Majestrum

by Matthew Hughes

  "Who are you and what are you doing to my flambords?" he said, glaring from Lascalliot to me.

  Lascalliot identified himself and now the flambord farmer recognized him, though he still regarded both of us with suspicion.

  "We knocked on the front door and received no answer," the young man said. "When we smelled the putrefaction we thought something might have happened to you."

  "Answering a call of nature trumps answering a door," Zherev said. "What putrefaction?"

  "You do not smell these dead flambords?" I said, indicating the floaters. "They are rotting."

  He gave me a puzzled look, then cast his eyes down to where I pointed. His puzzlement became consternation as he seemed to notice the die-off for the first time.

  "How. . .?" he said, then looked up at me. "Who are you again?"

  I identified myself but my name clearly meant nothing to him. "Let us go inside," I said. "You may have had too much sun. Young Lascalliot will clean this up for you."

  He allowed me to lead him into the house. The place stank of rotting flesh, though the smell came only from the dead flambords outside. I sat Zherev down at a table in the kitchen and opened some windows, using the opportunity to ensure that no one else was in the house's two other rooms.

  I returned to find the man sitting dazed and pale where I had left him. I found some restorative in a cupboard and brought him a draft then sat across from him while he drank it.

  "You did not notice the odor?" I asked him, when some color returned to his complexion.

  He looked toward the door, his nose wrinkling. "No."

  "And you did not see the dead creatures?"

  "No," he said again, "though I have been out there a dozen times in the past couple of days."

  "Hmm," I said. "Do you recall creating a new flavor of flambords and taking them to the quarterly supper of the Grass Tharks?"

  He rubbed his lower face and took another sip of restorative. "No," he said, "but I did dream of it. How do you know the contents of my dreams?"

  "It would be premature --" I began, only to be interrupted from within by my other self.

  "I need to examine the place where he mixes the feed," he said.

  "One moment," I told him. To Zherev I said, "Where might I find your friend, Osk Rievor?"

  The flambord farmer blinked at me, and I saw fear behind his eyes. "I have no friend by that name," he said, his voice trembling, "but I have dreamed it."

  He was becoming distraught. I poured him more of the restorative and accompanied it with some bland and reassuring remarks. After a while he calmed.

  "The feed preparation area," said the voice in my head.

  I asked Toop Zherev where he mixed his feed and he indicated a tall cupboard against an inner wall. I went and opened it, found a hinged board with chained corners that came down to form a small countertop. Behind, when I lowered it, were a number of labeled drawers that proved to contain strong-smelling spices and hotstuffs.

  "Give me control," my sharer said.

  I did and he bent to examine the contents of the drawers, bringing each to our nose. "Nothing," he said.

  Now he spied a small piece of paper, folded and tucked into a crack in the cupboard door. He extracted it and held it to our nose, sniffing gently. "Yes," he said. "Here it is."

  Carefully, he unfolded it. I watched, expecting to find some chemical twisted up in it. But there was nothing concealed within. He spread the sheet on the countertop and I saw that on it were printed four words in spiky black script, though the letters were unknown to me.

  My other self brought the paper back to where Toop Zherev sat at the table and showed it to him. "Can you read this?"

  "Read what?" the flambord farmer said.

  Our eyes went from the man to the paper. The lettering was gone. The paper was blank.

  To me, my alter ego said, "That settles it."

  "It does," I said. "We are dealing with a thaumaturge of considerable power."

  #

  Not long after I was aboard the Orgillous and bound for Old Earth, with Zherev, Lascalliot and all of Great Gallowan dwindling far behind me. I settled myself in the lounge, bade the integrator prepare a light meal then spoke to my inner companion.

  "There is now no doubt that Osk Rievor and all that stemmed from his activities are connected to the matter of Baxandall's book and our commission from the Archon."

  "There never was any doubt," he replied, "except in your share of our mind."

  "Recriminations are not fruitful," I said. "We need to find the shape of this case."

  "The issue of trust still stands between us," he said. "You did not trust my judgment."

  "It seemed to make no sense."

  I felt a flash of anger from him and said, "Emotion will not serve us."

  "You mean, my emotion will not. I have known you to become quite exercised, even to the flinging of objects."

  "Let us talk about the case," I said.

  "You cannot always change the subject," he said. "We must eventually settle our relationship. It is not as if either of us can leave the other."

  "On the contrary," I said, "eventually, I must leave. I will fade and diminish while you wax and flourish."

  "Ah, and that bothers you."

  "How could it not? You are a constant reminder that all that I am will, sooner or later, be no more than a ghost in the back of your mind. And the more we deal with incidences of sympathetic association, the more sharply I am reminded of the inevitable."

  Now I felt from him a wave of sympathy. "Don't," I said. "That irritates me even more than learning that you were right where I was wrong."

  He suppressed the sentiment and presented me with a cool stoicism. "Every man dies. You always knew that you would someday end."

  "Yes, but I face a different kind of death than what I anticipated. And you are its ever present emblem."

  He was silent for a moment, then said, "Very well, let us see if we can get on."

  "Work is a good distraction," I told him, "even if this case hastens my undoing."

  "I had not considered that," he said. "The more you and I are in places where magic is being done, the faster the transition."

  "I have considered it a great deal," I said. "But my work is who I am, even if practicing my profession speeds the day when I am not."

  "Who was it who said that irony is the fundamental operating principle of the universe?"

  "I believe," I said, "that it was Henghis Hapthorn."

  The Yacht's integrator announced that the food was ready. During the meal, I did not think about the case at all, practicing a technique of mind-clearing that had often been useful when preparing to set about a complex conundrum. But when Lord Afre's dishes had been returned to the yacht's servitor, I rose and began to pace the floor of the lounge, rehearsing the facts as I now knew them.

  "Let us call this thread one: someone has disturbed the Archon in his most private chamber, a disturbance that involved an object he described as a key. The key had something to do with a visit that he and his uncle, the previous Archon, made to the desolate region known as Barran.

  "Now thread two: someone has been killing the descendants of persons whose names Bristal Baxandall noted on the flyleaf of the indecipherable book written in an artificial language based on Late Horthalian, a language that disappeared when its speakers were destroyed in the cataclysm that caused the devastation of Barran. And all of the victims were coated in a fine grit whose nature and origins are unknown, though it is also connected with Barran."

  My sharer added a thought. "It is also significant that Glam Botch and Vhobald Hammis were each in possession of a carved object -- respectively, a lower face and, presumably, an eye, which I believe came from the same sculpture. We may assume that the rest of the unknown sculpture was made of an the same unclassified substance as the black powder, and that it has magical properties."

  "Yes," I said, pausing in my pacing to say, "and the chin and mouth were in a box label
ed with a word -- or name -- that we dare not speak nor even think of, that is rendered in red letters in the book." I clasped my hands behind my back and took as many steps as needed to bring me to where the lounge met the curve of the yacht's inner hull, turned and said, "And now we find that all of this is connected to Osk Rievor, an undoubted thaumaturge who has convincingly demonstrated the power to bend minds."

  "So the powder and Barran are common linkages," my alter ego said, "as is Osk Rievor."

  "Who came to the Thoon because it offered not only a dimple," I said, "but a vector -- that is, the flambords -- for getting a magical substance into other persons."

  I had reached the hull again, and turned once more. "Now," I said, "we move beyond the facts and into the realm of supposition. Why did Rievor create the Derogation and inflict Lascalliot on Chalivire Afre?"

  "Presumably to draw our interest."

  "It is far-etched, yet it remains the only explanation left standing. But when came to Great Gallowan the first time, he did not confront us, but remained hidden. And on this visit, he was gone."

  "I sense a reason," he said, "though I know you will not like it."

  "And I have deduced a motivation, and I agree that it is not a palatable thought to entertain," I said. "So, is what I think the same as what you feel?"

  I showed him an image from memory: my view of my plate from when I had sat in the dining room of the hotel on Great Gallowan, trenchering my way through a steaming pile of flambords.

  "It is," he said. "I am sure he has put something into us."

  "Which means he intends for us to do something he wants done." I stopped pacing and said, "How shall we know if we are being bent to his will?"

  "We may not. I will study Baxandall's books again, to see if something can be done."

  "But he now has influence over us. It is quite possible that, if a counter to the spell exists, that influence may preclude us from even seeing it."

  "True," he said. "Now we may not only have difficulty trusting each other, but have good cause not to trust ourselves."

  I agreed that it was not a happy point in the discrimination. "Two things I am, however, sure of, " I said.

  "And they are?"

  "One, that we must go to the wasteland of Barran."

  "I agree," he said, "that is where the road leads. And the other?"

  "That Osk Rievor is not compelling us to do so, as he compelled Hobart Lascalliot and Toop Zherev."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because," I said, "I most definitely do not wish to go there."

  #

  My assistant was curled around the fruit bowl in sleep, a scattering of seeds and rinds indicating that it had not stinted itself in my absence. I nudged its furred back with a bent knuckle and said, "Wake up. I wish to know what you have accomplished in my absence."

  "Not a great deal," it said, yawning and applying the backs of its fingers to its eyes. It blinked at me and continued, "I made extensive inquiries, as you required, about Osk Rievor."

  "And?"

  "Nothing. No such person has ever connected to the grid."

  "Not even offworld?"

  "Not even then."

  "That is of a pattern with Bristal Baxandall and Vhobald Hammis," I said. "We seem to have found an infallible way of identifying thaumaturges -- they value their privacy to an extreme."

  "There is another possibility," my assistant said. "It may be that they are connected, but that their connections are masked."

  It was possible to wander the grid undetected; my assistant did so when tickling its way into Bureau of Scrutiny data stores that were intended for official use only. But the subterfuges employed in those circumstances were of a temporary nature, relying on weaknesses in the Bureau's own defenses. A new mask had to be confected every time an illicit entry was attempted; the scroot integrators would soon catch on to the presence of a repeat interloper.

  "No," I said. "The improbabilities would pile up. It would not be possible to remain permanently masked."

  "Unless the masking was official."

  It raised an interesting and disquieting prospect. There was one person connected to the grid whose presence was neither recorded nor detectable. "The Archon?" I said. "Why would Filidor hide the presence of thaumaturges then set me on a quest that must inevitably uncover them?"

  "Perhaps to see if the uncovering was indeed inevitable," the integrator said. "Archons are subtle."

  It was true. Whenever one investigated a wheel that an Archon had set spinning, one always found wheels within the wheel, and closer examination showed that those wheels themselves contained wheels of their own, some of them spinning in apparently contradictory directions.

  But, on reflection, I rejected the notion. I did not believe that Filidor would send me to bring back a reverse-twist spratulator, as in the old joke. "He would not so abuse my professional stature," I said.

  "Archons are no respecters of persons," my assistant said.

  "Even so. Let us move on. What about the names in Baxandall's book?"

  While I had been en route to Great Gallowan and back, I had set my assistant to undertake a deep search for background on the ancient Late Horthalians and their descendants who had died missing pieces of their bodies while covered in black grit.

  "Again," my assistant said, "it was difficult to piece together much information. It is as if the records have been deliberately purged, leaving only scraps. Sometimes I had to take great leaps to tie separated facts together, leaving me with a most flimsy and tenuous assemblage. Then, however, a faint trail led me to a very ancient integrator that had been stood down for the better part of an aeon."

  "Intriguing," said, "and did this integrator dispel the mists that obscured your view?"

  My assistant stretched and yawned again, then reached for a ripe karba fruit. "Not to any great degree," it said, as its small fingers deftly peeled the rind. "It proved to be almost entirely sunk in that condition known as 'the vagues.' I had a great deal of trouble raising it even to semi-consciousness and, when I did, it rambled incoherently. Finally, I managed to delve deep enough below the mishegaas to isolate its core functions and put some questions to it."

  "And there you found some useful references to the Late Horthalians and their descendants?"

  "No," it said.

  "I am beginning to worry," I said, "that you have caught a touch of the vagues yourself, and that I am now trapped in a conversation that may never end."

  The suggestion caused my assistant to shudder. "Please do not say such things. I have seen too much of that condition lately. It is not a pleasant prospect for an integrator."

  "Then get on with it. Your conversational wanderings do nothing to ally my concern. I am tempted to strip you down for a diagnostic review, and in your new incarnation that would be an even more unpleasant prospect for both of us."

  The small creature pulled itself together and said, "The senile integrator could not tell me anything new about the mutilated bodies and the black grit --"

  "I hope for your sake," I said, "that you are now about say 'but' and follow on with a useful contribution to this discrimination."

  "But," it continued, "although it couldn't tell me anything new, it did tell me who could tell us -- and who could tell us not just more, but everything."

  "Now we are getting somewhere," I said. "And who is this font of all knowledge?"

  "You won't like it."

  My fingers curled. I experienced a sudden urge to pick up the creature that my integrator had become and give it a thorough shake, even if it meant that pieces of it might come off in my hands.

  "I don't have to like it," I said. "But I definitely have to hear it."

  "Old Confustible," it said.

  "Are you calling me names?" I said. I knew I had not programmed that function into my integrator.

  "No," it said, "Old Confustible is the name of an integrator, the name given it by its owner."

  "I see," I said, "and to wh
om does Old Confustible belong?"

  "To the Archon."

  I thought about it. "I don't like it," I said.

  #

  The Archonate was an institution so long established that its actual origins were lost not just in the shadows of pre-history, but in the shadows of shadows that loomed as far back as even the oldest integrator could recall. First, there had been the dawn-time, which ended with the First Effloration that took humankind off Earth -- it was just "Earth" in those days; the "Old" was added later -- and out into The Spray to people the Ten Thousand Worlds.

  Left to languish, Earth had become depopulated. Indeed, it had become a decidedly unfashionable address and for quite some time -- an aeon or three -- it was largely forgotten. Then, during the opening of the Twelfth Aeon, one of those inevitable transitions occurred: a world that had been forever beyond the pale suddenly and inexplicably became modish again, and Earth -- now affectionately renamed "Old Earth" was reinhabited. Ships came and went, peoples chose their dwelling places, polities were established, philosophies put into practice.

  Somewhere in that flurry of to-ing and fro-ing, the Archonate was established, though no one knew how or by whom. Scholars who had studied the matter concluded that all information concerning the birth of the institution had been expunged by universal agreement among the heterogeneous peoples who had come back to recreate the ancestral planet. Ever since, successive Archons had ruled Old Earth, or at least those parts of it that were inhabited by humans. Their authority was absolute, though the means by which that authority was exercised were never defined.

  Subtlety and indirection had been the hallmarks of Archons through the ages. One might confidently expect to see the Archon presiding at certain formal occasions, and he could also appear unexpectedly, as Filidor had when the Corps of Buffoons had performed in Drusibal Square. The rest of the time, he was a obscure presence. Archons were known to travel the world incognito. Thus anyone might be the Archon. That fact prompted generally polite behavior between strangers, because the Archon was empowered to do anything to anyone at any time.