He was thinking of what Jenore had said, about having a home to go to. For a moment he wondered if he would like to be back again on his narrow cot in his narrow room in Ovam Horder’s gaming house, a day’s tasks completed behind him and another day’s agenda awaiting him at the sound of the first morning buzzer.
He decided he would not, even if it were possible for him to reverse time’s flow. The universe had turned out to be more complex than he had realized, back when he had fitted the routine at Horder’s like a precisely machined cog in a well tuned mechanism. The initial stages of discovering that greater complexity had been discomfiting, he would admit. But now he was beginning to see the course of events as if he were playing a game that first presented as straightforward but evolved into arabesques and mazes as one progressed beyond its early stages. Much like paduay, he thought, which again brought him back to the puzzle that was Hallis Tharp.
He was beginning to pick at that conundrum once more when his ears caught a distant rattle of stones. Almost immediately, he heard the sound again, but closer and from multiple sources. Footsteps. Running. Coming this way.
He released Jenore’s hand and said, “Run. Run home now,” even as he turned to meet the rush from the darkness. Clear noncombatants from the killing zone said his training. Turn toward the attack and engage the enemy.
The light was too dim to see them clearly. There were six or seven young men, Alwan Foulaine’s followers almost certainly, closing rapidly, running down the beach toward them. He could make out straight lines, lengths of wood possibly, or more of the metal bars.
He heard Jenore say something and said again, over his shoulder, “I am fine. Run!”
Then he was in action. They would expect him to run or perhaps to stand his ground. But he had not won a thousand fights by doing what the opponents expected. He ran toward them, as silently as he could manage on the shingle but counting on the noise of their own passage to disguise his. He held the rod in both hands, arms extended before him at head height, aiming for the middle of the dark knot of attackers.
He hit one of them hard. Bone cracked, blood splattered Conn’s face and he heard a sob of surprise and pain. Nose broken, he thought. His momentum carried him past the injured man, whose knees had folded under him, and into the path of another who was coming close on the first one’s heels.
Conn kept the rod extended, letting it ride up and over the first target so that it struck the next man in the forehead. The impact was less but the second man went down without a sound except for the clatter of his cudgel on the stones. Now Conn was through the pack and turning to follow them.
His stratagem was working. Those still on their feet would have thought that those who were down had stumbled. They could hear Jenore ahead of them, running for home as fast as she could without any attempt to silence her steps. They continued after her. One of them slowed and looked back into the darkness, calling in a forced whisper, “Jeege, are you all right?”
The words were scarcely out of the man’s mouth when he received his answer. Conn’s rod came arcing out of the darkness and struck the side of his head above the ear. Blood or breakage, Conn thought. He was unsure how the Shorraffis would react if he killed the attackers – he was learning not to take common sense for granted among strangers – but the chances were good that merely disabling them temporarily would bring fewer consequences. He did not want his options limited.
Three down and, by the sounds of their footsteps, four more to deal with. He ran after them, finding them now beginning to string themselves out as each pursuer put on his best speed, hearing their quarry just ahead. They were no match for Conn’s swiftness. He caught them up and took them down, one after another, with precisely judged blows to each man’s head. He closed with the last one just as the fellow reached out to seize Jenore’s collar. “Got you,” the man said, but his prediction was revealed as premature when Conn’s weapon sent him sprawling unconscious on the beach.
Jenore did not look back. Conn loped after her, hearing her breath coming hard. “It is finished,” he said, close to her ear, his wind scarcely affected by the exercise. “They are all taken care of.”
He had to repeat himself and even so she ran several more steps before she stopped and bent over, hands on knees, sucking air into her lungs. After several seconds, when she could talk again, she said between gasps, “Are you... all right?”
“I am fine.”
“Are they... you didn’t...”
“They will all have sore heads, perhaps some slight concussions. One has a broken nose.”
“This should... be reported.”
“I would prefer to avoid complications.”
She stood straight, her breathing coming under control. “Thank you,” she said.
“I am not sure they were after you, as such. Foulaine would like to see me dead, though.”
“I do not think you understand how deep the sin of pride can go,” she said.
“Perhaps not.” He broke off and turned his head. “Listen,” he said.
From out in the water came the soft susurration of water over a boat’s bow and the burbling whisper of an impellor. Conn could make out the outline of the dark hulled craft against the stars that crowded the horizon. A whisper came across the water, “Wengh? Jeege? Did you get them?”
Conn said softly to Jenore, “I think you were right. He wanted to harm both of us.”
“And me more than you,” she whispered back.
“Shall I pretend to be Jeege or Wengh, lure him in?”
“I never want him any closer than he is now,” Jenore said. She stood and called out across the water, “Your bully boys are all stretched out senseless on the shore, Alwan. If you were not such a pasty-faced coward, you would be with them, and tomorrow your head would have harsh things to say to you.”
There was silence from the sea, then they heard the sound of the boat’s passage fading as it turned and sped away. At last, Foulaine’s voice came faintly on the wind, a snatch of words: “...not over.”
“We had best not speak of this to anyone,” Jenore said as they walked on. “There has been trouble enough today, and this can only make things worse.”
“As you wish,” Conn said. “This trouble, at least, I understand. The other business still mystifies me.”
“It is filthy stuff,” the patriarch of the Mordenes was saying as Conn and Jenore entered the big common room. “Money has never fouled this house. It will not do so in my time.” The boy whose tokens had been thrown into the pool opened his mouth to make an angry reply but Iriess restrained him with an admonitory hand and spoke in his place.
“Father, it is not money. It cannot be used to buy or sell.”
The old man’s eyes flashed. “It buys handedness – in itself a monstrous idea – at predicting the outcome of birl matches. It is wagered and those who win or lose it value the outcome.”
“No,” Iriess said, “it does no more than symbolize success or failure. There is no transaction.”
The argument had been going on since the return from the birl match. Now Eblon turned to Conn who had taken a seat beside Jenore, on a carved bench against the wall of the big family room. “We will ask an expert. Conn Labro, what do you say?”
“I prefer not to take sides,” Conn said. “I have nothing to gain by inserting myself into this dispute.”
But the old man insisted and the younger ones also clamored for his verdict, each side sure it would support its point of view. Conn looked to Jenore who sat near him and saw that her father’s request made her deeply uncomfortable yet she moved her eyes and mouth in a way that urged him to answer it.
“All dealings between human beings are transactions,” he quoted. “The goal of the reasoning person is to ensure that there is equity between buyer and seller, that the price is fair, the goods or services delivered as advertised so that the contract is justly consummated. Thus does the market retain the perfection that is its essence.”
From
the looks on the faces around the room Conn realized that something prevented the Mordenes from grasping the elementary concept. It was as if he had spoken to them in an incomprehensible language. After a moment, Eblon Mordene shook his head as if to throw off something that might be clinging to his scalp and said, “But you have not answered the specific question: is the wagering of tokens a transaction?”
“It must be. It can be nothing else. All human interactions are transactions.”
“Then you believe the tokens are money?” Iriess said.
“No,” Conn said. “Money is a general medium of exchange that facilitates transactions involving goods or services of differing types. These tokens can purchase only one specific commodity.”
“Prestige,” Eblon said.
“Yes.”
“But they do not buy that ‘commodity,’“ Iriess said. “The prestige of being handed at predicting birl outcomes – which takes knowledge and analytical skill – comes from success in the endeavor.”
“A pointless endeavor,” said Eblon, “like Foulaine’s tricks with numbers. Who benefits?”
“That is another issue,” Iriess said. “For some, it increases the enjoyment of the game.”
“Because they have wagered and stand to win or lose money!” his father said.
“No. Only to win or lose prestige!”
“Say what you like. I see members of my household getting and spending, their pelf dangling from their necks. It is obscene. It is a corruption of the young. I will not have it.”
Jenore sought to intervene. “Father...” she said.
Eblon folded his arms. “I have said what I have said.”
Jenore turned to her mother, but Munn gestured in a manner that meant she could do nothing.
The old man’s mind had closed. “Those who wish to traffic in money may do so,” he said. “But they may not stay under this family’s roof.”
“This is not fair, father,” Iriess said. “Where can the young ones go?”
“To Alwan Foulaine’s rat heap, for all I care,” said Eblon. “Let him take care of them. Let him prepare them for their ratherings. And a fine preparation that would be.” He would hear no more.
The oldest and youngest Mordenes went to bed. Those of the inbetween generations argued in clumps. The token bearers formed into a knot of angry protest and went outside to offer each other mutual support, or at least shared resentment.
Conn sat alone on his bench and observed the aftermath of the argument. He could not help contrasting the caustic mood of the evening’s gathering with the warmth and solidarity that had prevailed the morning he had arrived. It brought him a sadness that he had not known was within him, an emotion made deeper by his certainty that the bitter dispute was entirely pointless.
The tokens were not money. In any case, money itself was an innocent concept, not to mention an indispensable factor in the operation of markets, which were themselves the arena of free action. Everyone on Thrais knew this. How could anyone fix on money as an instrument of corruption?
The arguments around him were less vociferous than the earlier set-to had been, but the emotions in which they were freighted caused Conn discomfort. He went outside and walked down to the jetty. The night was clear, the sky strewn with the cold winks of stars and the scintillations of transiting orbitals. He looked up at the glitter and thought about the world he owned.
He heard Jenore’s footsteps on the path before her arm linked into his. “Are you all right?” she said. “The arguing seemed to upset you.”
“I was not at ease,” he said. “Your father took a strong stance.”
“He’ll have softened by morning. He’s just frustrated.”
“That much was clear.”
“What do you really think?” she said. “About the tokens.”
“I said what I think. All I can add is that I do not understand why there is an argument in the first place.”
“It’s because of how we feel about money. You would not understand.”
“You are right,” Con said. “I do not understand. If you used money, you would not have to go through all that rigmarole where you trade one thing for another while pretending that no such transaction is taking place.”
She raised a finger and opened her mouth as if to refute his observation but instead she said, “Never mind. These things are complex and not germane to you and me at this moment.”
They walked toward the Mordene foranq. The great barge sat at the dock, its paintwork glowing dimly in the light from the house. When Conn had first seen it he had been struck by the strangeness of the concept that generations would labor to create a priceless artifact that not one of the Mordenes actually possessed – as if, instead of the foranq belonging to the family, they instead belonged to the foranq.
His first impression had evoked a sense of wonder that people so like him in form and movement could be so different in their inner noöscapes. Now the foranq was just one more alien object, a reminder that while every other being he encountered was well fitted to some corner of the universe, strange though that corner might seem, Conn Labro had no such place. Unlike the bearer deed and its reader, there was no precisely shaped impression into which he could settle.
They reached the end of the jetty and sat on the wide bollard to which the foranq was tied. The silence between them lengthened until Jenore said, “Where are your thoughts taking you?”
“I am wondering about several things,” he said. “Hallis Tharp is alleged to have stolen the deed to Forlor. Might he also have stolen me? Do I have parents somewhere, siblings, aunts and uncles like yours? Are they perhaps stranded on that far distant world, abandoned when Tharp took their child and absconded?”
“I cannot conceive of Hallis performing an evil act,” Jenore said. “He had a gentle and unassuming nature.”
“Perhaps he became so in remorse for having committed a great misdeed.”
He saw her turn the concept over in her mind. “It is possible,” she said. “I prefer to think that Hallis was a good man who rescued you from danger or at least from neglect.”
“But only to sell me into servitude. How was that a kindness?”
“You have said, yourself, that you were at ease in the sporting house,” she said. “You had the necessities of life and an opportunity to become skilled at a profession that seems to have suited you.”
“True, but that might be only because I had been raised by Ovam Horder to know nothing else.”
“Perhaps Hallis lacked options,” she said. “In truth, I do not know and nor do you.”
“No, I do not know,” Conn said. “But it is becoming clear to me that I should. I should know where I belong.”
Jenore placed her hands on her knees and looked down at them. Without raising her head, she said, “When I was wandering The Spray, especially when I was stranded on Thrais, I thought that I belonged here – this island, these waters. Now I come home and I find it a hard fit, as if it were an old garment that has grown too tight in the shoulders.”
Conn often had trouble with metaphors. He asked her, “What are you saying?”
“That where you come from may be just where you come from. Where you belong may be somewhere else.”
“I thought I came from Thrais,” he said. “Now I am not sure that I ever belonged there. That is why I want to see Forlor.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I have been wondering if you might ever come to feel that you belong with me,” she said. “And that I belong right here.”
She put her hand on his chest so that he felt its heat through his shirt. She looked at him and the expression in her eyes opened an unexpected door inside him. The opening was no more than a crack, but beyond it there beckoned to him a soft light and a sweet warmth. Still, he hesitated on the threshold. “Perhaps I do,” he said, “but what if there are others, my kinfolk, on Forlor?”
“What if there are not? What if there is just an empty house, filling with dust?”
“Then I will know I do not belong there,” he said.
“And I know how to find out if you belong here,” she said, taking his hand and carrying it to her breast. He could feel her heart beating within.
She stood up and said, “There is a place along there...” she pointed to a patch of darkness under some trees, “where the moss grows exceptionally deep and soft.”
He rose and she led him into the secluded bower. By the time the first light of day touched the tops of the trees above them, Conn Labro was willing to admit that he had engaged in a transaction on which he would have had great difficulty in setting a price. They walked out into the morning, the sun like a tarnished coin on the mainland hills across the eastern water and sat again on the bollard at the end of the dock. Jenore put her head on his shoulder and encouraged him to place an arm around her.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You have skills that could bring you a good living on many of the Ten Thousand Worlds.”
“I believe most women don’t care to pay for that sort of thing,” he said, “and I might find it difficult to accommodate those who do.”
She looked up at him. “Was that humor?”
“Yes,” he said, “I think it was.”
“You’re changing.”
“I suppose. I am forced to recognize that Thrais is but one world among many. It is statistically unlikely that the great majority of humankind is mad and that the fragment on Thrais is sane. Although common sense argues that it is so.”
“Common sense as it is defined on Thrais?” she said.
“That is so. Apparently the view is different depending on where one stands.”
They were silent for a few moments, Jenore snuggling in close as the cool early morning breeze wrapped around them. “I was thinking,” she began again, “that you might open a school to teach fighting techniques.”
Conn envisioned himself surrounded by persons half his size. “I have no affinity for children,” he said.
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