F&SF 2011-11-01 - Nov_Dec

by F

  Just as there are Lord Syces in any era, so are there Luff Imbrys. The current version had no doubt that Waltraut's grandfather had found a connection to a person of resource and enterprise who, for a fee, had made his way past all of Huyaq Palaam's keep-outs and relieved the magnate of the burden of ownership of the Bone Triptych. Syce Voillute had then sequestered the masterpiece in his secret chamber at the heart of his labyrinth, there to be enjoyed at its new owner's pleasure.

  And there, the fat man reflected, it still stood. It had waited all these centuries, steadily accruing an aura of legend and mystery that Imbry was sure he could easily translate into immense, tangible wealth. It struck him, now, that were he to bring the proof of Odlemar's genius back to the light of the old orange sun—or the rays of whatever star its next owner's world might circle—that feat would be the crowning moment of his own career. It was unlikely he would ever engage in an operation to equal, let alone surpass, such a singular accomplishment.

  The thought gave Imbry pause. He was not usually given to introspection. His profession required a practical mentality. He set objectives, planned the steps to achieve them, energetically carried out the schemes—with due allowance for unexpected interventions—then reaped the rewards. This operation, though, was far out of the ordinary.

  Perhaps, he thought, I should keep a record of my achievements, that they may be remembered when I am one with Syce Voillute and Huyaq Palaam. Then it occurred to him what the consequences would be should such a history fall into the wrong hands. A stay at a contemplarium—"dining with the Archon" was the euphemism among Imbry's fellow denizens of the halfworld—would be the least of the possible repercussions. In his long career, Imbry had stolen from people whose capacity for artful vengeance made Lord Syce seem like a petulant schoolgirl. Reluctantly, he set aside the thought of composing his memoirs. He would wait until his last breath, from natural causes, was within viewing distance. And even then, he would arrange to publish posthumously.

  He addressed his integrator: "How are they getting along?"

  "They are conversing."

  "So the young Broosh is intact?"

  "It is difficult to say," said the device. "It is not a conversation of depth and complexity."

  "Then we will leave them to it." But now the thought occurred that he should follow up his earlier inkling: Had there been a feud between the Voillutes and the Brooshes? He told the integrator to deliver a summary of the events. The text appeared instantly, and Imbry soon saw that there had indeed been antipathy between the houses, a long-simmering acrimony that started with the diversion of a watercourse. But matters boiled over when Syce Voillute conceived an itchful lust for the young bride of a lesser member of the main branch of the Broosh line.

  "Her connection to Charan Broosh?"

  "Second cousin, once removed."

  "Ah. Continue."

  The text scrolled past, embedded with snippets from contemporary accounts of the scandal. During the reign of the Archon Shahoderam III, literary style had tended toward the ornate, so the news was couched in strained allusions and overripe metaphors. Lord Syce's "passions" were said to have been "aroused" by the sight of the young woman bathing during an afternoon lawn party at a third family's estate. Oddly enough, Imbry noted, though intimate matters were spoken of only in the most labored euphemism, mixed nude bathing had been commonplace.

  The Voillute sire, "unable to contain his ardor," had "made a forthright approach" to the object of his desire. When she declined "the honor of accepting his person," he threw a picnic blanket over her head, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her off to a secluded spot. There he "expended his manly substance" in at least two of her orifices—it was difficult to tell which ones, but Imbry thought the distinctions would scarcely have mattered.

  Finally, his itch well scratched, he set her loose. She returned to the party and "made strident complaints, displaying several outrageous discolorations and abrasions of her pale and tender flesh." Her husband was summoned and came at once. Lord Syce was summoned and failed to arrive. Instead, he sent a trembling major domo with the news that his lord was more profitably occupied in having his tonsure restyled.

  The ravished bride was taken home. Three days later, in the morning, a formal notice of vendetta was delivered in the traditional manner: a large fish—dead, though not recently—with Lord Syce's name carved into its putrescent flank, was laid upon the doorstep of the Voillute manse in Olkney. In the afternoon, the first exchange of small-arms fire broke out on Clarrey Common. Matters escalated rapidly, and within days it was dangerous even for the completely neutral to linger in the vicinity of a Voillute or Broosh demesne. People began to say it was time for the Archon to intervene.

  Over the aeons there had been thousands of archons. They came in several kinds. Some were activist by nature, and would step lively and early to prevent social dislocation. Others were inclined to let situations develop according to their intrinsic dynamics, intervening only when matters reached a stark crisis. The Archon Shahoderam III was of the latter disposition. He allowed the Voillutes and Brooshes to discharge their mutual animosity without hindrance, even to the point where heavy weapons had been brought into play and the fighting had escalated beyond skirmishes and minor forays into serious assaults. It was only when the Broosh levies came in force to strike Lord Syce's seat at Grand Minthereyon, killing the patriarch and dozens of his retainers, and reducing the estate to rubble and slag, that the Archon saw fit to intercede.

  Out of a long-forgotten hangar dug into the south slopes of the Devenish Range—forgotten, that is, by all except the Archonate's ancient integrators—lifted a trio of self-directing armored cruisers. Matte black with green trim, they still bore the arms of the Archon Wei-Barson IX, who had successfully resisted the last attempted invasion of Earth by the Dree, an inimical hive species from up The Spray. The flotilla loomed over Grand Minthereyon, the Voillute estate that Broosh forces were then reducing to slag, and the leading cruiser's integrator ordered an immediate stand-down, in Shahoderam's name, on pain of dissolution of the offenders' houses.

  The Voillutes, with Syce dead, at that moment lacked both leadership and their fallen patriarch's grim bloody-mindedness. They quieted their weapons and let fall their defenses. The Brooshes, unfortunately, were on a rising wave, having just achieved devastating victory. Seized by a misguided bravado, one of the Broosh commanders—it may have been he of the ravished spouse—discharged a weapon in the direction of the Archonate fleet.

  By the end of that day, the House of Broosh had ceased to exist. Its properties were seized and sold, its servants and retainers discharged to seek new employers. The family's upper tier were stripped of their names and titles and forcibly removed to several dozen different worlds, where each would live out a life of solitude, forbidden to leave the place of exile. The middle and minor ranks were instructed to attach themselves to whatever other aristocratic lineages they might be connected to, and never to mention the name of Broosh again, on pain of being sentenced to the same harsh banishment as their senior kin had received.

  Since Lord Syce had paid for his transgressions with his life, the punishment for the Voillutes was to be demoted en masse to the second tier of the aristocracy. The downgrading would remain in effect until such time as the Archon, or one of his successors, said otherwise.

  When these events occurred, Waltraut Voillute had been a woman of middle years and Charan Broosh had been dead for two decades. It explained why his essence had never been reactivated and how it, and the other ancestral Brooshes, had come to be stored in the Archonate's Grand Connaissarium, rather than in the family's essentiary.

  "What are they doing now?" he asked the integrator.

  "Singing."

  "Has she acquainted him with his true condition?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I surmise that she thinks it premature," said the integrator. "From their conversation so far, it is clear that he has no memory of
his death, nor of the days leading up to it. The information would come as too great a shock."

  "What does he know?"

  "He seems to believe he lies in a half-doze on a beach and that she is beside him, engaging him in idle chatter."

  "And her emotional state?"

  "A kind of melancholic joy."

  Imbry decided to leave the two facsimiles to it. He instructed the integrator to let Waltraut Voillute continue to soothe the young man's ghost until both achieved quietude, then to induce a simulation of sleep. "You will reawaken them when I return."

  He reordered his operations center so that it again appeared to be a vacant room in a shabby house, reset the wards and defenses, and departed. He made his way by indirect routes to Quirks, where he intended first to dine and then to take one of the rooms reserved for transient members or for those who overindulged in the products of the establishment's excellent cellars. But as he alighted from a hired aircar near the steps of the drab old edifice that disguised the club's inner opulence, a large and uncompromising form placed itself in his path.

  "Luff Imbry," said a lugubrious bass voice.

  "You mistake me for someone else," said the fat man, attempting to skirt the obstacle, which he now saw was clothed in the green-on-black uniform of a senior officer of the Bureau of Scrutiny. But a broad-fingered hand descended onto the thief's shoulder and exerted a power that stopped all forward motion.

  "No," said the scroot, "I do not."

  Imbry looked up, saw a long nose that was matched by pendulous ears and a protruding lower lip, the whole creating the impression that here was an individual who had seen much to disappoint him, while any moments of happiness that might have balanced life's ledger had been too few and too short. "I do not know you," he said, ceasing to push futilely against the hand, which now left his shoulder.

  "Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny," was the answer, "and no, we have not met." There was a pause while the world-weary eyes studied Imbry's countenance as if committing it to memory. "But I have been hearing about you for some time."

  Imbry offered an untroubled smile. "Though nothing actionable, it would seem."

  "There is actionable, and then there is actionable," said Warhanny.

  "I fail to detect a difference."

  "It depends upon which direction what I am hearing may come from. It is one thing when word filters up to me that some item of value has disappeared and that Imbry's shadow passed near the scene of the disappearance, or that Imbry's name was mentioned in connection with the passing of an artwork about which there lingers a whiff of forgery." The broad fingers now pulled pensively at the drooping nose and the wet gaze subtly hardened. "It is another thing altogether when I enter my office and find a message from one of the Archonate's most elderly integrators instructing me to take a close interest in Imbry's comings and goings."

  "Ah," said the fat man. His shoulders moved in a tiny, unconscious shrug. The chances that his disguise would have fooled the ancient device had not been as strong as he would have liked.

  "And then when I do take an interest," the scroot continued, "I find myself watching dozens of close copies of the said Imbry scattering across Beeley Plaza."

  "Ah," Imbry said again. There seemed no point in adding to the syllable.

  "So I thought," said Warhanny, "that I would take the first opportunity to let you know that I am concerned about you. As is the Archonate's integrator. You might want to take that into account in planning your future activities."

  "I might, indeed," said Imbry. "Have you any further advice?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "Then, if you will excuse me...." The fat man now made his way unimpeded around the black-and-green island and continued up the stairs into Quirks. In the club's cloakroom, he was about to shed his outer garment, but then he paused and instead took a small device from an inner pocket of his daysuit. He passed the mechanism's percept over his shoulder and heard it peep. He pressed a stud on the scanner's control node and watched as it located the tiny clingfast that Warhanny had attached to his collar. Imbry considered a range of strategies and chose to leave the scroot telltale where it was.

  For a moment he stood in thought, projecting possible futures, some of them worrisome. Then he exercised the mental discipline that was essential to one in his profession. He drove from his mind all consideration of the scroots and the Archonate, indeed of Waltraut Voillute and the Bone Triptych. He would go in to dinner and give the products of Quirks's superb chef the full attention they deserved.

  He would come back to the operation of the Bone Triptych in due time.

  "How is Charan Broosh?" Imbry asked the essence of Waltraut Voillute. Three days had passed, during which the fat man had occupied himself with preparations while making every effort to determine if he was under surveillance by the Bureau of Scrutiny. It appeared that he was not, which set him to thinking. But at the end of that process, he saw no reason not to continue the operation that would be the crowning achievement of his career, conferring another kind of immortality on Luff Imbry.

  "He is...well enough," was the mask's answer. "We are happy together."

  "Then you will wish that happiness to continue."

  "I have already said that I will do as you wish. There is no need to make threats."

  Imbry made a small sound that could be interpreted in several ways. The ghost chose to take this as a contradiction of her view. "A willing steed pulls hard and steady, and needs no goad," she quoted.

  "An aristocrat's attention extends no farther than his interest," the thief offered in counter-quote.

  Waltraut Voillute's tone became distant. "Your principles are debased."

  "Yet they serve me well in an uncertain world. I believe I will adhere to them."

  In truth, Imbry's central philosophy was both broad and supple, and though founded on narrow self-interest, it managed to encompass a range of corollaries that allowed him to navigate among the many complexities that life threw into his path. He selected his own goals and trusted none but himself to develop and execute the strategies that led to their fulfillment. The satisfaction he drew from his achievements could not be shared, since to have advertised his methods would only have served to smooth his path to the contemplarium.

  Now he rubbed his meaty palms together and said, "But enough of this bootless badinage, as my old tutor used to say. Time to be about it." He ordered the integrator to disconnect itself from the two essences. Then he took up the globe that housed Lady Waltraut and placed it over his head. The transition passed quickly and then he was looking through their shared perceptions.

  "There," he said, turning their gaze toward the mask that remained atop the seeming dresser, "is Charan Broosh. Now watch as I sequester him in this concealed compartment. There. If I return safely to this place, you will be reunited. If not...."

  "What is my guarantee?" said the voice in his inner ear. "What if you take what you want, then cast me aside?"

  "A fair question," Imbry said. "I can only assure you that I am not cut from the same stuff as your grandsire. I cause no more pain than is needful to gain my desires. As well, it pleases me to consider myself a man of my word."

  He returned her mask to its case and the room to its innocuous guise and departed. As always, he traveled by circuitous routes, with several waits and switchbacks, to shake off surveillance. He was confident that he was not under the eye of the Bureau of Scrutiny, because his wrist-watcher so advised him, and because before making his way to his operations center this morning he had transferred Brustram Warhanny's clingfast to the coat of a mercantilist who was breakfasting in the Quirks morning room and whose well-fed girth nearly matched Imbry's own heroic proportions.

  Eventually he entered a tattered and roofless building on the south edge of Olkney, where crescent streets lined with modest houses and small emporia gave way to the field of ruins that had once been the suburb of Valdevar. Inside the half-tumbled structure stood a battered carryall
, the dome above its passenger compartment scratched and discolored, the sides of its cargo bay dinged and dented from years of hard use.

  But when Imbry had checked to ensure that the items he had specified were tucked in the toolbay and that the vehicle's energy supplies were at full brim, when he had positioned himself behind the controls and activated the initiator, he was not surprised to hear the well-tuned gravity obviators run quickly up to readiness. He had hired the carryall from Gebbry Tshimshim, a fixture in Olkney's halfworld with whom the fat man had often done business.

  He patted the mask case beside him on the seat and said softly, "And so it begins." These were the words that he always voiced when the preparatory stage of an operation gave way to the active. The repetition came not from superstition but from a desire, in a life that of necessity required never establishing routines through which he could be tracked and ambushed, of having some sense of continuity.

  He touched the controls and the carryall rose almost silently above what remained of the building's walls. When it reached the height of the surrounding rooftops, Imbry directed it to take a southeasterly course, the first stage in a route he had worked out that would lead in time to the site of Grand Minthereyon. As he flew, he consulted the device on his wrist as well as the two instruments Gebbry Tshimshim had installed in the vehicle and saw nothing to concern him. Nevertheless, after several minutes of straight and level flight that had taken him out into a region of open meadows interrupted by copses of deciduous trees, Imbry brought the carryall down to just above the ground and followed a rough road into one of the small stands of timber.