Black Brillion

by Matthew Hughes

  To Baro she said quietly, “Watch Kosmir closely. Do not remove the restraint.”

  “I understand.”

  They had laid the lassitude victims on the flat stone surface of the Monument. As Haj departed, Baro separated the first officer from the others, bidding him sit apart and not to seek to stand up on pain of being shot in the leg. Bandar sat near him and promised to shout if the prisoner moved.

  Baro and Imbry examined the four afflicted. Ebersol and Sooke had slipped deeply into the disease. Their skins were as smooth and polished as old stone, and their eyes had receded into their heads like pebbles sunk into frozen earth.

  “Soon comes the crisis, I would say,” said the fat man. “Then …” He spread his hands as if to let something drop between them.

  Ule Gazz grunted something. Baro leaned down to listen. “I think she is trying to chant,” he said.

  “Still trying to elevate her chuffe, I don’t doubt,” said Imbry. He leaned toward the Lho-tso aficionado and said, “Better to prepare for the ineffable.”

  “There is no cause to shout,” Baro said. “The lassitude does not affect the hearing.”

  “People like Ule Gazz ought to be shouted at regularly,” said Imbry. “It might not improve them, but it couldn’t possibly make them any worse.”

  Baro was taking off his scarf. He folded it into a pad and set it between the back of Pollus Ermatage’s head and the hard rock. A tear ran from the outer corner of the Fasfallian’s cheek and made a tiny circle of darker gray on the face of the Monument.

  “Let us leave them in peace,” Baro said. They went over and sat with Kosmir and Bandar. Baro told the historian, “The lassitude is galloping forward in the two new victims. Already their skins are waxy. I think none of them will trouble us much longer.”

  Kosmir attempted to engage them in conversation but Baro cut him off. “Nothing you can say will induce us to release you. If danger comes upon us, you must take your chances as you are. Remember, I saw you kill poor Flix, and we know you murdered Monlaurion just when he believed his life had taken a miraculous bend toward happiness.”

  “Sooner milk from a stone than mercy from a scroot,” Kosmir quoted.

  “The Bureau is sometimes judiciously cruel for the law’s sake,” Imbry said, “but you are vicious by nature.”

  Kosmir proposed to contest the point, but desisted when Baro declared a growing inclination to shoot off one of the prisoner’s toes. Kosmir pulled a corner of his mouth between his teeth and frowned in thought at the four paralytics.

  They sat in silence. Baro watched the deserted town, with occasional glances at the prisoner. Bandar seemed to be mulling something and after a while he said, “You told Yaffak you felt a calling. Is it an urge to explore the Commons?”

  Baro cast about in his mind for an answer, finally saying, “I think so. Something about the noösphere calls to me. Or, more accurately, Something in the noösphere. Though what calls me and what I am called to do, I do not know.”

  “I am equally conflicted,” said Bandar. “It delights me, and it is a pleasure I never thought I would admit to, that you may have opened up new avenues for research. Yet it grieves me to have been the instrument that puts you in peril.”

  “Never mind,” said Baro. “Responsibility rests not with the instrument but with the hand that wields it. Besides, if I am fated to be here, perhaps you are too.”

  “It is a worrisome thought that my lifelong passion for the Commons has been not of my own choice but merely a constituent of some grander scheme,” Bandar said.

  “Still,” Imbry put in, “it gives a shape to life. I am coming to think that might be better than a lot of devouring and expelling, signifying nothing in particular. I may seek to make my way in the scroots.”

  “You would do well,” Baro said.

  “Thank you.”

  “A shape to life is a good thing,” Bandar said, “but one prefers to be the shaper rather than the shaped.”

  Imbry asked, “Yet which is better: to be the shaper of a small heap of not much, or to be shaped into something grand and enduring?”

  “An interesting point,” said the historian. “What does our young friend say?”

  But Baro waved the discussion away. His mind wandered from point to point, examining his experiences of the preceding few days and the changes those experiences had wrought in him. The world was clearly a much more complex place than he had previously understood it to be, and he was himself more complex than he had imagined.

  He had spent all of his life walking a well-defined path that led toward a definite end, only to find that everyone else he met had a different concept of both the path and the goal. Life was neither rigid nor simple, although it seemed that Baro had let himself become both.

  But now he had come unexpectedly to a turning point and he meant to make the turn. When this assignment was over, he would turn in his plaque and uniform and become an explorer of the Commons. Clearly, that was what he was called to do.

  The sun was warming the gray rock of the Monument and the heat was being transmitted to the layer of air that lay upon the stone. Baro felt the growing warmth seep upward into his bones while the heated air swaddled him like a blanket. The view of Victor grew hazy and began to ripple, the twin towers at the mine heads wavering like reflections on the surface of a pond. Despite himself, his eyes closed.

  “The man of envy is your foe,” said a voice.

  “What?” Baro’s eyes flew open and he turned toward Kosmir, thinking that the prisoner had spoken. But Kosmir sat staring morosely at the four lassitude sufferers and chewing the inner meat of his lower lip.

  He turned to Guth Bandar. “Did you speak to me?”

  The historian shook his head. “We have all been silently consulting our inner wherewithal.”

  “I must have dozed off,” Baro said. “But I clearly heard a voice.”

  “What did he say?”

  Baro repeated the warning.

  “Typical,” said Bandar. “Probably bubbled up from the Wise Man. Archetypes always speak as if they were fortunetellers at a country fair, offering vague advisories that are clear only in hindsight.”

  “Who is the man of envy?”,

  “Perhaps this one here,” said Bandar, with a nod to Mirov Kosmir. “Or Gebbling.”

  Baro turned both possibilities over in his mind but could come to no conclusion. Bandar must be right: messages from the noösphere were as slippery as conversations in dreams.

  Kosmir cleared his throat. “I have something to say.”

  Baro aimed the pistol at one of the prisoner’s feet. “I am thinking and do not care to be interrupted,” he said.

  Now Kosmir spoke quickly. “I know something the scroots would like to know.”

  “I have other things on my mind.”

  “It is information about a major crime.”

  “Worse than a double murder?”

  “Yes.”

  Baro felt a curious detachment. Only days ago, such an offer would have commanded all of his attention. Now it was an annoying distraction from the direction his thoughts wanted to take him.

  “You are Raina Haj’s prisoner,” he said. “Tell her when she returns.”

  Kosmir said, “She may not return. She is probably walking into danger.”

  Though he had lost his earlier regard for Haj, the prospect of her being in danger sent a jolt of decisiveness through Baro. He found himself standing on his feet before he knew he had risen. His plaque was in his hand and he keyed it to the Bureau’s emergency frequency; it would carry a signal at short range. “Haj,” he said, “can you hear me?”

  A crackle of sound came from the air above the plaque, then came Haj’s voice, but so fragmented and distorted that Baro could not make out more than a word or two. He called again, but received only a hiss and sputter.

  He turned to Kosmir. “Tell me what you know,” he said.

  “I want guarantees,” said the landship officer, “all charges
against me dropped and no seizure of my goods.”

  “I will not bargain with you,” Baro said.

  Kosmir put on a knowing look. “Scroots will always trade a fingerling for a trophy fish.”

  Baro aimed his pistol. “You have made a small but serious mistake,” he said.

  Kosmir’s sneer weakened. “How so?”

  “You are not talking to a scroot. I have resolved to leave the Bureau. You are talking to a man who has both a pistol and a strong urge to use it.” He notched up the weapon’s output control. “Now the urge grows even stronger.”

  “You seek to frighten me,” Kosmir said. “I insist on establishing terms.”

  Baro fired the weapon and a palm-sized piece of rock immediately in front of Kosmir turned red, then incandescently white. Droplets of lava spattered the man’s crossed legs, burning through his uniform trousers and smoldering into his flesh. Kosmir screamed and fell backward on his still-pinioned arms, rubbing his calves together as he tried to scrub away the molten rock.

  Baro stood over him, the pistol aimed. “Are the terms satisfactory?” he said.

  Bandar said, “That was needlessly cruel.”

  Baro ignored the historian. To Kosmir he said, “Well?”

  “I will tell you everything,” Kosmir said.

  “A wise strategy. Begin.”

  Kosmir talked swiftly and Baro listened with an analytical ear. The first officer was an ambitious man and intelligent, too good, at least in his own estimation, to putter his life away guiding landships across the Swept. He was born to own and command, although fate had not seen fit to grace him with assets or minions. Yet he was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to redress those lacks and made it his business to pry into any secrets he came across.

  Late one night, in the offices of the company that operated the landships, Kosmir happened to glance through some documents that had been locked in the desk of the managing director. He learned a number of things: that a holding company owned the landship line; that the holding company was controlled by another corporation that owned the mines at Victor; that the company that grew and distributed the truffles of the Swept was a corporate sister to the mining firm and that it was in turn connected to the company that held the contracts with Rovertown.

  “They are all one interrelated enterprise,” Kosmir said, “the base of a pyramid that gets smaller as it rises, though between the operating companies and the ultimate ownership is a hierarchy of shell and holding companies that insulate the owner from what is being done at the lower levels.”

  Baro said, “I hear no evidence of a crime.”

  “That comes from a conversation I overheard between the man who occupies the apex of the pyramid and another who assists him. They spoke in guarded terms but I deduced the meaning.”

  “Who are these men and what was the import of their conversation?”

  “The import was that the truffles of the Swept cause a restructuring of the brain. Some are more resistant than others. I believe that those who are worst affected become like these.” He gestured to the four lassitude sufferers.

  Baro felt a surge of outrage. “You are saying that the lassitude is caused by the truffles, and that someone is knowingly distributing the stuff?”

  “I am.”

  “Who is that someone?”

  Kosmir squirmed. “Would you leave me nothing to trade?”

  Baro aimed the pistol at Kosmir’s feet. “I will leave you nothing to walk upon. Who sits atop the pyramid?”

  Kosmir’s shoulders sagged. “Trig Helvic,” he said.

  “Who was the man he spoke with?”

  “I do not know,” Kosmir said. “I was using a listening device that only captured Helvic’s half of the conversation. He did not name the other man.”

  “Was it Horslan Gebbling?”

  “I think not. Helvic has one way of speaking to the few he considers his equals and an altogether different tone for everyone else. I have heard him speak in the latter vein to Gebbling, the former to the other man.”

  “You saw Gebbling?”

  “Before we left Victor for Farflung, he came aboard to make the recordings that were shown to the passengers.”

  “What is his relationship with Helvic?”

  Kosmir shrugged. “I assumed he was an employee.”

  Baro set the safety catch on the pistol and tucked it into his belt. He took out his plaque and tried the Bureau emergency frequency again.

  A voice spoke from the air. “This is a restricted frequency. Who is using it?”

  “Baro Harkless, agent ordinary,” Baro said. The voice was familiar. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Directing Agent Ardmander Arboghast.”

  “Sir,” said Baro, “Sergeant-Investigator Raina Haj may be in danger. I am seeking to warn her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Somewhere in the vicinity of Victor and Rovertown, approaching the landship Orgulon which is owned by Trig Helvic. Helvic is the employer of Horslan Gebbling and I have reason to believe he is behind the spread of the lassitude.”

  There was a silence, then, “Where are you?”

  “At the edge of the Monument to the west of Victor, with five passengers from the Orgulon, four of them afflicted by the lassitude, and a ship’s officer who has committed murder.”

  There was another silence. “Remain there.”

  “I must help Raina Haj,” Baro said.

  “You will stay where you are,” said Arboghast. “The situation is under control.”

  “How can you be sure?” said Baro. A part of him wondered at the brazenness of his challenge to his superior, but most of him did not care.

  “I am on the Orgulon,” was the response. “All is in hand. I will look out for Haj. You stay and protect the civilians until I come for you.” The connection was broken.

  Baro looked down at Kosmir. “It appears the Bureau already knows everything,” he said. “You will need something else to barter with.”

  The first officer now wore a sly look. “I have something else,” he said.

  “Try it on Directing Agent Arboghast when he arrives.”

  “It is something for your interest, not his.”

  Baro took out the pistol again. “I can still burn off a toe or two,” he said.

  “And you say you’re not a scroot,” Kosmir said. “Very well, shoot if you like. The pain will not last long.”

  That puzzled Baro. “Why do you say that?”

  Kosmir made a face that mocked Baro’s perplexity. “Why do I say it? Because neither of us has long to live—nor your friends nor these lumps that used to be people—if you won’t hear what I have to tell you.”

  Baro looked at the lassitude sufferers. They lay like wax cylinders. He could see no difference between the two who had come aboard the Orgulon already sick and the two who had been their companions. The disease had galloped through the bodies of Ule Gazz and Pollus Ermatage. From Olleg Ebersol came a strangled cough. Imbry got up and went over to the sick man.

  Baro felt a wave of pity for all of them, followed closely by a sudden burning desire to inflict savage punishment on Trig Helvic. He had a vision of his swinging the iron sword in a vertical two-handed stroke to cleave the magnate’s head. In the vision, Baro was clad in the iron mail and winged helmet of the Hero.

  “I will not trade words with you,” he told Kosmir. “Tell me what you know or die piece by piece.”

  Bandar spoke up again. “You cannot commit mayhem on a prisoner. It is wrong.”

  Baro turned his head to regard the small man. “He is evil,” he said.

  “I hear the Hero speaking in you,” the noönaut said. “You are letting yourself be taken by an archetype. You will become a simple-minded monster. Resist.”

  A part of Baro knew that the historian was right, but it was a small and ineffectual part. “I do not care to resist,” he said. He turned back to Kosmir and aimed the pistol.

  The historian rose and sang ei
ght tones in his thin tenor. As the notes struck Baro’s ear it was as if a light appeared in his mind and grew, pushing back a red-veined darkness he had not known was growing around him. Bandar repeated the measure and the darkness faded further. Baro lowered the pistol.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Now resist it,” said Bandar.

  Baro stooped and helped Kosmir sit up. He could feel the Hero stirring in the back of his mind, like a storm on the horizon, but if he willed it to stay away it would.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said to the prisoner.

  “Free me and I will. But hurry. There is no time.” Kosmir looked to the east, his eyes searching the air over Victor and Rovertown.

  “Tell me and if the information is as important as you say I will set you free.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Kosmir said. “I think you may be mad.”

  “And I do not trust you,” Baro said. “We are at an impasse.”

  “Not for much longer,” said Kosmir. “An aircar has risen from beyond Victor. If you do not free me before it arrives, it will be too late.”

  Baro turned and saw an aircraft ascending above the town. Even at the distance he could make out the colors and insignia of the Bureau.

  “Please,” said Kosmir. He hunched around on his buttocks so that his restrained arms were turned toward Baro. “Hurry!”

  “You are trying to fool me,” Baro said.

  “I think not,” Bandar said. “He seems genuinely afraid.”

  “He should be. Here comes the vehicle to carry him into incarceration.”

  “No!” Kosmir cried. “Here comes death!”

  Baro could hear the thrum of the aircar’s obviators. There was clearly panic on the prisoner’s face. He adjusted the pistol’s controls to the appropriate setting and aimed it at the holdtight.

  The strangled sound from Ebersol had grown louder. Baro looked past Kosmir to the four lassitude sufferers. The inert form that had been the Lho-tso adept was trembling and twitching. The mouth had stretched open and a wet and gargling sigh made its way around ropes of viscous drool.

  “It is the crisis,” said Guth Bandar. “Look, Corje Sooke is undergoing the same catharsis. Death will not be long behind.”

  “Never mind them!” Kosmir cried. “Free me!”