With my integrator on my shoulder and my inner companion awake, though apparently brooding on his own concerns, I climbed out of the hollow until I could look through a screen of low brush at the structure below. The edifice was made of the same stone as the hill on which it stood; indeed, the hollow in which I had landed was the quarry from which its massive blocks had been cut. It was a cube perhaps a hundred paces on a side, with its top surmounted by a shallow hemispheric dome. Like every other structure I had seen in the Thoon, it was unpretentious -- no architectural fillips or decorations interrupted its simple lines.
The side I was looking at was the rear of the building. It had no door, but from several windows along the ground floor, as well as from a row of skylights on the roof, a gentle light glowed. I could hear voices from the other side, people greeting and calling to each other affably. They sounded like any crowd gathering for an enjoyable event.
"Do you detect any wards or watches?" I asked my integrator.
"There is a good security system, but it is turned off," it said.
"Then I will go down. You may return to the yacht to await my instructions."
I had no need to crawl or make strenuous efforts at concealment. Shadows passed behind the windows, but no one was looking out. Their attention would be on the events that were about to transpire inside. Besides, I had donned an elision suit; with its fabric subtly coaxing light waves to slip around me, rather than bounce off, I was effectively invisible. I unhurriedly descended the slope and arrived at the rear of the building, then walked down one side to peer around the corner at the front.
The last few arrivals were leaving their vehicles and entering through the great doors. I listened but did not hear the whine of the skimmer. I made my way to the front doors and entered just as they were closing.
I stood in a shadow to one side of the entrance and saw that this was a general-purpose structure built to accommodate activities that required a good-sized floor space and that might attract a substantial audience. There was a well-sprung wooden floor that would have served equally well for dancing as for athletic contests, surrounded by tiers of seats broken by rows of steps. As with all things Thoonian, the facilities were functional and understated.
Perhaps two hundred men and women occupied the lower tiers of seats, leaving a couple of thousand more empty. I saw the man from the Claviger Service, now out of uniform, taking a seat in a front row. It was not difficult to avoid the small crowd; whole sections of seats even at the lowest levels stood empty. For safety's sake, though, I climbed a set of steps to the higher reaches, where most of the lumens had not been lit, and took a seat on the aisle.
At the center of the open space stood a portable image projector, beside it a tall lectern and four chairs. Now the house lighting dimmed, leaving only these objects illuminated. A voice spoke from the public address system: "Brothers and sisters, please welcome our respected Convenor, Toop Zherev."
Amid a gentle pattering of applause from the seated crowd, a man stepped into the lighted area and went to stand behind the lectern. He was of nondescript appearance, of middling height and middle age, dressed in the same simple trousers and smock as the rest of them. He exhibited no showmanship or even any evidence of podium skills, but spoke in a direct and forthright tone.
"Brothers and sisters," he said, "welcome to this first annual convening of the Derogation. We have, I feel confident in saying, a fine program to put before you. But, of course, you will be the judge of that."
Another round of restrained applause followed, unaccompanied by any of the grunts and hoots by which an Olkney audience would have expressed its approval of the sentiments expressed. Zherev waited until the sound died down, then began to introduce the first of four persons who came out of the shadows. One by one, the four made formal gestures of obeisance to the crowd, then took the seats. The four were three men and a woman, all in the muted style of the Thoon. The last of them to bow and sit was Hobart Lascalliot.
The program then began, and its content was much as I had expected. The first of the four went to the lectern, made a few brief remarks to set the scene for what was about to be shown on the projector. Then the lights dimmed and the device displayed a three-dimensional image, the moving figures within it more than life-sized.
I recognized the setting: the biennial Concertum on Pwys, which brought together bards, singers and tonalists of grand renown throughout the Ten Thousand World to compete against each other. The prizes they might receive were but a fraction of the cost that many of the contenders spent to travel to the event, but the glory of a Concertum win was beyond price.
On the last day of the event, before the finalists presented their signature pieces, came the Aspirants Hour. This was a time was set aside for the young and ambitious to stand on the venerated stage and sing a few bars. More than a few grand voices had first been heard by the connoisseurs who thronged to the Concertum, though many more had sung their piece and never been heard from again; there was no more exacting audience in all The Spray.
When the image appeared, a young woman with complexly ringleted hair was executing the last trills of Manvel's Thrice-Gloried in a warm contralto that earned her a respectable, and respectful, volume of applause. She curtsied demurely, hand to bosom and eyes aglow, and exited the stage.
Then out to the center of the proscenium stepped a man of mature years, dressed in the ornate formal clothes of a senior member of the Maccha Oligarchy, the hereditary clique that dominates the mercantile civilization of Buffo, one of the wealthier secondary worlds. His raven hair swept back from a wide brow, his nose as straight and uncompromising as a sword, his eyes full of the fierce pride of his ancient heritage, he waited for the crowd to fall silent.
Then, without accompaniment, he opened his mouth and sang the octave-spanning melody that Tap Trollane had composed. The Concertum audience listened in stunned silence for several seconds. Then, as provided for in the customs of the event, they began to hurl sadly inedible vegetables and soggy, tired fruit at the singer, accompanying their missiles with time-honored jibes and insults.
The man's face did not so much fall as plummet. He held out a hand in a gesture that seemed intended as a prelude to informing the audience that they had somehow misunderstood. Then it was as if enlightenment had suddenly risen like an unwelcome sun over his life's horizon. He looked about him with an air of belated comprehension. Then, as a round yellow fruit connected squarely with his chin, spilling tiny dark seeds and viscous green juices onto his gold-stitched shirtfront, his mouth set in a short, grim line and he stalked from the stage, disdaining to dodge the rain of forage that followed him all the way into the wings.
The image ended and the lumens came up. For the first time, I saw Thoonians let their feelings ride high. The brothers and sisters of the Derogation howled and stamped, their faces distorted by a cruel glee, their eyes wet with vindictive mirth, as the first presenter took a modest bow. The applause continued, until Toop Zherev resumed his place at the lectern and called up the woman who was to introduce the next performance.
For myself, I remained unmoved, except by the intellectual satisfaction of having correctly deduced the nature of the Derogation. After all, a Maccha oligarch would score low on anyone's scale of sympathetic victims, especially when the attack was no more than a thoroughgoing public come-uppance.
The butt of the woman presenter's contribution to the evening's program was equally unworthy of much pity: he was a High Arbiter from the Grand Umpirage on Brolligo, a foundational world that prided itself on its specialty of offering to arbitrate unresolvable disputes. Its judiciars were legendary for their haughtiness and high-flown dignity. These attributes were always on full display when senior members of Brolligo's intensely proud corps of legalists gathered for a round of formal dinners during Savants' Week. The events culminated in a grand banquet at which the greatest of the great rise and rehearse for their peers the salient arguments in cases they have adjudicated.
&n
bsp; I now witnessed, via the image projector, the unique spectacle of a High Arbiter presenting the key elements of an impasse between two septs of an aristocratic clan who contended over the rights to an estate in the highlands of Corkery on the world Aspahan. The arguments turned on a nice definition of the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of a child conceived under contended circumstances. More remarkable than the details of the case, however, was the fact that the High Arbiter presented them in song. I was familiar by now with the melody and did not listen, but watched as the image-gatherer panned across the faces of the singer's colleagues as they registered emotions ranging from sheer astonishment to creeping horror to purple-veined outrage.
The Thoonians erupted once more in vicious merriment and a harsh tumult of applause and catcalls. When the din subsided, Zherev called upon the third presenter. The air above the projector lit with the setting of yet another high and portentous event. This one looked to be the installation of a new Ecclesiarch of the Creed of the Contingent Revelation on Horm, an occasion that drew hierarchs and pulpiteers from all the many worlds to which the syncretic religion had spread. The massed choir was finishing a paean of celebration, and the seven-tiered diadem was about to be lowered onto the new predicant's brow. Then a portly man in the cassock and cocked hat of a senior creedsman stepped onto the stairs beneath the throne. The eyes of a hundred thousand celebrants turned to him as he opened his mouth and began to sing.
But I did not watch the inevitable result. My attention was drawn to the front door, which now opened to admit the thin man who had been watching me in the hotel restaurant. He looked about the hall and, spotting Baltaz Thoring, scuttled over to speak with him. I expected him to give a perfunctory report -- that I had gone offworld -- then take a seat. But he did not. He spoke with what seemed to be some agitation, his bony hand gesturing in an upward direction. For a moment I thought he was pointing in my direction and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps he had done to me what I had done to him, slipping a tracking device onto my person even as I had attached the bead to his sleeve. But I had had my assistant scan me thoroughly.
Now I saw that he was pointing up through the walls in the direction where the Orgillous lay hidden. I realized that Great Gallowan's traffic control function must have been asked to track the yacht's movements beyond the basic level of surveillance -- the Claviger Service would have a close relationship with the system -- and my surreptitious return to the Thoon had been noted.
Thoring now looked as alarmed as the man reporting to him. He left his seat and moved down into the open space just as the members of the Derogation burst into loud approval of the fate of the hapless singer in the projected image, who was being harried down the ceremonial steps by brawny men who used decorated staffs that were sturdy enough to be wielded as prods and cudgels. He crossed behind the projector and went to where Toop Zherev sat a few paces behind the lectern. But before he could reach the leader of this secret society, Zherev rose and went to introduce the fourth presenter, Hobart Lascalliot.
The claviger stood, wringing his hands in evident distress while the tall figure called Lascalliot to the lectern. I heard his familiar voice, though now he did not attempt to disguise the rounded vowels of Great Gallowan speech, describing the event the audience was about to see.
"The yearly levee of the Archon of Old Earth. . ." he began, but I paid no heed to what followed, nor to the image of the glittering gala in the Palace of the Archonate that now appeared in the middle of the hall. Instead, I regarded Toop Zherev as he received the news that an interloper was likely in the vicinity.
He did not react with the decisiveness one would have expected from the leader of a secret organization that could send operative up and down The Spray, even if their goal was only to induce the prideful to make utter fools of themselves. He looked like a farmer from a quiet little secondary world who wasn't quite sure what to do.
Still, as Chalivire's harsh voice rose in the now far too familiar tune, with lyrics added that rhymed Filidor's name in a most banal manner, I judged it time to leave. I rose quietly from my seat and began to ascend the steps to the very top of the building. As I turned my back on the scene below, I felt a strange chill across my shoulders, as if a cold breath had blown over me. At the same time, my inner companion became fully alert.
"What was that?" he said.
"I do not know," I said. "I have never felt the like."
"I have," my alter ego said. "In my dream--"
"Let us discuss this later," I said. "They know the Orgillous is nearby. I am escaping before a pursuit begins, which is always preferable." I then pressed a stud on my cuff, held it to my lips and said, "Now."
I swiftly climbed the steps to a broad landing that circled the entire top of the building. Here and there along the walls stood booths, now all shuttered, where patrons of events held in the hall could buy light meals and souvenirs. Past one of these groupings, where the landing turned a corner, a ladder rose to the roof. In moments, I was at the top of the rungs, pushing open a trapdoor to emerge into the open air. Lord Afre's yacht was just edging up to the edge of the roof, a portal open and a gangplank extending toward me. In two steps I was inside the yacht and by the time I entered the forward lounge, Great Gallowan was a diminishing circle in the viewer.
My assistant was perched on the buffet chewing on something red and fibrous fruit. "That seems to have gone well," it said.
"I'm not sure," I said.
#
I had been home several days when I received a communication from Lord Afre. He had not been on Old Earth when I landed, of course, because I had transmitted a full report on my discrimination of the case the moment the Orgillous had emerged from the last whimsy and I had shaken off the effect of the medications. By the time I touched down at his vehicle park, the aristocrat had long since assembled a useful assortment of retainers and set off for Great Gallowan in his touring ship, the Exultance. Chalivire sent her majordomo to greet me and furnish transportation to my lodgings. The man apologized for the mistress's inattention and, when I inquired as to her health, he assured me that she had largely gotten over her "recent setback" and was now very busy preparing for the arrival of a much anticipated visitor.
My integrator informed me that its counterpart at the Afre estate was making contact. I quickly donned the signs and tokens that would make me visible to my client and opened the connection.
"Hapthorn," he said, and I saw that he had got me well in view without straining.
"It is I," I said.
"A satisfactory result," he said.
"You acquired both the, er, objects you were seeking?"
A small cloud visited his sharp features then passed on. "No, not both," he said. "One seemed to have vanished. But I got the one the girl particularly wanted."
"Would you like me to see if I can locate the other?" I asked, and felt a slight disappointment when he declared that he did not think it necessary. Something about the mysterious Osk Rievor troubled me, or perhaps it was just my dislike of leaving loose ends dangling.
"By the way," Afre was saying, "didn't have a chance to mention that the Archon was asking after you."
"After me?" I said.
"At the levee, before Chalivire's regrettable. . . you know."
"Did he say why?"
"No. You know how Archons are," he said.
Indeed, I did, which was I had largely preferred to avoid them.
#
"Everything is connected to everything else," my alter ego was saying.
"A truism," I agreed. "But I still can't find a connection between your book and anything else in all the Ten Thousand Worlds."
We had spent another fruitless afternoon seeking the one loose thread that would let us untangle the text. My other self was growing increasingly distracted by the puzzle, if indeed it was a puzzle. Earlier, I had lightly offered the opinion that it might be a complete fabrication of a magical book, a decoy of some kind. "Perhaps some thaumaturge of a b
ygone age produced this farrago of meaningless letters in order to divert a rival's attention away from his real book of tricks."
A growl had sounded in my head. "These are not tricks," he said and I felt the force of his anger. "And this is no decoy."
I was becoming increasingly concerned. The situation had not been so problematical when we had been offworld and pursuing the Chalivire discrimination, even though the book had gone everywhere we went. But since our return, only a couple of smallish cases had come my way, both easily dealt with, and the idleness drove my inner companion again and again to the resistant mystery of Baxandall's book.
"So, everything is connected to everything else," I said, "except, apparently, this book which stands alone, a monument to its own uniqueness."
I heard him swear within my head. Oddly, he had a more salacious vocabulary than my own. "You don't see it," he said.
"Then reveal what I don't see."
"In your realm," he said, "everything is connected to everything else by rational ties, by cause and effect, by one and one making two, and so on."
I saw where he was going. "Ah, but in the world to come," I said, "when magic reasserts itself, the connections will be otherwise. Things that do not now relate to each other will do so intensely, intimately."
"Exactly."
"Then we have but to wait until that world arrives, you stand out in full measure, I fade into the shadows, and the meaning of the book will suddenly be clear."
He groaned. "I cannot wait! This must be dealt with now!"
"You are not just impatient for your own time to come?" I suggested. "It would be natural for you--"
"No!" he shouted in our shared mental parlor, then moderated his tone. "Well, yes, I am eager to get on with things, to see a world into which I fit as closely as you have fitted yours. But it is more than that. The urgency comes not from me, but from. . ."
"I understand," I said. "If you knew the source of your sense of urgency, that itself might be the first step into the maze."
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