Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  Finally, the Obblob hit upon the stratagem of rescuing persons lost at sea. The first recipients of this treatment, when brought to the little islet, were no less terrified; but, lacking recourse to flight, they had to stand and accept their rescuers’ attentions, and soon found that no harm was meant. Gradually, the word spread through the marine community, and men storm swept from decks or finding their craft sinking under them would hope to see an Obblob surface near them before the sea took its price.

  “So, to the Obblob we are like those toads whose psychedynamist secretions the ancients used to crave,” Filidor said.

  Bregnat nodded, and said, “Although you will recall the unfortunate end of that mania. Someone altered the beasts’ gene plasm to grow them to the size of houses, thinking thereby to harvest prodigal quantities of the stimulating ichor. But they failed to reckon with the toad’s point of view, which is that anything smaller than itself that comes within a leap’s length is food.”

  “Indeed,” said Filidor, “did not the philosopher Efrem Demetrix called it “an incidence of dietic justice?’”

  “He may have. I never met the gentleman,” said Bregnat. “But I was trying to tell you about Gwallyn Henwaye’s enterprise, and since he looms as large and baleful above your horizon as he does above mine, it would be well for you to pay heed.”

  The undermate revealed that he had known Henwaye when the latter had signed on as a crew on a ship belonging to a freight line that shuttled from port to port between the Olkney Peninsula and the New Shore. “He was no one’s icon of a sailor,” was Bregnat’s opinion, calling the man a “flub-handed mutton-thumper who didn’t know a main fibril from a shufty-aft. Even then you could tell he was flanky, not the kind you wanted sidling up on your blind side. He jumped ship at Tiddley’s Wherry and I heard later that he had gone for a pirate on a cheap-jack coastal raider called the Flagitious.”

  But Gwallyn Henwaye’s career as a freebooter had ended when shipmates threw him to the sea’s mercy after a dispute over the dividing of spoils. A Obblob had brought him here to this island, where the sea brigand had soon smelled an unrealized potential for his own enrichment. When the Obblob at last brought him back to the mainland with a poke of gold and silver moolai that had lain ten thousand years in a sunken galleon, he used the funds to finance a return to this little dot on a blank page of sea, prepared to launch his present enterprise.

  “He came with lumber and fittings and bales of sea furze,” Bregnat said, “and he brought along Tormay Flevvel and Toutis Jorn to strengthen his powers of persuasion.”

  Henwaye had planned all. He had studied the Obblob, learning to speak enough of their booming speech to treat with them. The ultramondes had a long and cooperative relationship with an educated species of coral which constructed underwater dwellings for them. The pirate coaxed the Obblob to induce the little creatures to raise more land above the waves, and to shape these buildings, the pools and the channels that led out to sea. Then the Obblob herded in the things that lived in the pools.

  “Henwaye built a strong-doored hut,” the undermate said, “and he and his men sewed suits from furze. They built the wheels and hung them. Then they waited for the Obblob to bring folk plucked from the sea.”

  In the months since, the Obblob had delivered eight castaways. When he heard that, the solution seemed clear enough to Filidor. He said, “Then we have the numbers to overmatch them. One concerted rush, and we lay them low.”

  Bregnat sighed. “Henwaye is nobbut a puffed up crumb-filcher, but he is long-headed with it. He has thought his plans through to the branching of every fractal, and takes pains to ensure that no more than one or two of us are free of our wheels or the strong hut at the same time. Any hint of trouble, and he cuts off our water.”

  Filidor put his mind to the problem. “What of the Obblob?” he wondered. “They do not mean us harm. Could they be induced to take our side?”

  Bregnat shook his head, although he allowed of the possibility. He had seen the ultramondes when Henwaye had rung the bell that summoned them. They came to collect the liquid pressed from the suits, bringing Henwaye precious things plucked from the sea bed. “Mayhap they are not as joyful as they used to, though gauging the mood of an Obblob is like trying to read the thoughts of rocks. It could be that the flavor or potency of the essences is affected by a sense of injustice among the producers.”

  Filidor would have heard more, but at that moment Henwaye and his two henchmen entered, bearing their plank, and soon he was walking the wheel once more, the itchy, smothering furze focusing all of his perceptions on his skin -- except for the constant awareness that to fail to keep well above the pool below would be horribly fatal.

  Before he was finished his new stint of drum treading, the pirates returned, removed Arboghast Fuleyem and took him away, then came back and put Bregnat on the wheel in his place. There were other comings and goings further down the room, but Filidor found it hard to see through the film of sweat that clouded his vision.

  He attempted to converse with Bregnat, but the exertion coupled with the rumble and squeak of the turning wheels interfered. “We’ll soon be back in the hut for the evening pot of sludge that passes for rations,” said the undermate. “We can talk then.”

  While Filidor’s feet slowly turned the wheel, his mind spun the information he had garnered since the Obblob had brought him ashore. He dismissed any thought of informing his captors of his rank and position; without plaque and sigil to confirm his protestations, they might take him to be either deluded or an exceptionally unimaginative impostor. Even if his breeding and noble deportment did manage to convince them of who he was, which his vanity encouraged him to believe was at least a small possibility, Henwaye would probably not respond by falling to his knees and begging clemency. More likely, he would see it as his safest course to feed the Archon’s nephew to one of the beasts in the pools, leaving no traces to invite inconvenient questions. Bereft of strategies, the young man finally asked himself what his uncle would advise, and decided that the dwarf’s counsel would be to say little and learn much.

  He wished he could question the integrator in his inner ear, but his attempts to speak with it brought no response. He feared that its energies had continued to dwindle until its elements became dissociated, which must be an integrator’s equivalent of death.

  At about the time that the fibers of Filidor’s legs had come to feel as if they had been replaced by stalks of overcooked vegetable, Tormay Flevvel and Toutis Jorn came and took him from the wheel. They stripped him of his sodden sweat suit and gave him a shift of coarse cloth that wore like silk after the furze. Then, positioning themselves on either side of him and taking a good grip on his arms, they walked him over to a smaller hummock of rock into which was inset a stout door of squared timbers thicker than the length of Filidor’s hand, barred by an iron bracket. This they opened, then pushed the young man within, slammed the portal shut and clamped it closed.

  Inside, the room was small, bare and ill-lit, its air rank with the smell of unwashed bodies and crushed seaweed. Six men, clothed like Filidor in soiled shifts, sat on the kelp strewn floor with their backs against the walls. All were haggard. One or two of them looked up when Filidor was thrust through the door, but their curiosity soon faded when they saw that he was just another captive.

  The young man found an empty spot against the rear wall and lowered himself on trembling legs until he was seated on the rubbery seaweed that covered the floor. The man next to him, a bluff looking sailor, gave him a weary smile and a shrug. After a while, Orton Bregnat was brought in, and he crossed the little room to sit on Filidor’s other side.

  They talked in a desultory manner, Filidor asking questions as they occurred to him and the undermate replying in a tone that bespoke fatigue and resignation. The sailor on his other side, who introduced himself as Etch Valderoyn, also offered some observations. From the two of them, the Archon�
��s apprentice learned that Henwaye had imposed a system on their labors that provided a gloss of reciprocity: the pirate doled out food and water, keeping -- or so he said -- meticulous records of each wheel walker’s consumption, then charged against these tallies the value of their output of essences. But although essences were precious, while the food was atrocious and the portions barely adequate, somehow the drum treaders never seemed to get ahead of their debts.

  “Common sense dictates that the less one consumes, the less one owes,” was Bregnat’s opinion.

  Valderoyn disagreed. “I believe none of us will earn his way from the clutches of Gwallyn Henwaye. The only exit will be into one of the pools when we are too weak to walk and can sweat no more wealth for our captors.”

  Filidor said, “But eventually someone must notice that no more rescued sailors are being brought ashore by the Obblob. Might that not spur someone to come and investigate?”

  “Unless they come in force, they will be seized by Henwaye and his gongles, and put to walking a wheel,” said the undermate. He then lapsed into a sour stupor that lasted until Flevvel and Jorn brought the evening meal. The food was as horrid as advertised: a cauldron filled with a thick paste made from something green and bitter, garnished by several small fishes that tasted as if they had already been digested. The foul mess was washed down with water which, Bregnat said, was recovered from the vats below the presses, after the essences had been culled and bottled. Knowing that nothing else would be forthcoming, Filidor ate as much as he could stomach, dipping into the common pot. He noticed that the others ate the green stuff faster than he could bring himself to swallow the rank sludge, leaving him to dine mostly on the execrable fish. He forced down three of these, and drank from the water bladder that Flevvel had said was to be his. Not knowing when more water might be brought his way, he saved some for later.

  When the pot was empty, the pirates returned and took it away. The day soon faded, and the room -- lit only by a small square window in the door -- sank into gloom. The men stretched out on the spongy weeds that covered the stone floor and let the slumber of utter exhaustion take them. Filidor followed their examples, resting his cheek on his arms. His head hummed with fatigue, his body ached, and his spirits were low. He began to sink toward a welcome oblivion.

  Hello, said the voice of the integrator in his ear.

  “You’re back,” the young man answered.

  Where are we? the voice wanted to know.

  “Let us not go through that again,” said Filidor.

  It could be important.

  “At the moment, nothing is more important than sleep,” said Filidor.

  “What are you saying?” said Bregnat, levering himself up on one arm.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Then to whom?”

  You weren’t talking to me?

  “No, I was talking to you,” said Filidor.

  That was what I thought.

  “You just said you weren’t talking to me,” said Bregnat.

  “I was talking to a voice inside my head.”

  There was just enough light to show Bregnat’s eyebrows going up and staying up. Arboghast Fuleyem, lying on his back nearby said, “And here I thought your head was completely empty.”

  “I accidentally ingested an integrator of a minuscule size, which has lodged in my inner ear,” Filidor explained.

  The integrator interrupted. Have you eaten anything unusual?

  “Unusual is the kindest word one might use,” said Filidor.

  “What’s he talking about now?” Fuleyem asked.

  “I think he’s back to chaffing with his tiny invisible friend,” said Orton Bregnat.

  “He’s a noddy, and he begins to annoy me,” said Fuleyem. He rolled over to turn his back on them.

  I want to know what you have eaten, said the integrator.

  “A handful of glutinous green stuff and some small, foul-tasting fish,” said Filidor. “Why?”

  Were the fish black with white dots on their fins?

  “They might have been before they were charred and flung into the green sludge.”

  Aha, said the voice, This is good luck. Try to eat as many of them as you can.

  It turned out that the ill-flavored fish, a bottom-feeder known as the pilkie, was one of the few natural sources of the compounds that could recharge the integrator’s emergency energy sheets, and the only one likely to be found at sea. So long as the Archon’s nephew could eat a handful or two of pilkies a day, the integrator could function briefly at full emergency power.

  Lying sore and exhausted on the hard floor of a stinking hut, the foul taste still in his mouth, Filidor found the voice’s enthusiasm irritating. “Let me understand you clearly,” he said. “You wish me to consume copious quantities of the most revolting stuff that ever assaulted my palate, so that you can interrupt my chance to sleep?”

  I might have framed the relationship in other terms, but that is essentially our situation.

  “I have an even better proposition: allow me to sleep, and I will not starve you into oblivion.”

  Your tone is caustic and your threat is undeserved. Bear in mind that I did not ask to be impounded in your head.

  “Nor did I ask to be imprisoned by pirates bent on wringing the last drop of sweat from my carcass by working me to death. Which will come sooner than later if you do not let me rest.”

  “Much sooner, if you do not let the rest of us get some sleep,” said Arboghast Fuleyem from the darkness.

  I will consider the situation, said the integrator, then added, This is not the Filidor Vesh I am accustomed to.

  Filidor’s only reply was a grunt, soon followed by a snore. Not long after, he found himself wandering through a maze of unfamiliar corridors in the Archonate palace, searching vainly for his uncle. Behind him, in a vast shadowy hall, something malign stole from pillar to pillar, always dodging out of sight when he turned to look. He came around a corner and found Faubon Bassariot seated at a table that groaned with good food and drink. Filidor rushed forward to attack the faithless functionary and seize the provender for himself, but Bassariot only smiled smugly as he and the food faded from view, leaving Filidor grasping at wisps.

  Chapter 4

  The morning brought another pot of the viridic porridge, finished off with even more of the repugnant pilkies, which Bregnat said schooled in vast shoals not far from the islet, in a stretch of shallows known as the Belly of the Bank. Filidor forced himself to eat a handful of the slimy things, until he feared that his tongue might give notice, uproot itself and find a new accommodation.

  When the eating was over, Gwallyn Henwaye appeared at the door, flanked by Tormay Flevvel and Toutis Jorn. One at a time, they took four of the strong hut’s inmates to the drums. Filidor was the last of the four. He had resolved to use his eyes constantly while outside, to look for opportunities to escape. To lengthen the time available for observation, he sought to engage Henwaye in conversation.

  “I understand you keep a tally of how much water each of us consumes, matched against a record of our output of our sweat,” he said.

  “That is so,” said Henwaye.

  “May I see my account?”

  The pirate smiled. “My system is abstruse. It would mean little to one not versed in its subtleties.”

  “I question its very foundations,” said Filidor. “Your system creates a fundamental division of labor that seems entirely arbitrary.”

  “The universe is demonstrably an arbitrary place,” said Henwaye. “Many would even say it is fickle. It ordains that some must walk the wheel, while others must keep the tally. It ignores all protests. I counsel acceptance.”

  “But there will always be a deficit between the water you provide and the sweat we produce,” said Filidor. “We daily incur further debt that can never be repaid.”


  Henwaye shrugged. “Perhaps if you worked harder and drank less.”

  Filidor tried another tack. “But surely the moisture we produce, laden with essence, is worth more than the water you give us. Accounts should be adjusted accordingly.”

  “Not so,” said Henwaye. I give you pure water, but you give it back contaminated by your essences.”

  “I would say, ‘not contaminated but ‘enriched,’” Filidor argued.

  “It is a matter of perspective. I must reckon the cost of distilling out your essences to recover my water, a cost that I alone must bear.”

  “But the essences are worth a great deal to the Obblob.”

  “True, but I am not an Obblob.”

  “There is a basic unfairness here,” said Filidor.

  “I have often pondered the question of fairness,” said the pirate, “and I have concluded that equity is not to be looked for in this life. Consider, most living creatures end their existences in the belly of another animal. A harsh fate, you may say, but if the swallow starves to spare the gnat, where then is justice?”

  “You are a philosophical sort for a pirate,” said the young man.

  “It’s a career that affords a man ample leisure. In time, for some at least, carousing loses its tang, and what is left but the life of the mind? But now you must turn to your labors.”

  They took him past the two other rock domes and he saw through their open doorways that one was a storeroom and the other the pirate’s quarters. There was no indication of any communication apparatus by which he might call for help. Pulled up on shore near the storeroom was an undecked jollyboat, the kind of craft a larger ship might lower to the water for short trips while in harbor. But it was tied, by some densely convoluted sailor’s knot, to a metal ring driven into the rock. Even if Filidor could pull free of the tight grip upon his arms, he could never get the boat loose and into the water before they caught him.