The Gist Hunter by Matthews Hughes Read Free Book Online Page A

conversation."
    The integrator said something that I could not quite make out. When I asked for clarification it placed itself in standby mode.
    I went instead to the picture frame on the wall, which was actually an aperture into my demonic colleague's realm. I performed the acts that would attract his attention if he was within range and was rewarded with the brain-twisting swirl of colors and shapes that signified his presence. I related my experiences on Pierce and my concern that I had not been able to determine whether Galvadon had indeed discovered time travel or had somehow hoodwinked me.
    He employed his peculiar resources to investigate. I knew from things he had said in the past that every point in space and every moment in time of my universe were open to his perceptions. After a moment, his rumbling voice came back. "Mitric Galvadon did not fool you."
    I was both relieved and troubled. "That means he truly did create a time-travel device, though that is impossible," I said.
    "Not so."
    "Are you saying 'Not so,' to the creation or to the impossibility?"
    "To both."
    I was further confused. "Explain," I said.
    "Galvadon did not create a time-travel device, although he thought he did. So did the despairing Ulwy Munt, who killed Galvadon and destroyed his gimcrack contraption when he saw his life's work collapsing."
    "But Galvadon did reach through the aperture and retrieve Thim artifacts from the past."
    "Well, from elsewhere in time."
    "So time travel is no longer impossible?" I said.
    "It never has been," my colleague said. "It is merely forbidden to your species."
    "Forbidden?" I said. "By whom?"
    "That knowledge, too, is forbidden you."
    "Why?"
    "You would pester."
    I could not deny it. "But why are we forbidden to travel through time?"
    "You occasion enough difficulties just moving through space. There must be limits, else there would be no peace."
    "I still don't understand what happened on Pierce," I said.
    "The Thim were put out by Ulwy Munt's tramping all over their habitat."
    "But they have been dead for eons."
    "Not so," he said again. "The Thim are in the obverse situation as regards time and space."
    I saw it now. "Ah. They can move freely through time but are forbidden to cross any larger space than their stone circle on Pierce." Another thought occurred. "So the Thim are not the high-minded souls Ulwy Munt took them for."
    "When it comes to dissembling and chicanery, the Thim could have given lessons to Mitric Galvadon. As indeed they intended to."
    "So they were always present."
    "Just so," he said, "although there are interplanal membranes that separate your milieu from theirs. They could create a transient breach but it would allow no more than a certain amount of mass to be transferred from their realm to yours."
    "That was why the artifacts appeared to be the disassembled parts of a sophisticated device."
    "Yes, the entire thing was too large to get through all at once. They counted on Galvadon to assemble it for them."
    I understood. "I should get in touch with the Dean," I said.
    "Yes," he agreed. "The Thim are tenacious. They will be working hard to pass another bomb across the barrier."

Falberoth's Ruin
    "My master is concerned that someone may wish to kill him," said Torquil Falberoth's integrator. "He wants you to discover who and how, and if possible, when."
    "What is the source of his belief?" I said. "Bold threats or subtle menaces? Lurkers in the shadows? Or has he merely dreamed an unsettling dream?"
    The latter was not an unreasonable supposition. If Torquil Falberoth, long and justly regarded as the most ruthless magnate of Old Earth's penultimate age, was not visited by uncomfortable dreams, he more than deserved to be.
    "He does not discuss sources with me," said his integrator. Falberoth seemed to have programmed the device to speak with a tone strongly reminiscent of its owner's habitual hauteur. "Peremptory instructions are his first resort; detailed explanations trail far