Majestrum

by Matthew Hughes

  "Sleep cures the condition," I said. "But before you do that, what are the results of your inquiries?"

  "The odds that the unfortunates who lost body parts and became covered in dust were descended from the persons named in the flyleaf of Baxandall's book," it said, "are almost certain."

  "They changed their names," I said.

  "Indeed, most of the few Horthalians who survived the cataclysm did so, even Terris Botch and Oblon Hammis. Though in the case of those two, their descendants resumed the family names after a few generations, once the resentment had cooled."

  "Well done," I said. "Now connect me with Lord Afre's house and hire an aircar for the day."

  The creature on my table rubbed its sore eyes with fur-backed fingers, showed me a pink-lined mouth agape in a skull-splitting yawn and said, "Then may I sleep?"

  "You may."

  #

  At Lord Afre's I alighted at the same ordinair and was met by the same majordomo who equipped me with the same identifying collar and pendant. He escorted me along a hallway newly redecorated in rosestone paneling offset by medallions of red brillion. We arrived at an east facing room, warmed by the light of the old orange sun, where Chalivire was completing a late breakfast. I made the appropriate salutes and struck the expected poses; she reciprocated in kind.

  I studied her face and posture. She had the aura of one who had come through a crisis of despair, had looked destruction in the face, yet had survived to recoup and regather her energies. It was to be expected; Old Earth's upper tier of aristocrats had not held on to rank and privilege through all these millennia by dint of mere chance and social inertia. If one scratched a Chalivire, one could expect to be scratched back -- if evisceration could be called a category of scratching.

  Formalities over, I came to the nub. "I would like to interview a guest of your house."

  Her face took on a wary stillness. "We have no guests at the moment," she said.

  "I use the term very loosely," I said. "This man would have come from Great Gallowan. You may not know that your father sent me to find him so that you could extend your. . ." -- I sought for a word -- "hospitality."

  I saw that my mentioning of her father had cleared up something she had wondered about. But she was still disinclined to grant me access to Hobart Lascalliot. "I'm not yet done with him," she said.

  "I understand," I said. "And I have no wish to take him away before you have completed your. . . dealings. I do require a few minutes conversation with him, however, just to clear up a small matter."

  I might as well have been trying to borrow a half-dead rodent from a house cat. Chalivire said she could not see how she could accommodate me.

  I had not wanted to take the approach I now took, since any mention of the name I was about to utter in this woman's hearing might provoke one of the frenzied rages that were as much a hallmark of the Afre character as their matchless pride. I struck an attitude of deference and said, "I am engaged on a discrimination for the Archon Filidor."

  It was as if Chalivire's face was trying on a succession of emotions, some of them very stark, but I was relieved to see her settle on guarded self-interest. "The Archon?" she said.

  She looked sharply at me and for a moment I thought I might have triggered something, but then her gaze turned inward and I could see her mind working -- something that was never too difficult with Chalivire -- and she said, "Very well."

  She summoned a footman who took me to a part of the great house that was seldom used. We stopped beside a blank wall and he bade me turn my back and close my eyes. When he said it was time to open them again, I turned around to see an opening where the wall had been. A set of stone stairs led down into darkness from which issued a draft of cold and unhealthy air. The servant handed me a lumen and gave me to understand that he was not permitted to descend.

  The stairs went down a considerable depth. At the bottom I found a hallway walled, floored and ceilinged in damp stone, with stout metal doors set at intervals. From one of these, as I neared it carrying the lumen, came a thin and wavering moan. I unlocked the door and went in to find a naked Hobart Lascalliot attached to a complicated apparatus that was clearly intended to afford him no comfort.

  He flinched at my entrance, then realized that I was not whom he had expected. A moment later I saw recognition come. He tried to say something, but was prevented by the utensil that constrained his tongue. I stepped forward and removed it and he said, "I have seen you before."

  "Yes, you have."

  "Have you come to abuse me?"

  "No."

  A tiny hope lit deep within his eyes. "To deliver me?"

  "Not that, either."

  The light died. "Then what?"

  "To ask you some questions."

  He snorted. "Chalivire comes to ask me questions, though somehow the answers never seem to satisfy her."

  "She has her own perspective," I said, "as you should surely understand."

  He made a wordless sound, then said, "Why should I help you?"

  "Because then I may be able to help you."

  "And if you could, why would you?"

  "Why wouldn't I?" I said. "I hold no animus against you. I sought you and found you because that is what I do."

  "Do you promise?" he said.

  "I do."

  "And is your promise worth anything?"

  "It is."

  The expression on his face told me that Lascalliot had reached a point in his life when he was inclined to doubt that there was much good in anyone. But then he adopted the resignation that comes with the realization that one has nothing to lose.

  "Can you at least loosen the clamps?" he said. "My bones are beginning to bend."

  But I did not know how to operate the apparatus safely. "I might break you," I said.

  He sighed. "At least give me a drink," he said.

  That I could do, and when he was as refreshed as it was within my power to offer, I said, "Tell me about the Derogation. How did the concept arise?"

  "I would have thought it was obvious," he said. "On Great Gallowan, especially in the Thoon, we do not care for 'look-at-me's' and superordinates. They come for the fishing and the mountain sports and offend us with their conceitful airs and boisterousness. One day, Toop Zherev proposed that we establish a society dedicated to the reduction of vanity through the instrument of public humiliation. We would seek out truly egregious examples of overweening pride and set them on a course toward a humorous come-uppance. The universe would be slightly improved."

  I plucked the operative word from his answer. "Zherev made this proposal, you said. Do you remember if he said how he came by the concept?"

  "I do," he said. "The idea originated with his friend, Osk Rievor."

  "And this Osk Rievor," I said, "did you know him as well? Can you describe him to me?"

  "Now that you mention it," he said. "I cannot recall ever meeting him. I cannot put a face to the name, though the name was, for a time, constantly in the air." The look of puzzlement drew down his brow again.

  I tried another tack. "Tell me the precise circumstances under which the Derogation was launched."

  His gazed turned toward memory and he said, "I remember that clearly. It was the quarterly supper at the Grass Tharks Lodge."

  "Grass tharks?" I said.

  He explained that they were an indigenous ruminant species on Great Gallowan, with four spiraling horns. The members of the herds showed great allegiance to the common good, to the extent that an individual thark would charge a predator to rescue another thark, even if there was no close familial relationship.

  "A noble beast," I said.

  "Indeed, and we of the lodge stood together. 'All for one and each for the other,' was our motto."

  "And then came the quarterly supper."

  "Yes. Toop Zherev brought a new flavor of flambords, wonderfully spicy, enough for every Grass Thark to have a whole tail."

  "Think now," I said, "Was Osk Rievor present?"


  His face clouded again. "I think not. No, definitely not. We were told that he was a person of such deep modesty that he had asked his friend Zherev to put forward the concept."

  "Tell me more about that."

  They had eaten the wondrously fiery shellfish and were cooling their palates with ices and chilled creams when the proposal for the Derogation had come up. At first, the idea had been taken as a joke; the Tharks had worked to outdo each other in proposing candidates for come-uppances and comically novel methods by which those results might be achieved.

  "Then, somehow, it was all decided," he said. "We went from laughing to planning to pooling our funds. Names were placed into hats and drawn out, and suddenly I was scheduled to depart on a space liner bound for Asper on Mythisch."

  His eyes lost focus for a moment. "Now that I look back on it," he said, "it was as if much of it was a dream. I had never been one to put myself about, certainly had no dealings with the likes of the Honorable Chalivire. Yet whatever the occasion required, I came up to the mark. Though raised a country lad, with her I was always urbane. I was witty among the wittiest, blase in the midst of sybaritic luxury, cool among those born to the coolest of blood. I was a most odd Thoonian."

  My inner companion was urging a question upon me. I asked it. "Did you sometimes feel as if someone else was guiding your words and deeds? As if you were almost a passenger in your own body?"

  It was as if the thought had just occurred to Lascalliot though he could not understand why he hadn't seen it before. "Why, yes," he said, "it was much like that. Now that you point it out, I wonder why I never noticed it before."

  My other self advised me that he knew why. At his behest I asked for more details. As Lascalliot focused on the matters put to him, it became clear that he had spent much of the last several months in a kind of fugue state, dissociated from many of his own words and deeds. "Sometimes," he said, "it was as if another will moved my limbs and tongue, but for some reason, the situation caused me not the slightest concern."

  "Hmm," I said.

  "What does it all mean?" Lascalliot said. "Why have I done this thing to a woman from a far planet, about whom I knew nothing?"

  "It would be premature to say."

  "Would you tell her that I am very sorry?"

  "I am sure she already knows that," I said. "Unfortunately, she probably intends for you to be much sorrier."

  "Could you tell her about the dreaminess?"

  "I will try, though it is difficult for aristocrats to hear things they don't care to hear."

  He lay back in the crimps and holdtights that gripped him in so many places and I saw that his mind was working at some exercise. I waited to see what would come of it. After a few moments he focused on me again.

  "Your name," he said, "is it Henghis Hapthorn?"

  "It is," I said. "We have met before."

  "I thought so. It was during the dreaminess, wasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "I remember something else."

  "What do you remember?"

  "You were the one I was supposed to watch for."

  "I?"

  "Yes, you. I was not to bring Chalivire to fruition until I had met you."

  "You are sure?" I said. "Your memory may be unreliable."

  "I remember that part perfectly."

  #

  "It makes no sense," I said to my other self as I walked back to the ordinair.

  "It may not connect with neat lines and snug fastenings," he replied, "but it assuredly hangs together."

  "The fellow is mentally unbalanced. He has been thus for months, and lately he has experienced excruciating new stresses." I conceived of a rational explanation. "What if Toop Zherev's new strain of flambord contained psychoactive chemicals and the Grass Tharks all went mad for a while? Stranger cults than theirs have arisen from unexpected encounters with new species of molds and fungi. Zherev may have gone mad tasting his new product, then communicated the madness to his lodgemates."

  "But what of his clear memory of waiting for your appearance?"

  "It is only a reported memory. It could be false."

  "I do not feel that it is."

  "I do not operate on feelings," I said.

  "That word means something different to you than it does to me. You see vaporous insubstantiality where I see rocklike sturdiness."

  I could not readily accept it. Perhaps this Osk Rievor could have established a secret society on a world far down The Spray, sending operatives out to gull the proud into making fools of themselves, just so he could entice me to come and look for him -- but why would he? "It is absurdly overcomplex," I said. "He could have simply sent me an invitation, offering an interesting discrimination and a suitable fee, and I would have come."

  "Apparently, he is not a man for the direct method," said my other self. "Besides, had he done so, you would have investigated him and perhaps become suspicious. You do not rush innocently into the grip of any stranger who offers you a commission."

  "True," I said. "A generous stranger might turn out to be working for some person of means whose schemes I once overturned, and who has come to believe that some equivalent suffering on my part would sweeten the bitterness of that remembered injury."

  "We went to Great Gallowan thinking it merely a stop on the way to finding Lascalliot. Osk Rievor seemed but a small passing landmark useful only as a means to plot a course toward what we thought was our goal."

  It was hard to believe yet I had no choice but to agree. "Indeed, he now looms larger. I believe we should retrace our steps and pick up his trail."

  The footman had been leading us back to where the aircar waited but now I bade him take me to Chalivire. I found her in one of the exercise rooms, practicing with an antique close-combat weapon. She executed vigorous swooping slashes and complex defensive arabesques, the weapon cleaving the air like a wand of fire, leaving a reek of ozone.

  I approached cautiously, making sure my chain and pendant were visible and that my posture and gestures were precisely correct. Armed aristocrats were always a reason to step lightly. She disabled the weapon and raised the visor of her elaborate headgear. "Yes?"

  "I have spoken with. . ." I did not name Lascalliot, but indicated with a motion of my head something an indeterminate distance away.

  "Yes?"

  "I believe he is not the author of your difficulties."

  Her eyes became as hard as faceted jewels. "I believe differently."

  "It seems he was manipulated by another."

  "More fool him."

  "He does not inspire sympathy?"

  She made no answer but the set of her mouth told me that she had sustained worse injury than being made ridiculous before all whose opinions she valued, bad as that hurt must have been to one of her milieu. Her relations with Lascalliot had of course been intimate but now I deduced that she had also allowed herself to become vulnerable.

  "Still," I said, "he who conceived your harm and made this fellow his instrument has gone free. Perhaps he dines out on tales of your discomfort."

  The knuckles that gripped the antique weapon lost their color. I saw a twitch at one corner of her mouth and the pulse that throbbed in her throat suddenly became visible.

  I placed my head and hands in a particular arrangement, suitable when someone of my rank wished to make a substantial request of someone of hers. "If you would lend me your yacht again, I would like to find the plotter and see what can be done to redress the balance."

  "I must ask my father," she said. From the tone of her voice, I took the impression that she was conflicted. She was trying to put the memory of her humiliation behind her, burying it beneath the tears and groans she could wring from Lascalliot. Adding a new player would somehow make the harm feel fresh again.

  "There is another aspect to consider," I said. I was being importuned from within by my other self. He strongly desired to take over this conversation and put a new argument to Chalivire. The prospect alarmed me: one did not deal wit
h armed aristocrats from a basis of 'feeling' -- one worked from an exacting code of etiquette, because the slightest flaw might trigger a sudden, irrepressible reaction on her part, a reaction that would leave my body lying on the exercise room floor in two smoking halves.

  I quieted his eagerness then averted my eyes and lowered my voice before saying, "The man behind this may also have placed the Archon in an uncomfortable position."

  On occasion, during my travels, I had seen top predators at ease in their natural habitats. They would exhibit a blasé indifference to much that surrounded them, idly lolling and playfully lollygagging -- until the moment that prey wandered into view. Instantly the hunter's entire attention would lock itself upon the moving meal, and it would seem to undergo a complete and sudden transformation into another kind of beast entirely -- all claws, teeth and appetite. The Honorable Chalivire now showed much the same metamorphosis.

  "The Archon?"

  Very carefully, I drew from my inner pocket the scroll that Filidor had given me, then unrolled it so that his personal seal and scrawled signature were visible. The symbols had their effect on the daughter of Afre. She extended a hand and accepted the document, read it thoroughly then returned it to me.

  She turned her head away and I could see her undertaking the uncharacteristic effort of thinking. Then she regarded me from a corner of an eye. "The Archon would be grateful to any who assist you in dealing with this 'grave concern?'" she said.

  "It is reasonable to think so." I said. "As well, I could make a point of mentioning your participation in the matter."

  I knew that aristocrats did not care to be bargained with, especially when they felt themselves to be at a disadvantage. Fortunately, Chalivire's desire to be restored to favor overcame any instinct to punish me for taking liberties.

  "Very well," she said. She gave instructions to the house integrator. Then, the matter settled, she lowered her visor and prepared to resume her exercises.

  "There is one other thing," I said.

  She turned a face of damascened metal toward me. I quieted my inner companion's clamor, made a mollifying gesture and said, "I will need to take Lascalliot with me."