Majestrum: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn

by Matthew Hughes

  "At least we are sure he was not merely a projected image," I said.

  "Yes. I recorded more than visual data. His body emitted heat. His breath was that of a young person in good health." The integrator edged over to the fruit bowl and took up a plum as it spoke. "As well, he displaced air by suddenly disappearing, but I cannot analyze the vortex for an indication of where he went. It happened too quickly."

  "It cannot be helped," I said. My mind circled around the mystery but again was unable to get a grip. I decided to step back from the issues of who he was, where he came from and how he arrived and went; instead, I considered the context of his sudden appearance. My sharer and I had been making progress in the matter of translating the book. We had made a connection between the purloined object named in the Great Connaissarium's catalog and the destruction of the ancient Late Horthalian speakers, then found a connection, however nebulous, between that event and the Archon. We'd had a sense that a pattern was emerging, then when we went out to see if public contact with Filidor would generate more information, the boy had suddenly come into our lives.

  I required insight, so I woke up my inner companion. "What if he were a distraction, meant to pull us away from a course of discrimination that would lead to the plotters?"

  My alter ego said, "Then he would have offered us a false clue."

  "Unless," I said, "he himself is the false clue."

  "That would be a subtle stratagem."

  "There is every reason to assume that we face a subtle enemy."

  There was a silence inside my head until I said, "What do you think?"

  "I think that the boy is connected to the case."

  "If he were a blind alley, salted with just enough mystery to lure us in, he would still be connected," I said. "It would merely be an unuseful connection."

  "I do not think so," said my other self.

  'When I say, 'think,'" I said, "I refer to a process of logical extrapolation from known facts or, at least, from verifiable suppositions. What does the word mean when you use it?"

  "I suppose it means that I 'sense,' or 'feel' the shape of things, the way an imagist knows that a particular curve is right or wrong, or that light and dark are juxtaposed in a balanced way."

  That seemed to me to be a shaky foundation on which to erect an edifice of thought. I did not say so, but he was adept at making inferences. He said, "My 'sensing' and 'feeling' have always served us well before."

  "They were always preceded by my rigorous analysis of a problem. It was only after I had delineated the facts that I would ask you to apply intuition to them."

  "Not always," he said. "I was not a conscious faculty then, so I have no clear memory, but my sense of things is that I often played a role in helping you to decide which facts were more salient than others."

  "My memory is unaffected," I said. "You were not part of my analytical apparatus until I sought you ought."

  "I do not think so."

  "You do not think at all," I said. "You only feel."

  "There is no need for you to be defensive."

  "I am not being defensive," I said. "I am seeking to put our affairs in order."

  "By 'putting our affairs in order' you imply a hierarchical arrangement. You wish to be master in our shared house."

  He was right, both about what I was implying and about what I was being. One of the drawbacks to arguing with a person who has full access to one's emotions is that it is difficult to conceal one's agenda.

  "Very well," I said, "I am being defensive because I think that I am under attack."

  "Have you evidence of any attack, or do you just 'feel' that way?"

  "Now who is being defensive?" I said. He made no reply and I continued, "Here is how I see it: I used to be the master of my inner realm, now I am forced to share it. That, I believe, constitutes an invasion, and invasion constitutes an attack."

  "I did not invade you," he said. "Indeed, I am not here through any volition of my own, but because of circumstances that resulted from decisions taken by you."

  "So the victim of invasion is to blame for the incursion? I wonder how many conquerors have advanced that argument through the eons?"

  "Invasion? Victim? Conqueror?" he said. "These are hard words. Remember that you apply them to a part of yourself."

  "It is not difficult to remember. I am reminded of it several times a day."

  "I do not think it is good for us to argue like this. Indeed, it approximates a definition of madness."

  "It is not the argument that is the problem," I said, "but the situation that gives rise to it."

  "We should put the issue aside and just try to get along."

  "Then my silence becomes consent, while you gradually take a larger role. And steadily I dwindle."

  "What else can we do?" he said. "We are but a microcosmic forerunner in a process that will gather speed and breadth until it is universal."

  And so we had come to the nub of it. The world into which I fit so perfectly was drawing to a close. The age that would succeed it would be ideal for my intuitive other self. He was on the ascendant, I was in decline. The inevitability of the process did not make it any the more palatable.

  "I do not wish to dwindle," I said, "nor to fade."

  "Then don't," he said. "Instead of contending with me, fight against the forces that threaten you."

  He offered me an image of a windblown Henghis Hapthorn standing resolute in the face of an encroaching storm, raising a solitary torch against a darkening sky.

  "You mock me?"

  "Look again," he said. "Is that a caricature? Or is it an accurate, even affectionate, representation?"

  It was not a caricature. "Do you seriously think," I said, "that one man can hold back the onrush of a new age?"

  "I do not know. But if there is one man who can do it, that man would be Henghis Hapthorn."

  "Are you seeking to manipulate me?"

  "Are you becoming paranoid?"

  "If I succeed in holding back the new dispensation, I will prevent you from coming into your own."

  I felt him give the mental equivalent of a shrug. "I am already here on time that should be yours. It is nothing less than good manners for me to be patient."

  "I have never been much good at patience," I said. "I prefer to get on with things."

  "Then let us get on with solving the Archon's problem. Perhaps it will give us some ideas for holding back the onset of sympathetic association."

  It was a rational proposal. But rationality was my contribution to the mix. It bothered me that the suggestion had come from him rather than from me. I wondered if he was indeed seeking to manipulate me, echoing to me my own way of thinking, just as someone might be trying to steer us onto a false course with the mysterious boy's sudden popping into and out of view.

  #

  It was late in the evening. We had returned to work, though I, at least, was not making much progress. My other self had withdrawn to mull the shape of things and I was examining every element of the known facts in relation to each and all of the others. My mind, however, would not fix itself to the task but kept veering toward the suggestion he had made: that I should devote myself to preventing -- or at least holding off -- the onset of the new age. It was folly, of course; no one could stop the Great Wheel from turning. Yet it was a grand folly, one of those great, futile struggles that somehow confer dignity upon those who conduct them. As the essayist Blithe Porlock had put it: Life is a hopeless rear guard action against an overwhelming foe; still how can we not admire those who battle on regardless?

  The notion had a curious appeal. I had long since admitted to myself that my very success in the profession of discrimination had brought my life to a point of crisis. A case that could fully seize my capabilities had become so rare an event that I had grown dangerously bored. Then came the incident precipitated by Bristal Baxandall and his greedy assistant, Vashtun Errible, that had brought me into contact with my puzzle-loving demonic colleague, and for a
while I had been fully engaged. Though the demon departed, I found myself sharing my life with an intuitive other and the fruit-fancying familiar that had been my integrator. Although the problem out of which they had emerged was certainly significant, I had felt not so much engaged by it as harassed.

  Then the Archon had arrived on my doorstep, presenting me with a deadly serious case that looked, at this stage, to be connected to the same impending cosmic cataclysm that had disturbed my domestic arrangements. Filidor's troubles were precisely the kind of professional problem that Henghis Hapthorn ought to fling himself at with unalloyed delight. Instead, I was brooding over whether I or my intuition ought to have precedence over the other, and wondering if I could trust myself.

  "Not good," I said aloud. My integrator twitched and grunted but did not awaken from sleep. For a moment I was glad of its new incarnation because the thought had occurred, not for the first time, that the division of my psyche might not be a result of magic and the impending great change, but a simple bout of madness. The fact that other people saw my fur covered integrator argued against any need for me to present myself for treatment.

  The who's-there interrupted my thoughts by announcing: "Colonel-Investigator Brustram Warhanny seeks admittance."

  "Wake up," I told my integrator, poking it with two fingers. It did so, connected with the door monitor, and showed me an image of Warhanny standing in the street. He was wearing his most official face, a mask of purest dispassion, which told me he was vitally interested in whatever matter had brought him to my lodgings.

  "Admit him," I said, and a few moments later he was standing in my workroom, subjecting it to as thorough an examination as he could manage without actually prying open cupboards or peeking under the furniture. His eye soon fell upon an object on table: the sealed scroll that the Archon had handed me.

  "Did you wish to consult me?" I asked. "Is there a case?"

  He rocked back and forth upon heels and soles, his hands clasped behind his back. The length and prominence of his nose made his pale colored eyes appear to be sunk in pits and they regarded me with an expression he sought to disguise.

  "He's worried," said my inner self.

  "I know," I thought back. "The question is, what is he worried about?"

  "I happened to be passing," Warhanny said.

  "And yet you did not continue, but stopped at my door."

  He made a noncommittal noise and looked around the room. I saw his gaze fall upon the small scroll that the Archon had ostentatiously handed to me in Drusibal Square. I had left it on the table.

  "That appears to be the Archon's personal seal," he said.

  "Does it?"

  "Someone mentioned that you had spoken with the Archon today."

  "Someone?" I said. Warhanny and I had a substantial history behind us. He had often resented my participation in cases that had also drawn his attention, and he resented even more the instances when I had solved puzzles that had baffled him and his fellow scroots. At the best of times, we were like two animals of different but related species who found themselves sharing the same habitat; at the worst, we were direct competitors for the same prey. We rarely cooperated.

  "Would that be the scroll the Archon handed you?" he said, the pendulous blob on the end of his nose pointing in the object's direction.

  "It would," I said.

  He rocked back and forth again. "Peculiar that you haven't opened it."

  "Is it?"

  He stopped rocking and swung his large head toward me. "Yes, it is. If I received a document from the Archon, I would break the seal and read it."

  "Clearly we are animated by different philosophies. You rush headlong at life while I proceed at a dignified pace."

  "Then I will be true to my character and pose a direct question: what business is there between you and the Archon?"

  "I think that the Archon, if he wished you to know, would have seen to it that you were informed."

  I was deliberately provoking him. The Colonel-Investigator possessed a legendary temper -- or perhaps it was better said that sometimes his temper possessed him -- and I wanted to see what might come of stoking his fires. In the past he had sometimes, in the heat of an intemperate outburst, let slip useful information.

  But not this time. I saw him rein in an impulse, then raise and lower his shoulders in a theatrical gesture of unconcern. He looked about the workroom, his eyes falling upon my integrator. "What manner of beast is that?" he said.

  "An unmannerly kind," I said.

  He extended a hand toward its head. "Does it bite?"

  "I don't know, but in a moment we may find out."

  He withdrew the hand and let his wandering gaze fall upon Baxandall's book that had been left splayed open on the table while my other self mulled and I analyzed. "What's this?" he said.

  "A book."

  "In what language?" He spun the tome around and scanned the visible pages, then flipped to the title page and examined the flyleaf. "What does it say?"

  "That's what I am endeavoring to discover."

  Having got me used to answering his questions, he now proceeded from idle inquiry to direct interrogation, as recommended in the Bureau of Scrutiny handbook. "What's this got to do with Filidor?"

  I imitated his earlier shrug. "Perhaps you should ask him," I said. "He is, after all, your employer."

  He batted it straight back to me. "And yours?"

  "A freelance discriminator does not discuss such matters without the expressed consent of the client."

  Victory flashed in his eyes. "Then he is your client."

  "I did not say that."

  He picked up the scroll, rolled it through his fingers and held it up to peer through it as if it were a telescope, then tossed it casually back onto the table. It landed on its fragile seal, which cracked.

  "Oh," he said with calculated innocence, "I've broken it." He reached for it again. "Perhaps it can be mended."

  Somehow in his concern for the object, the scroll unrolled in his hands and he could not help but read what was written there. I watched as several emotions -- surprise, consternation, irritation -- chased each other across his face before he regained control and presented me with both the scroll and an expression of untroubled impassivity.

  I took the document and read the few words it contained: To all who read this, it said, the discriminator Henghis Hapthorn is acting for me in a matter of grave importance. All officers and associates of the Archonate, without distinction of rank or precedence, will render him the same assistance they would afford me. It was signed by Filidor and a seal with the Archon's personal sigil was attached.

  "Hmm," I said, "I presume that would apply to a Colonel-Investigator of the Bureau of Scrutiny."

  Behind the impassivity another Brustram Warhanny regarded me with a distinct lack of affection. "What would you like me to do?" he said.

  "If anything occurs to me I will let you know."

  His right foot tapped the floor several times but the rest of him remained in the grip of a rigid control. He pulled at his nose, so reflexive a habit that I had sometimes wondered if the constant tugging had had anything to do with the organ's exaggerated length. He looked away and his eyes went to the book again. A finger traced something on the flyleaf. "What are these names?" he said.

  I recollected no names and came around the table to see what he was referring to. Indeed, a number of names were handwritten in faint green ink on the inside of the book's front cover: Phaladrine Baudrel, Omris Shevannagar, App Imrici, Hilarion Falan-Falan, Terris Botch, Chav Hemister and Oblon Hammis.

  "Do you recognize any of these?" Warhanny said.

  "I do not." None of the names was familiar to me, though I thought I had seen the handwriting before.

  "That is curious," Warhanny said, and I sensed in his tone that we had just experienced a subtle shifting of the ground between us, though I did not know why.

  "Why is it curious?"

  "This one," he said, placing
a fingertip under the name "Botch."

  "What of it?"

  "It means nothing to you?"

  I said, "It does not." Because it didn't.

  "Today," he said, "while you were conferring with the Archon before all the world in Drusibal Square, I found myself following two sets of footsteps through the dust of the nether reaches of Terfel's Connaissarium. One set, I believe, was left by a distinctive footwear often worn by the Archon Filidor. The other is as yet unidentified."

  He glanced down, as if measuring by eye the size of my feet.

  "The two trails led to a blank wall," he continued, "at the foot of which lay what appeared to be the abandoned garments of a sub-curator, and an unidentified powder. Inside the clothes the fellow had carelessly left his skin and bones, though not his flesh. Nor his eyes."

  "That is curious," I said.

  "The area in which he was found was not connected with his duties. He was a cataloger of intaglioed gems and his workplace was several levels above where he was found. He should not have been there."

  "If being there led to his being fleshless and dead," I said, "I can only concur."

  "Even more curious," he said, fixing me with that intrusive stare that all scroots must master before they are allowed to leave the Academy, "is the fact that the sub-curator's name was Botch."

  I looked again at the list of names. "Terris Botch?" I said.

  Warhanny's eyes became guarded. "No."

  "Then it seems we have a coincidence."

  "Does it?"

  "Doesn't it?"

  We could have played the game all night, but he switched tacks. "I don't care for murder," he said.

  "I'm not fond it myself," I told him.

  Now he went for the direct approach. "What do you know of the murder of Glam Botch?"

  "Nothing," I said. The statement was technically correct. I had not seen the killing and knew neither the killer's identity nor the motive for the crime. I did know that I could not give Warhanny what little information I had, because although I doubted he was involved in any palace intrigue -- he was too much the dogged scroot for such pastimes -- some of his associates him might be waist deep in plots and schemes. The Bureau of Scrutiny was thickly populated by careerists, each with an agenda to pursue.