The Gist Hunter by Matthews Hughes Page B

plucked the writhing device from my shoulders and held it to my chest. "Shall I close my eyes, hold my breath?"
    "Try not to think of anything," he said.
    "I've never been able to do that."
    "Then try to think of nice things." The colored shapes within the frame flourished and flashed for a moment. "I'm fashioning an insulating barrier to keep you from forbling," he said.
    My curiosity urged me to ask him what forbling was. Another part of me argued that I did not want to know. The demon's segmented limb extended itself through the portal, and his strange digits wrapped around me in a grip that alternated in a split second from white hot to icy cold to just bearable. Then I was drawn through the window into his realm.
    It was . . . different. I realized that I had used the phrase "completely different" all of my life without ever realizing that nothing I had encountered during my forty-seven years had really been completely different. Now I was experiencing a boundless reality in which everything was entirely and utterly different from anything I had ever seen, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. I discovered senses that I hadn't known I possessed, and only knew that I possessed them because my passage through the demon's realm outraged them as thoroughly as it overwhelmed the basic five. Or six if I counted balance and I was prepared to count it because my head was spinning.
    "Don't think that," the demon warned. "It will, and your neck is not constructed to allow it."
    "What shall I do?"
    "Try not to think at all."
    I imagined a blank screen. Immediately a blank screen materialized before me and we crashed through it. I swore and was instantly smeared with an obscene substance. I voiced another oath and a deity winked into existence. He looked surprised. At each manifestation, I felt my demonic companion exert his will—it was like being enveloped in a field of pervasive energy—and the apparition summarily vanished.
    "Only a moment more," said my colleague.
    The integrator whimpered and squirmed against my chest. It felt like a small, frightened animal. Then suddenly a rectangular window opened in the mind-bending unreality and I was pushed through it.
    "There," said the demon, and I found myself standing in my workroom. Then it seemed I was not standing but lying on the floor, which was beating rapidly. The ceiling tasted far too hot.
    "Close your eyes," the demon said. "It will take a little time for your senses to reorder themselves."
    I waited. After a while, I opened one eye and still saw swirling chaos. Then I realized I was looking into the portal which was now once again affixed to my workroom wall. I moved my eyes away and saw things as I was accustomed to see them—although I was not truly accustomed to seeing Ogram Fillanny creeping across my workroom, heading for the outer door.
    In his hands were the damning materials concerning his solitary vice that I had recovered from a former valet whom the magnate had discharged for cause, but who had returned to blackmail his former employer. I had had a talk with the servant after which the man had decided that he preferred to relocate offworld permanently rather than accept any of the several less enjoyable alternatives that Fillanny had in mind.
    The sight of my client attempting to depart with the evidence brought the events of the past few days into sharp focus. "Seize him," I said, and the demon did so.
    The plutocrat looked both abashed and fearful, but managed a hint of his customary aplomb as he said, "These are mine. I came for them. You were not here . . ."
    "Squeeze him," I said, and my colleague complied. Fillanny found he had more pressing things to do than talk.
    I put the situation to him. "You knew that I would never divulge what I had learned from your former valet. But so mortified were you by the thought that anyone—even Henghis Hapthorn—should know what you get up to in secret that you paid Sigbart Sajessarian to lure me into a trap. I am