The Gist Hunter

by Matthews Hughes

  It conjured up a remarkable set of mental images, made even more extraordinary when I considered the fact that none of the species Olabian had assembled were noted for leaving their homeworlds. Even the Halebs preferred to remain in their own habitats, finding not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of worlds hospitable to unmodified humans. The integrator could offer no explanation, only conjectures.

  "They did not publicly discuss their motives, therefore there is no record in the primary sources. Perhaps Olabian was a singularly persuasive recruiter, perhaps he promised rewards that overcame his workers' homesickness, perhaps he hired those who had been banished from their homeworlds, offering them shares in the venture which would have let them live large in exile.

  "In any case," the integrator continued, "his plans came amiss. Shortly after the mine began production, disaster struck: a tunnel collapsed, entombing all except Olabian himself, who happened to be at the surface expediting a shipment of gems to market. He quite reasonably abandoned the venture, coming back to Old Earth with only enough profit to purchase a small estate. To The Hutch he brought his son, and there they dwelt quietly until the boy was sent off to school."

  I then examined Olabian's history since his return to Old Earth but found nothing of note. He had become a recluse, living alone in the manor. Torsten went earlier than most boys to a residential school, though that was not in itself an uncommon circumstance. I, myself, had gained most of my education in such places, my father having declared in my seventh year that I had become insufferable—I had corrected him once too often on some trifling matter.

  I applied insight to the data and felt a faint tickle at the back of my mind, but nothing concrete emerged. I decided it would be best to take a closer look at the situation that had caused Torsten to worry. In the meantime, I tasked the Institute's integrator with amassing, from secondary and tertiary sources, all the information it could glean about the events in Orkham County.

  "That may take some time," it said. "Several hours at least, perhaps even days. It will require an open inquiry on a number of worlds and there is no guarantee that persons who have the information—supposing they even exist—will be inclined to respond."

  "Nevertheless," I said, and sent the integrator about its work.

  At Torsten's urging I took a hiatus from my studies and returned with him to The Hutch. We traveled by balloon-tram to Binch then descended to hire an aircar that carried us to the estate. I inspected the grounds from the air as we spiraled down and saw that they were well tended, although I noticed that all work was being carried out by self-guiding devices. When we alighted at the front doors, no servant came to admit us; instead, the who's-there mounted on a pillar of the portico notified the house integrator and the doors automatically swung open.

  "Where is my father?" Torsten asked as soon as we had entered, and a voice from the air informed us that Gresh Olabian was sequestered in his chambers.

  "Is he unwell?" my friend asked.

  "He does not say. He has asked not to be disturbed."

  I was intrigued. "Can you not deduce his condition from observation?" I said.

  The integrator replied, "My percepts were removed from the private chambers shortly after the master's return from the stars."

  "Indeed?" I said. I could not recall encountering anyone who shut himself away from his own integrator. It was an unusual state of affairs, almost unnatural. "Did he give a reason?"

  "My father is of an intensely private disposition," Torsten said. "I used to try to engage him in discussions appropriate between a son and a father, but he would soon run out of things to say and would retire to his suite."

  I would have pursued the issue further but at that moment a door to an adjacent room opened and another person entered the foyer. From the way Torsten stiffened, I knew this to be Jabbi Gloond.

  He was an unprepossessing fellow, past his middle years, with a chin that descended too far toward his chest and a wandering forehead that ranged almost to the crown of his skull. Between them was a nose the shape and texture of some root vegetable. His eyes were large and moist and I suspected that his lower lip only made contact with its upper neighbor when he was speaking, being left the rest of the time to hang as loose as an untucked shirttail.

  He offered Torsten a tepid greeting without stopping, and proceeded on toward the kitchens where I could hear his honking nasal voice instructing the integrator to prepare a plate of pickled mushrooms stuffed with spiced eggs.

  I would admit to myself, though not to Torsten, that I had expected something else: a swaggering bravo, a coldly imperious enforcer, a sly sidler. "He does not seem the type to intimidate a master miner," I said.

  "You would think so," my friend answered, "but my father clearly lost his verve on Bain. He was never quite himself again."

  I was shown to a large, airy chamber on the second floor, across from Torsten's favorite room when he was at home. The elder Olabian's suite occupied one end of another wing, down a wide aisle that led off from the corridor where our accommodations were. I asked where Jabbi Gloond slept and was told that he had a small space on the ground floor where he could reach the kitchens with the fewest steps.

  "He has an unending appetite for delicacies," Torsten said.

  I had read that the residents of Orkham County, faithful to the strictures of the Palmadyan Cult, subsisted on rude fare. I was sure it was wholesome, but no doubt some found it tiresome over a lifetime.

  I asked if Gloond had made any other demands. Torsten knew of none. "The fellow seems to desire no more than to sleep late in a soft bed, consume copious quantities of dainties and have his intimate needs seen to by the personal apparatus in his room."

  "Palmadyans are not renowned for sophistication," I said. "For Jabbi Gloond, such a regime as he now follows may approximate paradise. He has made no demands for funds? No suggestions about redrawing a will?"

  "Not so far. Comfort and opportunities for indolence seem to be his desired goals, and here he has achieved them."

  I was puzzled. Jabbi Gloond seemed to be no more trouble than any house guest who slips and ducks every hint that his optimum departure date has passed. Yet Gresh Olabian was reportedly ill at ease. I closed my eyes to seek insight but received only vague impressions.

  "Anything?" said Torsten, who had seen me perform before.

  "Premature," I said, "though I hope you will not be offended if I speculate that Gloond causes your father discomfort because he knows something that your father would rather no one knew."

  "That is an obvious line of inquiry," my friend agreed. "But when I ask the old man if there is something he wishes to tell me, he retires to his rooms without a word."

  We took luncheon in the great refectory. The Hutch's integrator was a superior model and provided a fine repast. Torsten, his father and I sat at one end of the long, grand table, while Jabbi Gloond occupied the farthest extreme, trenchering his way through mounds of roast vegetables and succulent meats. A strong odor of spice and pungent herbs emanated from the loaded salvers that appeared before him and he wielded his cutlery with a clattering brio that prevented his hearing our muted conversation.

  "I think we must count Jabbi Gloond a lapsed Palmadyan," I said. "The cult requires its adherents to eat only what they have grown and prepared themselves, a stricture only slightly modified by the fact that all effort in Orkham County is communal."

  "Not only communal but compulsory," said Torsten. "I think you have used too mild a term for the manner in which our guest has departed from the cult's teachings. He has not so much lapsed from Palmadyanism as leapt from it as far as humanly possible."

  Torsten and I had agreed on this conversational gambit as a means to make a sideways approach to the question on the son's mind. We would lure the father into an exchange that we intended to shape toward a discussion of how he and Gloond came to be sharing a house.

  "Indeed," I said, following Torsten's observation with a question to the older man. "You
have seen Orkham County at first hand. Is Jabbi Gloond as atypical as he seems?"

  But Gresh Olabian gave only a wooden shrug in reply and with pale, seemingly bloodless hands continued to pick without interest at a plate of herbs and softroot.

  Undeterred, I bored in. "Although you used offworld labor to mine for blue-fires and shatterlights, you must have engaged local transportation and handlers to get them to the spaceport on Shoal Island. Only horse-drawn wagons can cross Orkham County and the drivers are all local folk. Was Gloond one of them?"

  He made no reply, but this time Olabian looked at me. Although the waxy skin of his face did not register any emotion I thought I saw alarm in his otherwise expressionless eyes. My interest in Gloond appeared to disturb him.

  It clearly emboldened Torsten. "If he is causing you difficulties, we'll soon tumble him out into the road," he said.

  The elder Olabian said nothing and kept his eyes on his plate.

  "Please, Father," said Torsten, "Henghis is very good at unraveling mysteries. I have urged him to become a professional discriminator. Whatever the problem, I'm sure he can help. We'll get to the bottom of Jabbi Gloond."

  Again, though no expression animated the father's face I sensed a growing unease. But when I began to frame a new question, Gresh Olabian rose from the table without a word and departed the room.

  Torsten watched his father go, his face a turmoil of frustration mingled with heartfelt concern.

  At the other end of the table Jabbi Gloond paid no heed but continued to feed his apparently unrelenting appetite.

  "Hmm," I said.

  In the long summer afternoon, the old orange sun poured its tinted light through the trailing branches of a broad-boled dwindle that dominated the estate's south lawn. I had convinced Torsten that a round of pinking might take his mind off the situation. But when I came out with my stars in hand I found that my friend had prevailed, I don't know how, on Jabbi Gloond to operate the apparatus that flung the targets.

  We spun our stars at the disks as they flew against the blameless sky, though my friend's mind was not upon the game. He clean missed an easy low-glide in the first frame and barely nicked a high tumbler in the second. As the fallen Palmadyan reloaded the catapult and reset its randomizer for the third interval, Torsten said, "Let us question him about his comings and doings. Perhaps he will let something slip."

  I felt a stirring in the back of my mind, my other part stretching its intellectual tendons in anticipation of a pursuit. But some other region of my divided psyche made its influence felt and I said, "I am not sure there is anything to be gained by pushing into the thicket of secrets that your father and Jabbi Gloond share."

  Torsten's brow darkened. "But obviously he is extorting favors from my father."

  "Indeed," I said, "but they are trivial: some plates of spiced mushrooms and a narrow chamber that was intended for an undercook."

  "Details! My father is victimized!"

  "True, but he seems to have adjusted to the situation. He did not become disturbed until you spoke of my ability to penetrate an intrigue."

  There was a sensation in my own back rooms, an inner grumble that told me that my inward companion was not pleased at the direction into which I was trying to move events. There was an even more forceful protest from the friend beside me.

  "I must know what is going on," Torsten said. With that he made a peremptory gesture that caused Jabbi Gloond to slouch in our direction.

  "Unpleasant knowledge is like an ugly but unreturnable gift," I quoted. "Once received it must be lived with."

  Torsten struck a resolute pose. "Nevertheless."

  "Very well," I said, "but allow me to put the questions."

  At close quarters, the former Palmadyan was even less prepossessing. The comprehensive traces of several meals adorning the front of his smock were as much an affront to the nose as to the eye. I examined his face and deportment for the known signs of a criminal disposition and found nothing remarkable. Nor were there indications of even moderate intelligence. Any illicit enterprise conceived by Jabbi Gloond, I decided, would be uncomplicated and its execution probably confined to a single stage. A two-step plan would be one too many.

  "You are of Orkham County, I believe," I said.

  "Yes."

  "A remarkable place, Orkham," I said.

  "Is it?" For a moment I thought to detect repartee, then I saw that the man was genuinely puzzled by my observation. While the sparse teeth of his mental gears were still grinding I threw him a direct question.

  "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?"

  "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.'"