Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  Filidor took up his position at the side of the stage, partially obscured by the shadow of the overhang, and raised his mask slightly to admit the bottle of purple Pwyfus to his lips. The taste of the stuff had long since lost its slight appeal. At Flastovic’s signal, he cued the integrator, then stepped forward and delivered the first line of The Fish That Grew: “In the Marblake region of Far Forbish lived Bolsacks, a man who had always wished to catch a remarkable fish...”

  The curtain opened as he spoke, and Flastovic came into the light wearing rustic garb and a comic mask. Filidor waited until he had capered from one side of the stage to the other, the living image of a man who seeks to avoid an undesired duty. Filidor then spoke the line that introduced Bolsacks’ wife, Googiol, at which Gavne appeared, in a costume that drew maximum attention to her ampleness of femininity. She rolled her broad hips in a forthright manner and mimed a deep dissatisfaction with her husband’s intimate dimensions, as Filidor explained the nature of the discord between the spouses.

  From there, the ancient tale unwound: first Bolsacks brings home the peculiar fish, not knowing it to be a magical creature that grants wishes. He goes off to the tavern to consort with his cronies, leaving his lonely wife to express her constant wish for something to satisfy her particular need. The fish then transforms into a robust young fellow -- here one of the Florreys entered, robed, masked and extravagantly codpieced -- much to Googiol’s taste.

  Meanwhile, in the tavern, Bolsacks brags about the size of his catch and the energy of its struggles, and his wistful inflating of the creature’s dimensions and power is transmuted into reality back at his home, intensifying his wife’s experience to the point of worrisome discomfort.

  But, of course, by the time Filidor declaimed the moral of the story -- take care with your wishes, lest they come true -- things had gotten well out of hand, and the Clutterites were slapping knees and wiping tears as the curtain closed on a tableau of Bolsacks striving to disengage the miraculous catch from his pop-eyed wife. Just as the laughter began to subside, Flastovic used a sonic device to produce a loud pop! from behind the curtain, which set the audience off again.

  After a suitable lapse, Flastovic signaled Filidor to announce The Diligence of Marsill, another ancient and ribald tale refashioned by The Bard Obscure. Filidor drank more of the purple wine and spoke as the integrator dictated, telling the story of a jaded roué who vainly quests after an ultimate satisfaction, known mysteriously as the Diligence of Marsill. His quest takes him from world to world, across the Spray and even into the uncivilized worlds of the Back Yonder, until as an old man, worn out by chasing after unfulfilled expectations, he comes to Far Forbish and there finds at last the one woman in the universe who can perform the Diligence. Lengthy and detailed preparations are required, but the old man takes to them with a will. Then, just as the final arrangements are completed, and just before the Diligence can be effected, the old man expires.

  The Diligence of Marsill was one of those interminable tales known by the ancient and obscure term “shogdag,” and by its very nature it was overlong in the telling. To keep his inner voice alive, Filidor had to resort to the bottle of purple stuff several times, so that, by the time Flastovic, in white wig and seamed mask, sprawled dead upon the divan, the young man was feeling the consequences. Fortunately, the voice modulator was designed to deal with such vicissitudes, inebriety being not uncommon in the theater, and compensated for the occasional slur and hiccup.

  The Clutterites found no fault with his performance. They groaned appropriately as the tale wound to its inconclusion, and Filidor spoke the final ironic homily, about coming “to the end of all our journeying, and knowing that there’s no place like home.”

  The third presentation, The Bumpkins and the Flirt, was short and quick. Chloe, in spangles and gauze, was surprisingly affecting as the wise-cracking city girl -- Filidor delivered her lines in a sing-song staccato -- while the Florreys played manure-bespattered yokelhood to perfection. When the disclamator spoke the last line, “Then, let’s get these things off our thumbs,” the stage went black and the crowd howled its pleasure.

  At intermission, the Clutterites broke up into small clusters to discuss the entertainment and concerns of their own. Local vendors opened a row of concession stands, offering hot, spicy meats, stuffed perohs and mulled cider. Gavne and Chloe also went up and down the lines of Clutter folk that formed in front of the food booths, cadging more contributions now that the audience had sampled the quality of the troupe, returning to the groundeater with their cloches heavy and ajingle. “The punters are well pleased,” Flastovic said, standing by the great vehicle’s ramp as the women went in.

  “Indeed,” said Filidor, swaying slightly.

  “Were you not part of the show, it would not be my place to comment,” the mummer said, “but do you need to elevate the jar quite so much? ‘More talent was lost in a bottle than e’er was found,’ as the old saying has it.”

  “I find it essential,” Filidor said. “but I hope the need is only temporary.”

  Flastovic shrugged and went to oversee preparations for the second half. Chloe came out for some air, and Filidor made respectful gestures and said, “I thought you very good in your part.”

  She cast him a frigid look and moved away.

  The young man shrugged and decided he would make no further efforts to alter her views with respect to him. She was, in any case, a pale candle to the radiance of Emmlyn Podarke. He looked to where the eastern hills heaved blackly against the sky; somewhere, far beyond those rounded heights, was Trumble, and there waited -- though, he admitted, she did not know she waited, nor for whom -- the woman who commanded his heart.

  To clear his head before the second performance, Filidor wandered among the groups of Clutterites, still in his disclamator’s robes but with his mask tilted back onto the top of his head. The alterations Flastovic had made that morning to his appearance were still in place, although he suddenly worried that the false nose might be askew; the Archon’s apprentice raised both hands to it as if containing a sneeze, and surreptitiously assured himself that the bulbous thing was as it should be.

  His peregrinations brought him near to the fairgrounds gate, where Clutter’s main road ran by. Here he saw an official vehicle pull up and discharge a man of competent appearance, who wore a uniform of yellow and black. The law man passed a professional eye over the crowd, saw no cause to do more, then took from the car a wad of paper. He peeled off a sheet and tacked it to the gate post by means of a handheld machine that made a kchank noise when he squeezed it. He put up a few more of the posters on nearby surfaces, tipped his headgear to members of the community who were urging him in a friendly way to stay for the performance, then drove away.

  Filidor waited until the car was gone, then followed a few of the Clutterites who had moseyed up to see what the notices conveyed. He was dismayed but not surprised to see Etch Valderoyn’s face, doubtless as recorded last night after the tavern brawl, and beside it a recognizable rendition of his own. Underneath was an offer of a considerable sum, and instructions on how to collect it.

  The Archon’s apprentice forbore to show more than a casual interest in the poster. He put his hands behind his back and turned to walk casually away, and had pursed his lips to whistle when he noted that among a knot of Clutter folk peering at one of the other posters was Chloe Flastovic. She looked carefully at the paper, then tilted her head in his direction and produced an expression that many a cornered little creature has seen on the face of a larger predator at the end of a chase. Her eyes narrowed and her teeth showed in what was not quite a smile, then she ripped the poster from the wood, startling the Clutterites, and strode determinedly toward a communications booth near the concession stands.

  Filidor moved to catch her. When she looked back and saw him in her wake, she pulled up the flounced skirt that was her between-performances wear and began to run. Filidor
attempted to do likewise, but found the disclamator’s robes had been designed more for stately progress than for sudden bursts of speed. The half bottle of purple Pwyfus that was making itself comfortable in his bloodstream also did no good to his coordination.

  Seeing her pulling away from him, he opened his mouth and shouted, “Stop!”

  He had forgotten that he was still wearing the voice modifier. Its circuitry interpreted the strength of his utterance to mean that he was now addressing an audience large enough to fill a natural amphitheater, and amplified its volume accordingly. Every person in the fairgrounds, and many well beyond its limits, instantly ceased whatever he or she had been doing. Windows rattled in the south facing walls throughout the town of Clutter, and even Chloe faltered in her step from the force of the blast.

  More usefully, however, one of the Florreys took note of what was occurring. He was standing at a food stall, positioned between the girl and the communications booth, chewing on something that dripped red sauce. With an experienced criminal’s honed response to unexpected difficulties, he instantly sized up the situation. As Chloe sped by, he stepped into her path, swept an arm around her waist, and hoisted her off the ground.

  She resented the interference and strove to pummel the man, but the other twin was, as always, not far away, and arrived to assist in the operation just as Filidor caught up. With smiles and affable waves to the watching Clutterites, and assurances that there was nothing to worry about, the three of them hauled Chloe back to the groundeater, where Flastovic and Gavne waited. They all went into the lounge, where Etch Valderoyn showed an un-Lepkinlike anxiety at the fracas.

  Again, the mother took charge of the girl, doling out looks of exasperation in equal measure to her daughter and the men. “This cannot continue,” she said.

  “Chloe, you must not,” Flastovic said. “Much is at stake.”

  “I don’t care!” the girl replied, struggling in her mother’s strong embrace. Her eyes were like slits in a face gone red and rigid. “He’s awful, and I hate him!”

  “You must promise your father not to interfere,” Gavne said. “We would all suffer.”

  “I won’t!” said the girl. She waved the poster. “I’ll turn them in for the reward, then I’ll go away somewhere you’ll never find me, and live a life of elegance.”

  A spirited discussion ensued, mainly among the mummers, while Filidor and the sailor fretted on the outskirts. But neither threats nor entreaties nor the spectacle of her father tearing out his own hair would dissuade Chloe from taking her revenge. Filidor marveled at the intransigence of adolescence, not remembering that he had possessed an abundance of the same quality not many years since.

  “You’ll have to go,” Flastovic said, at last. “We can contain her for a while, but you can see that the situation does not lend itself to permanence.”

  Chloe was taken off again to her bedroom, her mother accompanying her to prevent a sudden exit through the window. The talk turned to the logistics of flight. It happened that the Florreys kept a two-man skimdoo in the storage compartment, charged and tuned and equipped with a silenced engine in case their circumstances ever argued for a speedy and flexible departure. This they were persuaded to sell to Filidor for an exorbitant price, after he assured them that their previous arrangement was still in effect. Valderoyn knew how to operate the amphibious device.

  “The question is,” Filidor said, “where to go? I had hoped to gather more information and from it formulate a strategy, but I know no more now than when I was marooned on Henwaye’s island.”

  The sailor cleared his throat, and offered a suggestion. “I don’t know much about Archonate intrigues, But I do know it never hurts to have a few pals at your back in a scrump-up. That fellow in the newspaper keeps saying about how we’re leagued with these Podarkes. Maybe we should see if he’s right.”

  “I don’t know where to find them,” Filidor said. “Surely they won’t be wandering around Trumble, shouting their affiliations to passersby.”

  “Why don’t you ask that voice in your head?” said Valderoyn.

  “Hello?” said one of the Florreys, and the other two mummer men showed an equal interest. “We did not take you for a nokes,” said Flastovic.

  Filidor explained matters in the briefest terms, including the need to keep the integrator’s energizing plates awash in a particular species of cheap wine. Then he said, “Integrator, where would I look for Emmlyn Podarke and her family?”

  Trumble, was the answer. They have a large house on the eastern edge of town.

  “And if not there?”

  I will consult my records. There was a pause. a Siskine Podarke once kept a hunting lodge in Hember Forest below Mt. Cassadet.

  Filidor remembered the name of Siskine Podarke. Emmlyn had mentioned it. “Does he still?” he asked.

  I cannot tell. I have shut down some of my systems to lower the drain on my energy. The corrosion still worsens and I am less than I was.

  “Has anyone been to the Hember Forest?” Filidor asked. No one had; the place was a backwater. But a gazetteer was found and consulted; Hember Forest lay between two ridges that descended from Mt. Cassadet, which was an extinct volcano to the south of Trumble. By road, it would take the groundeater three or four days, but a fast skimdoo could follow a direct route, traversing the grass covered hills and the intervening waters of Lake Foddlemere, to bring them to the outskirts of the forest in one long night’s travel.

  “What do you think?” Filidor asked Etch Valderoyn.

  “I don’t like forests,” said the sailor. “Better to try the house in town.”

  “The paper said they were hiding in caves on Mt. Cassadet,” Filidor said. “Surely their house would be watched. We would have a better chance of approaching unseen through woods.”

  “I don’t like forests,” the sailor repeated.

  “The hunting lodge is more or less on the way,” Filidor decided. “We’ll try there first.”

  Valderoyn looked unhappy, but shrugged his acquiescence. The Florreys went to unpack the skimdoo, while Erslan Flastovic again brought out his make-up chest and proceeded to alter the sailor’s appearance once more. The sight of a Lepkin riding such a conveyance, and with a passenger on the pillion seat, would have excited comment. Skin dye and false hair converted Valderoyn into a man three decades older, while a quick rummage through the costume hold outfitted both him and Filidor in the boots, caps and jackets of hunters. With the apparent difference in their ages, they would pretend to be father and son, out to bond with each other through the slaughter of wildlife.

  Filidor paid the Florreys for the skimdoo with a blue cabuchon the size of his thumb, which would have been enough to purchase the groundeater itself. He promised that there would be more when he was restored to office. The twins pronounced themselves satisfied, and bade the two fugitives goodspeed.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you,” said Flastovic.

  “You did more than I can thank you for,” Filidor said, and reconfirmed his commitment to build the mummer chief a grand theater on South Processional.

  He climbed onto the skimdoo behind Etch Valderoyn. “We’ll go down the road a ways before we strike out for the hills,” the sailor said, “just in case the young missy gets a glimpse of our direction.”

  Flastovic and the Florreys bade them farewell, then the old trouper went to the stage to announce a change in the evening’s program: the disclamator having fallen ill, the tragedy would not be performed; instead there would be a cabaret of stunts and hijinks, “including some remarkable sleights of hand by the celebrated Florrey twins.”

  Valderoyn worked the skimdoo’s controls and the little craft lifted lightly and leaned away toward the road. Moments later, they were passing the fields and growing pools of the farms south of Clutter. Where the highway bent around a long knoll, cutting them off from the view of anyone at
the fairgrounds, the sailor turned the steering bar to the left and they angled toward the distant hills.

  The evening was warm, the air rushing by was soft, and the only sound from the little vehicle was the sssss of its passage. Valderoyn had a sure hand with the controls, and they traveled without incident or conversation across ordered fields and tame watercourses, until the hills ceased to be a remote horizon but swelled to occupy the foreground and then became the travelers’ entire surroundings.

  The sailor increased power and they flowed up the slopes just above the feather-topped grass that covered the hills, the stems dividing under the force of their passage, then closing behind them without trace. Filidor assumed that the Florreys had had the trackless feature of the skimdoo in mind when they acquired it. Now he was the beneficiary of their foresight; if Chloe still desired to inform on him, any searchers would have to cast for a trail over a wide radius.

  They crested the first rise and saw by starlight the dim shapes of the rippled land ahead. Valderoyn flicked on the skimdoo’s illumination and they slid down the far slope as if on a beam of brightness. The sailor was humming some sea song.

  Filidor had been thinking about their situation and now he said, “I am sorry to have pulled you into my troubles.”

  Etch Valderoyn laughed. “A few days ago, I was walking a wheel for Gwallyn Henwaye, with scant hope of doing anything else the rest of my days. Now I am a carefree adventurer and a companion of the Archon’s heir.”

  “Not to mention a hunted felon,” countered Filidor.

  “Pfah!” commented the sailor. “I once thought myself unique because I had collected a diversity of pizzles. Now I see that life can be full of twists and sudden departures. Who knows what awaits? Whatever it may be, I find it better than walking a wheel or scrubbing another man’s deck, so why not be content?”