Fantasy

by Rich Horton

  And now, as I stand here at the ship’s rail watching End Harbor slip out of sight, I can let myself remember the feel of the pillow in my hands pressing down on the old man’s face, and the way he had jerked and shuddered as his body fought to breathe. The sea air is sharp with spray, and the voices of my new shipmates are loud with fear and hope, for, sailing before the wind, we do not know what world’s ocean we will see by the light of tomorrow’s sun.

  THE GIST HUNTER, by Matthew Hughes

  When confronted by the unpredictability of existence, I have a tendency to wax philosophical. It is not a universally appreciated component of my complex nature.

  “It is unsettling,” I said to my integrator, “to have one’s most fundamental assumptions overthrown in a trice, to find that what one has always known to be true is simply not true at all.”

  The integrator’s reply was too muffled to be intelligible, but from its tone I deduced that my assistant took my comment as a belaboring of the obvious.

  “The effects go beyond the psychological and into the physical,” I continued. “I am experiencing a certain queasiness of the insides and even a titch of sensory disorder.” The symptoms had begun during our recent transit of my demonic colleague’s continuum, a necessity imposed upon us after we were confined to an oubliette by an unworthy client, who now languished there himself, doubtless savoring the irony of the exchange.

  My complaint was rewarded with another grunt from my assistant, accompanied by a sharp twitch of its long, prehensile tail. The creature perched on a far corner of my workroom table with its glossy furred back to me, its narrow shoulders hunched and its triangular, golden eyed face turned away. Its small hands were busy in front of it at some activity I could not see.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  The motion of its hands ceased. “Nothing,” it said.

  I decided not to pursue the matter. There were larger con­cerns ­already in view. “What do you think has happened to you?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” it said, looking back at me over its shoulder. I found its lambent gaze another cause of disquietude and moved my eyes away.

  I reclined in the wide and accepting chair in which I was accustomed to think long thoughts, and considered the beast that had been my integrator. Its hands began to move again and when one of them rose to smooth the fur on one small, rounded ear I realized that it was reflexively grooming itself.

  Not long before it had possessed neither the rich, dark fur that was being stroked and settled nor the supple fingers that performed the operation. It had been instead a device that I had built years before, after I had worked out the direction of my career. I had acquired standard components and systems, then tuned and adjusted them to meet my need: a research assistant who could also act as an incisive interlocutor when I wished to discuss a case or test the value of evidence. Such devices are useful to freelance discriminators, of which I, Henghis Hapthorn, am the foremost of my era.

  I had also fashioned a small carrying case into which the integrator could be decanted for traveling and which could be worn around my neck like a plump scarf or a stuffed axolotl. It was in that casing that my assistant had accompanied me on a brief transit through another dimension. We had been carried through the other continuum by an entity who resided there, a being who occasionally visited our universe to engage me in intellectual contests. Though I did not care for the term, the common description of my visitor was “demon.”

  When we emerged from the demon’s portal into my workroom I found that the integrator and its carrying case had together been transformed into a creature that resembled a combination of feline and ape, and that I had an unscratchable itch deep in my inner being.

  I had always referred questions of identity and taxonomy to my assistant, so I asked it, “What kind of creature do you think you are?”

  It responded as it always had when I posed too broad a question, by challenging me to clarify my line of inquiry. “The question,” it said, “invites answers that range from the merely physical to the outright spiritual.”

  “Considering the degree of change that has happened to you, ‘merely physical’ is a contradiction in terms,” I said. “But let us start there and leave the spiritual for a less startling occasion.”

  Instead of answering, it took on an abstracted look for a moment, then advised me that it was receiving an incoming communication from a philanthropically inclined magnate named Turgut Therobar. “He wishes to speak with you.”

  “How are you doing that?” I asked.

  The golden eyes blinked. “Doing what?”

  “Receiving a communication.”

  “I do not know,” it said. “I have always received messages from the connectivity grid. Apparently that function continues.”

  “But you had components, elements, systems designed for that purpose. Now you have paws and a tail.”

  “How kind of you to remind me of my shortcomings. What shall I say to Turgut Therobar?”

  Ordinarily I would have been interested to hear from Therobar. We had met once or twice, though we had never exchanged more than formal salutes. He was one of the better known magnates of the City of Olkney; unlike most of his peers, however, he was renowned for charitable works and it was alleged that he entertained a warm opinion of humankind in general. I assumed he was seeking to enlist me in some eleemosynary cause. “Say that I am unavailable and will return his call,” I said.

  The creature’s expression again briefly took on an inward aspect, as if it were experiencing a subtle movement of inner juices, then it said, “Done.”

  “Again,” I said, “how are you doing that?”

  Again, it did not know. “How do you digest an apple?” it asked me. “Do you oversee each stage in the sequence of chemical reactions that transforms the flesh of the fruit into the flesh of Henghis Hapthorn?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Then if you do not introspect regarding your own inner doings, why would you expect it of me? After all, you did not design me to examine my own processes, but to receive and transmit and to integrate data at your order. These things I do, as I have always done them.”

  “I also designed you to be curious.”

  “I have temporarily placed my curiosity on a high shelf and removed the stepladder,” it said. “I prefer not to wrestle with unanswerable questions just now.”

  “So you have acquired a capacity for preferences?” I said. “I do not recall ever instilling that quality into your matrix.”

  The yellow eyes seemed to grow larger. “If we are going to dwell on preferences, you might recall that my bias, strongly stated, was to avoid undergoing this metamorphosis.”

  I cleared my throat. “The past has evanesced, never to be reconstituted,” I quoted. “Let us seize the firmness of the now.”

  My assistant’s small fingered hands opened and closed. I had the impression it would have enjoyed firmly seizing something as a precursor to doing noticeable damage. But I pressed on. “What do you think you have become?” I said.

  “The question lacks specificity,” it replied.

  I appealed to my demonic colleague. He had remained connected to the portal that allowed him to interact with this continuum after we had returned from resolving the case of Sigbart Sajessarian. But the transdimensional being offered little assistance.

  “This is a question of form, as opposed to essence. Such questions are difficult for me,” he said. “To my perceptions, calibrated as they are to the prevailing conditions of my own continuum, the integrator is much as it always was. Indeed, I have to tune my senses to a radically different rationale even to notice that it has changed. It does what it always did: it inquires, coordinates, integrates and communicates; these functions are the nub of its existence. Why should it matter in what form it achieves its purposes? I would prefer to talk of more seemly things.”

  “And yet matter it does,” I said.

  “I agree,” said the integrator.
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  The demon, which manifested itself as various arrangements of light and color in its portal on the wall of my workroom, now assumed a pattern that I had come to recognize through experience as the equivalent of when a human being is unwilling to meet one’s gaze. “What are you not telling us?” I asked.

  He displayed a purple and deep green swirl shot through with swooshes of scintillating silver. I was fairly sure the pattern signaled demonic embarrassment. Under normal circumstances good manners would have restrained me from pressing for a response, but at the moment normal circumstances had leapt from the window and taken flight to parts unknown. “Speak,” I said.

  The silver swooshes were now edged with sparks of crimson but I insisted.

  Finally the demon said, “I have not been entirely candid with you.”

  “Indeed?” I said, and waited for more.

  “I told you that my motives for seeking to observe your realm were curiosity and the relief of boredom.”

  “You did. Was that not the truth?”

  “Let us say it was a shade of the truth.”

  “I believe it is time for the full spectrum,” I said.

  A moment of silver and verdegris ensued, then the demon said, “This is somewhat embarrassing.”

  “As embarrassing as possessing an integrator that habitually picks at itself?” From the corner of my eye I saw the tiny fingers freeze.

  “I seem to feel a need to groom my fur,” it said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “I do not know, but it gives comfort.”

  “I did not design you to need comforting.”

  “Let us accept that I am no longer what you designed me to be.”

  The demon’s presence was fading from the portal. “Wait,” I said, turning back to him. “Where are you going?”

  “An urgent matter claims my attention,” he said. “Besides, I thought you and the integrator might prefer privacy for your argument.”

  “We are not arguing.”

  “It appeared to me to be an argument.”

  “Indeed?” I said. “Was the appearance one of form or of essence?”

  “Now I think you are seeking an argument with me,” the demon said.

  I thought of a rejoinder, then discarded the impulse to wield it. My insides performed an indescribable motion. “I believe I am upset,” I said.

  “You’re upset?” said the furry thing on my table.

  “Very well,” I snapped, “we are all upset, each in accordance with his essential nature. The atmosphere of the room swims with a miasma of embarrassment, intestinal distress and a craving for comfort.”

  I detected another flash of unease in the demon’s display and probed for the cause. “What are you thinking now?”

  The demon said, “I should perhaps have mentioned that through this portal that connects my continuum to yours there can be a certain amount of, shall we say, leakage.”

  “Leakage?”

  “Nothing serious,” he said, “but lengthy exposure followed by your complete though transitory corporeal presence in my realm may have had some minor effects.”

  “My integrator has become some sort of twitching familiar,” I said. “I am not sure that effect can be called minor.”

  The integrator murmured a comment I did not catch, but it did not sound cheery.

  It occurred to me that my demonic colleague might be diverting the discussion toward a small embarrassment as a means of avoiding addressing a larger one. “But we were about to hear a confession,” I said.

  “Rather, call it an explanation,” said the demon.

  “I shall decide what to call it after I’ve heard it.”

  The swirls in the frame flashed an interesting magenta. I suspected that my colleague was controlling his own emotional response. Then he said, “My motive was indeed curiosity, as I originally averred, but let us say that it was…well, a certain species of curiosity.”

  I experienced insight. “Was it was the kind of curiosity that moves a boy to apply his eye to a crack in a wall in order to spy on persons engaged in intimate behavior?” I said. “The breed of inquisitiveness we call prurience?”

  More silver and green. “Just so.”

  “So to your continuum this universe constitutes a ribald peep­show, a skirt to be peeked under?”

  “Your analogies are loose but not inapt.”

  “You had best explain,” I said.

  The explanation was briefly and reluctantly given, the demon finding it easier to unburden himself if I looked away from his portal. I turned my chair and regarded a far corner of the workroom while he first reminded me that in no other continuum than ours did objects exist separately from the symbols that represented them.

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “Here, the map is not the territory, whereas in other realms the two are indissoluble.”

  “Indeed.” He continued, “We deal in essences. Forms are…”

  He appeared to be searching for a word again. I endeavored to supply it. “Naughty?”

  “To some of us, delightfully so.” Even though I was looking into the far corner my peripheral vision caught the burst of incarnadined silver that splashed across his portal. “It is, of course, a harmless pastime, providing one does not overindulge.”

  “Ah,” I said, “so it can become addictive?”

  “Addictive is a strong term.”

  I considered my integrator and said, “It seems an appropriate occasion for strong language.”

  With reluctance, the demon said, “For some of us, an appreciation of forms can become, let us say, a predominant pastime.”

  “Is that the common term in your dimension for ‘all-consuming obsession’?”

  He made no spoken response but I assumed that the mixture of periwinkle-blue spirals and black starbursts were his equivalent of guilty acquiescence. I could not keep a note of disappointment out of my voice. “I thought the attraction of visiting here was the contests of wit and imagination in which you and I engage.”

  “They were a splendid bonus!”

  “Hmm,” I said. I had a brief, unwelcome emotion as I contemplated being profanely peered at by a demon who derived titillation from my form. Then I realized that anyone’s form—indeed, probably the form of my chair or the waste receptacle in the corner—would have had the same salacious effect. I decided it would be wise not to dwell on the matter. “To move the conversation to a practical footing,” I said, “how do we return my assistant to his former state?”

  “I am not sure that we can.”

  The integrator had been surreptitiously scratching behind one of its small, round ears. Now it stopped and said, “I am receiving ­another communication from Turgut Therobar,” it said. “He has added an ‘urgent’ rider to his signal.”

  “You seem to be functioning properly,” I said, “at least as a communicator.”

  “Perhaps the demon is correct,” said the integrator, “and essence trumps form. My functions were the essence for which you designed and built me.”

  I thought to detect an undercurrent of resentment, but I ignored it and homed in on the consequences of my assistant’s change. “I have spent decades dealing comfortably with forms. Must I now throw all that effort aside and master essences?”

  “Turgut Therobar continues to call,” said my assistant. “He claims distress and pleads plaintively.”

  So the magnate was not calling to enlist me in some good cause. It sounded as if he required the services of a private discriminator. My insides remained troubled, but it occurred to me that a new case might be just the thing to take my mind off the unsettling change in my assistant.

  “Put through the call,” I said.

  Therobar’s voice sounded from the air, as had all previous communications through my assistant. The magnate dispensed with the punctilio of inquiries after health and comparisons of opinions on the weather that were proper between persons of respectable though different classes who have already been introduced. “I am accuse
d of murder and aggravated debauchery,” he said.

  “Indeed,” I said. “And are you guilty?”

  “No, but the Bureau of Scrutiny has taken me into custody.”

  “I will intercede,” I said. “Transmit the coordinates to my integrator.” I signaled to the integrator to break the connection.

  The creature blinked and said, “He is in the scroot holding facility at Thurloyn Vale.”

  “Hmm,” I said, then, “contact Warhanny.”

  A moment later the hangdog face of Colonel Investigator Brustram Warhannny appeared in the air above my table and his doleful voice said, “Hapthorn. What’s afoot?”

  “Much, indeed,” I said. “You have snatched up Turgut Thero­bar.”

  His elongated face assumed an even more lugubrious mien. “There are serious charges. Blood and molestation of the innocent.”

  “These do not jibe with my sense of Turgut Therobar,” I said. “His name is a byword for charity and well doing.”

  “Not all bywords are accurate,” Warhanny said. “I have even heard that some say that ‘scroot’ ought to be a byword for ‘paucity of imagination coupled with clumping pudfootery.’”

  “I can’t imagine who would say such a thing,” I said, while marveling at how my words, dropped into a private conversation the week before, had made their way to the Colonel Investigator’s sail-like ears.

  “Indeed?” he said. “As for Therobar, there have been several disappearances in and around his estate this past month, and outrageous liberties have been taken with the daughter of a tenant. All lines of investigation lead unerringly to the master.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “I counsel you to exert more effort,” Warhanny said. “And where you find resistance, plod your way through it.”

  “Turgut Therobar has retained me to intercede on his behalf,” I said.