The Other

by Matthew Hughes

  He inched around the plinth and saw that the hole was filled with darkness. He bent and looked into it but could see nothing. Yet he had an unsettling sense of depth that told him that he stood on the lip of a shaft that went down and down, far beneath the surface of Fulda. He looked about for a pebble to drop into it, to listen and time the length of its falling, but there was nothing in the chamber but the column, the object, and Luff Imbry.

  He backed away from the shaft. Somehow he was reluctant to turn his back on it. He put the column between him and the pool of darkness. Only then did he take up the object he had found and, moving quickly, bear it back to the oval on which he had descended. Even there, he went to the other side of the stone and turned so that the column and shaft were in his sightline before he looked at what was in his hands.

  He saw a rectangular-shaped object of glazed ceramic, a little longer and wider than it was deep, colored in blues shading into greens, umbers, and old gold. It appeared to be of the same material as the figured tablets he had seen in the Hedevan Players’ tent. Indeed, the top and sides of the object were covered in the same figures, similarly in bas-relief, as well as several he did not recall seeing back at Pilger’s Corners. He ran his fingertips carefully over the object’s surface, feeling the smoothness of the glaze. He had no idea how old it was—it might have been fashioned before humans had discovered how to walk upright—yet it must have lain in this cellar all this time, untouched by weather, and looked as if it had been made only yesterday.

  His fingers absently stroked its sides while he thought: Unique. The single remaining artifact—unless there are others deeper in the darkness—of a vanished species. He knew collectors on Old Earth and a score of other great worlds who would pay a fortune for this piece. And others who would double that fortune just to deny it to a hated rival.

  I will hide it, he thought. When I am free of this place, I will come back for it. He could think of two people on Old Earth who would lend him a spaceship in return for a portion of the proceeds. He could land here in the wilderness, take the piece from wherever he would have hidden it, and be off-world again within minutes. He was already working out the logistics of contacting the most likely purchasers, of arranging an auction. It would be best if I could record an image of it, he thought. He wondered if Fuldans bothered with recording devices.

  He was roughing out his plans, still stroking the object, when a fingertip encountered a node on one side near its upper surface. The smooth little nubbin made a tiny movement under the faint pressure of his passing touch. He pressed a little harder, felt the little bump sink into the side of the object. In the same moment, he heard an almost inaudible click.

  Imbry stopped breathing. He set the object down on the pale stone of the oval. When he pressed his fingers gently against its sides he could feel a line of separation. A box, he thought, with a lid. He did what had to be done, gently lifting away the upper portion of the object. It separated from the base. He laid it tenderly to one side and looked into what was now revealed as a square container. Completely filling the space inside was a domed object of dark gray, smooth like the upper surface of an opaque lens. Imbry picked up the lid and turned it over, saw an indentation in it that exactly matched the gray curve of the lens.

  He had an impulse to try to lift the gray thing out of the box, an urge that he immediately suppressed—who knew how delicate it was? He might shatter it with his touch. The lid was still in his hands. He could see the tang of the simple spring lock in one side of the ceramic container and the corresponding indentation in the lid. His decision was made. He would fit them back together and hide the thing, to examine it as his leisure when he had escaped Fulda and come back for it.

  A shadow fell across his hands and the object they held. “There you are,” said a voice from above him, followed by a gasp of shock.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Hand it to me, very carefully,” said the young man in the black-hat. “I will hold it while you climb out of the pit.”

  Imbry recognized him as one of the arbiter’s assistants. He remembered the name—Shvarden—and that the old man had said he would send him out. He also recognized the expression that had taken possession of Shvarden’s face. He had seen that same look on the faces of collectors and connoisseurs when they at last beheld some masterpiece they had long lusted and schemed for.

  “No,” the fat man said, looking up. “I will place it on the floor down here. You will help me out. Then you will come down here and hand me the object. Then you will climb out and join me.”

  He watched to see the other man’s reaction. If he saw even a flicker of calculation born of avarice pass across the black-hat’s eyes, he would have to consider never letting the fellow out of the pit. But the awe that had illuminated Shvarden’s features, as if they were lit from within his skull, did not change. “Yes,” he said, “as you wish, but please put it down carefully.”

  Imbry did so, then he replaced the lid on the container, hearing the catch snick shut again. With the other man’s assistance, he struggled back up to the world of daylight, abrading his stomach only slightly on the edge of the hole. He noticed that before he took hold of Imbry’s hands, the black-hat had slipped on a pair of gloves from his pouch.

  Shvarden then let Imbry lower him down into the underground chamber. Imbry saw him glance around with surprise, but almost immediately the man’s attention returned to the flattened cube of ceramic. With a precision of movement that the fat man could only interpret as reverential, the arbiter stooped and lifted the object. For a long moment, he held it in his hands and stared at it. Then he looked up at Imbry with a new expression, one that Imbry had never seen on another human being but was prepared to believe was none other than sacred joy.

  “Now give it to me,” he said and saw perfect acceptance on Shvarden’s face as, with arms that trembled with awe, the black-hat lifted the box so that Imbry could take it from him. I do not know what this thing is, he thought, but surely it is my ticket home. He stepped back and let Shvarden propel himself up and out of the shaft.

  “Well,” Imbry said, “what do you think of that?”

  The black-hat was lost for words, his eyes going from the cube to Imbry’s face and back again. “All the years . . . all the dreams . . . the delvings. And now . . .” A look of beatific completion came over him. He uttered a string of syllables under his breath, too low for Imbry to hear, then made a complicated gesture involving one hand touching several points on his head and torso.

  “And what,” Imbry said, “is to be done with it?”

  The question snapped Shvarden back into focus. “There is no question,” he said. “It must go to the Chief Arbiter at Dolla.” He stopped. Imbry could see a succession of thoughts pass across his face. “We must send a message—no, a messenger sworn to secrecy. The preparations must be in place before the people are told. Certainly before the Reorientation learns of it.”

  “The Reorientation?”

  A shadow of sadness passed across the black-hat’s face, followed by a renewal of determination. “It is improper to discuss those”—he sought for a dignified term—“unenlightened persons with”—again a search—“well, with one such as yourself.”

  “Even,” said Imbry, “with such a one who brings this”—he held up the ceramic box—“into the light?”

  Now Shvarden showed irresolution. His gaze cast about as if an answer might pop out of the hard ground. Finally, he said, “It is not for me to say. It is for the Chief Arbiter. And the sooner we bring the First Eye to him, the better for all of us.”

  “Better for the Reorientation?” Imbry said.

  But he now saw that he had pushed his search for information as far as it could go. Shvarden was coming out of the ecstatic turmoil into which the first sight of the “First Eye” had plunged him. Whatever the thing was, its finding had been long anticipated, and a process laid down for what to do next. That would probably complicate Imbry’s desire to take the thing off-world
and sell it.

  But, he reminded himself, his strategy was still to get home and get satisfaction. Pecuniary opportunities, no matter how enticing, must not interfere with that plan. He refocused the young arbiter on the person who right now posed the greatest threat to Imbry’s aims. “What about Investigator Breeth?” he said.

  “What of him?”

  “I fear him. I believe he intends me harm.”

  “He must fall into line,” the black-hat said. “All of them must. After all, the question is now settled.”

  “Is Breeth part of the Reorientation?”

  “The Provosts Corps is rife with—” Shvarden interrupted himself. “Never mind,” he continued. “You don’t need to worry your little head about . . .” He broke off and gazed again at the box in Imbry’s hands. “And to think it was right here, all the time.” He looked at the hole in the ground. “How many times have I sat right there”—he gestured with his chin toward the hole at the center of the shallow bowl—“and invoked the Four Disciplines? How many times have I sought the Elusive Thread?”

  “Indeed,” said Imbry, “it is a wonderment. Speaking of which, I wonder how I will be received by the Chief Arbiter? I would not wish to offend.”

  Shvarden gave him a puzzled look. “Then don’t,” he said. “Practice the effacement, make a full courtesy. None of your irregular bumptiousness.”

  “I do not know what those things mean,” Imbry said. “I have already had one beating. I would prefer to avoid another. Or worse.”

  They were walking side by side, ascending the slope of the hollow at the foot of the cliff that sheltered the fortress. “How can you not know . . .” He stopped, turned his head sideways, and regarded Imbry askance. “Are you truly not of this world? I mean, I know irregulars sometimes say such things, but no one takes them seriously.” Before Imbry could answer he went on, as if to himself, “But then the scripture says that the Finder shall be one who comes from beyond all horizons.”

  “Show me a horizon anywhere on Fulda,” said Imbry, “and I guarantee that I come from beyond it.”

  Shvarden made a wordless sound and walked on, shaking his head. “I suppose we will all have to accustom ourselves to novel thoughts,” he said, “now that the Renewal is almost here.”

  “The Renewal?” Imbry said, keeping pace. He was thinking, Oh, for a little time alone with a well-organized integrator. These Fuldans dispense information as freely as a miser empties his purse.

  “That which the First Eye will bring us.”

  “And have I a part to play in this Renewal?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And what is my part in the Renewal?”

  Shvarden opened his mouth as if to answer, then closed it and chewed the inner corner of his lip. “That would best come from the Chief Arbiter,” he said at last.

  They crested another rise, and now Imbry could see the little beehive hut far down the slope. A carriage was tied beside it. “Was Shan-Pei all right when you got there?” he said.

  Shvarden’s eyebrows rose. “With all the excitement,” he said, “I forgot to ask you: where is she?”

  “I left her in the hut.”

  “She was not there when I arrived,” the black-hat said.

  And when they reached the little building, she was still not there. The stool and table had been turned over, the supplies that had been stacked on the latter scattered across the floor. The cover of the sleeping pallet was rucked up, as if a struggle had taken place.

  “Someone has taken her,” Imbry said, “though she fought against them.”

  “Who would want a little odd—” Shvarden gave the appearance of a man who was choosing a more polite word. “An irregular,” he finished.

  “Who would want to kill Tuchol?” Imbry said.

  “Death and mystery will precede him,” the black-hat said.

  “What?” It had sounded to Imbry like a quotation.

  “Nothing.”

  “I am becoming tired of mystery,” said the fat man, “and death from unknown quarters worries me, even when it is not my own. I am going to look for Shan-Pei. When I return we will have a more focused discussion.”

  “Do not take the First Eye with you,” Shvarden said. “Something could happen to it.”

  “You would prefer I left it in your keeping?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “But I will not. You will just have to accompany me.”

  “She is only an irregular,” the black-hat said. “She probably wandered off. Who knows what fancies move their simple minds?”

  Imbry said nothing. He was finding the Fuldans’ sentiments toward irregulars—a category which, he was constantly reminded, included his own person—increasingly tiresome. He decided that the discussion he meant to have with Shvarden would have to be more searching than he had heretofore been planning. But for now he went out into the late afternoon sun and looked in all directions for some sign of the fur-covered girl. He found none. The terrace stretched flat and empty in all directions, with scarcely more than the smallest bump to interrupt its levelness.

  Starting from the door of the hut, he began a widening-spiral search, but the ground was so dry and hard that it revealed almost nothing. Even the carriage wheels had made no more than a faint imprint, and the barbarel’s padded feet left no tracks at all. But as he went wider afield, still finding nothing, Imbry remembered his own caution when he had been en route to the fortress, and instead of looking for footprints he cast his eyes about for tiny signs of disturbance.

  And he found them. On the opposite side of the hut from its door he noticed a flat, rounded stone about the size of a stopper that would have fitted a wide-mouth jar. The object drew his attention because it was surrounded by a raised rim of desiccated soil, like a rock in ground that has alternately frozen and thawed. But no such alteration of temperatures would have occurred on Fulda. A moment’s thought told Imbry that the stone had been pressed down hard into the ground, while the soil itself had not been affected. He scanned the ground around the rock and found other pebbles that were sunk deeper than the surrounding dust.

  He knew what could cause such an effect: the gravity obviators used to lift aircars and other flying craft, even spaceships when they were enclosed by a planet’s atmosphere and could not use their more powerful drives. Their fields acted differently on denser objects than on less compacted mass. Imbry set down the ceramic box and knelt beside the sunken stones. He studied the dispersal of affected rock and dust and all at once the size and shape of the object that had been responsible was plain to him.

  “A carry-all has landed here,” he told Shvarden, who had been hovering about him throughout the search, his eyes never on the ground or horizon, but on the figured box.

  “Really?” said the black-hat. “You mean a flying vehicle?” Now he looked up into the sky. “I have heard of such things. They are irregular.”

  Imbry raised himself back to his feet and took up the First Eye again. “You have no flying vehicles at all?”

  “The Blessed Haldeyn inveighed against them. And rightly—they would lead us astray.”

  “Well, someone has a different view on their usefulness. Two nights ago, he used one to kill Tuchol, and now he has come down again to snatch poor harmless Shan-Pei.”

  “Irregulars are not to be harmed unnecessarily,” Shvarden said.

  “The Blessed Haldeyn again?” Imbry said.

  “No.” The black-hat turned thoughtful for a moment. “That was a truth revealed to us by Dansk, who had the vision that set us on the path to the Renewal.” Now a new thought occurred. “Although, of course, with the Renewal now at hand, the need for tolerating irregulars will expire.”

  “Tolerating?” Imbry heard a sharp note in his own voice. “Is that what you call it?”

  The black-hat spoke as if to an obtuse child. “They are unclean! In their presence we are at constant risk of contamination. Do you consider that no imposition?”

  The fat man did not reply.
Instead he turned and strode and returned to the hut, went inside, and placed the ceramic container on the sleeping pallet. Shvarden followed close upon his heels and, when the object was set down, his gaze remained fixed upon it. Imbry had seen a similar expression on devotees of various cults and covens when they were in the presence of venerated objects. He supposed it was what was meant by the term “sacred hunger.”

  He stepped closer to Shvarden. The man did not shift his gaze from the thing on the pallet. That made it easier for Imbry. His fist traveled only a short distance and very fast, to intersect with the black-hat’s midsection. Shvarden expelled air like a punctured bladder, doubling up and pressing his hands to his belly. Imbry followed the first blow with another to the hinge of the black-hat’s jaw, putting much of his weight behind the punch. Shvarden’s head snapped sideways, his knees bent, and he pitched forward, eyes already glazed. Imbry considerately caught him by the shoulders and lowered him to the floor.

  Not long after, Imbry flung the contents of a beaker into Shvarden’s face. The man awoke to find himself seated on the stool, his wrists and elbows bound tightly behind him and his legs tied just as firmly at knee and ankle. Imbry had used strips of black cloth torn from the black-hat’s baldric.

  Shvarden blinked to clear the water from his eyes. “You . . .” he said, “you touched me!”

  Imbry slapped him hard across the face, sending droplets flying. “Get used to it,” he said.

  “You cannot! You must use gloves! It is—”

  Another slap, this one with weight behind it. “Yes,” said the fat man, “it is irregular. But so am I.” The bound man stared up at him, eyes wide with shock that was sliding into horror. “We are going to have a conversation,” Imbry continued, “and you are going to be forthcoming.”