Nine Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  “Unknown,” said my integrator, “but he bought an open ticket.”

  An open ticket was a mode of travel favored by wanderers; Fullbrim could present it at the foot of any gangplank of a ship owned by any one of more than a dozen cooperating lines and receive preferred boarding.

  “Hypothesis,” I said, “he had discovered that there was something on Greylag, but it was a something that was likely to propel him on to some other destination. Else he would have bought a return ticket. Or a one-way, if he did not plan to return.”

  “Supportable,” said my assistant. “A subsidiary hypothesis is that he has gone on to that other destination.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and our best course is probably to follow him. Contact the Gallivant and tell it to provision for a lengthy voyage. Then alert the space port that we will be lifting off within the hour. In the meantime, I will survey these materials,”–I indicated the stack of papers and charts–“and see what had our quarry so deeply engrossed.”

  * * *

  Seated in the snugly comfortable salon of my ship, a mug of fragrantly steaming punge at my elbow, I again sought to draw a pattern from Doldan Fullbrim’s researches. But no comprehensive shape emerged. “It obviously has to do with fundamentalities,” I said. “He first put a lot of effort into investigating bell-curve distributions of naturally occurring phenomena. Then there was a period when he was concerned with the way that the atoms of which different types of matter are formed tend to attenuate at the edges of objects. Clearly, he was looking for underlying patterns, yet I find he drew no conclusions. Instead, he jumped over to a consideration of fractal geometries and the way that ostensibly straight lines and curved surfaces reduce themselves to tangled higgles-and-piggles when brought under close scrutiny.”

  “Indeed,” said my assistant. Before leaving my lodgings, I had decanted it into a traveling armature made of a soft but sturdy material and shaped like a plump stole that I could wear around my neck. At the moment, however, it was resting on the salon’s folding table.

  Seeing that the integrator had nothing more to add, I went on, “And then, most lately, he was comparing the shapes and trajectories of several million galaxies. He had leaped from the micro to the macro in a single bound.”

  “And from there he made a further leap: from Old Earth to Greylag,” said my assistant.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I suggest we put that question to Fullbrim when we find him.”

  It occurred to me that my integrator was not being of much use. When I gently suggested as much, its reply was equally unhelpful. It said, “You are looking for sense and structure in what is simply, and most likely, the evidence of mania.”

  “You think Fullbrim to be unbalanced?”

  “It is not uncommon for an inhabitant of Old Earth to be seized by an obsession. It is the defining characteristic of the world’s penultimate age.”

  It was an inarguable observation. The planet was rich in its supply of persons who niggled over philosophical minutiae or devoted themselves to mystic cults or needlessly rigorous political systems. Fullbrim might well be just another “full-bore,” as the type was colloquially known.

  “I wish my intuition had not gone off to live in a remote cottage,” I said. My former intuitive faculty, now reified as a separate person named Osk Rievor, had not even acquired an integrator through which we could communicate while he pursued his own researches into the coming new age of magic. “I could use his insight, especially as to the meaning of this last cryptic entry in Fullbrim’s journal.”

  “I took it for evidence of the impending breakdown,” my assistant said, “that sent him flying to the space port.”

  “It may be just that,” I said, “or coming last as it does, it may be the clue that illuminates all the murk that comes before.”

  I regarded the five words, jaggedly scrawled across two pages of the journal in a more agitated hand than had set down the neatly arrayed paragraphs and tables that filled the rest of the substance seeker’s notebooks. The entry read: “A lick and a promise,” and was followed by no fewer than three exclamation points.

  * * *

  Greylag lay some distance down The Spray, sufficiently far that we must pass through two whimsies and cross a great deal of normal space between them. I used the time to pore over Fullbrim’s notes and had my assistant deconstruct them from various perspectives, in case some hermetic code underlay the discontinuities of the material. But we had made no more headway by the time we popped back into reality to find ourselves only three hours at moderate speed from the sphere of controlled space that surrounded the planet. Greylag grew in the forward screen until it revealed itself to be a a cloudy world, much of it swathed in gray and white, though a constant ion flux from its star gave a pinkish coloration to the atmosphere over the poles. We did not land, but orbited at a wide remove while my assistant contacted the Graz Line factor and inquired as to the movements of our quarry. “I am receiving no cooperation from the factor’s integrator,” it informed me.

  “Connect me to the factor,” I said.

  An interval occurred while I regarded the image on my assistant’s projected screen. It was the heraldic symbol of the Graz Line, a fanciful beast with broad wings and a rounded belly that led up to a long neck topped by a horned head. The features of the long-snouted face were set in a simper.

  The interval extended. “Where is the factor?” I said.

  “He is said to be engaged in important affairs,” my assistant reported.

  “As am I,” I said. “Is there provision for an emergency connection?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then make use of it.”

  “The factor’s integrator requires to know the nature of the emergency.”

  “Tell it that it is of an intensely private nature and that the factor will be annoyed–no, say angered–by his integrator’s prying into affairs that do not concern it.”

  “You are being put through,” my assistant said.

  The Graz Line’s beast disappeared and the face of a heavyset man now filled the screen, his hand wiping crumbs from his lips and chin. “Who are you? What is this emergency?”

  “Emergency?” I said. “Your integrator must have misunderstood.” I identified myself and stated my business.

  “We do not divulge information on our passengers to every passing vagabond,” the factor said. I saw his hand, still becrumbed, reaching to sever the connection.

  Had we been on Old Earth I would have mentioned my connection to the Archon, but this far down The Spray, Filidor’s name would have raised no sprouts, as the saying goes. Instead, I said, “Then you will have to explain your lack of diligence when the Graz Line’s directors arrive to survey the ruins and decide who will carry the blame.”

  The hand stopped, the beetling brows drew down into a dark chevron. “Directors? Ruins? What?”

  “Of course,” I said, “it may be that Doldan Fullbrim has targeted some other enterprise for his latest devastating fraud. But then that company’s directors will still want to have words with whoever facilitated the crime. For the record, what was your full name?”

  “Fraud? What fraud?”

  “I have already said too much,” I said. “For all I know, you are yourself belly-deep in the conspiracy. I will disconnect and deal with your head office.”

  “Wait!”

  Moments later, my assistant received Fullbrim’s itinerary. “He has gone on to Mip, with a transfer to Far Grommsgrik.”

  I did not know the latter world. When my assistant had the Gallivant’s integrator pull up Hobey’s Guide to Lesser and Disregarded Worlds, the place turned out to be a dry and rocky little orb on the outer edge of human-settled space, where The Spray met the Great Dark of the intergalactic gulf. “To Far Grommsgrik,” I told the ship, and we left Greylag to its own concerns.

  * * *

  Hobey’s had little to say about Far Grommsgrik. After the usual statistical data on size, orbit and s
pin characteristics, and the composition of the world’s atmosphere, the flow of information tailed off sharply. Under the heading of population, the listing confined itself to the single word: “sparse.” The notation on the world’s economy was even slimmer: “nil.”

  Heeding the paragraph on climate, I chose appropriate clothing, filling the pockets with several species of coinage, some emergency rations and a compact weapon that could emit two types of focused energy or spit tiny darts that exploded once they decided they had penetrated deeply enough. I also put Fullbrim’s research materials into a satchel. Finally, I draped my assistant over my neck and shoulders and said, “Gallivant, open the hatch.”

  Far Grommsgrik’s axial tilt being almost nonexistent, the climate of the region in which I had touched down could not much worsen–which was a relief–but neither would it much improve, which would have been a depressing prospect had I intended to stay. I stepped down into a chill desert of dark rock and gray grit, flat in all directions except west, where an unimpressive sawtooth of naked peaks and crags interrupted the horizon. Between my ship and the mountains lay one of the planet’s few settlements, a huddle of flat-roofed huts fashioned from the same rock that surrounded them. Apparently, on far Grommsgrik, any other building material must be brought from off-world.

  I trudged toward the hamlet, my boots kicking up low clouds of dust that rapidly returned to the ground. Though small, the planet was dense; its gravity exhibited an umistakeable spirit of determination. Its day was also short and, as I had made planetfall after the pale sun this barren rock orbited had already reached the zenith, night would soon descend.

  I had been prepared to bargain for accommodation in whichever hut was the largest, but I was surprised to find that the settlement featured a rudimentary hostelry, identifiable by the words “The Inn” daubed in black paint above its low-linteled doorway. I pushed aside a curtain of heavy felt weighted with stones sewn into its lower edge and found myself in a bare room, its only furnishings a few chairs and tables made from piled-up flat stones, the seats softened by layers of the same felt that covered the doorway. By the light of a few dim lumens–there were no windows–I saw on the far side of the room a slab of waist-high stone, with just enough room behind it for a lean and sinewy man, narrow of shoulder and bald of crown. He regarded me impassively from eyes whose expression advertised that they had already seen as much of life as they cared to, and probably more than was good for their owner.

  As I crossed to him he drained the contents of a small beaker that had been halfway to his lips when I pushed aside the felt. He shook slightly from the impact of whatever was in the cup, then set it down and picked up a large stoneware crock. Cradling it under one arm, he began to ladle a thick, cold gruel into a row of bowls that stood on the counter top. The receptacles appeared to have been ground from the same material that formed the walls, floor and furniture. I performed a respectful salute, named myself, and asked if he was the proprietor of the establishment.

  He replied, without pausing in his work, that he was the keeper and that his name was Froust. Then he said, “You’ll be wanting to go up to the Epiphany. It’s too late today, but you may stay here for the night.”

  “I presume,” I said, “that there will be a modest charge for a room with sanitary facilities.” I looked at the gruel, pale and lumpy. “Is a decent dinner at all possible?”

  “No,” he said, filling the last thick-sided bowl. “We all eat the same here.” He reached beneath the counter and brought up another bowl, blew dust out of it, then ladled out another portion of pottage and pushed it toward me.

  “As for charges,” he continued, “most folk just turn over whatever they have brought with them, in return for being provided for in perpetuity.”

  I let my face show a natural alarm. “You strip your customers of all that they possess? How do they afford passage off the planet?”

  “They no longer require passage,” he said, “and have no further need for anything else that wealth can buy.”

  The words should have been said in a sinister tone, betokening that here was one of those madmen sometimes to be found running far-out-of-the-way hostelries, conscripting their hapless guests as unwilling players in disturbed dramas that invariably climaxed in spurting blood and carved flesh. But the only emotion I could detect in the fellow was a bottomless sadness.

  “You have leaped too far,” I said, “and landed on a conclusion that will not bear the weight. I have no plans to go up to the Epiphany, whatever that may be, and I do not propose to remain here any longer than my duties require.”

  Confusion spread across his unanimated face then slowly gave way to a dawning comprehension. “You’re not a seeker after substance,” he said.

  “No, though I am a seeker after one such, a man named Doldan Fullbrim. Have you seen him?”

  “We find no great need for names here. Would he have been dropped off by a Graz packet a few days back?”

  “He was last known to be on his way here on a Graz ship.” I gave a brief description.

  “He’s the one, then,” Froust said.

  “Where is he now?”

  The man consulted some inner timetable. “Well,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “he arrived, like you, late in the day. That would have been three days ago. The next morning, he set off for the Epiphany. He looked fit enough to have reached it before night, so he would have had his encounter then or early in the following morning, depending on what he felt he had to do before confronting the experience. It usually takes them longer to find their way down. Thus he may reappear sometime tomorrow. If he does not come before noon, I will go out and find him.”

  I looked toward the doorway. Despite the heavy weights sewn into the hem of the curtain, the thick fabric was being rippled by a brisk wind that had sprung up with the fall of dark. “I am minded to go look for him now,” I said.

  “You must not do that now. The path is dangerous in the dark.”

  “I have a compact space ship.”

  “You will find nowhere to land it. The slope is sleep.”

  “You do not recommend going on foot?”

  “No, the night air is chill. Ice forms after sunset.”

  “But Fullbrim is exposed to the elements.”

  “He will not notice.”

  I waited for him to add some further remark that would dilute the cryptic pall that obscured large parts of our conversation but he said no more on the subject of my quarry. Instead he declared a need to distribute the gruel and, lining his forearms with several bowls, he set off for an inner archway that led into an unlit space.

  I followed and watched. As he stepped through the opening, another dim lumen activated itself in a low-ceilinged corridor beyond. To either side of the short hallway were more dark doorways, low and narrow, as if the unseen rooms behind them were little larger than the kind of cells that would have gratified the most ascetic of contemplatives. I heard a faint sound of sobbing. Before each of the openings, the innkeeper set a bowl of gruel then returned toward the common room. Before he exited the hallway, causing the lumen to extinguish its cheerless light, I saw an emaciated hand emerge from one of the little cells then draw the bowl before it into the deeper darkness.

  Back behind his slab of a counter, Froust arrayed more bowls and filled them as he had the first round. Then he brought up from beneath the slab a pair of wide and shallow baskets suspended from a wooden yoke. He filled the baskets with the bowls, lifted the yoke to his shoulders and went out the front door. As he pushed aside the felt curtain, a stark wind took brief possession of the common room. The warming function of my clothing immediately activated, but the tips of my ungloved fingers stung from the cold. I wondered how Doldan Fullbrim was faring, somewhere out among the crags.

  The innkeeper came back with his panniers empty save for one bowl. “You seem to have miscounted,” I said, though I doubted he had done so.

  He tipped the bowl’s contents back into the crock and said,
“A man in one of the far cabins has completed his experience.” His eyes lost focus as he regarded some inner vision.

  I sought to question him as to the nature of the experience Fullbrim had apparently come seeking. I also wanted to know what the Epiphany was. But my host was in no mood for talk. He pushed the bowl of gruel in my direction again, and indicated that I was welcome to pile the chair felts on a table and take my repose. Then, after feeding himself a few mouthfuls from the crock, he went through another curtained doorway behind the counter. Before I had finished the tasteless mush, I heard the sounds of a troubled sleep.

  * * *

  By mid-morning, Fullbrim had not appeared. Froust said, “Some do not make it all the way back before lethargy overtakes them completely. I will go and look for him. You are welcome to come.”

  I indicated the integrator draped over my shoulders. “My assistant can perform long-distance scans,” I said.

  “No need. There is but one path up and back.” He dressed himself in several layers of mismatched garments, chose a stout staff from several that were stacked in a corner, and offered another to me, saying, “The way is steep in places,” and then we set off.

  A chill breeze rolled down the slopes, though it lacked the bite of last night’s wind. After a few dozen steps my calf muscles began to complain of the effects of the higher gravity, but I ignored the discomfort. We traveled in silence a fair distance, while I waited to see if Froust would volunteer any more information as to where Fullbrim had been making for and what he would have found there. But the man’s perspective was turned inwards, even as he trod the rough path. Finally I said, “What do the seekers find up there?”

  He glanced my way only a moment before averting his eyes, but I thought to see a look of guilt and shame in his aspect. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have never ascended all the way to the Epiphany.”