The Gist Hunter (17 page)

"I think we must count Jabbi Gloond a lapsed Palmadyan," I said. "The cult requires its adherents to eat only what they have grown and prepared themselves, a stricture only slightly modified by the fact that all effort in Orkham County is communal."

"Not only communal but compulsory," said Torsten. "I think you have used too mild a term for the manner in which our guest has departed from the cult's teachings. He has not so much lapsed from Palmadyanism as leapt from it as far as humanly possible."

Torsten and I had agreed on this conversational gambit as a means to make a sideways approach to the question on the son's mind. We would lure the father into an exchange that we intended to shape toward a discussion of how he and Gloond came to be sharing a house.

"Indeed," I said, following Torsten's observation with a question to the older man. "You have seen Orkham County at first hand. Is Jabbi Gloond as atypical as he seems?"

But Gresh Olabian gave only a wooden shrug in reply and with pale, seemingly bloodless hands continued to pick without interest at a plate of herbs and softroot.

Undeterred, I bored in. "Although you used offworld labor to mine for blue-fires and shatterlights, you must have engaged local transportation and handlers to get them to the spaceport on Shoal Island. Only horse-drawn wagons can cross Orkham County and the drivers are all local folk. Was Gloond one of them?"

He made no reply, but this time Olabian looked at me. Although the waxy skin of his face did not register any emotion I thought I saw alarm in his otherwise expressionless eyes. My interest in Gloond appeared to disturb him.

It clearly emboldened Torsten. "If he is causing you difficulties, we'll soon tumble him out into the road," he said.

The elder Olabian said nothing and kept his eyes on his plate.

"Please, Father," said Torsten, "Henghis is very good at unraveling mysteries. I have urged him to become a professional discriminator. Whatever the problem, I'm sure he can help. We'll get to the bottom of Jabbi Gloond."

Again, though no expression animated the father's face I sensed a growing unease. But when I began to frame a new question, Gresh Olabian rose from the table without a word and departed the room.

Torsten watched his father go, his face a turmoil of frustration mingled with heartfelt concern.

At the other end of the table Jabbi Gloond paid no heed but continued to feed his apparently unrelenting appetite.

"Hmm," I said.

In the long summer afternoon, the old orange sun poured its tinted light through the trailing branches of a broad-boled dwindle that dominated the estate's south lawn. I had convinced Torsten that a round of pinking might take his mind off the situation. But when I came out with my stars in hand I found that my friend had prevailed, I don't know how, on Jabbi Gloond to operate the apparatus that flung the targets.

We spun our stars at the disks as they flew against the blameless sky, though my friend's mind was not upon the game. He clean missed an easy low-glide in the first frame and barely nicked a high tumbler in the second. As the fallen Palmadyan reloaded the catapult and reset its randomizer for the third interval, Torsten said, "Let us question him about his comings and doings. Perhaps he will let something slip."

I felt a stirring in the back of my mind, my other part stretching its intellectual tendons in anticipation of a pursuit. But some other region of my divided psyche made its influence felt and I said, "I am not sure there is anything to be gained by pushing into the thicket of secrets that your father and Jabbi Gloond share."

Torsten's brow darkened. "But obviously he is extorting favors from my father."

"Indeed," I said, "but they are trivial: some plates of spiced mushrooms and a narrow chamber that was intended for an undercook."

"Details! My father is victimized!"

"True, but he seems to have adjusted to the situation. He did not become disturbed until you spoke of my ability to penetrate an intrigue."

There was a sensation in my own back rooms, an inner grumble that told me that my inward companion was not pleased at the direction into which I was trying to move events. There was an even more forceful protest from the friend beside me.

"I must know what is going on," Torsten said. With that he made a peremptory gesture that caused Jabbi Gloond to slouch in our direction.

"Unpleasant knowledge is like an ugly but unreturnable gift," I quoted. "Once received it must be lived with."

Torsten struck a resolute pose. "Nevertheless."

"Very well," I said, "but allow me to put the questions."

At close quarters, the former Palmadyan was even less prepossessing. The comprehensive traces of several meals adorning the front of his smock were as much an affront to the nose as to the eye. I examined his face and deportment for the known signs of a criminal disposition and found nothing remarkable. Nor were there indications of even moderate intelligence. Any illicit enterprise conceived by Jabbi Gloond, I decided, would be uncomplicated and its execution probably confined to a single stage. A two-step plan would be one too many.

"You are of Orkham County, I believe," I said.

"Yes."

"A remarkable place, Orkham," I said.

"Is it?" For a moment I thought to detect repartee, then I saw that the man was genuinely puzzled by my observation. While the sparse teeth of his mental gears were still grinding I threw him a direct question.

"Did you work for Gresh Olabian there?"

"No."

"Then for whom?"

"For Farmer Boher."

"What did you do for Farmer Boher?"

"Drove a wagon."

"It must have been a good and simple life, full of fresh air and healthful exercise."

He shook his elongated head so vigorously that the tip of his nose oscillated. "Food was bad, work was hard. Slept in the barn."

I understood that Jabbi Gloond had spent a lifetime doing what he was bidden to do. Asked a question, it was his reflex to answer it. Still, he was no running fount of conversation—more like a slowly dripping tap. But by patience and careful questioning I achieved an elementary view of his former situation. The Olabian diggings had been on Farmer Boher's land and Jabbi Gloond was the hand detailed to carry goods and persons to and from the mine site in the wagon. He had had only perfunctory contact with the mining party.

"Where you there when the accident happened?" I asked.

"Where?"

"At the mine?"

Now I saw craftiness mixed with apprehension blossom in his aspect, the sentiments as obvious as the open-pored tuber that was his facial centerpiece. "No," he said.

"You weren't there when the shaft collapsed?"

"No." Now there was patent relief in his face, telling me that I had asked the wrong question and that he was glad of it.

Insight came unbidden. "But you were there after?"

He looked away. "Don't remember."

"What did you see?"

"Nothing. Tunnel caved in. Was nothing to see."

I wanted to ask more but it now belatedly dawned on Jabbi Gloond that he was not obliged to satisfy my curiosity. He turned and sloped off toward the house.

"He was lying," Torsten said.

"Yes," I said, "but only a little."

"What do you deduce?"

I let the impression filter up from within. "Something to do with the accident. He knows something about your father's involvement. It cannot have been anything abstruse or Jabbi Gloond would have failed to notice it."

"Something as simple as my father's having caused the cave-in to rob the others of their shares?"

"Did the others have shares to be robbed?"

"I don't know."

Gresh Olabian was clearly not the warmest of men, but I did not sense in him the coldness of spirit that would be needed if he were to murder an entire mining crew. "And if he did," I said, "why would a troublesome Jabbi Gloond still have all his particles in place? He would make a small addition to the death roll. There are plenty of corners on the estate where his ashes might be tossed into the breeze."

"We need more information," Torsten said.

I reluctantly agreed, though again I counseled him to let the matter lie. "I sense no great evil here," I said. "Nor has your father asked for my help."

"But
I
have," was his reply, "and as my friend you are bound to provide it."

I could think of nothing to offer in response so I said, "Let us go see if the Institute's integrator has anything to report."

"Gresh Olabian's mining crew was a pastiche of exiles and banished criminals," the Institute's integrator reported when we used the communications nexus in The Hutch's study to make contact. It was an unimpressive room, containing only the commonest books and most of them were uncracked. The family connaissarium contained few relics or mementos, considering that Gresh Olabian had spent so many years off-world.

"The Gryulls," the integrator continued, "were from a minor sept of a warrior clan that had chosen the losing side in a voluntary prestige war involving several of the Umpteen Nations."

"I am not familiar with the Umpteen Nations," I said.

"'Umpteen' is the closest translation of the Gryull term. The next closest is 'More than anyone cares to count.' The species's numerical system only goes up to eight, that is, the equivalent of two four-fingered Gryull hands. After that come words for 'quite a few,' 'many,' and the term I translated as 'Umpteen.'"

"I take it that mathematical prowess is not prized in their culture."

"Indeed."

"Please go on," I said.

"The Gryulls were posted offworld for two cycles while they discharged their . . ."—again there was an untranslatable term that the integrator rendered as
second degree shame with liability for mild ridicule
—" . . .after which they could have returned home and resumed their careers."

"Were they close to a return?"

"They were, from a Gryull's perspective. They are far longer lived and thus generally more patient than humans."

"What about the Ek and their walking worms?" I said.

"Two of them were criminals of moderate notoriety according to their culture's norms. The other seems to have been some kind of cousin or a debt servant. Perhaps both. They fled offworld to avoid punishment."

"The Shishisha?" I asked.

The answer was vague, that species being notoriously unforthcoming about their laws and customs. "There are indirect allusions to its having assumed one of the Seven Proscribed Forms, thus making it ineligible for procreation. That's if I'm reading the term right; another interpretation is 'ineligible for cannibalization.' Or it could be that both translations are correct—little is known of the means by which Shishisha conduct their intimacies."

"And the Halebs?"

"They seem to have been motivated primarily by the shares that Gresh Olabian offered for their participation in the project."

"Ah," I said, "so he was dividing the proceeds."

"Yes," said the integrator, "though not until the mine's decommissioning, to keep the work force together. All stood to gain substantially, at least according to their own cultural definitions of 'gain' and 'substantial.'"

"So no one had a motive to destroy the enterprise before it produced great wealth?"

"None that I can ascertain. Solitary Eks sometimes go berserk from loneliness. However, the three in this case not only had each other but, even more important to their psychological health, they had their symbiotic partners. Unattached Shishisha can give way to despair. Or at least the state is conjectured to be despair. It is characterized by inertia but no one ever knows what a Shishisha thinks or feels, if the terms are even appropriate."

"And the cause of the shaft's collapse?"

"The region is volcanic and unstable," said the integrator, displaying a map of Orkham County marked with faults and magma chambers. "Since the disaster, there have been a number of serious upheavals in the same area."

"Are there images?" I asked but was not surprised to be told there were none. The integrator reproduced the texts of official reports on the incident and the results of a more recent geological survey of the area. A footnote mentioned the old mine cave-in.

I felt a stirring in the back of my mind. A picture appeared on my inner screen and after I had considered it for a few moments I told Torsten, "I believe that all this may soon take on a recognizable shape."

I have never been an aficionado of those tales where some fellow with more intellect than personality wields logic like a lancet to slice through layers of subterfuge and diversion to discover the pulsing truth. As a young man, however, I was familiar with the tropes. One of the standard ploys was for the discriminator to announce to the assembled suspects that the mystery had been solved and all would now be revealed. Invariably, this declaration led to the lights going out while the villain took flight or, more usually, attempted to murder the sleuth before his guilt could be uncovered.

My reading of the situation at The Hutch was that such a declaration would signal to Jabbi Gloond that his days of easy living were about to find their sunset. He would then depart—I judged him not to be the type that would opt for violent tactics—and life among the Olabians would return to its previous indifferent tranquility.

Accordingly, when we regathered in the refectory for dinner, between the soup and the ragout I flourished a copy of the printed information the Institute's integrator had provided me and said, "The puzzle is now solved. I have studied the reports from Orkham County and I know what happened."

I then turned a withering stare on Jabbi Gloond. Unfortunately, his attention had been consumed by his efforts to scrape the last drops of broth from his bowl and over the noise of his spoon he had not heard what I had said. I called his name and when his moist eyes rotated in my direction, I repeated my statement.

I watched his reaction carefully and saw a succession of moods flutter across the long dullness of his face: first came puzzlement, then cogitation as he worked at what I had said, followed by the dawn of realization as he grasped its import, and finally a mask of sad resignation, accompanied by a slump of his bony shoulders.