Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  “Having been seen, perhaps he has lost his usefulness and has been assigned other duties.”

  “Possible. Or he may have no connection. If we were being shadowed at Razham, why were we not followed to Wathers and then to here, where we are more of a problem than we were on Ikkibal?”

  “We need more information,” my assistant said.

  “We do.” I thought for a moment, then made my decision. “Contact Bars Hoop.”

  A moment later the corporal’s face hung in the air before me. “I plan to depart Shannery soon,” I said.

  “The news is welcome,” he said. “The Grange has applied for an order.”

  “I am concerned for my client’s safety. If we have to travel by omnibus, that old man might seek to arrange a more drastic solution somewhere along the way.”

  “The possibility cannot be overlooked. But I cannot provide an escort beyond my jurisdiction, which ends at the ferry dock.”

  “We do not require an escort, only permission to bring my space yacht up from Wathers so that we can go offworld directly from here.”

  I watched him make up his mind. “I will contact the appropriate authorities and see if I can obtain an easement,” he said. “Wait while I do so.”

  His image disappeared, to be replaced by the arms of the Prepostory, an ancient design of restraints and short cudgels grouped around an oddly shaped item of tall headgear. In a few moments he was back. “You may bring up your ship. Have it land at the rear of the hotel.”

  “Thank you. I will do so.”

  When the connection was broken I told my assistant to contact the Gallivant and bid it come up. “Tell it we will want to depart at sunset.”

  “Done,” it said.

  “Was your communication with the ship entirely private?”

  “No. The Prepostory is listening in.”

  “As expected,” I said. “Now transmit a series of instructions regarding provisioning and the preparation of a meal for Hespira and me, once we are offworld. Convey an impression that I have finicky expectations and a tendency to repeat myself unnecessarily. But embed in the communication a coded instruction to ignore the food order and instead deploy the yacht’s surveillance percepts while over the Grange’s property. I want to know everything there is to know about what is behind the Hedge.”

  “Done.”

  “Is there any indication the Prepostory intercepted the hidden message?”

  “None.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now, can your own percepts locate this Imrith who was doing all the shouting last night?”

  The reply took a few moments to arrive. “He is almost out of my range,” the integrator said. “He is in an upstairs room of a large residential building at the center of the Grange property. The door is locked and the who’s-there will not yield to his entreaties. He keeps going to an open window and gazing forlornly in the direction of Orban.”

  “Can you reach him with a focused beam of sound?”

  “There is a flat rock on one of the hills overlooking the town. I believe I can bounce a message off it and down to where he stands. I presume you would not want any other ear to intercept it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Let me test the vector. I will imitate a local bird call.” A few moments later, it said, “He is looking about for the bird.”

  “Very good,” I said. “Now assume our client’s voice and send him a message saying that she will come to him soon after sunset. He must meet her at the place where they first spoke.”

  “You assume that he will remember the spot?”

  “He is a Razhaman of the elegantiast class. It will be burned deeply into his romance-addled cerebrum.”

  “Should you not secure the client’s permission? She may not wish to meet him.”

  “It is a small subterfuge. Besides, she will not be keeping the appointment,” I said. “We will.”

  The integrator transmitted the message and reported that the young man now showed considerably more energy. “He is tearing up a wall hanging,” it said. “Now he is knotting the lengths together.”

  “Good,” I said. “Keep him in view and report any developments. I am going to confer with our client.”

  #

  I found Hespira coincidentally standing at the open window of her room and gazing out at the rear yard of the hotel. But her face, when she turned at my entrance, was not forlorn. She had the look of a woman who had made up her mind. “I want to thank you for all that you have done,” she said, “but now I want you to stop.”

  “Stop what?” I said.

  “Stop trying to find out who I am and what happened to me.”

  I let my surprise show. “You do not wish to know?”

  “No.”

  I could see that she had been prey to strong emotions. Beads of moisture dotted the fine reddish hairs on her upper lip and I was conscious of a warm odor from her body—not an unpleasant scent, nor yet enticing, but simply an essence of her. I found myself once again motivated to protect her.

  “Just because you are done with Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett,” I said, “does not mean that others may be. Whoever took your memories did so for a reason. Not knowing that reason may put you in jeopardy. Our having come here may have set wheels turning again, wheels that this time may crush the life out of you.”

  She did not answer my argument but took a new tangent, indicating the screen of the hotel’s integrator which was shimmering against an inner wall. It was filled with images and text. “I have been learning about the Broons. They are notorious hereabouts for their hard-heartedness. The ‘miserly clan’ they are called, not to mention ‘groat-squeezers’ and ‘grudge-grippers.’ Most of them would apparently step over a dying neighbor to gain a dented tin cup.”

  “General descriptions always admit of exceptions. How do you know that you were not one of the statistical outliers, a kindly Broon?” I said.

  “I was a young girl abandoned by my parents because they tired of being together and obviously tired of keeping me. If I come from the kind of people who could do that, odds are that I am not much different.”

  “Supposition,” I said. “You do not know that.”

  “I saw the look on that boy’s face. I broke his heart.”

  “He is a high-ranked Razhaman. They wallow in tragedy and melodrama. At least until they wed.”

  “And I took his father’s money to go off and leave him.”

  “I suspect there were threats as well as emoluments.”

  She gave me a harsh look. “A Broon’s response to a threat is the same as to a blow: vendetta to the seventh generation. I come from hard stock.”

  I argued with her, even though I could see I was making no headway. The thought of her being in danger disturbed me deeply. Finally, having come to understand that, memories or no memories, she was as unmovable as her clan was reputed to be, I said, “Then what can I do for you?”

  “Take me back to Old Earth,” she said. “There I will start anew.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I will do whatever comes to hand. It does not signify. What does matter is who I shall be.”

  “And who will you be?”

  “Someone who is the opposite of Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett. Someone kind.”

  I sighed. “The Gallivant arrives this afternoon. I have a few errant threads to knot up, then we will go.”

  Her face softened. “I am sorry to be of such trouble to you.”

  “That does not sound much like a Broon. Perhaps you were not like your relatives.”

  She signaled a negative. “I think it is because, since my amnesia, I have known only kindness, at your hands. You have not even sought to take advantage of my dependence. Most men would, even though I am no beauty.”

  “You are my client. It would have been improper.”

  “I suspect that young Irmyrlene met with a different set of standards. I would just as soon not remember them. But I will try to repay your efforts.”

  I
waved the suggestion away and returned to my room. As the door closed behind me, my assistant said, “I am concerned for you. Your indicators are well above normal.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, “I am as always.”

  “Your heart rate is elevated, as is your respiration. Glandular secretions are indicative of serious stress.”

  A man had to be a fool to dispute his integrator’s percepts. “You heard our conversation.”

  “You did not tell me not to.”

  “I am worried about my client,” I said.

  “By what passed between you, she no longer stands in that relation to you. At best, you are her unpaid chauffeur, and then only until we return to Old Earth. After that, she will make her own way.”

  The thought of Hespira on her own troubled me. “I still feel an obligation.”

  “And that obligation drives you to emotions I have not often seen in you before, and certainly never in a professional connection.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Now you are irritated.”

  “I am not insensible. I do not require a moment-by-moment guide to the emotions I am experiencing,” I said. “Make your point.”

  “You are behaving abnormally, without apparent cause. What does that suggest?”

  I groaned. “We are not back to magic again?” I drew from within my shirt the disk Osk Rievor had given me. It glowed a cool blue. “There, not so much as a tinge of red.”

  “You assume the talisman is functional, and that it cannot be overridden by a practitioner with more authority.”

  “I am not ensorceled,” I said. “Rather, I am facing the imminent end of all that I hold dear. Assisting Hespira has felt like a way to assert my true self, to hold up a small, brave flame against the encroaching darkness. Now she has leaned over and blown it out. A certain degree of vexation is to be expected.”

  The integrator changed the subject. “The Gallivant is in the air.” A screen appeared, showing the yacht’s route across the curve of Shannery’s surface. “It will arrive shortly.”

  “Good. Advise our client. I will go and settle the account with the hotel. We will go aboard as soon as the ship lands.”

  #

  The Gallivant greeted us with steaming punge and a fragrant assortment of ship’s bread. We settled in the salon, my assistant once again hung upon its hook, to sip and chew as the yacht displayed the results of its surveillance of the Grange lands, captured at an oblique angle as the ship had leisurely settled to its present resting place behind the Orban House.

  I saw an agricultural precinct, though most of it had been left to go fallow and its buildings rendered uninhabitable. Starting at the outskirts of the Grange lands, which covered almost the entire eastern half of Greighen Island, overgrown fields crowded against roofless homesteads, doors and windows gaped empty in the walls of abandoned barns and houses. Weeds sprouted down the middles of the unused dirt roads. Only near the center of the territory were there signs of husbandry. Here, one large holding had been maintained, its lawns and flower beds well tended, the croplands surrounding the manor house laid out in orderly plots of legumes, root crops, and berries, the orchard bursting with several species of trees, all well-laden with fruit, though the lighter gravity and richer air made the trees appear odd: as if the oversized apples and pears and grunderbols were merely pome-shaped balloons.

  I could see some two dozen men and women working the fields and others performing domestic chores in and around the estate’s outbuildings, but no guards kept a watch on their activities. Very few of the people in view wore the green livery, and all who did so displayed the adaptive characteristics of Razhamans. They busied themselves around the big house. I surmised that the dominee had brought only a handful of retainers with him from Ikkibal, and that they looked after him and his son, while locally hired labor delved and sowed and reaped. The estate was self-sufficient; its only contact with the world outside the Hedge was through the servant’s liaison with Erghreaves the shipper.

  A stone wall enclosed the manor, with strong gates. When I enlarged the image I saw that these physical barriers had been enhanced by less obvious defenses. “What do you make of those?” I asked my assistant.

  “High quality,” it said, “difficult to defeat. I believe they are intended to keep out more than just the locals.”

  But then we turned to the mystery that lay behind the big house, in what had probably been the previous owner’s garden and patio. The space it occupied was sufficient for a modest one-story building, but its actual dimensions and shape were unknowable; whatever stood there was effectively clouded.

  “Can you penetrate it?” I asked my assistant.

  “Not from this distance,” it said. “I could give a better answer after a closer inspection, but it is a very good cloud. Even tickling it to search for entry points might set alarms sounding.”

  The ship interrupted to say, “I am receiving a communication from Prepostor-Corporal Bars Hoop. He wishes to know why we have not departed.”

  “Tell him,” I said, “that I am not satisfied with the quality of your catering arrangements and am making changes before we lift off.”

  “That is not true, and it reflects discreditably on my shipliness.”

  “Rather, it reflects poorly on my character,” I said, “making me appear persnickety, even effete.” I added, “When we have done more traveling together, you will come to see that occasionally we must be other than forthright with local authorities. Many of them lack imagination and react poorly to creativity and unexpected innovation.”

  My assistant said, “Bars Hoop does not appear to lack imagination.”

  “True,” I said, “which makes the need for creativity all the more pressing.”

  The Gallivant said, “I have transmitted the message. The corporal says that if we are not offworld by the seventh hour, he will seize me, then subject all of us to a searching inquiry.”

  “Tell him that his orders will be carried out.” I returned to consideration of the mysterious structure behind the manor house. “Let us hope the young and besotted Razhaman knows how to unpick the cloud.”

  Hespira spoke up. “Why are you doing this? I have told you I do not wish you to pursue my case any further.”

  “I am not doing it for you,” I said, “but for my own peace of mind.”

  “You should leave that poor boy alone. Haven’t we brought him enough trouble?”

  “He will not notice a little more.”

  “Then I am going with you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I owe that young man at least an apology.”

  “No.”

  She looked at me in a way that made me think she had been right about the obduracy of Broons. “If you do not take me, I will inform Bars Hoop of your intentions.” She saw me weighing my response to her threat. “Or do you mean to imprison me on your ship? Is that how you will show your ‘concern’ for me?”

  “Two people have died on the fringes of this discrimination,” I said. “When we expose the heart of it, the danger may be extreme.”

  Her over-long chin poked out. “Nevertheless,” she said.

  I thought about it. “I have a spare elision suit,” I said. “But you must do exactly as I say.”

  Her voice said she would comply. Her eyes said something more ambiguous.

  Chapter Eight

  I had never liked dropping through the upper atmosphere, with nothing but a thin film of membrane to argue on my behalf against the pull of gravity—even Shannery’s lighter tug. I liked it even less in darkness, with Hespira’s arms clasped about my neck and her weight in my arms, though the latter was further reduced by the small obviator she wore attached to her belt. The wind of our descent whistled in my ears as the Gallivant climbed smoothly away from us and the manor at the heart of the Grange property rose too swiftly for my liking.

  “Put us down behind that byre,” I said to my integrator, which was also draped about my neck and to which
I had left the task of managing the airfoil as well as the business of keeping us undetected by the defenses the Razhamans had installed. Hespira and I were both clad in elision suits of my own design. The suits’ fabric neither reflected nor absorbed most electromagnetic energies, but caused them to slip over its surface and continue on their way unimpeded—at least, that was so for all but a tiny fraction of the spectrum’s frequencies. A highly refined detector could spot the minimal disturbance, and if that detector were connected to an alarm, or worse, a self-aiming weapon, the results could be unpleasant. The Razhaman dominee had impressed me as the kind who would mount just such a refined and connected defense; for that reason, I had reconfigured our suits’ controls to give any watching percepts the impression that we were a small bird arrowing down to its nest at the end of the day.

  We landed in deep shadow behind a small building with rough drystone walls and a sloping roof of something like shale. Around it hung a complex miasma of dank straw, spoiled food, animal musk, and dung. As I lowered Hespira to the ground, her nostrils flared, then her face wrinkled in distaste. She said, “I know that smell.”

  “It is the odor of firhogs,” I said. “Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett grew up on a farm that raised them. I believe it was her experience with the creatures that led to her being hired to tend the stock for the Grange.” Though it seemed a strange choice of livestock for traditionalist Razhamans, who eschewed any form of pig flesh as unsuitable for consumption.

  “So. I was a pigstress,” she said, trying on the self-description as if it were a new garment. Then she discarded it. “Something else I am glad not to be.”

  Our voices must have reached the large, flaplike ears of the beasts on the other side of the wall. They began to snuffle and grunt. “They know your sound,” I said.

  “As do I,” said a new voice from the darkness. The young Razhaman stepped forward from where he had been waiting. Before we had landed, my assistant had advised me privately of his presence and the fact that he was unarmed. The young man now reached out a hand, saying, “Where are you? I cannot see you.”

  Hespira removed the cowl and mask of the elision suit, so that her face appeared in the dimness. I left my disguise intact.