Majestrum

by Matthew Hughes

  The Braid's integrator interrupted at that moment to inform me that Lord Afre wished to speak with me and had sent a footman to lead me into my host's presence. I said goodbye to my assistant and changed into garments suitable for the time of day, making sure that collar and pendant were visible. By the time I was ready the servant had appeared and my inner companion had withdrawn to sleep.

  The servant led me through a maze of indoor corridors and outdoor walkways, delivering me to the estate's essentiary, a small building beyond a pillared colonnade at the far edge of the south lawn. Here Lord Afre had just concluded playing a game of plunge against the preserved life-essence of one of his ancestors, thousands of which were stored in compartments that lined the walls of the single room from floor to ceiling. Some members of the higher aristocracy felt an obligation not only to store the essentials of their forebears, but to engage them in activities that prevented their slipping into a state of disorganization known as "the clouds." I wondered if the Honorable Chalivire would maintain the tradition, or leave her father and countless other Afres unvisited in this little place, to dwindle into solipsism.

  "Hapthorn," my client said as I entered, "what have you learned?"

  I told him that I was sure that his daughter's paramour had some very definite end in view and that he was pressing toward it. I was also confident that Lascalliot was not of the ordinary type of offworld fortune hunters who arrived to take aim at the rich and elevated of Old Earth. These invariably assumed that the inhabitants of such an out-of-the-way, fusty old world must be naive blossoms, easily plucked; most soon discovered that the seeming flowers had more in common with carnivorous plants, and left the planet metaphorically short a finger or two. Those who learned the truth too late sometimes never departed at all, not even from the estates in which they had stalked what they had thought was easy prey. A place like The Braid offered countless corners that might accommodate a small, concealed room or a deep and narrow pit.

  "Not a Chloön-clutcher, then?" Lord Afre said.

  "Certainly not the garden variety," I said.

  "Where's he from? What are his people?"

  Since I did not command that information, I told the aristocrat that it would be premature to say, but that I expected to identify his home world in a day or two. I would then visit the place and make pointed inquiries. I also said that I doubted that Lascalliot intended any sudden strokes; his rhythms seemed to me to be more leisurely, his goal still out of sight.

  Lord Afre pulled at his pointed chin while his other hand toyed with a piece from the plunge set. It was the Emperor's Concubine, ornately carved from deep red carnelian, and his curled thumb firmly stroked the rounded torso. "No need for preemptive measures?" he said.

  "No," I said. "Besides, he may be one of a gang and if we start him too early the others will remain in deep cover."

  I had chosen an analogy that would resonate with the old lord's interests, and he accepted the point. "What will you do next?" he said.

  "When I have identified his world I expect to understand his interest. I will then return and recommend a suitably surprising outcome."

  "Take the yacht," Lord Afre said, waving in the general direction of the vehicle park. "The smaller one."

  "Thank you," I said. Whenever I traveled offworld I preferred to do so in a private spacecraft. The comforts and accouterments were better than what was offered even by a first-class passage on one of the superior lines.

  His attention had begun to drift so I performed the appropriate gestures of hand and head, left the essentiary and returned to the main house. I was taken back to the ordinair where I found my valise already packed and in the hands of a footman who also held Baxandall's tome. The aircar alighted, my goods were stowed, and moments later I was airborne. I contacted my integrator to inform it of my impending arrival and was told that there was no further news concerning the discrimination.

  "Very well," I said, "when I will return I will assist you-know-whom with an analysis of this bothersome book. Have you scanned it?"

  "Yes."

  "Then be prepared to give me your views when I arrive. And do something about luncheon. Lord Afre's breakfast will have worn off."

  #

  I napped briefly after eating, my sleep having been interrupted the night before, then had my assistant put up a screen and display the book. "What do we know of it?" I said.

  "It is not any known language," my assistant said. "I have consulted widely and the script is unrecorded anywhere. An integrator with an interest in defunct languages at the Archon's Institute gave an opinion that it was likely a specially created alphabet and that the language itself might have been artificially formed."

  The first question that occurred to me was "Why?" but I put it aside to deal with another that came close on its tail: "During your wide consultations, how much did you reveal about the reasons for your inquiry?"

  "As little as possible. I may have led a few persons and integrators to believe that you were investigating a case of mountebankery involving a fraudulent book of spells."

  "May have?"

  "I applied your technique of 'constructive ambiguity.'"

  "I see," I said. "Well done. Continue."

  The creature on my table executed a small bow. "Thank you. The Institute's integrator said that it was not uncommon for practitioners of magic in bygone ages to create their own languages and scripts. They would use them to record information they wished to keep private from rivals or subordinates."

  I thought of Bristal Baxandall's maladroit apprentice, Vashtun Errible, and the damage he had done while trying to compel his master's captive demon to fulfill his dreams of wealth, women and wisdom. "Understandable," I said.

  I regarded the text on the screen. In the upper outside corners of the pages were certain squiggles that changed in a systematic way from page to page. "These are numbers," I said, "and based upon a twelve-digit counting."

  "Yes," said my assistant, "but they do not occur in the text itself, so we are no further ahead."

  I noted that there seemed to be upper and lower case letters. I could also make out punctuation marks, though neither discovery told me anything useful. "Some words -- I assume they are words -- are printed in larger type and in colored ink," I said. "Why would that be?"

  "Your other self believes that there is significance to the highlighting," the integrator said.

  "Even I could intuit that much," I said. "But what does it signify? Does the reader say that particular word loudly? Or sing it at a precise pitch? Or turn around three times and spit toward the sunrise?"

  I again applied second-level consistencies to the symbols before me, and again saw obvious evidence of structure, but when I ascended the ladder to the third level, no new parameters emerged. I started again, this time placing the highlighted word in the prime armature, and received strong indications that that particular string of symbols represented a name. But whether it was the name of a person, a place, or a pet remained unknown.

  "We still require a starting point," I said, instructing the integrator to remove the screen. "A mapmaker must have at least one landmark from which to begin."

  "Your other self will not be happy to hear that."

  "If he is like me, he will know how to bear life's inevitable disappointments with dignity and grace."

  "I recall," said my assistant, "that when you were unable to come to a satisfactory resolution of the Eisenfeld Affair--"

  "We do not," I said, with dignity and grace, "refer to the Eisenfeld matter."

  But my assistant bore on regardless. "You expressed your disappointment with unrestrained vigor."

  "My recollection differs," I said.

  "Furniture had to be replaced. It was necessary to apologize to the neighbors."

  "Very well, I am a man of passion, once provoked," I said. "Do you wish to provoke me, or would you rather arrange for our trip offworld?"

  The small furry head jogged to one side and the thin shoulders l
ifted and fell. "I will make the arrangements," it said. "Will I accompany you?"

  I considered the question briefly then said, "Offworlders are used to seeing strange things. Strange things are their norm. Your presence on my shoulder will excite no more comment, I am sure, than my outlandish apparel. You may come."

  "And the book?" it said. "I believe your other self will want to continue his work."

  "This smacks of obsession," I said.

  "Or a courageous refusal to admit defeat, as someone once said when confronted with dead end after dead end in a difficult discrimination."

  "I don't recall the quote," I said.

  "It was during the Eisenfeld--"

  "I wonder," I said, quite loudly, "how one goes about turning off an integrator that has transformed into a familiar. And I wonder if, once turned off, it can ever be turned back on again." Then I lowered my voice and flexed my fingers. "I suppose the only way to answer the question is by a bold experiment."

  It pulled its head into its shoulders. "No need," it said. "Still, what about the book?"

  "You can reproduce the text as necessary."

  "Your other self seems to require the physical presence."

  I sighed. "We will take it with us. Perhaps inspiration will strike."

  During all this time, my assistant had been receiving answers to the query it had sent out to The Spray regarding Hobart Lascalliot's ditty. Each time a spaceship came through one of the several whimsies that linked Old Earth with the Ten Thousand Worlds, it sent a response into our world's connectivity matrix. But each response was negative.

  I spent the rest of the day tidying up details on two other discriminations on which I was engaged, neither of them urgent. I also replied to the correspondence that had accumulated in my absence, including a reminder that I had not yet replied to my invitation to the Archon's levee, scheduled for several days hence; I answered that I would be honored to attend if business did not call me offworld. An Archonate protocol integrator responded, saying that I would have until the day after tomorrow to give a definite answer.

  I would not be grievously disappointed to miss the annual high point of the Olkney social calendar. Filidor was an agreeable Archon, surprisingly effective after his flamboyant youth, much of which was recorded in the gossip columns of the Implicator. But the levee was a drastically formal affair, full of symbolic moments, many of them steeped in traditions so ancient and hoary that no one now recalled exactly what it was they symbolized. The banquet always began, for example, with a first course of cold liquid -- far too thin and watery to be called soup -- that was immediately whisked away the moment it was tasted. No one knew why, but no one dared to suggest revoking a custom older than memory.

  Still, the levee was a good place to be seen. And it was often instructive to observe the high and titled on their best behavior, competing to see who could impress the Archon with the stiffest posture and the most exacting punctilio.

  In the evening I dined at Xanthoulian's in Vodel Close, then went to view a tasteful revival of The Tragedy of Yamppo at the Round. I applauded and catcalled at all the appropriate moments and, in the final scene, threw the morsels of hard cheese that the theater provided. When I returned to my lodgings, no new developments had occurred. I announced that I would sleep and went to my chamber.

  I returned briefly to say to my assistant, "If the other fellow begins to express himself in ways that may damage our mutual flesh, please intervene."

  #

  Lord Afre's lesser space yacht, the Orgillous, approached the world known as Harlemond at moderate speed. I went to the forward lounge and asked the ship to display the world's image. A tranquil orb appeared, showing a well balanced arrangement of seas, continents and islands, tastefully rendered in pastels. Harlemond was one of the minor foundationals, settled long ago in the second wave of the great effloration of humankind into The Spray, Whatever crudities it may have offered the first settlers who encountered its primal state had long since been smoothed away.

  It was the seventh world I had visited since lifting off from The Braid's vehicle park some weeks before. Word had finally come, as I had expected, from a commercial ship inbound for Old Earth: Hobart Lascalliot's melody was known to the Sodality on Far Moline, the institution that registered musical creations and, more important, their creators. The tune was a recent composition credited to one Tap Trollane of the city of Branko on Byway, a secondary world not far down The Spray from Old Earth.

  I immediately advised Lord Afre of the development in the case. His yacht had been staffed and provisioned for ready departure since we had spoken in the essentarium, and within an hour my integrator and I were outbound aboard the Orgillous. A number of different routes led from Old Earth to Byway; we chose the fastest, which required us to pass through three whimsies. As we approached the first, I thought it prudent to raise with my assistant the question of how he ought to handle the experience.

  "I will avail myself of the medications that depress both consciousness and the secondary apperceptions," I said. That was always my custom, since passing wide-eyed through a whimsy could outrage the senses so drastically as to cause permanent disorientation. Almost every spaceport was haunted by spacers who had gone to their bunks somewhat the worse for strong drink only to awaken in the midst of a whimsy. Mild cases lost merely their sense of balance and tended to move at odd angles. Those visited with more severe effects emerged unable to reliably distinguish between their own persons and other parts of the universe; unless constantly watched, they fell from the first height they encountered or ingested things that did them no good.

  "Another unprecedented problem," said my assistant. We were in the luxuriously appointed main cabin where my integrator had established himself in a corner of a plush divan. For his convenience I had brought several types of fruit from the galley and left them in a bowl beside him. He now chose a purple berry before continuing, "Integrators are not troubled by the effects of whimsies; we simply disregard them as extraneous noise."

  "Your circuits are now not much different from mine," I said. "You would be wise to use the medications."

  We calculated a dosage based on his relative size and when we had come through the whimsy I was relieved to discover that the drugs worked as well on him as they did on me. I had not wanted to be confined to a space yacht with an unbalanced integrator.

  The passages through the normal space between the whimsies were of varying lengths, the longest taking more than three days even at the yacht's best speed. We came down on Byway a week after departing Old Earth. I immediately had my assistant link to the world's connectivity and seek a connection with Tap Trollane.

  In the air before me appeared a broad and homely face beneath a bowl-shaped coiffure that was apparently the current fashion on Byway. He spoke before I could, in a mellow, well cadenced tone and I realized that I was seeing and hearing a recorded announcement: "I am not at home. The Ramblers and I are playing the Po Festival on Claghorne. If we do well there, we will be invited to join the Glissand Tour for an indefinite time."

  The bushy eyebrows arched and the wide mouth quirked then the image said, "I must address the remote possibility that we have already been to the festival and returned in disgrace, having failed to rise beyond the preliminaries. If so, I am sitting here in my small clothes, drunk and despondent, and not fit for company. Please call again in a few days."

  "Integrator," I said, "break the connection and find out about the Po Festival and the distance to Claghorne." Moments later, I learned that the festival had started the day before, and that its venue was two day's travel away by the nearest whimsy. I had the yacht set course and lift off without our having known so much as a first breath of Byway's air.

  We touched down not far from the Po grounds and arrived there by a three-wheeled dromond. It was early morning and roustabouts were striking the marquees and collapsing the above-ground mineral pools whose bubbling mud was apparently a significant part of the festival-goer
s' experience. I spoke with a foreman and learned that all of the event's officials and organizers had already gone off-world on the Glissand Tour. They had left in a ragtag convoy of spacecraft the night before, their lift-off accompanied by pyrotechnical displays that were the traditional climax of the event. He did not know if the Ramblers had gone with them, although he remembered the quintet making it into the final rounds.

  "What of the tour's schedule?" I said. "Where will they play and for how long? I will catch them up."

  Until now, the Glissand Tour had never attracted my attention. Each of the Ten Thousand Worlds is a repository of culture and the arts, some of them having developed over hundreds of millennia. The Spray is a vast kaleidoscope of activities and diversions, from the inconsequential to the magnificent, and no one's lifetime is sufficient to allow for more than a tiny sampling of its countless offerings. I learned that the most salient feature of the Glissand Tour, apart from the virtuosity of its performers, was that it appeared unannounced at any venue it played. The musicians and dancers touched down on a world; they went en masse to some park or public square, where they performed to the surprise and delight of whoever happened to be on the scene; they rushed back to the spaceport and disappeared into the illimitable.

  "This is irksome," I told my assistant who sat upon my shoulder, with its tail curled around the back of my neck. "Contact traffic control and find out if the ships filed any flight plan."

  But, of course, no such requirement pertained to spacecraft departing Claghorne; once they were free of the world's nearspace zone, their goings and coming were of no concern to the Claghorners. The motley collection of vessels had been observed, however, to have been heading in the direction of a whimsy that was only a half-day away at the best speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. "We will try that," I said, "and see where we come out."

  When I awakened from the medications, I found myself seated in a chair in the main salon, which was decorated in a gaudy, overblown style -- all ruffles and gilded fretwork -- that must have been Lord Afre's most recent enthusiasm. Or perhaps it was Chalivire's; she was more likely to have used the family's lesser yacht than her father. Before me on a alabaster-topped, gold-rimmed table was spread the troublesome book whose mystery had overthrown my other self's sense of proportion.