The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  “I’m not aware that there ever was one,” said the thin man. “There was no settlement until the clitch miners came, and they were interested only in taking the clitch and selling it off-world.”

  “What is clitch?”

  “I saw a piece once,” Malweer said. “It looked greasy.”

  “Greasy?”

  “Like a greasy rock. Doesn’t matter; it’s all long gone now.”

  “The indigenes?” Imbry said. “What happened to them?”

  “No one knows,” said Malweer. “They left no records that could be identified. At least not until the tablets showed up.”

  “Tablets?”

  “For the Renewal.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Imbry.

  Malweer drained his ale, then held the container over his open mouth to allow the last few drops to fall onto his tongue. He belched and when he spoke again, Imbry realized that the thin man was one of those whom strong drink bowled over quite quickly. “Doesn’t matter,” Malweer said. “Doesn’t have anything to do with us.” He belched again. “Except when it does.”

  The man blinked sleepily and looked around for more ale.

  Taggar spoke. “We don’t concern ourselves with such things.” Imbry realized that the others around the table were showing discomfort at his questioning of the thin man.

  “What do you mean, ‘such things’?” Imbry said, but the muscular man waved away the question with an expression that said the inquiry bordered on the unseemly.

  “Does everyone on Old Dirt ask so many questions?” Ebblin said.

  “Some do,” said Imbry. “Tastes vary.” That innocuous observation caused the Fuldans even more disquietude. He saw Ebblin mouth to herself the last two words he had spoken as if it was the most outlandish remark she had ever heard.

  At that moment, Imbry experienced an instance of the abrupt mental dislocation that often struck those who traveled widely among the Ten Thousand Worlds. He had heard it called the “bump” or the “dissonance” and had encountered it himself more than once. It was the psychic shock suffered by a human being from one world who suddenly became aware that the person from some other world with whom he was innocently interacting possessed a radically, perhaps chillingly, different mindscape.

  The two might be chance-met in a tavern. They would fall into innocuous chat about inconsequential matters, each convinced by the other’s views on the weather or the quality of the beer that they are like-minded in all that matters. Until one of them offers an offhand comment about the tedium involved in having to sell his surplus offspring, or enthuses salaciously about next week’s public evisceration of a malefactor whose crime turns out to be something like scratching a buttock within ten paces of the portrait of a local saint.

  An icy frisson passes through the stranger. He holds himself perfectly still, though his eyes dart about, alarmed. Shadows seem to gather about him. All at once it seems perfectly possible, even likely, that the bland couple sitting at an adjacent table or the idlers in the street outside might without warning show fangs and unsheathe claws, leap upon the hapless visitor, and turn an until-now pleasant excursion into an impromptu abattoir.

  Some travelers who experienced the bump returned immediately to the spaceport to take ship for home, never to venture off-world again. Most recovered from the shock and counted it an opportunity for learning or an inducement toward philosophical speculation. A few became addicted to the shivery sense of dislocation and deliberately sought it out, even provocatively; these sometimes came to bad ends. Imbry used the recommended approach: he advanced the conversation to safer ground by suggesting that the Fuldans choose the topic.

  The members of the troupe seemed glad to move toward firmer ground. Malweer speculated boozily as to whether the long-gone indigenes had actually been seeking to achieve the conditions that prevailed on Fulda: the thick atmosphere maintained an even, constant temperature throughout the day and across the calendar.

  “It seems a sensible strategy,” said Taggar. “The present arrangement of the climate offers no unsettling extremes or sudden shifts. It is equilibrium, harmony, moderation.”

  Luff Imbry, whose character and career were both entwined with the pursuit of the rare and special, would have presented a counterargument, if it had not been only moments since he had experienced the chill of the bump. Instead, he folded his fleshy hands across his naked belly and moved his head in an expression of polite acknowledgement of a telling point and waited to hear what others might say. The consensus of opinion was that the mellow sameness of Fulda’s climate was one of the planet’s chiefest jewels; it must have been the indigenes’ intent.

  “Then why did they not stay around to enjoy it?” said Wintle.

  “You are presupposing that, having created a perfect world, they then left it behind?” said Taggar.

  The odd-faced youth gestured to the landscape in general. “They were not here when the miners arrived. They left ruins, but no mass graves.”

  “We know nothing of their funerary customs,” said Taggar. “Perhaps they consumed their dead relatives. Perhaps they incinerated them and spread the ashes widely.” He reached down and took a pinch of dry soil from between his feet and let it drift away on the quiet breeze. “There,” he said, “there goes the last of the indigenes.”

  “Or, perhaps,” said the woman with the infant hand, “having achieved a wondrously moderate world, they came to see themselves as an excrescence to its perfection. Saddened, they built ships and left.”

  “Or died, romantically and en masse, all at one appointed hour,” said Ebblin, a wistful look upon her diminutive face.

  “Or,” said Malweer, boozily, having used the time when others were talking to drink more ale, “perhaps they crossed over to Perfection, where they’re waiting for the Ideals to join them.”

  Imbry wanted to ask what Perfection was, but from the reaction of the others, he saw that the skeletal man had said something grossly improper. Taggar put the bung back in his cask of ale and bore it back to the wagon from which it had come. Ebblin took charge of Malweer, leading him stumbling toward one of the tents. The others rose and began to clean up the remains of supper and set out preparations for tomorrow’s breakfast.

  No one assigned Imbry a chore and their routine was so well organized that his attempt to join in only slowed the proceedings. He got out of their way. But his attention was drawn to Tuchol, who had taken no part in the conversation. The half-sized man, having eaten what was set before him, had risen from the communal table during the talk and walked to the other side of the oasis’s pool. There he sat on a bench made from three slabs of stone, his back to the rest of the company. He sat as if in thought, though Imbry saw his head tilt toward the sky from time to time.

  Imbry had been wanting a further private word with his kidnapper. This seemed an opportune moment. He now made a show of stretching and yawning, a man at leisure and with no immediate agenda, and sauntered in the opposite direction that Tuchol had taken, though his path would inevitably bring him around the pool to the spot where the little man sat. But he had taken only half a dozen steps when he felt a large hand descend decisively onto his shoulder and turn him half around.

  “I’ve told Tuchol to keep a distance between you,” said Taggar. “Now I’m telling you.”

  Imbry saw no point in dissembling. “There are things I need to ask him.”

  “You heard his story.”

  “There may be more to it than what he told us.”

  Taggar conceded the point, but said, “Tomorrow we will reach Pilger’s Corners. There is a Corps of Provosts station there. If you lay an information, Tuchol will have a harder time avoiding Investigator Breeth’s questions than yours.”

  “That depends on how I ask him,” said Imbry.

  “No,” said Taggar, the set of his face adding the information that the matter was decided, while inquiring if Imbry intended to dispute his ruling.

  “What if he leaves us at this
Pilger’s Corners?”

  “Why would he do that? He’s much better off with the troupe.”

  “He may not see it that way.”

  “The answer is still no,” said the company leader. “We have only each other and our parts to play. We divide at our peril.”

  “Very well, ‘no’ it is,” said the fat man. “In this Pilger’s Corners, would there be a communications nexus? Could I send a message off-world?”

  “Perhaps,” said the troupe leader. “You would have to ask at the Arbitration.” Then he turned and clapped his hands. “Sleeping pavilions,” he called. “Early start in the morning.”

  The troupe moved with practiced efficiency to draw poles and bundles of felt from two of the wagons. In less time than Imbry would have expected, two roomy tents had been erected, lanterns lit, and sleeping pallets laid out. The cooking and eating gear was cleaned and readied for use in the morning.

  The Old Earther was kept occupied doing his share under the guidance of one or the other of the troupe, though never Tuchol. By the time the camp was ready for sleep, full dark had fallen. No moon rose—the planet had no companion—nor did many stars appear in the thickly veiled sky, and none of them were familiar to Imbry. Twilight lasted longer than on Old Earth, but once darkness had set in, it was far deeper than a resident of a sleepless city like Olkney was used to. The night seemed to press in more closely.

  Imbry went into the tent designated for the male members of the company and sat upon the pallet Taggar pointed out to him. It was next to one of the pegged-down walls, and the fat man noted that the company leader’s own pallet was positioned next to Imbry’s. The fat man would have to crawl over Taggar to leave his sleeping position if he should decide to visit Tuchol—against the tent’s far wall—while the troupe slept. The look that Taggar gave him as he settled himself on the sleeping pad told Imbry that the dispositions were not random.

  No covers were supplied, or needed, the temperature remaining constant. Malweer was already snoring. Taggar was last to lie down, first extinguishing the lantern that hung from a hook attached to the central pole. The tent was briefly full of the rustles and small sounds of a group of men settling for the night. Imbry laid his head upon the pallet’s pillow and composed himself. It was odd not to have the services of a bed to ease him into slumber, but he knew that if he let his mind wander he would soon cross the unposted border into sleep.

  The pallet was hard, though. A thought occurred to him and he asked Taggar, “There are cots in the buildings. We slept on cots at the other oasis.”

  The bigger man sighed. “Don’t make trouble,” he said. “Now sleep.”

  Dawn was as slow a process as twilight had been. Imbry awoke in the crepuscular gray light. He lay for a moment, listening to snores and someone’s dream mumblings, gathering his thoughts. Then he sat up. Taggar, Malweer, and Wintle slept on their pallets, the youth murmuring into his pillow. But Tuchol’s place was vacant.

  Imbry listened for the sound of footsteps, but heard only the sounds from within the tent. With a smoothness and silence that belied his bulk, he rose to his feet and stepped over Taggar. A moment later he was outside in the warm air. The sun was still below the horizon, but the sky was filling with light. No activity showed from within the women’s tent. The oasis was still except for the slight motions of the greig trees. Of Tuchol there was no sign.

  The air had stayed too warm overnight to have precipitated much of a dew, but here and there tiny beads of moisture clung to the grass—enough to show where a single set of footsteps led from the men’s tent around the pool and toward the farther edge of the green space. Imbry hesitated a moment, weighing the pros and cons of waking Taggar, then decided to go on his own.

  He followed Tuchol’s trail, past the bench where the little man had sat, glancing up at the sky, the night before. The grass extended a short distance farther, to the fringe of berry-bearing plants beyond which was hard and stony soil. Imbry passed through the fronds. The bare ground was flat here for a few dozen paces, then the slope of the hill began.

  At the foot of the incline lay Tuchol, facedown, limbs contorted into odd angles that ought to have been too uncomfortable to maintain. But the half-sized man was beyond discomfort, his neck set at an impossible angle and the ground around him soaked in a wide pool of blood and other fluids.

  Imbry approached the edge of the dampness. Before he could examine the scene as closely as he intended, he felt the familiar weight of a large hand on his shoulder again, and Taggar’s harsh voice said, “What have you done?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Taggar had some means of long-distance communications. After he put Imbry back in the tent and told Malweer to keep an eye on him, he donned a pair of gloves and went to one of the flat-roofed buildings. The Old Earther could hear him conducting a one-sided conversation, but couldn’t make out the words. Afterward, the big man came back into the tent and said, “They’re sending a roller. It won’t take long.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Imbry said. He turned up the soles of his sandals, one at a time, and said, “The blood had pooled all around, but there’s not a drop on me. Besides, I didn’t have time. He looked as if he’s been dead for a while.”

  “How come you know how dead people look after a while?” Malweer said, his long face drawn longer by skepticism.

  “I have lived an eventful life,” said Imbry.

  The thin man went out and came back a few moments later. “He’s stiff,” he said. “I think that means he’s been dead longer than a few minutes.”

  “I believe he was taken up in an aircraft and dropped from a great height,” Imbry said. “The same aircraft that brought us down from a spaceship.”

  “We’ve still got to let the provost’s men handle it,” Taggar said. “Right now, I don’t think we should discuss it anymore.”

  Imbry was no great admirer of police forces, but in this case he was content to wait for the authorities to arrive. He was confident that any competent investigator would soon put the picture together. Then Imbry might be able to find a way off this world and back to Old Earth—where he might indeed indulge in some homicide.

  Malweer had long since gone to help strike camp and have breakfast. He returned briefly to bring Imbry and Taggar bowls of grits and some fried bread, but otherwise the fat man and the troupe leader remained alone. Taggar declined further conversation.

  They were not too far from Pilger’s Corners, the nearest town. The roller came down the track at a far faster speed than a barbarel and wagon could have managed. Imbry heard it arrive and heard two men talking. Moments later, one of them entered the tent. He was naked save for hat, sandals, and baldric-supported side-pouch, though his were all of a uniform dark brown. Two small circles of gold cloth were affixed to the front of his hat and another two were on the strip of cloth across his chest.

  When the provost’s investigator came into the tent, Taggar rose from where he had been sitting cross-legged on the earthen floor and offered a deep bow. Imbry also rose but studied the man. His experience of policemen on several worlds under a variety of circumstances had taught him that they came in different types. A wise man adapted his conduct to the breed he was dealing with.

  When Taggar had completed his bow, he made some complicated gestures involving fingertips, chest, and brow. Then he clasped his hands before him at his waist and, with eyes downcast, he said, “Investigator Breeth. I am Taggar. I have had the honor of meeting you before.”

  Breeth scarcely glanced at him. His hazel eyes in a bland face went instead to Imbry, and the fat man thought, Oh my, I’ve drawn an angry one. They were often the hardest to deal with.

  Breeth’s expression was one of distaste struggling with outrage. Imbry saw that this was not a good time to advance a request for assistance in getting off-world. He lowered his gaze and adopted a passive aspect. The provost’s man, meanwhile, dug in his pouch and produced a pair of knitted gloves, which he pulled on with brusque gestures. Then h
e bought out a strap of hard but flexible material and told Imbry, “Turn around.” A moment later the fat man’s wrists were pinioned behind him. A second strap cinched his elbows together. Finally the man behind him slipped a cloth bag over his head, tugged it down, and tightened it at the neck by a drawstring.

  “I protest,” said Imbry. “This is—”

  The blow that struck the side of his head felt like a flat-handed slap. It made his ears ring, but not before he heard Taggar’s sharp intake of breath.

  Breeth said, “Keep your mouth shut, oddy.”

  Imbry was not struck again, but his upper arm was seized by a gloved hand and he was roughly yanked around and marched outside. He felt the warmth of sunlight on his naked skin. After a few steps, he was halted. Then the hand on his bicep became a pair, and a second pair gripped his other arm, and he was being urged to step up. He raised his foot, found some kind of step and climbed. A moment later, he was manhandled into position on a bench seat that was covered in rough cloth. He heard a whirring, then he was thrown against the seat-back as the roller moved forward. The vehicle was not enclosed; he felt the passage of air on his skin.

  For some time, the only sound was that of the vehicle’s wheels—he assumed that anything called a roller would have wheels—grinding over the rough surface of the track. The provost’s men were in front of him, but Breeth did not speak until he said, “Turn here. Take us around the back way.” Then Imbry began to hear other sounds, voices, the whispery stirrings of greig tree branches, the plop-plop of barbarel pads, and the clatter of metal-shod wheels on paving stones. The warmth of the sun was suddenly cut off while the noise from the roller increased, and he knew they had come under the shade of a wall, probably passing down an alley—Breeth’s “back way.”

  Then the vehicle turned, traveled a short distance, and halted, back in sun-warmth again. Imbry was pushed and pulled out of his seat then hustled through a doorway, turned and turned again, a seat pushed against the backs of his legs. He had to lean forward to accommodate his bound arms. The hood remained over his head.