Starhammer (10 page)

"What is that?"

"We'll go talk to my old friend the historian, Clawenton Ravenish. If anyone will know about Elchites in this system, it'll be old Clawenton."

Clawenton Ravenish was only to be found in the History Institute at Nocanicus University. Meg called and arranged a meeting, then set off with Jon.

First though they went to the Winecellars of Gran Pacifico where Meg carefully selected a bottle of red wine. "Good wine is the only thing old Clawenton lives for, except for his research, of course."

Jon stared at the label. It was nine years old; there were a dozen descriptives; he gulped at the cost.

Meg snorted. "Just charge it to Petrie's gang. If we can't get any information any other way then this is what they'll have to put up with."

After a moment he shrugged. If they got some information then perhaps it would be worth it. But that 10,000 credit units would only be paid if they found this man Eblis Bey. Explaining a bottle of #132 wine might only be practicable in the event of a successful hunt.

Meg paid for the wine, charging it to Jon and ending any further doubts he might entertain.

Nocanicus University was near Octagon Three, in a pair of tasteful towers called the "tuning fork" by disrespectful students, with a green quadrangle set between them.

The History Institute was tucked away behind a library section on the ground floor of the northern tower.

Once inside the unmarked door, Jon gaped in awe at piles of paper books, many enclosed in plastic bags, that rose to the ceiling in great dusty stacks. They were everywhere, lining the rooms and visible corridors. More real books than Jon had ever seen before.

Clawenton Ravenish appeared out of the back, a wizened gnome of a man in a distinctly unfashionable, fussily cut suit in green gahash. Jon was sure that if he was correct in his surmise that Clawenton was at least one hundred and fifty years old, then the suit might be that old as well.

Clawenton's bald pate bobbed merrily as he recognized his visitor. "Darling Meg, my treasure from Testament. How are you, my dear? Still keeping Queen Alice going in the 'Hidden Notebook'?"

"Actually Queen Alice is having to move into rather new and confined quarters, since the laowon killed my baby Bioram."

Clawenton looked up. Jon thought he detected a surprise in the old man's expression. "Laowon, did you say?"

Meg explained briefly.

Clawenton nodded to himself at the end. "And so what you need is some information about the old Elchite sect." His brow furrowed momentarily. "Odd that you should ask me about them. Somebody else was interested in Elchites a few months back." He tapped his nose with a bony finger. "I can't remember who right now. But, well, it'll probably come to me."

Somewhat portentously he crossed his hands behind his back. "The Elchites, of course, are quite an extreme group. Panhumanists, and indeed I think one could say they were originally Human Supremacist. They used to be classified as one of the so-called ecstatic creeds in the Mingeer catalog. Arose from some blend of Islam, Christianity, and Judaic beliefs. Many authorities now fix the origin of the group right back in the early transsolar period."

He stopped and fixed Jon with a glare. It was like that of some rare, suspicious bird. "But why would the Superior Buro lock away the data?"

John shrugged. "It seems inexplicable on the face of it."

"Obviously there is something they do not want you to know about?"

"Well, Clawenton," said Meg, "that's why we came to you. We thought that perhaps with the historian's perspective you could tell us something."

Clawenton brightened a little. "Well, of course you're perfectly correct. Although the history of gas exploration and storage is my own specialty, I've always maintained a lively interest in the doings of the Panhumanist groups. There are some fascinating cults. Like the Pansperm Sympathoea, an extreme male-supremacist group who have been homosexual with reproductive cloning for forty generations or more. They are said to be radically altered from the human norm in patterns of thought. Their visual arts, for example, have progressed into new, quite bizarre experimentation in the religiosity of sexual depiction." Clawenton's eyes finally alighted on the package in Meg's hands.

"But what is this you carry?"

"For you, Clawenton. I hope you like it."

When he'd pulled off the wrappings his eyes popped quite spectacularly. "Domaine Larose!" he breathed. "Great heavens, a nine-year bottle. How wonderful!" He looked up again with renewed suspicion. "You must want to know an awful lot about the Elchites if you've brought me Domaine Larose."

Jon shrugged. "We have very little information. Whatever you can tell us will be an improvement on that."

"Well, let me think. Here, we'll put this wonderful wine away and I'll go and take a look in the back room."

A few minutes later Clawenton banged a data disc into his old video display.

"Now." His voice slipped back into the didactic mode of the professor. "The Elchite origins date back to the early era of competing nations in space. Several small nations fled to space quite early on. They brought strange, violent creeds with them, like the much-abominated Saudi male cultists."

"Oh, Clawenton! Must we bring such things up? That's just disgusting! Compulsory female circumcision, purdah, and harems! Why, they almost bred themselves into two distinct species, male and female."

"I'm sorry, my dear, but the history of our race is a tragic one, full of dreadful deeds and sad mistakes. One cannot ignore the innumerable crimes committed in the name of religious or ideological frenzy.

"Anyway, the Elchites represent a strange mixture of advanced and atavistic elements in their creeds. There are some very extreme male supremacist practices, for example, but there has also been the growth of the Elchite traders, who first became active about three centuries ago. Most recently a rash of outrages has been perpetrated against the laowon.

"Ah! Now I remember. A few months ago a questionnaire was sent out by the laowon military asking for information concerning the Elchites. It actually emanated from the
Illustrious
itself, I believe. But I didn't respond to it. I'm afraid I'm one of those who rather applauds the outrages committed by groups like the Elchites. The laowon are a greedy, brutal race. They use their advantages to crush us. I wish to resist." He probed Jon with a cold eye. "Does this shock you, young man?"

"No, not at all."

Clawenton looked to Meg. "I suspected as much when I saw you in the company of my lovely young Testamenter here." Clawenton winked at Meg, who smiled sweetly in return.

"Oddly enough, though, when the questionnaire came, I had just come into the possession of some interesting information concerning Elchites, right here on Hyperion Grandee."

"Oh, yes?" Jon said.

"I was researching the recent records of small- and medium-size gas and water companies in the belt. It was in connection with a government project. I found a reference to an Elchite trader, someone called Ulip Sehngrohn. He came here about thirty-five years ago, traded briefly in gases and water, then left Grandee."

"Do you know where he went?"

"That was the curious part. No boarding docket number existed in Hyperion Grandee records. So we don't even know where he came from. He certainly wasn't born here, however, and I became quite interested in the matter when I discovered that, so I researched it more thoroughly. Amongst other things I became convinced that there is an Elchite temple, all packed up in security crates, right here on Hyperion Grandee."

"Really?" breathed Iehard.

"I found that the Elchite trader took a long lease on a small commercial docking bay, on the high dorsal extender. No gravity, a prime launching place."

Jon and Meg exchanged a look. The Domaine Larose had paid for itself.

"Of course you have to wear a space suit up there, but I went out to check anyway." He paused for effect. "You know, that lease is still running and you can't get anywhere near the place. The accessway is secured with a steel gate. The locks are armor plated too. It's a Baltitude Security Company warehouse. They have a good reputation for security."

"Who is listed on the lease?"

"Interesting part that. Lease is held by a wholesale gas company with an address on Sooner."

"Sooner?"

"Small wanderer. Orbits way out past William and then shoots in all the way through the hot stuff."

"Asteroid?"

"Comet. The first settlers made a fortune—cheapest gas and water in the system for a few years. This is way back, in the earliest days of Nocanicus system. Before the laowon."

"That must have been an exciting find," Meg said.

"Well, I never found a departure code for Sehngrohn, but I doubt that he's still in the system. The Elchite traders mostly came from Aldebaran and they were real star hoppers, roving as far as the human hegemony runs. Of course, why he should maintain such secrecy concerning his movement is a matter that perhaps the Superior Buro knows more about than we do, eh?" He gave them a thoughtful glance.

"But I remain convinced that there's a chest full of genuine Elchite ceremonial vestments, objects, maybe even an altar of Earthstone! right here on Grandee. Just think what a sight it would make. Our Panhumanist exhibit in the university museum would finally look like something!"

"Yes, indeed," Jon murmured.

After absorbing as much information on Elchitism as they could, they copied some of Clawenton's disk onto a data module and left the ancient historian gleefully examining his bottle of ninth-year Domaine Larose, Cabernet Sauvignon, from the near-legendary agrihabitat Gloaming Splendor.

They chose to walk together through the park. The day was entering the evening hours. Jon could sense that Meg's mood had lifted considerably. "Because you outwitted them?" He hazarded an easy guess. She fairly skipped along like some gray-haired, fifty-year-old girl of ten.

"Of course, what do you want me to do? Think about poor Sha? No, I prefer to concentrate on our victory. To hell with the blueskins, we found out all we need about Elchitism. In addition we may have a lead of some kind. I say 'hooray, and let's skip to the May.'"

On the park mall they passed licensed stands where magicians, jugglers, and mimes exhibited. Small crowds were gathered around the performances.

They paused beside one quite remarkable display set up beneath a pole with a bright green banner. "Fabulous Fara's Template Show," said the illuminated sign that was set before a small booth beside the stand. A woman in a blue wig and a dress of white sequins stood on the dais.

Her show consisted of the production of exotic bubbles from a strange template, a device resembling a loop braided of several colorful threads. To produce the bubbles Fara simply passed the loop over a customer's head and down to his or her shoulders. When she removed the template and held it still, the bubbles floated from the center, up to a half dozen per person, each a unique size, anywhere from that of a pea to a large orange. All swirled with magically bright color patterns that changed constantly.

The bubbles seemed indestructible too. Fara demonstrated this with a blowtorch and a power tool that she brought out of a chest in the booth. Nothing could even mark them.

No two bubbles were ever the same; some were multicolored, some predominantly of one shade or other. The variety seemed endless as they watched her pass pet animals, a cat and a laowon pesski, and then some houseplants, through the hoop of colored wires.

The cat produced a single, glittering scarlet bubble. The pesski produced small, clear bubbles. Those produced by plants were tiny, opaque globes rather like pearls.

An oddity of the process was that it could be performed only once on any particular living thing. Subsequent attempts to obtain more bubbles produced nothing.

As she worked, Fara kept up a constant harangue of the crowd, drawing customers forth. For a fee of twenty credit units, anyone could have a set of fabulous Fara's bubbles.

While Jon and Meg watched, a few people came forward, a party of tourists from the watermoons in typical loud mooner shirts. Fara's harangue continued into a brief history of the template, which was clearly not from any known human science. She held it up so everyone could see it clearly.

"This remarkable device is one of the so-called templates that are found on the planet BRF, or 'Baraf' as it's popularly known, a planet covered in the ruins of a long-dead civilization." Jon looked up with renewed interest; the half-believable tales of Baraf had always fascinated him.

"My father, Finius the Bold, was the man who found this template. He spent the family fortune to go to Baraf and mount a prospecting expedition to the Baraf city sites.

"The expedition spent days on the dangerous trails. They fought off marauding mutants. Then two hovercraft fell into a crustal pit and thirty people lost their lives. However, Finius the Bold survived, and in one of those strange ancient places that they call the Boneyards, he found this template."

There was a little spatter of applause.

"He returned from Baraf forty-eight years ago and we have been producing these bubbles ever since. We estimate that it has produced nearly one hundred million bubbles in that time. During the entire period the device has absorbed no known energy or material of any type.

"So where do the bubbles come from?" Fara asked the crowd. She laughed. Fabulous Fara had a great laugh, lots of white teeth. The crowd laughed too, a mite uneasily at first, and then quite happily.

"From out of thin air!" Fara roared. There was more laughter and a little applause. More tourists stepped up to have bubbles made and photos taken.

Moved by curiosity, Jon stepped forward.

"Twenty credits is rather a lot for just a few bubbles, isn't it?" Meg said.

"After one thirty-two for a bottle of wine, it seems like nothing at all, Meg."

Jon's turn came. Fara lifted the template and settled it around his head. As it did so Jon sensed an odd twinge, a palpable pressure on his psi sense, and when the template lifted, a gasp of surprise arose from the onlookers.