9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  With my assistant around my neck I led the scroot to the spot where Pandamm had been struck down. I bade the integrator apply its recalibrated percepts to the pavement and display the results so that both Warhanny and I could see them. Immediately, the diamantine-sparkled pavement grew dim and misty and the nearby spiral of filigreed marble that commemorated the Archonate of Imreet IV became as a pillar of smoke. I directed the device to focus on the monument. Clinging to the carved stone, a short distance above the ground, we saw a dark shape about the length of my forearm, though twice as thick in the middle and tapering to blunt points at both ends.

  “What is it?” Warhanny said.

  “A gromm. Or at least it was. After such a fall it would not have been able to survive the impact with my client.”

  “And what is, or was, a gromm?” Warhanny said.

  “It is a life form from an uninhabited world a little ways up The Spray from Cheng,” I said, naming one of the grand foundational domains settled during the first waves of the great effloration that carried humanity out into the immensity. “The world is called... well, it doesn’t matter what its name is. Its atmosphere is insalubrious, it offers nothing worth the danger of landing there. But, occasionally, if someone is willing to pay, a few individuals who combine a taste for adventure with an unusual capacity for greed touch down there and come back with a few gromms. They don’t travel well, however, and will quickly degrade once they are taken from their proper habitat.

  “You will get the full story when you go through his integrator’s records. I think you’ll find he has been researching odd creatures through the Connaissarium.”

  At that, Warhanny bridled. “His account is under Bureau seal. If you have been poking into–”

  “I have not,” I told him. “Again, I have worked backwards from the presence of the gromm and Chavarie’s membership in the Immersion.”

  That information caused the scroot to make a sharp intake of breath. “You profess not to know about the hair, yet you casually walk the Immersion out from the wings?”

  “It was not I who brought it on stage,” I said. “It was our deceased margrave-major.”

  * * *

  The Immersion was a recent innovation, if one defines “recent” by the standards of Old Earth’s ancient aristocracy: it had begun a few centuries ago, as a fellowship whose membership was restricted to the upper two tiers of those whose ancestry was usually their only notable distinction. An Immersionist’s goal was to encompass the fullest possible range of erotic experience, believing that doing so would enable him–or her, though the membership was mostly male–to pass through into a new level of awareness: the state of Prismatic Abundance.

  Immersionists believed that the copulative impulse was the essential human drive, that it unleashed fundamental energies which, when directed by certain recondite exercises involving breath control and posture, would physically alter the cerebrum. It was a matter of attuning the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche, creating a resonance that resulted in a “pure tone” which, once sounded within the confines of the mind, would propel the adept’s being to a higher plane. There it would reside in perpetual ecstasy, untouched by space or time or entropy.

  There were some, however, who found the discipline of diaphragmatic exercises and nostril control wearisome. They believed that Prismatic Abundance could be achieved by exercising the erotic reflex while under the influence of the right psychoactive substance.

  One of those substances was the thick mucous that protected the gromm’s tissues from the hostile atmosphere of its normal habitat. When fresh, the slime had remarkable properties; but when allowed to degrade, the stuff could be lethal.

  * * *

  Warhanny had the Bureau integrators consult those of the Connaissarium. The latter confirmed that Lord Chavarie had been conducting research into rare off-world species. The gromm had been only one of several creatures blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the attributes in which the margrave-major had taken an interest.

  “Ambitious,” I commented, when the Bureau’s device passed Chavarie’s list of mind-altering organisms to my assistant for display. “Eventually, his experiments were bound to prove fatal.”

  Together we reconstructed the manner of his death. The Immersionist had been alone in a bedchamber on the top floor. He had disrobed and removed the gromm from its container, having first opened the window to dispel the strong odor and corrosive fumes of the creature’s home world’s atmosphere. Holding the gromm in both hands, the aristocrat had attempted some degree, perhaps even the ultimate, of molestation.

  The attempt had been unsuccessful. Exposed to Old Earth’s atmosphere, the animal’s already degraded mucous coating had rapidly altered its chemical composition. Its potent psychoactive substances, absorbed by Chavarie through his palms and through the skin of other, more tender regions, had triggered in him a catastrophic neuronic cascade. I could imagine the naked margrave-major leaping and thrashing contortedly about his bedchamber, his eyes bulging as he fell helplessly prey to random contractions and flexions of his own skeletal muscles, his lungs expanding and contracting like hyperactive bellows, with fluids emitting from every orifice. One of his spasmodic exertions must have flung the poor gromm out through the window, where gravity and momentum combined to deliver it onto the coiffured head of Feroz Pandamm.

  My client had seized it and flung it from himself in an instant. Thus its mucous had not had time to penetrate to his scalp, which was well protected by his flamboyant head of hair. He had also immediately wiped his hands in disgust on his coat, avoiding serious contamination through his palms. The only psychoactive effect had been to sober him. Gromm mucous, taken in a tiny dose, was prized by many spacers for just that purpose.

  The slug-like creature, now bruised and dying, invoked its last defense, an energy-consuming phase shift designed to disguise it from predators. It crawled to the Imreet IV monument, ascended as far as it could in an attempt to find refuge. There it expired, and there we found its remains.

  I put on a pair of impermeable gloves and reached up to seize the corpse. I had to pull sharply to detach it from the filigreed marble; on examination, I saw that on the gromm’s underside a network of small hooks stuck out from the now congealing slime. I found it hard to imagine how Chavarie could have summoned up an erotic impulse in the contemplation of such a creature, but then the eccentricities of Old Earth’s aristocracy are frequently beyond the understanding of we who spend our lives on the less exalted tiers of the social ziggurat.

  Warhanny produced an evidence container and we sealed up the gromm. “Again,” he said, “the Bureau must express its gratitude for your invaluable assistance.” To my ear, the sentiment behind his utterance did not appear to be gratitude, and judging from the gritting of his teeth as he pronounced the last two words, “intolerable interference” would have been a fair translation.

  Still, I have learned that it does no good to abrade raw flesh when it comes clad in black and green. “I regret,” I said, “that I diverted your attention from the core of the case, preventing you from achieving an early resolution.”

  The captain-investigator looked at me sharply, as if he thought I might be mocking him. But I maintained as sincere an expression of contrition as I could contrive and after studying me for a moment, he grunted what might have been an acknowledgement.

  * * *

  Feroz Pandamm came again to my workroom when I told him that I could identify the source of his baldness. He did not wish me to convey the information via the connectivity; my undoing of his scheme against the House of Esk had taught him that the measures he took to protect his privacy were not impenetrable. When he removed his hat, I saw that a fine stubble had sprouted on his scalp.

  He heard the tale of the gromm and Lord Chavarie’s demise without interruption, then nodded and said, “It’s as well he’s dead; I would have had a hard time prosecuting one of “them”– he used the intonation that, in Olkney, imbued the othe
rwise common pronoun with a particular meaning.

  “The Bureau of Scrutiny has informed the margrave-major’s heirs of the injury you innocently sustained, though your name was not mentioned. It was suggested that the matter could be disposed of if the family’s senior steward would view favorably a request to change its supplier of essences.”

  A gleam of avarice sparked in Pandamm’s eyes. “That’s a Pormeireon Brothers account,” he said. “Theirs since the world emerged from the primordial egg.” An uncharacteristic grin disfigured his dour face for several seconds, then the shutters drew down again.

  “You are satisfied with my handling of the discrimination?” I said.

  “I am. If ever you wish to take up an appreciation of essences, I will offer you a discount of–”

  “Such is not one of my ambitions,” I said. “But you will remember that you now owe me a favor, whenever I call for it.”

  His brows showed a vertical furrow. “What kind of favor will it be?”

  “It is premature to say. I gave in to an impulse.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Feroz Pandamm stands by his word. Call when you will.” And, dispensing with formalities, he took his leave.

  * * *

  The day after Lord Chavarie’s estate was adjudicated by the Archonate’s Court of Assigns and Severances, my assistant informed me that the primary heir’s major-domo was seeking a connection.

  “How may I assist you?” I said when the man’s bland face appeared in the air before me, wearing that look of supercility cultivated by servants of the proud and prominent.

  “My lord requires your services to locate a person.”

  “To what end?”

  “Do you require that knowledge?”

  “I do.”

  The servant sighed the sigh of one who finds he must tolerate the inanities of lesser breeds. “To requite an injury done to my lord’s family.”

  “Requite how?”

  His only answer was a glare meant to return me to my rightful place.

  “Is the person’s identity known?” I said.

  “His name is Wormer Krell.” The major-domo affected an expression of superior knowledge as he added, “He also goes by the alias Gestuphal Kennec.”

  “Do you have a last known location?”

  “He departed Old Earth as auxiliary crew on the liner Omphire, bound for Cronk.”

  “Cronk is a hub world,” I said, “this could require considerable travel.”

  The matter was languidly dismissed. “My lord will place his lesser yacht at your disposal.”

  “I thought Lady Alifrayne kept that vessel in constant use.”

  “Lady Alifrayne has retired to her father Lord Bulmare’s estate.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “I may also have to set aside a great deal of time.”

  We fell to discussing my fee. I proposed a generous retainer, with substantial refreshers. I did not ask for a bonus for locating Krell. Somewhere along the way I was bound to come across a corpse that would satisfy the Chavaries’ atavistic craving for vengeance. To them, we all looked much alike.

  And traveling The Spray in luxury would relieve the tedium that, increasingly, had begun to blight my hours. I began to prepare an itinerary of worlds I had long wanted to visit.

  * * *

  While I was packing, the dreamworm arrived. For a moment I entertained a the mischievous whim of sending it as a gift to Brustram Warhanny. Instead, I contacted Obinder Min and we met on the Belmain seawall, the gray waters of the Sound crashing with mindless violence against the gray, unmindful stone. I told the procurer that I had no need of the thing and that he could have it back. I had decided to repel boredom with the aid of Lord Chavarie’s lesser yacht.

  He shrugged and took back the item, saying that he could always find a buyer for a ripe dreamworm.

  “You are in no peril from the family over the matter of the gromm?” I asked him.

  He tucked away the pale yellow chrysalis in an impermeably lined pocket. “Not as long as I am useful to the Immersion.”

  I had assumed as much.

  “Is there anything you require?” he asked me.

  I discounted the unsavory implication inherent in the way he voiced the question. “I suppose there must be,” I said, “if I can just discover what it is.”

  Mastermindless

  I had almost finished unraveling the innermost workings of a moderately interesting conspiracy to defraud one of Olkney’s oldest investment syndicates when suddenly I no longer understood what I was doing.

  The complex scheme was based on a multileveled matrix of transactions–some large, some small; some honest, some corrupt–conducted among a elaborate web of persons, some of whom were real, some fictitious and a few who were both, depending upon the evolving needs of the conspirators.

  Disentangling the fraud, sifting the actual from the invented, had occupied most of the morning. But once the true shape of the scheme became clear, I again fell prey to the boredom that blighted my days.

  Then, as I regarded the schematic of the conspiracy on the inner screen of my mind, turning it this way and that, a kind of gray haze descended on my thoughts, like mist thickening on a landscape, first obscuring then obliterating the image.

  I must be fatigued, was my initial reaction. I crossed to my workroom sink and splashed water onto my face then blotted it dry with a square of absorbent fiber. When I glanced into the reflector I received a shock.

  “Integrator,” I said aloud, “what has happened to me?”

  “You are forty-six years of age,” replied the device, “so a great many events have occurred since your conception. Shall I list them chronologically or in order of importance?”

  I have always maintained that clarity of speech precedes clarity of thought and had trained my assistant to respond accordingly. Now I said, “I was speaking colloquially. Examine my appearance. It has changed, radically and not at all for the better.”

  I looked at myself in the reflector. I should have been seeing the image of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator in the city of Olkney in the penultimate age of Old Earth. That image traditionally offered a broad brow, a straight nose leading to well formed lips and a chin that epitomized resolution.

  Instead, the reflector offered a beetling strip of forehead above a proboscis that went on far too long and in two distinct directions. My upper lip had shrunk markedly while the lower had grown hugely pendulous. My chin, apparently horrified, had fallen back toward my throat. Previously clear sweeps of ruddy skin were now pallid and infested by prominent warts and moles.

  “You seem to have become ugly,” said the integrator.

  I put my fingers to my face and received from their survey the same unhappy tale told by my eyes. “It is more than seeming,” I said. “It is fact. The question is: how was this done?”

  The integrator said, “The first question is not how but exactly what has been done. We also need to learn why and perhaps by whom. The answers to those questions may well have a bearing on finding a way to undo the effect.”

  “You are right,” said I. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Are you being colloquial again or do you wish me to speculate?”

  I scratched my head. “I am trying to think,” I said.

  “I have never known you to have to try,” said the integrator. “Normally, you must make an effort to stop.”

  The device was correct. My intellectual capacity was renowned for both its breadth and depth. As a discriminator I often uncovered facts and relationships so ingeniously hidden or disguised as to baffle the best agents of the Archonate’s Bureau of Scrutiny.

  My cerebral apparatus was powerful and highly tuned. Yet now it was as if some gummy substance had been poured over gears that had always spun without friction.

  “Something is wrong,” I said. “Moments ago I was a highly intelligent and eminently attractive man in the prime of life. Now I am ugly and dull.”

  “I
dispute the ‘eminently attractive.’ You were, however, presentable. Now, persons who came upon you unexpectedly would be startled.”

  I disdained to quibble; the esthetic powers of integrators were notoriously scant. “I was without question the most brilliant citizen of Olkney.”

  The integrator offered no contradiction.

  “Now I must struggle even to...” I broke off for a moment to rummage through my mind, and found conditions worse than I had thought. “I was going to say that I would have to struggle to compute fourth-level consistencies, but in truth I find it difficult to encompass the most elementary ratios.”

  “That is very bad.”

  My face sank into my hands. Its new topography made it strange to my touch. “I am ruined,” I said. “How can I work?”

  Integrators were not supposed to experience exasperation, but mine had been with me for so long that certain aspects of my personality had infiltrated its circuits. “Perhaps I should think for both of us,” it said.

  “Please do.”

  But scarcely had the device begun to outline a research program than there came an interruption. “I am receiving an emergency message from the fiduciary pool,” it said. “The payment you ordered made from your account to Bastieno’s for the new surveillance suite cannot go forward.”

  “Why not?”

  “Insufficient funds. The pool also advises that tomorrow’s automatic payment of the encumbrance on these premises cannot be met.”

  “Impossible!” I said. I had made a substantial deposit two days earlier, the proceeds of a discrimination concerning the disappearance of Hongsaun Bedwicz. She had been custodian of the Archonate’s premier collection of thunder gems, rare objects created when lightning struck through specific layers of certain gaseous planets. They had to be collected within seconds of being formed, lest they sink to lower levels of the chemically active atmosphere and dissolve. I had located Bedwicz on a planet halfway down the Spray, where she had fled with her secret lover, Follis Duhane, whose love of fine things had overstrained her income.