly resist explanation. In such a case, adding further complications paradoxically clarifies the issue."

  I could remember having said those exact words. Now I asked the integrator, "Have you any idea what I meant when I said that?"

  "Not really."

  I scratched my head again.

  "Do you have a scalp condition?" asked my assistant. "Shall I order anything from the chymist?"

  "No," I said. "I was trying to think again."

  "Does the scratching help?"

  "No. Nor do your interruptions. Be useful and posit some complicating factors that might have something to do with the case."

  "Very well. You are ugly and not very bright."

  "I don't see how gratuitous insults can help."

  "You misapprehend. At the same time as you have become poor, your ap
pearance and mental acuity have also been reduced."

  "Ahah," I said. Again there came a glimmer of an idea. This time I managed to fan it into a small flame. "And Alfazzian, who normally delights in displaying his face to the world, hid behind a montage while he spoke with me."

  "So the coincidence might be even more extreme," said the integrator, "if he too has been reduced to ugliness."