Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  “Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny wishes to enter,” said the door’s who’s-there.

  “Let him,” I said. I realized that the imminent approach of one of the Archonate Bureau of Scrutiny’s senior criminal investigators had tumbled me down from the lofty heights of altruism into more prosaic territory. I executed a gesture of formal, though restrained, welcome at the balding scroot clumping up the stairs into my workroom.

  “How may I help you?” I said.

  He performed the nose tug again, then turned his head from side to side as he took in the workroom. His lugubrious gaze lingered on the young woman before he made the gestures that good manners called for. He looked to me as if expecting an introduction, but when I let the issue lapse unresolved, he moved on.

  “I understand,” he said, “that you have recently had dealings with Irslan Chonder.”

  When the Bureau of Scrutiny came calling, I had often found that the least response is the best. I said nothing, but did so in a way that invited him to continue.

  “I further understand,” he went on, “that you also have had dealings with Massim Shar and Hak Binram.” He regarded me closely, as I continued to stand mute. “Or at least with persons known to be associated with them.”

  “You will also understand that I was on a case,” I said. “I contravened no laws. My involvement is at an end.”

  His was not a face made for smiles, but now it delivered its version of a faint one. “You might want to look into that,” he said.

  The remark was clearly meant to spur me to ask a question. I let the opportunity go by.

  He reset his mouth into its established frown and said, “I have heard that Chonder has imported some hired bravos from offworld.” As he spoke he opened a memorizer and consulted it. “Operatives of the Hand Organization on the world Fasserade.”

  At this news I raised an eyebrow.

  “I have also heard that Chonder means to use these hirelings to express his unhappiness over some piece of business he conducted”—he paused to correct himself—“or had conducted for him, with the aforesaid Shar and Binram.”

  “That would be unfortunate,” I said. “Without breaching a client’s confidence, I can assure you that I would not recommend that he do so. Indeed, I would strongly advise the opposite.”

  “Your advice apparently makes little headway with Chonder.”

  “One does,” I said, “what one can. One can do no more.”

  Warhanny weighed this observation no more than it deserved, but shifted his footing in preparation to change the subject. “There is also the matter of Tesko Tabanooch,” he said.

  Again, I said nothing. Tabanooch had been a freelance operative whom I had occasionally hired, on an as-required basis, to perform small subsidiary tasks around the edges of discriminations. His last assignment had been for the benefit of Osk Rievor: to attend an auction at the selling of an estate. The deceased, Blik Arlem, had been a collector of magical paraphernalia, most of it counterfeit or of dubious worth, in which my alter ego had been interested. A mysterious woman, going under the name of Madame Oole, had also attended the sale, and had purchased an ancient item of jewelry known as a summoning ring. She had subsequently disappeared, it was believed offworld, leaving behind the corpse of Tesko Tabanooch, with whom it seemed she had been living. The Bureau of Scrutiny had labeled the man’s death as “of inexact circumstances,” meaning that foul play was suspected but not yet provable.

  “Is there new information?” I asked, after Warhanny had let the silence prolong itself.

  “Only that, by a process of elimination, we have established that this Madame Oole was definitely from offworld. We have established that she came to Old Earth from Anderthon, traveling on her own ship, and that she subsequently returned there.”

  “Indeed?” I said. “But I take it you do not believe that she remained there long.” Because of its relative position to other worlds in our reach of The Spray, Anderthon was a hub world; several dozen passenger and freight lines used its orbiting terminals as transfer and transshipment points. The local authority took no interest in who came and went, nor what they did there, providing they provoked no problems for the world’s lucrative role as a trading center. While there, the elusive and probably murderous woman could have easily shed her Madame Oole identity for another name and description; then, newly reminted, she could have gone anywhere.

  “I wondered,” Warhanny said, “if you had any further information concerning her that might assist us in narrowing the search.”

  I was about to answer in the negative, but he held up a large hand to forestall me. “I also wanted to be sure,” he continued, “that you were not interfering in a case that remains open at the Bureau.”

  With his last remark, his drooping eyes turned toward the young woman seated nearby who had been following our conversation with innocent attention. I did not need my missing intuition to see that the scroot had noted the offworld cut of her clothing and now, like a tightrope walker extending a foot, was testing to see if there was any connection between her and the Tabanooch business.

  I took the unusual step of making myself entirely clear to an officer of the Bureau of Scrutiny. “Tesko Tabanooch,” I said, “was an associate whom I employed infrequently for minor but necessary tasks. I do not know what his connection to this Madame Oole might have been, but I can state categorically that she was not part of any discrimination in which I am or have been engaged, now or at any time in the past.”

  Again he looked from me to the young woman. For a moment, I was tempted to reveal her plight to the Colonel-Investigator. She was, after all, not a paying client but only an unfortunate—albeit a strangely affecting unfortunate—whom I had encountered by chance. The Bureau of Scrutiny could make inquiries on her behalf and, though its machinery operated with slow deliberation, the scroots more often than not produced a credible result. But while their cogs ponderously turned, she would doubtless have to be housed in some dismal facility intended for suspected malefactors waiting for their misdeeds to catch up to them. To my knowledge, she had done nothing to deserve such treatment, and so I asked Brustram Warhanny if he had any further business with me, as I had a case to pursue.

  “No,” he said, and turned to leave. But before he had descended more than a step or two, he turned back and fixed me with that meant-to-be-piercing glare that fledgling scroots must study at the Bureau Academy and said, “If Irslan Chonder, for reasons I do not officially understand, is intent on inviting Massim Shar and Hak Binram to a private dance on the public thoroughfares of Olkney, he will find that it will be the Bureau that calls the final tune.”

  “Indeed,” I said, “I am sure of it.”

  “So you might want to keep your own dance card clear.”

  Again, I took pains to be clear. “I am not involved in their affairs.”

  “You might find it advisable,” he said, still holding my gaze, “to make sure that your lack of involvement is universally understood.”

  “Are you saying that it is not?” I said.

  This time, it was Brustram Warhanny who opted for silence, his only answer a slight cocking of his elongated head that invited me to find out for myself. Then he thumped down the stairs and out the door, leaving me so immersed in thought that the young woman had to speak twice to me before I responded.

  “Was that man threatening you?” she said.

  “He is a policeman,” I said. “They cannot help it.” I spread my hands in an assuring way. “It is nothing to be worried about.”

  But of course it was. If Irslan Chonder had given Massim Shar and Hak Binram cause to believe that I had overstepped the bounds of a discriminator’s neutrality to join in the magnate’s misguided vendetta against them, it was a misapprehension that needed to be cleared up immediately. I spoke to my assistant. “Plumb the depths and see what we know of Shar and Binram’s movements and where they are now.”

  The integrator did so, reporting back that neither had
shown his face all day, not even in those places where their ranks in the halfworld informally required that they put in appearances, to acknowledge the greetings of lesser lights and to pay their respects to villains who stood on higher rungs. “They have gone sublithic,” it said, using the Olkney thieves’ cant for the occasions when malefactors found it prudent to choose a suitable metaphorical rock under which to crawl, there to remain until some temporary trouble had passed harmlessly over their heads and, with any luck, over the horizon.

  “We had better send out the bees,” I said.

  “What about Osk Rievor’s request?”

  “It must wait.”

  “You might benefit from his insight.”

  “I have already benefited from it,” I said. “He warned me that I was about to have an encounter that could have repercussions. I have had the encounter, with Massim Shar’s cat’s-paw, and the repercussions have begun to roll. Now I need the bees to locate Shar’s and Binram’s operatives. Get them up and out, and while you’re doing that, connect me with Irslan Chonder.”

  A buzzing filled the workroom, provoking a small squeak of surprise from my foundling. I turned to her and saw that she had half-risen from her chair as the squadron of surveillance drones took flight. Now, as they circled the room just below ceiling height, she was settling back down.

  I said, “Forgive me for startling you. A pressing matter has arisen and I need to—”

  “Irslan Chonder,” said my assistant, and I turned to see the heavy face regarding me, with an expression of grim amusement, from the hovering screen. I had no doubt that that was the only kind of amusement of which my erstwhile client was capable. I allowed for no niceties. “What have you done?” I said.

  His hard mouth and heavy brows made an attempt at nonchalance. “Pursued my interest,” he said.

  “At the expense of mine.”

  His thick shoulders briefly lifted and settled. “I invited you to participate. It would have been to your advantage.”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “I like to choose my enemies with care. Now I may have to defend myself from enemies you have made for me.”

  Again the minimal rise and fall that expressed the absence of empathy. “I am busy at the moment.”

  “Not as busy as I expect to be,” I said. “At least confirm my analysis: you have let it be known, as if unwittingly, that I am acting as your locator for Shar.”

  “And Binram,” he said. “I am not given to half-measures.”

  “You wish to bring them out after me, making me the bait for some trap you mean to spring.”

  “I remind you,” he said, “that I offered to make you an active partner in the operation. It was you who chose the passive role.”

  “And it was you who chose to breach my neutrality. I will not forget it.”

  His lips pursed and his eyes rounded in a show of mock fear. “Chills dance up and down my spine,” he said. He made a brusque gesture and the connection was broken.

  I restrained my rising anger. It was a luxury that I would have to defer. The bees were swirling around a gap at the top of the window, ready to scatter across the city. “Make sure plenty of them patrol the nearby streets and rooftops,” I told the integrator. “Shar and Binram have had ample time to make their arrangements.”

  “Done,” said my assistant, “and the other defenses are at full alert.”

  The young woman’s earlier alarm was nothing to the anxiety she was now displaying. “What have you brought me into?” she said, getting to her feet and casting her eyes about the workroom as if in search of an exit, wringing her long-fingered hands. Few women’s faces are at their best when registering rising fear, and hers was far from beautiful even when at rest, yet there was something compelling about her, some elusive quality that made me want to protect her.

  “There is nothing to fear,” I said. “A former client has clumsily involved me in a matter that ought to be none of my business. I will soon have it straightened out.”

  “I think I should go,” she said.

  “Too late,” I said. “My lodgings are bound to be under observation. Anyone who leaves here would have to be—” I sought for the least alarming phrase “—looked at. You are much safer here.”

  “I am not used to this sort of thing,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

  Thinking that the stress she was presently under might break through whatever barrier denied her memories to her, I took the opportunity say, “And what sort of things are you used to?”

  It seemed as if recollection was standing at the borders of her awareness, but then it stepped back into the darkness. She shook her head, the coppery curls swaying heavily like underwater plants troubled by the tide. “No,” she said. “It was almost there, but then it was gone again.”

  “Still,” I said, “good news. You can feel that your past is in there somewhere. Then it just becomes a matter of reconnecting you to it.”

  She sat again, her face bleak. “I am stranded among strangers on a strange world, and am even a stranger to myself.”

  I would have offered her more reassurance but my assistant said, “There are reports.”

  I motioned to the young woman, a gesture that urged patience while promising that the need for it would be brief, then said, “Let us hear them.”

  “The house is under observation from front and rear, and a nondescript aircar circles the block at no great height.”

  “How many watchers?”

  “More than twenty. They appear to be divided into distinct groups.”

  “That is a lot,” I said. “I would assume that Shar and Binram have sent some of their soldiers to snatch me up and take me somewhere for questioning. Meanwhile, Chonder’s Hand hirelings will be lurking and watching, intending to follow us to wherever the first batch takes me. But still, that is a lot.”

  “Have you considered,” said my assistant, “that Shar may see you as an unnecessary complication and has decided to have you removed from the board before the main play opens?”

  “There is that possibility.” I attempted to calculate the probabilities, but I was not familiar enough with the rising crime lord’s style to make an accurate prediction. Again, I wished for my old insight, but it was far away and busy pursuing its own peculiar agenda. Instead, I fell back on my capacious knowledge of criminal procedures. I knew that a quarry who was barricaded behind a secure door, with who knew what armament, was a more dangerous proposition than someone who could be coaxed outside and swarmed. Massim Shar’s goons would want to avoid coming through a door to get me, but they wouldn’t want to wait around for me to saunter out in my own good time, then have to improvise.

  As if on cue, the street door’s who’s-there said, “A messenger from The Pot of Fire has arrived. Master Jho-su has impulsively sent you a tray of appetizers and the request that you try them and favor him with your impressions.”

  “How convenient,” I said. “And precisely the kind of impromptu situation to which I could be expected to respond eagerly. Massim Shar shows talent.”

  “Indeed,” said my assistant. “The messenger is an actual employee of The Pot of Fire, though from his respiration and heart rates, we might infer that he is of a highly nervous disposition. The three persons concealed in the ground car that brought him show only focused readiness for action.”

  “Very well,” I said, “let us roll the pebble and get the avalanche on its way.” I told the who’s-there to say that I would be right down. I guided the anonymous young woman to a secret inner room. “It is a redoubt I had built for emergencies,” I informed her, and showed her how to seal herself in so that not even the heavy troopers of Hemistor’s fabled Grand Militia could have forced entry.

  I returned to my workroom, gave instructions, then descended the stairs to the street door. I swung wide the portal, my face showing a refined and happy expectation. The messenger was a frail youth in the soiled garb of a table cleaner. I supposed they had snatched him as he took the eatery’s refuse
out into the disposal area. Affecting to ignore his pale and trembling manner, I stood in the doorway and said, “Where is the tray?”

  He gestured with a shaking hand toward the car, a low-slung motilator with darkened windows and no interior lighting. Its opened rear hatch gaped like the maw of some unfed beast grown surly with hunger.

  “Ah,” I said, “of course.”

  I stepped across my doorstep, out into the afternoon sunlight, already tending toward burnt umber as the day moved toward evening. The youth in the soiled smock stepped to the side, saving me the trouble of having to push him out of the way as I now ducked back inside my door while its defenses emitted a disorienting blast of sound and sprayed a jet of disabler in the direction of the ground car’s open hatch.

  Massim Shar’s soldiers were worth whatever he was paying them. Despite being doused in the foul-smelling liquid, the two who had been waiting inside the vehicle leaped out and fought against the disabler’s effects, throwing themselves at my retreating form even as they lost control over their spasmodically jerking limbs. The third ambusher, who had been crouched out of sight in front of the motilator, came up and out of hiding with the verve of a champion sprinter and made it to my door just in time to bounce off it as the portal snapped closed.

  A second ground car now raced up the street and screeched to a halt behind the first one, while a third vehicle hurtled toward it from the opposite direction, slewing sideways at the last moment to block the street. The aircar that had been circling appeared in the air above the scene, hovering menacingly.

  The doors of the two newly arrived ground cars sprang open and, as I watched the action on the who’s-there’s screen, disgorged a half-dozen men and women, all of them fit and superbly coordinated and uniformly clad in dark leather, who efficiently disarmed the three goons and hustled them into the aircar which descended only long enough to receive the captives, then lifted off again.

  So far, it had gone as I had expected. Shar’s thugs had made their move and I had thwarted them. Then, seeing the snatch gone wrong, the mercenaries Chonder had hired from the Hand Organization had snatched up Shar’s people, planning to take them somewhere quiet where they could be encouraged to reveal what they knew of their patron’s whereabouts.