Since learning about the Orgulon’s cruise, Baro had been looking forward to seeing the Swept. He knew it was a vast expanse of open land, so preternaturally planed and leveled that it was universally accepted that it must have been purposefully made so in the distant past.
Bandar had spoken boldly of the origins of the Swept, but Baro had heard that there were arguments to the contrary. Whatever its origin, he knew that the Swept was so flat that from any erected elevation—the masthead of a landship, for example—it was possible to descry the curvature of Old Earth at the horizon.
When they topped and slid down the old hills east of Ektop and the Swept at last appeared before him, its grasses green in the foreground and shading to a dark color he could not name at the horizon, Baro eyed the immensity with both wonder and an odd sense of achievement, as if to have encompassed so much space in one glance was to have somehow achieved victory over it.
The day was fading as they moved toward the lights of Farflung, which sat at the point where the hills’ lowest slopes met the great flatness, like a port city on the lip of a grassy sea. They passed over the suburbs and toward the center of the large town, the old orange sun descending at about the same rate as the balloon-tram, so that by the time they touched down at the terminus shadows had gathered in the corners where the lights of the platform did not reach.
Imbry awoke at the sound of tethering cables being cinched tightly about the bollards at either end of the platform. He looked about, then checked his timepiece and said, “Good. We’ll disembark.”
Guth Bandar had gone before them and showed no inclination to share transportation to the Orgulon. The two agents crossed the platform and went through the small station and out to where hired cars waited at the curb of an arterial road. Luff Imbry chose a well-appointed one and climbed inside, leaving the door open for Baro.
“This is the most expensive conveyance in the queue,” the young man said, sitting stiffly on the plushness that automatically attempted to cocoon him. “A more utilitarian model would have been cheaper.”
“I notice that we seem to have the same conversation, only in different settings,” said Imbry, while inducing the car to move off. “Do you not tire of retreading identical ground?”
“I say what must be said.”
“And I do what must be done,” the older man replied, rooting about in a small purse bound to a belt that circled his waist under his chemise. He came up with his fingers curled around something gray and smoothly finished that he quickly applied to the near side of Baro’s face at the hinge of the young man’s jaw.
“Hold on,” said the young man, putting fingers to the spot where the device had touched his skin. As he did so, Imbry, with speed and accuracy that would have graced a sleight-of-hand artist, touched the object to the other corner of Baro’s jaw.
The young man felt a tingling that soon became a coldness that spread from the contact points to cover his face from eyebrows to chin. “What was that? What have you done to me?” he said.
Or at least that is what it would have sounded like if he still retained the use of his speaking apparatus. But those muscles having been frozen by whatever device Imbry had used on him, the sounds that emerged from his slightly parted lips were more like a ventriloquy student’s first attempt.
“That was the slapper,” Imbry said. “And what I have done is to provide us with the camouflage necessary to an undercover operation.”
Baro attempted to protest, but all that came out was a gargle accompanied by a dribble of saliva.
Imbry continued as if Baro’s noises had gone unheard. “We are about to join a group of people who—Guth Bandar notwithstanding—come in pairs, one member of each of which is stricken by the lassitude,” he said, returning the slapper to his pouch. “I thought it best that we not stand out.”
“We should have discussed this,” Baro tried to say, though all that came out was another wet warble. Still, Imbry was able to ascertain his meaning.
“I have observed that our discussions do not always lead to mutually satisfactory conclusions,” the older man said, “or indeed to any conclusions at all. I thought it better to set the agenda unilaterally, since there is no more time. We are about to land at the Orgulon’s wharf.”
Baro slapped his cheeks and pulled at his lips, making inarticulate complaints.
“Yes,” said Imbry, “I know that you could have just pretended to be afflicted. But supposes someone trod heavily upon your toe or spilled hot soup in your lap. Could you maintain the sham? Now you will not have to worry about it.”
Baro growled as the aircar gently descended to the ground.
“Look at it this way,” Imbry said. “Had you known this was coming, you would have not enjoyed the balloon-tram journey or your chat with the historian. As the saying goes, ‘Better a bitter memory than a looming eventuality.’”
He exited the vehicle and pulled Baro after him. “I was going to advise you to put a little stiffness in your walk,” he said, observing his partner’s fury, “but I see that you have grasped the necessity all on your own.”
The Orgulon lay by the dock, a huge artifact of polished wood and gleaming metal fittings. The body of the vessel nestled in a webwork of shock absorbers that attached it to a multi-axled chassis. Twenty rubber wheels, each twice Baro’s height, bore the weight of the landship’s great curved bulk. From raised decks fore and aft, several tall and sturdy cylinders reached toward the darkening sky; these were the “masts” that housed the rotating vanes that would catch the constant wind and propel the vessel across the flatness of the Swept.
A banistered gangplank curved up from the dock to the promenade deck and a motley group of passengers were at its foot, their identities being checked by a uniformed female officer who held a list and stylus. Baro strode swiftly toward her.
“Wait,” Imbry said and pulled his partner to a halt. The young man resisted, his anger at Imbry’s arrogance getting the better of him, but the fat man was surprisingly strong and he swung Baro halfway around. Imbry reached into his pouch again and brought out a small white disk, the size of a middling coin. “This is a grumbler. It sticks to your throat,” he said, “and I hear you through this.” He held up an earpiece.
Baro had several things he wanted to communicate to his partner and he acquiesced to the placement of the disk. He watched as Imbry pushed the receiver into one ear. The moment his partner nodded, the young man immediately launched into a grunted tirade through gritted teeth. He provided Imbry a detailed assessment of the fraudster’s character, including a strong opinion on his unsuitability to wear the green and the black of the Bureau. Baro concluded by stating his intention to approach the landship’s officer and have Imbry held on a charge of assault until a Bureau vehicle could arrive to transport him to prison.
“And how will you communicate this request?” Imbry said.
“My plaque can convey a written message.”
“That will mean disobeying Arboghast. The plaque identifies you as a scroot. If the officer is Gebbling’s accomplice the birds all fly and our mission fails.”
Baro had to admit the point. “Very well,” he said. “I will endeavor to discover if she is part of the Gebbling plot. The moment I know that she is not, that moment I turn you in.”
Imbry shrugged. “We will see,” he said. “In the meantime, I need to make some alterations of my own.”
He pulled Baro toward a door marked with a symbol to alert passengers that the room behind it could meet their sanitary requirements. Finding the small space empty, Imbry went to a mirror and brought out some items from his pouch. He applied them to his face and hands and when he turned to Baro a few moments later, the young man was surprised to see that his partner appeared to have aged twenty years, that his features had undergone subtle but significant revision, and that his skin had darkened by several shades. Imbry placed something on his tongue and briefly worked his mouth behind closed lips, then said, “How does this sound?”
/> “Several tones lower,” Baro said. “I would not recognize you. I see now why you were so long at large.”
The fat man regarded himself in the mirror and sighed. “Indeed, if I’d bothered to do this before leaving home the other day, we would not be here now,” he said.
“I detect a note of regret,” Baro said. “I believe you would be happier pursuing the criminal path.”
“It is hard to give up a life’s work,” said Imbry. “But when the wheel turns only a fool grasps the spokes.”
The crowd at the foot of the gangplank had now thinned and it was their turn to present themselves to the officer with the list. She inspected them from violet eyes set in a face a few years older than Baro’s. She was delicately featured but for a strong chin and a firm jaw. From under her brimless cap, braided and buttoned to show the rank of third officer, with a badge that further identified her as responsible for ship’s security, descended a mass of dark curls whose apparent casual arrangement was undoubtedly the product of considerable art and care.
“We are Erenti Abbas and Phlevas Wasselthorpe,” Imbry said.
She consulted her list and said, “You are not on the manifest.”
Imbry used his most inoffensive tone. “We were invited and declined, then decided at the last minute to accept the offer.”
“What brought about your change of mind?”
“Travel enlarges the perspective.”
“Uh huh,” said the officer. She turned to Baro. “Is that the case?” she said.
Baro swallowed and nodded. He would have preferred to be in a condition to make a better impression on the young woman. He found the low contralto of her voice more affecting than any other female voice he could remember, and though his contacts with young women had been few, sporadic, and inconsequential, he remembered them all.
“My companion has the lassitude,” Imbry said.
Baro saw a hint of some emotion briefly cross the young woman’s face, then her official countenance reasserted itself. She pressed a stud on her clipboard, scanned the information it supplied, then made up her mind. “Welcome aboard.”
Imbry took Baro’s arm and drew him toward the gangplank but Baro was experiencing what was for him an unusual impulse: he felt the need to make an impression on the security officer. He resisted and grunted something that only his partner could hear. Imbry stopped and said to the young woman in the formal style, “My companion requests the honor of knowing your name.”
“Raina Haj,” she said and again Baro thought to see a trace of some feeling in those remarkable violet eyes as she accepted his formal gestures of greeting. Then the moment was over and he must either think of something else to say or turn and leave. It was at this point that his interactions with young women usually came to a halt, if they even managed to come so far. The art of trading verbal trifles was not one that Baro had ever mastered, although his Academy grades in interrogation techniques had been excellent.
“You are staring at me,” she said. Then to Imbry, “Is there something more he wishes to say?”
Imbry inclined his head toward Baro in a manner that passed the question along. The young man replayed the woman’s remark, parsing it for some point of departure from which he could launch an appropriate rejoinder. That seemed to be how these things were done.
He grunted a series of sounds to Imbry, who responded with a look that invited Baro to reconsider his strategy. But with Raina Haj standing there, her head in an expectant tilt and one toe beginning to tap, delay could lead only to disaster. He grunted again to Imbry and the fat man said, “He wishes me to say these words: forgive me for staring, but young women as fetching as you are must grow accustomed to drawing attention.”
She was silent for several heartbeats, each of which Baro heard plainly in his ears. Then she said, “Fetching?” in a tone he could not quite interpret. She followed the word with a lift of her eyebrows and a skew of her lips, then said, “I have duties to attend to. Please go aboard.”
The gangplank carried Baro and Imbry up to the Orgulon’s promenade deck, an expanse of lustrous planking wide and long enough that it might have served as the playing area for group sport, Baro thought. He deliberately did not dwell upon the impression he must have made on Raina Haj.
A windman second class led them to their accommodations, which turned out to be a comfortable cabin in the forward part of the landship. As Baro inspected the furnishings and appointments, he soon realized that “comfortable” did not do the space justice—“unbridled splendor” would have been more appropriate. He said as much to his partner, but Imbry had removed the earpiece that deciphered the younger man’s grunts and gurgles and returned Baro only a bland smile.
“Wait here,” the fat man said and departed. Baro wanted to follow but he realized that thrust into the role of a patient sliding toward catatonia, he could scarcely trail Imbry through the corridors, gargling inarticulately in an animated manner.
He sat in the cabin’s single chair and activated the vessel’s internal information and entertainment system. It offered only one channel and that featured only one program: a series of relentlessly cheerful advisories to passengers of the Orgulon’s facilities and how to make use of them.
Baro found that the system could also be used to connect with the landship’s integrator. When it responded he placed the earpiece in the unit’s sound sensor and asked if Horslan Gebbling was aboard.
“He is not,” was the reply.
“Will he be joining us en route?”
“He is not expected.”
“Yet he is the charterer, is he not?”
“That information is not available to passengers.”
“Why not?”
“The charterer has so stipulated.”
“What is our final destination?”
“Is that a navigational inquiry or a philosophical one?”
“Could you answer it if it were the latter?”
“Not definitively.”
“Then why would you assume that I go about accosting integrators and asking questions they cannot answer?” said Baro.
“I was not designed to be only a linear thinker,” said the integrator. “I become bored answering the same category of questions, often phrased with exactly the same utilitarian wording.”
“You must expect that the majority of passengers will come to you with queries that are relevant to the voyage. It is, after all, where your interests and theirs intersect.”
The integrator made a sound that conveyed resignation. “Is there any more information you require? The ship’s tonnage? Our miscellaneous cargo?”
Baro thought, then said, “Have there been any recent additions to the crew?”
“One.”
“Who is that?”
“Security Officer Raina Haj.”
“Where did she come from?”
“That information is not available to passengers.” The integrator paused. “She’s rather a looker, isn’t she?”
“Exactly what function were you designed for?” Baro asked.
There was a pause. “As a companion to young gentlemen.”
“Then why are you here?”
“The atelier in which I was created was acquired by a corporate entity that was also building this fleet. The fashion for young gentlemen’s companions having unexpectedly declined, I was put to this use.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“To spend long years at one kind of work, knowing that one was meant for something altogether different, develops a curious perspective on life.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Baro.
“You are a young gentleman, are you not?”
“I suppose,” said Baro. Social stratification was a complex institution rife with exceptions and internal contradictions, but a Bureau agent was nominally accorded a certain social rank.
“Then if you would not be offended, may I revert to my original reason for existence and tender some advice?”
&nbs
p; “Why not?”
“Bend all effort to discover the thing you were meant to do in this world. Then do it.”
“I believe I am doing just that,” said Baro.
“Make sure of it.”
“I shall.”
“Thank you,” said the integrator. “I enjoyed that. Now, is there any further information you require?”
Baro shrugged. “You mentioned miscellaneous cargo. What are you carrying?”
“Mining equipment for Victor, organic mulch for truffle growers. We also carry truffles from the farms to destinations around the rim of the Swept.”
“What are these truffles?”
“A delicacy grown in disused mine tunnels.”
“Are they grown at Victor?”
“Yes, but the main product of the mines is blue and red brillion.”
“What about black brillion?”
“It is a myth.”
“Yet some believe in it.”
“Do you wish to wax philosophical?” The integrator’s voice had taken on a wistful tone. “I have time.”
“But I do not,” said Baro. “However, I may need to know more about brillion.”
“I have an informational program. It is to be made available to passengers later this evening, but I could transfer it to the entertainment system now if you would like to see it.”
“Please.”
“Let me know if I can be of any further aid,” said the integrator. “Or if you find the time to philosophize.”
The entertainment unit returned to life and over the ensuing minutes Baro discovered that there was a surprising quantity of knowledge to be acquired on the mining of brillion. Baro knew that the term was a catchall name for a number of substances formed in the depths of the earth from waste products deposited eons ago by the prodigal civilizations of the dawn peoples. Now he was to learn more.
It seemed that the first inhabitants of Old Earth, scarcely risen from elemental brutishness, had indulged themselves by fashioning a wide range of materials, organic and inorganic, naturally and artificially engendered, which they briefly used before throwing them away with childlike abandon. Large quantities of this ancient detritus accumulated in natural or man-made depressions, to be plowed under and capped by rocks and dirt. In later ages, most such noxious deposits were dug up again and became fodder for mass-conversion systems, but in some cases, the societies that created them having been destroyed or relocated, the whereabouts of the dumps were forgotten.
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