Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  Besides seeing if Bars Hoop recognized Hespira, I had another reason to visit the place: the Grange man had not rushed off to report what he had seen so that those he reported to could sit in contemplation of the vagaries of life and the surprising turns a day might take. People who strip women of their memories and deposit them without resources on far-away planets, people who murder inquisitive jitney drivers and troublesome roughnecks who intrude upon them, were not likely to show equanimity when their plans were interfered with. I expected to see action out of the Grange, whoever they were, and I doubted it would be long in coming.

  Bars Hoop was a broad man, in physique, accent, and beard. He also had acquired the habit of herb-smoking that seemed to be rife on Greighen Island, so that his office was aswim with blue vapors that hovered in a layer just below the ceiling and his reddish whiskers were at risk of sudden ignition from errant embers. He did not know my client at sight of her, but he admitted that he had spent little time in Sandwynd and the other outports on the eastern edge of the island, even before the Hedge sprang up. “And now—” He spread his meaty hands, then picked up the carved pipe from a holder on his cluttered desk and drew fresh inspiration from it. “—now I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”

  “Then allow me to do the telling,” I said, and proceeded to lay out for him the events that had occupied me since Hespira had crashed into me outside Xanthoulian’s. When I spoke of her amnesia, his russet brows rose high, only to come crashing down when I related the death of Chumblot and the downfall of Big Tooth. I brought us up to the moment of the Grange man’s hasty exit and said, “I believe that my client is of concern to them, indeed some kind of threat, and that they will come for her. She must be protected.”

  Hoop’s brows rose again. “There has never been any trouble from over the Hedge,” he said. “They keep to themselves but they seem to be a law-abiding crew.”

  “Would you know if they were not?” I said. “They work hard to keep their doings out of sight. That’s often a sign that what’s being done won’t bear the light of exposure.”

  He conceded the point with a thoughtful nod, but answered my question in the affirmative. “They’re not as well-hidden as they think they are,” he said. “If anything untoward were happening, I would hear of it, sooner or later.” He took another lungful of blue fumes. “Islands are like that. And, even if islands aren’t, I am like that.”

  I was not so sanguine, and I let my sentiments show in my face. He reacted to my skepticism, though without the resentment I was accustomed to seeing in Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny and others of his ilk. Perhaps, I thought, the smoke has a mellowing effect.

  “We’re not used to them as call themselves ‘discriminators’ from half-forgotten worlds,” he said, “but I’ll say you this: I’ll assign Grondin Brist to keep an eye on you two at the Orban House tonight. He’s a quick lad, Grondin is.”

  “You will not mind if I arm myself with a shocker?” I said. “Just in case Grondin is not quite quick enough.”

  Bars Hoop’s answer was a remarkably coherent toroid of smoke that left his pursed lips and sailed upward to join the clouds above. I took it as an acquiescence.

  #

  Grondin Brist was built from the same general plans that had created his superior, though with more pruning of the thicket of hair that erupted from his cheeks and chin. His reputed quickness was not on immediate display but he exhibited a quiet competence in the way he assessed our situation at the Orban House and disposed himself. His Prepostory-issued surveillance suite was not as sophisticated as my assistant’s, but Brist’s had the handicap of having to operate within the strictures of law and custom. He deployed sensitive percepts at several points in the hallway and the ascender, thus covering all approaches to our rooms, then stationed himself in the hallway between Hespira’s door and mine, having set the doors who’s-theres to admit him without hesitation.

  My client and I spent the afternoon in the hotel. Hespira was understandably nervous; it is difficult to play a part in someone else’s drama when one is not allowed to see the script. I felt moved to sit with her and counsel her to be of good heart.

  “We have been steadily driving toward the core of this case,” I said. “Soon we will unlock the final door and all will be made plain.”

  “I am only a little frightened,” she said. “I have come to trust your judgments. And the prepostor looks to know his business.”

  “We are on the brink,” I said. Indeed, even without my intuition, I had a good feeling about how this discrimination had proceeded. It had had its turns and tweaks, but its puzzles had opened to straightforward applications of thought and logic; after the past few months, it was a relief to be exercising my craft without the interference of sympathetic association and all its jimjammering absurdities—absurdities that were all the more infuriating for having turned out to be truth.

  “Not long now,” I said. “We will find the starting point, we will unravel the web, and you will be restored to your life.”

  Her face took on a curious cast. “I wonder,” she said, “if that life was as interesting as this one has been.”

  “Interesting or not, it was yours and you are entitled to it.” Then I added, “Or, if you are so inclined, to reject it and try a new one.”

  She looked at me oddly, and I had the impression she wished to ask me a question, but that she preferred to leave it unvoiced until another time. Still, she brightened and even smiled. I played into her happier mood by remarking that there might be some advantage in being stripped of all knowledge of one’s past. “If, for example, there was more bad than good in it, if it contained more bleak memories than cheery ones, one would be well rid of it. How many of us, I wonder, if given the chance to start over, cleared of all debts owed to the past, all blame and guilt lifted away, wouldn’t gladly take the cup of amnesience and drink it down?”

  “Would you?” she said.

  Half a year ago, I would have answered no with speed and assurance. I had had a good life—perhaps lacking in some spheres, but that lack had been more than made up for by the satisfactions I had taken from my work and my various avocations. But now? If I could be relieved of knowing what I knew, of the chill certainty that soon all that I held dear would come crashing down around me, would I not gladly pass back the bitter cup of foreknowledge? Would I not happily go through the remaining days armored by ignorance, until I reached the edge of the unseen cliff and toppled over with everyone else?

  “I do not know,” I said.

  #

  We ate dinner in my room—krill and hair-fine noodles that the server said were made from a flour ground from the seeds of a grass that grew in the shallows between the shore and the deep water. It was a pleasant meal, made more so by Hespira’s happier mood, and I did my best to enjoy the moment. The evening wore on, then became full night, and I began to wonder if the man who had hurried away had wasted his speed, for no one seemed to be hurrying back.

  Then my assistant said to me, privately, “Two men are arriving in a vehicle at the front of the hotel. One is highly stressed, the other less so but keyed up. Now they are entering the lobby.”

  “Are they armed?”

  “No, but the desk clerk is reacting with alarm to their questions. Now he is telling them where we are.”

  To Hespira, I said, “Something is happening. I want you to go into the sanitary suite and set it to privacy.” I deployed my shocker and said to my integrator, “Alert Grondin Brist.”

  “No need. His percepts have detected the commotion from below.”

  I strode to the door. As I opened it, I could hear shouting in the hallway.

  Chapter Seven

  My first impression was that the young man who was doing most of the shouting was out of his rightful place. For one thing, he was physically unlike the general run of Greighen Islanders I had so far seen, being neither bearded nor fair-complected. His hair was straight and dark, instead of blond or rufous like Hespira
. His nostrils showed the enlargement of a Razhaman’s. And he clearly wasn’t used to raising his voice, because it kept cracking as he struggled with the prepostor, shouting repeatedly the same three syllables—“Irmyrlene! Irmyrlene!”—as if they were both a command and an explanation.

  But what struck me foremost about the man was his clothing. He wore the same combination of colors I had seen on the patrons of the Greeneries—black and silver set off with small gold diamonds. Indeed, he might have stepped straight out of the restaurant and into this one-sided tussle with the much larger and far better coordinated Grondin Brist. The prepostor had deftly turned the shouting man’s initial onrush, so that the Razhaman had ended up pinned face-first against the corridor wall, one arm twisted up behind his back. As I emerged from my room, Brist’s foot kicked the prisoner’s ankles apart while his free hand searched the man’s clothing for weapons, finding none. Through all of this, the agonized cry of “Irmyrlene! Irmyrlene!” continued.

  The other person on the scene was the fellow in green who had fled at the sight of Hespira. He hovered ineffectually, clearly wishing to come to the aid of the young man, but prevented by his nature from mixing into an actual fight. Beneath the elegantiast’s shouts and the prepostor’s grunts, I could hear the servant saying, agitatedly, “Please, sir! Do not hurt Master Imrith!”

  Imrith’s cries had now become hoarse, as much from overuse of his vocal chords as from the pain his twisted arm must have been giving him. I saw no danger here, but before I acted I consulted my assistant for its wider, sharper perceptions. The integrator told me that a third and fourth visitor were on their way toward us; both were unarmed, and one of them moved with the slowness of aged joints. “But the other is large, fit, and displays the physiological signs of a professional who is about to bring to the situation whatever is required.”

  It seemed wise to try to lower the tension in the hallway before fresh reserves came up from the rear. I moved farther out of my doorway and raised my voice. “Stop that shouting! Who is this Irmyrlene, and what is she to you?”

  The young man quieted almost at once, a response that I would have put down to a recognition of my natural authority if I had not felt a presence behind me. My client had come out of the room. The young man’s eyes went to her and immediately filled with tears, though a kind of smile was trying to force itself upon his trembling lips. “Irmyrlene,” he said.

  I spoke to the prepostor. “I think there is no need to restrain him further.”

  Brist relaxed the pressure on the young man’s twisted arm and pulled him away from the wall, but he kept one hand on his shoulder. All fight had gone out of the fellow. He gazed at Hespira as if at a sight much longed for, though without hope it would ever appear.

  “You’ve come back,” he said. “He told me you never would. But here you are.”

  I turned to Hespira. She was staring at the man in consternation.

  “Do you know him?” I said.

  “No,” she said, then, “wait… I…” She shook her head, as if to settle some loose part back into its place. “There is something. I can’t quite…”

  “Irmyrlene,” the man said, “don’t say you don’t remember.” He made to move toward her, but the prepostor’s hand clamped his shoulder and held him back. Still he pleaded with her. “Don’t do this to me.”

  But now another voice spoke, the kind of voice that not only expects answers immediately but expects them to be delivered in a respectful, if not outright cringing, tone. “What is going on here?”

  The voice’s effect on Grondin Brist was minimal but it struck the other two men with the solid weight of a cudgel. For the one who had been pleading with Hespira, the effect was as if the air had been suddenly let out of him. His face fell, his shoulders slumped, and he seemed to lose overall height.

  The man in green livery did literally cringe, shrinking back against the corridor wall to let pass the older man who had come up behind him. The servant lowered his eyes and kept them fixed on his own feet, as the newcomer brushed by him without a glance and said to Grondin Brist, “You will take your hand off my son, Prepostor. He is coming with me.”

  “No,” said the young man, softly, but it was a syllable of despair, not defiance. His eyes went from Hespira to me, then to the prepostor, and finally to his father. I saw the resemblance between them, though it was all in the frame and features, and the colors of their costumes; in character, they could not have been more different. Somehow a hawk had sired a pigeon. One was hard, the other soft. The younger would always yield, the older would never give way, whatever the price to be paid.

  Now the final invitee to the party put in his appearance. As my assistant had said, he was large and well muscled but I recognized the look of a man whose confidence comes not from raw strength but from skill and experience. He wore the same livery as the cringing servant, but there the similarities ended. With a quiet economy of motion he came to stand beside his master’s errant son and placed a hand on the young man’s upper arm.

  Brist was weighing up the situation, in that practical policeman’s way that I had often seen hovering about the person of Brustram Warhanny back on Old Earth. He only glanced at the man with whom he now shared possession of his prisoner, then turned his attention to the latter man. “Now, young Imrith,” he said, “are you to be quiet?”

  It was plain that all the shout had gone out of him. He gazed at Hespira in anguish. “Irmyrlene,” he tried, once more.

  His father made a brusque motion, and the prepostor released his grip. The large servant exerted a minimum of force and suddenly the son was turned the way they had come and, moving off, his shoulders slumped, feet scarcely lifting for each heavy step. If ever a back could express despair, I knew I was seeing it. The older man half turned his head to snap a syllable at the cowed liveryman who immediately fell in behind.

  But the incident had settled nothing. “Wait,” I said. “I have questions!” And when no one treated that news as of any importance, I said to the older man, “Where will you be tomorrow? I will wish to speak with you!”

  That did get me a response. I was fortunate that a glare could not have had physical force, else its impact would have knocked me clear off my feet, hurtled me back down the corridor, and thrust me right through the building’s wall.

  Then his gaze went to Hespira and I had a glimpse of the mind behind those raptor’s eyes. It was a mind that surgically divided the population of the cosmos into those who were useful to him, those who were of no interest, and those who were trouble. My client clearly fell into the third category.

  “You,” he said to her, “were not supposed to come back.”

  I waited to see how Hespira would respond. She was staring at the older man but I saw no recognition in her face. “I don’t—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “It does not signify,” he said. “Just go. And this time, stay away.”

  I made a gesture indicating that I wished to join the conversation. But the old man was already turning to leave and I saw that the father’s back could express contempt as eloquently as the son’s could convey defeat.

  Hespira was slumped against the door jamb, her face a war between confusion and suffering. Grondin Brist, raising the inside of one wrist to his lips, was communicating with his superior while watching the old man step into the descender and disappear from sight. I was torn between them, but I realized that the prepostor would be at his post and available for consultation through the night, while my client was in need now.

  I eased her into the room and closed the door, then went to the dispenser for a dram of restorative and a glass of improved water. Hespira had sunk into a chair, ignoring its efforts to adapt to her unhappy posture. I brought her the two drinks, said, “Come now!” in a peremptory tone, and got her to down the one and sip from the other.

  She sat holding the water tumbler in her hand and I could see that she was attempting to batter aside whatever was the inner barrier that kept her from he
rself. But she was making no headway and the lack of progress was driving her into a fit of frustration. A moment later, she threw the half-full tumbler across the room, splashing liquid in several directions. She uttered a coarse word, then repeated it several times, with rising emphasis, while her fist smacked the arm of the chair, causing it to withdraw.

  “It is not like a wall that you can break through,” I said. “It will be there until suddenly it is not, and then it will be as if it never was.”

  She looked at me, her face blotchy and her eyes red. I realized she had been fighting tears. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I have been studying the matter,” I said. “But that is not the important thing right now.”

  I supposed that she needed to take out her frustrations on someone, and apparently the tumbler and chair had not satisfied. “Very well, Your Lord High Knowingness,” she said, “just what is the important thing?”

  “Why, that moments ago, we were in the presence of several people who clearly know who you are.”

  I saw the import pierce the thicket of emotions that the scene in the hallway had caused her. “Oh,” she said, “of course.”

  There was more I could have added. The encounter in the hallway had not been a clarifying instant for her; the veil had not suddenly fallen. But, at some level of her mind, she had reacted with strong emotion—negative, but strong. To me, that said that some part of her not only recognized the old man and the son, Imrith, but recalled the affective context in which she knew them.

  “I think,” I said, “that we may be close to a breakthrough.” Now I saw hope struggling back to its place. “But, clearly, whatever your connection to those people, it was not tranquil and it did not end well.”