The Lost Goats, 8
Jul. 8th, 2012 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer"...and it is our souls, our souls, yea verily I say unto you our souls...er, that we must constantly guard, from the penetrative shafts of Satan..."
Habbinge was looking restive, and Zander was rapidly running out of evangelical steam. He hoped Soren was finding something useful, somewhere about the house...something that would lead them to the missing Adhemar, or for preference (if it came to a choice) the missing coup files with which he had absconded from the homeship. In third place, lagging considerably behind the field, would be the whereabouts of Pervilious Snood, the owner of the house, whose irritatingly close-mouthed servant this Habbinge seemed to be.
Having thus somewhat pointedly refreshed the co-author's somewhat dilapidated memory as to the plot, he quickly wound up his oration. "And in short, sir, we would be pleased to welcome you to our services, which take place every Wednesday fortnight at eight-thirty of the clock, and a modest preliminary donation will secure you a seat with a cushion...Mr Snood."
The man shook his head. "My name, as I have told you, Brother, is Habbinge."
"That may indeed be true," Zander said, "but I put it to you that you are the only Pervilious Snood in this house...and that you have been for some time."
Habbinge stared at him for a long moment; then his face crumpled and he buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
At the same moment there was a complicated series of crashes from somewhere above, and Soren's voice raised in imprecation.
Zander, muttering an ancient curse in Twiffleboink, raced for the stairs, leaving the weeping man behind him.
Habbinge was looking restive, and Zander was rapidly running out of evangelical steam. He hoped Soren was finding something useful, somewhere about the house...something that would lead them to the missing Adhemar, or for preference (if it came to a choice) the missing coup files with which he had absconded from the homeship. In third place, lagging considerably behind the field, would be the whereabouts of Pervilious Snood, the owner of the house, whose irritatingly close-mouthed servant this Habbinge seemed to be.
Having thus somewhat pointedly refreshed the co-author's somewhat dilapidated memory as to the plot, he quickly wound up his oration. "And in short, sir, we would be pleased to welcome you to our services, which take place every Wednesday fortnight at eight-thirty of the clock, and a modest preliminary donation will secure you a seat with a cushion...Mr Snood."
The man shook his head. "My name, as I have told you, Brother, is Habbinge."
"That may indeed be true," Zander said, "but I put it to you that you are the only Pervilious Snood in this house...and that you have been for some time."
Habbinge stared at him for a long moment; then his face crumpled and he buried his face in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
At the same moment there was a complicated series of crashes from somewhere above, and Soren's voice raised in imprecation.
Zander, muttering an ancient curse in Twiffleboink, raced for the stairs, leaving the weeping man behind him.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:15 am (UTC)To his relief, however, his tentative: "Soren, is that you and are you ... all right ?" was met by fervent language indicating that Soren was a)breathing, and b)conscious.
"Just help me get out," Soren's voice said.
"I think I saw something... "
Between the two of them, they managed to excavate a passageway and Soren appeared extractable. At which point a sobbing sound dreww Zander downwards once more, to handle Habbinge, who had recoverd his composure only to lose it again at the sight of a portrait of Snood haning in an alcove.
It took Zander (as Brother Iandomides) twenty minutes to calm Habbinge down, with a cup of what might, in a former life, have been coffee (or cocoa, or exotic-jungle-grade-coffee-substitute). On his return, he found Soren piling things into small heaps.
"Those aren't anything," Soren said, pointing to what looked like clothes. "They're average size and so forth, but they pre-date Adelmar leaving the 'ship by over ten years.
"These," he went on, "are personal items that clearly belong to Snood; and these equally clearly do not .... and unless Habbinge has very exotic tastes ... "
Zander weas about to look at the thrid pile more closdely, when Soren caught his cuff and pulled him over to the chaos.
"I'll extract -- you sort."
"What are we looking for ?"
"Whatever it was that I can't now remember, that I saw at the back of that closet, before all four of them exploded onto me."
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:46 am (UTC)"Clothes ?"
"I'd say so. Half a dozen boxes of cotton spooling."
"I'll put those as household supplies." Zander had, in-and-among, managed to identify and isolate a growing number of items which, whilst they might have been of recent date, appeared to have no function for any coup or coup-likle activity.
"Three volumes of SpacePort Traffic records. I think he was watching the Port quite closely."
"I agree -- how Definitely was your Definitely-Not-A-Pirate Jenny ?"
Soren thought for a second, picking his words carefully, since his tendency towards ... sidelines (often with nubile and vivacious young woman) ... was horrendously well-known to Zander.
"I'd say her definite was more in the description than in any objective area."
"So, she referred us to Snood, so they clearly know each other, and he might have been observing Port traffic ... I see a pattern here, Soren."
"Which might well tie in to Adelmar -- as I recall he found a certain attraction in analysing data rather than runnign coups off-the-cuff. Apropos of which, I have several boxes of lace cuffs here -- was Snood a dandy in his day, do you think ?"
Zander considered the almost ascetic aspects that Habbinge displayed.
"I'd say it's a distinct possibility."
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 08:52 am (UTC)"What of it ?"
"That's what caught my eye." Soren started to swim through the piles of fallen trivia. Zander tried to watch, but once again Habbinge's pleading voice called him away.
"It is true, Brother," Habbinge confessed: "For many years I have been doubling for my master. It's what he would have wanted."
"'Would have' ?" Zander queried.
"Alas, my master had devoted himself to the eradication of the moral turpitude which flourishes around the planetary spaceport." Brother Ianomides nodded, sympathetically and ewncourged Habbinge to unburden himself further.
"There was a young lady -- unfortunately she fell into bad ways -- reading the popular press and ... dancing." Habbinge shuddered at the thought. "Mister Snood sought to reclaim her soul, in a similar way, Brother to how you have treated me -- " (and this time it was Zander who felt a twinge of remorse, at his stratagem) " -- but she refused to listen to him. And the Port has continued to descend into evil -- piracy and conversion of goods being among the least of their sins.
"So when the man Rappanine came, wishing to discuss with my master, I knew that he was a sinner, seeking to draw my master back to darkness. I would have cast him forth, but then I foresaw the evil that he could do, let abroad upon the world -- "
"Got it !" Soren cried, and almost fell down the stair, clutching a large blue binder. "I knew I'd seen something like this before ! This is just like what -- oh !"
It was borne in on Soren, like a tsunami crossing a shallow shore-line and penetrating deep into the hinterland, that he might have intruded upon a Solemn Moment, something which was heightened by the shrill cry which proceeded from Habbinge's throat.
"The damned papers -- take them away ! Remove the canker from this house ! Here, take the cankerer, too !" He thrust a hand into his pocket, produced a large key, and forced it into the hands of Brother Ianomides.
It took a little longer to resolve everything, but the blue folder proved to contain the outlines for several seminal, if somewhat antequated, Nyrond coups, and the key to unlock a sub-cellar room, in which Adhemar was found to have been confined.
"I could not risk him having ought with which he might have escaped," Habbinge explained, whilst Adhemar was dressing himself from clothes which came from the smallship's fabricator, the ship itself having (very temporarily) been landed on the surface of the glacier.
"Take me back," Adhemar pleaded: "How do you and Zander cope, people locking you up, stripping you of your clothes ... ?" Soren withheld comment, and contented himself with collecting up all the gear which Habbinge had taken from Adhemar, and returning to the unhappy valet those things which by right belonged to him or to his master.
Zander, meantime, having made suree that no further copies of the coup-notes existed, spent his hours consuming tea with Habbinge, and little by little calming the man and reassuring him that the Brethren of Yester-Eve would have him in their prayers throughout the foreseeable future.
Finally the issue seemed to have been resolved, and, smallship systems reinitialised, take-off was initiated, and orbit achieved.
Which was when the pirate ship loomed up.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 09:53 am (UTC)"Or else your lives you'll lose," Soren responded: "It's an old song, Jenny. And we have nothing of value to you."
"Just an escaping Nyrond, who owes me a lot of money."
"I only met her the once," Adhemar protested.
"And how much did you dun her for ?"
"Well-- "
"And I want his notes."
"His notes ?"
"Genuine Nyrond-coup plans -- I can sell them for thousands, after I've used them a few times."
"Wait five." Soren closed the comm channels and looked round.
"We could give them Adhemar -- "
"Hey !"
" -- but the Homeship wouldn't like it. Two, we can give them the notes -- or a version of them. Three, we can run for it."
"I have an idea," Zander said.
"Hailing the Black Freighter -- this is Zander, of the Nyrond. I have a message for Pervilious Snood."
"For who ?"
"I don't know wjhat he's calling himself, Jenny -- Peg-Legged Pete, One-Eyed Jack, Short-Thin-Scruffy-Adonis-Face-Clam-Eating O'Brien -- the one that follows you around. Osmotherley Habbinge wants to know how he is, and for how many more times he has to set the table for four, because the stew is getting a little well-cooked by now."
There was a long pause, and then "Send the money -- we'll call it even."
"The money," Zander said, with a curious air of certainty, "is long gone, Jenny. But true love is worth more than any money."
Soren goosed the warp-drive (and the shields) and the smallship broke orbit and disappeared into the aether before Jenny, or her helmsman had time to react.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 10:25 am (UTC)[ "Or," and the edge was definitely showing now, "I'll order my chorus boys to bombard old Snood's place from orbit."
Habbinge. Zander caught his breath.
"You see, I'm not entirely ignorant of what it means when two strangers in black show up and try to diddle a harmless little mezzo-soprano out of her rightful dues," Jenny said. "Your move, I think."]
I think we're cooking...
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 02:09 am (UTC)