The Proof House (12 page)

‘To summarise—’ he was saying.

Alexius stopped and blinked, as if he’d just emerged into the light after a long time in pitch darkness.
Oh, no, not again
, he thought.

Old age, just old age; a tendency to wake up, as it were, to find that he was in the middle of doing or saying something but couldn’t remember how he’d got there or what he’d said. A dreadful handicap for a lecturer, suddenly finding yourself standing in front of a thousand reverently silent young faces, without a clue as to what you were saying or what you’re going to say next.

(Before that, he’d been in a dream, a daydream about a long, dark tunnel full of strange noises and smells, where people were killing each other by feel and instinct. Why he had to keep going there he didn’t know, and no amount of speculating would make it any easier to stop.)

‘To summarise,’ he could hear himself saying, ‘if we truly understand the nature of the Principle, we cannot fail to have our doubts about the existence of death. It becomes a shadowy, almost mythical thing, something we used to believe in when we were very young and impressionable, when we still believed in dragons and the Remembrance Fairy. If we truly understand the Principle, and the way its operation affects both the world about us and our perceptions of the world, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that death as we are taught to understand it is, quite simply, impossible. It can’t happen. It’s against all the rules of nature. If we choose, in spite of all the scientific evidence, to persist in believing in it - well, that must be a matter for faith and conscience, which have no place in scientific argument. But if we confine ourselves to those things which are susceptible to proof - and what is science, what indeed are learning and understanding and knowledge but those things which can be put to proof? - if we restrict ourselves to those things which have passed proof and not been found wanting, we must put aside this notion of death as, at best, not proven and not capable of being proved, with the overwhelming probability that there’s no such thing. The Principle, on the other hand—’

(‘
How is he? Can I talk to him?
’ )

‘The Principle,’ Alexius heard himself continue, ‘is proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt. The Principle, in fact, is proof; it’s the very process by which we test those things that we do not already know, when we wish to come to the truth of a matter. And, if anything of what I’ve told you today has made an impression on you, if you even begin to understand—’

(‘
You can try. But I don’t think you’ll get much sense out of him. Later on, maybe; he’s better in the afternoons.
’)

Alexius opened his eyes. ‘Athli?’ he said.

Athli smiled at him. ‘Hello, Alexius,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling today?’

‘Fine.’ Slowly and painfully, Alexius sat up. ‘I was dreaming,’ he said.

‘Nice dream?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘More of a nightmare, really. It was the one where I’m standing in front of a crowded lecture hall and I’ve forgotten the lecture.’ He smiled. ‘The good doctor Ereq would like me to believe it’s because I will insist on eating cheese, in spite of his dire warnings. I’m inclined to look for a rather more metaphysical explanation,’ he went on. ‘But only so as to be able to carry on eating cheese.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s the only food in this place they don’t boil to a mush.’

Athli frowned. ‘I don’t think you can boil cheese,’ she said, ‘it’d melt.’

Doctor Ereq gave his patient a ferocious medical scowl and left, whispering in Athli’s ear as he went. When the door was shut behind him, Alexius asked, ‘What was all that about?’

‘I’m to call him if you get upset and start talking nonsense. Oh, and I’m not to overtire you.’

Alexius shrugged. ‘It’s a bit hard if I’ve got to give up eating cheese
and
talking nonsense. I’ve been doing both ever since I was a little boy, and I’m far too old now to change.’

Athli perched on the edge of the bed. Outside, the rain was tapping against the shutters. ‘You’re not too old to fish for compliments, though, are you? We both know that talking nonsense isn’t a fault of yours. Talking, yes; but you generally make sense, at least when I’m around. You don’t like Doctor Ereq, do you?’

‘No,’ Alexius admitted. ‘Which is wrong of me, I know; he’s an excellent fellow, wonderfully good at his job, and when I think of how much all this must be costing you—’

‘Oh, don’t start,’ Athli said. ‘And besides, I write it all down to expenses in the accounts, so really it isn’t costing
me
anything.’

Alexius looked intruiged. ‘Expenses?’

‘Oh, yes. You’re employed by the Bank as a technical consultant; didn’t I tell you? Well, you are. Valued member of the team.’

‘Really?’ Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I any good at it?’

Athli waggled her hands in an equivocal gesture. ‘I’ve come across worse,’ she said. ‘Seriously, though,’ she went on, frowning a little, ‘you shouldn’t kid about with the doctors. They haven’t got senses of humour like normal people do, and they’ll assume you’ve gone funny in the head. Doctor Ereq’s convinced already.’

‘Oh, him.’ Alexius pulled a face, like a little boy. ‘What it was, I tried to explain to him about the Principle and being able to talk to people who aren’t necessarily there. He wasn’t listening, of course; he’d made his mind up I was off my head as soon as I mentioned the subject. You’d think a Shastel man’d know better.’

Athli grinned. ‘Between you and me,’ she said, ‘I don’t think he’s from Shastel at all. Oh, he says he studied there, but I asked and nobody remembers him. He’s colonial Shastel all right; I think he’s third or fourth generation Colleon. Actually, that’d make him a much better doctor, even if it does sound a bit hayseed. The Colleon medical schools teach a lot of Imperial stuff.’

‘Oh, well,’ Alexius said. He tried to stretch, but a sudden cramp caught him and made him wince. ‘Anyway, enough about him. How are you? How’s business?’

‘Could be worse.’

‘I see. Is that
could be worse
meaning awful or
could be worse
meaning you’re making money hand over fist?’

‘A bit of both,’ Athli replied. ‘Things are terribly quiet still, but the ventures that are going out are doing quite nicely.’

‘Such as?’

Athli thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the
Squirrel
’s due in any day now from the Mesoge with blueberries and honey; that’ll tie in very nicely with the Molain people having landed a big order from the Bathary—’

‘The who?’

‘The Bathary. They make uniforms for the Shastel army, who (as I’m sure you know) wear dark-blue great-coats. ’

Alexius nodded. ‘Which are dyed with blueberry juice. I see. Very clever.’

‘Fortuitous,’ Athli replied. ‘And honey’s fetching a good price, now that none of it’s coming in from the Empire. For once, I think Venart Auzeil may have stumbled across a good solid proposition.’ She frowned. ‘With a little help from Gorgas Loredan,’ she added. ‘Nobody’d heard of the Mesoge three years ago, and now here we are looking at sourcing two staple commodities there. I just wish I could believe it’s a solid place to do business.’

Alexius was silent for a while. ‘The Loredan boys again,’ he said. ‘They do tend to crop up all over the place, don’t they?’

Athli looked at him. ‘You want to know if there’s any more news about Bardas, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Well.’ She put her hands on her knees and looked at the shuttered window. ‘I did happen to run into Lien Mogre this morning, and her brother’s on the staff of the Shastel trade delegation that’s just got back from the latest round of talks with the provincial office—’

‘You mean he’s a spy? That sounds promising.’

Athli nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not a very good one. That’s the trouble; the Shastel people are such very bad spies, they make it so painfully obvious what they’re about. But I know for a fact that they do get fed lots of unimportant stuff just to keep them happy, so there’s a good chance it might be reliable information. Anyway, he told me Bardas has been posted to a nice, quiet administrative job somewhere inland; production manager at a factory, he seemed to think.’ She smiled. ‘Well, you can’t get more prosaic than that, can you?’

‘Depends,’ Alexius replied. ‘There’s factories and factories.’

‘Yes, but even so.’ Athli stood up and crossed to the window. ‘I know you have this theory all about the Loredans and the Principle and how everything’s tied up together in knots; but I don’t really see how he’s going to divert the tide of history sitting behind a desk cutting tallies and balancing ledgers.’ She sighed. ‘And if it keeps him out of harm’s way, I think it’s just fine, for all of us.’

A heavy gust of rain shook the shutters, rattling the catch. ‘You’re angry with him, aren’t you?’ Alexius said. ‘Are you ever going to tell me why?’

‘I’m not angry at all,’ Athli answered, with her back to him. ‘These days I don’t give him a moment’s thought from one day’s end to the next. I’m pleased to say I’ve moved on since I was a fencer’s clerk; I’ve made something of my life, thank you very much, and I’ve done it without hurting anybody or causing any fuss. I reckon that’s something I can be proud of, don’t you?’

Alexius lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘When I think of all the people you’ve helped and looked after since you first came here - me, Gannadius, his nephew; Venart and Vetriz—’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Athli said quietly.

‘I’m sure it is,’ Alexius went on, ‘but you didn’t have to, and you did. But it’s almost as if you’ve taken it on yourself to go around - well, tidying up after him, I suppose you could say. Here are all these people who’ve been left behind in his wake, and here you are, trying to give them back some semblance of a normal life. I find that interesting.’

‘Really?’ Athli carried on looking at the shutter. ‘Well, it’s a funny way of looking at things.’

‘That’s my job,’ Alexius replied, with a hint of amusement.

 

The night after the fight in the bar, as he bounced and bumped about between the packing-cases and barrels in the back of another post coach, Bardas remembered the mines for the first time.

It began as a dream; but he got out of it as quickly as possible, wrenching his eyes open and hoping to see light. There wasn’t any; there was a heap of roped-down luggage between him and the courier’s lanterns, and it was a dark night. He could hear the crash-bump of the coach blundering down the rutted road. He could smell rosemary—

Rosemary? That’s not right. He reached out to feel open space, but he’d slipped down into a crack between two large boxes, and all he could feel on either side was a rough wooden wall (
been here before, then
) and an obstruction against his feet. He kicked, heard and felt something splinter and crack. Of course, he knew he wasn’t in the mines any more, but that didn’t help a great deal; he’d known all sorts of things while he was down there, and very few of them had been true. He kicked again, and the world was flooded with the smell of roses.

The movement was all wrong, though. The mines didn’t bump up and down and jar your spine (
wonderful; I’ve managed to find somewhere that’s worse than the mines
) and the smell was wrong and there was way too much air. He was on a cart, or a ship.
Alexius?
No, then; not in the mines, at any rate.

He was on a coach, on the road from Sammyra to Ap’ Calick; he was going to the proof house at Ap’ Calick, where he was going to learn how to kill armour, suits of armour with nobody in them. It was all right; he wasn’t in the mines any more (
except that once you’ve been in the mines, you’ll always be in the mines
). He was going to be all right. He was deep inside the territory of the Sons of Heaven. He was safe.

It’s customary to die first, but in your case we’ve made an exception
.

Feeling a little foolish about the panic attack, he braced his hands against the sides of the coach and shoved himself up into a sitting position, his back to a tall barrel. The smell of roses was horribly strong; he’d put his foot through something fragile, broken something containing essence of roses. That might prove embarrassing in the morning, when the coach made its first stop. He leaned forward and sniffed; his legs reeked of the stuff, as if he’d died and been embalmed -

(That was what they used the stuff for; he remembered now. Strong essence of roses - it was so overpowering that it could even mask the smell of a body that’s a week late for its funeral. He remembered the stink at Sammyra, when they’d taken the body of the dead corporal to the camp mortuary. They used a lot of rose essence there; burial detail was once a week, if you missed the detail you had to wait for the next one.)

- and rosemary; they used that for flavouring and preserving meat. They were clever that way, the Children of Heaven; give them something dead and they could keep it sweet for ages, with herbs and spices and perfumes and essences. They could make rotten meat taste better than fresh; they’d hang up perfectly good carcasses and wait till maggots formed in them, just so they could get that perfect flavour. There was life after death in the Empire; of a sort.

Thinking about such things, he fell asleep. The courier woke him with a gentle nudge from the toe of his boot. It was broad daylight.

‘Melbec,’ he said, as if that meant anything. ‘You can stretch your legs if you want to.’

Bardas stood up; pins and needles in both legs. He sat down again.

Change of horses at Melbec; another at Ap’ Reac, where they parted company with the outriders. Ap’ Reac was too small to be Ap’ now; once, according to what the courier told him when they stopped there, it had been a city ‘twice the size of Perimadeia’, but that was before the Empire extended this far. When the frontier reached Ap’ Reac there was a great war, a long and terrible siege. No more Ap’ Reac.