Template: A Novel of the Archonate

by Matthew Hughes

  “They would say the same about the thrust for riches on Thrais. And be disgusted by the flaunting of wealth and dominance.”

  Conn looked out at the drab sprawl that was Trintrinobolis and thought there were worse ways of life than the innocent pursuit of money. After a moment, Jenore interrupted his musings.

  “Have you identified the fundamental sin of Bashaw?”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “Envy.”

  Flagit Holdings was listed on the barebones directory of a bland two-story edifice in the business district. It occupied a single room down a corridor on the first floor. At the simply varnished door with small painted lettering that listed three other firms, Jenore reached for the opener. Conn stopped her.

  “Wait,” he said. He took a coin-sized object from his belt pouch and concealed it in his palm. “All right.” He motioned her to open the door.

  The occupant of the room was a pale-eyed man with thinning hair and a curved spine. He looked up from a ledger on a counter that ran most of the way across the office, then immediately closed the book and placed it on a shelf below the counter. The single word he spoke was “Yes?” but the tone of his voice and the set of his face said the opposite.

  Conn stepped to the counter and leaned his elbows on it. “I have a message for the principals of Flagit Holdings, whoever they might be,” he said.

  He saw no alarm cross the clerk’s eyes, only wary calculation. “We are their agents. What is the message?”

  “Chask Daitoo is dead.” Conn was watching the man carefully. The information brought no reaction.

  “Also, the indenture contract of Conn Labro has been paid out and voided.”

  Again, no agitation showed in the man’s expression, only puzzlement. “Who is Conn Labro?”

  “I am.”

  “Are you sure you have the right office?”

  Conn reached into his pouch and withdrew the bearer deed. He let the figured bead rest in his palm and showed it to the man behind the counter. “One last thing,” he said, “I am taking this to the registry on Old Earth.”

  This time there was a response, though quickly suppressed. “I know nothing of this. You have the wrong business.”

  “That is quite possible,” Conn said. “The whole affair has been fraught with mystery and misdirection. Still, we will sort things out conclusively on Old Earth.”

  The pale eyes flicked to the bead and again Conn saw that he had struck something in the clerk that vibrated. he made a breezy farewell and led Jenore from the room.

  When the door was closed behind them they went down the hall a short distance. Jenore made to speak but Conn signaled her to silence. He waited most of a minute then marched back to Flagit Holdings, opened the door and stepped into the room and up to the counter.

  “I thought I heard you call,” he said.

  The curved man was speaking into a communicator. He broke off and said, “I did not.”

  “No matter,” said Conn. His hand slid along the counter’s edge then he departed.

  “Did you hear him say anything useful?” Jenore asked as they strode down the corridor.

  “No,” said Conn. Then he produced the clingfast, a small listening and recording device of Hilfdan Klepht’s that he had placed and recovered from beneath the counter’s lip. “But I’ll wager this did.”

  They reentered the aircar and flew toward the hotel. When they were secure in Conn’s room, he sat on the hard and narrow bed and activated the clingfast’s playback. They heard the sound of a communicator being activated then the light-eyed man’s voice, shaking with agitation, spoke to an unknown listener.

  “An off-worlder was here,” he said. “He called himself Conn Labro.” There was a silence while whoever was on the other end of the communicator reacted.

  “I don’t know,” said the clerk. “He said something about a man named Daitoo being dead, then he showed me a bearer deed. I think it was the one.”

  Another silence, then the man said, “He said he is on his way to the registry on Old Earth.”

  There was the sound of the door opening and Conn’s voice said, “I thought I heard you call.” He shut off the playback.

  “There is nothing here to take to Subinspector Smit,” Conn said, “no apparent connection to the killings on Thrais or the attempt on my life.”

  Jenore was staring at him. “But the bearer deed meant something to him. And now you have told whoever wants it where you are and where you are going.”

  “Yes.”

  “If whoever wants the deed also wants to kill you,” she said, “you have just told them where to set the ambush.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Now all I have to do is survive it.”

  Very few residents of The Spray traveled to Old Earth. It was off the main routes, exported almost nothing and took in only a few antiquarians and even fewer voyagers in search of diversion. It was thought a fusty, insular, timeworn place with little to offer the discerning.

  The planet’s main space terminal, therefore, was a small and ill-attended facility on an island in Mornedy Sound, connected by boat, air and an undersea tunnel to the great city of Olkney. The tunnel had never achieved popularity and carried only self-directed freight vehicles.

  The Grayling discharged its few remaining passengers at a single-story terminus whose only visible staff was a cargo handler directing an articulated crane. No one paid any attention to the handful of people and one feathered ultraterrene who descended the ramp from the ship’s smallest portal. Bashaw had been the end of the line for most of those who had been aboard when Conn and Jenore boarded at Holycow. Only two had boarded at Bashaw: the ultraterrene and a Bashavian in gray worsted who hurried ahead of the others to commandeer the only vehicle for hire. The aircar went aloft and disappeared over the sea toward the mountains of the mainland, their dark peaks distant on the horizon.

  “If someone was sending a message to prepare an ambush,” Jenore said, “That man is carrying it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why not stop him and learn what he knows?”

  “He probably knows no more than an address where he can leave his message or where to find some minor player who will take the news from there. Besides, it is not illegal to carry messages from one world to another.”

  Conn took a look around. The day had advanced well into the afternoon. The tired orange sun was sliding down the sky and causing shadows to lengthen. The sea was more gray than green, with flecks of white when the breeze stirred. He decided that the tales of Old Earth’s blue waters must be misinformation. But the smell was interesting, like a too salty soup left to go sour in the pan.

  Jenore said, “Beyond the terminus is a dock where water taxis are usually available. We can hire one to take us to the city, or call for an aircar.”

  “I have never been on the sea,” Conn said, “except in simulations.”

  “I grew up with one foot in the water, as we say in Shorraff.”

  “Let us find a boat, then. It will be a new experience for me and a welcome home for you.”

  They went into the terminus. It was empty save for a machine polishing a corner of the waiting area. Conn had the impression that the device was malfunctioning: the corner was polished to a high gloss while the rest of the floor was dull and streaked with grime.

  There were no formalities nor anyone to perform them. Beyond the terminus, a railed wooden walkway led out to a wharf where small boats were tied up. Jenore looked down into each craft while their owners affected airs of pleasant invitation or reserved disinterest as their natures moved them. She rejected one after another, finally giving a grudging nod to a yellow and red runabout with two hulls and a raked superstructure.

  “The owner at least knows how to stow a line and polish the brightwork,” she said. “He is therefore less likely than the others to overturn and drown us if the wind braces up.”

  The person referred to, a bald and grizzled man in a one-piece suit that had recently been cle
aned without removing a spatter of grease stains, spat over the side and activated the motor. A moment later the lines were cast off and they were skating over the slight chop toward Olkney.

  “Seen a boat before, have you?” said the boatman. He stared straight ahead but let the wind of their passage carry his words over his shoulder to the pair in the stern seats.

  “I am of Shorraff.”

  This brought a nod and a silence, then, “Been away long?”

  “Years.”

  The information brought a grunt and an even longer silence.

  “You’ll find there have been changes.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  This time the boatman turned to look at her. One eye squinted as the breeze caught its corner. “Some say good. Some say not.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  But his only answer was, “Best you see for yourself.”

  The water taxi let them off at a public wharf on the southern edge of the Olkney Peninsula. It was a district given over to docks, warehouses, chandlers and that breed of enterprises – the same on every sea-bearing world, Jenore said – that cater to sailors. It was not a place to attract aircars, but they soon found a three-wheeled motilator that was for hire.

  “The Registry for Off-world Properties,” Conn told the vehicle when they were seated in its compartment.

  “No,” said Jenore, “the Archonate Bureau of Scrutiny.”

  “Which of you is paying?” the taxi asked.

  “I am,” said Conn.

  “Off-world property registry it is,” was the response. Wheels hummed and they rolled forward.

  “The scroots will not take it well if you engage in combat with whoever might be waiting for you at the registry,” Jenore said.

  “I am not planning any combat.”

  “But you are not ruling it out.”

  “True.”

  “If you hurt or kill anybody, the Bureau will charge you with an offense.”

  “Even though I act in self-defense?”

  “That will be taken into consideration, but so will the degree of force you use versus that which is used against you, and whether or not you could have avoided confrontation altogether.”

  “If my blood is shed or my bones broken,” Conn protested, “how is it anyone’s business but my own?”

  Jenore explained that the Bureau’s role was to preserve the Archon’s peace. All who disturbed it were taken up without regard for rank or role. Assessing the degree of individual guilt was a matter for another branch, the Bureau of Judiciars and Intercessors.

  Conn signaled dissatisfaction with the concept. “I am an off-worlder fearing attack from other off-worlders over the ownership of an off-world property. How can I be assured that these ‘scroots’ will act in my best interests?”

  “It is their duty.”

  “But who is their client, if they arrest everyone?”

  “Their client is the public good.”

  “There is no such thing as ‘the public good,’“ Conn said. “All goods are private.”

  “The Bureau of Scrutiny has a different perspective. They also have the means to enforce it,” Jenore said.

  “She is correct,” commented the vehicle. “All arguments with the scroots conclude with the click of a holdtight.”

  “Besides,” Jenore said, “you agreed to deliver the message from Chief Constable Soof regarding Willifree.”

  They changed course and proceeded to the central headquarters of the Bureau of Scrutiny. It was in a district heavily favored by offices of several Archonate bureaus, all nestled against the lowest slopes of the Devenish Range whose black crags were Olkney’s northern skyline, topped by the sprawling palace of the Archon himself.

  Conn handed over Soof’s message and told his story to a succession of green-on-black uniformed officers of ascending rank. Each telling was preceded by a period of waiting in a colorless anteroom on chairs not designed for comfort. The fourth iteration was to a hard-eyed woman of indeterminate age whose wide desk bore a plaque identifying her as Directing Agent Odell. No first name was specified and Conn wondered if that was because no one had ever had the temerity to ask what it might be.

  The document conferring FRP auxiliary status on Conn had been proffered and returned, while Soof’s missive regarding Granfer Willifree had been examined – for the fourth time – but this time retained. The woman consulted the Bureau’s main integrator from her desk and entered the aristocrat’s particulars.

  “I do not have a positive identity for him,” she said after perusing the data.

  “The murdered woman’s brother thought he might be an adherent of some cult called the Immersion,” Conn said.

  “Of Blue-Green Exemplar or Yellow Cynosure rank,” Jenore added.

  Odell asked them to describe in more detail the types and arrangements of Willifree’s facial adornments. She referred the description to the integrator. When she had received its analysis she said, “His name is false, that of a character from a childhood fable.”

  She consulted the data again. “His arrangement of gems is now well out of fashion, suggesting that he has been off Old Earth for some time. We will pass the description to the major shipping lines so their security officers can watch for him, but if he travels by irregular vessels, or indeed if he simply stays put, the chances of finding him decrease daily. They do not call the planets of The Spray the Ten Thousand Worlds for nothing.”

  She then asked to hear about the other matter. Conn began to explain about the encrypted bearer deed.

  “May I see it?” Odell said.

  He handed it over. She scrutinized it with no great show of interest then pressed a stud on her desktop. A thin beam of purplish energy played across the bead. Odell looked at a readout on a screen Conn could not quite see. “It is seriously encrypted,” she said.

  “Can you decipher it?”

  “Perhaps, but that is not my proper function. The Registry will do that for you tomorrow.”

  Conn recovered the bead and continued with his explanation of how he had come to possess it. Midway through the tale Odell raised a hand and said, “Is there a connection between any of this and Willifree?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Conn.

  She looked at her timepiece. “Then you are wasting Bureau time. What do you require of us?”

  “My companion recommended that I let you know that we propose to visit the Registry to discover what property the bearer deed pertains to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone might try to take it from me.”

  Odell steepled her hands. “Because it may have been the cause of three murders on Thrais?”

  “And an attempt on my life,” Conn said.

  “But you have no evidence to connect the bearer deed to these crimes?”

  “The authorities on Thrais and Bashaw thought that a connection was probable.”

  The expression that passed over Directing Agent Odell’s face might have been read in a number of ways, none of them complimentary to the police agencies of worlds she had scarcely heard of. “Are you requesting a protective escort?”

  “I have no need of protection.”

  The wave of her hand was airy to the point of insouciance. “Then what?”

  Conn took a deep breath. Although his training had made him capable of exercising great patience, he saw no reason to do so in this circumstance. But as he opened his mouth to offer the scroot the candid opinion that he was forming concerning her and her entire organization, Jenore cut in. “We thought it wise to advise you of the situation in case there are any difficulties when we visit the Registry,” she said.

  “Difficulties?”

  “Breaches of the peace.”

  “I counsel you not to commit any,” said Odell. “The Bureau does not endorse frontier-style brawling by wild-haired off-worlders. This is Olkney.”

  Conn said, “We are aware of our location.” He rose and added, “Now we will seek another.�
��

  “The Registry will be closed by now,” the agent said and for the first time since he had entered her office Conn saw something escape the control that Odell exercised over the microexpressions of her face: a flicker of satisfaction.

  He said nothing as he and Jenore rode the descender to the lobby and went out into a street bustling with homeward-bound functionaries, some uniformed, some not. Their motilator had moved on, but Jenore displayed an ability to produce a piercing whistle which, along with a raised hand, brought a cruising aircar to the curb.

  She gave the vehicle the name of a modest hotel on the edge of the Shambles district and it bore them aloft. Conn was interested to observe the city from a height; it was larger than Bay City and showed much more variety in its zones and architecture. One district seemed to be actually in ruins, another was all greenery and small lakes, while the structures ranged from tenements down by the river through every class of housing up to manses surrounded by formal gardens.

  He wondered if Hallis Tharp had come from somewhere down there. The old man had spoken often of Old Earth and had even mentioned Olkney once or twice, he recalled. Then Jenore spoke.

  “Are you angry? You looked ready to remove that woman’s hide with your tongue.”

  He turned to her. “I do not permit myself anger, but I did begin to feel annoyed,” he said. “Until I saw what she was doing. To her credit, she played me quite well, indeed well enough that it was only at the end that I realized I had been played.”

  “Played you how?”

  “She kept us there until it was too late to go to the registry today.”

  He saw comprehension in her face. “So they will have time to investigate us and perhaps set up a surveillance on the place.”

  “That seems likely.”

  “So we need not worry about tomorrow.”

  “I was not worried,” he said. “I have a good understanding of my own capabilities.”

  The Brzankh Hotel was at an intersection called Five Points just outside the Shambles. It was comfortable but small, its humble exterior embellished with stubby towers and ornamental cornices. On Thrais its obvious charm would not have saved it from being torn down and replaced with a vaster, more assertive edifice that would have trumpeted its identity through flashing, illuminated signs and uniformed personnel urging passersby to take a round at the gaming tables.