The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  “Understood,” said the carry-all.

  “Thank you,” said Imbry. “And you will leave me the communicator?”

  “When you’ve done what is required of you,” said Shvarden.

  Shabaqua was a substantial oasis far out in the southern desert, uninhabited since the clitch miners had moved on. A couple of the utilitarian buildings Imbry had first encountered when Tuchol had brought him down to Fulda stood beneath the greig trees. Farther out in the waste was a large indigene structure, and beside it another one of the circular, shallowly conical depressions that had once held a great gray lens.

  It was late in the day when the carry-all brought them over the ruin. “We will see what is beneath the circle,” said Shvarden, “now, before the light goes.”

  Imbry was tired and hungry. They had paused only once on the day-long trip, at another remote water hole. There had been berries to pick and not-quite-ripe greig fruits that had caused his belly to rumble all afternoon. But the sooner this business was done, the sooner he could get back to his life. He acquiesced with good grace to the arbiter’s agenda.

  Again, as soon as he stood upon it, the oval at the center of the depression began to sink into the ground. Again, Imbry found himself in a dim space with a circular pool and an object which must be what he was supposed to find. It looked to him at first as a bundle of long, pale-colored sticks. They turned out to be made of the same ceramic-like material as the matrix of small rods he had found at Naicam, each almost as thick as his plump wrist. But when he attempted to pull one from the pile, it resisted. The poles were all connected to each other by pivots and rivets of the same hard stuff, and now he could see that there was more to the arrangement: at one end of the bundle were curved lengths of the same stuff, grooved on their inner surfaces.

  “It’s a larger version of the framework we found at Naicam,” he called to Shvarden and Breeth, whose heads poked down from the world above. “Too heavy for me to carry.”

  A moment later, Breeth jumped lightly down into the underground chamber, then Shvarden followed. The two Ideals looked hesitantly about, like young black-hats at their first visit to an important shrine, but Imbry broke the mood by briskly issuing orders. “Decider, you take that end, and Investigator, you take the middle. I will bring up the rear.”

  The bundle was heavy but manageable. They maneuvered until Shvarden was under the hole in the ceiling, then the arbiter carefully elevated his forward end while Imbry lowered the back end to the gritty floor, Breeth providing muscle to the common effort. When the upper end was through the hole, the arbiter scrambled up and between the two below and the one above, they lifted their burden into the light just as the sun set.

  “Let us put it on the ground, outside the circle,” Shvarden said. They did so, then the arbiter studied it and said to Imbry, “It looks to me like a larger version of the jointed matrix you found at Naicam.”

  “My impression, too,” said the fat man. “What is the material it is made of?”

  “I don’t know,” said Shvarden.

  Nor did Breeth. “But if it is meant to contain a lens of clitch,” said Breeth, “the lens would be big enough to fit this circle.”

  “Bigger,” said Shvarden, and the other two agreed that he was probably right.

  “Let us put it in the vehicle,” Imbry said.

  Shvarden called it over and had it lower its tailgate. “All together now,” the arbiter said, stooping and seizing the bundle.

  “Wait,” said Imbry. To the integrator, he said, “Have you any portable obviators?”

  “In the compartment behind the seat.”

  A short while later, the obviators attached and activated, the new find was lowered easily onto the bed of the carry-all. The bundled rods filled the width of the space and hung out over the open end. The vehicle extended flexible cords from its inner sides and snugged the load safely down.

  Shvarden watched the proceedings with interest. “Are such devices common where you come from?” he asked the fat man.

  “Yes. They are used all over The Spray.”

  The arbiter looked mildly puzzled. “They would be useful here, too. I wonder what the Blessed Founder had against them.”

  It seemed to Imbry that this was an inappropriate time, and the arbiter and investigator an inappropriate audience, for him to voice his opinion that Haldeyn had been an insane charismatic. “Perhaps,” he said, “it was an oversight during the rush to leave the Pit and get your ancestors established on Fulda.”

  The notion of his revered leader being capable of even a mild form of error was novel to Shvarden. But rather than explore the implications, Imbry moved the conversation to a new topic. “Should we stay here tonight, or press on to Omphal?”

  “Can the vehicle navigate in darkness?” Shvarden asked.

  “Yes, but we would not get much rest. If, as I suspect, at Omphal we will have to fit a large lens of clitch into today’s find, even with gravity obviators, it would be better to arrive fresh.” Imbry paused to think then said, “On the other hand, I am still concerned about the possibility of armed provost’s men waiting for us when we arrive.”

  Shvarden waved the issue aside. “Decider Brosch will tell them nothing.” Breeth supported the arbiter’s view. He seemed to Imbry to have become cheerfully complacent now that he had shifted his frame of reference one hundred and eighty degrees.

  The fat man made a noncommittal sound and imitated one of the arbiter’s shrugs. “Very well,” he said. “I would rather sleep lying down indoors than sitting up in the air, especially in an uncanopied carry-all. Let us gather some fruits and make a meal.”

  The greig tree fruits were ripe at Shabaqua, their amber flesh full of the musty sweetness for which they were prized. Imbry asked the Fuldans if they could remember the names of the berries on the fronds that grew beneath the trees. “They’re just called berries,” said Breeth. “Are there other kinds where you come from?”

  “A few,” he said, then suggested they gather dead stalks and branches and kindle a fire. The warmth of the Fuldan night made a blaze unnecessary, but the fat man said it would add cheer to the occasion.

  The carry-all’s tool compartment provided an igniter. When they had dined, they sat around the fire and stared into the flames in the old dawn-time way, each pursuing his own thoughts. Imbry recollected something from the expedition below ground.

  “Did either of you,” he asked the Ideals, “look into the shaft near where we found the rods?” Imbry had not thought to do so.

  “I did,” said Shvarden.

  “Did you see water in it?”

  “Yes, now that you mention it.”

  “How far down?”

  “Not far,” said the arbiter. “Perhaps as far down as the height of one of these trees.”

  “Curious,” said Imbry. “In the place where I found the First Eye, the shaft was dry. At Naicam, I could see water far down. Here we have water almost to the top.”

  “What does it signify?” said Shvarden.

  “I don’t know. Does the water table normally rise and fall?”

  Both Fuldans answered with shrugs. Breeth said, “It doesn’t matter. Soon comes the Renewal. What happens on this world afterwards will not concern us.”

  “The irregulars will still be here,” said Imbry, “unless you plan to take them with you to Perfection.”

  This time, both Ideals responded with amusement. “What would be the point of that?” Shvarden said.

  The exchange tipped the two Ideals into another discussion of the anticipated delights of their soon-to-be new home. Imbry rose and walked away into the darkness under the greig trees. Certain aspects of the situation were beginning to puzzle him. He had been comfortable with the assumption that the first two objects he had found had been planted by the partisans of the Renewal. Clitch was rare, but a small lens of it could have been surreptitiously planted at the place where he had found the First Eye, as could the framework of rods he had found at Naicam. />
  But could the big artifact he had found today have been created and transported to Shabaqua in secret? And by a College of Arbiters that relied on horse-drawn transport? Even more difficult to fit into the explanation was the fact that Shvarden, an educated man of his culture, did not recognize the substance from which the rods were made. Imbry could understand the man’s not knowing about obviators and self-cognizant devices; Fulda was a world that had been deliberately pared down to simplicity by its founder. But although the arbiter wouldn’t recognize many of the sophisticated materials to be found in bewildering variety up and down The Spray, the stuff from which the rods were fashioned must have come from Fulda. It was hard and strong, and therefore would have several potential uses on a world that had no timber except the greig trees. It ought to have come before the arbiter’s eyes before now.

  Another thought occurred. This whole process of Finding was moving at an ease and speed that seemed remarkably convenient. Just when it was needed, an off-world vehicle complete with lifting devices appears on a world that does not know of them. But, surely the carry-all’s involvement was fortuitous. It was a result of somebody on Old Earth deciding to play a mean, even potentially lethal, prank on one Luff Imbry.

  Yet here Imbry was, with a vehicle and associated tools, just when they were most convenient. It had to be coincidence, but Imbry was as familiar as any educated Old Earther in the mathematical discipline called consistencies, which explained the hidden structures that underlay the universe’s seeming randomness. This situation did not fit the way things were known to be organized. Some part of the puzzle, some very essential part, had not yet shown itself.

  For a moment he wondered if the Blessed Haldeyn, far from having died and sent his elements back into the flux and churn of the phenomenal universe, had indeed translated himself to some more sublime plane, from where he maneuvered and manipulated those left behind to fulfill Idealism’s great purpose.

  He entertained the thought for a few moments. He knew that other dimensions existed; everyone learned in school about the Nine Planes. But they also learned that only one of them—this one—was hospitable to humans. In the distant past, efforts had been made to visit the other dimensions, in physical or facsimile form. The end was always madness or psychic disintegration, followed soon by death, unless death arrived even before the madness could set in.

  Imbry put aside these thoughts. It did not matter to him what the forces might be that were causing his situation to evolve. It mattered only that it should come to the fruition he desired: Luff Imbry on a ship bound for Old Earth, where he would find out whom he had to settle accounts with—a Finding much more to his taste—and then settle them in a manner as ingenious as it would be thorough. And memorable: throughout the Olkney halfworld, hardened operators would feel their neck hairs lifting as they spoke in whispers of what Imbry had done to the one who wronged him.

  These were more pleasant thoughts. They sustained Imbry as he made his way to one of the flat-roofed buildings behind the greig trees, where he found a cot and slept the night away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Omphal had been a substantial settlement in the mining era, Shvarden had told Imbry as they made their way there. It was well north, and somewhat to the east, of Shabaqua. That put it closer to the Ideal towns and hamlets, but both Ideals assured him again that there was no need for concern. Even if Brosch was inveigled into telling their destination, Breeth said there was no hope that their rollers could cover the distance in time.

  “They called it ‘the navel of the world,’” said the arbiter, returning to the original subject as they flew toward the last node on the spiral map, “for obvious reasons.”

  “Which were?” Imbry said.

  “One, that it is the lowest place on the planet. Two, it is surrounded by a circular geological feature. The miners said it was probably a meteor that fell from the sky and struck the desert, long ago. Strange energies are said to permeate the area.”

  “My grandfather told me once,” Breeth put in, “that it was full of clitch sites. Circle after circle, but no indigene ruins. They must have been a curious race.”

  “Are no traces of them found?” Imbry said. “Besides the ruins and the circles?”

  “Not a one,” said the investigator. “No roads, no evidence of agriculture, no tombs or mausoleums, no artifacts to puzzle over.”

  “And no indication what happened to them?”

  Shvarden said, “It was theorized that they had all left the world long before humans came. Do you know of non-human species out there among the Pit worlds?”

  “I have encountered some.”

  “Perhaps one of them came from here.”

  “They might all be dead by now. Or perhaps they passed on to their own Perfection.”

  “Perfection,” said Shvarden, “is for Ideals.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Imbry. “I keep forgetting.”

  “They could have gone anywhere or nowhere,” said Breeth. “Who knows what would motivate a two-headed insect with a hundred legs?”

  Imbry raised his brows. “Is that how they were described?”

  “No one knows what they might have looked like.”

  Imbry said, “My impression is that they were marine creatures.”

  Shvarden laughed. “On a desert planet?”

  “The drying up of their world would have been a strong inducement for a sea-dwelling species to pack up and go.”

  “It does not matter,” Breeth said. “Soon comes the Renewal . . .” He paused and then continued with a note of wonder in his voice. “It’s hard to believe, but it might be today. This day, we might be in Perfection.”

  Shvarden laughed again, but this time not in mockery. “Perfection,” he said. “Think of it.”

  Again came the enthusiastic speculations, from which Imbry was precluded. He sat between them on the carry-all’s wide bench-seat while they leaned forward to speak past him. He would have been happier traveling in the cargo bay, but the rods left no room.

  Near midday they saw another oasis and set down to make another meal of greig tree fruit and berries. Imbry found a pitcher in the one-roomed building that stood in the shade of the trees and went to get water. As he approached the pool, he experienced a sudden, strong desire for a mug of good, hot punge. He could almost taste the beverage in the back of his throat, then the longing passed away. But as he stooped to fill the vessel, he noticed that the surface of the water was alive with tiny ripples, as if something vibrated in its depths.

  Peculiar, he thought, I wonder if the place is geologically active. He meant to ask Breeth and Shvarden, who were putting together the rest of their midday meal, but by the time he got there his thoughts had again returned to punge.

  Some time later, after another long flight in the carry-all—this time with Imbry seated on one side of the common seat so that the Ideals could sit with their heads together and delight themselves in pleasant conjectures about Perfection—Shvarden said, “There it is.”

  In the distance, Imbry saw a ridge of land breaking up the flat line of the northern horizon. As they flew on, the elevation grew more substantial, and he could see that it was indeed a great circle of sharply risen rock, the first feature he had seen on Fulda that was not gradual and gentle. At Imbry’s request, Shvarden ordered the vehicle to go higher so that the fat man could have a fuller view. The thick, moist atmosphere made viewing anything at a distance more difficult than it would have been on most planets, but as they neared their destination, Imbry could make out a huge crater, dotted with small circles—he realized they only seemed small because of the scale of the enclosing landform—that once would have been filled with greasy, gray lenses. At the center of the crater was a gradually sloped depression, also perfectly round, with a more steeply sided central core whose bottom lay in shadow.

  “I understand,” he said, “why the miners called it the ‘navel of the world.’ From space, it must look much like one.”

  “I
ntegrator,” Shvarden said, “angle down to the central depression and land beside it.”

  “Understood,” said the carry-all. It began its descent.

  “Wait,” said Imbry. “Go higher.”

  “Should I?” said the device.

  Shvarden looked at Imbry. “What is it?”

  “To the north,” the fat man said, “just above the horizon. Something is moving.”

  “Go up again,” the arbiter told the vehicle.

  “And use your distance percepts,” Imbry said.

  “Yes, do that,” Shvarden said.

  “Integrator,” Imbry said, “can you make a screen to show us what that object is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do as he says,” Shvarden told it. A note of concern had crept into his voice.

  A screen appeared in the air before them. Centered in it was a pale oblong.

  “Magnify,” Imbry said.

  The image swelled in size, its outline and surface details made uncertain by the thickness of the humid air through which the light traveled. “Compensate for atmospheric distortion,” Imbry said, and the image immediately sharpened. The screen showed a much larger version of the carry-all. It looked to Imbry like a massive transporter designed for airlifting heavy cargoes at moderate speeds.

  “What is that?” Imbry asked Shvarden.

  “I have never seen one, but I have seen pictures. They were left by the miners at a place called Fosh, far off. They had a spaceport there, back in the long ago.”

  A second transporter now came into view behind the first. “I am being hailed,” said the carry-all. “A man who identifies himself as Overcommander Chope orders me to fly toward him. He is aboard the first transporter.”

  “Ignore him,” said Shvarden. “He has no authority.”

  “He says he does. He says further that there has been a change of governance on Fulda and that the Provosts Corps, in which he is a high-ranking officer, is now in charge.”

  “Impossible!” said Shvarden. “The Arbitration is supreme. It is, as the Blessed Founder said, the soul of the Ideals, the Provosts Corps its hands. Can the hands rule the soul?”