Black Brillion

by Matthew Hughes

  Imbry looked impressed. “So you’re not all softness and sunlight.”

  “The Bureau encourages a degree of assertiveness in its investigators.” Baro turned from the window. In its reflection he had seen Monlaurion rising to his feet.

  “Honorables and distinctions,” the artist said, in a voice that Baro thought was still charged with genuine emotion, “and new-made friends …”

  As he spoke, the chanting and the buzz of conversation both tailed away and the room turned as one toward him.

  “ … this has been a wondrous and, I must say, unexpected blessing,” Monlaurion continued. “I cannot explain it. I will not try to explain it. It is enough that my Flix has been returned to me whole again.”

  “He speaks well for someone caught unawares by circumstances,” Imbry said in Baro’s ear.

  “Perhaps. Let us listen.”

  Monlaurion went on, “When the lassitude first struck her, I promised myself that if we were spared I would forgo the artist’s life, the routs and parties, the openings and galas. We would repair to some country town and rusticate the years away, living modestly.”

  Baro, watching Flix, thought that this news came as a surprise to the actress, and not a pleasant one. But the young woman recovered quickly and reached up to place a hand on the artist’s arm. “Let us not bore these good people with the humdrum of our domestic life,” she said.

  “Pah!” said Monlaurion. He put his hand affectionately on hers. “Let the world know: I will devote the rest of my days to our happy tranquility.”

  “We will talk about it later,” Flix said. She stood up. “It is warm in here. I would like to go out on deck.”

  Monlaurion smiled. “As you wish. But I am determined. Even before the lassitude I was planning a change. My images no longer command the attention they once did, and I believe it is time I accepted an artist’s fate. I have picked out a place for us a little distance from the town of Miggles. It has a duck pond.”

  Baro saw a small vertical line appear between Flix’s eyes. He doubted that she desired a bucolic existence built around the comings and goings of barnyard fowl. He watched the two set off across the dining room, Flix’s mouth working constantly just below the level of Monlaurion’s ear.

  Baro’s training reasserted itself before the pair had covered half the distance to the door and he cast his eyes about the crowd. In some faces he saw hope battling with skepticism, in others the optimism was unalloyed. Ule Gazz and a few others were again chanting the fah, sey, opah, while the unrelieved lassitude victims sat as blank as mushrooms.

  There were two exceptions. One was Mirov Kosmir. The first officer watched the departure of the imagist and his companion with an expression that Baro could not interpret. Then he stood and made formal gestures to those around him, saying something about needing to go on deck to “tack the ship.”

  The other exception was Raina Haj. While Kosmir watched Monlaurion and Flix depart, the security officer was watching Kosmir. At some point she must have felt Baro’s gaze upon her, because she turned her head and for the second time her eyes collided with his.

  With Monlaurion and Flix gone, the buzz of conversation in the dining room swelled and spirited debates broke out. Baro said to Imbry, “The artist and his friend are the most likely to be Gebbling’s confederates, but there may be others. While the clingfast does its work, we should attempt to identify any shills. Let us circulate.”

  The two agents moved about the room discreetly, eavesdropping on the passengers. Most appeared to accept the healing as genuine, though the habitually skeptical tried to remind the enthusiasts that a single feather made a poor bird. He noted that Trig Helvic, the magnate, sat alone with his afflicted daughter Erisme, staring dully into the middle distance, ignoring all efforts to draw him into discussion.

  At some tables, debate became intemperate. The most vociferous of the believers was the white-haired woman with the blue-fire gems glittering in her towering coiffure. Grim as a tombstone, she stabbed a bony finger at Guth Bandar, sitting opposite, while repeating over and over, “You have seen, you have seen.”

  Bandar finally managed to be heard. He admitted that he had indeed seen what all had seen, at which she folded her arms and began to repeat a new slogan—“There’s nothing more to say”—frustrating the historian’s attempts to suggest that there was indeed something more to be said: that seeing and being are not inevitably connected.

  The woman now began to clap her hands rhythmically to a chant of fah, sey, opah that was taken up by others around the table. The small man lifted and dropped his thin shoulders and turned away. Seeing Baro, he rose and said hello.

  Baro indicated the stiffness of his jaw and numbness of lip and tongue by poking them with his fingers while making sounds in his throat.

  “You have the lassitude?” the historian said and Baro was touched by the sincere compassion that flooded the man’s face.

  Baro spread his hands and shrugged. At that moment, Luff Imbry joined them. “He is in the early stages,” he told Bandar. “It comes and goes.”

  “You have my sympathies.”

  Baro spoke so that Imbry could hear him through the earpiece and the fat man’s eyes went up in surprise before he relayed the message to Bandar. “My young friend wonders if you would tell him more about the Commons. It has piqued his interest.”

  Bandar rose. “I would be pleased to. It occurs to me that if he can make the tones he might travel the noösphere though the illness confines his limbs.” He looked down at his shirt and continued. “But right now I notice that that fierce woman has transferred a fair quantity of her saliva to my shirtfront. I would like to change and then perhaps we could meet on deck.”

  When the historian left, Imbry said, “Do we have time for such pursuits?”

  “It was an impulse,” Baro said. “Something about that man’s hobby interests me.”

  Imbry said, “Pursue it later. We are supposed to be working.”

  He was right, but Baro could not bring himself to say it. Instead, he said, “Much of what I’m seeing does not mesh with what the Bureau manual says to look for. If Flix and Monlaurion are gull pushers for Gebbling, they ought to have stayed to work the crowd. Instead they went off to be alone. They were even arguing with each other as they left.”

  “Hmm,” said Imbry and scratched his nose. “Let us go to the cabirr where I can speak without being overheard.”

  With the door closed behind them, Baro said, “I saw no one I would identify as an obvious shill.” He did not like to say his next thought, but it was his duty. “Perhaps a more experienced agent would see things I did not.”

  “No,” said Imbry. “There is none more experienced than I. I saw no one working the crowd either.”

  Baro was grateful for that. “And that security officer. She was very interested in Kosmir.”

  Imbry shrugged. “Perhaps he has been embezzling from the ship’s mess fund. We cannot investigate every possible malfeasance.”

  “She is also interested in me.”

  “Is it your habit to flatter yourself?”

  “I mean she noticed that I—and you as well—stand out from the rest of the passengers.”

  “Do not include me,” said Imbry. “I am blending in nicely.”

  “How pleasant for you,” said Baro. “Let us go on deck and see if we can recover the clingfast before Monlaurion retires.”

  When they arrived on the promenade deck, they saw that a few other passengers had also come up, some of the ambulatory ones bringing with them their lassitude-afflicted loved ones. The Orgulon had provided come-alongs, small, free-floating platforms designed for conveniently moving luggage, which had been adapted to carry the stiff forms of the ill.

  The central space was lit by spotlights mounted on the masts fore and aft and angled down toward the promenade deck, but the forecastle and afterdeck were in darkness.

  Baro looked up at the stars and said, “The ship has already tacked. We are on
a new heading, northeast instead of south-east.”

  “I would like to know our actual destination,” Imbry said. “That’s assuming that Gebbling does not intend for us to cruise from hither to yon for some baffling purpose.”

  Guth Bandar came up the forward companionway and joined the two agents.

  “What did you think of our mysterious host’s promises?” Imbry asked the historian.

  “I will be candid,” Bandar said. “Even if I suffered from the lassitude, I would be deeply skeptical of any who claimed a mystic cure.”

  As they spoke they walked about the deck, Baro and Imbry unobtrusively leading the way toward the foredeck where Monlaurion and Flix were dimly visible by the rail, conversing in whispers. Baro wanted to keep an eye on the couple, but now that he was in the presence of the historian he was aware of an even stronger urge to find out what was behind that light-limned door he had earlier seen in his mind’s eye. He grunted a message to Luff Imbry.

  “My young friend would like to know more about the Commons,” the older man said.

  Bandar looked uncomfortable. “I am usually happy to teach,” he said, “but I am concerned about the speed with which he visualized the door and the light this afternoon. Either he has a remarkable ability to focus his mind, or—you’ll forgive my candor—he lives uncomfortably close to the border between sanity and madness.”

  Baro gave an answer for Imbry to relay, but his partner chose to express his own thoughts. “He has his failings,” he said, “and time does not permit us to itemize them all.” He raised a hand to forestall Baro’s energetic grunts. “But I can testify to his capacity for focus. Display a scale to measure intensity of concentration and he will rank somewhere above the maximum.”

  “Well,” said Bandar, pulling his nose as he weighed the question, “it is a crime to turn away a willing and talented student. Certainly, we noönauts do not find ourselves deluged with applicants.” He tapped a small fist into a diminutive palm. “Very well. Let us to it.”

  Baro let Bandar lead him to the bulkhead where the promenade deck met the forecastle. The historian had him sit with his back against the wooden wall and his hands folded in his lap. “This is the traditional posture,” Bandar said, assuming the same position opposite him, so that they sat knee to knee. “Now, close your eyes and voice the tones with me. When the portal appears, tell me. I will talk you through it.”

  Bandar flexed his shoulders and rippled his fingers in a tension-shedding exercise that looked unconscious to Baro. As he did so the historian said, “Some of the arrangements of tones may sound familiar.”

  Baro signaled assent.

  Bandar closed his eyes and Baro did likewise. “We’ll begin with the one we used this afternoon,” the noönaut said, “four descending tones. Let me know when you see the portal rimmed with light.”

  Baro did as he was bid. He needed neither tongue nor lips to make the sounds. Soon the vision he had seen before rose up in his mind, a stout closed door with gleaming handle, its jamb and lintel warmly lit by golden light.

  He grunted.

  “He is there,” said Imbry.

  Baro heard Guth Bandar’s voice, soft in his ear. “Now reach for the handle and sing these tones”—a succession of notes came—“and when the door opens step through and wait for me beyond the threshold.”

  Baro reached and sang. The handle felt smooth and warm in his hand, like old bronze. He turned and pulled and the glow of rosy, golden light became a flood, so bright he could not see beyond. He stepped forward.

  “Wait,” said Guth Bandar. “Wait for the light to fade. More important, wait for me to catch up. You went through like a fourth-level adept.”

  “Where am I?” Baro asked. Here was neither up nor down, forward nor back, but only the glow of gold tinged with crimson. His voice was neither loud nor soft; it was the small calm voice he heard in his thoughts.

  “You are nowhere yet,” said Bandar. “Just rest. It takes me longer to come the Way.”

  The historian’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Then Baro could hear him sounding the tones. Moments later the man made a wordless syllable of satisfaction and said, “There. I am through my own portal.”

  “I do not see you,” said Baro.

  “You will not, you cannot, for a while. Is the glow fading?”

  Baro realized that there was a thinness to the light around him. It faded to yellow, then to an ivory hue and paler still until suddenly it was gone. He could see. “This is odd,” he told Bandar.

  “Where are you?” came the historian’s disembodied voice.

  “In my parents’ house, as it was when I was a boy.” Baro looked around. He was in the large room that overlooked the garden through a wide window. He crossed to look through the glass and saw his father and mother among the rosebushes, she kneeling to trim a dead blossom from its stalk, he watching her with affection.

  “I remember this,” Baro said. “It was the day he …” He watched the scene unfold. His father was in green and black, a bag slung over his shoulder. Now Baro’s mother rose and gave her husband a hug, received a kiss and a pat on her ample hip, and then he was gone through the gate at the foot of the garden. She reached for another deadhead and snipped it off.

  “What am I doing here?” Baro said, turning away. Something was impeding his breath and the back of his throat burned. “This is not the Commons. This is all my own.”

  He heard Bandar speaking. “I am sorry. Of course you do not know that the way to the all is through the singular. Because you found the path so readily, it’s as if you have already mastered the Seven Precepts and Four Principles when in truth you are as unschooled as the most hard-brained loblolly on Firstday.”

  “I do not want to be here,” said Baro, watching his mother gather the deadheads into a basket.

  “Turn away,” said Bandar. “Then think of the place where you were most secure and happy. Picture it and you will be there.”

  Baro had all his life been able to visualize anyplace he had been, but this was different. He was suddenly in his boyhood room under the eaves of the old house, images of persons he admired fixed to the walls, his books in shelves beside the well-worn desk that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s, the studs that controlled its built-in integrator polished from a myriad of touches by Harkless fingers.

  He spoke to tell Bandar where he was. “Good,” said the historian. “Now look for something that does not belong—another door, a mirror, a picture.”

  Baro inspected the room. All was as it should be. He crossed the faded Agrajani rug to the wardrobe and pulled it open. Behind his school clothes was a sheet of shadowy glass.

  “There is a kind of mirror in the wardrobe,” he said.

  Bandar said, “Look into it.”

  Baro swept aside the shorts and tunics—he could actually feel their fabric—and peered at the dark oblong. Something moved behind the glass. He jumped back.

  He had not seen it clearly, but there was something repellent about whatever lurked in the dimness. “I don’t like it,” he told Bandar. “Is it dangerous?”

  “No. It is …” The voice paused, then continued. “It will take too long to explain. I ask you to trust me. It is something you will not like, but it is harmless. Step toward it and it will yield to you.”

  “You are sure?”

  “To the all through the singular,” Bandar was apparently quoting, “to the wide through the strait, to the object of desire through the embrace of the repugnant.”

  Still Baro hesitated. The thing in the mirror grew clearer. “It looks like me,” he said.

  “It is only your Shadow,” said Bandar. “It is the things you have chosen not to be, all gathered in one. It has no substance nor any power other than what you allow it. Step up to it and see.”

  Baro stepped into the wardrobe and reached toward the glass. The figure beyond did likewise and Baro saw a young man with his own face—no, he saw his own features but they were arranged
on a face that bore no trace of his character. Instead, it reminded him subtly of Luff Imbry. The eyes were puffy and dissolute, the irises fashionably discolored. The mouth was cocked in a disdainful smirk that failed to conceal underlying weakness, the hair arranged with preposterous ornamentation. The jawline was soft and some trivial bangle glittered in an earlobe.

  Bandar was right: here was nothing to be afraid of. “What a poor thing you are,” Baro told the image and stepped toward it. His reaching hand went through the surface of the glass, which rippled and evaporated, taking the Shadow with it. In a moment Baro was through.

  “I have done it,” he said.

  “Tell me where you are,” said Bandar’s voice.

  “I am on a path on the side of a hill or mountain,” Baro said, looking about. “There is mist around and above me but I can see down to a tarn of dark water.”

  “Good,” said the historian. “Go down the path.”

  When Baro reached the water’s edge he announced that he had done so. There was no wind and the water was unmoved. It lay flat and black, gleaming though there was no light from above. “Now what?” Baro said.

  “Dive in,” said Bandar’s voice.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Answer that for yourself,” said the historian. “Put your face into the water and tell me what you see.”

  Baro knelt at the tarn’s edge, then leaned forward and broke the surface of the water, his eyes open. The liquid was warm against his skin. Beneath was a green vastness, a great bowl of a valley with cities and forests, mountains and castles, rivers and roads, walls and fields.

  He told Bandar what he saw and only as the words escaped did he realize that though his head was immersed in the lucid water he made no bubbles and he could breathe. An involuntary laugh broke from his lips and he dove deep into the green and the light.

  “It’s more like flying than swimming,” he said as he stroked downward. Even as he spoke the light intensified to full daylight. Yet there was no sun; the place was gently lit from all directions and not even the mountains cast shadows.