Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  The pirates had worked out their system to the finest point of precision; unless he could somehow overpower the three, all of them larger than he and surely much more adept at dealing out incapacitating blows, he might have to consign himself to walking their wheels into his next incarnation.

  He had faintly hoped that the furze suits would be less itchy and the work less onerous on his second day, but the reverse was true. His skin cried out for an unavailable abrasion, and the muscles of his thighs and calves felt as if they were trying to tear loose from their fastenings. He ground his teeth and pressed on.

  Midway through his first shift, the voice in his head made its appearance. Filidor had decided that the integrator did not think him worthy of respect, simply because he was not the bauble of his era. He did not greet the voice’s return warmly.

  You mentioned pirates, it said.

  “They are hard not to mention when one is in their thrall,” said Filidor.

  Arboghast Fuleyem, walking the adjacent wheel, looked over, then shook his furze-swathed head and said nothing.

  I thought if you outlined your situation, I might make some useful suggestions.

  “Did you not hear all that transpired yesterday?”

  I can only hear what you say.

  “You missed a great deal,” Filidor said.

  Please tell me.

  “I prefer not to dwell upon it,” said Filidor.

  The voice gave its version of a sigh. Did you know, it said, that I contain a vast repertoire of recorded music?

  “How delightful for you.”

  If you wish, I could play you something. Perhaps you would enjoy Marm’s Monotonic Cantata, which consists of one note -- rather high up the scale; in fact, close to the upper limit of human auditory perception -- played on a variety of instruments and at different rhythms. It will take up most of the day. Of course, I would have to shut down all other functions to free up the energy, so I would not be able to respond if, by some freakish chance, you did not care for the music.

  “I am sure I would not enjoy the piece,” said Filidor. “I cannot conceive of any rational being who would.”

  I also have Blekkie’s celebrated opera, The War Between Cats and Dogs, in twelve acts, with an all-animal cast.

  “Don’t go to any trouble,” said Filidor.

  It’s no trouble. Or perhaps you would rather tell me of our situation.

  So Filidor told about the arrival on the little island, about Gwallyn Henwaye and the two henchmen, and about the wheels and suits and pools and planks and beasts, of all that Orton Bregnat had said, and all that he himself had seen.

  When he had finished, the integrator asked a few questions to amplify certain details, then said, The solution is obvious.

  “Perhaps from your perspective. From mine, it seems elusive.”

  One query: do you happen to speak any Obblob?

  “I do not, but under the circumstances, I am willing to learn. What is your plan?”

  I must shut down now, until you have eaten more pilkies.

  “First tell me at least the rudiments.”

  No time. But the solution is plain. I wonder that you do not see it.

  “I am somewhat occupied,” Filidor said.

  There was no response from within. The day dragged itself to a conclusion through stints of agony on the wheel, interrupted by periods of exhausted lassitude on the bench. Orton Bregnat seemed less disposed to talk when circumstances put them together. In mid afternoon, however, the two were brought back to the strong hut, where they immediately fell asleep, but awoke to find the rest of the day hanging heavily on then, as they awaited the evening meal. Arboghast Fuleyem remained disdainfully aloof, and the other prisoners had adopted the view that Filidor was at best a zany, at worst a maniac, and kept clear of him, talking behind their hands and rolling their eyes, except when he looked in their direction.

  “They think me addled,” he complained to Orton Bregnat, while they sat against the wall.

  “Do you not accept that you may have nudged them toward that heading?” said the undermate, carefully.

  ‘”I must deal with my situation according to its realities,” said Filidor.

  “Yet we may differ as to what constitutes the real, and what the fanciful.”

  “An old debate,” said Filidor.

  “Yet ever renewed,” put in Etch Valderoyn, who had been listening. “As a sailor, I frequently find myself leaning on a ship’s rail, contemplating the inescapable facts of ocean, sky and the horizon where they meet, and wondering how all of this came to be offered for my consideration.”

  “My experience has been different,” said Filidor. “Before any contemplation could occur, I was offered for the sea’s consumption.”

  “Clearly, it has jaundiced your view,” said Bregnat.

  “Your situations are not at right angles to mine,” said the young man. “We are all prisoners, used as beasts, and I doubt that Gwallyn Henwaye intends to see us into comfortable retirement.”

  Valderoyn shrugged. “We are all used, all users. With luck, the final tally approximates a balance in our favor. But I think you are one of those who calls the proverbial glass half empty, while I prefer to call it half full.”

  “No,” said Filidor, “In truth, I have never given these matters much thought. I am one who quaffs the glass empty and calls for it to be refilled. Speaking of which, where is our repugnant repast?”

  “You can’t have developed an appetite for Henwaye’s swill,” Bregnat said.

  Reluctantly, Filidor explained the importance of pilkies to the integrator within him. Arboghast Fuleyem snorted, two of the other prisoners put their heads together and whispered something that provoked stifled giggles, and even the friendly Etch Valderoyn moved himself a little distance away.

  Filidor noticed and complained. “It is not my fault that I am intruded upon. It is my uncle’s doing.”

  Arboghast Fuleyem could not resist. “You say your uncle put this thing in your head? Is he part of some vast conspiracy of which you are the unwitting fulcrum?”

  Filidor decided it was time to put Fuleyem in his place. “He is Dezendah Vesh, the Archon,” he said. “And I am his apprentice and heir.”

  The sniggers graduated to guffaws this time, and Arboghast Fuleyem regarded the young man as if he were a bizarre but acceptable entertainment. “I suppose Henwaye took your plaque and sigil along with your robes of state,” he said, prompting more laughter from all but Bregnat, who seemed to have found something worthy of study in a far corner of the hut’s ceiling.

  “He did not,” said Filidor. “They were stolen from me by a young woman of Trumble, and I was on my way to recover them, traveling incognito, when my major-domo treacherously plied me with Red Abandon and threw me from the ship.”

  The little hut shook with mirth. Even Orton Bregnat could not repress a titter.

  “You should write these things down,” said Fuleyem. “There is a market for published inanities.”

  “But you must not tell any of this to Gwallyn Henwaye, or he may do me a mischief,” Filidor.

  “Fear not,” said Fuleyem, wiping a tear from his eye. “This knowledge is far too precious a gem to share with the likes of him. Now, tell us, do all servants of the Archonate have teeny tiny integrators in their inner ears, or is this a benefit bestowed only upon the select few?”

  Filidor told them of the Zenthro Intrusifer and the accident, but found it difficult it tell the story in the face of gusting laughter and raucous interjections. Before he had finished, Flevvel and Jorn arrived with the evening pottage, the former’s pop eye taking in the scene of merriment with suspicious disapproval.

  “What’s all the rumpus?” he wanted to know, while his bullet headed friend loomed in the doorway, clasping and unclasping his hands as if eager to grapple.

 
“The new man is a loon,” said Bregnat, adding quickly, “but harmless.”

  “He tells us grand tales,” confirmed Fuleyem.

  “About what?” said Tormay Flevvel.

  Filidor jumped in. “That I am the King of Air and Spirit, unjustly usurped of my throne, but all who aid me in regaining my seat shall be barons and fealtors of the first rank. I decree it unreservedly.”

  Flevvel smirked. “And how do we render this aid? Are there ogres to slay, nygraves to bind in gossamer?”

  “Nothing so taxing,” said Filidor. “Just bring me more of these delicious pilkies, the food of kings.”

  Tormay Flevvel sneered and even Toutis Jorn contrived an expression of amused contempt. The pop eyed one seized a good handful of the black fish from the pot and tossed them into Filidor’s lap, saying, “May it please your majesty,” and when the Archon’s apprentice seized the evil-tasting provender and began to consume it with apparent delight, rolling his eyes and making noises of gustatory enjoyment, the pirate threw him yet more.

  The others laughed even harder, and Arboghast Fuleyem said, “Here, now, save me some of those. I might be of the blood royal myself.”

  But Filidor merely grunted and continued to shovel the piscine foulness into his mouth, grinding and swallowing while trying to ignore the bitter expressions of grievance from his taste buds.

  Their keepers left and the inmates fell to the dull business of eating. Filidor put a handful of the green stuff into his mouth, to try to scrub away the memory of pilkie, then washed it down with a swig of tepid water. It did little good. The flavor of the fish was not easily overcome. He feared he might yet be tasting its echoes when he had only one tooth to chew with.

  “Thank you,” he said to the others. “If they knew who I really am, it could go hard for me.”

  “Indeed,” said Fuleyem, choking on a little sludge that must have taken the wrong direction into his interior. “They might summon agents of the vast interplanetary cabal dedicated to nought but your undoing.”

  There was more laughter, until Orton Bregnat said in a placatory manner, “The lad has a point.”

  One of the other prisoners suggested that that was merely the shape of Filidor’s head.

  “Now, now, seriously, but,” said the undermate, “if Henwaye thought this young wight was in any way connected to the Archonate, it would not be a matter of the boy eating fish. Instead, the vice would swiftly become the versa.”

  “True enough,” said Valderoyn. “And though we owe the boy nothing, we owe our captor even less.”

  “There is a mutuality of debt between me and Gwallyn Henwaye,” said Filidor. “He owes me a tally of sweat and pain, and I owe him the opportunity to pay it.”

  “I must say, he talks like one steeped in the brew of rank and privilege,” said Arboghast Fuleyem. “Tell us more about how the Archon is really a grinning yellow dwarf, instead of the figure of imposing magisterial grace we’ve all known for so long.”

  “Now, now,” said Bregnat again, rolling his eyes, leave the lad to his fancies.”

  The others urged Filidor to say on, but the young man declined. As the substance of the pilkies spread through his system, he had again heard a faint chime in his left ear, and the now familiar voice.

  There must have been more of the fish. My sheets are ashimmer with the recharging.

  “Let’s not talk about that,” said Filidor. “When last we spoke, you said that the solution to my imprisonment was obvious.”

  The other prisoners all moved a little closer at this. As the moral of the old story about the hierarch and the tree worshiper had it, “Stupidity may often dwell with madness, but brilliance sometimes comes to visit.”

  I don’t think we should discuss it now, said the voice.

  “Whyever not?”

  Because, at the moment, said the integrator, I can only tell you how to escape from the island.

  “That will do fine.”

  Not if it just means that the Obblob will bring you back again.

  Arboghast Fuleyem leaned in. “What’s your friend saying about escaping?”

  Filidor reported the substance of the conversation. Bregnat said, “We’ve thought of that, too. Even could we overpower the three of them and steal their boat, the sea folk are like to bring us back again. They seem to do Henwaye’s bidding, and he’s the only one as can speak their language.”

  Filidor asked the integrator if he had heard that. No, was the answer. I still hear only your voice, and that faintly through vibrations of the bones in your head.

  So Filidor related what Bregnat had said, at which the voice said, The key is to be able to speak to the Obblob in their own bubbling speech. Gwallyn Henwaye has mastered a few words, and those few words were enough to convince the Obblob -- or at least some of them -- that he is the Dry Provider.

  “The what?” said Filidor, and then had to tell the voice to wait while he brought his audience of eavesdroppers up to date.

  “The Dry Provider?” was Fuleyem’s response, followed by a rough edged snuffling deep in his throat. “That oe’rtops even the King of Air and Spirit by a full span. Your majesty’s talents are wasted and would be better employed in the public entertainments.”

  “At least one of my listeners,” Filidor told the integrator, “considers the title ‘Dry Provider’ to be farfetched.”

  It is a shortened approximation of a much longer Obblob phrase. Would they like to hear it?

  “I doubt it. Their interest is more directed to the practicalities of escape.”

  Then tell them this, said the integrator, and began an account of Obblob spiritual beliefs, including a prophecy that had drawn many of the ultramonde species to Earth in the first place. Filidor relayed the information in small packets to the other prisoners, who hung on his utterances as if he were a paid storyteller who already had their coins in his purse.

  “So,” said Arboghast Fuleyem, when the young man had finished, “the Obblob are inclined to believe in prophesies, one of which is that a human will some day say certain things to them in their own speech, after which he will provide them with an unending supply of essences, enough to maintain them in a state of perpetual rapture. Gwallyn Henwaye somehow learned of this prophecy and has used the knowledge to sway the Obblob to his bidding.”

  “Yes,” said Filidor, “in a nutshell, yes.”

  “An appropriate metaphor,” said Fuleyem, and snickered. “Highly apt, your majesty.”

  “But it has the shape of sense,” said Orton Bregnat.

  The integrator had more to say. Chances are remote that the pirate has got the exact phrases the prophecy requires, since they are a quotation from Obblob oral literature, never transcribed except but once into human speech, and stored in only one place. But it may be that hearing Obblob sounds from a human was enough to convince at least some of the ultramondes that a true fulfillment of the prophecy might be at hand.

  “And so they do his bidding, half in hope, half in doubt,” Filidor concluded.

  “If we had access to the one place where the true phrases are recorded,” Orton Bregnat said, “we might speak to the Obblob and turn the tables on the pirates.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Fuleyem. “And then we could be wafted away to palaces in the land of eternal spring, with hot and cold running houris to minister to our wants.”

  “Arboghast Fuleyem doubts your existence,” Filidor told the integrator in a soft voice. “Perhaps you could consult whatever mentions of him appear in official records and furnish me with information that will prove me not a madman.”

  Ask him if he is the same Arboghast Fuleyem who barely managed a second-rank finish at the Philestry Institute, and was turned down when he applied for a position with the regional office of the Archonate there.

  Filidor made the inquiry, and saw the laughter drain from the intercessor
’s face. He listened again to the voice in his head, and then asked, “And is there not now an investigation of your affairs by the chancery division? Something to do with allegations that you tried to play the wizard with funds trusted to you by your clients?”

  The man’s pallor deepened as Filidor took fresh input from the integrator and continued, “Was it this unhappy turn of events that induced you to depart Thurloyn Vale on a course that took your air-car straight out to sea, and in such a hurry that you neglected to refill its fuel cells? Was it your intent to end things, a plan that had begun to lose its appeal as the car sank and an Obblob appeared with its reclamatory basket?”

  Fuleyem had gone quite pale. All the others looked to him for a response, but for a long while he could not speak. Finally, in a hoarse voice, he said, “Who sent you here? Was it the Cornoni brothers?”

  Filidor made no answer, but turned to Orton Bregnat and spoke the man’s name, rank and ship. The integrator supplied him with information, and he said, “You were schooled at the Manfleury Academy, where you broke your left arm playing pelaste in an intramural tournament. The final score was seven to four for your team.”

  “He is right,” said the undermate.

  Quickly, Filidor made the rounds of the others, eliciting their names and places of origin, then telling them random facts about their own histories, culled from the integrator’s memory banks. Maijung Celemet was a thickset man with a scar across one eye, which he had got entering a burning building to rescue a paramour’s pet. Tanoris Volpenge, a youth with a vacant cast to his expression, had once won a prize for his rendition in scrimshaw of the sinking of the Vindiction. Byr Lak, the oldest of the inmates, had been born in the house next to that of the celebrated poetaster Melfogel. Finboag Aury had served on eight ships, which Filidor named. They all confirmed his information, and regarded him with some wonder and even the edge of respect -- except for Arboghast Fuleyem, who grew more irascible with each new revelation.