Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

In the hallway, the harper leaned close to the Fudir and whispered, “This is the famous Kennel?”

Donovan answered, “Don’t be deceived, harper. They show us a feckless face; but look in their eyes. The eyes are as hard as stones.”

“But why the façade?”

“A man’s greatest weapon is his opponent’s underestimation.”

“But we’re come for their help. We have the same objective. How are we opponents?”

“They like to keep in practice.” But if Donovan had understood the old man aright, there were those in the Kennel who were more interested in finding what Bridget ban had been up to than in finding the woman herself.

The armillary was in a conference room. Graceful Bintsaif had activated it earlier and it now displayed a three-dimensional projection of the Spiral Arm, centered by ancient convention on Old ‘Saken. The projection would have been impossible to read had all the stars of the Arm been displayed; but only those connected by Electric Avenue were shown, and even so it was a dazzling display of diamonds and golden threads. The young Hound-instructor took the brain from de la Susa and inserted it into the armillary.

De la Susa spoke into a phone. “From insert>Files>Sent from>Display”

Immediately, several nodes on the network brightened, while others dimmed.

“Add>Subordinate coordinates.” He turned to the harper. “These are worlds she mentioned having visited in her reports.” He leaned over the phone again. “By ‘Send Date’>Sequence.”

Light ran through the display like a river, flowing from star to star. It rose from Dangchao Waypoint, through Die Bold and out the Peacock Shortway to the Junction. From Peacock Junction, Bridget ban had traveled the Silk Road through the great interchange at Jehovah and all the way to Harpaloon. After that, she had zigzagged across the Lafrontera District: down the Spiral Staircase to Dancing Vrouw and Bangtop-Burgenland; along the Grand Concourse to Siggy O’Hara and Boldly Go; out Gorky Prospect to Sumday and Wiedermeier’s Chit.

“And the Chit is where she was last heard from?” asked the Fudir, in spite of himself. He gave the Sleuth a mental elbow in the ribs. The Sleuth did not have control of the tongue, but sometimes Donovan or the Fudir accidentally verbalized his thoughts.

De la Susa sighed. “No, she returned to Siggy O’Hara. After that, we never heard from her. Most of Lafrontera is outside the Circuit, so at first we thought she had come back to Siggy O’Hara to use the Ourobouros station there, and we awaited the late arrival of drones or messages entrusted to passing ships; but… None came. It’s possible she sent a message by a ship that was lost through mishap.”

That would be two mishaps at roughly the same time , the Sleuth pointed out. A Hound gone missing and her last message lost. The probability of that is…

“Quiet,” said Donovan. “No one cares what the probability is.”

The other three in the room turned to look at him, and Méarana said, “Don’t worry. He talks to himself sometimes.” Why this might be a reason not to worry, she did not say.

The Fudir was sorry the witch was missing. After all these years, the anger no longer flamed. But the ashes were bitter and he was not about to spend his life looking for her.

It’s obvious where we have to start , said the Sleuth.

“Where the harper has to start,” Donovan muttered sotto voce. “It’s Jehovah for us.”

You can’t be thinking of sending Méarana out there alone?

“And why not?” he whispered.

You know why not .

It suddenly seemed very cold to him, and he shuddered like a drunk caught thin-shirted under a Harvest-month sky.

“Are you all right, Fudir?” the harper asked.

“Just old and decrepit,” he said. “Zorba, can you give her the reports of the Hounds who followed up on her mother’s disappearance?”

“Ah, child,” the old man said to the harper. “How can you hope to find her where we have failed—even with this wreck of a man to help you.”

“I’m not helping her,” Donovan protested once again.

“‘Tis not so much ‘this wreck of a man’ but ‘the wreck of this man.’”

The Tall Hound nodded. “Ah… I can see where that might matter.”

“And I thought that—if we followed Mother’s itinerary—we may see things the others missed,” said Méarana. “I am her daughter, after all.”

Zorba looked at her with sadder eyes. “A slim hope.”

“When hope is all there is, it is enough.”

The Aged Hound nodded, as if to himself. Then he said, “Graceful Bintsaif”

“Yes, Cu?”

“Give them the redacted reports that Greystroke and the others filed.”

“Is that wise, Cu?”

“Ask, ‘Is it useful?’” He turned to Donovan and the harper and extended the pocket brain. “Do not suppose we have neglected to visit these places.”

“Yes…” Donovan accepted the brain and gave it to Méarana. “…but your reports can at least tell her which trails not to follow. And maybe they can convince her by the thoroughness of your harvest that there is little point to her gleaning.”

The Old Hound rubbed his cheeks again with his hand. He glanced at Graceful Bintsaif. “You’ll tell Himself everything, of course.”

“Of course.” The junior Hound bowed slightly from the shoulders.

“Ochone! She’s the Little One’s spy, you know,” he added aside to the harper. “Oh, the old man is garrulous. He talks too much. So she is my second shadow. Well, I will tell you this much. Bridget ban had picked up rumors. She never said where. But she was hunting something big. She said it could shield the League against the Confederation for aye. Or it could destroy us.”

“In the wrong hands…,” said Donovan slowly.

“Oh, aye. But consider it a warning. If such a power exists, it proved too much for a Hound. It would make short work of a harper and a drunk.”

“You’re a blunt one,” said the Fudir.

“Is it wise, Sèan-Cu,” said Graceful Bintsaif, “to lay such temptations before… layfolk?”

The Fudir cackled. “No worries, sahb. I haven’t laid hands on absolute power in almost twenty years.”

The restaurant called The Three Hens sits on a narrow side street just west of An Caislinn. It is entered by three short steps down into a small barroom and then through an archway into a larger dining room where the tables sit within vast wine barrels. The ceiling is vaulted stone, suggesting that this was once the cellar of a larger building and these had been its storage rooms .

The restaurant takes its name from three clone-lines of poultry that, to this very day, have been nurtured and pruned for their flesh. What grows in the vats is not exactly alive, nor does it resemble much the images of hens that decorate the dining room. How long the lines will yield their harvests no one can say. Legend holds that they were started by Commonwealth “scientists” and will last forever. Yet there are aged and nearly unreadable images at the Taran Archives in which, in the background, one can make out a sign: The Four Hens. Nothing lasts forever .

The meal is tasty, the smack of the poultry accented by subtle sauces, and the staff is attentive to de la Susa and his party .

Donovan has told the Kennel what happened to the Dancer and a portion of what the Names had done to him afterward. He has said only that his ill-treatment had left him “disoriented.”

Over Hunter’s Hen, fenneled potatoes, and glasses of Gehpari Mountain White, the scarred man does his best to forget the memories roiled by the debriefing. So he lets the Fudir tell of some scrambles in the Terran Corner of Jehovah. The Old Hound finds great amusement in the account of the rescue of Little Hugh O’Carroll. In return, he tells of his liberation of Hector Lamoy, the “Friend of Truth,” who had been sentenced to death on Chamberlain for a poem satirizing the Alish Bo Wanameer, the People’s Hope .