F&SF 2011-11-01 - Nov_Dec

by F

  Imbry calculated from memory. The piece had disappeared at about the time Lord Syce Voillute had flourished. "You saw it?" he said. "And lived?"

  The young Waltraut had had the run of the labyrinth, whenever it was safe to enter. One day she was playing little girl's games in a side alcove when her grandfather brought down someone who had grievously offended him. She drew back into the shadows and watched as he pressed a hidden stud in a wall. A panel opened. Within she saw the secret chamber. There stood the triptych on a dais, lit by light-pipes that drew natural sun down from above. A chair fitted with restraints faced the dais and against the far wall were the implements of her grandsire's complex vengeance.

  "When the door closed, I crept away and said nothing to anyone. His Potence was not a man to be crossed, even accidentally, even within the family."

  Imbry drew his palm across his face. "I must think about this."

  "I have learned to be patient," said the ghost. "But do not think too much. Fortune loves the bold."

  "The Archon's contemplaria are full of bold fellows who learned how faithless a lover fortune can be," the fat man said. After a long silence, he said, "Integrator, prepare to conduct research."

  The institution of the Archonate had existed for so long that the exact circumstances of its origins were lost beyond recall. In the beginning was the dawn-time, in which humankind arose from the primeval ur and stumbled into civilization. Then came the First Effloration, when the species left Earth, leapfrogging through The Spray to settle the first foundational domains that would eventually become the Ten Thousand Worlds.

  The foundational domains soon beckoned those who had been left behind on the ancestral planet and Earth became a place of empty, moldering cities falling to the inexorable advance of resurgent wilderness. For aeons, it was too passé, even to visit. But with the dawn of the Twelfth Aeon, a change: Earth was now "Old Earth" and somehow back in vogue. Spaceships thrummed down from its revirginal skies and new cities and towns began to speckle the landscapes, many of the new polities being peopled by like-minded adherents of particular philosophies who had chosen the refreshed old planet as a place to exercise their enthusiasms. Inevitably, the incompatible ideologies of some new neighbors created friction, but out of the developing unease came not war but the establishing of the Archonate.

  Ever since, a succession of Archons had ruled those parts of the planet inhabited by human beings. An Archon's authority was complete and without check, though the exact means by which it was exercised was purposely never defined. It was universally accepted, however, that the Archon must be obeyed. Also, he could do anything to anyone at any time. But it was also understood that Archons would forbear from acting unless the disputants were unable to reach their own accommodation. After a few salient examples, the citizens of Old Earth came to understand that it was best not to bother Archons; sometimes their way of resolving disputes involved an overwhelming—indeed, grossly excessive—application of destructive force.

  The Archon was occasionally seen presiding over high and mighty occasions, wearing stiff and formal garments and speaking portentously from a seat of honor. Most of the time, however, the Archonate exercised its influence on events by subtle and indirect means. Archons had been known to wander the world in everyman's clothing, riding public transportation or walking secondary roads. Any stranger might be the Archon, a fact that prompted most people to practice a fastidious politeness, at least in public. There were tales, likely apocryphal, though nonetheless widely repeated, of rude behavior summarily truncated when a hitherto unnoticed bystander stepped forward, displayed his insignia, and levied some sudden, horrific retribution. This function of the Archonate was known by its ancient descriptor: the progress of esteeming the balance.

  As aeon gave way to aeon, Archons of different characters and passions came and went, each choosing his successor—sometimes from family or near associates, sometimes from obscurity. But down through the ages, one function of the Archonate remained constant: a vast array of comprehensive and pansophical integrators had operated ceaselessly since the establishment of the institution, amassing, storing, winnowing, collating, and correlating information. They were the oldest continuously aware intelligences on the planet, and they answered to no authority save that of the Archon himself.

  Yet any citizen could consult the Archon's integrators on any subject and without charge. Most Old Earthers, even the blasé denizens of the ancient capital, Olkney, to whose daily lives the vast bulk of the Archonate palace was a constant backdrop sprawled across the crags and tors of the Devenish Range that loomed over the city, preferred to leave the devices undisturbed.

  Sometimes, the worst thing one could do was to draw the attention of an Archonate integrator to one's private affairs.

  The publicly accessible area of the Archonate Palace began at a wide terrace, floored in a pattern of varicolored bricks, partway up the lower slopes of the Devenish Range. It was here that Luff Imbry alighted from the disk of an ascender and joined a disparate throng of Olkneyites and visitors from outlying counties. Some were leaning on the balustraded edge of the plaza to gaze out over the grand vista of noble and yet dissolute Olkney, its broad boulevards and twisting alleys, its spacious mansions and teeming tenements, its splendor and squalor that stretched to the horizon under the orange light of the fading old sun. Some were making their way toward the half-ruined entry of the Grand Connaissarium, built millennia ago by the Archon Terfel III.

  Imbry went in another direction, weaving through the crowds, the lines of his distinctively rounded person blurred by a capacious garment, his plump-fingered hands encased in shapeless mittens and his features invisible beneath a broadbrimmed beekeeper's hat from whose edge descended a veil of fine mesh. At the inner limit of the terrace, set into a black wall of otherwise unworked native rock, stood a nondescript door. The fat man paused only a moment before touching the pad. The door slid open, revealing a small booth. Imbry stepped within, and the door silently closed behind him.

  "Reveal yourself," said a neutral voice from the air.

  The thief threw back the veil.

  "That is not your face," said the integrator.

  "It will have to do," said the voice of Waltraut Voillute, issuing from the globe of the life mask.

  "I am transferring you to a more senior integrator."

  A moment later, another voice spoke. Its tone was as detached as the first's, yet there was some quality beneath its seeming mildness that caused a cold sweat to spring from Imbry's scalp where it touched the mask's plate.

  "Well now," said the Archon's integrator. "What is this?"

  "We seek information that cannot be plucked from the open fields of the connectivity."

  "And who, exactly, are 'we'? Besides, that is, the essence of Margaret Voillute, whom I recognize from life, though it has been a long time since that life came and went."

  "We would prefer to keep that information to ourselves," said Imbry. He was growing accustomed to hearing his voice interpreted by the woman's.

  "Why?"

  "Why not?"

  "I cannot be complicit in the furtherance of a criminal enterprise."

  "What makes you think that we intend any such?"

  "It is a reasonable supposition. You appear wearing a life mask of the Voillutes. Only a Voillute ought to do so, but, the fashion for life masks having passed, no Voillute would be caught in such a flagrant acte-passé. Therefore you are not Voillute. Would you care to explain how you came by the mask?"

  "I submit," said Imbry, "that the issue of provenance is irrelevant."

  "As the burglar said to the provost," said the integrator. The device made the small noise that was its version of a throat clearing. "Very well, make your submission."

  "I wear the mask with the permission of a Voillute."

  "Which?"

  "Waltraut Voillute," said Imbry.

  "There is no such person."

  Imbry let the mask answer. "Yes, there is. I am
Waltraut Voillute and this person interacts with me with my full consent."

  "Essences are not persons," said the integrator.

  "It has not been established that we are persons," said the mask. "But nor has it been established that we are not."

  A moment's pause ensued as the Archon's integrator consulted the same ancient files that Imbry had studied. There had been a case during the Archonate of Severine VI: the essence of Lord Thonne Ap had been called into an inheritance dispute between two branches of the family. The question of his post-mortem existence had been argued before the Archon himself. The opposing side had countered by contending that, if the preserved essences of the once-living were found to be persons, the same status might have to be extended to other artificial personalities.

  "If you are a person," the Archon's integrator now said to the essence of Waltraut Voillute, "then so am I?"

  "Yes."

  "Hmm," said the neutral voice.

  Imbry took back control of the mask's speaking apparatus. "The Archon Severine, having heard that argument, asked the disputants if they truly wanted him to rule on the question. The two branches of the Aps decided that they would rather sort out the details of their inheritance without bothering the ghost of their ancestor."

  "The question of the personhood of both essences and integrators therefore remained moot," said the integrator.

  "Or," Imbry said, "one could say it remains to be answered."

  "Hmm," said the voice from the air.

  "Do you think the Voillutes would like to have it answered today?"

  "Doubtful."

  "Do you think the Archon Filidor would be happy to take up the matter where his predecessor left it, what was it, eight thousand years ago?"

  "Seven thousand, nine hundred and six," said the integrator. "And probably not."

  "Then perhaps it would be best to accept Waltraut Voillute's claim to personhood as having some potential to be upheld," Imbry offered, "while not actually going so far as to test that potential."

  "Hmm. You are not, by any chance, connected to the Archonate mandarinate?"

  "No."

  "A pity. Agile minds are always welcome here."

  "My career has taken me along other paths," said Imbry. "But I accept the observation as a compliment. Now, can we move on to the next item?"

  "I am fascinated to know what it might be," said the integrator.

  Imbry mentally stepped back, so that the remnant of Waltraut Voillute could say, "We wish to discover the whereabouts of the essences of the House of Broosh."

  "Why?"

  "To fulfill an ambition that was denied me in life."

  "What is that ambition?"

  "It is of a personal nature."

  "Will its fulfillment portend any harm to the Broosh essences, singly or collectively?"

  "No."

  There was a pause that Imbry later thought had been only for effect. Senior Archonate integrators had a reputation for savoring any opportunity to trifle with the emotions of those forced to deal with them. Then the voice said, "Very well. The essences are stored here, in the Grand Connaissarium."

  The mask's voice trembled with constrained emotion. "Are they accessible?"

  "They can be."

  "Will they be?"

  Again, an unnecessary pause. "Yes. Proceed to the nineteenth subterranean level of the southeast section. An assistant subcurator will be notified to expect you."

  "Thank you," said the essence. Imbry turned them toward the door, flipping down the veil.

  "Wait," said the integrator.

  The fat man turned back. "What?"

  "I have heard her ambition. I have not heard yours."

  "At this point, it is to assist Waltraut Voillute."

  "And after this point?"

  "We will have to see, won't we? As someone recently told me, many situations turn out to be more complex in the middle than they appeared going in."

  "Speaking of complexities," said the integrator, "you might want to bear in mind that person or not, the essence of a high-status Olkney aristocrat can be an uncertain handful."

  "I have been bearing that in mind most of the week," Imbry said and stepped out onto the sun-warmed terrace.

  TYPICALLY, Luff Imbry dealt with collectors: persons who had an abiding, sometimes overwhelming, interest in a particular class of objects. The Archon Terfel III, now long since moldered to dust in his tomb, was what Imbry called an acquisitor. He lived to amass as many specimens, of as many types and varieties, as could be crammed into whatever space was available. Fortunately for Terfel, occupying the peak of the social pinnacle, even on as fusty and odd a little world as Old Earth, gave him plenty of scope for his craving. The result was the Grand Connaissarium, now time-worn into a partial ruin, but still packed with every conceivable—and some scarcely conceivable—oddity, curio, rarity, treasure, and peculiarity that the teams of collectors he had sent foraging up and down The Spray had been able to shower upon him. A corps of conservators continually sifted and sorted the wonders and woohoos that filled shelf after shelf, in corridor after corridor, on floor after floor of the massive pile of ornamented stone whose belly and fundament lay deep within the black rock of the Devenish Range.

  This month the great expanse of the grand atrium behind the main doors was largely given over to a retrospective of sound sculptures from several different periods of the present aeon. The invisible artworks, apprehensible only by the ear and, in some cases, the internal organs, were scattered about the vast tessellated floor that was tiled in harlequins of marble, jet, agate, and slate. Those participating in the exhibit felt their way from one circumscribed region of sound to another, being caressed or bombarded, depending on the intent of the artists, with successions of musical tones, keening whines, shrieks, whispers, graceful arpeggios, monotonous clanks, and infrasonic rumbles.

  Heedless of the floor map on a placard that stood on a tripod just inside the entrance, Luff Imbry strode straight across the open space and almost immediately passed through a zone of tightly repetitive tweedles and contrapuntal bass tones. The sculpture reproduced a species of early music that he had never cared for and which was made no more appealing for being filtered through the sensorium of a long dead Voillute. Unfortunately, the mask offered no opportunities to clap hands over its virtual ears—a design flaw, Imbry concluded—so he gritted his teeth and hastened his step.

  Next came a wash of rhythmic swishes that evoked a mental image of waves rattling up a shingle beach, punctuated by a booming honk that might have been some primitive sea beast pining for a mate, then he entered a cacophony of stamping boots like files of soldiers marching to several different cadences. The effect was annoying, all the more so as Imbry found he was unconsciously trying to keep in step.

  "Enough!" he said, though in Waltraut Voillute's cracked contralto. The room was then treated to the rare spectacle of Imbry proceeding at any speed greater than a brisk walk, as with the skirts of his voluminous robe gathered up and the veil streaming over his shoulders, he crossed the rest of the atrium at the trot. His goal was a small, undecorated door in the inner wall, above which a sign advertised that the public could expect no admittance.

  But when Imbry arrived, his ears still ringing with the caterwauls and cymbals of Irrimandi ritual mourners, the portal slid silently aside. He passed through into a well-lit but unadorned corridor painted in institutional drab, and was met by a twinkler, the little light hovering in the air at eye height. A voice spoke from the general vicinity of the mote, saying, "This way." With that, the cynosure set off down the passageway at a walking pace.

  Imbry removed the hat and followed the guide along a succession of ways and turnings. He attempted to keep a mental record of whether they went left, right, or straight through intersections, or up or down ramps and tubes, but his usually reliable sense of direction was soon outmatched. The smooth-walled, painted corridors gave way to stretches that were less carefully maintained, then to tunnels cut thr
ough naked rock in which the glowing mote increased its brightness, there being no other illumination this deep in the belly of the mountain. Finally, he arrived at a descender tube from which issued a cold updraft. The spark entered and hovered expectantly. Imbry stepped in, was immediately embraced in a grip of supportive energies, and plunged down into darkness faster than he would have liked.

  The descender debouched the fat man into chill blackness, made colder by the dampness of the subterranean depths. The twinkling guide now hung unmoving in the unlit air like the seed of a star that has found no soil in which to take root. When Imbry shifted his feet, the floor that grated against his soles was of corrugated rock, roughly gouged out of the elemental flesh of the Devenish Range but never planed smooth. He recalled that Terfel III's Grand Connaissarium had been only partly constructed when its initiator's death had delivered the Archonate into the hands of a successor who had other enthusiasms to make manifest. This section might be as far as the borers and rock digesters ever got.

  The mote showed no inclination to move on and Imbry stood in the darkness, exercising patience. Waltraut Voillute's night vision was less acute than his own, and he was tempted to remove the globe. Then from the corner of his eye he caught a distant flicker of light that grew steadily brighter as it came toward him through what he gradually came to see was a vast artificial cavern whose ceiling was too far above him to be seen. The huge space was haphazardly filled with lockers and stacked cabinets of varying sizes as well as utilitarian open shelving. The doors of the former were closed, but as the illumination grew, Imbry could see that the shelves were filled with objects of different sizes and shapes, higgled and piggled together in no perceptible order, though each bore a small hand-indicted label.

  The light was nearer now, and the mask's eyes showed the thief that it was carried above the head of a slight figure in the working robe of a graduate of the Institute. The upper torso was also wrapped in a padded garment that must be necessary, Imbry thought, for anyone who spent time down here in the perpetually unheated blackness. The face, when it appeared from beneath the shadows of an overhanging cowl, was that of a youngish woman with pinched cheeks and a sharp chin, and an even more pointed nose. She regarded Imbry from beneath downdrawn brows then spoke into the voice pickup of a communicator clipped to the side of her hood. "I have her," she said. "Or him. Or it, for all I can tell."