9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  “Did you work for Gresh Olabian there?”

  “No.”

  “Then for whom?”

  “For Farmer Boher.”

  “What did you do for Farmer Boher?”

  “Drove a wagon.”

  “It must have been a good and simple life, full of fresh air and healthful exercise.”

  He shook his elongated head so vigorously that the tip of his nose oscillated. “Food was bad, work was hard. Slept in the barn.”

  I understood that Jabbi Gloond had spent a lifetime doing what he was bidden to do. Asked a question, it was his reflex to answer it. Still, he was no running fount of conversation–more like a slowly dripping tap. But by patience and careful questioning I achieved an elementary view of his former situation. The Olabian diggings had been on Farmer Boher’s land and Jabbi Gloond was the hand detailed to carry goods and persons to and from the mine site in the wagon. He had had only perfunctory contact with the mining party.

  “Where you there when the accident happened?” I asked.

  “Where?”

  “At the mine?”

  Now I saw craftiness mixed with apprehension blossom in his aspect, the sentiments as obvious as the open pored tuber that was his facial centerpiece. “No,” he said.

  “You weren’t there when the shaft collapsed?”

  “No.” Now there was patent relief in his face, telling me that I had asked the wrong question and that he was glad of it.

  Insight came unbidden. “But you were there after?”

  He looked away. “Don’t remember.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. Tunnel caved in. Was nothing to see.”

  I wanted to ask more but it now belatedly dawned on Jabbi Gloond that he was not obliged to satisfy my curiosity. He turned and sloped off toward the house.

  “He was lying,” Torsten said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but only a little.”

  “What do you deduce?”

  I let the impression filter up from within. “Something to do with the accident. He knows something about your father’s involvement. It cannot have been anything abstruse or Jabbi Gloond would have failed to notice it.”

  “Something as simple as my father’s having caused the cave-in to rob the others of their shares?”

  “Did the others have shares to be robbed of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gresh Olabian was clearly not the warmest of men, but I did not sense in him the coldness of spirit that would be needed if he were to murder an entire mining crew. “And if he did,” I said, “why would a troublesome Jabbi Gloond still have all his particles in place? He would make a small addition to the death roll. There are plenty of corners on the estate where his ashes might be tossed into the breeze.”

  “We need more information,” Torsten said.

  I reluctantly agreed, though again I counseled him to let the matter lie. “I sense no great evil here,” I said. “Nor has your father asked for my help.”

  “But I have,” was his reply, “and as my friend you are bound to provide it.”

  I could think of nothing to offer in response so I said, “Let us go see if the Institute’s integrator has anything to report.”

  * * *

  “Gresh Olabian’s mining crew was a pastiche of exiles and banished criminals,” the Institute’s integrator reported when we used the communications nexus in The Hutch’s study to make contact. It was an unimpressive room, containing only the commonest books and most of them were uncracked. The family connaissarium contained few relics or mementos, considering that Gresh Olabian had spent so many years off-world.

  “The Gryulls,” the integrator continued, “were from a minor sept of a warrior clan that had chosen the losing side in a voluntary prestige war involving several of the Umpteen Nations.”

  “I am not familiar with the Umpteen Nations,” I said.

  “‘Umpteen’ is the closest translation of the Gryull term. The next closest is ‘More than anyone cares to count.’ The species’s numerical system only goes up to eight, that is, the equivalent of two four-fingered Gryull hands. After that come words for ‘quite a few,’ ‘many,’ and the term I translated as ‘Umpteen.’ ”

  “I take it that mathematical prowess is not prized in their culture.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Please go on,” I said.

  “The Gryulls were posted off-world for two cycles while they discharged their...”–again there was an untranslatable term that the integrator rendered as second degree shame with liability for mild ridicule–”...after which they could have returned home and resumed their careers.”

  “Were they close to a return?”

  “They were, from a Gryull’s perspective. They are far longer lived and thus generally more patient than humans.”

  “What about the Ek and their walking worms?” I said.

  “Two of them were criminals of moderate notoriety according to their culture’s norms. The other seems to have been some kind of cousin or a debt servant. Perhaps both. They fled off-world to avoid punishment.”

  “The Shishisha?” I asked.

  The answer was vague, that species being notoriously unforthcoming about their laws and customs. “There are indirect allusions to its having assumed one of the Seven Proscribed Forms, thus making it ineligible for procreation. That’s if I’m reading the term right; another interpretation is ‘ineligible for cannibalization.’ Or it could be that both translations are correct–little is known of the means by which Shishisha conduct their intimacies.”

  “And the Halebs?”

  “They seem to have been motivated primarily by the shares that Gresh Olabian offered for their participation in the project.”

  “Ah,” I said, “so he was dividing the proceeds.”

  “Yes,” said the integrator, “though not until the mine’s decommissioning, to keep the work force together. All stood to gain substantially, at least according to their own cultural definitions of ‘gain’ and ‘substantial.’ ”

  “So no one had a motive to destroy the enterprise before it produced great wealth?”

  “None that I can ascertain. Solitary Eks sometimes go berserk from loneliness. However, the three in this case not only had each other but, even more important to their psychological health, they had their symbiotic partners. Unattached Shishisha can give way to despair. Or at least the state is conjectured to be despair. It is characterized by inertia but no one ever knows what a Shishisha thinks or feels, if the terms are even appropriate.”

  “And the cause of the shaft’s collapse?”

  “The region is volcanic and unstable,” said the integrator, displaying a map of Orkham County marked with faults and magma chambers. “Since the disaster there have been a number of serious upheavals in the same area.”

  “Are there images?” I asked but was not surprised to be told there were none. The integrator reproduced the texts of official reports on the incident and the results of a more recent geological survey of the area. A footnote mentioned the old mine cave-in.

  I felt a stirring in the back of my mind. A picture appeared on my inner screen and after I had considered it for a few moments I told Torsten, “I believe that all this may soon take on a recognizable shape.”

  * * *

  I have never been an aficionado of those tales where some fellow with more intellect than personality wields logic like a lancet to slice through layers of subterfuge and diversion to discover the pulsing truth. As a young man, however, I was familiar with the tropes. One of the standard ploys was for the discriminator to announce to the assembled suspects that the mystery had been solved and all would now be revealed. Invariably, this declaration led to the lights going out while the villain took flight or, more usually, attempted to murder the sleuth before his guilt could be uncovered.

  My reading of the situation at The Hutch was that such a declaration would signal to Jabbi Gloond that his days of easy living were about
to find their sunset. He would then depart–I judged him not to be the type that would opt for violent tactics–and life among the Olabians would return to its previous indifferent tranquility.

  Accordingly, when we regathered in the refectory for dinner, between the soup and the ragout I flourished a copy of the printed information the Institute’s integrator had provided me and said, “The puzzle is now solved. I have studied the reports from Orkham County and I know what happened.”

  I then turned a withering stare on Jabbi Gloond. Unfortunately, his attention had been consumed by his efforts to scrape the last drops of broth from his bowl and over the noise of his spoon he had not heard what I had said. I called his name and when his moist eyes rotated in my direction, I repeated my statement.

  I watched his reaction carefully and saw a succession of moods flutter across the long dullness of his face: first came puzzlement, then cogitation as he worked at what I had said, followed by the dawn of realization as he grasped its import, and finally a mask of sad resignation, accompanied by a slump of his bony shoulders.

  “There are just a few more facts to be added, details of legaisms and entitlements,” I said, embroidering the fabric of my falsehood to heighten the effect on Jabbi Gloond. “I shall have them in the morning. Then we will settle matters once and for all.”

  Gloond’s shoulders fell further. I looked across the table at Torsten’s triumphant smile. The son turned to the unwanted guest and said, “Depart by any door you choose, or face the consequences.”

  Gresh Olabian, meanwhile, said nothing, nor did his expression change. His eyes remained on his plate and his pallid fingers rested immobile beside it. I examined him closely and confirmed my earlier intuition. I believed I knew what had happened on Bain.

  The lights did not go out. Instead we were served five-flesh stew. Torsten ate his with more gusto than Jabbi Gloond. It was the happiest I ever saw my friend. His father sipped a few morsels from a spoon and when he thought I was not looking regarded me with a brief, expressionless stare.

  I turned and offered him a reassuring smile. He would not meet my eyes but looked down again at his plate.

  After dinner, Torsten and I played pick-and-ponder in the study while the two other inhabitants of The Hutch went to their chambers. Over a smoky liqueur Torsten asked me, “Do you really know all?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “It would be premature...,” I began but he cut me off, demanding that I disclose what I knew.

  I demurred. “I only suspect,” I said. “And if in the morning, Jabbi Gloond is gone then you will have the result you sought. The Hutch will again become as you have always known it and you can let matters lie.”

  “I cannot believe that my father did anything discreditable.”

  “That is an appropriate attitude for a good son who has a good father. I believe the situation on Bain was unique and involved desperate circumstances. It need not be spoken of.”

  “But what about the secret?”

  “Obviously it is something your father does not wish anyone to know. I believe that ‘anyone’ includes you, perhaps especially you.”

  “But you know it.”

  “Until it is confirmed, I merely suspect,” I said again. “And if in the morning Jabbi Gloond is gone, I will rise and depart in his wake without speaking of it. Then all of this can be forgotten.”

  Late in the evening we retired. Although I still did not suspect the worst of Jabbi Gloond I locked my chamber door and set a chair against the opener. I left a small lumen aglow on a nightstand and got into bed. I turned the facts and my conclusions over in my head one last time, then turned myself over and fell asleep.

  * * *

  I came awake in complete darkness. I lay without moving, breathing as quietly as I could through my open mouth, listening. Something had awakened me but now the room was without noise. The silence extended, second after second, while I heard only my own pulse throbbing in my ears.

  Then there came a whisper, nearby and off to my right, the faintest sound of a soft sole touching carpet. Silently I pushed back the covers, rolled across the bed to the night table on my left and reached through the blackness for the pinking stars I had left there after my game with Torsten. Applying insight, I spun a star as I would when blindfolded. I heard it strike home, a meaty thunk followed by a hiss. Then came sounds of motion receding.

  I leapt from the bed and felt for the nightstand. When I activated the lumen its glow revealed that I was alone in the chamber, with furniture still set against the latch. I threw the chair aside, unlocked the door and stepped out into the corridor to find it empty. A moment later, a tousled Torsten appeared in sleeping attire from his quarters, rubbing his eyes and inquiring what was the matter.

  I told him that there was nothing that need concern him. His eyes dropped to a spot just inside the door to my room. There lay a pinking star, one of its points glistening with dark liquid.

  “Gloond!” Torsten said and flung himself in the direction of the stairs.

  “No!” I called after him but he paid no heed. I could only follow.

  Gloond’s cubby beside the kitchens was empty, the bed unslept in.

  “Integrator,” Torsten called. “Where is Jabbi Gloond?”

  “Gone,” came the answer. “He packed and caught the last jitney to Binch.”

  “No,” said Torsten. “His departure is a ruse and he has returned to do us ill. Even now he may be entering my father’s rooms with foul intent.”

  I put my hand on his arm and shook him gently. “How could Jabbi Gloond contrive to enter my locked room then, having sustained an injury, escape in seconds through the still barricaded door?”

  Torsten tore himself away. “I do not know.” He spoke to the integrator. Where is my father?”

  “In his chambers, I believe.”

  “I must see that he is all right,” Torsten said.

  “No, leave him,” I said. “All will be well.”

  But again he paid me no heed and reluctantly I followed him to the end of the corridor in the far wing. He touched the door control and when it would not open he ordered the integrator to override the mechanism.

  The door slid aside and Torsten strode through the sitting room to his father’s private bed chamber. He called for every lumen to be activated and the sudden flood of brightness chased all shadows from the room.

  The great bed occupied the center of the space, and its center was occupied by a motionless, amorphous shape beneath the bedding. “Father!” Torsten cried and before I could stop him he pulled back the covers.

  Gresh Olabian’s face was expressionless. His blank eyes looked up at us and then he slowly blinked. But our gazes were drawn first to the center of the pale forehead where, like a third eye, a deep puncture was slowly filling itself in, and then to what lay where his body should have been.

  * * *

  “I wish I had never brought you,” Torsten said.

  “I understand,” I said. “I did try to keep you from discovering what I suspected had happened on Bain.”

  “You should have tried harder.”

  We were seated in the study. The geological survey notes were spread across a table. They told how less than a year ago another volcanic upheaval had rearranged the rocks into which the Olabian mine had burrowed. A deep crack now led down to where the mining party had been trapped. The footnote reported that someone had been sent down to place the ceremonial objects with which Palmadyans marked informal graves. I was certain that someone had been Jabbi Gloond.

  He would have seen the unmistakeable evidence of what had happened years before. Most of the miners had suffered death or near-fatal crushing injuries in the first moments of the cave-in. But a small space had remained, enough for the badly hurt Gresh Olabian and the only other member of his party left alive.

  Jabbi Gloond’s slow mind would have been longer coming to an understanding of what had happened after the cave-in than t
he instant leap accomplished the night before by that other Henghis Hapthorn who shared my mind. But eventually the Palmadyan would work it out. Then he would see in the secret that had been hidden below ground an opportunity to live the life he had come to crave once he had tasted–no doubt surreptitiously–the exotic foods that he hauled to Gresh Olabian’s mining camp from the space port. He had worked his way back to Old Earth, scrubbing decks and latrines on a third-rate freighter, dreaming of an unending feast of spiced eggs and pickled mushrooms.

  I looked at the geological survey notes and again I could envision Gresh Olabian and the other survivor making their agreement. Olabian was dying. He was desperate not to leave his infant son orphaned as he had been orphaned. So he transferred to the other all rights in the venture’s earnings and the information needed to exercise them. In return, the surviving partner would see that Torsten would have a home and a father to give him a secure upbringing. The pact sealed, the other waited for Olabian to die, then it performed a necessary act upon the dead man’s body before slipping through cracks and fissures, none of them thicker than a man’s thumb, to reach the surface.

  There the Shishisha assumed Gresh Olabian’s likeness, wearing clothes from the mining man’s tent as well as what it had brought up with it from the collapsed tunnel. When Jabbi Gloond came with the wagon, the facsimile of Gresh Olabian rode it to the spaceport and departed Bain.

  Now the study door opened and the entity Torsten Olabian had called father for most of his life came into the room. The wound in Gresh Olabian’s forehead was almost completely healed; the interaction between the Shishisha’s fluid surface and the skin it had long ago flensed from Gresh Olabian’s head and hands aided rapid recovery. I suspected that by now it had so integrated with the alien flesh that it could not remove them.