“I had not thought of myself as a Calabrine,” I said, “merely a habitual solver of puzzles. But perhaps there is something in it.”
We were seated across from each other at the table in the salon. Now she reached over with one of her large rough hands and took mine. “I still cannot understand how you could have known what you know and kept it to yourself. I think of you walking among the people on the streets, each of them going about their own concerns, as if they had all the time they would ever need. And you knowing that soon, they and their concerns would be whisked away. I would have had to stop passersby at random, to blurt out the horrid news.”
“What good would it have done?” I said.
She touched her fingers to her breastbone. “It would have relieved the pressure.”
“And what good would that have done?”
#
One more sleep, an unmedicated one, and we were within view of Old Earth and her tired sun. I had set my assistant the task of trying to communicate further with Osk Rievor, but either his grinnet could not receive from the connectivity, or he had instructed it not to do so. I suspected the latter. My integrator informed me that there were “odd characteristics” to the message that we had already received, but found it hard to express what it meant.
“A peculiar flavor, one might say,” it said. The ship offered its opinion that it was more an odor than a taste. But both integrators agreed that any apparatus receiving a communication from Osk Rievor would note the added ambience. It could draw unwanted attention.
“Did I smell like that?” my assistant asked the Gallivant, when I was in grinnet form?”
“No,” said the ship, “though there was the same shrillness of tone.”
My assistant denied being shrill and I was forced to restore equanimity and instruct both of them to prepare for landing.
#
My standard communication with Olkney’s spaceport, set on an island in Mornedy Sound, was interrupted by a priority message from the Bureau of Scrutiny. Brustram Warhanny required me to make contact with him “as soon as might be convenient”—a phrase that, in scroot parlance, translated as “immediately, and your convenience be damned.”
“Connect me,” I said to my assistant. A few moments later I was confronted once more with the lugubrious mien of the Colonel-Investigator. I experienced a momentary temptation to do as Hespira might have and advise him that his world was shortly to end; but I was immediately faced with the same question I had asked her—what good would it do?
“Hapthorn,” he said without preamble, “the Shar-Chonder affair has yet to run its course.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
He told me that there had been a number of affronts to the Archon’s peace, including two incidents that had left bodies strewn about the back streets and cramped alleyways of the Gullet, the district where Massim Shar had established his base.
“Chonder escalated the conflict, hiring two full platoons of Hand Organization operatives. But Hak Binram showed surprising versatility in his dispositions, negating the Hand’s superiority of numbers.”
I said that I had always thought Binram underrated.
“Well, now he has had his opportunity to show his true substance. The result is that the Hand is aggrieved; its shield has suffered a tarnishing. They have sent Chai Esquilieu to take charge.”
“I have heard of him,” I said. “He is First Thumb over four worlds.”
“Five, now,” said Warhanny. “We have been added to his remit.”
I sighed. “What do you wish of me?”
The scroot held up a hand of his own and ticked fingers one after another. “First, accept no further commissions of any kind from Irslan Chonder.”
“I have no intention of doing so.”
“Second, avoid Massim Shar.”
“I have every intention of doing so.”
“Third, stay indoors, or better yet, out of town. The dynamic of the Shar-Chonder situation has evolved. It is now a prestige war between Hak Binram and Chai Esquilieu. You have become a trophy that each seeks to deny the other. Neither will be content until he has collected your ears.”
“I had rather they didn’t. I have grown attached to them.”
“Binram has established a node in the connectivity offering five thousand hepts for true word of your whereabouts. Esquilieu offers six thousand.”
Neither was a negligible amount, nor yet a fortune. I was not sure how I felt about it.
“Finally,” Warhanny said, touching his smallest finger, “if you come across any information that would assist the Bureau, do not keep it to yourself. The situation is grim.”
I assured the Colonel-Investigator of my complete cooperation and severed the connection. “We will stop briefly at my lodgings,” I told Hespira, “then go out to the Arlem estate.” To my assistant, I said, “Engage an aircar for us, under an assumed name”—I kept several dormant identities for when it was better not to be Henghis Hapthorn—“and when it arrives scan it thoroughly.”
Our journey across the sound and to the landing pad atop the roof of my lodgings was uneventful. As we came in range of the dwelling my assistant reported, “There are several detectors and passive surveils covering the premises, including a Bureau set. I cannot defeat them from a hired aircar.”
“Make us as vague as possible,” I said, “and expend no energy on the scroot equipment.” Warhanny already knew I was home. “We will just pick up a few necessities and be on our way.”
We touched down and the rooftop who’s-there, already alerted, had the door open as we reached it. We went down through my chambers and into the workroom, my assistant scanning the premises and receiving reports from the in-built wards and defenses.
“Attempts have been made,” it said, as I opened storage lockers and retrieved items I thought might be useful, “but the intent seems to have been more to reconnoiter than to invade, at least once it was known you were not here.”
At least no one had sought to insert any devices with lethal capacities. Whoever wanted me—and the number and variety of attempts argued for more than one in that category—wanted me alive. “Good,” I said. “It is easier to fend off kidnapers than a semi-sentient projectile arriving at ultrasonic speed, or a line-of-sight energy beam from an orbiting emitter.”
“The detectors have reported our landing and entry,” the integrator said. “Messages went in several directions, some of them to receptors no great distance away.”
“Then let us be gone,” I said.
Hespira had spent this time sitting on the steps, watching my rapid despoiling of the cupboards. She looked anxious, which caused me a pang of concern. “Do not worry,” I said, as I urged her back up toward the roof, “the danger is temporary.”
We bundled ourselves back into the aircar and I used a small device of my own manufacture to pop open its service panel.
“Stop,” it said. “My systems are private! I will summon a provostman.”
I pushed a package of components into the works and said to my assistant, “Install that and get it functioning.”
“This is an intolerable invasion of—” said the aircar, then became silent as my integrator took control. Its records would now show no sign of anything that happened after we reboarded; instead, if queried, it would display a carefree trip to see some of the sights of Olkney, with appropriate commentary by me and appreciative responses from Hespira.
“Done,” said my assistant.
“All right. Now get us down to the street and make us look like we belong there.”
The aircar lifted off, flew a few streets over, then dropped to the pavement. As it did so, its appearance changed—at least to all but the most penetrative percepts—as its true outline was obliterated and replaced by a projected image. It now seemed to be a ground car, moving along with the flow of surface traffic, which was quite busy in this district at this time of day.
We turned a corner and the image changed, becoming a di
fferent model and color, then changing again after we dropped down into a subsurface conduit and changing once more as we emerged to climb a spiraling connector to the roof of a huge bronze-toned glass monolith in the commercial precinct that had been known, since time out of mind, as the New City. Along the way, my assistant employed a reflector that caused several nearby vehicles to offer any tracking percepts the same images it used to disguise our own, so that by the time we arrived atop the monolith it would have taken a well-coordinated mobile surveillance suite—like my own swarm of bees—to have kept us in view. And, after a long, passive scan, my integrator informed me that no such attention was directed our way.
“At least none that I detect,” it said. “It is possible that my own abilities can be defeated. I am not sanguine that I could outdo the best that the Hand Organization could bring to bear.”
“We will take the risk,” I said. “Make us seem another breed of aircar and take us up.” Shimmering with false colors and reshaped sponsons, we rose into the aerial traffic and took a meandering course over the city. After several minutes, I said, “Well?”
“With the same caveat as previously,” my assistant said, “I believe we are unobserved.”
“Then to the Arlem estate,” I said, “though at a tangent, and at a speed that will draw no one’s attention.”
#
After we had flown a good distance, I asked if there were any signs of our being followed.
“Nothing overt,” said my assistant, “but I do not entirely discount the possibility.”
“Well,” I said, patting the large carry-all I had filled from my workroom cupboards, “if we are, then we have the wherewithal to deal with any eventualities.” I instructed it to turn the aircar toward the estate.
It was late afternoon when we arrived. We circled and scanned, saw nothing amiss, and descended to a wide lawn from which led a path to the cottage. We had not traversed half the distance, winding among the artificial hills and small ponds that dominated the landscaping, when we met Osk Rievor hurrying out to greet us. I noticed that he had now lost all of the pallor that he had acquired during his time in the symbiote’s caverns on Bille, and his—or rather Orlo Saviene’s—mouse-colored hair had grown thick. But what struck me most about the former sharer of my psyche was the brightness of his eyes and his quick, almost jerky movements. He gave the impression of a man seething with inner excitement, who might at any moment be expected to cut a caper or let loose an actual hoot.
“You must come see,” he said, taking my elbow, his gaze darting from me to Hespira and back. “I’ve got it doing tricks.”
“Got what doing tricks?” I said.
But his eyes had found the valise that Hespira was carrying, I being burdened with the carry-all and a couple of other satchels. Though hers was by far the lightest burden, Osk Rievor went for it like a famished duck darting at a piece of floating bread, saying, “Are those the jewels? Let me have them.”
He took the bag and, without further explanation, turned and strode off in a flurry of bent knees and elbows. I followed at the best speed I could manage, but my progress improved after Hespira relieved me of the carry-all, which she hoisted onto one shoulder like a sailor toting his seabag. I supposed that the Broon-Pasketts produced few weaklings.
We put down our loads at the cottage doorstep. I removed some of the contents of the carry-all, and hung my assistant on a hook by the door, instructing it to bring the equipment to operational readiness and to maintain a full-spectrum watch to the limits of its range. Then Hespira and I went around to the rear of the little house, where I could hear my former intuition engaged in a largely one-sided conversation. He was providing all the words, the other half of the colloquy consisting of sibilant hisses and guttural grunts.
The noises were coming from inside a pen made of waist-high palings sunk into the sod and held together by twists of wire and twine. Osk Rievor was bending over the barrier, looking down at whatever was inside. In one palm he held the small heap of jewels. He was plucking them, one at a time, and tossing them into the enclosure. Each time he did so, he spoke to whatever was within, using the kind of voice usually adopted by fellows who were addressing the lap pets of ladies whose affections they wished to win over by first winning the animals’ hearts. His efforts were rewarded by squeals and gutterings from their unseen recipient.
I went closer. My other self tossed another jewel and I saw a flash of blue and gold, accompanied by a hiss and a squeak. I took another step, and was now close enough that when Osk Rievor threw a gem of deep red color into the pen I could see a triangular head and a pair of four-digited paws rise swiftly up from the bottom of the enclosure. The head split laterally to reveal a pink-fleshed mouth adorned with several rows of needlish teeth and a long, darting crimson tongue. It was from there that the squeaks came. One of the paws closed upon the stone and the creature sank down again. As I arrived at the palings and peered over, I saw that it was pressing the red gem to its hide, just where the other paw joined the body.
I drew a specularum from my coat pocket and examined the beast more closely. Its hide was covered in tiny scales arranged in complex patterns. I saw reds and greens, gold and silver, turquoise and sapphire, and the brilliant pinpricks of pure light must have been diamonds. I increased the magnification and the individual scales became faceted rubies and emeralds, thunderstones and rose-of-alcalene crystals, while the golds and silvers revealed themselves to be coins
I watched again with my naked eye as Osk Rievor threw in a diamond as large as the end joint of my thumb. With another squeal the beast caught the flashing gem, then with a muttering it pressed the jewel against a spot at the base of its throat. I studied the action through the specularum and saw the diamond seem to vanish in the creature’s grasp. But a new pinpoint of light now showed where its paw had pressed.
I felt a warmth against my chest and felt around in my clothing, drawing out the disk my alter ego had given me. It glowed a bright red, like an ember from a banked fire. When I extended it toward the bejeweled creature, it became too hot for my hand. I withdrew it and made Osk Rievor take it back. He took it, glanced at it, and let it drop to the ground.
“What is this beast?” I said, backing away from the pen.
He continued to toss it jewels. “At first I called it a salamander,” he said, “because it resembles a description of a creature by that name from a partial text I have recovered from the Eighteenth Aeon. But now I know that that is not what it is.”
He threw it an emerald and the squeaks and grumblings followed. Hespira came forward and watched the proceedings. She made as to reach down and pet the animal’s glistening spine, but Osk Rievor said, “It resents contact.” He showed her a half-healed tear on one thumb and she backed away.
“It is a deeply magical beast,” I said, “judging by its effect on the amulet.”
My alter ego continued throwing gems. “It only appears to be an animal. It is actually an avatar of a minor deity from the last age of sympathetic association, a god of wealth and treasure named Yeggoth. I have seen such referred to, here and there. There was a cult of avarice on an island in the Sulon Sea, off the coast of a land called Gesta Hal. The devotees gave precious things to the god and were supposedly rewarded tenfold.”
“And this is the god?” Hespira said. “The actual god, Yeggoth?”
We heard a hiss and a growl. “Do not speak its name,” Osk Rievor said, “unless you are making an offering. It takes offense. Here.” He handed me a jewel and bade me toss it toward the creature, which caught the spinning gem and rewarded me with a gurgle.
“It is a simple creature. It is not the deity itself, I think, but a reified representation of a couple of aspects of its godhood—the acquisitive element and the part that resents and punishes encroachments on the divine prerogative.” He paused, and threw in the last gem, making “Who’s-a-good-little-god?” murmurs. “I suppose it may more properly be called a crystallization of its worshipers’ desi
res—apparently quite a few gods are created in that manner. Whatever it is, it has lost a great deal of its power by coming into this age of rationalism. I had no trouble containing it, once I realized what made it grow larger.”
I had several questions. “You are saying it came, not that you brought it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, turning to me with the delighted look of an academician who has found a point worth a footnote. “It turns out that when I was pulling in streams of coins and jewels, I thought from some hoard, I was actually stripping its hide. I had transcribed the spell backward—it was the reverse of the mantra that the cultists used to transfer their dedicated offerings to the deity.”
“And it came to get its property back?”
“Of course. And since the jewels and coins were its own substance, and it had the powers of a god in its own age, it was strong enough to pull itself forward into our time, though when it arrived here it was no larger than the length of my hand.” He shook his head in mild wonderment. “Quite fascinating.”
“I notice,” I said, “that though the gems were sizable when they were in our hands, they shrank to the size of pinpoints when the god returned them to their proper settings.”
“Oh, well spotted,” he said. “Yes, in its own time and place, the avatar would have been huge.” He looked up at the tall trees that blocked our view of the horizon, as if seeing a jewel-bedecked behemoth looming above them. “Monstrous,” he said, “simply monstrous.”
“Does it not disturb you,” I said, “that you have stripped the hide off a huge creature with divine powers, then confined it to a pen and forced it to do tricks to get its substance back? Most gods would not take such treatment kindly.”
“Remember, it is only an aspect of the deity. It is a simple creature. Give it what it craves and it is mollified, even friendly. I have now restored all the stones and coins I took from it—or almost, except for those you spent offworld. But I have also found ways to acquire fresh supplies and have been feeding them to the god while studying its emanations.”
Hespira Page 24
