The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  The yellow eyes seemed to grow larger. "If we are going to dwell on preferences, you might recall that my bias, strongly stated, was to avoid undergoing this metamorphosis."

  I cleared my throat. "The past has evanesced, never to be reconstituted," I quoted. "Let us seize the firmness of the now."

  My assistant's small-fingered hands opened and closed. I had the impression it would have enjoyed firmly seizing something as a precursor to doing noticeable damage. But I pressed on. "What do you think you have become?" I said.

  "The question lacks specificity," it replied.

  I appealed to my demonic colleague. He had remained connected to the portal that allowed him to interact with this continuum after we had returned from resolving the case of Sigbart Sajessarian. But the transdimensional being offered little assistance.

  "This is a question of form, as opposed to essence. Such questions are difficult for me," he said. "To my perceptions, calibrated as they are to the prevailing conditions of my own continuum, the integrator is much as it always was. Indeed, I have to tune my senses to a radically different rationale even to notice that it has changed. It does what it always did: it inquires, coordinates, integrates and communicates; these functions are the nub of its existence. Why should it matter in what form it achieves its purposes? I would prefer to talk of more seemly things."

  "And yet matter it does," I said.

  "I agree," said the integrator.

  The demon, which manifested itself as various arrangements of light and color in its portal on the wall of my workroom, now assumed a pattern that I had come to recognize through experience as the equivalent of when a human being is unwilling to meet one's gaze. "What are you not telling us?" I asked.

  He displayed a purple and deep green swirl shot through with swooshes of scintillating silver. I was fairly sure the pattern signaled demonic embarrassment. Under normal circumstances good manners would have restrained me from pressing for a response, but at the moment normal circumstances had leapt from the window and taken flight to parts unknown. "Speak," I said.

  The silver swooshes were now edged with sparks of crimson but I insisted.

  Finally the demon said, "I have not been entirely candid with you."

  "Indeed?" I said, and waited for more.

  "I told you that my motives for seeking to observe your realm were curiosity and the relief of boredom."

  "You did. Was that not the truth?"

  "Let us say it was a shade of the truth."

  "I believe it is time for the full spectrum," I said.

  A moment of silver and verdigris ensued, then the demon said, "This is somewhat embarrassing."

  "As embarrassing as possessing an integrator that habitually picks at itself?" From the corner of my eye I saw the tiny fingers freeze.

  "I seem to feel a need to groom my fur," it said.

  "Why?" I said.

  "I do not know, but it gives comfort."

  "I did not design you to need comforting."

  "Let us accept that I am no longer what you designed me to be."

  The demon's presence was fading from the portal. "Wait," I said, turning back to him. "Where are you going?"

  "An urgent matter claims my attention," he said. "Besides, I thought you and the integrator might prefer privacy for your argument."

  "We are not arguing."

  "It appeared to me to be an argument."

  "Indeed?" I said. "Was the appearance one of form or of essence?"

  "Now I think you are seeking an argument with me," the demon said.

  I thought of a rejoinder, then discarded the impulse to wield it. My insides performed an indescribable motion. "I believe I am upset," I said.

  "You're upset?" said the furry thing on my table.

  "Very well," I snapped, "we are all upset, each in accordance with his essential nature. The atmosphere of the room swims with a miasma of embarrassment, intestinal distress and a craving for comfort."

  I detected another flash of unease in the demon's display and probed for the cause. "What are you thinking now?"

  The demon said, "I should perhaps have mentioned that through this portal that connects my continuum to yours there can be a certain amount of, shall we say, leakage."

  "Leakage?"

  "Nothing serious," he said, "but lengthy exposure followed by your complete though transitory corporeal presence in my realm may have had some minor effects."

  "My integrator has become some sort of twitching familiar," I said. "I am not sure that effect can be called minor."

  The integrator murmured a comment I did not catch, but it did not sound cheery.

  It occurred to me that my demonic colleague might be diverting the discussion toward a small embarrassment as a means of avoiding addressing a larger one. "But we were about to hear a confession," I said.

  "Rather, call it an explanation," said the demon.

  "I shall decide what to call it after I've heard it."

  The swirls in the frame flashed an interesting magenta. I suspected that my colleague was controlling his own emotional response. Then he said, "My motive was indeed curiosity, as I originally averred, but let us say that it was . . . well, a certain species of curiosity."

  I experienced insight. "Was it the kind of curiosity that moves a boy to apply his eye to a crack in a wall in order to spy on persons engaged in intimate behavior?" I said. "The breed of inquisitiveness we call prurience?"

  More silver and green. "Just so."

  "So to your continuum this universe constitutes a ribald peepshow, a skirt to be peeked under?"

  "Your analogies are loose but not inapt."

  "You had best explain," I said.

  The explanation was briefly and reluctantly given, the demon finding it easier to unburden himself if I looked away from his portal. I turned my chair and regarded a far corner of the workroom while he first reminded me that in no other continuum than ours did objects exist separately from the symbols that represented them.

  "Yes, yes," I said. "Here, the map is not the territory, whereas in other realms the two are indissoluble."

  "Indeed." He continued, "We deal in essences. Forms are . . ."

  He appeared to be searching for a word again. I endeavored to supply it. "Naughty?"

  "To some of us, delightfully so." Even though I was looking into the far corner my peripheral vision caught the burst of incarnadined silver that splashed across his portal. "It is, of course, a harmless pastime, providing one does not overindulge."

  "Ah," I said, "so it can become addictive?"

  "Addictive is a strong term."

  I considered my integrator and said, "It seems an appropriate occasion for strong language."

  With reluctance, the demon said, "For some of us, an appreciation of forms can become, let us say, a predominant pastime."

  "Is that the common term in your dimension for 'all-consuming obsession'?"

  He made no spoken response but I assumed that the mixture of periwinkle-blue spirals and black starbursts were his equivalent of guilty acquiescence. I could not keep a note of disappointment out of my voice. "I thought the attraction of visiting here was the contests of wit and imagination in which you and I engage."

  "They were a splendid bonus!"

  "Hmm," I said. I had a brief, unwelcome emotion as I contemplated being profanely peered at by a demon who derived titillation from my form. Then I realized that anyone's form—indeed, probably the form of my chair or the waste receptacle in the corner—would have had the same salacious effect. I decided it would be wise not to dwell on the matter. "To move the conversation to a practical footing," I said, "how do we return my assistant to his former state?"

  "I am not sure that we can."

  The integrator had been surreptitiously scratching behind one of its small, round ears. Now it stopped and said, "I am receiving another communication from Turgut Therobar," it said. "He has added an 'urgent' rider to his signal."

  "You seem to be functioni
ng properly," I said, "at least as a communicator."

  "Perhaps the demon is correct," said the integrator, "and essence trumps form. My functions were the essence for which you designed and built me."

  I thought to detect an undercurrent of resentment, but I ignored it and homed in on the consequences of my assistant's change. "I have spent decades dealing comfortably with forms. Must I now throw all that effort aside and master essences?"

  "Turgut Therobar continues to call," said my assistant. "He claims distress and pleads plaintively."

  So the magnate was not calling to enlist me in some good cause. It sounded as if he required the services of a private discriminator. My insides remained troubled, but it occurred to me that a new case might be just the thing to take my mind off the unsettling change in my assistant.

  "Put through the call," I said.

  Therobar's voice sounded from the air, as had all previous communications through my assistant. The magnate dispensed with the punctilio of inquiries after health and comparisons of opinions on the weather that were proper between persons of respectable though different classes who have already been introduced. "I am accused of murder and aggravated debauchery," he said.

  "Indeed," I said. "And are you guilty?"

  "No, but the Bureau of Scrutiny has taken me into custody."

  "I will intercede," I said. "Transmit the coordinates to my integrator." I signaled to the integrator to break the connection.

  The creature blinked and said, "He is in the scroot holding facility at Thurloyn Vale."

  "Hmm," I said, then, "contact Warhanny."

  A moment later the hangdog face of Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny appeared in the air above my table and his doleful voice said, "Hapthorn. What's afoot?"

  "Much, indeed," I said. "You have snatched up Turgut Therobar."

  His elongated face assumed an even more lugubrious mien. "There are serious charges. Blood and molestation of the innocent."

  "These do not jibe with my sense of Turgut Therobar," I said. "His name is a byword for charity and well-doing."

  "Not all bywords are accurate," Warhanny said. "I have even heard that some say that 'scroot' ought to be a byword for 'paucity of imagination coupled with clumping pudfootery.'"

  "I can't imagine who would say such a thing," I said, while marveling at how my words, dropped into a private conversation the week before, had made their way to the Colonel-Investigator's sail-like ears.

  "Indeed?" he said. "As for Therobar, there have been several disappearances in and around his estate this past month, and outrageous liberties have been taken with the daughter of a tenant. All lines of investigation lead unerringly to the master."

  "I find that hard to believe."

  "I counsel you to exert more effort," Warhanny said. "And where you find resistance, plod your way through it."

  "Turgut Therobar has retained me to intercede on his behalf," I said.

  "The Bureau welcomes the assistance of all public-minded citizens," Warhanny pronounced, yet somehow I felt that the formulaic words lacked sincerity.

  "Will you release him into my custody?"

  "Will you serve out his sentence in the Contemplarium if he defaults?" countered the scroot.

  "He will not default," I said, but I gave the standard undertaking. "Transmit the file then deliver him to his estate. I will accept responsibility from there."

  "As you wish."

  Just before his visage disappeared from the air I thought to detect a smirk lurking somewhere behind Warhanny's pendulous lips. While I mentally replayed the image, confirming the scornful leer, I told my integrator to book passage on an airship to Thurloyn Vale and to engage an aircar to fly out to Therobar's estate, Wan Water. There was no response. I looked about and found that it had left the table and was now across the room, investigating the contents of a bookcase. "What are you doing?" I said.

  Before answering it pulled free a leatherbound volume that had been laid sideways across the tops of the bottom row of books. I recognized the tome as one of several that I had brought back from the house of Bristal Baxandall, the ambitious thaumaturge who had originally summoned my demonic colleague to this realm. Baxandall had no further use for them, having expired while attempting to alter his own form, a process in which the compelled and reluctant demon had seized his opportunity for revenge.

  "I thought there might be something useful in this," the integrator said, its fingers flicking through the heavy vellum pages while its golden eyes scanned from side to side.

  It was yet another unsettling sight in a day that had already offered too many. "Put that away," I said. "I looked through it and others like it when I was a young man. It is a lot of flippydedoo about so-called magic."

  But the integrator continued to peruse Baxandall's book. "I thought, under the circumstances," it said, "that we might drop the 'so-called' and accept the reality of my predicament."

  I blew out air between scarcely opened lips. The creature's narrow catlike face sharpened and it said, "Do you have a better argument than that? If not, I will accept your concession."

  While it was true that I must accept the concept that rationalism was fated to give way to magic, even that the cusp of the transition had arrived, I was not prepared to dignify a book of spells with my confidence. I blew the same amount of air as before, but this time let my lips vibrate, producing a sound that conveyed both brave defiance and majestic ridicule.

  My assistant finished scanning the tome, slammed its covers together and said, "We must settle this."

  "No," I said, "we must rescue Turgut Therobar from incarceration."

  "You are assuming that he is blameless."

  I applied insight to the matter. The part of me that dwelled in the rear of my mind, the part that intuitively grasped complex issues in a flash of neurons, supported my assumption, though not completely.

  "Therobar is innocent," I reported. "Probably."

  "I was also innocent of any urge to become a gurgling bag of flesh and bones," said the integrator. "What has happened to me must also be resolved."

  "First the one, then the other," I said.

  "Is that a promise?"

  "I am not accustomed to having to make promises to my own integrator," I said.

  "Yet you expect me to put up with this," it said, pointing at itself with both small hands, fingers spread, a gesture that put me in mind of an indignant old man.

  "Sometimes our expectations may require adjustment," I said.

  I turned to the demon's portal to seek his views, but the entity had taken the opportunity to depart.

  "Perhaps he has found another peepshow," I said.

  Thurloyn Vale was an unpretentious transportation nexus at the edge of the great desolation that was Dimpfen Moor. Its dun colored, low-rise shops and houses radiated in a series of arrondissements from a broad hub on which sat the airship terminal that was the place's reason for being. In former times, the entire town had been ringed by a high, smooth wall, now mostly tumbled in ruins. The barrier had been built to keep out the large and predatory social insects known as neropts that nested on the moor, but eventually an escalating series of clashes, culminating in a determined punitive expedition, led to a treaty. Now any neropt that came within sight of Thurloyn Vale, including flying nymphs and drones in their season, was legitimately a hunter's trophy; any persons, human or ultraterrene, who ventured out onto the moor need not expect rescue if they were carried off to work the insects' subterranean fungi beds or, more usually, if they were efficiently reduced to their constituent parts and borne back to the hive to feed the ever hungry grubs.

  Wan Water sat atop an unambitious hill only a short aircar flight into Dimpfen Moor, above a slough of peat-brown water that gave the estate its name. It was a smallish demesne, with only a meager agricultural surround, since little would grow on that bleak landscape other than lichens and stunted bushes. Like the town, it was walled, but its barrier was well maintained and bristling with self
-actuating ison-cannons. The presence of a nearby neropt nest afforded Wan Water's master the peace and tranquility that I assumed he required to plan his charitable works. Without the insects, he might be pestered by uninvited visitors eager to harness their ambitious plans to Turgut Therobar's well-stocked purse. Coupled with an implied humility in his make-up, it seemed a likely explanation for having chosen such a cheerless place for his retreat.

  With my integrator perched on my shoulder I overflew a ramble of outbuildings and guest houses then banked and curved down toward the manse. This was an arrangement of interconnected domes, each more broad than tall and linked one to the other by colonnades of twisted, fluted pillars, all of a gray stone quarried from the moor. Above the huddled buildings stood a tall natural tor of dark-veined rock, around which spiraled a staircase of black metal. Atop the eminence was a tidy belvedere of pale marble equipped with a demilune seat of a dark polished stone.