The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  “I took care not to be,” Imbry said.

  Taggar’s eyes went to the book tucked under the fat man’s arm. His curiosity only partly satisfied, he dismissed the question Imbry thought he was about to ask and said, “You must leave here. That investigator has been back. There was a confrontation with the young arbiter that Decider Brosch left here. Breeth is now lurking by the bridge, watching for you.”

  “I came another way.”

  “Good. Now come with me.” He went toward the tent opening, extinguishing the light.

  “Wait,” said Imbry. “Does he mean to arrest me for Tuchol’s murder?”

  “No,” said Taggar from the darkness. “Now that they have examined the corpse, it seems clear that he fell from a great height.”

  “Then what does Breeth want?”

  The big man was silent.

  “You must tell me,” Imbry said. “Does he intend me harm?”

  Taggar’s voice was strained. “It is an intimate matter. Not something one discusses with . . . an acquaintance.”

  “Is it sex?” Imbry said. He had been on worlds that had developed odd prohibitions against natural appetites.

  “What?” said the other man, surprise evident in his tone. “No, no. It has to do with his . . . That is, he has conceived a . . .” He was silent for a moment, then said, “There is no time for this. Come with me, quietly.”

  Imbry followed him out of the tent, ducking through the half-open flap. “I need to know,” he said. “At least tell me if I am in danger.”

  Taggar had him by the arm, hurrying him toward where the animals were tethered. Imbry noticed that the big man felt no need to place the thickness of a glove between them. “It would just be . . . bad,” Taggar said, after a moment, “if you and the investigator remained in proximity.”

  “Bad for whom?”

  A sigh. “Just bad. Now, here we are. Get aboard.”

  They were under the trees near the picket line. It was too dark to see anything other than deeper shades of blackness. Imbry heard the whuffle of a barbarel and the creak of harness. He groped with his free hand and the dark spot in front of him became the side of a wagon—no, he realized, as his hand moved over leather, a carriage of some kind. He found a metal step set in wood and, with a boost from Taggar, put his foot into it and climbed to a padded seat covered by a rough cloth.

  “Go,” the big man said.

  Somebody was seated next to Imbry. He felt motion and heard the slap of reins on thick skin. The vehicle lurched forward on well-oiled wheels, with barely a creak of its springs. They were headed away from town. Beyond the trees they came almost immediately to dry ground, but the carriage wheels were muffled in some softer material and made almost as little noise of passage as the barbarel’s padded feet.

  Out in the open, they were still in darkness, but there was enough light left in the upper air for Imbry to see that someone walked at the animal’s head, guiding their way. They were following a narrow track, a little lighter than the gray of the desert that surrounded them. Imbry spoke softly to the unseen person on the seat beside him, “Where—”

  “Shh!” was the immediate response.

  They continued to walk on in near silence for some time. At first the ground was level, but then it began to rise and fall. They were climbing and descending slopes too small to be called hills. When they had been up and down several times, the person in front let go of the harness and, still walking along beside the barbarel’s head, ignited a hand-held lumen, its beam focused on the way ahead.

  They walked on. All Imbry could see of the one leading them was a silhouette. By size and shape, he must be an Ideal and a male. But the illumination also reflected a little off the ground, casting back the faintest glow—light enough for Imbry to see, by his peripheral vision, that the person beside him on the carriage seat was small in stature. But he could make out almost no features, and after a moment he realized that was because his companion was covered in fur. “Shan-Pei?” he said.

  But the juggler did not answer. Instead, the person who led them along the path spoke: “We do not speak now.”

  The voice was deep, full of solemn authority. Imbry recognized it instantly. Superior Arbiter Brosch, stone-faced priest or judge in whatever cult or code the Ideals of Pilger’s Corners followed, was leading them out into the desert.

  Based on what he had so far encountered on Fulda, Luff Imbry had little doubt that whatever awaited him would not be to his liking.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Fulda rotated on its axis somewhat more quickly than Old Earth did, Imbry was coming to believe. This, coupled with the light-holding quality of the higher atmosphere, meant that true night tended to be short—at least in the tiny part of the planet he had so far seen. They had not been traveling too long when the first pale intimations of dawn appeared in the upper air. Within a short time after, the landscape began to reform itself in shades of gray.

  “May we speak now?” Imbry said. He had several questions he wished to put.

  “No,” was the response from the elder who continued to lead the barbarel along the rudimentary path, though he had extinguished the hand lumen. Shan-Pei held the reins though there was no need. Imbry noted that she wore gloves, the garments looking incongruous against her natural fur covering. There was also a cloth spread over the padded seat and another on which their sandaled feet rested.

  With no other occupation available to him, Imbry examined their surroundings as they became increasingly visible. There was little enough to see. They had not trended downward toward the low desert where Imbry had first been deposited on Fulda. Instead, they were generally climbing a long, though gently inclined, slope leading them higher into the great dry plateau in which Pilger’s Corners was the first town beyond the pass from the lowlands. Imbry tried to imagine how the terrain would look from above, and it seemed to him that it would resemble a continental shelf between a continent and the deeper sea, though with all the water removed.

  There was no vegetation to be seen in any direction. The carriage creaked ever higher up the slope, until the sun was past the midpoint of its rise to the zenith. The day grew hot, but not unbearable. Eventually, they came to a broad terrace that extended a great distance to either side of their path. The flat land stretched before them toward the far distance, where a high escarpment rose more sharply than the gentle slope they had just climbed.

  They continued forward at a walking pace, the arbiter as apparently tireless as the barbarel. As the carriage rolled on, an object appeared in the distance and gradually resolved itself into a simple stone hut shaped like a beehive. The trail led to it and stopped, as did the carriage when they reached it.

  There was no oasis here, no sign of life at all. Nor any water, although outside the hut was a trough gouged from the rock. The elder went to the rear of the carriage and came back with a large bottle whose contents sloshed. He poured its contents into the trough. The barbarel moved forward of its own accord and began to drink.

  The old man turned to the two in the carriage. “Get down,” he said.

  Shan-Pei and Imbry did as they were bid. Imbry peeked inside the hut, saw its interior dimly illuminated by beams of sunlight that passed through chinks in the walls. The rocks of which the structure was built were horizontally striated, he noted. On Old Earth, that would be a sign that they had been formed from sediments laid down on the bottom of a sea. It must have been a very old sea, he thought. But the issue on his mind was a much more recent geologic event.

  “Decider, I have several questions,” Imbry said. “Have we finally reached an appropriate time to ask them?”

  “I will tell you what you need to know.” The gray-haired man went to a shelf on the back of the carriage and unloaded some twine-wrapped bundles that had been lashed there. These he set beside the entrance to the hut and went back for more, saying, “Take these inside, if you are able.”

  Imbry hoisted one of the bundles and took it into the hut. The pain in h
is ribs was lessening, he noted gratefully. Inside was a floor of swept earth on which stood a rough sleeping pallet and a low wooden stool. Some bowls and a pitcher were stored on a small table whose top was of unvarnished planks that had weathered gray with age.

  “What is this place? Why are we here?” Imbry said.

  “One of you must watch while the other sleeps,” said the elder, bringing the last two bundles from the carriage and setting them down. “If you see anyone coming, you”—he pointed first at Imbry, then at where the land rose again at the distant end of the terrace—“must go that way and hide in the indigene ruins. Do not come back until you see that whoever comes has gone away again.”

  “When you say ‘someone,’” Imbry said, “you mean Breeth, the provost’s man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why does he pursue me? I thought I had been cleared of implication in the death of Tuchol.”

  “It is not that,” said the arbiter.

  “Then what is it, Decider? What have I done?”

  A look passed briefly over the elder’s impassive face. Imbry wasn’t sure if it was fear or some milder form of concern. “I cannot tell you,” the Fuldan said.

  “Why not?”

  “And you must not ask.”

  “I will ask. If necessary, I will go and ask Breeth.”

  This time he provoked real alarm in the elder. “You must not have anything to do with him. It is outside the procedures.”

  “How long am I to sit here and hide?” Imbry said. “What is to become of me?” The arbiter’s mouth twisted, a reaction that Imbry read as that of a man having to deal with uncertainty for the first time in many years. He pressed his advantage. “You know that I am on this planet unwillingly, having been kidnapped by criminals and abandoned here. The man who was the agent of the kidnappers has been killed, likely murdered to prevent his telling me who did this to me.”

  He paused to let the elder respond, but the man said nothing. Still, the man looked even more uncomfortable. Imbry continued, “Whatever danger I may be in from Investigator Breeth, I am first the victim of someone who does not flinch from murder. Someone who has a spaceship that may be in orbit above us, watching me until his plans have matured. I have to consider my life to be under threat.”

  The information apparently added to the old man’s concerns. He looked up at the sky for a moment, then knitted his heavy brows in thought. “Shvarden is coming out to guard you,” he said, “as soon as he is sure Investigator Breeth is not watching.”

  “Is Shvarden the young man who accompanied you earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he be armed?”

  A moment passed while the arbiter made his decision. “No.”

  “But is he capable?”

  No hesitation this time. “Yes.”

  “Again,” Imbry said, remembering to add the man’s honorific, “Decider, for how long must I remain here? It was my intent to contact the authorities and begin procedures to arrange for my return to Old Earth.”

  “You have contacted the ‘authorities,’” the old man said. “The Arbitration is the body charged with governing the community of the Ideals.”

  “Then what will the Arbitration do for me, Decider? I cannot be the first off-worlder stranded here. If you will let me, I can probably adapt one of your communication devices to call down a spaceship. Would you allow me to do so? And will you protect me”—he glanced up—“in the meantime?”

  He saw that thoughts were passing through the elder’s mind, but the man’s answer left him with doubts that the black-hat intended to make Imbry privy to them.

  “You will be protected. You must be protected, until we know . . .”

  Imbry recognized that whatever the old man was leaving unspoken would remain as such. He had stepped into some situation that was of importance to the Ideals, and not something to be casually spoken to an outsider. “At least,” Imbry said, “give me some indication as to when this whatever it is that you don’t want to tell me about will be over. I wish to go home.”

  The elder was probably seldom questioned, and almost certainly never by an irregular, Imbry thought. But whatever was going on, it was unusual enough to cause the black-hat to ignore social protocols. “I have already sent to my superiors. I have asked them to empower me to deal with the matter. I believe they will grant my request. But in the meantime, you must be kept away from Investigator Breeth. His response to your presence has been . . .”

  “Irregular?” Imbry said.

  “And more than that.”

  “But you can’t tell me more?”

  The old man looked off into the distance, then turned back to Imbry. “I cannot give you information that may distort the . . . determination of your status. I can tell you that it will not take more than two days for the proper authority to decide if I will be empowered to resolve your . . . situation.”

  “And in the meantime,” Imbry said, “you have to keep me safe from Breeth, because he might ruin whatever it is you’re trying to determine?”

  “Exactly,” said the elder. “I’m glad you understand.”

  “I understand nothing, Decider, except that I have been deprived of my liberty.”

  The old man’s face grew stony again. “There are more important issues than your liberty,” he said.

  “Not to me,” said Imbry, “and certainly not on the basis of what I’ve so far been told.”

  “Two days,” said the elder. “Then we may be able to address your concerns. If you are not . . .”

  “Dead?”

  Imbry heard impatience put a snap in the Fuldan’s voice. “You will not be dead.”

  Imbry looked up at the sky then back to the old man. “I hope not.”

  The elder turned to where Shan-Pei stood beside the door of the hut. She saw that she had his attention and bowed her head. Imbry noted that she had taken the supplies that had come with them into the little building, and that the cloths that had covered the carriage’s seat and footrest were neatly folded in her gloved hands. The barbarel had finished its drink and was munching on something in its feedbag.

  “Shvarden will be here no later than the evening,” the elder said. He went to the carriage and took hold of a corner of the coarse cloth that covered the seat, tugging it free and letting it fall to the ground. Then he climbed in. “Be vigilant until then, and all will be well.”

  Imbry looked at the desolation about him. “Your definition of ‘all’ and ‘well’ may differ from mine,” he said.

  The Ideal looked as if he might say something, but after a moment’s inspection of Imbry, he slapped the reins against the barbarel’s rump then pulled them to point the animal back the way they had come. The fat man watched him depart then turned to Shan-Pei.

  “What can you tell me?” he said.

  She spread her fur-backed hands in a universal gesture. “We are not told anything other than what we have to do in the ‘delvings.’”

  “And what do you have to do?”

  “We perform. They watch us. The arbiters watch the watchers. They look for signs of some kind. We don’t know what those signs might be because we are forbidden to look anywhere but up.”

  “And after? In the back rooms?”

  Again the gesture. “We are presented to the chosen ones. We sit on the stools. Then they touch us.”

  “Is it sex?”

  Shan-Pei’s expressions were difficult to read because of the fur that covered her face, but Imbry saw that he had said something ridiculous. “Sometimes,” she said, “they shake and make strange noises. Sometimes they speak, but the words are not connected, or they are of an unknown tongue. Malweer calls it ‘mere babble’ but I do not know.”

  “And the tiles with strange characters on them?”

  “Sometimes while they touch us, they will point to a tile and tell the black hats that they see this or that symbol.” She touched her head. “In here.”

  “And then?”

  He was b
ecoming less than fond of her spreading-of-the-hands gesture. “We are sent to our quarters and the chosen ones go with the arbiters.”

  “They never explain?”

  “We are irregulars. We are owed no explanations.” She looked down at her hands, turned them so he could see the pink, naked palms. “Malweer says that if it were not for the delvings, they would not let us live past birth. I think he is right. Nobody talks about it, but I think that was how it used to be.”

  Imbry wished he had spoken more with Malweer. Or that the stick-thin man had been sent out here instead of the girl. But that might have been no accident. They had put him with the least knowledgeable, least curious member of the troupe, because there were things they did not want him to know. “What is this place?” he said, indicating the hut.

  “Sometimes, one of us is taken out to be left alone for a day or two,” she said. “They call it ‘settling.’ Then an arbiter brings out a chosen one for a delving. I think it has to do with removing distractions, but it has not happened to me before.”

  “Are they sending someone out to . . . touch you?”

  “No. This is just pretend so they can hide you from the provost’s man. He has become ‘attached’ to you without going through the proper procedure.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  The hands opened again. “We’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re already irregular. Anything we do that is even more out of the ordinary makes them angry.”

  “It’s not good to make them angry,” Imbry said, pressing a hand to his sore ribs.