Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  Her face partially repaired the damage. “I suppose that’s possible,” she said.

  “Why even now, someone may be saying, ‘My, it’s a long time since we heard from whatyoumaycallher,’ and instructing an integrator to seek you out. When you are not in any of the places where you might be expected, alarms will sound. At any moment, an inquiry may be lodged with the authorities. And, soon after, we will have it ourselves.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “In the meanwhile, we will carry on.”

  I bade my assistant to present its findings. They were not definitive, but they further narrowed our target area. The term “flippadiday” had come into the regional speech of Ballaraigh within the past couple of generations. My assistant had come across a monograph by an amateur philologist who noted the rise of this variation of “flippydedoo” and had traced it back to a short-lived movement among young people on the southern continent’s northern coast. The youths had called themselves “the Dauntless Divers,” after their preferred recreation: entering sea caves whose interiors stood above sea level but whose entrances were accessible only from underwater.

  The Dauntless Divers had decorated and furnished a few of the larger caverns, turning them into places where they could spend time unobserved by their elders. The caves lost their allure, however, when a rockfall crushed several revelers during a celebration that marked the end of Green, one of northern Ballaraigh’s five seasons. The Height, as the local authority was known, ordered the cave entrances barred, and the young people moved on to a new fad: kite-sailing off the cliffs beneath which the sealed caves lay, an activity which killed only the brashest.

  “None of that means anything to me,” Hespira said.

  “It need not,” I said, but I drew her attention to the images of the Dauntless Divers and the Kiters who succeeded them: many of them were tall and long-featured, red of hair and green of eye. “Any of these might be your cousin.”

  I saw hope steal into her expression and stoked it. “And now we come to the singular cream. Integrator, tell us what you’ve found.”

  “It is produced only here,” said my assistant, putting up a map of northern Ballaraigh, then narrowing the focus to the Windstance Archipelago, then further until the screen showed a single, though substantial, island separated from the mainland by a wide strait. “Greighen Island.”

  “What do we know of the place?” I said.

  “It was formerly a farming area, mostly small holdings that produced a mix of agricultural products. The town of Orban, here on the coast that faces the mainland, was the only built-up center.”

  “Formerly?” I said. “What of now?”

  “In recent years, an organization called the Grange has bought up all the farms on the eastern half of the island. Cost was no object and the local landowners exploited the opportunity, selling up for two or three times what their properties were worth. The new owners left the farmsteads empty but combined the lands into one large estate. Then they left most of it, even prime croplands, to lie fallow.”

  On the map a circular dot appeared in the middle of Greighen’s eastern half. “The Grange established a compound here with a manor house and cottages for a small number of locals who remained to take wages to work the estate. The house servants, like the estate owners, all came from offworld. They then fenced off the entire holding, even along the coast.”

  “And what does the Grange do there?” I said.

  “They do not say,” my assistant said, “but from inference it is clear that they produce singular cream, though by a process that is shrouded in secrecy.”

  “How well-shrouded?”

  “I cannot tell exactly until I can make a reconnaissance of my own,” my assistant said, “but indications are that the information is shielded far more than ought to be necessary on a secondary world full of farmers, fishers, and kite-flyers.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “An anomaly.”

  “There are two more items of interest, both pointing back to Ikkibal.”

  “Say on.”

  “First, it seems that the newcomers originated there. I draw that conclusion from reports that appeared in the Spectacle, a news organ based in the town of Orban, as the estate was being established. Once the fence was up, no more reports followed. The Spectacle was purchased by the Grange; it publishes just as before, with the same staff, but these days no news comes out of eastern Greighen at all.”

  “The second item?”

  “Not only is Greighen the sole source of singular cream, but Ikkibal is the Grange’s sole market. Indeed, not just Ikkibal but only the city of Razham, and only the eateries that cater to the highest ranks.”

  “And that is not happenstance, I take it?”

  “From what I have gathered from networks used by commerciants in the food and beverages trade, approaches have been made by restaurants and emporia in New Kutt and from other worlds. Even though price is no object, the Grange will sell only to Razhamans, and only if consumption is guaranteed to take place there.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “What does it mean?” Hespira said.

  “It would be premature to say,” I said.

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “But I mean to find out.”

  #

  We set down at the Wathers spaceport, a modest facility with only the basic formalities of entrance. Once it was established that neither Hespira nor I had recently been on worlds that might have contaminated our footwear with any worrisome agricultural blights or parasites, we were free to go where we wished. I exchanged a few more of Osk Rievor’s jewels for local funds and we rode a shuttle into the town proper.

  The seaport was separated from the rest of Wathers by a high wall, breached by several gates that were guarded by blue-uniformed members of the Vigil, as the local militia was known. I saw no hindrance being given to persons passing in either direction, except for a party of freightermen who had obviously taken on a cargo of dire grog. These were turned back toward the docks, firmly though with good humor, by the Vigil. The sailors rolled down toward a dockside tavern, singing an inventive ditty about the testicular deficiencies suffered by those who had suffered the great misfortune of having spent their lives ashore.

  Hespira and I presented ourselves at one of the gates where the bluebugs, as Vigilers were locally called—the guidebook we had acquired at the spaceport said the nickname came from a droning insect known to bumble about harmlessly—looked us over with scant interest. They warned us to keep our hands on our purses at all times and to accept no invitations to enter unmarked premises, no matter what marvels were promised to await within.

  “I am a seasoned traveler,” I assured the underofficer in charge of the detail, “and my integrator will keep a watch out for unpleasant surprises. But would you tell us where we can find an establishment called the Rolling Pig?”

  “If you are not seasoned, you will be once you’ve spent an hour in that wallow,” said the Vigiler. He gave directions that I let my assistant absorb and then we set off. To Hespira I said, “If anything seems familiar, please tell me.” And to my assistant I said, in our private mode, “Monitor passersby for any who react to the sight of our client.”

  But we wound our way without incident to the street on which the Rolling Pig stood. I recognized it from the scenes we had viewed in the Gallivant’s salon, but now saw it in context: it was on a narrow road that sloped down to the harbor, not more than a two-minute stroll from where I could see a windvane-powered coaster tied up and taking on cargo, some of it hoisted aboard in rope nets, the rest rolled up a gangway.

  “I know this street,” Hespira said. “There is a shop down there that sells—” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “—sea boots and wet-weather gear.”

  It could easily have been a guess; it was precisely the kind of shop one would have expected to find within sight of a busy dock. But the look in my client’s eyes when we covered no more than two dozen
paces and found ourselves staring into the display of a sailors’ outfitters said otherwise. “I have been here,” she said. “I don’t know when or why, but I have stood on this pavement.”

  Whatever had been done to cleanse her mind of memory was beginning to come undone. “Look elsewhere,” I said. “Does any other sight speak to you?”

  She looked about, then focused on a doorway opposite. “There,” she said, pointing with her chin. “The door opens on stairs that go down.” Her gaze went inward. “I see a man coming up and out of the door.”

  “Describe the man.”

  “Just a man. His face is lost. Dark clothing. Not a sailor, though.” She was nodding as she spoke, her hands before her at waist height, moving as if she was dispelling leaves floating on still water to see through to the depths beneath. Now her head came up and her long-fingered hands became fists, white at the knuckles. “And a woman. She comes out behind him. I cannot see her face, she wears a broad hat. It is night! They are in shadow. That is why I cannot see them. But they look at me. They look, and…”

  I saw the moment of perspection end, her fists clenching as if she could hold on to the memory even as it came apart, the shreds escaping her mind’s grip. She said a word that was not out of place in the haunts of seafarers, though it was the first time I had heard a salt edge to her tongue.

  “By all means, be angry,” I said, “but temper it with some joy. If one memory comes, then so can others; if a trickle, why not a flood? This is a good step forward.”

  She took hold of that thought. “Yes,” she said, “a good step.”

  “But keep the anger,” I said. “There is someone who merits your wrath.”

  “Will we find him?”

  “I have no doubt of it.” I did not say what was in my thoughts: that it would likely not be “him,” but “them”—and that it might turn out to be a man and a woman, he in dark garb, she shaded by a wide hat. I did not believe Hespira’s vision of the two people coming out of the doorway was a random piece of flotsam tossed up aimlessly from the deep floor of her psyche, not when the memory had triggered the fists and the curse. “Come,” I said, “let us see what lies behind that door.”

  Of course, it was the Rolling Pig. No sign adorned the entrance, but when I bade the portal open a waft of liquorous fumes, stale smoke, and old sweat engulfed us. Beyond was a dark and narrow throat, steeply stepped and with the cheap paint on the walls worn away by the brushing passage of ten thousand shoulders up and down the way to drink and dissolution. Along with the odors came a grumble of low-voiced conversation, a clinking of glasses and a clunking of mugs on tables, and someone’s drunken attempt to sing a sea chanty against the vocal opposition of several patrons who did not care to hear him.

  Silently, I said to my assistant, “Full alert.” I flexed my wrist to arm the shocker strapped to my forearm, then said to Hespira, “I will go first.”

  The room below was much as it had been pictured in the image we had viewed earlier. The carved pig flourished its wooden trotters among the kegs and bottles, and the huddled drinkers might even have been the same determined crew we had seen. The man behind the bar was not bald and bay-bellied, however; today the drinks were being poured by a narrow-faced Shanner with close-set eyes and protruding teeth who put me in mind of an underfed rodent. His gaze flicked our way as we entered, then immediately went to a table in the far corner where two men sat nursing half-filled tumblers of some dark liquid. One was heavy-shouldered and darkly bearded, the other thin with mud-colored hair tied in a topknot. Both looked sharply at us then just as quickly turned their gaze elsewhere.

  I let my attention wander about the room like an errant tourist hoping for the picturesque and memorable. Meanwhile, I said for my assistant’s benefit, “The two in the corner.”

  “Interested, but not alarmed,” it said in my ear. “Their interest is predatory.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Some are curious, some show the disdain and reflexive hostility due a stranger, some entertain an indiscriminate lust.”

  “No one recognizes our client and reacts with surprise or consternation?”

  “No.”

  The corner of the bar nearest the door was unattended by the elbow leaners who covered most of its length. I stepped to it and signaled the rat-faced keeper. He came, shoulders indrawn and hands reflexively wiping themselves on a stained rag, an attempt at an ingratiating smile baring his forward-thrusting teeth.

  In my ear my assistant said, “Anxious, though it is mere habit in him. Also, hopeful of gain, eager to exploit you in full measure.”

  My own reading of the fellow’s aspect concurred with the integrator’s. I decided on a direct approach, sliding my hand flat across the top of the bar and, when his eyes followed the motion, spreading my fingers so that only he would see the high-value coin beneath them. His face tightened and when he looked up at me I saw that I had his complete attention.

  “This will work best for both us,” I said, “if we can keep it as uncomplicated as possible. So I advise you to cease trying to work out what I want before I ask you.”

  He took a moment to digest my advice then nodded.

  “Very good,” I said. “Now, the woman beside me. Have you ever seen her before?”

  His eyes went from me to Hespira and back to me again, then down to where the coin was hidden beneath my now closed fingers.

  “No,” I said, “do not try to play the situation. Truth will get you this; lying will get you nothing; and I will know which is which. Now, again, have you ever seen her?”

  “No.”

  “Truth,” said my assistant, and I agreed.

  “You are not the only grog-pusher here,” I said.

  “No. Anfo is the owner. He works in the evenings, when it is busy.”

  “A large man, balding?”

  “Yes.”

  “The two in the corner—don’t look!” I held his gaze when he would have slid his eyes toward the beard and topknot. “They are always here, aren’t they? Except when business calls them away.”

  “Fear,” said my assistant.

  “They do not know that we are talking about them,” I said, in my most matter-of-fact tone, “nor will they know because I will not tell them.”

  “Calmer now,” said the voice in my ear.

  “So,” I continued, “they are always here?”

  The man’s throat moved. He gave the tiniest of nods.

  “If my companion had been in here, they would have seen her.”

  Another incremental motion of the rodential head.

  “One last item: when we leave, they will follow us, will they not?”

  The fear rushed back into his eyes.

  I smiled a reassuring smile. “That is what I want them to do. Is there a signal you are supposed to give if we look to offer good pickings?”

  “I scratch my nose.”

  “Then prepare to scratch,” I said, and lifted my hand from the coin. The man’s rag instantly wiped the scarred surface where the money had been.

  I touched Hespira’s elbow. “Come,” I said, “and quickly.” We moved toward the door.

  “He is scratching his nose,” said my assistant. “The two in the corner are rising.”

  We went swiftly up the stairs, out the door, and across the street to where an alley opened beside the chandler’s shop. “Now slow,” I said.

  “Here they come,” said my assistant.

  “Walk ahead of me,” I said to Hespira, “into the alley at an easy pace and without looking back.” I sauntered after her, looking up at the rear walls of premises that backed on the lane as if they offered architectural diversion.

  “Coming fast,” said the small voice, “and closing.”

  They wore the sound-muffling footwear that has given the profession of footpad its name. I did not hear them approach, even though the large one was easily half again my weight. But my assistant was well schooled in such operations and gave me my cue to turn and si
multaneously bring the shocker out into my palm.

  The two thugs knew as well as I did that words were superfluous in the situation. The big one must have felt he needed only his outsized hands, but his lightweight companion was drawing a stinger from a pocket of his long-tailed coat. Still, I shot the larger one. The shocker’s emanations acted to overstimulate the natural bioelectrical capacity of his own flesh, turning him first into a rigid, bow-shaped version of himself, teeth bared in an involuntary rictus. Then, as my weapon’s discharge cut off, he collapsed to his knees and slowly toppled sideways, but I was already bringing the shocker to bear on the second one.

  “This need not go so badly for you,” I said.

  He had frozen with the stinger only halfway toward a position where it would be useful. My assessment had been that he was not the smarter of the two—the big one was the brains as well as the bulk—but I did not need a deep thinker. “Keep the weapon,” I said, “but put it away.”

  I lowered the hand that held the shocker. He folded his stinger and put it back where it had come from, meanwhile regarding me with a considering gaze. “Information?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Paying?”

  I produced a coin of larger denomination than the one that had slid under the barkeeper’s rag and tossed it to him. He caught it without taking his eyes off me. For good measure, I tossed another onto his partner’s recumbent form. Then I indicated my client standing nearby. “Have you seen my companion before?”

  I was not surprised that the response was a negative. “But what about a man and a woman, he in dark clothing, she in a wide-brimmed hat, spending time in the Rolling Pig?”

  I saw the answer in his face before he spoke.

  “Do you know who they are?”

  “No. They were offworlders.”

  I held up another coin. “Then what can you give me for this?”

  He looked down at his companion. “We are brothers,” he said.

  “Admirable loyalty,” I said, and added a second coin. “Now, what have you to sell?”

  “I know where they stayed.”

  “You followed them as you did us,” I said. It was not a question but the man signaled that I was correct. “But you did not accost them.”