Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  Filidor heard the pirate chief say, “Get him!” and rushed for the bell. His hope was that when he reached the driftwood and began beating on the iron signal, he would see all three of his captors racing toward him, with Bregnat and Valderoyn slipping unspied behind them, moving to the strong hut to bring reinforcements.

  But that hope went unfulfilled. When he arrived gasping at the bell and scooped up the piece of driftwood that was used to beat it, he turned to see that only Flevvel was in pursuit. Behind the pop eyed pirate, Filidor saw Henwaye and Jorn racing for the door of the strong hut, and knew that they would arrive there before Orton Bregnat and Etch Valderoyn, who had spilled out of the drum room and were running for the same goal. Henwaye spun at the door and yanked out his cudgel. Jorn pounded up to stand beside him, flexing his great hands.

  The plan had come undone, but the young man intended to carry it as far as he could. He hefted the driftwood and smashed it into the bell. The iron rang with a satisfying clang and flecks of rust leapt from its surface. He struck again and once more and had the wood raised for a fourth blow, when Tormay Flevvel, his enlarged eye florid with rage, suddenly filled Filidor’s vision. The wood was already raised to strike, so Filidor shifted his stance enough to bring it down smartly upon the henchman’s head, splitting the skin and driving the pirate to his knees. A second blow might have ended things then and there, had Filidor immediately struck again. But, instead, he remained true to the strategy, and hammered a renewed flurry of blows on the bell, hoping to distract Henwaye and Jorn.

  It was another forlorn hope. As he smacked the iron again and again, he witnessed the brief struggle outside the strong hut door. Orton Bregnat arrived there two paces ahead of Etch Valderoyn, and seeing Gwallyn Henwaye’s cudgel poised to strike, he flung himself headlong at the pirate chief’s midriff. But the weapon sliced down with practiced skill, and struck the undermate a glancing blow on the side of the head, so that he was already dazed when he caromed into Henwaye. They both went down, but only the pirate got back up.

  Valderoyn, coming up behind, and seeing no hope of besting the heap of muscle and bone that was Toutis Jorn, dodged to right and to left, then came right again, seeking to wrong-foot Henwaye’s henchman, and get behind him long enough to throw the bolt on the strong hut door. His plan almost succeeded, and he dashed past the slope headed pirate, but the latter recovered his balance enough to fling out one long simian arm, the enormous hand on the end of it colliding with a flat smack against Valderoyn’s head, sprawling him senseless.

  Filidor saw no more, because now Tormay Flevvel came up from his stupor, and with a flurry of blows from fists, feet and knees, efficiently turned the young man into a ball of pain curled on the rocky ground. Filidor drew up his knees and wrapped his arms about his head, as the kicks continued to land, and somewhere amidst the suffering, a distant part of him put Tormay Flevvel’s name on the list that was headed by that of Faubon Bassariot.

  “Enough,” said Gwallyn Henwaye’s voice from a distance, and Flevvel’s attack subsided to one last toe in Filidor’s ribs.

  “Get him up and bring him down to the boat,” the pirate chief continued.

  Filidor was yanked to his feet, There was blood running into his eyes from a split eyebrow, and when he wiped it away he saw Toutis Jorn at the strong hut door, Henwaye brandishing his cudgel to threaten those within, as Jorn dragged the naked and stunned forms of Valderoyn and Bregnat across the threshold.

  It was a good plan, and bravely followed, Filidor comforted himself. Perhaps that other Filidor, hero of another Earth, could have done better, but he could not have tried harder.

  Henwaye and Jorn had now returned to the beached jollyboat, and Tormay Flevvel kicked and harried Filidor over to where they waited. The pirate chief reached into the boat and came up with a copy of the Olkney Implicator. He opened it to an inner page, then looked from the page to Filidor and back again.

  “Who do you say you are?” he asked.

  “The King of Air...” Filidor broke off as Gwallyn Henwaye favored him with a hard slap across the side of his head.

  “Now without the rodomontade,” the pirate said.

  The young man swallowed, then said, “Filidor Vesh, nephew and heir to the Archon.”

  Henwaye looked at the Implicator again, his lips moving as he read something. “You’ve been quite the naughty boy, haven’t you?”

  Filidor did not know how to respond.

  “He’d be worth a hern or two, then,” said Tormay Flevvel, and his smaller eye squinted in avarice.

  Henwaye pulled his upper lip into a fold as he thought about it. Then he shook his head. “Not enough to be worth the trouble.”

  “He doesn’t look to be much trouble,” Flevvel said.

  “Archonate entanglements are more trouble than anything’s worth,” said Henwaye. “We’re doing fine here, as is.” His tone bespoke no intent to argue. “Get his clothes on him.”

  “My uncle will pay a handsome reward for my safe return,” Filidor said.

  Henwaye glanced again at the Implicator and smiled. “Your appreciation of your situation may be fatally behind the movement of events,” he said.

  The nondescript garments that Filidor had worn when he came ashore were brought from the storehouse, and with the rough-handed aid of Flevvel and Jorn, he was quickly dressed.

  The young man tugged his tunic free of Flevvel’s fingers and straightened its lines to let it hang appropriately. It now occurred to him that they would not be dressing him if he were to be returned to the strong hut. Nor did they have any intent of returning him to his previous life, even for a reward. And since they were unlikely to offer him a partnership in their Obblob essence venture, that left only one other possibility.

  “What on earth is that?” the young man said, pointing over Henwaye’s shoulder, and although their attention left him only for the briefest fragment of time, it was enough for Filidor to spin on his heel and race away up the shore. His days on the wheel had firmed up his legs, and the soft soled boots on his feet lent more spring to his step -- and even if neither had been the case, the imminent prospect of being murdered added a clinching extra to his speed and stamina.

  He quickly drew away from Flevvel and the lumbering Jorn, giving him time, as he drew near the bell, to aim and deliver a flat handed strike upon the iron, which made it ring with a dull hum. Then he ran on. But he knew the time to summon an Obblob was now spent. He could only hope that there was one within earshot -- assuming that Obblob had ears -- as he breathlessly shouted out the gobbling syllables of the opening sutra. He drew breath and shouted the phrase again, and heard an angry growl from Tormay Flevvel somewhere behind.

  Filidor chanced a glance to his rear and saw that Flevvel and Henwaye were in pursuit, the pirate chief some distance behind his pop eyed henchman, while Flevvel was in no great hope of soon catching his younger quarry. Toutis Jorn, apparently not even in the running, was not to be seen.

  Being in the lead, outrunning his pursuers, brought up a sudden fierce joy in Filidor, even as a part of him reasoned that a roundabout race on a small island could have only one conclusion. Still, he filled his laboring lungs once more, and shouted out the Obblob words as if they were a victory cry. Then, as the last bubbling sound left his lips, he rounded the curved outer wall of the drum room and crashed into the great pillar of unyielding flesh that was Toutis Jorn.

  Arms thicker than Filidor’s thighs snapped closed about him. His air wheezed out under pressure. Flevvel and Henwaye came up, and the latter said, “Right, no more finny-whacking about. In with him.”

  Still clasping Filidor to his wide chest, Toutis Jorn turned and walked into the sea. When the water was up to his waist -- which put it chest high on Filidor -- he stopped and, seizing the Archon’s apprentice by the scruff of his neck, thrust him beneath the surface. Between the time he left Jorn’s bosom and entered that of the sea
, Filidor had time to draw in one brief draft of air.

  But, as he regarded the coral floor that sloped gently away into the dark distance of the submarine world, Filidor faced the fact that his next inward gasp of atmosphere must be his last. Jorn could afford to be more patient than his victim. He would hold Filidor under until the air now in the young man’s lungs was consumed, after which some inner reflex, responding to a single-minded imperative that was hundreds of millions of years old, would betray all the rest of his system by causing his diaphragm to flex and expand his chest. The sea would then rush in where it was never supposed to be, and Filidor would fare forth into the eternal.

  To struggle was pointless, Filidor knew. Yet he did not want to lie passive, doing nothing while the ultimate moment of his existence drew inexorably nearer. He thought about that other Filidor, living his infinitesimal but somehow much larger span of life in a mote-sized universe. Would he quietly await his demise? Though he knew little about that other Filidor, he was certain that his alter ego would not go into the otherness without at least a measure of defiance.

  His possessions reduced to a suit of sodden clothes and a dwindling lungful of air, Filidor resolved to make best use of what little he had. He shaped lips and tongue to the purpose, and blew out the last of his breath in an underwater restatement of the first sutra of the Obblob prophesy. He saw the bubbles form and felt them rush past his face. He closed his mouth, but felt the sea begin to press its way up his nostrils. Ripples of blackness crept along the edges of his field of vision, and a whine like that of flying insects swelled in his ears.

  His last thought was that he was sorry to be dying without having achieved all that he might have, but he was grimly satisfied that he had struggled all the way to the final blink. Then, as the darkness swept in from the edges, he closed his eyes and prepared to greet it.

  It came with a sudden rush, as if something had seized the back of his shirt and snatched him up. “So this is what it’s like,” he thought. He opened his eyes and found himself suspended above the shallows at the edge of the little island and moving toward shore. He could see Toutis Jorn sitting on his wide hams in the water, and beyond him Henwaye and Flevvel looking up at him with great consternation, then turning and running away.

  “It’s as if they can see me, and are terrified of my specter,” thought Filidor. But his appreciation of his new bodiless state clashed with the next evidence of his senses: he realized that he was breathing freely, and that what was entering his lungs was not seawater, but sweet, unchoking air. That’s odd, he mused. Who would have thought that ghosts would breathe?

  As he flew across the line between sea and shore, he gently descended, until his feet touched the rocky surface in a familiar corporeal way. Henwaye and Flevvel had run to the storehouse. They went inside, and he heard the slam of its wooden door and what sounded like things being frantically piled against it from the inside. He turned to see what Toutis Jorn was doing, and saw that the slab shouldered henchman was up and wading away through the shallows. But the sight of the fleeing pirate was not the most compelling thing in Filidor’s field of vision. That distinction belonged to the enormous manlike creature standing right behind him, looking down at the Archon’s apprentice with an expression on its green and gold-flecked face that Filidor took to be mingled tenderness and spiritual awe.

  Ah, thought the young man. I am returned to life. Moreover, it is a life that looks to become much more interesting. He then had the presence of mind to speak the entire succession of phrases that the integrator had taught him, even remembering the descending dissonance on the fourth syllable.

  The giant ultramonde made a sinewy motion of head, arms and shoulders that caused the tube-like symbiotes on its dorsal surface to ripple. It honked softly, then burbled something, and tentatively held out a web-digited hand as broad as Filidor’s chest. The Archon’s nephew reached and laid the tips of his fingers on the rubbery skin of the Obblob’s palm, at which the ultramonde blinked and sighed.

  “Please come with me,” Filidor said, simultaneously adding gestures that made his meaning clear. The Obblob obligingly followed the young man as he walked to the strong hut. Along the way he saw Toutis Jorn pounding on the storehouse door with fists that no longer seemed so large, but Filidor paid the man no heed until he had thrown the bolt on the prison and called the others out into the sunlight.

  They came gingerly at first. Orton Bregnat had a bump the size of a child’s fist on the side of his head and appeared a little dizzy, but Etch Valderoyn was unhurt. Celemet, Lak, Aury and Volpenge eased through the doorway in a manner that kept a maximum distance between them and the Obblob and stood staring at Filidor, as if new and startling wonders were to be expected at any moment.

  Then Bregnat stepped forward and embraced the young man, saying, “By Orm’s third ball, you’ve done it.”

  “We thought they had you pegged and wrapped, lad,” said Valderoyn, “and maybe us next for knowing how yon shemmie-lickers had done you down. As the saying goes, ‘Closed eyes, still tongue.’”

  Filidor was moved by the affection of Bregnat and Valderoyn, and oddly discomfited by the awe in which the other prisoners plainly held him. But he thought again of how that other Filidor would take it, and thanked the men in what he hoped was a modest tone for their concern. “But now we have a job to do,” he said.

  “Aye,” said Bregnat, and lightly punched a fist into a palm.

  Filidor took the Obblob’s hand and tugged gently, leading the ultramonde toward the storehouse, the others following behind. They found Toutis Jorn still on the wrong side of the door. At the sight of the Filidor’s big companion, the pirate’s knees seemed to lose interest in keeping their owner erect. He sank down and tipped over until his sloping forehead leaned against the storehouse wall, then he put his hands over his eyes. A little sound escaped his lips.

  Filidor ignored him. He knocked on the storehouse door and said, “Come out.”

  There was no answer from within, except the scraping of something heavy across the floor, a grunt of effort, and the thump of something solid against the inner side of the door.

  Filidor called again. “I admit it will not be good for you to come out, but I promise you it will be much worse if we have to come in.” It seemed the sort of thing a heroic Filidor might have said.

  Still there was no answer. “Imagine them peeping about in there like sleekits in a hold,” said Bregnat. “Let’s put the cat in.”

  By signs and gestures, Filidor conveyed to the Obblob that he would like the door open. The ultramonde stooped and seized and pushed, and the goal was obtained. Then the other prisoners jostled their way through the entry and shortly emerged with new versions of Gwallyn Henwaye and Tormay Flevvel, bruised and timorous versions that bore only a slight resemblance to the imperious brigands who had worked the captives on the wheel. Bregnat had acquired the pirate chief’s cudgel, and was using it to good account. The other former prisoners joined in and soon had all three of their erstwhile captors rolling and flinching on the rough ground under a rain of well placed kicks and buffets.

  “Enough,” said Filidor, after a while, but he had to say it a couple of more times before the men had satisfied their first taste for revenge. “Put them in the strong hut,” he said, “until we have mulled the possibilities.”

  When the thugs had been harried to their confinement, the men poked through the storehouse for their clothes, then gathered around Filidor again. He realized that they looked to him for leadership. That was a novel state of affairs; even among the coterie of lordly drones with whom he had passed many an idle evening, none would have singled out Filidor Vesh as the shiniest pebble on the beach. Again, he experienced an unfamiliar mix of emotion: he was gratified by their regard, but at the same time he felt that their trust had lowered a weight of responsibility onto shoulders unused to bearing more than his generally underemployed head.

 
Still, he thought to himself, if not I, then who? But confessed to himself that he would be glad of some help, and so said, “Bring me pilkies.”

  A bushel of the horrid tasting fish were found in the storeroom and brought out. The Archon’s apprentice sat down with his back against the storehouse wall and began to consume them. It was not long before he heard a voice in his head.

  Has our situation improved?

  “It has.” Filidor quickly brought the integrator up to date.

  Good thinking on the suits, it said, Now, tell this to the Obblob. There followed a string of syllables, which Filidor repeated to the ultramonde. The Obblob responded with a jutting of its chin and a rippling of its tubes. Then it turned and walked into the sea and was soon lost to view beneath the water.

  It will return with its fellow ecstatics to hear the new dispensation, the integrator said. Afterwards, we can depart for Olkney and your uncle’s workroom, there to free me from the confines of your inner ear and connect me to a more familiar source of power.

  “A sound plan,” said Filidor.

  Now I will conserve my resources, while you and your friends investigate the contents of the pirates’ trove.

  The pirates had wrung plenty from the sweat of their captives. A pile of precious goods was heaped in one corner of the storehouse: noble metals, costly gems, ancient manufactures that were old enough and rare enough to excite even the most blase archaicist or curio collector. But of more immediate interest to the freed men were the supplies of good food and drink on shelves along the wall. They gathered handfuls of containers and brought them outside for an impromptu feast. Filidor was most pleased to find a demi-cask of the purple Pwyfus that had first energized the voice in his head. He filled a cup of damascened gold with the stuff and a drank a solid draft, then asked the integrator if it felt any effects.