Template: A Novel of the Archonate

by Matthew Hughes

  “Chabriz always stayed here when he was in Olkney,” Jenore said. “The rates are reasonable and the guests are left undisturbed unless they inflict themselves upon the general peace.”

  After depositing their baggage in adjoining rooms on the third floor and refreshing themselves, they descended to the refectory and took an evening meal that Jenore said was typical of the season.

  Conn found the food too mild to be interesting.

  “Thraisian food is an assault upon the senses,” Jenore said, “chilis that evacuate the sinuses and sauces that quell the palate with sheer violence. Here, the mix of textures and flavors is subtle and their enjoyment is an acquired art.”

  “I doubt I shall be here long enough to acquire it,” Conn said.

  “Where will you go, once you have solved your mystery?”

  It was a question that had been circling in the back of Conn’s mind, like a predatory bird seen high and at a distance. He had preferred to keep it there, but he knew that soon he must let it swoop and seize his attention.

  “I do not know,” he said. “I have tried traveling. It does not seem rewarding.”

  She made a dismissive noise. “You have seen only a couple of orbiting stations and Bashaw, The Spray’s dullest corner. There are worlds scattered like seeds from here to the Back of Beyond, each one unique. Some are still rough frontier, some are well worn and cosmopolitan. In its own way, Old Earth is one of the most fascinating, replete with cultures that have been polishing themselves since the dawn time.”

  “And yet you left it.”

  “I was young and half-dreaming.”

  “So now you will return to Shorraff and find your true place?”

  “If it will have me.”

  Conn said, “The boatman spoke of changes.”

  A pensive look came over Jenore. “If it had been frozen since I left it, like the magic land in the children’s tale,” she said, “it would still be different to me, because I have changed. That is the point of going and coming back.”

  “So Bay City will be transformed when I return?”

  “Only if you have been. But do you truly intend to return to Thrais?”

  Conn had not really thought about it. “I was at ease there,” he said.

  “But your place is gone. Surely you would not indenture yourself to another Horder?”

  “No. I played all possible combinations of that game. Now it has no appeal.”

  The server brought them spicy punge and a tray of pastries. Jenore chose one. “You might be at ease somewhere else, once you found it.”

  Conn selected a flaked shell that surrounded pureed chestnuts. He let it dissolve then said, “I might never find it. I am, as you continue to remind me, unusual.”

  She formed her mouth into an expression that at least hinted at apology. “Yet you are not a monster. I’m sure there is a place that would receive you as comfortably as a well tailored glove takes to its hand.”

  “That would be some glove,” Conn said, selecting a fruit tart.

  Later, a mummers troupe took over a small elevated stage at one end of the refectory and announced that they would perform selections from their repertoire. The first was the ancient tale of Fenoak, the statue brought to a kind of life by its sculptor’s desire. The mummers presented the tragic version, in which Fenoak is unable to achieve full personhood and throws himself from the top of a tower, shattering himself into a myriad shards.

  Conn did not remain to see the end. “They are persons pretending to be characters who never even existed,” he said, when Jenore suggested that he stay. “What is the point of it?”

  “They elucidate truths.”

  “What have lies to do with truth?” he said and would not stay to hear her answer.

  The off-world property registry was in a narrow building of stone and dark wooden beams, between a fishmonger’s and a depot for the recycling of used technology on Thrip Street. It was some distance from the hotel but they elected to walk, Conn wishing to be well warmed in case of trouble.

  When they turned the corner onto Thrip from Wanless Way Conn scanned the street as if he were entering a scenario from one of Horder’s seek-and-strike games. No vehicles moved on or above the pavement, although halfway down the block a velocitator was parked at the curb, its service hatch open and its operator bent over the components. On a porch across from the registry, another man was carefully polishing the lamp above the door. As Conn watched, he removed the lumen, inspected it at length, then replaced it in the holder.

  An elderly woman was making a slow progress along the pedestrian way on Conn’s side of the street, following the meanderings of a diminutive puff of feathery fur that demonstrated a close interest in whatever odors had been left on the bases of railings and signposts. At the mouth of an alley a heap of rags moved, revealing itself to be a dissolute man curled around a container of drink.

  “Hmm,” said Conn. Without pausing, he made his way to the registry. Jenore followed more tentatively.

  “Any of these might be an assassin,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Conn said, “but not all of them. Therefore they are all police.”

  “How can you be sure of that ‘all?’“

  “Because any loiterer who was not of the police would already have been identified and arrested.”

  They had reached the steps of the registry. Conn took another look up and down the street and saw nothing to alarm him. He did notice, however, that the animal on a leash was actually a camouflaged surveillance instrument clad in fake fur and held by its operator, who was female but not actually aged, on a length of stiff wire.

  Behind the registry’s front door they found a bare office containing one battered and untenanted desk and a man in nondescript garb who was studying a yellowed notice affixed to an announcements board on wall. The sheet of paper bore no more than twenty words in large type, but the man was studying it as if committing the text to permanent memory. He studiously ignored the entrance of Conn and Jenore.

  Conn advanced to the desk and read what was written on a handsized card stuck to its top. PRESS, it said. The only other object on the desk was a stud connected to a wire that ran down the side of the desk and across the dusty floor to disappear into an inner wall next to a door marked REGISTRAR.

  Conn pressed the stud and heard a faint buzzing from behind the door. He waited. Nothing occurred. He glanced over his shoulder at the man by the notice board and saw that the fellow was still rapt in contemplation of the twenty words. He pressed the stud once more, holding it down and hearing the buzzing continue unabated. After several seconds, he heard footsteps approaching loudly from beyond the door.

  The portal was flung open and the doorway framed a short stub of a man with fiery red hair and a furious expression. “Can you not read?” he said. “We are closed!”

  “Are you the Registrar?” Conn said.

  “I said, can you not read?”

  “I read quite well,” said Conn. “The sign on that door says ‘Registrar’ while the one on the desk says ‘press.’ I assumed that doing the latter would summon the former, and here you are.”

  “I meant the sign on the door!”

  “There is no sign on the door other than the plaque designating this as the Registry of Off-world Property.”

  Conn would not have thought it possible for the outrage on the Registrar’s face to intensify, yet it now did. He stomped to the front door, yanked it open and glared at its unadorned outer face as if it had personally disparaged him.

  He spun to face Conn and Jenore. “Return my sign!” he said.

  “We do not have it,” Conn said. “It was not there.”

  The official now seemed to become aware of the other occupant of the room: the student of the yellowed notice. “You!” he said. “Did you take my sign?”

  The man at the notice board gave no answer. He studied the paper with renewed intensity. But the red-haired man had spotted something. He strode across the room on sho
rt legs and plunged his hand into a pocket of the other’s drab overcoat. When he pulled it out it contained a crumpled sheet of paper.

  While the notice board student feigned a complete lack of interest in the proceedings, the Registrar smoothed away the paper’s wrinkles and held it up between two stub-fingered hands. In bold letters formed much like those on the card on the desktop, it read CLOSED.

  He showed it first to Conn and Jenore, then to the man at the notice board. “This is theft and wanton destruction,” he said. “I have a mind to summon the scroots.”

  “They are already here,” said Conn. “If you rummage further in that man’s pockets you should find some form of official identification.”

  At that the man at the notice board pulled his garments closer about himself and made for the door. The Registrar watched him go with a face that was struggling to maintain anger against a tide of bewilderment.

  “We wish to identify something,” Jenore said.

  “Come back when we are open,” snapped the red haired man. He opened the outer door and sought to reattach the sheet of paper but could only swear and say, “The pin! He took the pin!”

  “When are you open?” Jenore asked.

  “We open when there is business to conduct,” the Registrar said.

  “We have business to conduct,” said Conn.

  The short man cocked his head as if Conn had spoken in a disused language. Then he signaled a negative with overtones of impossibility. “There is never any business to conduct,” he said.

  “This is the Registry for Off-world Properties?” said Jenore.

  “Yes.”

  “And you are the Registrar?”

  “For many years. Uttyer Hoplick is my name.”

  “Then we have business with you.” She turned to Conn. “Show him the bearer deed.”

  Conn produced the figured bead. Hoplick’s head moved forward on his shoulders as he peered at the object. Then he strode across the room and held out his hand.

  “Two people have died, perhaps because of this,” Conn said, “and two attempts were made on my life. I want to know what it is.” He placed the bead in the Registrar’s hand.

  Hoplick examined it as if it were an arcane jewel. “I have not see one of these in decades,” he said. “Not a real one, at least. There are some famous ‘lost properties’ for which there are lucrative standing offers to anyone who can provide the coordinates. Is this one such, I wonder?”

  “All I know is that this is a deed to off-world property,” Conn said. “I do not know what property it confers ownership of, but that is what I am here to learn.”

  The Registrar rubbed his hands together. “Then to business,” he said. He waved his visitors toward the inner door. “Please come in.”

  Hoplick’s office was clearly not just a place of business. It contained a sleeping mat, a comfortable chair, food storage and preparation facilities and the accouterments of a simple life. There were the smells of punge from a half-filled mug and of used socks from a pair left under the dresser.

  The Registrar went to a corner where cartons where stacked and began to pull them aside; one tilted and fell, disgorging books and papers which were ignored as the search continued. Finally, he dug deep behind the rearmost box and emerged bearing a device not much larger than his fist. This he brought to a table by the window and set it down before producing a square of cloth from his pocket and wiping away a film of dust.

  He pressed a control on the object’s top and it showed a light and made a noise. A circular piece of its upper surface receded, creating a hemisphere exactly sized to receive the bead. When Hoplick placed the bearer deed in the aperture, the machine hummed quietly to itself. After a moment a screen became visible in the air above the table then it filled with printed data.

  Conn peered at the information but saw that it remained encrypted. Then Hoplick touched another control and the symbols on the top quarter of the screen resolved themselves in readable words and numbers.

  “There you have it,” said Hoplick.

  Conn looked again. There were some archaic legalistic phrases involving stated rights and secure precedents. They referred to something called Forlor. Conn took this to be the name of the estate or house to which the deed conferred ownership. Then there was a long string of numerical coordinates; these he assumed to be surveyor’s site descriptions setting out the bounds and borders of Forlor, wherever it might be. The rest of the screen revealed gibberish.

  Hoplick regarded the information with an air of approbation. “Congratulations,” he said.

  “I am not sure congratulations are in order,” he said. “It seems I now own something called Forlor, but have no idea where or what it may be.”

  Hoplick blinked. “The information is before you,” he said. He pointed to the numbers. “Here are the spatial coordinates and the recommended route to take. Enter these into the navigation nexus of any space ship and it will take you unerringly there.”

  “But where is ‘there?’“ Conn asked.

  Hoplick peered at the data. “Well beyond Gowdie’s Last Reach, I can tell you that.”

  Everyone in The Spray knew of Gowdie’s Last Reach. It was the ultimate world humans had settled during the Great Effloration. Past its blue white star hung the Back of Beyond, a empty gulf where a few lonely stars gleamed through rifts in vast clouds of obscuring hydrogen.

  “Forlor is on a planet in the Back of Beyond?” he said.

  “No,” said the Registrar. “Forlor is a planet in the Back of Beyond. You own a world.”

  Now it was Conn’s turn to blink. He sat in Hoplick’s comfortable chair. “I own a world,” he said.

  Jenore said, “What kind of a world is it?”

  Hoplick rummaged through the stacks of cartons until he found a large book. Its cover identified it as Hobey’s Compleat Guide to the Settled Planets. The Registrar set it on the table and riffled its pages then ran a finger down a column until he located the information he sought.

  “Here we are,” he said. “The planet was located millennia ago but registered under a blind. That means its coordinates were known only to whoever held the bearer deed.” He scanned the information in the guide and went on, “Smallish place. White dwarf sun, orbital distance and axial tilt make for mainly bearable climates, rudimentary vegetation but no major fauna or intelligent species. Geologically inactive, mostly ocean, one continent, no moon but a couple of moonlets. No settlements noted.” He closed the book. “Seems a reasonable sort of place. Probably some magnate’s private retreat. If it had been acquired by a cult or some other fellowship, a settlement would almost certainly be listed. Of course, they might be of the kind that live in trees or caves, but such hermits usually eschew space travel.”

  “I own a world,” Conn said again. “A reasonable sort of place.” He was trying to come to terms with the notion of owning a planet but somehow it could not lodge securely in his mind.

  Jenore pointed to the still encrypted part of the screen. “But what is all the rest of it?” she said.

  Hoplick held up a finger. “Ah,” he said. “That would be the security system to protect whatever’s there. You place the bead into its lock, or perhaps into a communicator. It transmits the code to the facility’s integrator which admits you. Without the code, other measures may ensue.”

  “What kind of measures?” Jenore asked.

  The Registrar assumed a speculative air, “At the least, you would be apprehended and confined until someone in authority comes to legitimize your presence. Of course, if no such person is onworld, the confinement would be indefinite. But then, there may not be provisions for long-term prisoners...” He spread his hands in a gesture of inevitability. “Or the measures might be more forceful: noxious gases, irritating vibrations, direct fire. There is no police presence in the Back of Beyond so property owners can be as ruthless or as inventive as they see fit.”

  Conn had by now digested the change in his circumstances. His Thraisian upbringing
asserted itself. “What is a world worth?” he said.

  “What anything is worth,” said Hoplick. “What someone will pay for it.”

  “Is there a market where they are bought and sold?”

  “Not on Old Earth. Out among the Ten Thousand Worlds there is surely room for such an institution. But if it exists, news of it has not reached here. The vogue for owning worlds came and went long since. If one wants solitude, one closes the door and bids the house integrator accept no contacts. Privacy is complete.”

  “What about people who wish to conduct themselves inappropriately?” Jenore said and Conn knew from the set of her face that she was thinking of Clariq Wallader.

  “Fortunately, such are rarely able to afford their own private worlds,” Hoplick said. “Even for the tiny few who would have the resources, it is still a long, long way to go.”

  At Conn’s request, Hoplick printed out the bead’s data. He folded the paper and put it away in his pocket then recovered the bearer deed. Somehow it now seemed heavier and more substantial than before.

  On the street outside, the scroot surveillance team were as they had been, except for the man who had loitered inside the registry. He now leaned against a wall up the street, glancing frequently at his timepiece to give the impression of someone who waited impatiently for whatever had brought him to this spot. Conn approached him and said, “Please tell Directing Agent Odell that we are grateful for her concern but we do not require your services.”

  The scroot was a lanky fellow with prominent eyes and an even more prominent bulge in the front of his throat. The latter moved up and down as he swallowed nervously. He made a last effort to ignore them, consulting his timepiece again and tapping his foot impatiently.

  “We are returning to our hotel now,” Conn said. “Do you intend to shadow us to the lobby?”