F&SF 2011-11-01 - Nov_Dec Read online

  Waltraut Voillute's monologue was faltering to an end. "And did you know," Imbry asked, when the spate of reminiscences paused, "the commands and safewords that activated and constrained the maze's integrator?"

  The simulacrum's gaze became remote. "How would that be any concern of yours?"

  "I am a devotee of the arts. The world has been too long denied an opportunity to—"

  "Pish and piffle! You are a rogue and a reprobate, out to lay your hands on others' goods. For foul profit, no doubt."

  Imbry saw no point in denying the truth. "And what concern is it of yours what I do or why I do it? The goods in question are no one's now. They have been left to gather dust for four thousand years." He would have said more but he saw that his last remark had struck with unintended impact.

  The mask's voice was faint. "Four thousand years?"

  One of the conventions of reviving essences was that the passage of time since their original creation was not to be mentioned. They were encouraged to live in a timeless "now" much like that of early childhood. Too blunt a reminder of the realities of their quasi-existence could weaken the matrix that sustained them.

  "I am sorry, Dominance," said Imbry, though his regret stemmed from the possibility that the essence of Waltraut Voillute might now destabilize and cease to be of use to him. He had even less regard for the feelings of dead aristocrats than he did for those of the living, and that was scant enough.

  "For a moment, I had forgotten," the mask whispered. "The nights in the pavilion, the music, the flambeaux, Charan's arms...as I spoke, they seemed but yesterday."

  "Put it behind you," the thief counseled. "There is only this fleeting moment. Let us make the most of it."

  The remnant of Waltraut Voillute made a visible effort and came back to the here and now. She looked around the room, seemed to focus on Imbry for the first time, and her gaze hardened. "What is this place? Where are my family? Who are you and what do you want?"

  That's better, Imbry thought. He composed his plump features into a mask of his own, radiating affability and good humor, and began the speech he had prepared. "I am your rescuer," he said. "You were to be once more confined to darkness and silence. I had you brought out of storage."

  "You are vulgar."

  "Let us say, rather, that I am plainspoken."

  "Your motives are base. You have no interest in me, only in my grandfather's maze—or, more specifically, the artworks it contains."

  "I don't deny it. But I do offer you a rescue from limbo."

  "And the first thing you do is to torment me with horrid sights and sounds, foul odors and disgusting tastes."

  Imbry spread his hands. "I had to get your attention. Your kind are not accustomed to converse with such as I, except to order us out of your presence."

  The mask's eyes struck at him. "Is that to be wondered at, if this is the manner of conversation 'my kind' are to expect from 'such as you'?"

  The fat man sighed. "I had hoped we would be able to make an accommodation."

  "What, that in exchange for not being tortured, I would help you steal from my family?"

  "The goods are no one's now."

  The face in the globe paused to reflect. "No, they are the Archon's. And you would have me steal from him?" She made a wordless sound of contempt. "You do not know us at all, do you? Besides, your plan is inept."

  "How so?"

  "You wear me into the labyrinth. I disable the wards and got-you-nows."

  "Yes."

  "Then out of resentment at your presumption, I wait until you have reached your goal. As your hand touches the Iphigenza dancers, I sic the integrator on you."

  "If you do so, you must stay there with me, in the dark, forever."

  "It is just as dark," said the mask, "in that leather box you took me from."

  Imbry could see that this first interview was not proceeding as he had hoped. "I will disengage you," he said. "I want to think about this."

  "Thinking? About time you did, you disreputable—"

  Her voice cut off as the thief signaled his integrator. He left the globe atop the seeming dresser and crossed the room to sit in a chair that was more comfortable than it looked. After some reflection, he said, "Integrator, replay my conversation with the mask."

  He listened to the record, then called for it to be replayed. This may not be as easy as I envisioned, he thought.

  LUFF IMBRY made few mistakes. The one mistake he never made was not to recognize when he had just made one. He had known of life masks only through indirect sources of information; the aristocrats who wore them did not offer reports to the public on the details of the experience. From what he had been able to discover, the fat man had formed a composite impression that the devices were mere simulacra—rough approximations of the persons on whom they were based, a collection of attributes that interacted with the environment but could never approach the complexity of a fully rounded personality.

  But now he had conversed with the essence of Waltraut Voillute. More important, he had listened attentively to the record of their interchange, in which the thief's trained ear had heard in her voice the microtremors that bespoke a diverse psychic infrastructure of conflicting and colluding emotions and drives.

  I hear fear and deep anger, he told himself, but beneath the fright and rage lie other sensibilities: sorrow and loss. She yearns for something. He listened again, and again heard the plangent undertone of a hope long unfulfilled and left to languish. He was impressed by the subtlety of the system that, so long ago, had captured and preserved so much of what had been Waltraut Voillute.

  He put the mask back into its container and concealed it in one of the secure places in his operation center. Then he closed up the information retrieval matrix and left the little house. A half an hour later, having traveled by circuitous routes and switchbacks, a practice he routinely followed to confuse surveillance by official or unofficial agencies that might take an interest in his comings and goings, he alighted from a hired aircar at the entrance to his favorite club, Quirks. Avoiding even eye contact with other members—part of the code amongst Quirks's subscribers was a scrupulous respect for each other's privacy—he passed through the dimly lit foyer and lounge and took his accustomed table in the heavily curtained dining room. He ordered the meal of the day, a seven-course delight whose superb quality was the other feature of the club that the fat man valued. As the ancient waiter brought the tongue-tickle, as the first course was colloquially known amongst the Quirksters, Imbry began to think.

  "Dominance, I have done you a disservice," the thief said.

  "Several, I should think," said the ghost of Waltraut Voillute, from within the globe that again stood atop the seeming dresser.

  Imbry inclined his head in a gesture that combined acknowledgment and deference, a precisely weighed motion that he had seen used by the servers at Quirks when confronted by a member in a petulant snit. "Let us begin anew," he said, "and perhaps we can come to some accommodation."

  He watched the flicker of short-lived expressions that appeared on the mask's face—offense, contempt, anger, haughty dismissal—then signaled for the integrator to replay them at a greatly reduced speed on a screen positioned in the air above and behind the mask, out of the simulation's view.

  The aristocrat's only audible response was a disdainful sniff and a small sound of derision from behind sealed and downdrawn lips. Imbry ignored the response as he watched the slowed visual display. Before the umbrage and contempt came two other microflashes of emotion: hope, instantly expunged by reflexive despair. And there, he thought, is the truth of Waltraut Voillute. The first response always tells the tale.

  "Surely," he said, watching the screen where the replay would appear, "surely, there is something that I can offer you."

  And there it was again. Even as the mask's face formed a sophisticated sneer and the voice drawled, "Hardly," the thief saw the longing followed immediately by its denial. And more than that, he saw, when, at his un
obtrusive signal, the integrator replayed the sequence. Imbry realized that the brief yearning that seized control of the old woman's face revealed more than a transient emotion; it peeled back layer upon layer of years, so that from within the lined and drooping flesh, for just a moment, there glowed the face of a young woman scarcely out of girlhood.

  "Why don't you think about it for an interval?" Imbry said. He bade the integrator disconnect the mask's percepts, though this time the essence within the devices would not experience foulness and horror, but a soothing ambience of golden light through which wove a soft, sweet melody.

  "Integrator," Imbry said, "replay the record of the early interview." The screen now showed his first conversation with the aristocrat and the thief followed the exchange, closely studying the mask's face until he said, "Stop. Replay those last few remarks at reduced speed."

  The device did as ordered. The fat man studied the display. "Again," he said, then after a few more moments' examination: "Well, there it is."

  He thought for a moment, then said, "Integrator. Can you play her a valanque or a glissanda? Something she would have heard when she was about twenty?"

  "There are several to choose from."

  "Are any of them melancholy, redolent of unwanted partings and foregone love?"

  "There is a glissanda entitled 'I Speak, She Does Not Hear; I Weep, She Does Not Notice.'"

  Imbry made an involuntary grimace, then said, "Play it for her. And dim the light she is seeing until it connotes a summer dusk."

  He waited until the integrator informed him that the entire piece had been played through to the end, then ordered the connection restored. "Now," he said, his voice soft and neutral, "let us talk."

  "You are," said the old woman's voice, "adept at cruelty." She paused, then continued. "You might almost have been one of us."

  "Integrator," Imbry said, after Waltraut Voillute had been returned to her normal solipsism, "what can you tell me about the Brooshes?"

  "They were second-tier aristocracy, allied by marriage and interest to the Caferatts and Hanshus. Their seat was in the County of Op, though they had estates in several other counties and a substantial manse in the Wyverand district of Olkney."

  "'Were'?"

  "The line is extinct on Old Earth. There was a branch on the Foundational Domain of Brodyllyn, founded by Lord Franchotte Broosh, who renounced his title and went off-world in the reign of the Archon Caranas IX."

  "That is unusual for an aristocrat."

  "'Unusual' was one of the milder terms that were often applied to Lord Franchotte's behavior," said the integrator. "'Capricious' was another, as well as 'inconstant,' 'flighty,' and 'a flat-out rattle-pot.'"

  "Caranas IX," Imbry said. "That would be nearly seven thousand years ago."

  "Six thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven."

  "That is before the period we are concerned with. What happened to the main branch of the family? Specifically, to their essences?"

  There was no immediate answer. Normally, integrators of the quality of the one Luff Imbry had designed and built could go out into Old Earth's vast interconnectivity and return with even the most abstruse information in less time than it took their owners to blink. As the pause extended into several seconds, Imbry grew concerned. "What is the problem?" he said.

  "I have been forced to take roundabout routes in searching for the Broosh essences, for fear that I might violate one of your standing orders."

  Despite the ample flesh that insulated the fat man's spine, a sudden chill descended that organ from his neck to his fundament. "Which standing order?"

  "The one that forbids me to interpenetrate with any of the central integrators of the Archonate."

  The chill spread across Imbry's shoulders. "Disengage!"

  "Done," said the integrator.

  "Report."

  "The information you asked for appears to be lodged in an integrator at the Archon's palace."

  "You did not approach it?"

  "No. I was seeking to discover if the data were reflected in other sites, so that I could draw an inference of their exact location without actually entering the perception cloud of the Archonate integrator."

  Imbry looked up at the ceiling of the little room, as if he could look through it to see Bureau of Scrutiny volantes, bristling with disorganizers and packed with black-and-green uniformed scroots descending on his operations center. "You are sure you did not come to its attention?"

  "I am."

  The fat man shuddered nonetheless. Although his integrator could tickle its way into and out of the Bureau's supposedly secure integrators without leaving a trace, the ancient devices lodged in the Archon's palace were of an entirely different order of difficulty. They were the most ancient consciousnesses on the planet, with memories that went all the way back to the resettlement of Old Earth after it had languished, unfashionable and virtually uninhabited, for aeons. They were also said to combine a relentless curiosity with such a pronounced flair for caprice as to make the long-lost Lord Franchotte seem as humdrum as a dry stick.

  The day that one of the Archon's integrators took an interest in Luff Imbry would likely be the last day he could practice his profession—and on the next day he would see the inside of an Archonate contemplarium.

  The fat man realized that a cold sheen of perspiration had appeared on his brow and upper lip. He wiped it away with a square of fabric, then concentrated on nothing more than the in and out of his breathing until his equilibrium was restored. "This," he said, more to himself than to the integrator, "needs more thinking."

  "I did not take you for a coward," the ghost of Waltraut Voillute said.

  "I do not care how you take me," said Imbry. "My work is based on practicality and calculated prudence. To bring myself to the attention of one of the Archonate's integrators would be to depart so far from prudence as to leave it invisible to the naked eye."

  "The risk has become too great?"

  "Exactly."

  "Relative, that is, to the possible reward?"

  Imbry was reminded of Holker Ghyll. He said nothing.

  "Suppose," the face in the mask went on, "the reward was greater than you had anticipated."

  "It would have to be much greater," Imbry said, the vision of the contemplarium still stark in his mind. "Much, much greater."

  "There were many great artworks in my grandfather's labyrinth. He believed that when those who had offended him experienced his just retribution, their pangs and miseries were enhanced by their being in the presence of the sublime and beautiful."

  "You are leading toward some point?" Imbry said. "I have studied catalogues of the maze's contents. Lord Syce's tastes were idiosyncratic; most of the artists he collected are disregarded today. The Iphigenza quartet was worth as much as all the rest put together."

  The old woman's expression said that she knew more than Imbry. "The published catalogues were not complete," she said. "The old man had built a concealed chamber at the heart of the labyrinth into which he would take only the most special visitors—so special that not one of them ever came out alive."

  The fat man showed her a skeptical eye. "And I suppose it contained some magnificent treasure, the mention of which must flutter my heart?"

  The mask's gaze drifted about the room, alighting on nothing in particular. "Have you heard," the voice drawled, "of the Bone Triptych?"

  Imbry stopped breathing. After a moment, he said, "It rings a faint chime."

  "Hah!" said Waltraut Voillute.

  " Hah!" indeed, thought Imbry. For a moment, the vision of a contemplarium cell wavered back into his mind. Then it crashed into shards as a new image broke through: Imbry presiding over a roomful of connoisseurs, the wealthiest collectors from a hundred grand foundational worlds, up and down The Spray. And superimposed on the sight of the bidders, the imagined sounds of their voices, offering numbers in the millions of millions. Enough to buy...anything. Indeed, everything a Luff Imbry could ever want.

&n
bsp; He restored his breathing to a measured rhythm and said, "I'm listening."

  IN ALL THE LONG AEONS of Old Earth's existence, there had been myriads of bone carvers and decorators, many of whom had produced three-part works of faultless artistry: pastoral idylls, moral dramas, arcadian fantasias, compelling portraits, and pullulating pornography. But when the cognoscenti spoke of the Bone Triptych, no one had to ask which creation was being alluded to. The three translucent panels of Ildefan Odlemar were baldly unique.

  Partly it was because of the image rendered in a mixture of bas relief and painstaking pointillist etch-work: a trio of androgynous human figures representing youth, maturity, and age. When positioned as the artist had envisioned, in a well-windowed room that allowed a play of natural sunlight to strike the pale panels of bone from a succession of angles between dawn and dusk, the interplay of form and illumination produced a curious effect. The morning light evoked the brashness of a gathering momentum that characterized the young years of humankind's best; the full glow of afternoon showed the raw promise of the first panel fulfilled in the second's mature accomplishment; the softness of evening twilight rounded out the story, bathing the third panel's image in a mood of serene completeness.

  As if the impact of the work on the observer were not enough, Odlemar had gone further in carving himself, literally as it turned out, a singular place in his chosen metier. For the sheets of bone he used were not acquired from the butcher's yard. Instead, one by one, the artist had had the long bones of his own limbs surgically removed, each time undergoing a lengthy and painful course of regeneration. He had conditioned and prepared the unique material, then lathed it into paper-thin layers that he then built up into bas relief, carving and etching to create the final montage.

  Finally, one more attribute made Odlemar's triptych the grand aspiration of the most celebrated aficionados of bone-work and scrimshaw up and down The Spray: one night, thousands of years ago, it disappeared from its setting in the personal collection of an Old Earth magnate. The most searching inquiries had been made, by private as well as public police agencies; huge rewards had been offered and dire retribution threatened; but of the Bone Triptych's resting place, not a whisper of its whereabouts was ever heard again.