Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  “Nice ship,” said Osk Rievor, when he reached Hespira and me. We had climbed out of the hatch and were examining the vessel’s relatively minor scratches and dents. Like many spells, the clouding had died with its caster. “Who’s is it?”

  “Yours, I suppose,” I said. “Your pet ate the previous owner.”

  He seemed concerned, but said, “I am sure she did something to deserve it.” He spotted the skin bag Madame Oole had dropped. “Ooh, what’s this?”

  #

  There were, of course, loose ends to tie up, but Brustram Warhanny took care of some of them. The Bureau of Scrutiny’s orbital percepts could not fail to note the exchange of heavy-weapons discharges at the Arlem estate. The fight went on long enough for the scroots to assemble a sizable task force, led by the Archon Filidor, in person. The combination of overwhelming firepower and the Archon’s vaguely all-powerful authority led to the rapid surrender of the disputants. Quick dispositions were made: Massim Shar and Irslan Chonder settled their differences with alacrity when faced with the alternative of having Filidor do so for them; Chai Esquilieu departed Old Earth in fetters, which did him no good upon his arrival at the Hand Organization’s headquarters, where success is the only currency that buys rank; Hak Binram ceased to be a feature of the Olkney halfworld, but a rumor passed through Bolly’s Snug that he had been seen wearing the uniform and insignia of a Bureau of Scrutiny tactical officer.

  And I returned to my lodgings with my assistant, to which I expressed my gratitude for having had the acumen, while hidden in Grishant’s den, to contact Binram’s and Esquilieu’s snoop nodes and report my presence at the Arlem estate’s coordinates.

  “It seemed to me that a mixed situation offered the best prospects for a happy outcome,” the integrator said.

  “And happy indeed it was,” I said. “By the way, how did you get along with the grinnet?”

  “There is that odd flavor to its communications, but otherwise it is an agreeable sort.”

  “It was good of it to untie me,” said Hespira, who had also accompanied me home.

  “Yes,” I said. “That simplified matters.”

  “We should send it some fruit,” said my assistant. “It prefers a ripe karba.”

  “Indeed. I do recall.”

  The only remaining item on my agenda, other than deflecting Brustram Warhanny’s curiosity as to the strange forensics of the battle scene, was what to do with my client. I had been housing her in a spare room, but the arrangement could not endure. Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett had spent her life in farm labor, developing skills that did not easily translate into the role of housekeeper for a discriminator of discriminating tastes. A place for her had to be found, and something appropriate for her to do, for she said she would find it irksome not to have an occupation.

  “Firhogs are rare on Old Earth,” I said. “And unobtainable objects of devotion are also in scant demand.”

  We had not found a solution when it appeared on our doorstep one morning in the person of Imrith Khal, the young man who had built a dream around her on Shannery. He was now the proprietor of a vast inheritance, including the Grange estate on Shannery, from his deceased father. Having come into his fortune, he was therefore done with the period of his life when young Razhaman elegantiasts experienced the Ennoblanz. Negotiations were underway for him to return to Razham and espouse a person of standing. But it was customary for a discharged swain to bestow a parting gift on his unobtainable, and because Irmyrlene had been ill-treated for his sake, he had brought with him the deed to the Grange, made over to her. It had been part of his father’s vindicat and Imrith had no use for the place. He also offered her a ride back to Shannery on the old man’s space yacht. In a short time, I was alone again.

  Imrith had left another gift behind, this one being meant for me. It was a recording of Issus Khal’s final moments. I had my integrator play it, and saw the screen fill with an image of a magnificent ancient hall, its walls hung with the heraldic banners of Razham’s noblest families, the members of which were seated at elegantly appointed tables, celebrating their annual levee. Supper was just ending, the grand ball would soon begin. The high and the haughty were engaging in the ritual of the singular cream, tapping their silver spoons against the containers before dipping into the wondrous stuff, with sighs of gustatory satisfaction—and the smiles of confirmed addicts who have got what they crave.

  It was then that Issus Khal strode across the gleaming floor, mounted the dais where the orchestra waited. He caused several screens to appear in the air, angled so that none of the glittering throng should miss what he was about to show them. He silenced their whispers with a raised hand, then executed a theatrical gesture. The first images filled the screens. Khal started with a picture of the cream itself, snug in its little pot, then he worked backward, showing it being gathered from the cells of the hive insects. Next the view was of an individual creature vomiting its stomach’s contents into a cell; that caused a hubbub, but Khal held up a hand in a gesture that said: wait, there is more to come.

  Next came a close-up image, in slow motion, of one of the hive insects collecting a droplet of amber fluid, the recording lingering on the process before the viewpoint drew back to reveal the orifice from which the droplet had come. That brought actual shouts of protest, and a few retches from the more squeamish. Again, Khal quieted the tumult and directed the dominees and their ladies to watch the screens.

  The viewpoint followed one of the hump-backed foraging insects, again in tight focus as its mandibles and wriggling mouth parts took provender. When the scene widened to show what the forager was eating, more shouts erupted, and serious retching. Chairs were tipped back. Angry men and women rose, gesturing, mouths contorted. Prominent amongst them, she in a gown of gray and a snood of silver, he in a purple mask, were a man and woman I took to be Issus Khal’s former spouse and her protector.

  A general riot was brewing, with several male elegantiasts, brandishing ceremonial—though quite functional—daggers while they struggled with each other for the honor of drawing first blood. But the avenger on the dais roared them to silence and drew their eyes again to the screens for the final images. I saw Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett in the firhog pen, shoveling their output into a wheelbarrow, then a shot of its contents being dumped into the tray, attracting a swarming mass of insects. Cries of horror now competed with outrage as the dominees foresaw the weeks of strenuous ritual cleansing that would be required before any of them could step outdoors again.

  Finally, Issus Khal’s servant, Fezzant, was seen entering the greenhouse and emptying the contents of a single ceramic pot onto the steaming heap. The man then paused and held the pot still so that the image-capturer could zoom in on it. I saw that it was of white ceramic, delicately painted with a flowered motif. The image briefly dissolved, then we were seeing the pot again. But now it rested on a floor in Khal’s chamber and squatting over it, breeches about his knees, was the avenger himself. His eyes stared straight into the percept, hard and bright, and a triumphant smile graced his lips as he held up in one hand a little silver pot, and in the other a little silver spoon. And now he brought them together for a single, melodic, mouth-watering ting.

  When the mob rushed the dais, I told my assistant to remove the screen. “It was better that way,” I said, “better than the way I wrote it back on the Gallivant. Telling the tale wordlessly with images, heaping revelation upon revelation, working backward to conclude with the pure, single note of the chime—that was perfect.”

  I was invited to a salon a few nights hence. Reis Glindera would direct some of his shadow-casters in a scene from Vix Rushmak’s The Empty Window. I cared for neither the play nor the director, the combination of the two was an instance of the already overwrought meeting the undertalented.

  I had not intended to accept the invitation. Now I would, and I would take Issus Khal’s recording with me.

  Epilogue

  Osk Rievor came to see me the morning after the salon inv
itation. He arrived in my workroom in a crack of displaced air. His first utterance was, “It works!” His second was an apology for causing me to spill my punge.

  “I’ve brought you these,” he said, placing a wooden rack containing several stoppered vials and bottles on my worktable. “And this.” He laid a small notebook beside the rack. I opened it and saw that it contained handwritten notes in tightly organized penmanship.

  He had found them in Oole’s spaceship and had no use for them. “It makes you forget,” he said, “and my concern is with committing so much to memory.”

  The feverishness had not gone out of him, but he looked healthier. No doubt he had found a spell for it. We conversed a little more, then he had to get back to his studies. He spoke, gestured, and disappeared.

  I spent the morning reviewing Oole’s notes and cataloguing the contents of the rack: paralethe, forget-me-knot, oil of myranthium, and a few substances the sorceress seemed to have developed on her own. There were recipes for combining them into different concoctions that the notes said would have highly specific effects.

  “It’s your choice,” my other self had said before taking himself away. I sat now and thought about it. I had a standing invitation to Shannery, where my former client owned half an island and a newspaper. Greighen Island would not be a bad place on which to go through the transition to the new age; not that much would change, nor all that drastically.

  I could re-create myself as a journalist with a sympathetic employer. I would have some holes in my memory, but in some less-lit corner of my mind I could have my assistant lay down an instruction not to seek to fill them in.

  I mixed the dose according to a formula in the notebook, poured it into an empty vial, and stoppered it. I put away the rest of the materials and the notes, then took the vial and placed it on a shelf near the stairs to the street.

  Then I sat in a chair and looked at the little container and began the process of deciding what I would do.