9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  “His integrator has alerted him to our surveillance,” said my assistant.

  “It would be a poor integrator if it did not,” I replied, but voiced the remark in a whisper and behind a concealing hand. I knew that Bureau of Scrutiny percepts were almost as good as those that I had designed and installed in my assistant, and there was no advantage to be gained by irritating Warhanny’s assistant. Warhanny himself was already annoyed, as I could see from the thunderheads building in his brow.

  “He demands to speak with you,” said my integrator.

  “Connect him.”

  A moment later, the captain-investigator’s lugubrious bass rumbled in my ear, “Henghis Hapthorn, what do you do here?”

  “From your perspective,” I said, “I am actually ‘over there.’

  The integrator was still supplying me with a close view of Warhanny’s hangdog face. I saw his eyes darken and the grim set of his mouth would have rivaled Pandamm’s deepest frown. “This is a Bureau crime scene,” he said. “Why have you brought your percepts to bear on it?”

  I could have dissembled, could have professed no more than an idle interest, but my well honed intuition was telling me that the presence of scroots on the top floor of the manse in front of which my client had been mysteriously struck down was unlikely to be a coincidence. I said, “I am engaged in a discrimination.”

  Warhanny’s canine eyes were expressive for a Bureau agent’s; now they widened in outrage. “Has the margrave-major’s heirs called in an outsider even before the Bureau has surveyed the locus? Why, I’ll–”

  “My client is not connected in any way with Lord Chavarie,” I said.

  “Then for whom are you acting?”

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  Warhanny’s eyes were getting to show their full emotive range this morning, I thought, as I saw them narrow to slits. “When it is the Bureau asking,” he said, “liberty is what we say it is. And you will find that it can become tightly, oh, so tightly, circumscribed. So much so that you may have difficulty drawing a breath.”

  “True,” I said, “if the asking relates to a crime on the Bureau’s docket. The incident I am investigating has been reported to none but me.”

  “What incident?”

  “If I report it to you, here and now, that could make it a Bureau matter. You might claim jurisdiction and prevent me from serving my client.”

  “All crimes are within the Bureau’s jurisdiction.”

  “But this might not be a crime. It may have been an accident.”

  Besides, even if it was a criminal assault, I would still have jurisdictional leeway if the matter did not involve blood or breakage, theft of substantial property or credible threats to commit such acts. I told Warhanny that the case did not fall within those bounds, then added, “The offense, if it turns out to have been an offense, is one of public embarrassment, and the mystery involves both the means and the instigator.”

  The captain-investigator blinked. My integrator widened the image’s focus so that I could see the mocking hand gesture that accompanied Warhanny’s next remark. “And you count your days as productive?”

  I resisted an urge to reply in kind, which I could have done by reminding the scroot of occasions when I had led the Bureau out of darkness and into the light. Instead, I said, “I intend to come down to Tirramee Plaza and poke about. I will take care not to get in your way.”

  “Do so,” he said. The integrator told me that he had broken the connection. A moment later, my view of Warhanny and the scene on the roof went black, then I was seeing the square with my unassisted eyes. Lord Chavarie’s roof and upper floor were concealed beneath a dome of darkness. My assistant said, unnecessarily, “They have raised a screen. Shall I pierce it?”

  “By no means,” I said. “They are on their guard and would notice.” Besides, Warhanny could then act against me for poking my percepts into an active bureau investigation. “We will go down to the street then climb to the plaza. Prepare me some background on Lord Chavarie and canvass the integrators in the area for anything that they may have observed yesterday evening.”

  Moments later, as I stepped into the descender and was borne down to street level, the integrator said, “I have reports.”

  Proper procedure would have been to ask for the integrators’ observations first, but something about the way Warhanny had leapt straight from surprise to umbrage prompted me to call for the aristocrat’s background. An image of Dizmah Chavarie appeared in a corner of my field of vision. He had the lean and vulpine countenance characteristic of Olkney’s hugely inbred upper social strata–his eyes were set so close together as to test the definition of human, and his expression was that of a man continually encountering unpleasant odors.

  My assistant’s voice spoke in my ear. Lord Chavarie had been a margrave-major, placing him the upper quadrant of the second tier of Olkney’s aristocracy, which meant he could reliably trace his ancestry back through not just millennia but through aeons. His family was established before the crags and tors of the Devenish Range had arisen.

  His estate was beyond Ektop, but he rarely visited there, preferring the comforts of his house-in-town. He had belonged to three clubs, none of which he frequented regularly, and spent most of his disposable time–aristocrats often had demanding schedules full of obligations imposed by immemorial custom–at the Terfel Connaissarium, engaged in research.

  “What kind of research?” I said.

  “He has invoked a privacy seal,” said my assistant.

  “Hmm,” I said. Ordinarily, tickling its way past a research integrator’s blocks and barriers would have posed no problem for my assistant, even if the device to be fooled was housed in the Archonate’s premier connaissarium. But if Lord Chavarie’s research related in any way to the Bureau’s presence on his roof, Warhanny might even now be watching for us to come winking-and-tricking our way in.

  “Indeed,” my assistant agreed, “and the Bureau’s integrators, when already on alert, are not easily fadiddled.”

  “So we will not take the risk. See what can be learned from a roundabout approach.”

  Four seconds later, my assistant said, “Done.”

  “Report.”

  I was now on the slideway that would carry me up through the terraced streets that led to Tirramee Plaza. The architecture I was passing was of a bombastic style, dating from a period when the ancient city’s most affluent enjoyed flaunting their social prominence. It had been the fashion then for grand, solid houses, their outer walls unwindowed at street level–instead they were cut with niches in which were set moving statues of their owners striking heroic poses modeled on famous works of representational art. The architects had not reckoned, however, with the inventiveness of Olkney’s common citizenry, who came in the night and decorated the statues with inappropriate clothing and other objects that created usually a comical, and often an obscene, effect. The owners complained to the Bureau of Scrutiny, but somehow the perpetrators were never apprehended. Eventually, the statues were removed and the niches stood empty.

  “Lord Chavarie’s biographical history is unremarkable,” my assistant informed me. “As a child, he was educated at home then attended the Archon’s Institute. He achieved no academic distinction nor did he dabble, as aristocrats may do, in the professions. Ten years ago, he contracted a marriage to Lord Bulmare’s third daughter, Alifrayne, but their union has been without issue. For a time, he collected incised eggs, then abandoned that pastime to try breeding and rearing firefowl, but failed to damp down his flock adequately one night–”

  “I remember now,” I said, “the blaze spread from the outbuilding to the main house. His estate is still uninhabitable, I believe.”

  “Indeed. He relocated to Tirramee Plaza, though without Lady Alifrayne. She now travels The Spray. Communication between them is said to be brief, infrequent and rigorously formal.”

  “So, without success in profession, marriage or avocation, to what does Chavar
ie devote his time and such energies as an overbred Olkney aristocrat might summon?”

  “Did,” said the integrator.

  It was my turn to say, “Indeed? His death is confirmed?”

  “The Bureau has just released a statement. ‘Death from indeterminate causes.’ And ‘all persons having knowledge of the circumstances are required to communicate such to the nearest barracks of the Bureau of Scrutiny.’”

  “Hmm,” I said. “But back to the question: what was the deceased’s latest preoccupation?”

  “Again,” said my assistant, “the Bureau has invoked a screen.”

  “They might as well have put an illuminated sign on the man’s roof,” I said.

  “Ah, of course,” said the integrator, then we spoke the next two words together: “The Immersion.”

  * * *

  The integrators of the houses and establishments lining the six sides of Tirramee Plaza had little to report. Feroz Pandamm had indeed descended the steps of the Monopolists Club at the time he had said. Unsteady in his gait, he had lurched around the fountain on the west side of the open space, his progress observed by the who’s-theres of the several premises he had passed.

  He was seen to fall to his knees at one point, immediately raising his hands to his head then making strenuous motions of his arms. He rose, glared at the sky above, felt his pate, then looked about as if searching for a hat. But he had not worn a hat–indeed, he never did, being grossly vain about his abundance of thick hair, which he wore shaped into extravagant swoops and peaks. He was seen to palpate his scalp as if in horror then, holding his hands to his head, rush off in the direction of his home at Tsant Prospect.

  “Has the Bureau queried these devices?” I asked.

  “They have,” said my assistant, “but their inquiries focused on traffic to and from Lord Chavarie’s domicile.”

  Feroz Pandamm’s behavior would have seemed to scroot eyes nothing more than the stumblings of an overly lubricated imbiber weaving his way home. “Have we images?” I said.

  We did. Two of the who’s-theres were tasked by their owners to record all traffic in front of their premises. I saw the events Pandamm had described from both devices’ perspectives. His statements to me were borne out. As was something he had not said. I had my integrator contact him.

  “A question,” I said, when his own integrator summoned him to speak with me. “After you were struck down, you sped away from the scene as fast as you could.”

  “I ran,” he said.

  “You ran in a very coordinated manner for a man who until moments before had been unable to walk a straight path, did you not?”

  “I had not thought about it,” he said, after a pause in which I assumed he was making up for the previous night’s failure to do so. “But, yes, the attack seems to have sobered me.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Still premature. I will be in touch when I have something to tell you.” I broke the connection.

  By now we had reached Tirramee Plaza and I went to the scene of the incident. I glanced up as I approached Chavarie’s house, four stories high and faced in polished green vitrine streaked with wiry veins of black chalcedax. The tall windows of the lower two floors were opaqued and the who’s-there at the top of the long flight of stairs leading to the public doors was showing the red flash to discourage visitors. The roof remained under the Bureau’s dome of darkness.

  I walked about between the house and the west-side fountain with its interlocking circular curtains of spray. The pavement was of the self-cleaning sort, its perpetual eddies of mild energies carrying off dust and light debris before they could settle, to deposit the detritus in grilled slits set in foundation walls around the plaza, including the stone bases of the fountains. Accordingly, no trace of last night’s events was to be found on the ever-swept and diamantine-studded surface.

  But the nearest grill, in the base of a foundation, was of inert metal. I knelt and examined it, then had my assistant augment my perceptions. Finally, I took a miniature specimen kit from my coat pocket and collected a sample of the substance that speckled the base of the grill.

  “Open an aperture,” I told my assistant, and when it did so I placed the specimen bottle within. “Analyze that,” I said.

  A few moments later it gave me the chemical composition of the material I had collected, adding the comment: “Unusual.”

  “Certainly not what one would expect to find in Tirramee Plaza.” I said. I had an inkling of where the stuff had come from, and that inkling gave me a potential explanation not only for what had happened to my client, but probably for what had befallen Lord Chavarie. The quickest way to make sure would have been to consult the records in the Terfel Connaissarium. But that I could not do, under the present circumstances, because, if my intuitive leap was right, I would find myself examining the same files in which Dizmah Chavarie had conducted his researches. And that would instantly draw the unwelcome attention of the Bureau.

  “We are being observed from above,” my assistant told me, privately.

  “As expected,” I said. I looked up at the tall helix of minutely carved marble that was a reminder of the Archon Imreet IV’s long-ago reign. I would have liked to examine the monument through my assistant’s percepts, but to do so I would first have to adjust their settings. And, again, that might result in scroot boots clumping over ground across which I preferred to step lightly.

  I considered the facts as I knew them, as well as the avenues down which those facts appeared to lead, then I applied insight–by that I mean that I turned the question over to the intuitive part of my well calibrated brain–and waited. This time, it was not a long wait. I received an immediate answer.

  I turned and walked briskly back the way we had come, telling my integrator, “Summon an air-car to meet us at the end of the slideway.”

  “Done,” it said. “It wishes to know our destination. Back to the lodgings?”

  The vehicle was already touching down beside us, its canopy sliding open. “No,” I said, “contact the procurer Obinder Min in the usual manner and tell him I wish to consult with him.”

  * * *

  Had Obinder Min been standing in bright sunlight in the middle of an open square without so much as a lamppost to hide behind, any fair-minded observer would still have said, “That man is lurking.” Min’s relationship to the phenomenal world proceeded along oblique lines; a direct and open approach was alien to his nature. Furtiveness was so much his idiom that I would not have been surprised to learn that he even sidled up to his breakfast.

  My assistant could not contact him directly. Instead, there was a public integrator at the corner of Magher Street and The Blossoms that had been subverted to Min’s purposes. It unknowingly relayed any incoming message to a private phone in a tavern in the Tan-Tan district, then promptly erased all record of the transaction.

  The tavern’s owner sent a boy across the alley to an upstairs room in a tenement, where an unsavory old woman memorized the message. When the boy was gone she tapped a spoon three times upon an exposed water pipe. Obinder Min then came down and the woman whispered in his ear. Had she tapped any other number than three, he would not have descended, but would have climbed to the roof and leapt across to parapet of the adjoining building then down into another alley, where he kept a battered, single-seat skimmer hidden under what appeared to be a pile of moldering rubbish.

  It seemed to me to be an unnecessarily elaborate process and ultimately not effective; I had penetrated Min’s layers of security the first time I had cause to contact him–I found it useful to know what I was dealing with when I descended into the city’s half-world. But it was plainly of importance to him so I had never told him that I could have readily parked my hired air-car outside his grimy window and tapped on it to gain his attention.

  Not too long after my integrator sent out its signal, Min contacted me, though by voice only, through another public integrator that
was also unaware of the work it was performing for him. “Hapthorn?” he said, “you wish to meet with me?” It was a straightforward question, yet somehow when it came from the procurer’s vocal apparatus it acquired an unspoken insinuation, as if the words were now smeared with some noxious substance.

  “My integrator must have told you so,” I said.

  “I deal with principals, not subordinates.”

  Indeed, it was for that very reason that I wished to consult him. “Place and time?” I said.

  “Is it urgent?”

  “Not as such,” I said, “but I would like to move on the matter while it remains fresh in my mind.”

  “I will see if I can free myself of entanglements,” he said. His voice oozed out the last word as if inviting me to imagine him wrapped in lubricious coils. I resisted the invitation and proposed that we meet without delay.

  “Bolly’s Snug,” he said. “Give me an hour to make the arrangements.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said. I told the air-car to take me back to my lodgings and to wait there while I equipped myself with a number of items. It was never wise to visit the tavern where the halfworld did much of its business without taking precautions against being rendered incapable, if not irrevocably dead.

  * * *

  We met in one of the private chambers at the rear of Bolly’s Snug. Besides seclusion and a guarantee against eavesdroppers, the tavern’s back rooms also offered unconventional exits should anyone, official or otherwise, attempt to interrupt a conference. Obinder Min was already on site when I arrived. Before I was led to the space he had hired for the hour, one of the proprietor’s functionaries examined me for weapons. I turned over the needle-thrower I carried in an outer pocket but the rest of my paraphernalia was judged to be only of a defensive character and remained with me. The man who searched me knew his business, but though he passed a fairly sophisticated detector over my integrator, which still hung around my neck like a fat collar, his device did not detect mine’s full capabilities. Any discriminator needed to put a lot of thought and work into the design and construction of an assistant, and I prided myself on not being just any discriminator.