Chapter 10 #3
“I like seeing my name,” I said. “It reminds me.”
“Suit yourself.” He reached past me and picked up one of the sheets. “Careful,” I said, “they’re still wet.”
“Absolutely,” he said, letting go of it. “Wouldn’t want anything bad happening to this lot.”
No, he wouldn’t, not at any price. Not after he and his people had been to so much pain and trouble. “Do you understand?” he said.
I straightened my back. An hour and a half of writing at top speed hurts me more than digging peat.
“I think so,” I said. “Most of it.” I turned my head and looked at him.
A tall man, with white hair and a dignified, almost noble face.
“If they catch you in here, they’ll flay you alive,” I said. “Not that I’d mind that.”
He smiled. “Oh, you don’t hate us, I think we proved that. You can’t hate someone who’s delusional, isn’t that how you see it? Besides, they’d do no such thing. I work here.”
I think I was supposed to be shocked; an agent of the Loyal Opposition embedded in the Order of Intercession. Yawn. “You’ve come to collect it, presumably.”
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll take good care of it, and make sure it ends up where it needs to be.”
I really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking, but I did rather want to know. “I understand most of it,” I said. “I realise that Grimhild’s wrong and Tysapherna didn’t want the demon. She didn’t even know it was there. She wanted the book.”
“Absolutely. Well done.”
“Don’t patronise me, you shit. She wanted the book. The book was booby-trapped with a demon. That’s all pretty straightforward. And Grimhild knew about the demon—”
“But not the book. It’s rather amusing when you think about it.”
“This book,” I said. “And I can see that destroying all the other books was part of the plan right from the beginning, because that’s why it had to be me. Because nobody else on earth would suffer nearly as much as me, when all those other books were lost.”
“That was part of it,” he said gently.
“But what I don’t get,” I said, “is why your lot want this book to come back to life right now. How on earth could that possibly help your idiotic grand design?”
He was silent for a moment. “I’m disappointed,” he said. “I thought you’d have got that.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Fine. The book, which the demon was guarding, was the only surviving copy of Bausa’s Metallurgy.
It includes a detailed account of the blister steel process, which is how they made steel under the empire.
When my sister was finally able to get inside your head, she implanted in your memory the full text of the relevant passage, which you’ve just written out for me. All clear so far?”
“Yes.”
“And you still don’t get it. Curious. Very well.
The rediscovery of the blister steel process will make it possible for the human race to manufacture large amounts of cheap, reliable steel.
This will result in vastly improved agriculture and industry; cheap, good tools, cheap, good ploughshares.
People will suddenly have enough to eat, and money in their pockets to buy things.
So factories will be built, to make things for them to buy.
The technical term, as I understand it, is an industrial revolution.
Everything will be changed, for ever. Under the empire, of course, there was a strong central government which controlled everything.
It was possible to keep, so to speak, the demon in the bottle.
But that’s all gone now, you’re basically just a few clusters of savages living in scattered villages.
Within a few generations, society will be unrecognisable.
Most of the human race will live in cities, not the countryside.
More people will be employed making things out of iron and steel than growing food.
They’ll develop new forms of government you couldn’t possibly imagine, not even in your worst nightmares.
They’ll cut down all the forests to make charcoal, and then they’ll dig coal out of the ground, and the skies will turn black with soot, and the rivers will be poisoned.
In two or three centuries, the human race will have changed so much you’ll have nothing in common with them except two hands and two feet.
And the joy of it is,” he went on, “this is God’s will, His plan, not ours.
The entire human race enslaved to a monster nobody can control, universal misery, no hope, no future, and He will call it Progress and see that it is good.
And it all starts here, with these pages.
” He reached past me and took them. “You can see why you were so important to us. We couldn’t let a hair on your head be damaged. ”
I could have snatched the pages back, but I’d missed my chance.
It came, it went, and that was that. “All the other books had to go, of course,” he went on.
“They contained all the wisdom, the truth, the clear thinking, the reasons why not. There was a risk that, if they’d survived, we could never have persuaded the human race to do to themselves what we need them to do.
Instead, they’ll get blister steel. And universal prosperity, for a little while, and then what they deserve.
” He was smiling again. “It won’t last, of course,” he went on.
“Nothing lasts, in a world without end. The game is never over. The brave new world you’ve given birth to will fall, eventually, and the grass will grow back, until the next time.
But my colleagues and I will have the satisfaction of gazing down at the abomination that’s coming and saying, we did that, with our little hatchet.
We can never win, just as we can never lose, but that’s a glorious thing to look forward to.
Without moments like that, what would we have to live for? ”
I looked him in his clear blue eyes. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think you’re delusional.”
“Really.” I’d annoyed him, and I suddenly realised he wasn’t someone you wanted to annoy. Too late now. “In that case, you’d better come with me.”
“Not likely.”
He reached out and grabbed my shoulder; and suddenly we were on a mountaintop, looking down into a valley.
We were so high up, we could see all the kingdoms of the earth.
I knew where we were – Colidon, the mountain above Iden Astea, and the valley was what they used to call the Garden of Aelia, where they grew half the wheat of the empire.
But it was all different now. Instead of green, it was pale grey, the colour of limestone.
It was all houses and huge buildings I couldn’t understand, cut through with black roads like worms in an infested kidney.
There was a low noise everywhere, a sort of hum.
My eyes started to water, and the air was foul, and I broke down coughing.
“Blessed are those who have seen and yet have not believed,” I heard him say, “but you don’t have that option any more, do you?
” I tried to swear at him, but I was coughing too much.
And then I was back in my little scriptorium, breathing clean air, and the only sound was a broom outside on the cloister floor.
He let go of my shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “That was just a hallucination, designed to scare you to death. It’s not real.”
My throat was raw and my eyes were still stinging. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “That’s only one possible future. It won’t happen. Someone will stop you.”
He grinned. “Who?”
I felt bitterly cold. “It’s progress,” he said.
“Nobody wants to stop progress. He doesn’t.
There’ll be cities where now there’s just grassy hills, and nearly everybody will be able to read, and most people will have enough to eat, and they’ll be able to cure toothache.
It’ll be just like it was under the old empire.
” He grinned in my face. “It’ll be worse. ”
“It’s a flashback,” Mother Grimhild was saying. “It’s quite normal, after a prolonged possession.”
I was lying on my back in a small room. The walls were whitewashed and light came in through a window; best quality writing light, going to waste. “Will he be all right?” said Svangerd’s voice, somewhere behind me.
“I think so,” Grimhild said. “We aren’t entirely sure how it works, but basically it’s his system trying to cope with all the poisons it absorbed while that thing was inside him.
In some cases, the subject seems to be right as rain for days or even weeks, and then it’s like an abscess bursting.
The subject has a seizure, and either he dies or he slowly comes out of it, and then he’s usually all right.
A lot depends on character. It’s worse for clever people, and people with a vivid imagination. ”
I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. My body couldn’t hear me.
“Is it all right if I stay here for a bit?” Svangerd said.
“Of course,” Grimhild replied. “Stay as long as you like.”
Mother Grimhild walked away until I couldn’t see her any more. It was quiet, and the light was beautiful. I heard someone muttering prayers, and crying softly.
Like the old empire, only worse. Oh boy.
I tried to get rid of the thought, but it was lodged deep in my mind, like an arrowhead, and I couldn’t pull it out because it was too cold to touch.
All my adult life I’ve mourned for the Fall, for everything we’ve lost, for all the tiny lights in the dark that flickered and went out.
All my adult life, I’ve done my best to guard those frail little flames, cupping them in my hands, putting my body between them and the freezing cold wind.
Fire is, of course, ambiguous; it gives you light and warmth, and it eats libraries.
Not its fault when it does something you don’t like. That’s its nature.
Now I had a splinter of ice permanently jammed into my skull; what if the empire deserved to fall, and what if there are books that need to be burned?
We move from white squares to black squares to white squares, world without end, and the game is never over.
Thrice blessed are those who have seen and yet have not believed, but eventually they grab you by the scruff of your neck and rub your nose in it.
At that point, it takes a special sort of grace to escape belief.
I told myself it was a flashback, a documented medical phenomenon, a reaction to a parasitical infestation, by a biological organism we don’t happen to understand any more.
Ducennius lists a whole load of plants and fungi that make you see weird visions if you eat them; the visions are so real, he says, that you think you can smell and taste things, and feel pain, but really it’s just chemistry, just substances in the plants that do funny things to your head.
There’s one kind of mushroom that’s guaranteed to make you see God, and a kind of tree bark only found in northern Echmen that takes you straight to Paradise, where the saints wash away your sins with holy water and angels give you a blowjob.
None of it’s real, of course. It’s just your silly old brain, interpreting the effects of plant juice.
“You’re pathetic,” she said.
She was asleep when I woke up. She hadn’t left her chair for two days, except to piss in a pot in the corner of the room, and when I finally came round she was fast asleep. I had to croak loudly to wake her.
“I didn’t go all to pieces,” she said. “I didn’t collapse in a heap and go to sleep for three days.”
“You’re a believer,” I said. My throat was still sore. “And a girl. Probably it’s different for women.”
“Bullshit. It’s because you’re lacking in moral fibre. One little brush with the Prince of Darkness and you’re gutted.” I realised she was holding my hand. “Grimhild saved you. She prayed for you.”
“So did you.”
“Yes, well. No man is an island. But it was Grimhild who pulled you through. After all the nasty things you thought about her.”
“That was very wrong of me. I don’t know what got into me.” Talking made my throat hurt. Probably the effect of some potion or medicine Grimhild had poured down it while I was unconscious. “Thank you,” I said. “For praying for me. It’s all garbage, of course, but it’s the thought that counts.”
“Fuck off.”
As soon as I was well enough I went to my little scriptorium and made a copy of the Psalms. I did my very best work; my finest cursive uncials, and simple but exquisite illuminated capitals.
I gave it to Mother Grimhild, to say thank you, and as an apology.
She smiled. “That’s very nice,” she said.
“But I’m not allowed to own anything. I’ll put it in the library.
It can be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. ”
Indeed. But nothing lasts for ever, in a world without end; not empires, not the will of God, and most definitely not books. Which is probably just as well.