The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  "Indeed," I said again. This had the odor of an affair among Olkney's decadent aristocracy who, possessing every luxury that Old Earth might offer, chose to salt and season their otherwise placid existence by competing against each other for shaved minims of prestige and precedence. Players at these social games would mount the most elaborate conspiracies whose only ends were that the victim would not be asked to Lady Whatsoever's spring cotillion or would be seated one chair farther down from the Duke at dinner.

  To keep their fingers unsoiled and unscorched, lordly rivals often hired others to perform the mechanics of the plots. From time to time I received delicate approaches from magnates and aristocrats seeking to enlist me in their schemes. I invariably declined. Creatures like Sajessarian made fortunes by accepting.

  "I will take the case," I said. "How long a head start will you require?"

  "If you would begin to seek for me three days from now, I will have laid my false trails and blind alleys."

  "And how long do you need to remain unfound?"

  "Let us say three days for that as well."

  "Done," I said.

  During the ensuing three days I concluded Ogram Fillanny's business and advanced the progress of three other outstanding cases. I could have achieved more but I will admit that I was distracted by a new pursuit: the being who visited me occasionally from an adjacent dimension had introduced me to a new game which I found fascinating. It irked me slightly that I could not refer to either the game or my visitor by a name, but symbol and being were so inextricably mixed in his continuum that voicing the one materially affected the other. Doing so in my universe would have catastrophic results.

  For my own purposes, I had taken to calling the game Will. Its playing pieces were semi-sentient entities that could carry out complex strategies in three dimensions over time if motivated to do so by a focused expenditure of the player's mental energy. The rules were fairly easy to master but the inherent variability of the playing area—one could not call it merely a board—allowed for intricate maneuvers to develop from simple beginnings once one grasped the rhythms by which play ebbed and flowed.

  It had taken me a little while, under my opponent's guidance, to develop the faculty of focusing my thoughts on the pieces, especially how to contemplate a move without causing it to happen before I had definitely decided that that was what I wanted the pieces to do. Now, however, I had achieved what my partner called a modest but promising ability. A few more games, each one followed by a thorough digesting of my defeat at his hands—I use the expression loosely; they were more like the claws a bear would have if a bear were a species of insect—and he promised that I would approximate a good opponent.

  I tended to ponder long over each move, whereas he made his with an alacrity that at first frustrated me. In our latest match, however, he had lingered in the portal, which gave him limited access to this continuum, assessing the deployment of my pieces for quite some time.

  Finally, he said, "You have divided your forces."

  "Indeed," I said, exerting the mild effort that kept the pieces where I had willed them.

  "What do you think that will achieve?"

  "It would be premature to say," I said. "It is your move."

  The shifting colors and shapes that filled the portal assumed an orientation that I had come to recognize as his equivalent of a frown of concentration. "Take your time," I added.

  He emitted a noise that combined a thoughtful hmm with a rumbling growl and reformed his reserves while launching a cloud of what I called fast-darters into the middle-middle of the playing area. His plods—that is how I thought of the slower, larger pieces—moved heavily in formation into the lower-forefront, waited while the terrain exhibited one of its regular oscillations, then rotated and inched forward once more before stopping at a barrier that emerged from the "ground." The plods then changed color to become two shades lighter.

  "Hmm," I said, and looked thoughtful, although his move was almost exactly how I had expected him to respond to mine.

  "I shall return when you are ready to make your next disposition," he said.

  "It may be a while," I told him. "I am about to pursue a discrimination that will almost certainly require me to leave these premises. I may even have to go offworld." I told him briefly about the impending search for Sigbart Sajessarian.

  "If you wish," he said, "I can tell you where he is, now or at any moment in his lifespan." His access to this realm was limited but his perspection of some aspects of it was limitless.

  I did not wish him to do so. "We have discussed this," I said. "I value you most highly as a partner in such pursuits as this"—I indicated the game—"because you have largely drained the swamp of boredom in which I long floundered. But my profession is an essential element of my being, and your omniscience threatens to leave me without purpose."

  The swirling colors assumed a pattern I recognized as a shrug. "As you wish," he said, "but I am interested to see where your strategy will lead. Perhaps you might take game and portal with you, in case you have an idle hour during the search for Sajessarian."

  "I might, at that," I said.

  He departed and immediately I turned to my assistant. "Integrator, consider the disposition of the pieces. Note that our opponent blanched his plods by two shades instead of three. Project my ten most likely strategies that I may evaluate them." I had found it easier to let the device present the options; when I envisioned where my pieces might next go I must exercise will to prevent them from drifting in the foreseen directions. The effort could become tiring.

  "Your opponent," said my assistant.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "He is your opponent, not mine," said the device. "I am only your aide."

  The correction was technically precise, and I had designed the device to be exacting in its use of language. As we speak, so do we think, after all. Still, I thought to detect a tone that, in a human interlocutor, would have betokened jealousy.

  But when I inquired of my assistant if there was anything it wished to discuss regarding my relationship with my transdimensional visitor, it answered my query with a question of its own.

  "How could there be?" it said.

  "Indeed," I said, though again I noted what would have been a certain frostiness. After a moment, I added, "We must schedule that review of your systems."

  "How thoughtful of you."

  My thoughts were on the game as I boarded the shuttle to Zeel, where I would rapidly—in Zeel it was an offense to do anything at less than full speed—transfer to an airbus bound for an estate called The Hands, in the rolling countryside known as the Former Marches. The estate took its name from a pair of gigantic sculpted human hands that had weathered out of a range of low hills several centuries ago. They were surely a monument to some forgotten person, event or ideal that had flourished in a previous eon, but no record of their creation now existed. The great stone fingers were arranged in a remarkable pattern, to which various meanings had been assigned, leading to heated exchanges between academics in a number of disciplines. My own view was that The Hands symbolized insouciant defiance, but of what and by whom I had no idea.

  The estate was the ancestral seat of Lord Tussant Tarboush-Rein, the aged last survivor of a family so ancient that its founders may well have been responsible for the sculptures that gave the place its name. The manse was now grown as decrepit as its final resident, who lived alone except for a single house servant and a greensman whose sole duty was to keep open a tunnel through what had once been a garden but was now long since given over to vegetative rampage. The greensman's position was no sinecure: in youth Lord Tussant had been an enthusiastic collector of exotic and offworld biota; some of the plants whose tendrils rustled and slithered through the impenetrable foliage had sharp appetites and no hesitation about satisfying them.

  The airbus descended to let me off at the lane that led to the estate, the vehicle's operator rolling his eyes in admonition when I insisted that
I was not concerned about venturing into the unwholesome place. The conveyance soared skyward in a whoosh of displaced air and I contemplated the short walk to where the estate's walls were broken by a pair of black metal gates, their outer edges entwined in creepers that undulated slightly as I approached.

  My assistant was housed in an armature I had designed for convenience when traveling. It was made of a soft, dense material and I could wear it across my shoulders like a stuffed stole, blunt and rounded at one end and tapering to a tail-like appendage at the other. It resembled the rough draft of a small animal coiled loosely about my neck.

  I spoke to it. "That is clutch-apple, I believe, though I do not recognize the variety."

  The integrator stirred as its percepts focused on the creeper at the gate. "Lord Tussant is said to have bred some new variations," it said. "Note the ring of barbed thorns around the rim of each sucker. And farther down the path I see a fully developed got-you-now."

  "Hmm," I said. "Generate some harmonics to discourage it and any other lurking appetites." Immediately I sensed a vibration in my back teeth. I approached the gate and looked for a who's-there, but found only a large bell of tarnished metal with next to it a stick on a chain. I did the obvious and when the reverberations had faded but the gates remained closed, I struck the thing again.

  This time the gates lurched, and amidst squawks and creaks from unoiled hinges, they shuddered open just wide enough to admit me. I strode unmolested along the green umbilicus, noting how some of Lord Tussant's experiments had come to fruition, literally in the case of one stubby tree from which hung dark purple globes. "I am told their juice produces the most interesting effects," I said to my assistant.

  "Not the least of which," it replied, "is to be rendered blissfully immobile while the parent inserts threadlike ciliae into your ankles and drains your bodily fluids."

  "Every experience exacts some price," I said, but I decided not to pick the fruit.

  I arrived at the front doors to find another bell and clapper. This one summoned a stooped, cadaverous fellow in black and burgundy livery, his skull encased in a headdress fashioned from thick cloth folded in a complicated fashion. "The master is not at home," he said in a voice as light and dry as last year's leaves.

  "Of course he is," I said. "But it is not Lord Tussant whom I have come to see."

  "Then whom?" said the butler.

  "Sigbart Sajessarian."

  "I do not recognize the name."

  "Yes, you do," I answered, brushing past him into the manse's foyer, "for it is your own."

  "How did you know where to look?" Sajessarian asked. We had repaired to a sitting room deeper inside the crumbling manor where a blaze in a fireplace struggled to overcome the damp and gloom. He had disengaged the device that cloaked his appearance in a projected image and distorted his voice.

  "I do not reveal my methods," I said. "Put it down to insight and analysis."

  In truth, it had not been difficult. Sajessarian was devious but not original. He would not trust in the simplicity of hiding in plain sight, and his attempts to mislead by booking passage on three separate space liners outbound to the human settled worlds along The Spray were complex but easily discounted. I simply tasked my assistant with searching his background for the most obscure connections. Within moments it had uncovered a third cousin twice removed who, some years back, had supplied Lord Tussant with biotic specimens. Having tenuously linked the fugitive to The Hands, it took only a brief consideration of vehicle movements in the area to discover that an unlicensed aircar had moved through an adjacent town's airspace before passing out of range of the municipal scan. My suppositions were confirmed when the gardener failed to answer the outer bell.

  "Where are the real servants?" I inquired.

  "In their quarters," he said. "Both have a fondness for the fruits of the garden and normally lie insensible from dusk to dawn. I merely increased the dosage."

  "And Lord Tussant himself?"

  "He lies insensible almost all of the time. His fondness for a cocktail of soporific juices laced with tickleberries knows no bounds."

  I rubbed my hands and extended them to the fire. "Well," I said, "there remains only the fee."

  "I will fetch it," he said. "Indeed, I will double the amount if while I am bringing it you would design an escape plan that would stymie even Henghis Hapthorn for more than three days."

  It was an interesting challenge. What would fool me? I agreed to his request, and gave the matter several seconds thought after he departed. When I had conceived a stratagem I had my assistant embellish it with some loops and diversions, then I called for a display of the Will scenarios. I was contemplating a promising permutation of plods, fast-darters and sideslips when Sajessarian returned with a heavy satchel. He took it to a table, opened it and began to dispense stacks of currency, counting as he did so.

  My mind was still weighing and discarding options for the game of Will as I said, "I have come up with an escape course that would baffle even me, at least for a time."

  He expressed interest so I outlined the gist of it and the nature of the distractions. "It's a subtle variation on the classic runaround, with a reverse twist."

  "Magnificent." He continued to lay out the funds. Then he said, "The fire dwindles. Would you reset the flux control?"

  My mind still on Will, I reached and pressed the flux modulator. As I did so, I heard Sigbart Sajessarian say, "It is indeed a fine plan." He went on to say, "But I have a better." These last words came from a distance because the floor had opened beneath me, plunging me into darkness and the rush of cold air.

  "Obviously, such was his plan from the beginning," my assistant said.

  "Obvious now," I said. "I do not recall your bringing it up until just this moment."

  "If you hadn't been so ensnared by your friend's game, you would have noticed that giggle of triumph in his voice in time to leap off the trapdoor."

  There was that tone again. Integrators were not supposed to be able to entertain independent emotion, yet mine seemed to have found a way to do so. I was tempted to investigate the matter but I saw no profit in stirring up rancor while trapped in a tiny, doorless cell at the bottom of a shaft deep below Lord Tussant's manse. I had not yet devised a means of escape from the oubliette and I did not wish to have to do so without the aid of my assistant.

  "Equally obvious," I said, "is that whatever perfidy Sajessarian means to commit will have greater import than a game of precedence among aristocrats. He must intend to do something truly awful which will bring down upon him not just some lordling's hired bullies but all the resources of the Bureau of Scrutiny. It will be the kind of case which will baffle the scroots and soon bring Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny to my workroom."

  "Which he will find empty."

  "Indeed," I said. "Or perhaps Sajessarian was hired to lure me into this predicament by some enemy who seeks revenge or even by a foresighted criminal who wants me out of the way." I gave the possibilities some thought then said, "It will be an enjoyable puzzle, working out his motive. Let me see again the matrix of his relationships and associations."

  But instead of putting up a screen and displaying the information, the integrator said, "Let us get out of here first."

  Curiosity has always been my prime motivator. "That can wait," I said. "Show me Sajessarian's data."

  "I'd rather not," it said.

  It was just a few words but they contained a world of meaning. One's integrator might routinely express its preferences when one asked for them; to balk at a direct instruction was unheard of. A full review of my assistant's systems was now the least response I would make; indeed it seemed likely that I would have to tear down and rebuild from bare components.

  But if the situation annoyed me, it also roused my curiosity. "Why would you rather not?" I said.

  "I don't know."

  The admission sent a chill through me, and now self-preservation overpowered even my vigorous investigative
itch. An integrator that had acquired motives and did not know what they were was not a reliable companion in a dungeon. Fortunately, I had other avenues down which I could seek aid. From an inner pocket I drew the folded frame of the transdimensional portal through which I communicated with my colleague. I unkinked it and leaned it against the dank stone wall then executed the procedure that would attract his attention. Within moments, the mind-twisting flux of shape and color that constituted his appearance in our dimension filled the frame. It pulsed as he said, "You've made your move?"

  "A more pressing situation has arisen," I said, and explained the circumstances. "Can you assist me?"

  We fell to discussing the might-dos and couldn't-possiblies of my predicament. I knew that my friend, though he could isolate and inspect any event in the entire sweep of our continuum, could only physically interact with our universe by direct contact. He could reach through the portal but not far enough to achieve any useful purpose.