The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  But Bandar resisted the pull. He had to avoid danger because if he died in this Location, his consciousness would be irrevocably meshed with its elements. He would be the Mute forever, unless the Commons had a means of extracting him at the point of death, a possibility in which he was not willing to trust his existence. Besides, Bandar was still Bandar and he had his own agenda, the crowning piece of which awaited him at the top of the steps.

  The slaves had surrounded the remaining soldiers, pressing them into a tight cluster, jammed so closely together that most of them could not bring their weapons to bear. More chunks of masonry were now flying from all sides, smashing into the trapped remnant. Wherever an impact rocked a spearman a rebel was waiting to slip sharp iron through the gap. The action would not last much longer. Bandar dodged around the rear of the fighters and climbed toward the Subgovernor's party.

  He put on his most appealing face, smiling and gesturing happily to the men who held the dignitaries, clapping them on their shoulders as he slipped among them. At the rear of the group the First Wife's major-domo stood ashen faced, his brow glistening with a chill sweat, the hooked staff of office quivering in his grasp so that its little silver bell tinkled too softly to be heard over the sounds of murder.

  Bandar stepped up to the terrified idiomat, put the thumb and finger of one hand to the ringing metal, then brought up a knife in the other. The major-domo flinched but Bandar offered him a harmless smile and sliced through the thread that held the bell. Then he turned and sped across the top of the temple steps, seeing from the corner of his vision the priests clustered within its entry, all white of eye and open-mouthed.

  In a few moments the noönaut was down the steps, past the heaped corpses of the column guards and into the empty streets of the town. With the fifth note clasped in his hand, he made his way at a fast trot past closed gates and shuttered windows, to arrive at the smithy hardly out of breath.

  He set the silver bell on workbench then began assembling his seven-toned instrument around it, reaching for the tongs and the other pieces then bringing from under his kilt the spear point he had been issued but had not used. When the seven items were arranged in proper order he allowed himself a brief smile and a small sigh of satisfaction, then he turned to look for the small rod that was his striker.

  A dark figure came between him and the bright world outside the smithy. It took him a moment to make out the habitual sneer of the Toady. Then he saw the hulking form of the Bully and the Henchmen. Bandar realized that he could not recall having seen any of them in the fighting. But he saw that they carried weapons, swords of gray iron whose edges gleamed with the brightness of fresh sharpening, still unblooded.

  He grasped it all in a moment. The Bully cared nothing for the slaves' cause. Instead he would help suppress it, seeking to be granted the only life such an idiomat could aspire to: as an overseer given a whip and plenty of unnecessary encouragement to use it.

  And so he would lurk here until the Smith came home—as he surely would, humble in his moment of triumph. Then, while the victorious slaves celebrated in the streets, the Bully and his gang would wait in the house and treacherously stab the Hero to death. When the night grew quiet, they would steal away, carrying the butchered idiomat's head in a basket, aiming to meet the army that the Governor would soon send down river to put the town back to rights.

  All of that Bandar knew in the time it took him to blink in surprise. It was an old story, of course; that was why it had been preserved forever in the collective memory of humankind. What surprised him was the strength of the desire that now filled him, the powerful urge to run from here at all speed, to find the Hero and warn him. Even as he marveled at the power of the impulse, he saw that one of his hands was reaching back for the spear point while his mind was seeing a picture of the Mute breaking through the four men, slashing as he ran.

  Then the whole situation became academic. The Toady was shouldered aside by the Bully. The last Bandar saw was the smirk on the thick lips and the smug satisfaction in the close-set, beer-colored eyes as the big man drove his sword through the noönaut's belly and up into his heart. The pain was like ice and fire together, and then it was gone. And so was Bandar.

  The thugs, the smithy, the town instantly ceased to be. Bandar was back once more in the luminous mist. The Multifacet regarded him placidly from the eyes of a cartoon lion.

  "You have failed," Bandar said.

  "Have we?"

  "You wanted me to be Helper to the doomed Hero, but I would not."

  A tusked demon smiled in return. "Yet you wished to."

  "I fought the urge, and prevailed."

  The demon became a saucy tomboy. "Because you knew whence it came. What will you do when its source is less obvious?"

  Bandar set his jaw. "Be as subtle as you like. I will be on guard."

  A kind-eyed saint smiled and said, "Not if you don't remember."

  As these last words were spoken, the figure dwindled rapidly, as if it rushed away from Bandar at great speed, pulling the mist twisting and roiling in its wake. The noönaut blinked and found himself reposing in the shade of the palm tree, the generic ocean rippling and whispering up the gently sloping beach and the three gamins beckoning him to pursue them. The blonde gave him her unintentional parody of a come-hither look while the red-haired one cocked one hip.

  Bandar smiled and sat up. A shadow of a thought crossed his mind. Hadn't he been thinking of something just now? He reached for the memory, but whatever it had been, it had now ebbed away. He got to his feet and chased the three giggling idiomats out into the waves where, as always, the sequence faded and a new dream took its place.

  In the morning, Bandar formally resigned from the Institute for Historical Inquiry and caught the noon jitney to the balloon tram station at Binch. He would return to Olkney and take up a position with his Uncle Fley, who operated a housewares business in which there had long been a standing offer of a junior executive post for Bandar, Fley having no heirs of his own.

  It was with a mix of feelings that Bandar watched the ground fall away as the tram car ascended high above the tracks. He saw, far off, the Institute's grounds, the neat cloisters and formal gardens, the grand old halls and the students' cottages, and a tear came to his eye. But then he turned his mind resolutely toward the future: Uncle Fley, though only a commerciant, was a man of integrity and quiet accomplishment. He struggled against the vicissitudes of existence with courage and without complaint.

  There was a nobility in the simple life, even a kind of heroism, Bandar told himself. He experienced a gentle urge to stand by his uncle, to be of help.

  Shadow Man

  For as long as he could remember, Damien Bonnespine knew somebody was there, watching him.

  Not all the time. There were long spells between the moments when he would feel the shiver across his shoulders that made his neck hairs stand up. But eventually it would happen again and he'd know they were back. Then for the next few minutes he'd feel them watching him.

  He couldn't see them, and he always thought of them as a crowd of shadow men—no faces, no details, just vague silhouettes with shaded eyes turned his way. When he was little it had creeped him out, but nothing bad ever came of it. He didn't feel threatened, just watched.

  When he was nine he told the mom. She gave him the same scared but careful look he already recognized, even back then, as a signal that some of the thoughts that slowly bubbled up to break at the surface of his mind were best kept unsaid. Thoughts about pain and how animals squirmed and yelped when things happened to them. How interesting it would be to know if people squirmed and yelped like that.

  When Damien was fifteen, the mom found the cat trap and the stuff he kept in a box way back in the crawl space under the house. She took him to a doctor. There were machines and needles and stupid pictures he had to look at and talk about, but some of the doctor's other pictures were way cool—dead people, and some who were not dead yet, but were opened up like the cats,
showing slick red meat and yellowy bones.

  One time, while he was looking at the pictures and talking about them, he felt the familiar chill across his shoulders and the tickle of hairs lifting. The doctor must have seen something in Damien's face because he said, "What are you thinking now?"

  Damien told him. The man made notes on his pad and asked a lot more questions. "Were there voices? Do the voices want you to do things?"

  Damien said there were no voices but he didn't think the doctor believed him. They made him take pills that filled his head with cold, silent noise. He couldn't think and sometimes when he tried to talk the words got lost for a while. He stopped going to school but the mom got him lessons from the school board to do at home and a computer that connected to a tutor. But one day he was so interested in a picture he had found on the Internet that he didn't hear her come in until she was looking over his shoulder. She took the machine away.

  Now, at eighteen, Damien Bonnespine used the public library's computers to look at pictures. His interest had broadened and he read about interesting people: Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, Frank Spisak. He was living in an abandoned butcher's shop near the cement plant. Some other kids slept in the rooms upstairs but they let Damien have the downstairs all to himself. He had stopped taking the pills and now his head was hot and busy again.

  It was morning and Damien was thinking about the new girl who had come back to the squat with the others yesterday. She was only thirteen and her button nose and slanted, almond-shaped eyes reminded him of a cat. He was sitting on the old counter top, the wood scarred with cuts and scratches, letting his thoughts circle the girl when he felt the familiar shivery prickle.

  He paid no attention, concentrated on the pictures in his head. Then he caught a flutter of motion to one side. He didn't turn toward it, just let his head drift a little in that direction until, from the corner of his eye, he saw the shadow man.

  It was like seeing something on tv when thunderstorms screwed up the reception: a man shape, dark but without detail of features or clothing, speckled with dots that flickered and flashed. Damien turned his head an inch more and saw that the staticky man was not watching him now. He was bent over, poking at something where his waist would be.

  The years of catching cats had made Damien very fast. He set himself, inhaled a long, deep breath—then, as he let it out, he threw himself from the counter top and crossed the room with one long stride and a flying leap.

  His outstretched hands sank into the dots and sparks and met cloth-covered flesh beneath. The man squawked and tried to pull free but Damien yanked the shadow man toward him while shooting his head forward like a striking snake so that his forehead connected hard where the watcher's face should be. He felt bone snap and heard a gargly yelp.

  The man was not big but Damien was. He lifted the watcher off his feet and slammed him against the door of the long-gone butcher's walk-in cooler, did it again and again until the body flopped loose in his grip.

  He let it slide to the floor. It was still flickering and winking but that was the only movement. Damien reached into the static and felt around the waist where the man had been poking. He found a belt with a row of studs on it, traced his fingers along its length to a clasp. He undid the fastener and pulled the belt free.

  Now his hand was encased in a blur of light and dark. Damien felt for the studs, pressed them singly and in combinations, but the effect didn't change. Then the belt gave a hiss that became a hum that grew louder before it abruptly stopped. The sparks and shadows disappeared and Damien could see his hand again. It was holding a strip of metallic fabric set with a panel of buttons. From the panel came a smell of fire and ozone.

  Damien poked at the controls some more but the thing was dead. He turned his attention back to its owner and saw a small man with a sharp-featured face that put Damien in mind of a ferret. He had been pretty bald for someone so young but Damien could tell from the interesting angle of his neck that he wouldn't have to worry about getting any older.

  The body was wearing a one-piece jumpsuit with a peculiar fastening system down the front. There were pockets but nothing interesting in them. Tied to one wrist by a looped cord was a small, flat oblong of metal about half the size of a cigarette pack.

  Damien freed the object and examined it. He identified what looked to be a lens and next to it a pinpoint microphone. There were controls etched into the side and the upper surface. He touched them. At first nothing happened, then suddenly a screen appeared in the air, crowded with symbols and icons. There was writing, too, but Damien couldn't read it. It looked vaguely Chinese.

  Damien reached out a finger to one of the icons. Dozens of thumbnail images flooded the scene, and when he touched one of the miniatures it expanded to fill the viewing space and the figures in it began to move.

  Damien recognized the scene: the attic in Gacy's house. He'd seen a tv movie about it but they hadn't shown anything interesting. But now, as he watched, he understood. This wasn't a movie. This was real.

  He found how to minimize the image and touched another of the main screen's icons. He watched, fascinated, for a few moments. That was Dahmer's kitchen. There he was at the stove, humming. Another selection and Damien was watching Bundy creeping into a darkened bedroom. Then a man he didn't recognize, in a city where the cars flew, and another in some place where the sky was red.

  He ran through the entire menu, sampling, mentally marking the ones he wanted to come back to first. Until an image brought a sharp intake of breath: the cramped space beneath his mother's house, a figure lit by a flashlight kneeling in the back corner, putting on his heavy gloves to lift a spitting, struggling tabby out of the trap.

  He watched his juvenile self, reliving the memory. Then he canceled the image and chose another: looking at the pictures in the doctor's office; then the time with the stray mongrel and the propane torch.

  But there were pictures he didn't remember, couldn't have remembered. They showed a Damien grown into his twenties, into his thirties, showed him in places he'd never been, with people he hadn't met yet.

  He turned his eyes from the screen and regarded the body slumped against the grimy wall. Damien had never known what people meant when they said they regretted things they'd done. Now he almost understood.

  He wished he could talk to the man. They had had a lot in common. As he dragged him into the cooler, Damien felt that it had been—he sought for the right word, then found it—an unfortunate way to treat his first fan.

  He turned back to the images of the future Damien, watched the way he did things, how he controlled the situations. He thought again about the girl with the cat's eyes and began to make some mental notes.

  The Devil You Don't

  The frantic sparks fly up into the November night like lost souls seeking safe harbor who, finding none, extinguish themselves against the unheeding darkness. Or so I might write it if ever I should put pen to paper to tell this tale. But I shall not.

  The fire itself is confined by the blackened steel barrel. I poke again with the gardener's fork and another flurry of sparks shoots up, and with them scraps of burning paper. By the flickering light of the flames I can sometimes see a printed word or two before they are consumed: Alamein, Rommel, Singapore, Yalta.

  The books are thick. They will take time to burn but I have learned patience. I have always taken the longer view. Perhaps it is a sense of history. Perhaps it is just how I am formed. But, in the arena of public life, he who takes the longer view must win out in the end.

  The gardener has left in heaps his cullings from the bygone summer's flower beds. I gather another armful of dried stalks and withered blossoms and throw them onto the flames. The flare of light illuminates the disturbed earth that the gardener turned over this afternoon and the pile of red bricks that have lain here much longer—more than a year since I abandoned building a wall to take Mr. Chamberlain's reluctant call.

  First Lord of the Admiralty, then. Prime Mi
nister now. It was what I had always wanted, I will admit, though I would have preferred its arrival under less perilous circumstances.

  The books are burning well. I leave them and kneel beside the wall. The cement with which to mix the mortar is just where I left it and there is water at hand. I lay a red, fired brick atop the black soil, trowel its side with mortar then place a second beside it.

  Another pass with the trowel, then another brick. The work proceeds as it always did, a step at a time. That is how walls are built. As are lives. And futures.

  The man appeared from thin air. I wanted to think he had stepped out of the darkness but the space behind him was well lit by the lights of Chartwell's great house, my house. I had not been here since the start of the war.

  "Please don't be alarmed," he said.

  "I am alarmed," I said. "My visitors usually make less startling entrances, and then only when invited."