The Gist Hunter by Matthews Hughes Read Free Book Online

noncorporeal entities—though his precise and detailed interpretations of the message's significance were regarded with skepticism by some. Still, before my unmasking of Mitric Galvadon as a villainous shamshifter, Munt had looked fair to become the next Dean.
    We stayed late at the breakfast table, then the Dean said that he had a few obligations to attend to and lent me his volante to go out to Munt's research site. The Academician and Galvadon had flown out to the ruins earlier to prepare for the day's retrieval of another artifact from, supposedly, the deep past.
    I spiraled down to the landing pad, finding no one to welcome me. I went first to the building where Munt kept his workroom and found it in disarray. The table on which he had displayed his antique finds was turned over and the artifacts themselves were in fragments on the floor, the boards of which showed the imprints of boot heels.
    I went to the place where Galvadon's machine was housed and found even more disorder. There had clearly been a struggle. The device itself was utterly destroyed. Someone had turned an energy weapon on it and the components that were not evaporated were fused into molten lumps.
    I went out again and circled the small building. Not far off I found Mitric Galvadon. It would be more accurate to say that I found the lower two-thirds of him. The rest had been converted to vapor by the same weapon that had immolated his device.
    There was no doubt that it was the same energy pistol. I found it still in the hand of Ulwy Munt who sat not far away, leaning against an inclined stone, mumbling something to himself. He offered no resistance when I took the weapon from his limp grasp, but only looked up at me and said, "I do hear them, you know."
    The investigating Guards officer from the Polity had few questions for me. I gave my answers freely. Ulwy Munt, having already run far beyond the cliff's edge, out into the thinnest air of spiritual speculation, had received two sharp shocks: first, that his trust in Mitric Galvadon had been cruelly abused; second, that the basis of his entire life's work—his ritual-loving, machine-rejecting interpretation of Thim culture—had fallen into shards about him.
    What was coming through the lens-shaped hole in reality was clearly a sophisticated device of some kind. I speculated that, prior to my arrival for the final demonstration, Galvadon had felt the latest object on the Thim shelf or altar or whatever it was, and reported to Munt on its shape and attributes.
    The Academician had been unable to accept the crash of his great theory, which brought down with it his hopes of elevation both to a higher spiritual plane and to the Deanship. He had produced a weapon and obliterated the retrieved objects, the time travel aperture and the fraudster.
    Munt was in no condition to give evidence and it was doubtful that he ever would. The Guards inspector accepted my analysis not just because it was cogent but because it coincided with his own.
    That left only the question of whether Galvadon had indeed invented the impossible—a true time-traveling device—or whether he had somehow confounded me. The matter was of no interest to the Guards, but it was of great concern to me and as soon as I returned to my rooms in the grand and gaudy city of Olkney on Old Earth I began to make inquiries.
    My assistant turned out to be of no use. It professed to be feeling less than optimum. Since integrators are not known to possess feelings, and I had certainly not designed any into it when I put it together, I was nonplused. I questioned it closely, but received only short and unuseful answers.
    "Perhaps I would feel better if you had taken me with you when you went gallivanting down The Spray."
    "I offered," I said. "You would not accept the traveling box."
    "So you're blaming me?"
    "Blame was not mentioned," I said. "The facts, however, are as they are. We can reexamine them together. Be so good as to replay our