Upon their arrival in Heliopolis, the capitol city of Pentateuch, our heroes immediately went in search of lodging, which they found readily available in the pilgrim's quarter.
The next step was for Jaana to visit the Naos, the main school of the Eskatonic order, to check for word of Fars Ikoru. By chance (if anything involving Eskatonics happens by chance) her old teacher from Stigmata, Philosophus Hideo Ackerman, was in residence as an instructor, so there was a suitably Eskatonic reunion. The head of the Naos, Magister Luisa Winter, indeed had a package for Jaana from Ikoru, as well as the word that Ikoru, after meditating in the desert, had determined that his calling was to travel to Pandemonium and do what he could to shore up the failing terraforming engines there. He had promised that if Jaana went to Pandemonium to look for him, he would definitely be there. This time for sure.
Matsushida was somewhat peeved that Jaana dragged everyone all the way to Pentateuch just to pick up her mail, but being already on Pentateuch, there was little he could do it about. Appeals to Gwen were fruitless.
The discord was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger from Baron Renato Sebastian Fidencio Castenda, a Hazat noble resident in Taurus (a smaller city to the east of Heliopolis), with a dinner invitation for the next day. Since the plan had been to look for gargoyles in Taurus anyway, Matsushida accepted on behalf of all. Gwen also wanted to look for gargoyles on the famed Mount Tabor, in the Megiddo Desert, but that would be an excursion of two or three days, so had to be put off until after the Taurus trip.
Jaana looked through the book left her by Ikoru, The Vision of Doramos, a weighty 800-year-old text on the life and theories of Doramos the World Alchemist, the preeminent terraformer of the Second Republic and the original creator of Pentateuch. One of the appendices contained copies of the undecipherable scribblings found with Doramos's body after his death, which Halley immediately seized upon, declaring that a proper application of cryptographic theory could not help but unravel them.
The next day, our heros rented a car and drove to Taurus. A local guide took them to the Ur ruins deep in a cave outside town, where they found no actual gargoyle, but had many strange experiences. Halley, studying the carvings, discerned an unmistakable relation to Doramos' cryptic writings. Matsushida found one part of the carvings that grew progressively colder as he touched it, but felt perfectly normal to everyone else with one exception. Gwen, when she touched the allegedly cold carving, felt pins and needles start to crawl up her arm, and onto any part of herself that she touched or even gestured at. After a short while, a lack of pins and needles started at her fingertips and followed the same pattern. Although, all told, she spent several minutes fiddling with this, no one else perceived anything except her touching the carving and pulling her hand back within seconds. Much mystification ensued.
After cleaning up from their spelunking expedition, our heroes arrived in good time for their dinner engagement with Baron Renato. Peculiarly, the baron greeted Matsushida like an old friend, with great warmth and many references to their past encounters. Matsushida was perfectly certain that he had never been on Pentateuch before, and had never met the baron, but played along and even elicited some information as to when the baron believed they had met: on Matsushida's great tour of the known worlds, three years previously. Needless to say, Matsushida recalled being bored to death at home for the past three years and more.
The breaking point was reached when the baron brought in his daughter, Lucia Florian Cecelia Castenda, and spoke proudly of her engagement to Matsushida. Matsushida had to take the baron aside and disavow all knowledge of their history together. At first the baron (an astute judge of character) was convinced that Matsushida was just trying to weasel out of the engagement, but when Royo testified to his knowledge of Matsushida's activities over the past few years, and Matsushida offered to swear in front of two priests that he was telling the Pancreator's Own Truth, Renato had no choice but to believe him. Matsushida hypothesized that someone had been imitating him, but if so, the imitation was done with unbelievable skill and complete knowledge of Matsushida's life and character.
In the meantime, Gwen had been sharpening her claws on Lucia while Elaine looked disapproving and Halley remained oblivious.
After taking his daughter aside and explaining things to her (distant sound effects of shrieking and weeping), the baron returned to complete a rather awkward meal. Although Renato had intellectually accepted Matsushida's claims, he still had three years of memories of their friendship coloring his behavior, and even had to be persuaded that Gwen was Matsushida's fiancee and not his bodyguard.
After dinner, Matsushida asked to see the correspondence "he" had exchanged with the baron, while Jaana locked herself away in the chapel to pray for insight. The letters seemed genuine enough in address, tone, phrasing, and signature, and were accurate in describing the events that overlapped Matsushida's memories, but talked about places he had never been and things he had never done. The mystery was only deepened.
Jaana emerged from her meditations with the words 'shadow doubles', an arcane Eskatonic notion of a person literally taking both paths at a major decision point in their life. Father Orin advanced the notion that it was a demon, but without conviction.
Matsushida proclaimed that although he honestly had no memories of being Renato's friend before this time, he would be glad to be so in the future. He then went into the chapel to pray for enlightenment. Jaana went off to expound on shadow doubles to Gwen, and the Baron retired for the evening.
After much discussion, some possible lines of attack on the problem were determined: the Eskatonic gurus of the Naos and their mystic insight, the archbishop of Pentateuch and his holy insight, spaceport customs records for the relevent period, Charioteer mail routing records.
And then to bed.
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