The Gist Hunter (12 page)

I had placed my integrator on the sleeping pallet before going into the ablutory to wash. Returning, I extended my arm so that it might climb back to its wonted place upon my shoulders. I realized as I made the gesture that I was already becoming accustomed to its warmth and slight weight.

The creature came to me without taking its eyes from the footman who stood impassively beside the door. I noticed that the fur behind its skull was standing out like the ruffs that were fashionable when I was in school. I made a gesture to myself as if I had forgotten some trivial matter and returned to the washroom. There I lowered my voice and said to my assistant, "Why are you doing that?"

It moved to the far edge of my shoulder so it could look at me and said, "I am doing several things. To which do you refer?"

"Making your neck hair stand on end."

It reached up a paw and stroked the area. "It appears to be an autonomic response."

"To what?"

Its eyes flicked about then it said, "I think, to the presence of the footman."

"Why?"

"I do not know. I have had neither neck hair nor involuntary responses before."

"I should perform a diagnostic inquisition on you," I said.

"And just how would you go about doing that in my new condition?" it asked.

"Yes," I said, "I will have to think about that."

We went out to the anteroom and the servant opened the door to the corridor, but I stayed him. It might be useful to question him about the events that led up to Therobar's arrest. Servants often know more than they are supposed to about their masters' doings, even though they will invariably adopt an expression of blinking innocence when barked at by an inquisitive scroot like Warhanny. But let the interrogation be conducted by someone who has questions in one hand and coins in the other, and memories that had previously departed the servant's faculties come crowding back in, eager to reveal themselves.

"What can you tell me about your master's arrest?" I asked.

"Agents of the Bureau of Scrutiny came in the morning. They spoke with the master. When they left, he accompanied them."

This information was delivered in a disinterested tone, as if the man were describing a matter of no particular moment. His eyes were a placid brown. They rested on me blandly.

"What of the events that led up to the arrest?" I said.

"What of them?"

"They involved a number of deaths and some unsavory acts perpetrated on a girl."

"So I was told."

The servant's lack of affect intrigued me. "What did you think of the matter?" I asked.

"My memories of the incidents are vague, as if they occurred in another life."

"Struggle with them," I said, producing a ten-hept piece. I was surprised that the impassivity of his gaze did not so much as flicker, nor did he reach for the coin. Still I persisted. "What did you think of the crime?"

He shrugged. "I don't recall thinking of it at all," he said. "My duties occupy me fully."

"You were not shocked? Not horrified?"

"No."

"What were your emotions?"

The brown eyes blinked slowly as the man consulted his memory. After a moment he said, "When the Allers girl was brought in, she was hysterical. I was sent to the kitchens to fetch a restorative. The errand made me late in preparing the sleeping chambers for the master's guests. I was chagrined but the master said it was a forgivable lapse."

"You were chagrined," I said.

"Briefly."

"Hmm," I said.

I flourished the ten-hept piece again and this time the fellow looked at it but again showed no interest. I put it away. Turgut Therobar had a reputation for aiding the intellectually deficient. I reasoned that this man must be one of his projects and that I would gain no more from interrogating him than I would from questioning the mosses on Dimpfen Moor. "Lead me," I said.

I was brought to a capacious reception room in the main dome. Therobar was in the center of the great space, making use of a mobile dispenser. He had changed his garments and now wore a loose-fitting gown of shimmering fabric and a brocaded cloth headpiece artfully wound about his massive skull. He was not alone. Standing with him were an almost skeletally thin man in the gown and cap of an Institute don and a squat and hulking fellow who wore the stained smock of an apparaticist and a cloche hat. All three turned toward me as I entered, abruptly cutting off a conversation they had been conducting in muted tones. We offered each other the appropriate formal salutations, then Turgut made introductions.

The lean academician was Mitric Gevallion, with the rank of sessional lecturer in dissonant affinities—the name rang a faint chime but I could not immediately place him—and the bulky apparaticist was his assistant, who went by the single name Gharst. "They are conducting research into some matters that have piqued my curiosity. I have given them the north wing. We've been having a most fascinating discussion."

He handed me a glass of aperitif from a sideboard. I used the time it took to accept and sip the sharply edged liquor to cover my surprise at finding myself drawn into a social occasion after being summoned to an urgent rescue. There seemed no reason not to raise the obvious question, so I did.

"Should we not be concerned rather with your situation?"

For a moment, my meaning did not register, then his brow cleared. "Ah, you mean Warhanny and all that." He dismissed the subject with a lightsome wave of his meaty hand. "Tomorrow is soon enough."

"The matter seemed more pressing when you contacted me," I said.

His lips moved in the equivalent of a shrug. "When confined to the Bureau of Scrutiny's barren coop one has a certain perspective. It alters when one is ensconced in the warmth of home."

There was not much warmth apparent. I thought the room designed more for grandeur than comfort. "Still," I began but he spoke over my next words, urging me to hear what Gevallion had to say. Out of deference to my host, I subsided and gave the academician my polite attention.

"I am making progress in redefining gist within the context of configuration," the thin man said.

Gevallion's name now came into focus and I stifled a groan by sipping from the glass of aperitif. There was a subtle undertone to its flavor that I could not quite identify. As I listened further to the academic a memory blossomed. In my student years at the Institute, I had written an offhand reply to a paper posted on the Grand Forum, demolishing its preposterous premises and ending with a recommendation that its author seek another career since providence had clearly left him underequipped for intellectual pursuits. I now saw that Mitric Gevallion had not taken my well-meant advice but had remained at the Institute, dedicating his life to the pursuit of the uncatchable; he was a seeker after gist, the elusive quality identified by the great Balmerion uncounted eons ago as the underlying substance of the universe. Gist bound together all of time, energy, matter and the other, less obvious components into an elegant whole.

Apparently he had forgotten my criticism of his work since he did not mention it upon our being introduced. It seemed good manners not to bring it up myself, but I could not, in all conscience, encourage his fruitless line of inquiry. "You are not the first to embark on the gist quest," I said, "though you would certainly be the first to succeed."

"Someone must be first at everything," he said. He had one of those voices that mix a tone of arrogance with far too much resonance through the nasal apparatus. Listening to him was like being lectured to by an out-of-tune bone flute.

"But gist is, by Balmerion's third dictum, beyond all grasp," I said. "The moment it is approached, even conceptually, it disappears. Or departs—the question remains open."

"Exactly," the academician said. "It cannot be apprehended in any way. The moment one seeks to delineate or define it, it is no longer there."

"And perhaps that is for the best," I said. I reminded him of Balmerion's own speculation that gist had been deliberately put out of reach by a hypothetical demiurge responsible for drafting the metaphysical charter of our universe. "Otherwise we would pick and pick and pick at the fabric of existence until we finally pulled the thread that unraveled the whole agglomeration."

Turgut Therobar entered the conversation. "Master Gevallion leans, as I am coming to do, toward Klapczyk's corollary to Balmerion's dictum."

I had earlier restrained a groan, now I had to fight down an incipient snort. The misguided Erlon Klapczyk had argued that the very hiddenness of gist bespoke the deity's wish that we seek and find it, and that this quest was in fact the reason we were all here.

I said, "I recall hearing that Klapczyk's adolescent son once advanced his father's corollary as an excuse for having overturned the family's ground car after being forbidden to operate it. Klapczyk countered his own argument by throwing things at the boy until he departed and went to live with a maternal aunt."

"I agree it is a paradox," Gevallion said, then quoted, "Is it not the purpose of paradox to drive us to overcome our mental limitations?"

"Perhaps," I said. "Or perhaps what you take for a teasing puzzle is instead more like a dutiful parent's removal of a devastating explosive from the reach of a precocious toddler. If I were to begin to list the people to whom I would not give the power to destroy the universe, even limiting the list to those who would do so only accidentally, I would soon run out of stationery."

Therobar offered another dismissive wave. I decided it was a characteristic gesture. "I care not for a cosmos ruled by a prating nanny," he said. "I prefer to see existence as veined throughout by a mordant sense of irony. Gevallion's speculations are more to my taste than Balmerion's tiptoeing caution."

"Even if he budges the pebble that brings down the avalanche?"

The magnate's heavy shoulders rose and fell in an expression of disregard. "We are entering the last age of Old Earth, which will culminate in the sun's flickering senility. All will be dark and done with."

"There are other worlds than this."

"Not when I am not standing on them," Therobar said. "Besides, what is life without a risk? And thus, the grander the risk, the grander the life."

I was coming to see my client from a new perspective. "I really think we should discuss the case," I said.

"I've set aside some time after breakfast," he said, then turned and asked Gevallion to explain some point in his theories. After hearing the first few words, I let my attention wander and inspected the room. It was lofty ceilinged, the curving walls cut by high, narrow windows through which the orange light of late afternoon poured in to make long oblongs on the deep pile of the rich, blood-red carpeting that stretched in all directions. One end of the room was dominated by a larger than life mural that displayed Turgut Therobar in the act of casually dispensing something to a grateful throng. Not finding the image to my taste, I turned to see what might be in the other direction and noticed a grouping of divans and substantial chairs around a cheerful hearth. Seated in a love chair, placidly regarding the flames, was a young woman of striking beauty.

Therobar noted the direction of my gaze. "That is the Honorable Gevallion's ward, Yzmirl. She is also assisting him in his researches."

"Would you care to meet her?" Gevallion said.

I made a gesture of faint demurral. "If the encounter would not bore her."

Therobar chuckled. "No fear of that. Come."

We crossed the wide space, the drinks dispenser whispering over the carpet in our wake. The young woman did not look our way as we approached, giving me time to study her. She was beyond girlhood but had not yet entered her middle years. Her face had precisely the arrangement of features that I have often found compelling: large and liquid eyes, green but with flecks of gold, an understated nose and a generous mouth. Her hair was that shade of red that commands attention. It fell straight to her shoulders where it was cut with geometric precision. She wore a thin shift made of layers of a gauzy material, amber over plum, leaving her neck, arms and shoulders bare.

"My dear," said Gevallion, "allow me to present the Honorable Henghis Hapthorn, a discriminator who is assisting our host with matters that need not concern us."

She remained seated but looked up at me. I made a formal salute and added a gallant flourish. Her placid expression did not alter but it seemed that I had captured her interest, since she stared fixedly at me with widened eyes. It was a moment before I realized that the true focus of her gaze was not my face but the transmogrified integrator that crouched upon my shoulder. At the same time I became aware that the creature was issuing into my ear a hiss like that of air escaping from pressurized containment. I gave my head a sharp shake and the annoying sound ceased though I thought to detect a grumble.

"What is that on your shoulder?" Yzmirl asked. Her voice was soft, the tone polite, yet I experienced a reaction within me. It was just the kind of voice I preferred to hear.

"I have not yet reached a conclusion on that score," I said.

The green eyes blinked sleepily. She said, "There was a character in Plobbit's most recent novel,
Spelling Under a Fall
, who trained a large toad to squat on his shoulder. At a signal from its master, the beast would send a jet of unmentionable liquid in the direction of anyone who offended him."

"I recall it," I said. "Do you enjoy Plobbit?"

"Very much," she said. "Do you?"

"He is my favorite author."

"Well, then," she said.

Therobar cleared his throat. "I have some matters to attend to before dinner," he said.

"As do we," said Gevallion, draining his glass and dropping it into the dispenser's hopper. "Yzmirl, would you mind entertaining our friend for a while?"

"I would not mind," she said. She patted the seat next to her to indicate that I should sit. I did so and became aware of her perfume.

"Is that
Cynosure
you're wearing?" I said.

"Yes. Do you like it?"

"Above all other scents." I was not exaggerating. The perfume had had an almost pheromonical effect on me when I had encountered it on other women. On Yzmirl, its allure was compounded by her exquisite appearance.