The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  In the former category, a client who purchased an expensive item from Imbry, only to discover that he had been passed a hoop-de-hoop would have the motive. Many collectors were also so wealthy as to inhibit them from developing mildness of character. They also had the means to carry out the plot in which Imbry was embroiled. But selling forgeries was a lesser part of Imbry’s work; mostly he dealt in the theft of valuables and in the selling-on of valuables that others had stolen and turned over to him for disposal at a commission. And he was certain that he had never used Barlo Krim to pass on a fake. The Krims were honest thieves and fences, with no liking for the hoop-de-hoop trade—that was why Imbry had not doubted that the knuckle-knackers Barlo had offered were genuine.

  He turned now to associates and competitors. In that category he must necessarily be less than certain; he knew of three practitioners who also used Barlo Krim. If Imbry knew that Krim worked for the three, it was not unreasonable to assume that the three knew that Krim worked for Imbry.

  He considered the three practitioners, each in turn. Least likely to be the source of Imbry’s troubles was Popul Deep. A longstanding fixture of the Olkney halfworld, the old man was a veteran receiver and passer-on of stolen goods. But he had no eye for artworks, and dealt mainly in rare essences, precious gems, and objects whose owners kept them hidden because exposing them to the public gaze might cause embarrassments. Deep would usually acquire these latter objects under contract from their owners’ rivals, but was known to sell them back to the original possessor if he or she was the most successful bidder. None of these affairs had any relation, however, to Imbry. He and the old man might be likened to predators at the tops of separate food chains. Removing the fat man from the criminal ecology would bring no benefit to Deep.

  Next on the list was Tamarac Firzanian, a specialist in the theft of houses and all their contents. The methods by which he pulled off his coups had been a closely guarded secret of the Firzanian clan over many generations. Imbry surmised that the business must involve tunneling, gravity obviators, and a powerful and sophisticated method for concealing the whereabouts of the stolen premises.

  Imbry had had dealings with the present Firzanian, and with his uncle Barsheezh, whose retirement had elevated Tamarac to the head of the family. Sometimes, the victim of the theft was unable to meet the price for the return of the goods, and the contents of the house were sold off in lots or as individual items. Imbry had purchased some fine pieces at Firzanian auctions. At the last sale—Tamarac’s first solo event—Imbry had paid well under market for an engraved Nineteenth Aeon carboy whose worth the Firzanian valuers had misjudged.

  Old Barsheezh would have punished the errant valuer and written off the loss as one of the vagaries of commerce. Young Tamarac was of a touchier disposition, or so Imbry had heard—he did not yet know him well. It was possible that being taken by Imbry on one of his first operations had rankled the new head of the clan. If so, the Firzanians certainly had the means to have him kidnapped and dropped on Fulda. But doing so would have meant departing widely from the family’s traditional way of settling scores: the miscreant was partially skinned in hand-width bands starting at the toes and extending all the way to the crown of the head, creating an effect known as a “Firzanian Parfait” that, though not always fatal, was indelibly memorable not only for the recipient but for any who encountered him as the years wore on.

  The third candidate was Ayalenya Chadderdan, and on her Imbry now focused his thoughts. Chadderdan was an up-and-coming dealer in much the same goods that were at the heart of Imbry’s practice: rare and ancient artworks, most of them genuine, a few of them spurious. But like Imbry, she would not have used Barlo Krim for offloading a hoop-de-hoop.

  Imbry had encountered Ayalenya Chadderdan twice at Bolly’s Snug, where they both did business in a similar manner and with similar—sometimes the same—clients. He had received the clear impression that she considered herself his competitor and wanted others to consider her his eventual successor. So she had the motive and the connection to Krim, who had middled for her at least once that Imbry had come to hear of. Whether she had the means, and whether she had the brashness to make such a play this early in her career, Imbry could not say for sure. He wished he had paid more attention to her and to what he had chanced to hear of her. But he had not seen her as a real threat, she being young and, he thought, still busy finding her feet in the halfworld. He had even thought that, somewhere down the road, he might approach her with a hint that he might be willing to form a mutually beneficial association. There was ample scope for two skilled practitioners, and sometimes synergies brought cumulative benefits.

  As for Krim himself, Imbry was inclined to hold no grudge. Even criminals had families, else there would be no new generation, and the halfworld would become a dwindling passle of purloiners, cake-fakers, and pouch-ticklers, waiting for death or decrepitude, whichever arrived first. The fat man could not expect the middler to place Imbry’s comfort over the health of Ildefons and Mull. Restored to his haunts, as he definitely meant to be, Imbry would exact no harsh retribution. He would merely level a stinging fine. The Krims would negotiate the amount—assuming that Barlo had survived the encounter on the seawall. If not, the clan might join Imbry in an effort to find the culprit.

  The roller was now climbing the last slight slope in the series of dips that lay before Pilger’s Corners. The town was in slumber, only its scattering of street lumens dispelling the darkness. Imbry saw the tents of the Hedevan Players go by to his left without a glimmer; then they were across the waste ground and rolling over the bridge that led into the street that would bring them to the wide square across which the Arbitration and the provost station faced each other.

  Imbry readied himself. When they arrived at the station, he meant to roll backwards off the carriage seat, kick free the cloth-over-wicker frame that separated the passenger compartment from the shelf where poor Shan-Pei lay. Even with his wrists pinioned, he could scramble somehow over her shrouded body and run across the square toward the arbitration. He meant to do so shouting at the limit of his lungs the name of Superior Arbiter Brosch.

  Someone would open a window to see what all the commotion was, and that would at least add a witness to Imbry’s arrival in the investigator’s custody. With any luck, the arbiters themselves would come out and take a hand in the proceedings. And once Shvarden was able to raise the issue of the Finder and the First Eye, Imbry’s situation would likely become more fluid.

  The roller grumbled over the cobblestones, heading toward the square, the barbarel plodding wearily behind. Two lumens were attached to the wall above the station’s door. Good, Imbry thought, I’ll be visible to any watcher. And bad, because Breeth will have a clear shot. He intended to run in a zigzag pattern. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his calves, ready for the moment of action. That would be when the roller turned into the alley that ran down the side of the station to the walled yard at the building’s rear.

  But when the vehicle reached the turning place, the dynamic changed. Out of the station’s front door stepped an older man in a brown, wide-brimmed hat and baldric, both of them adorned by a single, broad circle of yellow metal. Right behind him came Superior Arbiter Brosch, then a gaggle of attendant brown- and black-hats. The older provost’s man beckoned Breeth to continue toward where they stood in the overlapping pools of light from the double lumens. Against that glow was outlined the silhouette of the investigator in the front seat of the roller, and Imbry saw Breeth’s shoulder’s slump and a brief, angry shake of his head.

  As the roller stopped before the station door, the brown-hat with the broad gold circle said, “Investigator Breeth, why is that arbiter under restraint?”

  Breeth did not descend from the vehicle. “I found him in improper conjunction with an irregular suspected of two murders.”

  Brosch spoke. “It is not for the Provost’s Corps to decide what is proper or improper for an arbiter.”

  But somethin
g had changed. Breeth was not cowed. “He is part of a plot to mislead the people. That one”—he gestured with a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Imbry—“has fabricated a so-called ‘First Eye’ that he claims to have found out in the barrens. The arbiter has let his airy dreams mislead him,”—a crowd had begun to gather in the square, and now Breeth’s voice grew louder—“unless he has knowingly colluded along with his oddy friend.”

  Shvarden shouted something in protest but Brosch’s deeper voice overrode him. “Colluded? Make yourself plain, Investigator.”

  “A plot to fool the people, to make us all over into oddy-lovers. It’s what the College of Arbiters have been after for years—”

  “Enough,” said the senior provost’s man. The crowd was growing restless. Imbry heard voices raised in contention. Someone pushed someone else. He heard a grunt of pain and a growl of anger. The provost’s officer raised his voice. “Go to your homes. Leave this to us.”

  “Let the arbiter go!” someone shouted.

  “No! Incarcerate him!” said another voice.

  “Shame!” cried another.

  Someone started to chant. “Oddies out! Oddies out!”

  A knot of struggling men formed around the place in the crowd where the shouts had come from. The senior brown-hat spoke to the provost’s men around the station door. They began to move toward the crowd, hands spread as if to push the people back. But other members of the Corps were now coming out of the station, lengths of polished wood in their hands.

  “Stop!” cried Superior Arbiter Brosch, in a voice that echoed off the Arbitration across the square. “This is not how brothers and sisters resolve disputes! Go to your homes. Commander Tenton and I will decide what is right. The matter is complex, but we will find the right way.”

  Imbry saw the elder arbiter give the provost officer a look that said, “If you’re wise, you’ll show them a common front.” The inchoate fight in the crowd had stopped when Brosch began to speak, but people were still coming to see what was going on in the square. If the crowd grew any bigger and another brawl started, it would be more than the provost’s men could handle, batons or no batons.

  Commander Tenton saw wisdom. “Decider Brosch is right,” he said, pitching his voice to carry to the rear of the mass of people. “There is no need for conflict here. We are all good Ideals. The Corps and the College have always worked for the welfare of all. Let us do our jobs and we will make a joint statement tomorrow at the midday pause.”

  Now the provost’s men and the junior arbiters jointly moved forward—the former leaving their batons stacked beside the station door—and urged the crowd to disperse and to leave the square. Tensions dissipated. What had almost been a mob became couples and trios of ordinary citizens heading in different directions.

  Commander Tenton looked at Breeth and then at his prisoners. “Take the restraint off the arbiter,” he said, “and bring them both inside. We have some questions that need to be answered.”

  “I have not yet seen evidence that a crime has been committed,” said Brosch. “It might be better to talk in the Arbitration.” But then Breeth, with a look of almost insolent triumph on his nondescript face, came from behind the carriage carrying the shroud-wrapped body of Shan-Pei.

  “Tell me, Decider,” he said, “can you see this?”

  “Death and mystery,” said Shvarden.

  “Inside,” said Brosch. His face, though it was the same face they all wore, somehow grew longer.

  Gloved hands gripped Imbry and he was manhandled down from the carriage seat. The Ideals who took charge of him looked to share the same anger and contempt as Breeth. He did not think they would be among the first to acknowledge him as the mystic linchpin of Fulda’s new spiritual order, whatever shape it might take. He assumed the submissive posture Taggar had shown him and let himself be taken inside.

  “What is your name?” said the senior provost’s man.

  “Luff Imbry.”

  “Luffimbry? That is an unusual name.”

  Imbry repeated his name, pronouncing it clearly. “It is two names.”

  Commander Tenton gave him a sharp look. Imbry remembered to lower his gaze. “Why would you have two names?”

  “It is common where I come from.”

  “And that is?”

  “The city of Olkney, on Old Earth.”

  Now his interrogator’s look suggested the man was trying to decide whether he was dealing with a person of diminished capacity or a sly trickster. Imbry said, “I am neither an oddy nor a contriver. As I told Investigator Breeth, I was kidnapped on Old Earth, brought to your world, and abandoned here. The man who conducted the kidnapping was subsequently murdered. I believe he was taken up in the carry-all that belonged to the spaceship and thrown down from a great height.”

  The commander looked to Breeth. The investigator said, “That was his story.”

  “Did it fit the evidence?”

  Breeth’s face darkened. “The man is grossly irregular!” he said. “Just look at him! You’re not going to get truth out of a thing like that!”

  “Unless,” said Brosch, “you beat it out of him?”

  Breeth’s head snapped around. He glared at the senior arbiter, half rising from the chair on which he was sitting. But the commander snapped his name and the investigator subsided. They were all seated in a small office, just Imbry, Breeth, Tenton, and the two arbiters, with the senior provost’s man behind a commandeered desk and the other four in a row of chairs in front of him.

  “Uka!” Tenton called. Immediately, the door of the office opened and the provost’s man who had accompanied Breeth to arrest Imbry and Shvarden stepped in and assumed a rigid posture. “The first irregular who was killed, were his injuries consistent with being thrown from a great height?”

  The provost’s man’s gaze unconsciously flicked toward Breeth and the commander slammed his palm on the desk top. “Eyes front! Answer!”

  “I . . . I think so, Commander,” Uka said. “I have never seen such injuries.”

  “Was there much blood?”

  “Yes, sir. And brains and innards, too.”

  “Did the irregular you arrested have any blood or other bodily fluids on him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He could have washed,” said Breeth.

  “No,” said Brosch. “We had the full story from the leader of the company. That is why Investigator Breeth had to release this man. By then, the investigator had already abused the prisoner.”

  Tenton asked Uka, “Did you witness Investigator Breeth abusing the suspect?”

  “No, sir.”

  Brosch made a sound, but Tenton cut him off. “Did you see evidence on the suspect of abuse?” Uka ground his teeth. “Speak, man!” the commander said.

  “Those bruises,” the provost’s man said.

  “Stand up,” the commander told Imbry. He did as he was bid. The bruises on his sides were mottled purple and yellow. “Did he,” Tenton asked Uka, “have those bruises when he was brought into the station?”

  “No.”

  Tenton looked at Breeth. “Explain.”

  “He was insolent,” said Breeth, but his tone was more truculent than defiant. “He showed no sense of propriety, just sat there looking around as if he owned the place.”

  “Exactly,” said Brosch, “like someone from another world.”

  Tenton’s eyes flicked from the arbiter to Imbry. “Sit down,” he told the fat man. To Uka he said, “Have you examined the second dead irregular?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Indeterminate. No wounds or breakages. Can’t see bruises unless we shave her.”

  “Anything unusual?”

  Uka thought for a moment, then said, “Her body was very cold, colder than the air. And the veins in her eyeballs were ruptured.”

  “That is unusual,” Tenton said. “The veins could have been ruptured during asphyxiation. Any damage to her throat, evidence of ligature?�
�

  “No, sir. Her larynx was not crushed. But she was delicately made. If she’d been strangled, I would have expected some damage there.”

  “May I speak?” Imbry said.

  Tenton looked at him sourly. After a moment, he said, “Speak.”

  “I have not examined the body,” Imbry said, “but the cold and the damage to the eyes are consistent with her having been taken up to the high atmosphere without a pressure suit.”

  “You’ve seen that, have you?” said the commander.

  “No, sir, but I have heard of it from persons whose livelihoods involve space travel.”

  Breeth wanted to say something, but Tenton cut him off. He addressed Uka again. “Was there any evidence to suggest that this man had any connection with her death?”

  The provost’s man frowned. “They left town together.”

  “And with me,” said Brosch. “Am I also a suspect?”

  Shvarden spoke now. “The girl was all right when I saw her. Imbry had already gone to hide in the indigene ruins. I left her alive and well and went to find him. He was a considerable distance in the opposite direction from where the provost’s men found her body. And he was trapped in a hole in the ground. I had to help him get out.”

  “I saw none of this,” Breeth said. But Tenton’s questioning established that Shan-Pei’s body had been found on the trail between Pilger’s Corners and the hut, and closer to the town than to the refuge.

  “Are you accusing the arbiter of lying?” the commander asked the investigator. “If so, what is his motive?”

  “This fat oddy has tricked a naive young man into believing that he is their so-called Finder, and that the piece of gimcrack we took off them is the ‘First Eye.’” He pronounced the last two words with mocking reverence.

  “Where is this gimcrack?” said the commander.

  “In the evidence room,” said Uka.

  “Bring it.”

  A few moments later, the flattened cube of ceramic stood on the desk. Tenton rotated it carefully, examining all sides. “It looks old,” he said. “And the figures on the sides and top are like those on the tablets arbiters show to visionaries.”