“If you hadn’t been so ensnared by your friend’s game, you would have noticed that giggle of triumph in his voice in time to leap off the trapdoor.”
There was that tone again. Integrators were not supposed to be able to entertain independent emotion, yet mine seemed to have found a way to do so. I was tempted to investigate the matter but I saw no profit in stirring up rancor while trapped in a tiny doorless cell at the bottom of a shaft deep below Lord Tussant’s manse. I had not yet devised a means of escape from the oubliette and I did not wish to have to do so without the aid of my assistant.
“Equally obvious,” I said, “is that whatever perfidy Sajessarian means to commit will have greater import than a game of precedence among aristocrats. He must intend to do something truly awful which will bring down upon him not just some lordling’s hired bullies but all the resources of the Bureau of Scrutiny. It will be the kind of case which will baffle the scroots and soon bring Colonel-Inspector Brustram Warhanny to my workroom.”
“Which he will find empty.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Or perhaps Sajessarian was hired to lure me into this predicament by some enemy who seeks revenge or even by a foresighted criminal who wants me out of the way.” I gave the possibilities some thought then said, “It will be an enjoyable puzzle, working out his motive. Let me see again the matrix of his relationships and associations.”
But instead of putting up a screen and displaying the information, the integrator said, “Let us get out of here first.”
Curiosity has always been my prime motivator. “That can wait,” I said. “Show me Sajessarian’s data.”
“I’d rather not,” it said.
It was just a few words but they contained a world of meaning. One’s integrator might routinely express its preferences when one asked for them; to balk at a direct instruction was unheard of. A full review of my assistant’s systems was now the least response I would make; indeed it seemed likely that I would have to tear down and rebuild from bare components.
But if the situation annoyed me, it also roused my curiosity. “Why would you rather not?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
The admission sent a chill through me, and now self-preservation overpowered even my vigorous investigative itch. An integrator that had acquired motives and did not know what they were was not a reliable companion in a dungeon. Fortunately, I had other avenues down which I could seek aid. From an inner pocket I drew the folded frame of the transdimensional portal through which I communicated with my colleague. I unkinked it and leaned it against the dank stone wall then executed the procedure that would attract his attention. Within moments, the mind-twisting flux of shape and color that constituted his appearance in our dimension filled the frame. It pulsed as he said, “You’ve made your move?”
“A more pressing situation has arisen,” I said and explained the circumstances. “Can you assist me?”
We fell to discussing the might-dos and couldn’t-possiblies of my predicament. I knew that my friend, though he could isolate and inspect any event in the entire sweep of our continuum, could only physically interact with our universe by direct contact. He could reach through the portal but not far enough to achieve any useful purpose.
Mentally, however, he could affect the perceptions and thoughts of sapient entities within a considerable distance. Unfortunately, The Hands was isolated, leaving only the persons on the estate. He investigated Lord Tussant and the servants but found them too far sunk in blissful stupor to be summoned. “They might not ever awake.”
His powers allowed him to deceive but not to overpower volition. “I cannot compel Sajessarian to release you,” he said.
“Could you trick him into letting down a rope?” I asked.
“I could try. But we must hurry. He is about to depart.”
I had an inspiration. “If an officer of the Bureau of Scrutiny were to arrive and tell him the game is up, he might free me to reduce his term in the Contemplarium.”
My friend and I agreed that it might just work out that way. The integrator contributed nothing to the plan. It struck me that the device had developed the practice of not volunteering information when the demon was present. Again I wondered how an integrator could develop a thoroughgoing sulk.
Upstairs, my friend reported, Sajessarian had summoned the aircar he had secreted in a secluded hollow on the estate. It was idling before the front doors while he packed a few keepsakes he expected Lord Tussant not to miss, the value of which would keep the purloiner in luxuries for years to come. But when he came out onto the stoop he found Brustram Warhanny waiting for him, wearing his most knowing look and saying, “Now, now, now, what’s all the hurry?”
There were several things Sigbart Sajessarian could have done while remaining true to his nature. He might have leapt into the aircar and attempted an escape. He might have offered his wrists for the scroot’s restraining holdfast. He might have feigned blithe innocence.
Or he might have jumped, startled and squawking, at the unexpected sight of unwelcome authority. Unfortunately, Sajessarian jumped. His involuntary leap took him mostly sideways, so that he landed just on the edge of the top step, which caused him to stumble and drop his sack of Lord Tussant’s knickknacks. He then tottered backwards a short distance into the reach of a tickleberry tree.
As everyone knows, a tickleberry tree is as equally happy to tickle as to be tickled. The trick is to do unto the tree before it begins to do unto you, because once it starts it has no inclination to stop and is effectively tireless. My friend described the scene with poor Sajessarian appealing in ribald anguish to the Colonel-Investigator he thought was before him.
“Is there nothing you can do with the tree?” I asked my friend.
“No,” he said, “there is too little to work with.”
* * *
We sought for other options. I asked the integrator to join in the effort but received only a truculent murmur. I asked the demon to examine once more the oubliette and shaft in case there was a secret outlet, but he said he had already done so and there was none. Lord Tussant and the servants slept on, oblivious of Sajessarian’s dwindling shrieks and sobs.
“Integrator,” I said. “Have you any suggestions?”
“Hmpf,” it said.
“That is not helpful.”
Its next noise was unabashedly rude.
“When we return home I will review your systems before we do anything else.”
The integrator was silent.
“This may be my doing,” said the demon. “Prolonged proximity to me may be causing its elements to mutate. It would have happened eventually in any case; the Great Wheel turns and your realm grows nearer and nearer to the cusp when rationality begins to recede and what you call magic reasserts its dominance. But your assistant appears to be ahead of the wave.”
“I had enough trouble accepting you,” I told my colleague. “I should not be expected to accept magic as an explanation. Now, have you a suggestion as to how I may escape this dungeon?”
“I have one,” said the demon, “and only one.”
“Then speak,” I said.
His colors swirled in a pattern I had not seen before. “I can move this portal to anyplace it has already been,” he said, “but It is... tricky.”
“Ah,” I said. I saw what he intended.
So did my assistant. “Oh, no,” it said and I knew that I had never heard that tone from it before. Integrators were not subject to abject terror.
“It is necessary,” I told the device.
“Please,” it said.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know. I’m still getting used to the idea of being afraid.”
A complete rebuild was definitely in order. “Turn yourself off,” I said.
“No.”
No integrator had ever said no to its master. Now my assistant squirmed on my neck and shoulders, an ability I had not given it in its traveling form. “Are you try
ing to escape?” I said.
Its only reply was a moan.
“We had better do this quickly,” I said to the demon. I plucked the writhing device from my shoulders and held it to my chest. “Shall I close my eyes, hold my breath?”
“Try not to think of anything,” he said.
“I’ve never been able to do that.”
“Then try to think of nice things.” The colored shapes within the frame flourished and flashed for a moment. “I’m fashioning an insulating barrier to keep you from forbling,” he said.
My curiosity urged me to ask him what forbling was. Another part of me argued that I did not want to know. The demon’s segmented limb extended itself through the portal, and his strange digits wrapped around me in a grip that alternated in a split second from white hot to icy cold to just bearable. Then I was drawn through the window into his realm.
* * *
It was... different. I realized that I had used the phrase “completely different” all of my life without ever realizing that nothing I had encountered during my forty-seven years had really been completely different. Now I was experiencing a boundless reality in which everything was entirely and utterly different from anything I had ever seen, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. I discovered senses that I hadn’t known I possessed, and only knew that I possessed them because my passage through the demon’s realm outraged them as thoroughly as it overwhelmed the basic five. Or six if I counted balance and I was prepared to count it because my head was spinning.
“Don’t think that,” the demon warned. “It will, and your neck is not constructed to allow it.”
“What shall I do?”
“Try not to think at all.”
I imagined a blank screen. Immediately a blank screen materialized before me and we crashed through it. I swore and was instantly smeared with an obscene substance. I voiced another oath and a deity winked into existence. He looked surprised. At each manifestation, I felt my demonic companion exert his will–it was like being enveloped in a field of pervasive energy–and the apparition summarily vanished.
“Only a moment more,” said my colleague.
The integrator whimpered and squirmed against my chest. It felt like a small frightened animal. Then suddenly a rectangular window opened in the mindbending unreality and I was pushed through it.
“There,” said the demon and I found myself standing in my workroom. Then it seemed I was not standing but lying on the floor which was beating rapidly. The ceiling tasted far too hot.
“Close your eyes,” the demon said. “It will take a little time for your senses to reorder themselves.”
I waited. After a while, I opened one eye and still saw swirling chaos. Then I realized I was looking into the portal which was now once again affixed to my workroom wall. I moved my eyes away and saw things as I was accustomed to see them–although I was not truly accustomed to seeing Ogram Fillanny creeping across my workroom, heading for the outer door.
In his hands were the damning materials concerning his solitary vice that I had recovered from a former valet whom the magnate had discharged for cause, but who had returned to blackmail his former employer. I had had a talk with the servant after which the man had decided that he preferred to relocate offworld permanently rather than accept any of the several less enjoyable alternatives that Fillanny had in mind.
The sight of my client attempting to depart with the evidence brought the events of the past few days into sharp focus. “Seize him,” I said, and the demon did so.
The plutocrat looked both abashed and fearful, but managed a hint of his customary aplomb as he said, “These are mine. I came for them. You were not here...”
“Squeeze him,” I said, and my colleague complied. Fillanny found he had more pressing things to do than talk.
I put the situation to him. “You knew that I would never divulge what I had learned from your former valet. But so mortified were you by the thought that anyone–even Henghis Hapthorn–should know what you get up to in secret that you paid Sigbart Sajessarian to lure me into a trap. I am grievously disappointed. I scarcely know what to do with you.”
“I know exactly what to do with him,” said the demon. He pulled Fillanny twisting and protesting through the portal then reached in to take the frame with him. He was back almost immediately to reestablish the window and I saw him swirling in the pattern I had come to recognize as self-satisfaction. “I put him in the oubliette,” he said.
It had a simplicity to it, but I knew that my tender nature would not permit me to leave the transgressor languishing to a lightless death. I said, “In a day or so I will advise Warhanny of the situation and have him rescued.”
“As you wish,” said the demon. “Now, what about your next move?”
I produced the playing area of our game but found that my former enjoyment of it had evaporated. “The pieces are, after all, semi-sentient,” I said, in explaining my changed view. “To send them into battle, where they ‘die’ in their fashion only for our amusement now seems cruel.”
“It is what they are for,” said the demon.
“A compassionless deity might say the same of my own life and that of all my fellow beings,” I said.
“Well, since you mention it...” the demon began then seemed to break off the thought.
“What?” I said.
“It would be premature to say. Weren’t you planning a review of your integrator’s systems?”
“Indeed.” I looked about but did not see the device’s traveling form and thought that it must have decanted itself. “Integrator,” I said, then after a moment, “respond.”
There was no answer. But I heard a muffled sound from beneath the divan. I crossed the room, knelt and peered under its tasseled bottom edge.
Something small and dark was pressed against the rear wall. I reached for it and my hand unexpectedly touched warmth and fur. I gently closed my fingers about it and drew it forth.
It looked at me with large golden eyes and curled its long tail around my wrist.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” I said.
My assistant studied its paws and flexed their prehensile digits. It said, “How do you think I feel?”
Thwarting Jabbi Gloond
In my senior year at the Institute, I found a friend in Torsten Olabian, a sunny tempered young man who shared my enthusiasm for the sport of pinking. We would regularly meet at the practice range to skim small, eight-pointed stars at wooden targets propelled in various directions by an attendant’s catapult.
Olabian was skilled with either hand and it was a rare disk that did not tumble from the air pierced by one of his missiles. For my own part, I soon grew bored after mastering the throws and postures. I would have abandoned the pursuit if I had not discovered an ability to strike the targets from the air while blindfolded.
“How is it done?” Olabian wanted to know when I had just brought down my fifth disk in a row though my head was swathed in a lightless hood.
I had always found it difficult to explain how I did such things. “I call it simply insight,” I said. “One just knows where target and star will meet. All that is then required is to bring the two objects together at that point and moment.”
“It sounds easy,” he said.
“Indeed,” I said. “I find it much easier to do than to explain. It is the same with the facility with which I resolve conundrums that others find impenetrable.”
“That is a useful ability. Perhaps you should consider a career as a discriminator.”
I made a noise indicative of gentle ridicule. “Henghis Hapthorn, discriminator at large,” I said. “Most doubtful.”
Yet even as I said it I felt a contrary vote from deeper inside me. I then confessed to Torsten what I had told no one else. “I am able to do these mental tricks with the aid of some other part of me, one that is lodged in the more remote regions of my psyche. I cannot assert control over it, though it yields remarkable results if I offer acceptance
and collaboration.”
“I wonder if I have such a part?” Torsten said.
“If you do, it might be best to leave it undisturbed.”
My being able to hit a pinking target while blindfolded was but the latest manifestation of the odd capabilities my “other part” had demonstrated since childhood. During my adolescence I tried to understand or at least delineate the peculiarities I had discovered in myself, but my efforts met with frustration and at last I gave up.
Grown to young manhood I found myself–that is, the part of me that lived in the front parlors of my mind–no better than most of my peers at using formal logic to analyze situations and work through syllogisms to a rational conclusion. In the numeric disciplines my studies at the Institute were teaching me how to apply higher level consistencies, the recondite procedures which underlay the mathematics of chaos, and I was making adequate progress.
Yet, beyond the normal development of my intellect, there was always the sense that another person lived, for the most part unobtrusively, in the back of my mind. If I kept a problem only in my familiar front parlors I could worry at it for days and still be baffled. But if I took the conundrum down the rear most corridors of my consciousness and left it at the edge of darkness, in time–it might be moments, or hours, but rarely more than a day–a fully formed answer would appear.
I had found that stilling my thoughts through an elementary variant of the Lho-tso exercises aided the process and I had become so adept at the business of what I called “applying insight” that it was now almost automatic. Faced with a puzzle that did not yield an easy or obvious solution, I need close my eyes for no more than a moment or two to know intuitively that the man down the backstairs–so I thought of him–was hard at work.
I did not resent sharing my inner spaces with this anonymous prodigy, though I had not yet come to include him in my private definition of “me.” It was like having a brother who was reliable yet eccentric.
Nine Tales of Henghis Hapthorn Page 11
