Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  He studied the crowd, which he was pleased to see was growing larger, and tried to decide which of its rearmost members appeared the most pugnacious. After consideration, he awarded that distinction to a short statured but sturdily built man who, he saw, twice used his shoulders to deter others from imposing their presence upon him. Filidor moved to a position at the rear of the pack of riffraff, which put him only two arms lengths from his target, and waited.

  Time went by, and the young man was relieved to see that his choice did not lose patience and go off to seek another diversion. Eventually, a thrumming was heard from the sky to the west, and heads turned to track the descent of a long, sleek volante with the Archonate crest on its door. Filidor ignored the vehicle, alternating his attention between the ill tempered spectator and town hall. As the hum of the air-car’s gravity obviators swelled, the door of the Osgood opened and Etch Valderoyn emerged, blinking and peering about, clad in prison pinks and with wrists manacled. His arms were firmly gripped by two strong men in pale blue uniforms.

  The gawkers’ attention shifted across the street, and Filidor moved. He quickly bedecked himself in the bobblobblobl, then forced his way into the crowd’s midst while their attention was fixed on the prisoner. Drawing back his fist at waist height, he slammed the best blow he could muster into the floating ribs of the truculent man, then adroitly stepped back.

  His target yelped in pain and turned to the man at his rear, a tall, round headed fellow, whose face bore a grimace of disgust occasioned by his having just smelled Filidor’s disguise at close range. The man Filidor had struck took the other’s expression for an indication of hostility, and as the Archon’s nephew expected, pursued no further inquiries. He dealt the tall man’s midriff an immense buffet which doubled the victim up and propelled him into the man on his far side, who pushed the gasping sufferer into another bystander. Filidor meanwhile, moved along the rear rank of the mob, shoving backs and kicking ankles, until the first fight had multiplied into a general brawl.

  The clear space through which Etch Valderoyn and his guards should have proceeded quickly from Osgood to Archonate bureau now filled with punching, kicking, swearing men. The constables first tried to keep a separation, and when that failed they sought to push a way through to their original destination. By the time they realized that effort was futile, it was too late to return to the door they had come out of.

  Still cloaked in Obblob invisibility, Filidor climbed onto the base of a lamp pole and regarded the mess he had created. One of the constables had gone down, and the other was clearly torn between helping his partner and keeping his hold on Valderoyn. Whistles were blowing, and reinforcements were trying to get into the street from the Osgood, but the outward opening door was blocked by the press of battlers.

  With no help able to reach him soon, the remaining constable chose duty over fraternity. Drawing his truncheon, he began to apply its energized end to the fighters around him, causing them to instantly stiffen then collapse, while he sought to drag his prisoner free of the mob. The officer soon cleared a path and emerged, gasping and with his shirt half torn off, into open space. At that point, Filidor stepped up beside him and pressed the man’s wrist so that his truncheon touched his own chest. The constable made a curious noise and folded up as if his larger bones had dematerialized. Filidor, meanwhile, had stretched the bobblobblobl and brought it back down again to cover both him and Etch Valderoyn.

  “We should go,” he said.

  Valderoyn showed presence of mind. “The keys,” he said, pointing with both bound hands to a pouch on the officer’s belt. Filidor stooped and found them. Rising, he looked up and saw through the gauziness of the Obblob cloak a face appear above the lip of the Archonate office roof, a rounded face with a large curl gummed to its forehead, a face that was unhappily regarding the riot below.

  “We’d better hurry,” said Filidor.

  The groundeater’s motors were idling as Filidor and Valderoyn, still enfolded in the bobblobblobl, climbed aboard and shut the door. The Florreys were waiting for them in the galley, and saw Filidor remove the Obblob cloak. The twins looked at each other with a shared thought.

  “That’s a useful piece to own,” said Ches.

  “By rights, it ought to be shared,” added Isbister.

  But Filidor put the reeking garment away in its pouch, and said, “It will not help us evade detection if this vehicle is stopped and searched. At close quarters, its stench draws attention.”

  The Florreys advised the young man not to worry. One of them went forward while the other brought out the make-up chest and broke it open on the table. Flastovic joined them from the forward part of the great vehicle, where he had been preparing for their departure. “Isbister will take us out,” he said, a prediction almost immediately validated by a lurch of the groundeater as it got under way. To Filidor, he said, “In your present disguise, you will pass for Ovile Germolian. It is an affectation of his performing style never to be seen unmasked. You,” -- he indicated Etch Valderoyn -- “will make an interesting Lepkin.”

  As Filidor watched, Flastovic and Ches stripped the manacles from the sailor’s wrists and the prison clothes from his body. They shaved the hair from his head and face, including his eyebrows, then applied luminous tattoos to his cheeks and forehead. Ches took the Osgood uniform and restraints to the costume storage lockers behind the folding stage, where they could be hidden in plain sight among similar odds and ends. He came back with a pair of vermilion shorts and the lime green leggings over which they were to be worn, a frogged yellow shirt and a long-tailed coat of ivory lace with a gaudy metallic panache on the left lapel. A tall, brimless hat with a rounded crown completed the ensemble. Flastovic then used prostheses to alter the shapes of Valderoyn’s teeth, the pitch of his nostrils and the pendency of his ears. For a finale, he grafted an extra thumb to each of the sailor’s hands and showed him how to engage the small motors they contained, so that they closed appropriately when the other digits made fists. Valderoyn now looked distinctly nonhuman.

  “You must contrive to appear bored to the edge of expiration,” the chief mummer said. “Lepkins require great stimulation before they are roused to take even the slightest notice of their surroundings.”

  “Why am I aboard your vehicle?” Valderoyn wanted to know. “In case the authorities ask.”

  “We will tell them we have been pondering the same mystery,” Flastovic replied, “but have been unable to attract your notice sufficiently to receive a reply.”

  “What if they ask me directly?” the sailor said.

  “Like any Lepkin, you will contemplate the shapes of clouds, or the alignment of your cuffs, until they grow tired of asking and go away.”

  “What if they persist?”

  “A Lepkin’s attention, once attracted, is not always a benefit. They will not persist.”

  They led Valderoyn to a seat by a window and bid him practice gazing serenely at nothing. Flastovic then produced a voice modulator for Filidor to wear under his garments. When the device was tested, he assured the Archon’s apprentice that it closely approximated Germolian’s diction. Filidor noticed no great difference, but was assured that such was normal.

  The precautions proved unnecessary. As the groundeater traveled the wide thoroughfare that led south to Thurloyn Vale, they encountered a roadblock on the outskirts of town. But the checkpoint was staffed by local constables, and their investigation was lackadaisical. A blue uniformed underbannerman came aboard, made a quick and perfunctory survey of the occupants, and waved them on without so much as a question.

  When the man came aboard, Filidor was on a side seat in the vehicle’s command section. As they got under way again, he said to Flastovic, “I would have expected Bassariot to have mobilized Archonate forces for this work.”

  The mummer scratched his chin, and considered a while. “Perhaps his reach still exceeds his grasp. I misrememb
er the actual history of Holmar Thurm’s exploits, but I have often performed Mbukwe’s play based on the events. Between his initial moves and the moment when he at last sits his rump on the Chair -- that is through most of the second act -- there is a hiatus of power. Thurm commands those fools who have wagered their futures on his success, and is opposed by loyal Carvrey and Thil, but the rank and file of the Archonate stand neutral until the struggle is resolved.”

  Filidor nodded. “That is why Bassariot came himself to collect Valderoyn. There cannot be many he can bid to go and come back, knowing that they will dutifully do his will once out of his sight.”

  He reasoned it further. Bassariot had thrown him from the ship, then hurried back to Olkney, surely intending to unseat the Archon and seize power. The fact that he had not -- he was, after all, only “acting Archon” -- argued that Filidor’s uncle had perhaps found a corner where Bassariot had expected a straightaway. It now struck Filidor that it was possible that Dezendah Vesh had foreseen what was to happen, and had arranged for Filidor to play a decoying gambit while the main action of the game happened on another level of the board. For all the high regard in which he held his uncle, the apprentice knew from uncomfortable experience that the Archon was quite capable of leaving him out in a perilous no man’s land while the dwarf carried forward some intricate scheme.

  But he dismissed the surmise. He could not believe that his uncle would have sent him off on another potentially deadly fool’s errand -- unless it was possible that the dwarf had known Filidor would be thrown from the Empyreal and had somehow set an Obblob to rescue him? Again, Filidor put speculation aside. It was at once encouraging and enraging to think that he was marching along a course already plotted by a wiser authority. He had heard of philosophies that held all life to be such a journey. But for him to proceed under such an assumption, if in fact it was unwarranted, would be unwise. He would assume he was in danger and act accordingly.

  He expressed this thought to Flastovic, who agreed. “Better alive and worried than carefree and dead,” the mummer quoted.

  Filidor went back to the lounge and found Gavne and Etch Valderoyn comparing techniques of knitting; like many sailors, the man was well versed in the skills of self-sufficiency. He rose when Filidor entered, and said, in a formal tone, “I thank you for rescuing me again.”

  Filidor made a depreciative gesture. “As with the first time, my motives were not entirely altruistic,” he said.

  “I judge by results,” said Valderoyn.

  Filidor sat beside Gavne. “I am sorry to have upset your daughter,” he said.

  Her placid face turned his way, though her fingers remained in motion with sticks and yarn. “She will not easily forgive you.”

  “But I was not the agent of her discomfort. Germolian took despicable advantage.”

  The woman moved her head in an expressive way. “Just so. But your discovery of the espolianth transformed her grand love affair into a sordid victimization. She still sees him partly haloed by the drug’s misty glow; you stand in a much starker light.”

  “That is unfair,” said Filidor.

  Gavne shrugged. “Things are as they are. If you quest after justice, young women are the wrong continent to explore. They run more to clemency or spite. In this instance, Germolian gets the one, and you get the other. Fairness does not come into it.”

  “Should I ask her pardon?” Filidor asked archly, but Gavne took the question on its merits.

  “I would leave her alone. She might not hesitate to do you a disservice.” Her eyes returned to the clicking rods between her fingers. Valderoyn asked her if she knew the four-and-roll stitch, and the conversation moved away from Filidor.

  ***

  The road south arrowed across a fruitful plain bordered by low wooded hills, passing through small farming towns and cozy villages whose inhabitants had crowned successful careers in the cities with retirement to bucolic peace. The highway was the main street in these communities, and the groundeater slowed as it passed through, so that Erslan Flastovic could employ a loudspeaker to invite all and sundry to the evening’s performance in Clutter, farther down the road.

  They reached that mid-sized town in late afternoon, and parked in fairgrounds south of the main settlement. Flastovic called them all to a meeting in the groundeater’s lounge. “We will give them three short comedies, then a good tragedy to send them home on. We’ll open with The Fish That Grew, followed by The Diligence of Marsill, and then The Bumpkins and the Flirt to take us to intermission. After that, we’ll do Death and Dismemberment, the long version. If they demand an encore, we’ll reprise the last scene of D and D. Nothing cheers the country crowds like a good old fashioned bloodbath.” He clapped his hands then rubbed them together. “Let’s to our rehearsal.”

  They unlimbered the stage and sorted props and costumes. The work soon left Filidor at loose ends, since his attempts to be of assistance had the effect of rendering simple, familiar tasks difficult and novel. Valderoyn offered to make the pre-performance meal, he having some professional experience in ship’s galleys. Flastovic said that help was welcome, but he must close the curtains so that none should look in and see a supposed Lepkin at domestic chores, which would be as uncommon a sight as the old planet had ever witnessed.

  The Archon’s nephew went outside, where a few adolescent residents of Clutter had perched themselves on the top rail of the fairground fence. Their clothing tended toward checks and stripes, the cuffs rolled up at wrist and ankle, and their taste in hair styles was extravagant by Filidor’s standards. They were offering each other commentaries and evaluations of the groundeater and its company which, within the circle of the young Clutterites, apparently passed for brilliant sarcasm. Filidor ignored them, using the free time to ponder his circumstances. He needed to contrive a strategy, but he could not construct a means until he had settled on an end. He did not know where to go, nor what to do when he got there.

  Again, he thought how much easier it would be if this were a tale or brave deeds and daring escapades, even one of The Bard Obscure’s dramas. At this point, something would occur to direct the hero toward his next action, and matters would proceed smoothly to the next episode. Of course, Filidor reminded himself, if this were a romance, the chances were not good that he would be its hero -- unless the story was less about derring-do than about derring-done-to.

  Filidor waited, but the only sign that appeared was one of the Florreys, come to tell him that supper was ready.

  Chapter 7

  Clutter was named for its founder, a philosophical visionary whose system of thought was based on the cultivation of a single root crop. This tuber, he averred, could meet all human nutritional needs, provided the humans maintained a sufficient clarity of perspective about the vegetable’s merits. The revered Clutter attracted a small number of disciples, some of whom did not have far to go to achieve the simplicity of mind required by their leader’s teachings. They came to this broad valley, planted plenty of the tubers and strove to put their beliefs into practice. Midway through their third winter, however, when they were most in need of the spiritual discipline that made it possible to face three meals of the same boiled root, day after day, a store of delicacies and rich viands was found under the floorboards of Clutter’s house. The community’s official history said that the prophet was promptly exiled, but rumors persisted that he was in fact roasted and eaten. In either case, the Clutterites forswore singularity of diet and their descendants now planted and reaped a full variety of crops.

  The fairgrounds were well filled by twilight, the Clutter folk gathering around the lighted marquee. Unlike their children, the adult Clutterites preferred to dress in bland solid colors, accented here and there by discreetly spotted trim. Men and women covered their heads from crown to nape in tight fitting caps, to which were attached emblems and symbols which expressed their wearers’ whims and idiosyncrasies.

 
Filidor, robed and masked as a disclamator, came upon the Florrey twins in the shadows at the side of the stage. The brothers were pointing out various members of the crowd and discussing their choices in low voices. They were debating whether the bump-and-tickle was the best approach to the wealth of a large man near the front of the crowd, or whether the drop-and-dip might be wiser.

  “Rearrange your priorities,” Filidor said. The voice modulator added a sepulchral tone, and the sudden admonition from the darkness caused the twins to jump. “I remind you,” Filidor continued, “that the consequences of official attention could well be extreme. My adversary may now have convinced himself that there is truly a conspiracy to thwart him. He may go to great pains to assure himself otherwise. The pains would not all be his.”

  “We plead the defense of necessity,” one of the Florreys said. “Our stipend is measly.”

  “Flastovic has an ungiving nature,” the other added. “We rely on these small perks for our rudimentary comforts.”

  “You would find short comfort in the removal of strips of your skin, or the introduction of ravenous insects to your tenderest regions, while Faubon Bassariot’s inquisitors vainly urge you to reveal knowledge that you do not command.”

  “Would they be so... inventive?” one of the twins asked, while the other shuddered.

  Filidor moved his hands in a gesture of indifference. “If one as moderate and mild as I can conjecture such horrid eventualities, the thought of what an experienced interrogator could devise opens whole new vistas.”

  The Florreys conceded the point. They went to prepare for their first roles.

  When the hills in the east were humps of purpled blackness and only a faint glow of chartreuse limned the ridges to the west, Erslan Flastovic appeared on stage in his impresario’s regalia. He rang the gong and welcomed the audience. While he described the performances the troupe would offer, Gavne and Chloe moved through the crowd, presenting the traditional felt cloche and urging the spectators to be liberal in filling it.