Template: A Novel of the Archonate

by Matthew Hughes

  “Perhaps gain is not the motive,” Jenore said.

  “What else is there?” Conn said. “There is neither rank nor trophy to be won.”

  “See where he looks.”

  Conn observed and saw the aristocrat’s eyes flick from time to time to the worried young woman who sat behind the seminarian. Beneath the contrived stillness of the lord’s face he discerned a sharp appetite. “He desires the woman,” he said, “though I see a complex of urges, some of which I cannot name.”

  “You must help the young couple,” Jenore said.

  Conn was surprised. “Why?”

  Her whisper was fierce. “Because you can!”

  “Once again you make no sense.”

  She placed her fingertips to her brow. Again he saw exasperation underlaid by a sincere intent to assist him.

  “Listen,” she said, “will you accept that the universe is more complicated and varied than your experience on one world might have equipped you to appreciate?”

  He began to think about it but she broke in upon his chain of reasoning as if there was an urgency to the question. “Your preconceptions have already been challenged by the behavior of Lord Cheat’Em, have they not?”

  He admitted as much.

  “Then I want you to trust me – you do trust me, don’t you?”

  “I am sure that you mean me no harm,” he said, “although some of your attitudes frankly puzzle me.”

  She blew out a long breath. “Just for now,” she said, “I ask you to assume that my ‘attitudes’ stem from a wider experience of humankind than you have been able to acquire in Ovam Horder’s sporting house.”

  “That is a rational assumption.”

  “And I want you to believe me when I say that it will be good if you intervene in that game to prevent the dissolute lord from doing what he wishes to do with the young woman.”

  Conn wanted to ask her what she meant by “good” in this instance, and how it related to his interests, but the expression on her face told him that she had nearly exhausted her capacity to continue the discussion. Still, he could not see how doing what she asked would bring him to harm. “I will trust you,” he said.

  He was welcomed into the game. “Fresh meat!” cried the Hauserian with a jocular twist of his lips that was not entirely echoed by his eyes. The others responded as their nature’s dictated while Conn touched his fingers to the receptor at the center of the table, causing it to disgorge a substantial wealth of playing counters and charge the cost to his account.

  He had already unconsciously analyzed the play before sitting down. He could estimate within quite close tolerances how each player would react to the evolution of the rounds and could confirm his evaluations by reading the tells and give-aways displayed by the autonomic movements of lips, brows, pupils and sweat glands.

  To have simply played to win the maximum from each player would have offered no real challenge. Thrash was a moderately complex game, but the players were not expert – except for the Old Earther. Now that Conn examined him competitively, he became aware that the aristocrat was able to exercise much greater control over the unconscious motions of his face than any amateur. He concluded that the man was a professional gambler. He also saw the means by which he hid his plans and responses: the locations of his embedded facial jewels corresponded with neuronic trigger points; frequent touches by the lord’s beringed fingers inhibited the nerves beneath and gave his expression a preternatural stillness.

  But the man’s eyes gave him away: his pupils swelled whenever he looked at the young woman seated behind the Divorgian. Conn could not fathom what motivated the gambler’s appetite; she was plain and graceless and would prove at best an unenthusiastic partner for whatever the aristocrat had in view. It occurred to him that Jenore Mordene was right: her wider experience allowed her to view human behavior through windows that were opaque to his eyes.

  He settled into the rhythm of the game, won the deal a couple of times then sent it back to the aristocrat. He made the game more interesting by setting himself the task of not only frustrating the Old Earther’s attempts to ruin the young man but of determining how each of the players would fare.

  He used his own funds and the Hauserian’s to keep the Argyllians within their comfort zone, while feeding the seminarian small to moderate gains that rebuilt the stake the aristocrat’s fraudulent play had stolen. Then he arranged for the pastoralist to win a substantial pot, which encouraged him to overbet the next few rounds. Within a few minutes the young Divorgian, who displayed no real aptitude for the game, possessed twice the amount he had brought to the table.

  Now the plain woman leaned forward, a deep vertical line engraved between her eyebrows, and spoke quietly but forcefully to the young man. Reluctantly – it was all there to be seen in the downturn of his mouth and the stiffness of his shoulders – the seminarian rose from the table, swept the counters into his purse and allowed his companion to lead him from the room.

  The aristocrat’s eyes followed them out, then flicked back to meet Conn’s level gaze. There was a stillness around the table for a moment, broken only when the tree-like gills that branched from the Stig’s prehensile neck expanded and lightly fanned the air.

  “You have a remarkable facility for the game,” said the Old Earther.

  “As do you,” said Conn.

  “The game noticeably changed direction when you joined us.”

  “Yes. For the better.”

  The Hauserian herdsman interrupted to let them know his point of view, which likened the ups and downs of thrash to the progress of some animal called a chukkichukki across an open prairie, although with “more jinks and jukes than you could throw a spangbrake at.” Neither Conn nor the aristocrat responded nor took their eyes from each other.

  “Indeed,” said the Old Earther, “your abilities test the conventions of reasonable odds and permutations. One might say you stretch them to the brink of snapping.”

  Conn’s voice was even. “Have you a more pointed suggestion to offer?”

  The lord’s face remained frozen but there was a hard glitter in his eyes. “I may. Where are you from?”

  “I am of Thrais,” said Conn.

  Now a faint smile ghosted across the aristocrat’s lips. “I am told that Thraisians sometimes settle disputes by direct confrontation.”

  “You are told correctly.”

  “I am sure you are aware that I am of Old Earth.”

  “So I have been told,” said Conn. “I am not versed in the customs of every obscure world, but I have engaged with a few combatants from your end of The Spray.”

  The Stig’s brachial gills had turned a darker pink and were rippling like fingers massaging the air.

  The lord said, “I am called Willifree. My rank is Margrave-minor. I will forgo naming my ancestors since they will mean nothing to you. I have encountered nineteen opponents and defeated seventeen. Two contests ended in draws, but I was young.”

  Conn was familiar with the style of the challenge – it was common up and down The Spray wherever dueling was permissible – and responded in kind. “I am named Conn Labro,” he said. “My rank is now indeterminate, my ancestors unknown to me. Since attaining manhood I have met and defeated one hundred and eighteen opponents in various modes of combat. I have drawn once. If you have something more to say to me, speak on.”

  That completed the phase known as the Declarations. Several steps should now ensue: the Particulars of Offense, the Rejection of Mediation, the Challenge Ordinary or the Challenge Exceptional, the Concord on Means and Circumstances and the Agreement on Proceeds. Conn waited.

  But Willifree abruptly declined to continue. Conn saw calculation and some indefinable emotion in his eyes before the aristocrat looked away. He would have recognized fear had he seen it, and knew that he had not. Indeed, the man had the look of an accomplished swordster; he might even command that indefinable quality called rif that distinguished the gifted duelist from those who were merely mas
ters of technique.

  The silence lengthened then the Old Earther said, in tones of distaste, “You are not of rank. To engage with you would demean my ancestors.”

  “A pity,” said Conn. “However, I am on my way to Old Earth on a matter of business. I understand titles may be purchased there. Perhaps we will run into each other again and I could offer you satisfaction.”

  “It is doubtful our circles will ever coincide,” said Willifree. He appeared to wish to say something more, but changed his mind. He scooped his winnings from the table, rose to his feet and assumed a precise posture. Then he turned and left the room.

  Four players not being enough to sustain play, the game broke up with the Hauserian urging all to regather for a subsequent match. “You just bring ‘em on, flat, flipped or flying high. I’ll be there with boots, buckles and busters,” he said, in what Conn assumed was a reference to techniques and equipment used to herd the domesticated fauna of Hauser’s vast plains.

  Conn crossed the room to where Jenore had stood watching. She leaned in close, touched his hand with hers and stood on tiptoe to place a light kiss on his cheek. He was surprised by the softness of her lips.

  “That was a good thing,” she said, linking her arm in his and leading him from the room, “and necessary.”

  He understood neither observation but he did not extricate his arm from hers. They went to the ship’s middle-priced dining room and took a light meal.

  The Dan’s upper forward lounge offered comfortable seating in a variety of arrangements. Single seats catered to those who preferred solitary contemplation, while groups of chairs and sofas attracted those who enjoyed social discourse.

  When Conn and Jenore entered they saw the two soberly dressed Divorgians clustered with the Hauserian pastoralist. Jenore drew him toward them. All offered appropriate gestures and sentiments, followed by introductions.

  Ren Farbuck controlled several immense land leases around Sixty Mile Station on Hauser where he ran vast herds of a native species that had long ago been modified to conform to human digestive processes. The Divorgians were Moat and Clariq Wallader, brother and sister as well as graduate students of the Bodoglio Academy at large for a year of field study.

  Conn would have asked what field they were studying but their entrance had interrupted Farbuck’s recounting of an incident concerning an uncooperative employee. Out on the endless plains, there was no Arbitration to settle disputes, Conn gathered; contentious matters were resolved directly between the disputants.

  “We came to a point,” said the pastoralist, “at which he compared my appearance to the south end of a northbound squajja. There was then no recourse but to the hassenge.”

  At Moat Wallader’s urging, Farbuck described the practice. The two disputants stood face to face at close range. Each held in his right hand a pokkai, a blunt, short-bladed knife, the point of which he set against the opponent’s upper chest. The left hand was placed behind the back and the contest began.

  “You lock eyes and lean your weight against the other man’s blade, starting easily but gradually increasing the pressure as you incline yourself further. Your pokkai presses against his flesh, his against yours. Growls leak out from behind clenched teeth. The pain is glorious. He loses who is first to cry, ‘Hold!’ or to bring the left hand around to relieve the pressure. Indeed, to move the left hand at all is tantamount to surrender.”

  “Do you play to first blood?” Conn asked. He was trying to understand the strategy behind the contest but if there was one it escaped his analysis.

  “Children play to first blood,” Farbuck said, “and sometimes women if the disputants are friends. No man would give in before the pokkai is well seated. Among experienced hassengions, complete transfixion is not uncommon, and he whose back is pierced first is accorded the victory.”

  “You allow your opponent to push a dull knife right through your upper body?” Conn asked.

  For answer, the Hauserian removed his upper garment, a smock of softened and sun-bleached hide, and turned to show three scars in the upper left quadrant of his back. The corresponding area on the front of his body was criss-crossed with scars, most white with age, one still freshly purple.

  “I do not understand,” Conn said. “What do you gain from the experience?”

  Farbuck’s eyes flashed. “Honor.”

  “Yes,” said Conn, “you outrank the loser. But what is the tangible gain?”

  The Hauserian’s face hardened. Conn read anger there.

  Clariq Wallader intervened. “He means no offense,” she said. “He is of Thrais, where life is understood to be founded entirely upon economic transactions. The Thraisian concept of society is indistinguishable from a marketplace.” She turned to Conn. “That is so, is it not?”

  “I am of Thrais,” Conn said. “And of course life is a matter of economics. What else would it be?”

  The Divorgian woman smiled indulgently. “There are other models,” she said. “As students of the Bodoglio Academy, my brother and I study the range of concepts underlying the disparate human civilizations along The Spray. We have just spent a few days confirming Raul Hoysin’s research on the Thraisian polity. Are you familiar with his works?”

  “I am not,” said Conn.

  “No matter. A fish does not need to know about water in order to swim in it,” she said. “Although when the fish leaves the sea, an understanding of air does become advisable.”

  There was something about her tone that irked Conn. He wondered if he were being belittled. Yet when he inspected her features he saw only disinterest.

  “I am not a fish and I have never cared for argument by metaphor,” said Conn. “To argue that one thing is similar to another is to focus exclusively on the similarity at the expense of the dissimilarities. The former may be trivial and the latter profound.”

  Jenore Mordene put her hand on Conn’s arm. “She meant no offense,” she said.

  “I am not offended,” he said though even as he said it he wondered if it were true. But no, he could not be offended if he chose not to take offense and now he deliberately made that choice. Evidently, off-worlders could build their lives around strange concepts. If he was to function amongst them, he must endeavor at least to be aware of the illusory landmarks that were plain to them though invisible to him. “Please say on,” he told the Divorgian. “You mentioned other ‘models?’“

  She assumed a momentary air of introspection then said, “There are many different ways of being a human being among other like-minded human beings. Societies begin with people banding together in common efforts to solve the most basic problems of life: food, shelter, security. When those needs become routinely provided for, a new priority emerges. Once their bellies are regularly full, their bodies warm and dry, and their lives, limbs and liberties unthreatened, human beings discover a need for a sense of consequence to their existence. The inevitable question arises: what is the meaning of all this doing and saying and being? Equally inevitable is that the answer takes the form of an idea around which they structure their individual and collective lives.”

  Now Moat Wallader entered the conversation. “My sister and I are preparing a monograph that argues that every society is fundamentally organized around one or another of the cardinal sins.”

  Conn’s was not the only puzzled face among the listeners. “I mean,” said the Divorgian, “that every culture, whatever ideals it professes, is in practice built around one of the seven mortal iniquities identified in ancient times: pride, envy, and so on.”

  Clariq chimed in again. On Hauser, society was based on the sin of pride, she explained. Ren Farbuck and his adversary endured severe pain and a certain degree of fear – after all, the hassenge is occasionally fatal, usually from blood loss or septicemia – for no other reason than that all who knew them, including themselves, would have held them in disesteem if they had quailed.

  “Mud on the name, earth on the grave,” Farbuck aphorized. “How can it be a sin for
a man to defend his honor?”

  Conn ignored the comment. “But neither of them gained anything from the transaction,” he said. “Nor lost.”

  The Hauserian shook his head and muttered something Conn did not hear because Clariq was saying, “They did not view the event as a transaction.”

  “Yet it must have been a transaction,” Conn insisted. “All human interactions are.”

  “They are to those who are disposed to see them as such,” the Divorgian woman said, “but not to those who wish to see them as something else.”

  “A thing is what it is,” said Conn.

  “No,” said Clariq, “some things are what everyone says they are. Answer me this: on Thrais, if someone were to publish a libel about Conn Labro, what recourse would you have?”

  Conn answered immediately. “A suit before the Arbitration. It would adjudicate on the basis of the facts, including the intent of the libeler. He would be required to pay me damages, and if he could not pay from his assets he would pay with his indentured body.”

  Clariq looked over at the Hauserian. “How does that strike you?” she said.

  “I will risk a blunt reply: it is disgusting!” said Ren Farbuck. “How can the value of a man’s name be assessed in currency? What would you sell your children for, I wonder?”

  “I have no children.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  “As an infant, I was sold anonymously to my indentor, Ovam Horder,” Conn said. “My value depended to some extent on my potential, determined by reliable tests, as well as on Horder’s interest in acquiring me. Had I been an unhealthy child I would have had almost no value at all, other than the worth of my essential attributes.”

  The Hauserian’s ruddy complexion had paled. “Parents actually sell their children on Thrais?”

  “I assume it was my parents who sold me, since no one ever came looking for me. It is not commonly done, but it is not completely uncommon.”

  Farbuck stood. “I will leave,” he said, “before I am compelled to say something that would inevitably lead to the hassenge.”