The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  "Connect me to him."

  A moment later I was again looking at Alfazzian's screen. "Tell me," I said, "has there been an alteration in your appearance?"

  There was a pause before he said, "How did you know?"

  I had never had difficulty answering that question. "I do not reveal my methods," I said.

  "Are you taking the case?"

  "I am," I said. "I will make a special dispensation and allow you to pay me later."

  "I am grateful."

  "One question: Does it seem to you that your intellectual faculties have been reduced?"

  "No," Alfazzian said, "but then I have always got by on my talent."

  "Indeed," I said. My longstanding impression of the entertainer remained intact: his talent consisted entirely of his fortuitous facial geometry. "Remain at home and wait to hear from me."

  I broke the connection and the screen disappeared. I said to my assistant, "Now we know more, but still we know nothing."

  We knew that I who had been brilliant, attractive—or so I would argue—and financially comfortable had been made dense, repugnant and indigent. Alfazzian had been admittedly more handsome than I and probably much more wealthy, and now he was also without funds or looks—but his intellect had not been correspondingly ravished.

  "There is a pattern here," I said, "if I could but see it."

  I wrestled with the facts but could not get a secure grip. The effort was made more difficult by a growing clamor from the street outside my quarters. I went to the window and, bidding the integrator minimize the obscuring membrane, looked down at a growing disturbance.

  Several persons were clustered before a doorway on the opposite side of Shiplien Way, beating at the closed portal with fists, feet and, in the case of a large and choleric woman in yellow taffeta, a parasol. As I watched, more participants joined the mob, then all took to shouting threats and imprecations at a smooth-headed man who leaned from an upper window and implored them to return another day.

  The door, which remained closed, led to a branch of the Olkney Mercantile, one of the city's most patronized financial institutions. I spoke to my assistant. "Is Alfazzian's account with the OM?"

  "No."

  "Then I believe we can add one more new fact to our store."

  I inspected the individual members of the crowd. I had never been one to judge others on mere appearance, but the assemblage of mismatched features across the street was the least fortunate collection of countenances I had ever seen assembled in one place. "Make that two new facts," I said.

  "Hmm," I said. Again, it was as if my mind expected a pattern to present itself, but nothing came. It was an unpleasant sensation, the mental equivalent of ascending a staircase and, expecting to find one more riser than the joiner has provided, stepping up onto empty air and crashing down again.

  "The most handsome man in Olkney is made repellent," I said to my assistant, "and the most intelligent is made at best ordinary. As well, both are impoverished. So apparently are many others." I struggled to form a shape from the data and an inkling came. "If Alfazzian and I are the targets and the others are merely bystanders, then why is the institution across the street in turmoil? We have no connection to it."

  "It could be that the attack is general," said the integrator, "and therefore you and our client are only part of a wider category of victims."

  I turned the concept over and looked at it from that angle. It appeared no more comprehensible. "We need more data," I said. "Access the public advisory service."

  The screen reappeared, displaying a fiercely coiffed young woman who was informing Olkney that it was inadvisable to visit the financial district. "Dislocations are occurring," she said, widening her elegant eyes while uplifting perfectly formed eyebrows.

  "Two more facts," said the integrator. "Other depositories must have been raided and there is one attractive person who has not been rendered grim."

  "Three facts," I said. "The painfully handsome man who usually engages her in inane banter about trivialities has not appeared."

  But what did it mean? Were only men affected? I had the integrator examine other live channels. Those from outside Olkney showed no effects. In other cities and counties, handsome men still winked and nodded at me from behind fanciful desks. There were no monetary emergencies. But the emissions originating within the city fit the emerging pattern. Of attractive women, there was no shortage; of good looking men, a dearth.

  "Regard this one," said the integrator. We were seeing the farm correspondent of a local news service, a man hired more for his willingness to climb over fences and prod the confined stock at close range than for set of jaw or twinkle of eye.

  "He has always been hard on the gaze," I said.

  "Yes," agreed my assistant, "but he is grown no harder."

  "Another fact," I said.

  Matters were almost beginning to assume a shape. If I could have thrust aside the clouds that obscured my mind, I knew I would be able to see it. But the mist remained impenetrably thick.

  "A question occurs," I said. "Who is the richest man in Olkney?"

  "Oblos Pinnifrant."

  "And is his face well or unfortunately constituted?"

  "He is so wealthy that his appearance matters not."

  "Exactly," I said. "He delights in inflicting his grotesque features on those who crave his favor, forcing them to vie one against another to soothe him with flattery. Connect me to him."

  Pinnifrant's integrator declined the offer of communication. I said, "Inform him that Olkney's most insightful discriminator is investigating the disappearance of his fortune."

  A moment later, the plutocrat's lopsided visage appeared on my screen. "What do you know?" he said.

  "It would be premature to say."

  "Yet you are confident of solving the mystery?"

  "You know my reputation."

  "True, you have yet to fail. What are your terms?"

  My terms were standard: ten per cent of whatever I recovered.

  Pinnifrant's porcine eyes glinted darkly. "Ten per cent of my fortune is itself a fortune."

  "Indeed," I said, "but 32 hepts and 14 grimlets are not much of a foundation on which to begin anew, even for one with your egregious talent for turning up a profit."

  In fact, Pinnifrant had been born to wealth and had only had to watch it breed, but a lifetime of deference from all who rubbed up against him had convinced the magnate that he was the sole font of his tycoonery.

  After a brief chaffer, he said, "I agree to your terms. Report to me frequently." He moved to sever the connection.

  "Wait," I said. "Have you noticed any diminution of your mental capacities?"

  "I am as sharp as ever," was the answer, "but my three assistants have become effectively useless."

  "Has there been any change in the arrangement of their features?"

  "I would not know. I do not bother to inspect their faces."

  "One last thing," I said. "Have your financial custodian contact me immediately."

  Agron Worsthall, the Pinnifrant Mutual Solvency's chief tallyman appeared on my screen less than a minute after I broke the connection to Pinnifrant. He seemed eager to assist me.

  "How much remains in his account?" I asked.

  "Oblos Pinnifrant has consolidated many of his holdings through us," Worsthall said. "All but one of his accounts have been reduced to a zero balance. The exception contains 32 hepts and 14 grimlets."

  "What about other depositors' holdings? Are they also reduced to that amount?"

  "They are. That is, the male depositors and those who had joint accounts with female partners."

  "But women are unaffected?"

  "Yes, and children of both sexes."

  "And where have the funds gone? Were they transferred to someone else?"

  "They were not. The money is simply not there."

  "Is that possible?"

  I heard him sigh. "Until today I would have said it was not, but I am finding it di
fficult to deal with abstruse concepts this morning."

  "Has there been any change in your physical appearance?" I asked. "Specifically, your face?"

  "What kind of question is that?"

  "A pertinent one, I believe."

  There was a silence on the line while Worsthall sought his own reflection. When he came back his voice had a quaver. "Something has occurred to my nose and chin," he said. "As well, there are blemishes."

  "Hmm," I said.

  "What does it mean?"

  I told him it would be premature to say. "You said that all accounts held by men had been reduced to 32 hepts and 14 grimlets. What about accounts that contained less than that amount—were they raised to this mystical number?"

  "No, they were unaffected. Is that germane?"

  I asked him if he had difficulty understanding the meaning of "premature." Then another idea broke through the fog. "I wish you to do something for me," I said. "Contact all the other financial institutions in Olkney. Ask if the same thing has happened."

  I broke the connection and attempted to rouse my sluggish analytical apparatus, but it continued to lie inert.

  Again, I asked my assistant, "If I were possessed of my usual faculties, how would I address this conundrum?"

  "You would look for a pattern in the data," it said.

  "I have done that. I cannot see more than the bare outline of what, and not even a glint of why or how. Men have been robbed of their wealth, looks and intelligence, yet who has gained? Where lies the motive, let alone the means?" I sighed. "What more would I do if I were intact?"

  "You might look for a pattern outside the data," the integrator said. "You once remarked that it is possible to deduce the shape of an invisible object by examining the holes left by its passage."

  "I do not see how that applies to this situation."

  "Nor do I. I am accustomed to rely upon you for insights. My task is to assemble and correlate data as you instruct."

  "What other brilliancies have I come up with over the years? Perhaps one will ring a chime and re-ignite my fires."

  "You once opined that the rind is mightier than the melon. You presented this as a particularly profound perception."

  "What did it mean?"

  "I do not know. When you said it, you were under the influence of certain substances."

  "No use," I said. "Go on."

  "You have occasionally noted that the wise man can learn from the fool."

  "I remember saying it," I said, "but now I have no idea what I meant."

  "Perhaps something to do with opposites attracting?" the integrator offered.

  "I doubt it," I said. "Do they attract? If so, it can't be for long since wouldn't true opposites irritate each other if not cancel each other out? It sounds like mutual annihilation and I'm sure I've never been in favor of that."

  "You also say that sometimes the most crucial clue is not what has happened, but what has not."

  "That sounds more like it," I said. "Except that the number of things that haven't happened must be astronomically greater than those that have. So how do we pick out the nonexistent events that have meaning?"

  "You usually perform some pithy analysis."

  "Yes, but I'm short on pith today."

  "Then it will have to be an inspired guess."

  "I am far from inspired," I said. "But I think we have at least defined the crime. The attacks are aimed at intelligent and presentable men as well as those who have more than 32 hepts and 14 grimlets.

  "Dull men have not been made duller, nor poor men poorer, nor have the unprepossessing been further victimized. And women and children are unaffected on all counts.

  "We come back as always to means, motive and opportunity."

  It was difficult to posit a rational means or an opportunity by which the assumed perpetrator could do so much harm to so many and all apparently at the same moment. I knew from long experience, however, that motives were relatively few and all too common to most of humankind. "Jealousy," I said. "We may be looking for a poor, not too bright man with a face to curdle milk."

  "But if he is dim-witted, how does he contrive to perform the impossible?" said my assistant.

  "Indeed," I said. "How is the operative question."

  The integrator made a sound that was its equivalent of a throat clearing. "I have a suggestion," it said.

  "What?"

  Its tone was tentative. "Magic."

  I snorted. It was an automatic response whenever the subject was raised. "Only a fool believes in magic," I said.

  "Perhaps this is the work of a fool."

  That almost made sense, but though I could no longer argue for them, I recalled all my old opinions. "There is no such thing as magic."

  "Yet there are arguments for the opposing view."

  I had encountered them. Supposedly there was an alternation between magic and physics, between sympathy and rationalism, as operating principles of the phenomenal universe. As the Great Wheel rolled through the eons, one assumed supernacy over the other, only to see the relationship eventually reversed.

  When one regime took the ascendancy, the other allegedly remained as an embedded seed in its unfriendly host. Thus in an age when magic held sway, its mechanics were still logically extrapolated—there were rules and procedures—while during the present reign of rationality, events at the subquantum level were supposedly determined more by quirks and quizzidities than by unalterable laws.

  I was occasionally braced, at a salon or social, by some advocate of the mystical persuasion who would try to convince me that the Wheel was now nearing the next cusp and that I might live long enough to see the contiguous series of electrons that carried information from one device to another replaced by chains of ensorceled imps, my integrator supplanted by an enchanted familiar.

  I had investigated the arcana of magic over a summer during my youth and could demolish its advocates with arguments that were both subtle and vigorous. However, I had to admit that those arguments were at present beyond my grasp. Still, I harrumphed once more and said, "Magic!" then blew air over my lips as if shooing away a gossamer.

  My assistant said, "You also like to say that when all impossibilities have been swept from the table what remains, however unlikely, must be the answer."

  "Magic," I said, "is one of those impossibilities."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I used to be," I said, "so I ought to be now."

  "Even a wise man can . . ." began the integrator, then interrupted itself to tell me that Pinnifrant's tallyman was back.

  "What have you learned?"

  "The same situation pertains across the city. Indeed, even accounts held outside Olkney by male residents of the city have been affected."

  The more I learned the more perplexed I became. Even in my diminished state, I recognized the irony. I had long wished for a superlative opponent, a master criminal who could give me room to stretch. Now one had seemingly appeared, but in doing so had robbed me of the capacity to combat his outrages. Still, I struggled to encompass an image of the situation.

  "And there is no indication that anyone has benefited from the thefts?" I asked Worsthall. "No woman's account has ballooned? No child's?"

  "No."

  "Thank you," I said, though I could not see how the information helped.

  "There is one anomaly," he said.

  "Hmm?"

  "A male depositor at Frink Fiduciary had a balance of 32 hepts and 15 grimlets before the discrepancy this morning . . ."

  "Discrepancy?" I asked.

  "It is a term we in the financial sector use when accounts do not tally."

  "Why not be bold and call it what it is, mass theft and rampant rapine?"

  "If we were bold, we would not be bankers," was the reply.

  "Indeed," I said, "but what were you about to tell me?"

  "That a male depositor had a balance of 32 hepts and 15 grimlets before the . . . rampant rapine, and that he had the same balance afterwar
d. And still does."

  I had him repeat the numbers again. "This depositor had one grimlet more than the ubiquitous H32.14 before the . . . the event, and he still has the same amount now?"

  "As of three minutes ago," said the tallyman.

  "Hmm," I said. I experienced a vague sense that the anomaly might be significant. "Who is he?"