The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  At least, he thought, I will not starve, an observation that was underwritten by Ebblin and Wintle, who insisted that he take an extra helping when he had cleared his plate. “It can’t be easy keeping all that up,” the tiny-headed woman said, with a gesture toward his mounded middle.

  Otherwise the meal was taken in silence. When all were finished, the plates were passed to one end of the table and a carafe of punge moved in stages in the opposite direction. Only when everyone’s mug was filled did conversation begin, and Imbry was asked to tell how he came to be waiting at this oasis. He made no effort to sweeten the tale.

  “I was lured into a trap, stunned, and kidnapped by your companion,” he said, cocking one fleshy digit at where Tuchol sat at the other end of the table. “Why, I do not know, but the ship that brought us said it had been done at someone else’s bidding.”

  “Spaceships can think and talk,” Malweer put in when he saw brows wrinkling. With that fact accepted, if not digested, by the company, all eyes turned toward the half-sized man, who stared truculently at his short-fingered hands clasped around a mug of ale. After an expectant silence, Ebblin opened her mouth but Taggar forestalled her. “Tuchol,” he said, “we do not keep secrets if doing so causes disharmony in the troupe.”

  The little man looked up, met several gazes, though not Imbry’s, then looked back into his mug. “I might as well say this now,” he said. “I was given no choice. See this?” He indicated the red splotch on his sternum. “I was in a tavern in Nid, after Grayan’s last tour, when a stranger offered me a tankard of ale.”

  The tale continued: Tuchol had woken up on a spaceship, with a device glued to his body. The ship’s integrator told him that if he did not do as he was told, or if he tried to remove the object, it would detonate. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the cabin were covered by sheets of impermeable fabric—to facilitate cleaning up, he was told—and Tuchol took the situation seriously.

  “What did the man look like?” Imbry asked.

  Tuchol gave him a look that questioned the fat man’s intellect. “Like anybody,” he said. He turned to Malweer. “Do off-worlders have the power to make themselves look different?”

  The thin man knitted his brows. Imbry spoke instead. “There is such a device. It cloaks the wearer in whatever semblance he chooses.”

  Gasps went around the table. Wintle said, “You mean I could look like an—”

  But Taggar silenced him. “We need to hear what Tuchol has to say,” he said. “The harmony of the troupe is at issue.” To Tuchol, he said, “It seems to me that you owe Imbry an apology. It is not right to do a disservice to a fellow member of the company.”

  “In the first place,” said the half-sized man, “he was not a member of the company when I seized him. In the second place, he owes me an apology for involving me, who would have preferred to remain an innocent bystander, in his desperate enterprises, whatever they may be.”

  Imbry rejected both arguments as specious and began to give Tuchol a sharply pointed assessment of the little man’s character. Again, Taggar intervened. “This does not conduce to harmony,” he said, “and we have a long tour ahead of us. I will now hear pertinent comments from the generality.”

  Imbry made to speak again—his long familiarity with persons of a criminal disposition told him that Tuchol was telling only part of the truth, and not even the most important part—but the troupe leader ruled him out of order. The others spoke, each in turn, and though the phrasing was different in each case, there was but one opinion amongst them. It was most succinctly voiced by Malweer, the elongated man, who said, “However any of us came to be here, we are all here now, and with a long road ahead of us. The most productive course must be to put aside pointless regrets and recriminations, and move forward.”

  “Then that is that,” said Taggar. “Tuchol and Imbry, the company requires you to let the past lie dead behind you. Are you willing to do so?”

  The little man scowled but his hand made a motion of irritated acquiescence. Imbry was less inclined to be accommodating, but he suspected that if he did not agree, he would be left to try his luck with the oasis’s scant resources; he didn’t think the greig trees would bear fruit for quite some time. But he had one question.

  “After you shocked me with the crackler,” he said, “you kicked me. Was that part of your instructions?”

  Tuchol’s scowl deepened and he did not reply. Taggar said, “It is a valid inquiry. You must answer.”

  The half-sized man squirmed and had to be urged again. “No,” he said, at last, “I was angry at being put to so much trouble, against my will.”

  “Then you definitely owe Imbry an apology,” said Ebblin, to a general concurrence from the others around the table. Tuchol grimaced but finally offered Imbry a couple of grudging syllables, though his face belied the sentiment.

  “If you accept, we can move on,” Taggar said.

  “Then I accept,” said the fat man, “though I reserve the right to renew my grievance against Tuchol if I should ever encounter him after we both leave the company.”

  After a brief further discussion, this was judged a reasonable amendment and the matter was declared closed. Punge mugs were now drained, and the troupe rose and began to break camp in what was clearly a well-practiced routine. Imbry found himself underfoot in his efforts to help, until the odd-faced youth, Wintle, took him in hand and introduced him to the system of collection and stowage.

  “You can ride with me,” the boy said.

  “Agreed,” said Imbry, “if you will answer some questions.”

  In a very short time, the draft animals were reharnessed to the carts and the troupe mounted up. Imbry could not spring into the box as others did, but Wintle showed him how to put one foot on a wheel hub, then the other on the footing of the brake lever. With relatively slight difficulty, he managed to get aboard. The youth settled in beside him and when it came their turn to follow the wagon in front, Wintle clucked to the animal and slapped the reins down on its broad rump. With a jerk and a flick of a tufted tail, they were rolling forward.

  “Where are we bound?” Imbry asked, when the whole train was in motion.

  “For tonight,” Wintle said, “the pass between the Bredons, yonder.” He indicated with a lifting of his chin the hills to the west. “Tomorrow we will climb to the plateau beyond, and by nightfall we should be on the outskirts of Pilger’s Corners.”

  “What sort of place is Pilger’s Corners?”

  “It’s like any other place,” the youth said, and gave Imbry a milder version of the look Tuchol had given him when he’d asked what the stranger in the tavern had looked like. “That’s an odd question,” he said.

  “Why is it odd?”

  “Because places are places. Why would one be different from another?”

  “A hundred different reasons,” Imbry said. “The circumstances of its founding, the topography of the land, the tastes of the residents, the flux and churn of architectural fashion, rivalry between social leaders, contempt for the too-familiar, the evolution of civic goals—” He broke off when he saw that the youth was regarding him with consternation. “Do none of these conditions apply on Fulda?”

  “In a word,” said Wintle, “no.”

  “Property owners do not compete to outdo each other in the appearance of their establishments?”

  Imbry had to take the youth’s “What an odd notion!” as a negative reply.

  “So every town is exactly the same? The buildings, streets, amenities—all exactly alike?”

  “Some places are more populated than others,” Wintle said, “and therefore have more buildings. But a house is a house, is it not? There is an optimum size and shape, and why would anyone depart from the optimum? This was all laid down long ago by the Blessed Founder.”

  Imbry deferred a question as to who this last-named individual might be. He scratched his head under the crown of his broad hat. “All right,” he said, “suppose one family has three children an
d another has seven. Wouldn’t the larger brood need more room?”

  “Seven children would be irregular,” was the answer. “For that matter, so would three.”

  “How many children is regular?” Imbry said.

  “Two, of course,” said the youth. “One male, one female. Unless,”—and here he lowered his voice as if what was to follow was not to be spoken of too brazenly—“unless one of them is . . .”—and now his words descended into a whisper—“irregular.”

  “Irregular?” Imbry said, not quite sure he had heard the term over the rattle of the wheels and the huff-huff of the draft beast’s breathing.

  Wintle’s face reddened and he looked about as if some authority might suddenly arrive to box his ears for mischief. “Shush,” he said.

  “You haven’t encountered many off-worlders, have you?” Imbry said.

  “None,” said the boy, keeping his voice low. “Ingress is not encouraged. Off-worlders are known to be shamelessly irregular. Malweer says sometimes they come to Nid and Steyne, where the troupes rest between seasons. But they must wear those devices you talked about, because no one I’ve ever met has ever seen one.”

  “So I am . . . irregular?” Imbry said, lowering his own voice on the last word.

  Wintle’s embarrassment deepened. “Well, we all are. I mean, look at us.”

  “But it’s not something to be openly discussed?”

  The boy sighed. “It’s bad enough to be . . .”—he made a rolling-on motion with one hand—“without having to dwell on it.”

  “I see,” said Imbry. “Perhaps I should discuss this with one of the older people.”

  Relief spread across the boy’s long face. “Yes, perhaps that would be best.”

  Imbry had been intending at some point to question Wintle about his curious physiognomy, specifically why the youth preferred to go through life with pendulous jowls and earlobes, along with droopy eyes and a sloping nose that more approximated a canine muzzle than anything human. Now he put the matter aside and merely watched the arid landscape roll toward him from beneath the wheels of the wagon ahead of them.

  He wished he’d had the presence of mind to have asked the ship’s integrator to show him Hobey’s entry on Fulda. It was clearly one of those odd little worlds where the population had committed themselves to putting into practice some unusual philosophy. The minor worlds of The Spray were freckled with such places, often founded by cults and coteries of like-minded believers who had come as refugees from more cosmopolitan worlds where their peculiar slants were disrespected, if not outright opposed. Once established, the exiles would discourage contact with the wider array of humanity—as by not building a spaceport, so that they could pursue without interruption whatever notion or dogma they believed would bring them salvation or deliver them into their version of utopia.

  Imbry thought he would take up the history of Fulda with one of the adults. In the meantime, the sun angled down toward the hills, which were now appreciably closer. He could see that the track they were following led to a pass between two ridges that extended out onto the plain, like a pair of headlands enclosing an inlet of a sea. Atop one of the promontories was an outcrop of weathered stone that looked too regular to be of natural origin. It resembled a cluster of bubbles such as a child might produce by blowing on a film of soap caught in a circle, piling one orb on top of another. In places, apparently at random, the stone globules were pierced by circular holes. Imbry pointed toward it, using his chin as the youth had done, and said, “If it’s not improper to ask, are those ruins? And if so, what is their story?”

  Wintle glanced that way, unconcerned. “Leavings of the indigenes,” he said, “from long ago, even before the clitch miners came and went.” He wrinkled his brow in recollection, then said, “Malweer could tell you more than I—he reads books—but people say there was a race of ultraterrenes here, a very long time ago. Some of their ruins can still be seen, though the miners broke up most of them.”

  “Were they searching for artifacts?”

  The word meant nothing to the boy, but he answered anyway. “I think they were looking for clitch.”

  “What is clitch?” Imbry said.

  Again, he had thrown the youth into consternation. “Well, it’s . . .” Wintle hunted for a description, but did not find one. “It’s just clitch,” he finished.

  Imbry realized he should have ridden with Malweer, though the thin man had not offered him a seat. “What happened to the ultraterrenes?”

  Wintle did not know. But he insisted that neither did anyone else on Fulda. “Malweer said he’s heard somebody say that they tried to do something about water, something big. But it didn’t work. All the water got stuck in the air, and it can’t come out. So now there are only the pools down here in the desert, such as the one where we found you. Up in the high country, there is no water at all.”

  “Does Malweer say that is what caused the indigenes to die out?”

  “I think no one really knows. Maybe they just left and went somewhere else. But I know there’s nothing to see in the ruins.”

  Conversation lapsed after that exchange. There being nothing else to see beyond desert and hill, Imbry turned his attention to the contents of the wagon, visible through the opening in its cloth cover that gaped behind his seat. The vehicle was mostly filled with large bundles of felt, tightly wrapped with straps of a coarser, woven fabric.

  “Tents?” he asked Wintle.

  “Pavilions.”

  They were also Imbry’s bed for the remainder of the journey into the pass. He crawled into the shade of the wagon’s interior, made himself more comfortable than he had expected to be on the bales of fabric, and dozed until he heard the braying and stamping that announced that the caravan was coming to a halt. He alighted from the back of the vehicle to find that the stock was being unharnessed and led to another pool much like that of the first oasis, while preparations were underway for another communal meal under an almost identical stand of trees. The only difference in the scene was the setting: instead of being surrounded by flat desert, the troupe was now on a level piece of ground between two slopes. The trail also rose and fell before and behind them, and the fat man realized that they had climbed a fair distance into the pass while he had slept.

  “Can you cook?” Taggar’s voice came from behind Imbry as he watched the bustle. “You look like a man who knows his way around a kitchen.”

  “I do. I can.”

  “Then help Thelia. Wintle can help me feed the barbarels.” And thus Imbry learned the name of the animals that had pulled his weight into the hills.

  The portable kitchen was distributed between three wagons. Under the young woman’s direction, Imbry fetched and hauled, unfolded and arranged. Again, as at lunch, some of the cooking would be done on a grill set above self-igniting coals, but the setup also included an array of pots that provided their own heat, allowing the cooking to boil and simmer. Thelia introduced her new helper to a range of ingredients, most of which he recognized, and a minimal selection of spices. From these, with water hauled from the pool, he improvised a robust pottage to accompany the strips of meat that the woman tended one-handed on the grill.

  The results, accompanied by flatbreads baked in an ingenious oven, were well received by all the company, although Tuchol grimaced and offered comments apparently intended for no one but himself to hear. After taking a first mouthful, Taggar rose and left the table, returning moments later with a keg under his arm from which he poured a strong brown ale that perfectly complemented the food.

  Malweer downed half a tumbler then used the remainder to toast Imbry.

  “Takes a first-rate meal to make our leader unbung the ale before we reach Chenbo Fork,” he said. “I, for one, am glad we found you.”

  “Thelia did the meats and bread,” Imbry said.

  “We’re always glad of Thelia,” said the thin man, “but the vegetable stew won us the ale.”

  “Then I am glad to be on your good si
de,” the fat man said. “Young Wintle has been telling me that you’re the one to turn to for information on Fulda and its past.”

  Malweer had been energetically spooning up the contents of his bowl as Imbry spoke, causing the latter to wonder how such an appetite could result in so meager a frame. Now the other man paused long enough to belch before saying, “Fuldans, particularly the Ideals, never used to concern themselves with what has been, nor with what may come—though the Renewal has certainly changed that.”

  Imbry interrupted. “Ideals? Renewal?”

  “One thing at a time,” said the thin man. “As for the past, it is thought that the proper focus should be on a full appreciation of what is. I, myself, have decided that since I have clearly chosen to be a statistical anomaly in form, I might as well also be one in character. Hence, I involve myself with the past, although I trouble myself less over the future.”

  “You believe your physique to be a result of a choice you made?” Imbry said. “Prenatally, I presume?”

  “Considering the attendant difficulties,” Malweer said, “I prefer to think that it is a result of my own volition, for reasons I cannot now appreciate, rather than random chance, or worse, some unavoidable fate.” He regarded Imbry’s corpulence and said, “You may pursue a different philosophy.”

  “At the moment, I am pursuing information as to this planet’s past,” the Old Earther said. But he decided to defer asking for clarification on other issues. He was coming to see Malweer as the type to dislike interruptions, once he was launched. He let the thin one sail on.

  Fulda, he learned, was an old world. When the first locators had come this way, they had found a dried-up planet that, curiously, boasted abundant supplies of water. But most of the liquid was trapped in huge aquifers that permeated the planet’s porous crust. Another great portion was suspended in the atmosphere, which extended far higher into space than should have been possible for a world of Fulda’s size and composition.

  Malweer paused to drain his tankard of ale and pour another one. Imbry used the hiatus to ask, “What was the explanation?”