The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  “Tuchol, is it?” Imbry said.

  The little man gave a confirmatory grunt.

  “What now?”

  “We wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Not very.”

  “For what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “We’re not going to have long, deep; and complex conversations, are we?” Imbry said. When it was clear that Tuchol would have no response to the question, Imbry advanced another. “What is this place?” His finger circled to indicate the building they were in.

  “A mining consortium built them, long ago,” the half-man said. “Or so I’m told.” He turned his head away to indicate that nothing more was forthcoming. Imbry went back the way he had come. In the first room, he spoke to attract the attention of the building’s integrator. There was no reply. He went back to where Tuchol lay. “No integrator?”

  “You’ll find,” said the little man, “that Fulda is lacking in many of the amenities.”

  Imbry went back outside. It did not take him long to re-explore the oasis. He saw no reason to go into the desert any farther than his vision could reach. If he climbed the distant hills, he doubted that he would see much to encourage him.

  He did make one discovery, however: on one side of the oasis, where the grass had been cropped and torn up and the soil had been made damp then dried, he found the tracks of some splay-footed animal—indeed, several different specimens, judging by the individual shapes of their three broad toes. When he went to the edge of the vegetation, he found scratches in the hardpan that were almost deep enough to be called ruts. They ran toward the south. When he walked around the outer edge of the green space, he found similar markings on the hard ground on the opposite side; the trail continued toward the low hills. The sun had moved enough in the sky since he had landed that he could now deduce that it was midmorning, and that the hills lay to the north.

  The information was not immediately useful, Imbry knew, but he told himself, “It’s a start.” He went back to the single building, poured himself some water from the pitcher, and drank it. Then he lay back on the cot, which protested his weight before adjusting itself as best it could to his dimensions. Imbry ignored the complaint and gave himself over to thought.

  Over the course of his career as a thief, forger, and purveyor of valuables illicitly acquired by others, he had of necessity made some persons deeply unhappy. Most of them would never know, at least not for sure, that Luff Imbry of Olkney was the author of their discontent—he usually employed cutouts and stand-ins to keep a barrier of safety between himself and his clientele.

  But the high value of the goods in which Imbry dealt meant that they were almost always the possessions of the wealthy and well placed. These were exactly the kinds of persons who would have the means to penetrate the fat man’s layers of insulating subterfuge. Careful as he might be, and he was more careful than most, he could not discount the possibility that some aggrieved magnate might someday discover that his prized Humbergruff assemblage or Bazieri portrait had been borne away by the thief Luff Imbry.

  Or, worse, that neither Humbergruff nor Bazieri had had the remotest connection to the work for which the magnate had paid Imbry a handsome fee, the artwork being entirely the product of the fat man’s skills as a forger.

  The latter scenario was worse because, while a man who had been robbed of a genuine treasure might hope to recover it, a purchaser of gilded dross could only hope to regain the funds he had been swindled out of. And though money meant a great deal to the wealthy—otherwise they would not be such—pride often meant a good deal more.

  Imbry began to make two mental lists: one of persons from whom, in recent years, he had stolen artworks of significant merit, and another of those to whom he had passed gimcracks bedecked in falsified provenances. Neither list was short. He was in the prime of his career, and had had much success over the past couple of dozen operations. He wondered if his accomplishments had led him to sloppiness in his arrangements. Had he chosen poorly in his circle of associates, leaving him vulnerable to whispers and behind-the-hand gossip that had led some hunter first to the unfortunate Barlo Krim and thus to Luff Imbry?

  But the more he thought it through, the less likely it was that he had made the significant error that had caused him to be netted. If some magnate had discovered that he had been slipped a forgery or that his beloved collection had been rifled, it was only a matter of spending sufficient funds to send operatives out to find and squeeze the likes of Barlo Krim. And sufficient squeezings would eventually lead to Imbry.

  Imbry went through his two lists again, and sketched possible responses to grievances that the names on them might lodge against him. But until he knew who had him and why, he could plan only the vaguest contingencies. He abandoned the effort and decided to husband his energies for the events Tuchol had told him to await.

  He formulated a rough plan in several stages. First, came survival. After that, he needed information to help him to the third stage: escape from Fulda. Stage four would see him return to Old Earth. Stage five would be centered on finding out who had done this to him. Stage six would be his revenge. It might well be the longest and most imaginative part of the plan.

  He closed his eyes and allowed the cot to soothe him into slumber. When he awoke, the sun was slanting into the room at a different angle, and the air outside resounded with brayings, shouts, and the rumble of metal-shod wheels.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The wheels belonged to six high-sided wagons with tops of heavy fabric supported by rounded ribs. The braying came from the draft animals, large, heavy-haunched quadrupeds with long faces that were extended at one extremity by prehensile upper lips and at the other by leaf-shaped ears that stood erect except at the tips. The creatures were anxious to get to the water, and their drivers, seated on the boxes of the wagons, had to haul on the reins to keep them from bolting toward the pool while a strongly built man wearing the same lack of costume as Imbry and Tuchol unhitched one of the beasts and let it go to drink. Imbry noted that all their hats, baldrics, and pouches were white like those that had been issued to him.

  Imbry stood in the doorway of the building and watched the proceedings. As the first animal was let go from its cart, the driver slid down from his seat and joined in the work of loosing the next beast. He was a man of improbable height and thinner than any the fat man could recall ever encountering, yet Imbry thought he might be the brother of the muscular man who had led the animal, so similar were they in the coloring of hair and eye.

  As the thin man led the second beast to drink, the driver of its second cart, a youth approaching manhood, jumped down and went to unhitch the bawling creature between the shafts of the wagon behind his. Imbry could see that the process was a familiar one to humans and beasts, completed with a minimum of fuss or delay. When the last of the draft animals was slurping at the water’s edge, the people busied themselves unloading lightweight furniture and large woven baskets and carrying them to the shaded part of the green space. In moments, a communal table had been established, dishes and utensils were clattering onto its surface, and a portable grill was being set up and activated.

  The little man with the crackler had been watching the caravan’s arrival from a spot midway between Imbry and the swirl of activity. Now he stepped forward and called a greeting to the muscular man who was clearly in charge of the group. “Ho, Taggar!”

  The bigger man turned and regarded him with a mixed expression. “Tuchol,” he said. “I thought you were with Grains’s troupe.”

  “Only one season.”

  “And now you’re looking to join us?” The big man’s eyes went to Imbry and the expression did not change. “And with a friend.”

  “He’s no friend of mine,” Imbry said, stepping out of the doorway. “He has kidnapped me and brought me here under duress.”

  Taggar’s eyebrows climbed to their highest vantage. He looked back to the half-sized man, noted the weapon in his hand
. “Is this so, Tuchol?”

  The smaller man lifted and lowered his shoulders without looking back at Imbry, but when Taggar advanced upon him and made a beckoning gesture, Tuchol placed the crackler in the extended palm. The caravan leader thumbed open the device’s dorsal hatch, removed the power source, and put it in his pouch. Then a twist of his powerful hands rendered the crackler into so much debris. This he handed back to the half-sized man.

  Imbry crossed the remaining distance and dealt Tuchol a solid slap to the side of his head, sending the little man sprawling. He intended to do more, but a wordless negative sound from Taggar and an outsized hand applied to the fat man’s chest stopped his forward motion.

  “No doubt he deserved that,” said Taggar, and as an aside to the fallen man, “didn’t you, Tuchol?”

  “That and worse,” said Imbry. He would have said more, but the bigger man spoke first.

  “I will acquaint you with our rules,” Taggar said. “Within the troupe, no one raises a hand to another, no matter what the provocation.”

  “I am not part of your troupe,” Imbry said.

  “True,” said the other, “but no one from outside our company may offer harm to any of us, else we all pile on in mutual self-defense.”

  “You offer me little recourse,” Imbry said. “This man has disrupted my life, dragged me across space through two whimsies, stripped me near naked. I do not even know where I am.”

  “And I do not know what two whimsies mean, but I can repair at least part of the damage,” Taggar said. “You are on Fulda.”

  This Imbry already knew. If he had had access to Hobey’s Compleat Guide to the Settled Planets, he could have looked up Fulda and learned where it stood in relation to the foundational domains and secondary worlds of The Spray. As it was, the mere name of the planet meant nothing to him. He told Taggar in so many words.

  The troupe leader turned toward the half-sized man, who had regained his feet and was shaking his head as if to dislodge something that was making noise inside it. “Tuchol, are you rejoining us?”

  “If I’m allowed. Temporarily.”

  Taggar looked around at the others, saw shrugs but no objections. “All right,” he said. He turned to Imbry. “And you, do you also wish to join us?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “There is no compulsion amongst us, save that of mutually respectful behavior.”

  “I would rather,” said Imbry, “go home.”

  Tuchol laughed at that, though he stifled his mirth when Taggar sent him a look. “You may do so, if you have the means,” said the big man.

  “The ship that brought me will not take me away. Is there a space port on your route?”

  “No. Nor anywhere on Fulda.”

  “How is that possible?” said Imbry.

  “I do not know. But it is not only possible. It is fact.”

  “Have you a communicator that I could use to call down a ship?”

  “No, not for that purpose.”

  “If I do not go with you, will someone else be coming along?”

  “Very doubtful. This is our company’s route this season. I cannot imagine why anyone else would come here before next year.”

  Imbry contained himself. “And you would not advise staying?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anywhere within walking distance? Anywhere that I might be able to call down a ship?”

  The big man looked at Imbry measuringly. “You believe you can do that?”

  “I assure you I am not a loon,” the fat man said. “Do you not see moving points of light in the sky at night?”

  Taggar thought about it. “I suppose I have. Those are spaceships?”

  The tall, thin man had drifted over as they spoke. He regarded Imbry with curiosity but no show of friendliness. “They are,” the thin man said. “Though I didn’t know they could be called on a communicator.”

  “They can,” said Imbry, “by one who knows the protocols.”

  Taggar’s face showed an expression that said the matter might be interesting, but was irrelevant to their circumstances. “You might be best off talking to the Arbitration,” he said.

  “Is that your government?”

  “Not ours,” said the thin man.

  “Hush,” said the big man. “They are the ones who make the decisions.”

  “Well, then,” said Imbry, “may I come with you to wherever I can talk to this Arbitration?”

  “We cannot carry idlers,” said Taggar. “You would have to join the company.” At Imbry’s frown, he added, “At least temporarily.”

  Imbry, though he often dealt professionally in other people’s illusions, prided himself on retaining none for himself. “Then I believe I would like to join your company,” he said.

  “You wear white,” Taggar said. “What is your talent?”

  During their conversation, Imbry had been examining the other members of the troupe. Apart from the stick-insect man, he had noticed that the youth who had driven the second wagon had an unusual face. There was also a woman with a tiny head, and a slim person of average height whose sex remained indeterminate because he or she was covered from pate to toe in a coat of glossy, tan-colored fur. “Is talent necessary?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Taggar. “We operate within the law.”

  “I can sketch,” said Imbry, “line drawings, portraits, caricatures.”

  The information brought a snort from Tuchol. Taggar sent him another look that quieted the little man. “Anything else?” he said.

  It was not generally known, but Luff Imbry owned a passable tenor voice, though few had heard it raised since he had left school and its mandatory choir. “I can sing, if necessary.”

  “Please do so now,” said the big man, and listened as Imbry sang the opening bars of Thesiger’s Lament. “That will do,” Taggar said. “What is your name and place of origin?”

  Imbry told him.

  “You have two names?” said Taggar.

  The thin man said, “I’ve heard that off-worlders can have three or more names.”

  “Two names are common on Old Earth,” said Imbry.

  Taggar hushed him. “That’s off-world?”

  Imbry was not surprised to see that Old Earth was as unfamiliar to Taggar as Fulda was to Imbry. Humankind had spread out into The Spray many aeons ago and the ancient home world was little thought of now. Indeed, there were well-established schools of thought that argued for a number of other planets to be recognized as humanity’s original font.

  Taggar said, “Having two names is too irregular. Which one would you prefer to be known by?” When the Old Earther told him, he laid a hand on Imbry’s shoulder and adopted a formal diction to say, “Imbry, of Old Yurt, you are now and henceforward a member of the Hedevan Traveling Players, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities appurtenant thereto.” Then he smiled and said, “You may begin to exercise the former by joining us for the midday meal.”

  He led the way to the table, where the members of the company had finished laying out plates and cutlery. Some were seated, while others tended the grill on which sausages and some kind of thin pancakes were cooking. Taggar introduced the newcomer with minimal ceremony, and Imbry confined himself to an inclination of the head and an informal motion of hand to chest.

  “Take my seat,” Taggar said, and the fat man thought at first that it might be a significant gesture. Then he noticed that the strongly built leader’s chair was far sturdier than the foldable arrangements of wood and fabric on which the others sat. The leader was sparing him the experience of becoming an object of mirth just as he was making the acquaintance of his new associates. Imbry lowered his formidable buttocks onto the offered seat, and when Taggar came back from one of the wagons with a matching chair the fat man made a discreet show of gratitude.

  His introduction brought a variety of responses from the others at the table. The tall, skeletal man said, “Malweer,” which turned out to be his name, and added th
e briefest and thinnest of smiles.

  The tiny-headed woman made up for Malweer’s reserve by favoring Imbry with an improbably wide grin and a tumbling speech of welcome and inquiry, in which she told him that she was called Ebblin, that he was to think of her as his new mother, and how did he get so plump, and was he partial to spiced sausages, which they were about to eat and in which she liked to indulge, although they tended to give her the squits, but what could you do? And what was his name again?

  Before Imbry could respond, the fur-covered individual shushed Ebblin in what the Old Earther thought was an affectionate and familiar manner and identified herself—the voice was distinctly female, and sounded friendly—as Shan-Pei. “That’s Wintle flipping the crepes,” she said—the odd-faced youth paused in his labors to acknowledge the introduction with a flourish of his spatula—“and Thelia is tending the sausages.”

  Thelia was a young woman of medium build and squarish face of the same coloring as Taggar and Malweer—indeed, now that they were all seated together, Imbry saw no more than a shade of difference in hair, eye, and skin color around the table. Even Shan-Pei’s fur was of a comparable shade. The only one who stood out among the company was himself, being of paler skin and almost colorless hair and with eyes the color of ice.

  At first glance, he thought that young Thelia also stood out by not being in anyway unusual. But when she was introduced she waved to him with the hand that was not holding a long-tined fork, and he saw that her unencumbered extremity was bloodless and tiny—as if it had stopped growing in infancy.

  Wintle brought a platter of pancakes to the table and it was passed from hand to hand, each member of the troupe forking a few of the thin crepes onto his or her plate, then spreading the flat surface with a sweet-smelling compote of purple fruit ladled from a central bowl. Imbry did as the others did, rolling his portion into a fat tube to be sliced and eaten with knife and fork. A platter of sausages now made the rounds, and the fat man found them to be as spicy as Ebblin had promised.