F&SF 2011-11-01 - Nov_Dec

by F

  "No integrator this far down?" Imbry said.

  The assistant subcurator quirked her eyebrows in a manner that suggested she intended no unnecessary conversation. "This way," she said, and set off between two long rows of shelving. Imbry followed. The twinkler remained at the mouth of the descender. As Imbry turned to look back, it shut itself off.

  His guide turned left, then right, led him past a jumble of stacked travelers' trunks and cartons of random sizes and shapes, then came to a region populated by clusters of cabinets of gray metal. She held the lumen close to the labels affixed to the doors, read what was on three or four of them, then said, "No, not these. We'll look over there," and walked on.

  Several minutes and as many more consultations later, she tapped the door of a compartment that was both wider and taller than Imbry. "Here."

  Imbry leaned closer, saw a label marked in faded ink. Broosh, it read, followed by a series of dates that corresponded with the reigns of Shahoderam II and III, as well as the two other archons who came between them. He let the ghost of Waltraut Voillute consider the matter, then heard her say, "These will be they."

  The Connaissarium official produced a kind of key that fit a kind of lock. Imbry would have been professionally interested to inspect both, but the movement was too quick. Then the cabinet was thrown open. Within were serried shelves, each holding several cases similar in size and shape to that which Holker Ghyll had brought to Bolly's Snug. Imbry reached to touch one, causing the assistant subcurator to give an involuntary start. Then she subsided and said, "They are fragile."

  Imbry removed his veiled hat and saw the woman's eyes widen in surprise. "I know," he said.

  "I was told only to bring you here. I was not told what more was required."

  Imbry let the ghost speak. "We seek the essence of Charan Broosh."

  "What are his dates?"

  The mask delivered them.

  "Wait." the woman moved the lumen closer to the cabinet's door. Imbry now saw that pasted to its inner surface was an inventory of the locker's contents. The young woman ran a slim finger down the listing, stopped then moved the digit sideways and stopped again, tapping an entry. "Here."

  She squatted and reached into the lowest shelf. Imbry saw her arm moving up and down as she counted her way back through ranked objects in the blackness of the cabinet's interior. Then she grunted and stood up. In her hand was a dark, squat, cylindrical object that filled her small palm. She held the lumen close and peered at it. "This is it."

  Imbry spoke. "It is not installed in a life mask."

  The official looked up and to the left as she consulted her memory. "It likely never was. The Brooshes were extinguished before Temerankh came along." When she saw that the name meant nothing to Imbry, she added, with only slightly veiled condescension: "Bulbar Temerankh, the inventor of the object you're wearing."

  "You mean Charan Broosh's essence never interacted with a living person?"

  "Obviously." She examined the cylinder again. "I doubt that this essence has ever been activated since it was taken from life."

  Imbry phrased his next utterance carefully. "After so long, what...condition should we expect...."

  The response was a brief lifting and lowering of the assistant subcurator's shoulders, conveying in one gesture a lack of both knowledge and interest.

  Inside Imbry's inner ear, the mask was clamoring to be heard. He spoke to the assistant subcurator. "Can you put that into a mask?"

  He could see that her first instinct was to say no. Instead she spoke into her communicator: "Did you hear that?" then listened to a reply Imbry could not hear. A moment later her ungenerous lips pursed and she said, "If that's what you want. Hold this."

  The last two words were to Imbry. She handed him the lumen, then knelt and set the cylinder on the floor. With quick movements, she reached into the cabinet, took the globe of a mask from another shelf, briskly extracted its occupant and slipped the remnant of Charan Broosh into the receptacle. She touched a recessed stud on the inner concavity of the mask, consulted a display that appeared, and said, "It's ready to go live. Are you familiar with introducing essences to the experience of the mask?"

  "No."

  "I wish to be formally absolved of responsibility for what may now ensue," she said. Imbry realized that she was not speaking to him. Whatever she heard through her communicator's earpiece caused her to protrude her thin lower lip. "I also hereby formally register my professional disapproval—"

  She was apparently cut off. She grunted, then set the life mask on the floor and dug around in the cabinet for an empty carrying case. She slipped the globe into the plush-lined container, then stood and took back the lumen from Imbry. "This shouldn't be allowed," she said. Again whatever passed through her earpiece did not mollify her. "I'll show you out," she said.

  Without looking back, she set off for the spot where they had left the twinkler. Imbry picked up the mask in its case and followed. At the foot of the descender, he said, "How do I activate the essence?"

  The assistant subcurator said nothing but her face made it clear that the problem was his. She made a final gesture that only a more charitable person than the thief could have taken for a farewell salute rather than a contemptuous dismissal, then turned and went back into the darkness, insulated within her little sphere of light.

  The twinkler reignited and floated into the tube of the descender. Imbry followed, the mask clasped to his mounded chest. The air gripped him and he rose.

  HE WAS CROSSING the terrace outside the Grand Connaissarium's main doors when a voice spoke beside his ear. "It would be good if you kept in touch."

  "Of course."

  "Better than if we have to find you," said the Archonate integrator.

  "Understood," Imbry said, though he had no intention of complying.

  At the plaza's edge, he stepped onto a disc and began the long slide down to the thronged streets of Olkney. He knew that he was now under surveillance; common sense said that the integrator would have set the scroots on his tail; more to the point, the device that he wore on one wrist—a mechanism of his own design and manufacture—detailed the surveilling energies that now touched him from overhead. Somewhere high above, a Bureau volante was shadowing his progress down to the city.

  But Luff Imbry was a master of the art of avoidance, especially when he had had time to prepare. After the disc brought him gently to the pavement below, he ambled at an unconcerned pace down Eckhevery Way, turned left into Tuntston Parade, then, after crossing a couple of intersections, he turned right and descended The Winding. Soon he emerged onto Beeley Plaza, where the usual assortment of jugglers, declamators, acrobats, and caricaturists were entertaining the usual assortment of lunchtime idlers. Imbry wove through the loose crowds until he came to an alley. A few steps later he found a door above which was affixed a sign that identified it as the artists' entrance to the Miramance Theatre.

  The who's-there admitted him when he spoke the right phrase. Inside, he went quickly to the dressing room he had arranged to be ready for him. With the door shut, he set down the case that held Charan Broosh's essence and stripped off the voluminous garment and veiled hat, stowing them in the costume chest from which they had come. A moment later, he briskly removed the Voillute life mask and placed it in its carrying case, left there earlier. He used a makeup cloth to wipe away the sweat that coated his face and matted his thin, blond hair. Then he placed both mask cases in a plain wicker grab-bag, which he tucked under the dressing table. He regarded himself in the reflector, straightened the lines of the nondescript daysuit that he had worn under the disguise. "Ready," he said to his reflected image and left the small room.

  A short corridor led to a flight of steps. Imbry descended, took a turn, and pushed through a heavy curtain. He found himself in one of the wings of the theater's stage. A moment later, he stood at the center of the open space, clapping his hands for attention.

  "I am sorry," he said to the more than thirty pairs of
eyes that turned his way from the seats nearest the proscenium. "I must inform you that there has been a temporary blockage of funds and we are unable to begin casting today. I remain convinced, however, that the production will go forward and I expect that I will soon be able to call you all together again so we can choose a lead and an understudy for this celebrated revival of Chastoniery's Five Heads, One Basket. "

  A mutter of disappointment and resignation came from the semidarkness in front of the stage, then a creaking of seats and a shuffle of footsteps as almost three dozen unemployed thespians rose to their feet and made their unhappy ways toward the various exits. As Imbry had specified when he had caused the casting call to appear in the appropriate media, each was clad in an unremarkable daysuit; each carried a sizeable wicker container; and each was either naturally well fleshed or had inserted padding where necessary to appear so—Vixley, the decapitating protagonist of Chastoniery's masterwork, was a memorably well-rounded character.

  The unhappy actors wended their separate paths from the Miramance, singly or in twos or threes, some to the nearest drinkhouse, others to whatever other destinations called them. Imbry, stepping smartly to recover his own wicker grab-bag, became one of the near-identical many threading their way through Beeley Plaza. A quick pause to visit the public ablutory beneath the Arch of Tyrrhe, and he reentered the square wearing a particolored cape, a cockaded hat, and towing a fabric-covered suitcase on a come-along.

  A glance at his wrist told him that the plaza was awash with Bureau of Scrutiny inquisitive fluxes, but the indicators showed that the scroots were unable to narrow their focus to a single target. The thief made his way to a stand where aircars waited to be hired, negotiated terms with the first vehicle in line, and was soon aloft.

  Holker Ghyll entered the small private chamber at the rear of Bolly's Snug and offered Luff Imbry an eloquently raised pair of eyebrows.

  "Yes," said the fat man, "bring him in."

  Imbry pulled up the hood and donned the face mask of his elision suit, so that the light in the room would now slide across its surface, effectively rendering him invisible. Moments later, the door opened again and Ghyll escorted another man into the room. The newcomer wore a long coat, fastened up the front, but in the warmth of the confined space, he opened the garment. Beneath, Imbry saw the saffron and ivory livery of a subfootman of the house of Voillute.

  The man's gaze darted about the room, but kept coming back to the object on the table. A beading of sweat appeared on his brow and upper lip, and he looked back toward the door as, with a soft sound, it slid closed.

  "Come, come," said Imbry, making the servitor start, "you are adherents of the Computance. You would not be here if you had not already calculated that your reward outweighs your risk. No new factors have been adduced. Show me that your philosophy has meaning to you."

  The subfootman drew himself up. "Very good," he said, with a sideways glance at his fellow Computant, "our numbers do not fail us."

  "Show me, then," Imbry said.

  The man advanced and put his hands on the life mask that sat in the middle of the table. "For your own calculations, I remind you that I have not done this myself. That is the responsibility of the major domo. But I have seen it done, often enough."

  Imbry placed a purse next to the life mask so that its contents clinked heavily against the tabletop. "Show," he said.

  The subfootman lifted the globe and peered into the cavity. "The essence appears to be well seated," he said. "There is a sequence of steps to be taken in activating the process."

  "Remember, this is a first installation," Imbry said.

  "The steps are the same. You touch this stud, then move this slide thusly. Wait until this indicator light achieves full brightness"—a pause ensued—"as it now has. Next, stroke the power slide until the display glows a healthy red. And there it is, ready to be worn."

  "Are there particular words to be uttered?"

  The subfootman moved his head in a negative, even as the corners of his mouth drew down in a facial shrug. "But Holker Ghyll said the essence has not been activated since it was taken. Therefore, you will have to explain to the essence how it comes to be meshed with a stranger's sensorium, and one of the lower classes, at that. Even in life, aristocrats leap quick-and-lively onto any passing umbrage and they are not inclined to brush off explanations that try to clamber on behind them. My advice is to speak rapidly and to the point."

  Imbry placed the pearly globe containing the ghost of Charan Broosh atop the seeming dresser in his operations center. He watched as his integrator connected itself to the mask's percepts. "Ready?" he said.

  "Ready."

  "Begin."

  He had decided against the subfootman's advice. He would not don the Broosh mask and activate it by meshing the essence's sensorium with his own. Instead, he would begin by feeding the facsimile a simplified set of stimuli concocted by the integrator: a blue sky dotted with slow-moving clouds and the sound of gentle surf lapping nearby.

  "The facsimile is responding," said the integrator.

  "Good. Can you tell the level of mentation?"

  "Not without entering into its cognitive matrix, and that would be a rough and frightening intrusion."

  "Very well. Continue." Imbry now placed the Voillute globe beside the Broosh and bade the integrator activate the mask and connect itself to Waltraut Voillute's percepts. He saw her face appear out of the grayness, her eyes going immediately to the globe beside her. Her voice spoke from the air. "Is that he?"

  "It is. It has just become sentient."

  "Not 'it'! He! "

  Imbry's plump hand made a gesture of indifference. "He, then. If he is in fact conscious, it will seem as if he has awakened from sleep and is lying on a beach. I have not spoken with him."

  "Let me."

  "Wait. You must know the situation." He explained about how Broosh's essence had never been enmasked before, that it was likely his remnant had never been activated by his descendants. "He may not even be aware that he is only a facsimile."

  "Connect me to him." But even as Imbry raised a finger to signal the integrator to meet her demand, she said, "Wait! Let him just hear my voice, as if I were beside him on that beach."

  "Very well."

  "And let me sound as I did when we were young."

  "Why?" said Imbry.

  There now came one of those pauses in which silence conveyed meaning. Imbry realized he was about to hear something that had been willfully withheld from him.

  "Because he never heard my voice as it became in later life," said Waltraut's ghost.

  A list of reasons why that might have been so formed in the fat man's insightful mind: because they had squabbled and the breach was never mended; because their families had forbidden them to meet; because Broosh went off-world and did not return. But he doubted any of these would be the explanation. "He died young," he said.

  "Yes."

  "Tell me that it was not sudden, not an accident far from recovery services."

  "He was skimming on a glacier. A crevice opened."

  Imbry said a harsh word under his breath. He could visualize the scene. Skimmers could not lift themselves more than knee-high above the ground. He imagined the lightweight vehicle's gravity obviator straining ineffectively to prevent the young man's plunge into the unexpected abyss, the long fall, slow at first, then gathering speed and momentum, culminating in the final smash against blue ice compressed by its own weight to the hardness of steel. And how long before his body would have been recovered and the essence taken?

  No wonder the essence had never been activated. "There may be nothing of him left," he said.

  "His body was found in a pool of meltwater. It would have chilled quickly. His skull was intact."

  "You are grasping at gossamers!"

  The face in the globe showed agony. "I must know! At least give me that! Please!"

  The fat man was not immune to sentiment, though he had no tolerance for it when
it interfered with business. "And if there is nothing in there but a drooling cretin? A turnip?"

  The mask's voice quavered. "Then...nothing. You may put me back in the darkness. Indeed, I would ask you to do so."

  "You misunderstand," Imbry said. "I meant, if there is nothing for you, what about me? After all, life— my life—goes on."

  The face within the globe turned toward him. "I will uphold my end of our bargain."

  "You will guide me to the Bone Triptych?"

  "I will."

  "And not leave me to the hooks and gyres of your grandsire's retributive devices?"

  "I will bring you and it safely out again."

  Her mere saying of it was not enough, Imbry knew. He made her swear by several formulae so ancient that their tenets were woven almost genetically into the aristocratic psyche. Only when he could think of no other way to bind her to the undertaking did he authorize the integrator to link the two essences.

  IMBRY BUSIED HIMSELF by refreshing his knowledge of the Bone Triptych. His integrator produced the only image ever published, from the catalogue that advertised the original offering of the piece for sale. The publication contained a plethora of reviews and appreciations, and a lengthy list of the persons who had come to own the work, through inheritance or purchase, until the day it had departed from the possession of Huyaq Palaam, a magnate of the first tier, under circumstances that were never explained.

  That it could have been acquired by Lord Syce Voillute was not unlikely, Imbry knew. Aristocrats came in several different varieties, but it was a belief shared by all that, whenever they conceived a desire, that conception was intimately conjoined to a conviction of entitlement—that is, whatever they wanted they deserved. But as the fat man delved into the history of the Voillutes, it became clear that Lord Syce had not so much possessed that belief as he had been possessed by it. Anything that he desired, be it a morsel on a tablemate's dish or another peer's spouse, immediately became—in Syce's mind— his. The original owner's continued possession of the item was from then on tantamount to theft. And Syce Voillute was not one to let his goods be pilfered.