9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  Min rose from his place at the table when I entered, gesturing me to take the seat opposite his. The air in the small room was thick with a floral scent that came from the pomade that the procurer used to sweep back his thin, dark hair in two gleaming wings. He had a habit of running a hand from temple to nape when he was nervous, as if the touch of his own tonsure somehow reassured him; he did it now as he waited for me to broach the subject of our conversation.

  I folded my hands on the table top and looked directly into his mud-brown eyes. “The Immersion,” I said.

  I am adept in reading micro-expressions. In this instance I was aided by my assistant which had focused its percepts on Min’s face so it could record and replay key flashes of revealed emotion, displaying them to me as still images at the edges of my field of vision. Thus, when I spoke the two words, I was able to discern that his reactions were, in sequence, shock, alarm, guilt, and the recognition of opportunity–all passing in about the time it took him to blink twice and present me with a contrived look of bland ignorance.

  “I don’t know any–” he began.

  I spoke over him. “Let us dispense with the preliminary dancing. You provide certain... let us say, ‘requirements,’ for some members of the Immersion. I know, for example, that you have assisted Lords”–my assistant put up a list of names where I could see them and I read a few aloud–”to find particular types of persons and objects with which they wished to gratify themselves.”

  I did not need my assistant to decipher Min’s expression now. His face registered shock at the first aristocratic name I spoke and he actually flinched at two of the others. “What I want to know is, what did you get for Lord Chavarie last night?”

  I had employed a calculated stratagem. I knew that the first names I had spoken were adherents of the distasteful philosophy–it would not have been too great a stretch to call it a cult without a deity–that was the Immersion. My insight had told me that it was highly likely that Obinder Min, as one of Olkney’s most infamous procurers, was one of their suppliers. The likelihood became a certainty when I mentioned the name of the secret society and studied his reaction.

  Still, I had not known for sure, before I spoke his name, that Chavarie was an Immersionist, nor that Min had procured for him. But I knew now. I knew also that Min would not want to discuss his relations with an aristocrat.

  “I cannot tell you anything,” he said, rising on shaky legs.

  My assistant acted as we had prearranged. Min suddenly found that he could no longer control his lower limbs. He opened his mouth to call for help. That, too, was expected and my assistant emitted a pulse that paralyzed the man’s vocal chords. I used the silence to remind Min that, unless he had thought to pay for it in advance, any emergency assistance he now sought from Bolly would have to be negotiated at a time when Min’s need was greatest. Bolly was a notoriously hard-skinned haggler, especially when he had the other bargainer at a decided disadvantage. I suggested that Min wait to see what I intended before he committed himself. I then gave him back his voice.

  He saw the wisdom of my suggestion. “But,” he said, “I have learned not to incur Lord Chavarie’s displeasure.” His glance went to the fingers of his right hand. I had noticed that they were misshapen.

  “I can relieve you on that score,” I said. “The margrave-major is no longer with us.” I saw the procurer visibly relax, until I added, “But the upper floors of his house-in-town are currently decorated in black and green.”

  Min took a sharp breath. “The scroots? What happen-”

  This time, he interrupted himself and I did not need my assistant’s percepts to tell me that the man had followed a chain of thought that answered his own question, and that he would be extremely reluctant to share that answer with me. His soft mouth set itself in as firm a line as it could manage, and though I knew he was frightened of me, I could see that he was far more frightened of something else.

  I tried a gambit. “If you told me everything, I could keep your name out of it.”

  “No,” he said, and I saw the truth of it in his eyes, “no, you couldn’t.”

  “Then tell me one thing,” I said, “and we are done. Where did you get the... “requirement’ that you supplied to Lord Chavarie?”

  I saw him wrestle with his fear and was surprised that he was able finally to subdue it. “The spaceport,” he said. “A ship called the Fanferray. I bought it off the supercargo.”

  My assistant informed me privately that Min had told me the truth. “Very well,” I said, “and now, for cover, we will make it appear that our meeting was to arrange for you to get something for me.”

  Suddenly, Obinder Min was all business. “What are your preferences?” he said. “Or do you wish to enlarge your tastes beyond previous experience?”

  “Nothing that will make me an occasion for gossip.”

  “Discretion is my–” he began.

  “A dreamworm will do. I am frequently bored.”

  “Is that all?” he said. “They are not prohibited. Why not something more–”

  “A dreamworm,” I said. “For my researches.”

  He shrugged. I bade my assistant return control of his legs to him and left by an unmarked exit.

  * * *

  She was a stubby tramp freighter, her hull red and her fins and sponsons umber, and the finish not been recently renewed so she bore the pits and scratches that testified to her being a less than well loved vessel. I found her standing on a pad on the eastern edge of the spaceport, out on its wind-swept island in Mornedy Sound.

  The west side of the port was reserved for the great and gaudy spaceships that hauled freight and carried passengers under the names of the grand interstellar lines, the north for private yachts and charters, the south for administration, maintenance and in-transit facilities. The east side was a forlorn place, made more so by the grid of narrow streets separated from the rows of pads by a tattered wire fence, where spacers with time on their hands and funds in their pockets could expect to find rough-and-ready accommodations and personal services, supplied without a garnish of intrusive questions.

  “Is your supercargo aboard?” I asked the ship’s integrator.

  It informed me that he was to be found in one of the establishments on Rear Street. It could summon him if I wished.

  “No,” I said. “We would only have to retrace his steps so that I could buy him a drink. Will you provide my assistant with an image of him? Oh, and his name.”

  The ship did not question why I should wish to entertain one of its officers I had never met and could not even name. It had probably learned not to ask questions. My assistant told me that it now had the man’s likeness and that his name was Wormer Krell. I ducked through a gap in the wire and walked down a nameless alley that crossed Front and Middle streets to end at Rear.

  I turned left and walked the stained and pitted pavement while the device around my neck employed its percepts to examine the interiors of the establishments we passed. Krell was discovered in a dark corner of a narrow room that consisted mostly of a long counter fronted by stools and a few booths at the back. The place smelled of yeasty liquids, fried grease and old sweat.

  Krell wore frayed coveralls and the expression of a man who expected little of life, and even less of it good. When I sat down across from him his eyes went immediately to the integrator around my neck. “Police?” he said.

  “Freelance discriminator.”

  One knob-knuckled hand was wrapped around a glass of colorless liquor. He lifted it now from the ring-scarred surface that separated us and brought it casually to his thin lips, but I saw his other hand drop out of sight to the bench beside him.

  “I prefer this to be a friendly encounter,” I said, “and perhaps even a profitable one for you. Besides, you will find that the weapon has been rendered inactive.”

  His hidden hand reappeared from beneath the table holding a mid-sized shocker. A red light flashing on its upper surface confirmed the truth of
my statement. He set the weapon back down on the bench seat beside him and took another sip from the glass, swirled the stuff in his mouth then nodded as he swallowed. “What?” he said.

  An image of Obinder Min appeared between us then faded as soon as he had seen it. “You sold something to this man.”

  “Did I?”

  “Something that is not often seen on Old Earth.” I did not add the reason for its rarity: that their import was strictly prohibited.

  He made no reply but his eyes said he was waiting for the part of our conversation that interested him.

  “My question is: having procured one, can you procure another?”

  The slightest motion of his head.

  “But here is my concern,” I said. Another image appeared, a list of worlds the Fanferray had called at on its most recent voyage. “None of these is home to the item in question.”

  The list disappeared. He looked again at my assistant and I could see that he was worried. “Yes,” I said, “I am a very capable discriminator. Interrogating your ship’s integrator without its knowledge was well within my integrator’s range. Finding out everything I need to know about you would not be a challenge.”

  This time, he drank what was left in his glass without making a show of it. “You are concerned about provenance?” he said.

  “I am. The creature we’re talking about cannot be too long away from its native habitat, or it becomes...” I gestured with both hands, rippling my fingers upward like a flock of birds taking sudden flight.

  “It was stable,” he said. “It traveled in a sealed container.”

  “Even before you acquired it?”

  He said yes, but his eyes said he did not really know. And now I knew what had happened to Dizmah Chavarie and Feroz Pandamm.

  I owed Krell nothing, but I saw no reason to add to his troubles. “Get yourself gone from here,” I said. “It was not stable. It had degraded. And your end customer was an aristocrat.”

  It took him a moment to understand that I had been lying when I said I was interested in acquiring what he had supplied to Obinder Min to give to Lord Chavarie. Then his face went gray. He aged a decade in a moment. “Was?” he said.

  “And is no more,” I said. “That means inquiries will be made. Not by the Bureau of Scrutiny; they will be told nothing. Private inquiries. I will not be surprised if, before evening, I am approached to make them.”

  Now I saw confusion mix with the fear in his face. “You are not making them now?”

  “Not in that regard,” I said. “Fortunately for you, I have been retained by a bystander who was... inconvenienced by a side-effect. He would send men to kill you out of hand, but I have already told him I will not be party to such an act.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Change your face, your name, your occupation,”–I glanced at the glass in his hand–”your habits. Go to live in some out-of-the-way place where you’ll be able to see who’s coming before they can see you. And make sure you always have a back door.”

  He stood up, the deactivated shocker in his hand, his eyes already looking left, right, in a way that would become a habit, if he lived long enough.

  “How long do I have?”

  “The rest of today, at least some of tomorrow. Don’t tell anyone goodbye. Leave your dunnage on the Fanferray. Go, and go quickly.”

  He swore. There was nothing more to say. I turned to watch him leave. Already his shoulders had taken on the hunch of the hunted. I said to my assistant, “We will aid him. Lay an obvious false trail, then a second, less obvious.”

  A few moments later, as I left the drinking house, my integrator said, “The Fanferray believes he has signed on with the freighter Buswold that departed an hour ago. The port’s security section’s records, which will take some penetrating, show him catching a ride on a utility transport vehicle up to an orbiter. The orbiter’s percepts will show him taking passage on a small liner heading down The Spray, under the name of Gestuphal Kennec.”

  “Good,” I said. “Make sure that there is also no record of our having been here today.”

  “I routinely dissimulate our movements, unless otherwise instructed,” it said.

  “Of course.”

  I walked on, toward the north end of the port. “When we get to the charter terminal,” I said, “find us an air-car.”

  “Destination?”

  “Home.”

  It left me to my thoughts, but as we neared the lights of the northside facility, it said, “Why save Krell? He didn’t care what happened to whoever took the animal off his hands. He is at least culpable of negligence.”

  Many people do not encourage curiosity in an integrator; it can lead to an unending series of questions, some of them unanswerable. A discriminator, however, requires a subtle assistant. “Because,” I said, “I have never been able to appreciate vengeance as an art form, and sometimes I grow tired of being an auxiliary to those who do.”

  * * *

  “Feroz Pandamm wishes to speak with you,” my assistant said as the air-car gently descended to my lodgings’ upper entrance.

  “He will have to wait,” I said. “Inform him of what awaits us.” Now it was my roof’s turn to be decorated in black and green. A Bureau volante hovered there, while a ground car idled before the street entrance on Shiplien Way. As I alighted from the air-car, Brustram Warhanny stepped from the volante. His down-drawn face, born to express an unhappy perspective on life, was again not even trying to overcome that handicap.

  “The vehicle in which you arrived believes that it took you on board south of Finnhaber Boulevard, yet my car tracked it coming east across Mornedy Sound. From the spaceport.”

  I could think of nothing to say that would improve the situation. I smiled a very small smile and inclined my head in a way that conceded a point. That, however, was far too little to sate the captain-investigator’s appetite; he asked me if he should impound the hired air-car and subject it to a peel.

  “No,” I said. “You should let it depart while you come with me to Tirramee Plaza.”

  His long head drew back. “To what end?” he said.

  “To resolve the matter of Dizmah Chavarie.”

  Now the lofty forehead compressed itself into a facsimile of desert dunes seen from on high. “You told me that your discrimination had nothing to do with his death.”

  “I told you that my client had no connection. I have only just discovered, however, that what happened to my client was an after-effect of Lord Chavarie’s demise.”

  “And I suppose you were just about to report as much to the Bureau?”

  “Such was my intent. But I would have asked you to meet me at his house-in-town.”

  I could see that Warhanny was torn between doing something to me that he had long desired to do or solving a high-value case. It did not take long for duty to win out over personal preference, a quality that had to be admired in the better sort of scroot. “Get in,” he said.

  He told the aircraft where to take us. As we flew, I took my assistant from around my neck, opened the hatch that exposed its controls and made an adjustment.

  “What are you doing?” Warhanny said.

  “Recalibrating its percepts to take account of phase shift.”

  “Why?”

  Instead of answering, I put a question of my own. “When you scanned the margrave-major’s corpse, did you detect traces of this compound?” I had my assistant display the complex molecule I had collected from the site where Pandamm had been struck down.

  Warhanny looked from the image in the air to me. “Yes,” he said. “Are you saying you found it in the square below?”

  “I am.”

  “And you analyzed it?”

  “I did.”

  We waited to see which of us would speak next. “So did the Bureau,” he said after a long moment. “The analysis was not useful. The substance is not known.”

  “That is because,” I said, “it has degraded through contact with othe
r substances with which it was highly reactive. You would have to work backwards through some unlikely chemistry–unlikely because the substance is of off-world origin.”

  “Where off-world,” Warhanny wanted to know, “and what other substances?”

  I answered the second question. “Our atmosphere, plus the natural oils of Lord Chavarie’s skin, and probably whatever unguents he may have applied. Were there concentrations of the stuff on his palms?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was any of his hair... missing?”

  “He wore his hair in a band from ear to ear, cut short and dyed, with the rest depilated,” the scroot said. “I believe that is the current mode among his set.”

  “I did not mean the hair on his head,” I chided him, though gently.

  That was not an issue, Warhanny said. Like many of his kind, the aristocrat had no body hair, the gene having been edited out of his line long, long ago.

  “Ah,” I said, “I had not known that.” Indeed, I was gratified to find that there was something I did not know. Of course, the upper tiers of Olkney’s society liked to keep some things to themselves. Their body servants were notoriously difficult to suborn–partly because the punishments for betraying a confidence ranged from the drastic to the horrific, but mainly because the relationships between the two classes were of such a great age as to have become essentially symbiotic. Neither could have lived long without the other.

  “But, to retrn to the matter at hand,” I said, “besides his palms, the greatest concentration of the mysterious compound would have been on and around his genitalia.”

  “How did you know that?” Warhanny said.

  We were angling down toward Tirramee Plaza. The volante intended to land on the margrave’s roof. “No,” I said, “the ground.” And there we disembarked, the captain-investigator’s last question still unanswered.