Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  Annoyed, I looked about and caught the boy across the aisle making the face of an old curmudgeon who has come down to breakfast to find the punge tepid and the dolcetacc burned. Hespira followed my gaze and laughed out loud. I sighed again, folded my arms and closed my eyes in feigned sleep. In time, the pose became a welcome reality.

  #

  At the foot of the Oyoy Pass, with its dry, grassy hills looming over the pale stone and dark timber of the unnamed inn, our northbound omnibus connected with an eastbound route that followed a road skirting the high country. When we set off in the morning, we had acquired several new passengers and, I was thankful to note, lost the flexibly faced boy. My assistant reported that none of the newcomers was paying us more than cursory attention. And so we climbed, topped, and descended the Sleeves, as the range of hills was known. By midday we were onto the forested plain beyond, and by evening we could see the lights of Mol, where the twice-daily ferry put in from Orban on Greighen Island. We had missed the last sailing, so I booked us rooms in a comfortable hostelry overlooking the waterfront.

  After two days of sitting in an omnibus, I felt the need to stretch unused muscles. I invited Hespira to accompany me on a walk around the harbor. The boat basin was largely filled with krill-skimmers and a few seiners, with a separate section for pleasure craft. Most of the vessels we saw were of an unpretentious cut, many decorated with carved folk art at stern or prow—comical figurines expressing their owners’ worldviews—or painted in comfortable colors.

  Shannery seemed a more relaxed place than Ikkibal, its inhabitants far less concerned with receiving whatever was due them by dint of their social rank. Conversations were more frequently punctuated by laughter, and the laughter was more from the belly than from the back of the throat. I was reminded that the antecessors of this world had been those who found Ikkibal too tight a fit. I decided that the former Ikkibalis who had opted to become Shanners had made a good swap.

  We walked through the dusk, watching the last few working boats come in from the fishing grounds, Greighen Island a dark smear to the north. I was suddenly struck by the notion that this little town called Mol might be a better place than Olkney to wait out the end of my time. The mood here was less strident, the easy-going population probably better able to absorb dislocations.

  Of course, I would miss much about Old Earth—not least the menus at Xanthoulian’s, Master Jho-su’s Pot of Fire, or a dozen other eateries, the theater and, most of all, the salon life of wit and epigram—of which I was, I could say without vanity, one of the leading ornaments. If I relocated here, or in some place like it, I would have to become a different Hapthorn, or at least a Hapthorn with different interests. And yet, I reminded myself, it was not as if I could expect Xanthoulian’s to survive the collapse of civilization; in the none too distant future, my interests would suffer a profound and sudden reversal when magic once again ascended the throne. Here I might become an odd fellow who occasionally spoke “funny”—in Olkney, I would become one of the desperate survivors cutting throats over a stale loaf.

  I realized that, for the first time, I was thinking about life after the great change. Until now, I had been seeing the impending cataclysm as the end of all, looking down a road that led to a precipice, with nothing beyond but a plunge into darkness that went on forever. But there was a beyond beyond that. When geologic upheaval forces some great river to alter its ancient course, I thought, it scours out its new bed through whatever stands in its way, sweeping away walls and houses, palaces and parks. But here and there, by accidents of topography, it leaves islands. The north coast of Ballaraigh felt to me as if it might be one of those fortunate spots.

  I glanced at Hespira beside me, her hand on my arm. Her perpendicular face was that of a woman as lost in thought as I had just been. “Is any of this familiar to you?” I said.

  “It is,” she said. “Like a dream I’ve had often.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “we will go across to Greighen and there I think we will find some answers.”

  A cold breeze came in from the darkling sea. She shivered. “Come,” I said, “perhaps, this close to the source, the hotel will have singular cream.”

  #

  “I have never heard of it,” said the young woman who came to take our orders. She bore a certain resemblance to my client, mostly in her coloring and the size of her hands and feet, but she gave no sign of recognizing Hespira as a cousin.

  “Singular cream,” I said again. “It is a kind of custard made on Greighen Island. With a unique taste.”

  The description lit no inner lights. I said, “I’m told it’s made by an organization called the Grange.”

  “Oh, them,” said the server. “We have no dealings with them. Nor them with us.” She made a face for emphasis. “Especially not them with us.”

  At her recommendation, we ordered fillets of smoked grish and a steamed vegetable called tide fruit. The local wine was a little sweet, but it had the character needed to overcome the defect. “Interesting,” I said, “that singular cream is unknown almost within sight of the place where it is made.”

  “Perhaps the server on Ikkibal misled us,” said my client.

  “Unlikely,’ I said, although I had been on worlds where leading the stranger astray was a popular pastime. “In any case, it’s another answer we can look for tomorrow.”

  #

  Most of the ferry’s deck space was allocated to heavy transport vehicles, there being few private cars on either side of the strait. We boarded an omnibus that picked up passengers at the hotel and a few other stops around Mol, then drove straight onto the vessel. We left the omnibus for the duration of the voyage and climbed to an upper deck where we could see across the water to Greighen.

  It was a fine day, the sky and sea showing different shades of blue, with a mild breeze that put white peaks on waves that, because of the lighter gravity, were sharper than those we would have seen on one of Old Earth’s seas. Some of the passengers had brought stale bread—I was reminded of my dark vision of the night before—which they tore into chunks and threw overboard. Scarcely had the pieces floated down to touch the water before the spot where each landed became a miniature maelstrom: dozens of swimming crustaceans, ranging in size from the length of my little finger to that of my whole hand, competed to bear away the crusts, tearing them to fragments with multiple hooks and pincers and cramming the morsels into their complex mouth parts before they could be stolen away.

  Meanwhile, the feeding frenzies attracted flocks of leathery-winged creatures that the locals called flaps, which skimmed the surface, artfully stinging the krill with their long, thin, forward-mounted proboscises, then catching the paralyzed animals with their long-toed hind feet. As a successful flap rose with its catch it might be attacked by another of its flock intent on robbery, leading to an airborne squabble full of honks and whistles.

  The ferry passengers, having instigated all this mayhem, regarded the several melees with thoughtful silence. When all the bread was thrown and the last bite taken, they turned back to their own lives, their faces bearing expressions I could only describe as philosophic, as if the all-against-all in sea and air confirmed some deeply held view of the nature of existence.

  My assistant, draped over my neck and shoulders, reported that there was still no unusual interest in our presence. Hespira and I passed an uneventful couple of hours and reboarded the omnibus as the boat slowed to enter the harbor at Orban, tying up at a sloping ramp where our vehicle was the first to disembark. It carried us up into the center of the town, built on the top of the flattest of three low hills just inland from the strait. We stepped down into a wide public square, paved in crushed white seashells and surrounded on three sides by two- and three-story buildings of woodframe construction, brightly painted in cheerful yellows, oranges, and several shades of rose, most with wide verandahs on which locals watched each other and the day go by. A sturdy building that featured a second verandah above the first revealed itself to
be the Orban House, with vacancies.

  “Familiar?” I asked my client.

  “Yes,” she said, looking around. “But again, it is as if this is a place I have visited in a dream and now am seeing it brought to life.”

  “I believe we will find that the dream-sense is an effect of what has been done to separate your awareness from your past. We are getting close.”

  She swallowed. “I am apprehensive,” she said.

  “I will protect you,” I told her. Then I spoke quietly to my assistant, saying, “Watch the watchers,” as I lifted our luggage and led Hespira toward the hotel. “Let me know if we evoke any surprised reactions.”

  “Nothing,” it said, as our soles crunched the shell fragments underfoot into smaller pieces. “Still nothing. Now some mild curiosity.” We reached the stairs leading up to the Orban House’s porch, where a couple of casually clad locals sat in split-cane chairs, looking as if the chief goal of their already long lives had been the growing of capacious beards—a goal that had been not only achieved but accomplished to a degree surpassing any reasonable expectation. They were smoking some sort of aromatic herb in long-stemmed pipes while they examined me at leisure, no doubt trying to decide where in their hard-won worldview such an unusual specimen as I could be made to fit.

  “Nothing. Still nothing.”

  The hotel’s double doors were open to admit the warm weather. An odor of furniture polish and fresh-cut flowers invited us to enter the lobby. I led the way, bearing the bags, my client bringing up the rear, and crossed to the reception desk still hearing my assistant’s advisals that we had attracted no more than cursory notice. I had reached the desk and was setting down the bags when I heard it say, “To your right. Strong reaction. I would call it shock.”

  I looked in the direction indicated. An archway led out of the lobby and into what appeared to be an informal dining area. Standing in the opening was a man of average build and in his early maturity, wearing a matching longcoat and trousers of dark green that immediately put me in mind of a servant’s livery. He was also wearing a look of unalloyed astonishment, his mouth hanging open, his eyes fixed on Hespira.

  I turned to her, saw that she had not noticed the man. I immediately said, “Look there,” drawing her attention to him. “Do you know him?”

  When her gaze fell upon the man in green it was as if she had transmitted an impulse that freed him from his stasis. His mouth closed, he blinked twice, then without a word he made for the front doors. By the time he reached them, he was running.

  “You!” I managed to get out as I went to follow him. Behind me I could hear Hespira answering my last question—“No, I don’t think so.”—but events had moved on. When I reached the front porch he was not to be seen, but the two smoking idlers were both gazing to my left, where the verandah ended at some steps that led down to a lane that ran beside the hotel. My assistant confirmed that the fleeing man had gone that way then added, “A light engine is starting up.”

  I could hear it myself—a powerful air impeller, followed by the whine of a gravity obviator cycling up into the ultrasonic. I raced down the verandah and leapt the three stairs at the end and whirled in time to see the man disappearing down the alley on a single-seat skimmer. He turned left at the end of the building’s side wall, sending up a swirl of dust and needles from the spreading deodar that shaded the back of the hotel. I ran after him, though I had no need to keep him in sight.

  “He is heading inland,” said my assistant, “increasing speed.”

  I rounded the rear corner of the hotel. The skimmer had already crossed the open games court at the rear and exited through an arched gateway onto an arterial road. “Increasing distance will cause me to lose his sound shortly,” said my integrator, “but he appears to be taking the shortest route toward that road that winds up between the hills.”

  I looked where it indicated and saw a set of wooded prominences that rose above the three hills of Orban. A white strip of road angled up to disappear in a saddle between two of the heights. After a minute or so, I saw a speck of motion on the lower stretch of pavement. “There he is,” said my assistant.

  “Yes,” I said, “but where is he going?”

  Hespira was waiting for me on the front verandah, the two smokers watching her as if they expected a second act. When I reached her, they leaned forward, forearms on knees, so as not to miss a moment of the drama. But I promoted them from spectators to cast members by asking them, “Did you know that man?”

  They looked at each other, deciding who would speak. The one with the more grizzled beard eventually said, “No.”

  “Was that a uniform of some kind he was wearing?”

  Again the silent consultation, then it was the darker beard’s turn. “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  Darker beard must have felt that he still had momentum. “Grange,” he said.

  “The Grange? What can you tell me about them?”

  But both of them had apparently run out of drive. My assistant reminded me that the Grange was a highly secretive organization.

  I tried the two loafers again. “He went up and over those hills behind the town. Does that road lead to the Grange’s lands?”

  At this I got a nod and a scowl, the latter I think reflecting the Grange’s secretive nature, which would have provided little grist for the mills of speculation that these two ground on the Orban House’s porch.

  I opened a second file for them. “Regard my companion,” I said. “Is she at all familiar to either of you?”

  Their eyes went back to Hespira and both pipe stems went into the smoke-stained holes in their beards as they studied her at length. Finally, the grizzled one removed his fumarole and said, more to his companion than to us, “She might be a Hob.”

  Dark beard took time to digest this suggestion, but gave it only a qualified approbation before countering with, “Or a Broon, from over Sandwynd way.”

  My assistant was adding commentary. “Hobs are an extensive Greighen Island clan, mostly centered around the northeast of the island.” Broons were another clan, somewhat less numerous. Sandwynd was a village a day’s walk to the east.

  Hespira spoke. “Broon,” she said. “I think I’ve heard that name. And Sandwynd.” She was looking down, her eyes not really seeing the whitened boards of the porch floor. “Yes. Yes.”

  “Sounds like a Broon,” said the darker beard.

  I put a question to him. “Would a Broon say ‘flippadiday’?”

  Another pull on the pipe led to a confirmatory nod. “Serious folk, the Broons,” he said. “No time for lolloping about.”

  #

  The man in green was not a local, at least not in any sense that the two on the porch would have accepted. Apart from his livery and the shock he had shown at seeing Hespira, his other distinguishing characteristic had been a pair of wide, forward-facing nostrils. He was a Razhaman.

  This much was confirmed when my client and I returned to the hotel’s reception desk. As well as assigning us two adjacent rooms overlooking the square, the clerk answered my question concerning the identity of the man who had fled.

  “I do not know his name. He acts as the shipping agent for the Grange and sometimes dines here when he has business in town.”

  I learned more, even though the clerk declined the coin I set on the countertop. The Grange allowed itself only the most minimal contact with the town of Orban. It was not even part of the Greighen Island connectivity but communicated with the outside world solely by messengers such as the man we had encountered. Since the Hedge had gone up, very few of the island’s residents had entered the huge estate that took up most of the eastern portion of the island. The Greigheners who worked the estate, under the direction of green-liveried Razhamans, lived in sequestered villages. Their employers discouraged them from too much contact with outsiders—and “too much” as defined by the Grange was “any.”

  “Surely, they are not prisoners?” I said. “Not serfs tied
to the land?”

  The clerk was a fair-haired youngish man, with no more beard than would cover his chin, but like persons of his occupation whom I had met all over The Spray, he had been exposed to a variety of types and situations, and had learned how to weigh up what he saw. “The Grange paid good prices for their land and offered them wages to stay on. Many declined the offers and moved on. Those who stayed found that their new prosperity was worth a few constrictions.”

  I ventured a question. “Sandwynd was one of the villages the Grange purchased?”

  “It was.”

  “Might my companion have come from there?”

  He looked at Hespira. “She might.”

  “Is there anyone here in Orban who could take the imprecision out of my question?”

  The clerk thought out loud. “They were mostly Broons and Claverclocks out that way, and a few Izmals. Not many of them stayed on behind the Hedge. They took the payments and went south. Some even went offworld. None are around here now.”

  “What about the authorities?”

  The man’s eyebrows moved in an eloquent ambiguity. “Sandwynd folk were of the old stock. They preferred not to entangle themselves with musts and mustn’ts. They left the world alone and expected the world to return the favor.”

  “What about the police?” It had been my experience on several worlds that official forces of probity liked to aim at least an occasional sidewise glance at folk who had the attitude the clerk had just described to me.

  “Bars Hoop?” said my informant, then clarified the two syllables by identifying them as the name of the local prepostor-corporal. “If anyone had dealings with them, Bars would be the one.”

  A few minutes later we had traversed the square and followed a broad avenue to a three-story building—also of timber frame, but with a ground-floor annex of solid stone—that was the local administrative nexus, which included the Greighen Island Prepostory. This force consisted of the aforementioned Hoop, three prepostors-ordinary, two clerks, and a stooped and entirely bald man who swept out the offices and oversaw the ins and outs of the jail. My assistant informed me that the latter institution was locally referred to as the “whileaway.”