Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  ***

  It was Emmlyn who asked for the explanation. Filidor was too occupied in exploring his new sense of who he was. It was a strange feeling; he was unquestionably himself, but it was a different self than he had ever been before; a strong, confident Filidor, who was becoming aware of a considerable curiosity about how things worked. He was chewing a cracker spread with a savory paste and wondering how the sweet and sour could be so carefully balanced, when Emmlyn said, “So what was all that all about?”

  The little man looked over the rim of his cup of punch. “Well, I suppose it began when I discovered that Faubon Bassariot had replaced the Zenthro Intrusifer’s control with one that had been reconfigured so that the “clear and abort” stud would instead have disassembled me and placed each of my atoms in individual mini-cosmoses, from which a reassembly would have been doubtful.”

  “That’s why you told me not to press the bottommost stud,” said Filidor.

  “Exactly. Have some more punch.” He sipped his own. “Well, of course, I knew that Bassariot could not have done the reconfiguring, that he must be only the fingertips of someone else’s grasp. The quality of the work limited the field to a relatively few people, and then when I knew you would kill Bassariot in Trumble -- the ancient seat of the Magguffynnes -- my suspicions turned to Vadric.”

  “How did you know I would kill Bassariot?”

  The full explanation followed. The Archon had been using the Intrusifer for some time to investigate parallel versions of the universe. Some differed in tiny ways, some very distinctly. He had found one in which time had had what he called “a hiccup” shortly after the earliest moments of that nanocosm’s inception, with the result that it was identical to the macrocosm, except that it was a few days advanced. He had replicated the Archonate integrator from that minirealm and questioned it regarding developments.

  The integrator had reported that in its cosmos, Filidor had been declared a fugitive renegade by Bassariot and that his whereabouts had been unknown for days. The little man had isolated and replicated the integrator moments after Filidor had got into the volante in Trumble, announced that he had killed Faubon Bassariot and demanded to know the Archon’s whereabouts. When the dwarf learned that he had mysteriously disappeared from his workroom shortly after sending Filidor and Bassariot to Trumble, he ended the conversation and quickly discovered the Intrusifer’s sabotage. He then altered the device to create a temporary and timeless sphere of existence for himself, which he intruded into another tiny cosmos. Since his enemies would think him disassembled, he knew his hiding place would be secure.

  “Can you do that?” Filidor said. “That means placing a macrocosmic entity within a microcosm of the macrocosm that contains the microcosm.” He stopped for a moment and ran the words through his consciousness again. “Yes, I did get that right. That is what it means.”

  “Indeed,” said the Archon. “Had you ever persevered through the maze of Balmerion’s Great Theorem, you would see how it is done.”

  “I never thought I could,” said his nephew. Then a new sense of capability rose up from somewhere within him. “But I believe I will.”

  “Wonderful,” said the little man. “And why not now? Integrator, display Balmerion’s first four intervals.”

  A screen appeared in the air. The formulae laid themselves out in their four quadrants, just as Filidor remembered them from boyhood. For a moment, as he looked at the curves and integers, he felt a tremble of the old child’s fear, that sinking, liquid, inner chill that told him he would fail. But then the long planted reflex vanished under a new surge of conviction, and he said, “Let me see the fifth.”

  Another component appeared on the screen. Filidor stared. The chill came back. The thing just didn’t make sense; it wouldn’t fit, couldn’t fit. But then a part of him brushed aside the uncertainty, took hold of the four and the fifth, and turned them thus and so, and all at once, there it was.

  “Well, of course,” Filidor said. He regarded the screen and saw, not four and a fifth, but one -- and with room for more.

  “Show me the sixth,” he said, and almost as soon as the shape and coordinates appeared, he effortlessly slid them into conformity with the other intervals. “Now the seventh,” he said, and saw that that, too, was obvious.

  “Show him the eighth,” said his uncle.

  “Wait,” said Filidor, “there is no eighth interval.”

  “Oh, but there is,” said his uncle. “It surrounds and infuses the first seven. And I found it.”

  And when Filidor saw it, and grasped it, he said, “That’s amazing. With that kind of insight, you could rule the world.”

  “I know,” said his uncle. “I do. And now, so can you.”

  Filidor laughed, and looked at Emmlyn Podarke. “Yes,” he said, “now I can.”

  But then a thought intruded. “Uncle,” the young man said, “something bothers me. When you learned that I would kill Bassariot and come here after the device was dug up in Trumble, you did not know that things would come out well in the end. You suspected that Vadric Magguffynne might be the string-puller behind the curtain, and you must have recognized him as a formidable enemy. Why did you not take stern action immediately, arrest Bassariot and root out the plot before it went further?”

  The Archon stroked his smooth chin. “That is not how these things work,” he said. “I knew, from the future-seeing integrator, what would happen if I removed myself from the scene. But if, days ago, I had diverted the flow of events, who knows what new channels they might have carved into the future? Besides, I was less concerned with plots and usurpation than I was with seeing you arrive at where you stand now.”

  “But you left me to face Magguffynne. He might well have bested me,” said Filidor.

  “Yet he did not.”

  “But you could not have known that I would triumph.”

  The little man shrugged. “In full truth, I did not know for sure. But I was willing to take a small risk for your sake.”

  “I think it was a great risk.”

  “Not so great. Remember, I have known you and Magguffynne all of your lives. If it came to a passage of wits between you and that self-inflated despot-in-waiting, I would wager all on you. As I did, and won.”

  Filidor didn’t know what to say.

  His uncle put a hand on the young man’s arm. “I have always had faith in you,” he said, “much as you often strove to frustrate my confidence. I have worked and waited for years for the moment -- this moment -- when you would finally come to have faith in yourself.” The little man blew out a sigh of completion, and finished with, “And now I can retire.”

  ***

  In all, the conspirators numbered only a dozen, all of whom ended up treading wheels in the Etch Valderoyn Memorial Contemplarium under the exacting supervision of Orton Bregnat and a cadre of well trained warders. The Obblob ecstatics were pleased to assist when necessary, and continued to deliver shipwrecked and sweptaway mariners as before, but now the rescued wretches were carried home by Byr Lak in the jollyboat. Ovile Germolian was found by operatives of the Bureau of Scrutiny and sent to the islet to sew suits of sea furze.

  Filidor was promoted to Underarchon and assigned a new and larger staff. He took on wider duties within the Archonate, now that his mastery of Balmerion -- plus Vesh’s Corollary -- enabled him to understand exactly what it was the Archonate did, and how it was done. A date was set for his uncle’s retirement, and a section of the palace was being fitted out, under Master Apparaticist Berro’s careful eye, to become what the Archon Emeritus called his “tinkerarium.”

  Filidor and Emmlyn entered into the arrangements that were customary for two young people who felt as they did toward each other. Their conjointure was announced at the gala opening of Flastovic’s Grand Pantodeon on South Processional, which coincided with the retirement celebrations of the Florrey twins. At the rece
ption that followed, catered by Xanthoulian’s and featuring the new sensation, Podarke’s Ancient Clabber Cordial, the mummers were cajoled into playing an impromptu encore. They chose The Bard Obscure’s existential classic, The Fowl and the Thoroughfare. Chloe, still not entirely reconciled to Filidor, mischievously stirred the crowd to press the Underarchon himself into the role of disclamator.

  Filidor called upon his personal integrator, now removed from his inner workings and positioned instead in a pore of his left earlobe, with nanobuilt power supply and full communications array provided by Master Berro. Prompted by the still tiny voice, but without a modulator, the Archon’s heir intoned the Bard’s deceptively simple lines, tracing the bird’s philosophical transit across a symbolic road and the discovery of fundamental purpose it found on the other side. The applause was gratifying and, Filidor felt, sincere.

  When the performance was done, and Emmlyn had congratulated him with a kiss, Filidor spoke to the voice only he could hear. “Integrator,” he said, “besides having compiled all of The Bard Obscure’s works, have you recorded any information about the playwright’s life and experiences?”

  It happens that I have, said the voice. He came to a sad end. The labor of composing such insightful works eventually drove him into the embrace of madness.

  “A pity,” said Filidor. “And do you also happen to know his true identity?”

  I do.

  “Well?”

  He was Holmar Thurm.

  About Matthew Hughes

  The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the two genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for fantasy, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews.

  I’ve won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Derringer Awards.

  I was born in 1949 in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I’ve made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and -- from 1979 until a few years back-- as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. I am a former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and I used to belong to Mensa Canada, but these days I’m conserving my energies to write fiction.

  I’m a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US). I’ve been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons.

  In late 2007, I took up a secondary occupation -- that of an unpaid housesitter -- so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. These days, I’m in Italy but any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; but you can send me an e-mail by clicking on my name in the footer of this page. I’m always interested to hear from people who’ve read my work.

  You can find me at:

  http://www.matthewhughes.org/

  Also by Matthew Hughes

  Fools Errant

  Downshift (as Matt Hughes)

  Fool Me Twice

  Gullible’s Travels (omnibus edition of Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice)

  Black Brillion

  The Gist Hunter and Other Stories

  Majestrum, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn

  Wolverine: Lifeblood (as Hugh Matthews)

  The Spiral Labyrinth, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn

  The Commons

  Template

  Hespira, A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn

  The Other

  To Hell and Back: The Damned Busters

  Song of the Serpent (as Hugh Matthews)

  To Hell and Back: Costume Not Included

  Old Growth (as Matt Hughes)

  To Hell and Back: Hell To Pay