The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  He heard a door close, a chair scrape the floor then creak as someone’s weight settled into it. The room was still. Policemen use silence as a tool, he reminded himself. He sat and waited. The quiet continued.

  Then Breeth said, “We know you killed him. The question is why?”

  “I did not kill him,” said Luff Imbry. “The question, therefore, is who did?”

  “You were known to be on bad terms—”

  “He shocked me into paralysis, kicked me—”

  Interrupting the interrogator won him another slap on the side of the head.

  “You hated him. That’s motive.”

  Imbry waited, then said, “May I speak now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am from off-world, from Old Earth. I was kidnapped and brought here by Tuchol. A certain amount of rancor is understandable.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “I admit the undeniable. But I did not kill him. Indeed, it is possible his death was accidental.”

  “His body was crushed and broken, the injuries consistent with a personage of your . . . irregular conformation having jumped up and down on him in a paroxysm of rage.” The investigator folded his arms across his bare chest. “How would you have done that accidentally?”

  Imbry sighed. “The injuries are also consistent with his having fallen from a great height. Such as from a spaceship’s carry-all. Such as the carry-all that was used to take me aboard the ship that brought us here.”

  “What ship?” said the man from the provost’s office. “Who saw this ship? What is its name?”

  “If there was no ship, how did Tuchol and I appear at the oasis where we were picked up by the troupe? We had no means of travel, yet there we were.”

  “Another troupe abandoned you there, because of the bad blood between you. Your kind can’t control your emotions. You’re shiftless, squalid, disgusting—” He broke off. “Stop wasting my time. Confess. Nobody cares about that little oddy. You won’t get more than a couple of years—”

  “I did not kill him.”

  The investigator sighed. Imbry expected another slap, but it didn’t come. The room was quiet again. The fat man imagined Breeth sitting across the table from him—there was always a table, chairs on either side. The provost’s man would be giving Imbry a look that he had seen on the faces of officers on a dozen worlds, a mixture of dislike and frustration. It said, “I know you are a criminal, and I know that you have done things for which you ought to be punished, but I do not have enough evidence to send you to . . .”

  The last word varied, depending on the philosophical underpinnings of the world in question. Sometimes it was “rehabilitation,” sometimes “incarceration,” though in some places it might be “a thorough flogging,” or even “the post.” Imbry had been threatened with “the post” on the secondary world Courmaline; he had not remained on-world long enough to discover for certain what it meant.

  “You could ask the other members of the troupe,” he told the provost’s investigator, keeping his voice mild.

  The chair scraped again and suddenly the hood was yanked away from Imbry’s face, the unloosened drawstring abrading his jaw and stinging his sore ear. Breeth threw the bag into the corner then leaned over the table, his weight propped on his wrists. “I’m asking you,” he said.

  Years before, Imbry had trained himself to notice and capture microexpressions; it was a useful skill when negotiating with people for whom honesty was a remote and foreign country. He saw an alternation of emotions on Breeth’s bland face: revulsion, contempt, anger, the standard repertoire of the frustrated homicide investigator. But there was something else, something that underlay the strong emotions and even contradicted it.

  After a moment, the analyst in the back of his mind identified it. Appetite, the fat man thought, appetite and aversion, at one and the same time, like a man who lusts after what repels him. He did not think the provost’s man desired him physically, but there was something about Imbry that caused Breeth to hunger—and something about the hunger that caused Imbry concern.

  Then he saw the investigator shake off the emotion and resume the interrogation. The same questions came again. Interrogators were trained to circle back on the line of inquiry. “You were found standing over the body. You had motive, means, opportunity,” Breeth said.

  “Taggar would have woken when I crawled over him,” Imbry said, “as indeed he did awaken. So I had no opportunity. Unless you are saying that I crawled over Taggar without waking him, stole out of the tent, and slaughtered Tuchol, who died without making a sound, then crawled back over Taggar to my pallet, again without waking him, only so that I could then crawl over him a third time, awakening him, so that he could follow me out and find me standing over the body? Wouldn’t I have been better advised to let someone else find the corpse?”

  “You went once. Taggar awoke and followed, but was too late. You had already savaged the little fellow.”

  “Without getting so much as a speck of his blood on me?”

  “There was a pool of water. You could have cleansed yourself.”

  “So I followed Tuchol, crushed and trampled him without a sound, ran to the pool, washed off the gore, then ran back to stand over him—all in the time it took Taggar to see me leaving the tent and rise and follow me.”

  The provost man’s hand slapped the table between them. “So you confess?”

  “I do not. I merely itemize the nonsense you seek to hang around my neck.”

  The investigator made a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl. He kicked back the utilitarian chair on his side of the table, stalked from the room. Left in the silence, Imbry reviewed the last few moments. There had been a disconnection between what had been happening—a standard interrogation of a suspect in a serious crime—and the emotions that kept flickering into life on the provost’s man’s nondescript face. Something was going on in the man’s psyche, Imbry was convinced, that had nothing to do with the roles of suspect and investigator.

  He remembered the word that Breeth had applied to Taggar: oddy. Obviously, it implied oddness, difference. But it was clearly also an epithet of contempt. Did that explain the investigator’s suppressed emotion? Was Breeth the kind who felt uncomfortable in the presence of persons who did not stand upon the middle rung of humanity’s ladder? Among the thousands of cultures speckled across the worlds of The Spray, there were those that valued conformity and found irregularity an affront. The Hedevan company comprised a collection of unusual shapes and characteristics. Were such people discriminated against on Fulda? Did Imbry’s heroic shape revolt the provost’s man?

  But there was nothing unusual about Taggar other than his overdeveloped physique. Indeed, now that Imbry thought about it, there was a definite resemblance between the two men. Their features were similar, though Taggar’s were heavier, the bones beneath the flesh more pronounced. But they were the same coloration—eye, hair, and skin tone—though that might be a result of the inbreeding that was to be expected on a disregarded world that lacked even a spaceport. Some similarity of type was bound to emerge over a long time.

  The door opened. Breeth came back in. Imbry readied himself for a resumption of the questioning. Instead, the investigator walked on stiff legs to where the hood lay in the corner. He took it up and, stepping behind Imbry, jammed it back down on the prisoner’s head. In the sudden darkness, Imbry heard Breeth say, “Up!” the man’s voice thick in the back of his throat.

  Imbry stood. He heard his chair clatter away across the floor. Breeth must have kicked it. He expected to be taken from the interview room and imprisoned in a cell for a while—moving the suspect around, keeping him isolated, was part of the process of reducing his sense of independence and security. The technique was intended to make the prisoner dependent on his captors, and could be effective even with a suspect who was aware of the technique.

  But Imbry was not taken to the door. Instead, he was pushed backwards until his shoulders met the w
all and his wrists were pressed against a hard object that protruded from it at waist height. He felt a tug on the restraint, then another, and found himself unable to move. Breeth had attached his wrist restraint to a ring or hook set in the interrogation room wall.

  Imbry did not care for the implications. “Listen—” he began, but got no further. A sideways blow to his ankles kicked his feet out from under him and his full weight fell upon his pinioned wrists. He cried out, as much in surprise and anger as from hurt, and immediately the familiar hard hand struck open-palmed against the side of his head. This time it drove a column of compressed air down his ear cavity and a lance of agony shot through his head.

  It was not the first time that Imbry had been beaten. In his younger years he frequently had to endure physical violence at the hands of those who had power over him. Sometimes the assaults had come from persons who possessed police credentials. Sometimes they had come from criminals who wanted something—goods, information, connections—that Imbry had and did not wish to part with. The earliest had come from fellow inmates of the school to which he had been sent at an early age after his parents died. He had learned that maintaining a stoic silence under the impact of fists and boots guaranteed that they would keep coming at him. Now, as the man behind him used his fists to strike his floating ribs, Imbry cried out at each blow.

  Eventually, the beating stopped. Imbry could hear the man’s breathing, coming harder than his exertions justified. Then the door opened and closed and he was alone again. He got his feet under him—that relieved the agony in his wrists. His ribs ached but the injury he was most concerned about was to his ear. But when he concentrated on the pain there he felt it fading. The eardrum was not ruptured.

  Even though the hood had prevented him from seeing Breeth’s face, Imbry knew that something outside of ordinary physical coercion was being directed at him. Something about him stirred Breeth to violence. He hadn’t even been asked a question. And now no kind-hearted second interrogator had come into the room to beg him to give up something, anything, that would assuage the other’s brutal rage.

  After a while, as the ache in his head subsided, he heard the door open. He braced himself, but all he felt was a neutral hand disengaging him from the hook then taking his arm and walking him through the door and a few dozen steps to where he heard the clank of a heavy door. He was maneuvered until he felt a pressure against the back of his thighs. It felt like a padded bench, and whoever had him in charge wanted him to sit on it. He did so and the restraints were removed, sending sharp pains through the blood vessels in his arms and hands as circulation was restored.

  A moment later, the hood was taken from his head, leaving him blinking in the sudden brightness of a lumen set in the ceiling of a bare cell. Already the provost’s man who had unshackled him was just a naked back retreating through the door. It closed and Imbry heard the sound of a heavy latch sliding into place.

  Imbry probed at his tender places, decided that his ribs were bruised, not broken. His ear ached and whined, but it was improving. He gave thought to the meaning of what had been done to him.

  It was possible that the investigator was merely having a frustratingly bad day. Or perhaps he had a particular dislike of the obese. More likely, though, was that the man had acted out of some motive that had to do with the Fuldan cultural dynamic. First off, throughout the arrest, transportation, interrogation, and beating, the man had worn gloves—as if the very touch of Imbry’s flesh was contaminating. And he had looked at Imbry with a peculiar blend of fascinated revulsion that was unlike any of the roles the fat man had seen police officers adopt in such situations.

  There were factors and forces in play on this world that were known to all its inhabitants—indeed, they were so obvious as to need no comment—but which were invisible to an outsider. It was thus on many worlds. Imbry would either catch on through observation, or find someone to explain it to him. His immediate concerns were more pressing, however, and he put the little mystery aside and considered the larger.

  Tuchol had given the impression that he was expecting someone to interrupt his sojourn with the troupe. Sometime while the camp slept, he had heard what he had been waiting for and had stolen out of the tent, probably by rolling silently under the felt wall that he had lain beside. Down from the sky had come the carry-all from the anonymous ship that had brought them to Fulda.

  It was remotely possible, but highly unlikely, that it had landed on Tuchol and crushed him to death. More likely, Tuchol had climbed aboard having been promised to be taken away. Imbry remembered his answer when Taggar had asked him if he was rejoining the Hedevan troupe: temporarily. But what happened next was something the half-sized man had not expected. Again, it was barely possible that he had accidentally fallen over the side of the uncanopied aircraft. Imbry discounted the likelihood on two counts: first, the little man would have had to have stood on one of the seats and leaned over the side rail; second, an integrator that operated such a vehicle would certainly notice a passenger in danger of falling out and would adjust the carry-all’s orientation accordingly while issuing a warning—unless, of course, the vehicle’s ethical constituents had been adulterated.

  There were only two likely scenarios. In both, the carry-all would have come down. Tuchol had scrambled in. It had risen high above the pass through the hills. At that point, the possibilities diverged. If there had been another person in the vehicle, he had picked up the little man and thrown him over the side. If the killer was kindhearted, he would have first rendered the half-man unconscious with the same kind of weapon Tuchol had used on Imbry. The second possibility was that the aircraft’s integrator had been suborned—it could be done; Imbry had done it—to commit the murder itself.

  The question Imbry most wanted answered was: who was on the carry-all, or if it was operating on its own, who had tampered with its integrator’s ethics? In a sense, he already knew something about that mysterious individual: he owned a spaceship; he had drugged and enslaved Tuchol and bid him snatch Imbry from the Belmain seawall. Tuchol’s murder gave credence to the story the half-man had told of being coerced into kidnapping the Old Earther. And the choice of Tuchol was not random. Whoever had stolen the little man had needed him to make sure Imbry connected with Taggar’s troupe; but once that end was achieved, he had disposed of Tuchol.

  So Luff Imbry was the focus of a person who was demonstrably ruthless. The schemer must have some end in view—it seemed unlikely that he would go to all this trouble just to cause Imbry the inconvenience and embarrassment of being inserted into a troupe of naked misfits and required to sing on whatever kind of rudimentary stage was tucked away in the wagons.

  The choice of where to put me must also be significant, he told himself. The plan had something to do with Fulda. If Imbry could work out why he was where he was—why this disregarded little planet out of all the Ten Thousand Worlds—he would be a step closer toward discovering who had put him here.

  And when he knew why and who, he would be in a position to not do whatever it was the hidden puller of strings wanted done. At that moment, blocked and frustrated, the nameless manipulator might finally step into view—and, if Luff Imbry could help it, into reach. His plump fingers stretched then closed tightly into fists as he imagined what would ensue. Then he took a controlled breath and relaxed.

  The day wore on. No one came to bring Imbry food or drink, but neither was he taken back to the interrogation room for more questioning or another beating. At some point, Imbry dozed on the bench seat but was awakened by the sound of raised voices somewhere down the corridor. He thought that one of the voices was Breeth’s. There were two others, one a baritone whose owner did most of the arguing against the investigator’s protests; the other voice was a deep bass rumble that spoke less, but with an unmistakable overtone of authority.

  The argument ended and quiet ensued until the latch of the barred door rattled. Imbry sat up and braced himself for whatever might come. But when the portal wa
s thrown wide, Taggar stood in the doorway. “The Arbitration has ordered Investigator Breeth to let you go,” he said.

  “Hurrah for the Arbitration,” said Imbry.

  “Hush yourself,” said Taggar, as if to an unruly child. “Come with me.”

  He handed Imbry his pouch and hat. The fat man’s sandals were at the end of the corridor, wrapped in rough cloth and stored in one of a wall-covering array of small boxes beside the door that led outside. “Hurry,” said Taggar. “This is not a good place to dawdle.”

  Imbry could have given him facts to back up that opinion, but instead he concentrated on strapping on his footwear. The other man pushed open the door and Imbry noticed that he, too, was wearing cloth gloves. As they stepped out into a gated courtyard where the wheeled vehicle that had brought Imbry to the station still stood, a provost’s man was approaching the door.

  Imbry’s initial, unpremeditated reaction was to flinch; he thought the approaching man was the investigator who had beaten him. The resemblance was striking: the same blandly nondescript features, the same hazel eyes and light brown complexion, the same lank brown hair. But on closer scrutiny he noticed slight differences in the bone structure of the face. Besides, this man was several years younger. He supposed there must be a family connection—a younger brother or a nephew. He noticed also that the officer’s wide-brimmed hat and baldric were bare of the circles—he assumed marks of rank—that Breeth’s bore.

  He had only been a few moments making the examination, but now Taggar was pulling Imbry’s arm, somewhat urgently, and saying in a forced whisper, “Come! What are you doing?”

  “I was just noticing how—” Imbry began, but his remark was cut off by a stronger yank on his arm, which coincided with the provost’s man’s harsh, “What do you think you’re looking at, monster?”