Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Resilient Services himself overruled the Council on a few occasions, and Méarana supposed that this was for the same reason. In one case, the emperor denied “yin privilege” to the daughter of the Minister for All Things Natural Within the Realm. “Yin” was the privilege of bypassing the examination system to secure a place in the hierarchy. Apparently, this was sufficiently pro forma for the children of officials that the Minister’s face twitched in irritation. The Grand Secretary noted this and snapped, “Five blows! Filial impiety!” The sergeant-at-arms, who stood by the wall with a long cane of slapstick, stood to attention; but Resilient Services, looking up from perusal of yet another report, said, “Belay that, please. Imperial grace.”

“I was frightened,” the harper later admitted to the Fudir, when that worthy had emerged from the Terran Corner slightly scathed and greatly enlightened. “At least, a little,” she added. They had met in the Fudir’s room at the Hotel Mountain Glowering. Méarana sat in the comfortable sofa while the scarred man examined his face in the mirror.

“What? Of our young emperor?” The Fudir applied a healing stick to the cut over his left eye, wincing slightly at the sting.

“Not so much of him as for him. His slightest whim is instantly obeyed. What does that do to a man’s soul? And the others grovel before him. It can’t be good for a man to have others grovel to him.”

“Better perhaps,” said Donovan, “than for the ones who must grovel.”

“There was one set of reports… Did you know there is a second, independent hierarchy whose only purpose is to monitor the behavior of the regular officials and report any ‘nonharmonious words or acts’?”

The Fudir dabbed at the other cuts he had suffered. “The Bureau of Shadows,” he said. “It could be worse.”

“Worse, how?”

“They could be shadowing the common people. If a government is going to snoop, they may as well restrict their snooping to one another. The system could be brought to perfection if the first set of officials were then restricted to monitoring the second. How soon can you break off these afternoon tête-à-têtes?”

Méarana sat up. Something in the Fudir’s voice…” What did you discover?”

“Two things. First, the jewelmonger Hennessi fu-lin remembers your necklace. He bought it in pawn from a man of Harpaloon. The man never came back for it, so he sold it to your mother.”

“Harpaloon. Mother’s next stop. Was she following the necklace? What was the second thing?”

“The Terrans remember that she met several times with a man from Kàuntusulfalughy who had been stranded here by the thistlequake. It isn’t much, but it’s the only activity of hers that I’ve heard about that wasn’t tied directly to disaster relief.”

“Who was it? What did he and Mother talk about?”

The Fudir held up a hand. “It may mean nothing at all. The Sleuth is always too eager to see patterns. The rest of us pointed that out and the Sleuth got huffy and left…”

“Fudir… The Sleuth is inside your head. Where could he go?”

“He’s sulking; not communicating. That makes it hard for the rest of us to put things together. The Terrans claim that when your mother returned she asked after this Kauntling. Debly Jean Sofwari. He was a science-wallah, or impersonating one, because he wore the white robes they favor. The Terrans say that he was flitting all around the sheen swabbing people’s mouths.”

“He was what?”

The Fudir spread his hands, palms up. “Could I make up something like that?”

“That must be why Mother met with him. She wanted to learn if he was a madman.”

“I bribed the log-keeper at Dewport Field, but Sofwari must have had his own ship. There’s no record of him in the departure logs. The automatic system was wrecked in the ‘quake and they were doing everything the hard way. I’ll spend another day snooping after Sofwari, but if the Terrans had known anything more, I’d have some inkling. We don’t know why your mother found him so interesting. He was too young for her bed.”

Méarana stiffened. “Dinnae speak of Mother in such ways.”

“Méarana… You must know that your mother’s bed was not a restricted area. Little Hugh was there; I was there. Even Greystroke was there. So was a Die Bold businessman, the Peacock STC director, a—.”

“Stop it!”

“And that was in the short time she and I were ‘associated.’ It’s no use clapping your ears like that. You can hear the truth from your inner voice.”

Méarana took her hands from her ears. “You didn’t know her the way I did.”

“I should hope not.”

“She’s not like that any more.”

The scarred man forbore to answer. Proverbs about leopards and spots came to mind. But the argument continued despite Méarana’s silence, with himself taking all sides. Shut up! he told himself. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Turning away from the harper, doubling over his clenched arms, he fell to his knees on the thick carpet of the sitting room and…

… suddenly, everything around him was unfamiliar, as if he had stepped off-stage. What was he doing here, in this comfortless room, so far from the consolations of Port Jehovah? He cursed Zorba de la Susa. He cursed Méarana Swiftfingers. Most of all, he cursed Bridget ban.

But that was in another country, a part of him said, And beside, the wench is dead.

Tears squeezed from his eyes. Though why should he mourn the death of Bridget ban? She had been dead to him for years.

Something subterranean rumbled with gigantic laughter, sending Inner Child scurrying in flight, silencing even the silent Donovan (for there is a silence more deep than mere quiet).

Each of him regarded himself to the extent that things unreal can regard anything. A fragment of an ancient poem brushed his mind too lightly for the words to alight; and a terrible foreboding took hold of him. An image of a shadow, slouching, at a distance, like a stranger seen under a lamppost on a foggy night. Dead , he thought; or a part of him thought. All tears are dust .

And the word— dust, dust, dust —echoed down the drainpipe of his mind like a man falling into an endless cavern. He saw a party of people, small, as if viewed by an eagle from a distance, circling along a narrow ledge above an immense abyss. One of them pointed with a walking staff into the darkness below them. There is something down there , he said, that cannot speak .

When he came to himself once more, it was night. The room was dark, save for a reading lamp in the corner. He lay curled up upon the bed and, in the corner, the harper slept upright in a padded chair. Slowly, he straightened, careful lest he make a noise, but Méarana’s eyes opened.

“You had a seizure,” she said. “Worse than before.”

The scarred man lay still for a while, then pushed himself erect and sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned his hands on his knees. “It was easier,” he said, “when I thought I had forgotten.”

The harper didn’t ask him what he had thought forgotten. She said, “I brought a doctor in. He prescribed rest, and some herbs.”

He laughed softly and without humor. “The famous herbalists of Thistlewaite. Did he stick pins in me? I’ve heard they do that here. Chicken soup?” He remembered being haunted by thoughts of death. But whose death? And whose thoughts?

There was something very wrong inside his head.

That elicited a second humorless laugh. It was more pertinent to wonder if there was anything very right in that vandalized ruin.

How could such a kaleidoscope keep Méarana safe from harm? De la Susa had not known what he was asking of him.