Chapter 8 #6
“Clock. Oh, sorry, I forgot, that book was lost in a fire. Or at least it wasn’t.
There’s still one copy lurking on a dusty shelf somewhere, but it hasn’t been rediscovered yet.
Fine, here goes. Imagine there’s an island a thousand miles out in the middle of the sea.
The people who live there don’t know there are any other countries: they think they’re the only people in the world.
And they’re primitive. They don’t have wheeled vehicles or metal tools or spinning or pottery.
Anyhow, an islander is walking on the beach and he finds something he’s never seen before.
He picks it up and stares at it. It’s a Mezentine mechanical clock, and it fell off a ship a thousand miles away, and it washed up on the island.
Now, what does the islander make of it? Does he assume it’s a rock that’s been battered about and eroded and partially dissolved by the seawater until, purely by chance, it’s developed into an object that just happens to move a pointer through exactly three hundred and sixty degrees in precisely twenty-four hours?
Or does he say to himself, someone must have made this, and therefore there must be another island?
” He beamed at me. “I like that one. Old but gold, as they say. When that book turns up again, it’s going to make a lot of people sit up and think.
Saloninus’ Mechanics. I’d keep your eyes open for it, if I were you. ”
My head was swimming. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ve gone off collecting old books; it makes too much trouble for people. And I don’t believe a word of any of it.”
“You don’t believe there ever was such a book, or you don’t believe it’s got the story about the clock in it? Not that it matters. You’ve got to believe there’s a story, because you’ve just heard me tell it, therefore it exists, in your memory, like maggots in a wound.”
“I don’t believe in your long game,” I said. “And if a Mezentine clock was in the water that long, it’d have rusted up solid.”
He laughed. “I like you,” he said; “you’re cute.
You’re also the man who’s going to make the schism happen, because we’re all relying on you.
Because if you don’t, and this split doesn’t happen, all the underlying problems in Holy Mother Church are going to stay buried for another hundred years and then burst out in a really bad schism that’ll split the West in two just when the Sashan are strong enough to invade, and the result will be very, very bad indeed.
But we can’t let that happen, can we? No, of course not.
So we have a little schism now, get it all over and done with and then shake hands and make friends, so that when the Sashan come we’ll be ready for them and we’ll drive them back into the sea.
Also,” he added, looking me in the eyes, “if you don’t do it, Kotkel really will kill your darling Svangerd. On that you can rely.”
I opened my mouth but I couldn’t speak.
“Because,” he went on, “who knows, Svangerd may turn out to be the next arch-heretic, or she may have a son who’s the next Etzel the Butcher.
But that wouldn’t be allowed to happen, and you know what they say about omelettes and eggs.
Sometimes you’ve got to be ruthless, when you’ve been entrusted with the welfare of the human race. ”
“I’m on it,” I said. “I’ve got it figured out.”
“Good boy. I knew we could rely on you.” He stood up.
“Quite possibly,” he went on, “all your life you’ve been trained and guided and beaten into shape to do this one job, and you never even knew it.
Or maybe not, and it’s all just serendipity, and you’re a pebble that just happens to tell the time.
I know the answer, of course, but I’m not supposed to tell you, and of course you wouldn’t believe me if I did.
Go carefully. Don’t take any wooden deniers. ”
I watched him walk away. If I ever wanted to commit murder – as opposed to assassinating princesses or strangling sentries to stop them raising the alarm, or crushing my father with a bell, not homicide so much as pesticide, it was that moment.
I’m not a violent man, but everybody’s got their limit.
Blessed, someone once told me, are those who have seen and yet have not believed.
What are friends for? Answer, or one answer that makes a sort of sense: friends are so that you can have someone to talk to when it all gets too much, someone you can tell, so you don’t have to keep the whole swarm of maggots kettled up inside your own head.
Also, friends don’t lie to each other, or keep secrets.
Svangerd was my friend, but I couldn’t tell her. It’d kill her.
Angels, for crying out loud. No, thank you.
I like to be prepared. If you have your bags packed and your ducks in a row before the killing starts, you have a slight edge. Usually the advantage gets lost in the whirlwind, but it’s worth making the effort, for those few occasions when it does make a difference.
I was prepared. I’d figured out a way of casting doubt on the authenticity of the true gospels.
I knew what I was going to say. The debate I was supposed to make my confession in wasn’t until the next day.
That gave me one night in which to try and be clever.
If it didn’t work out, I’d make my confession as I’d been told to do, or I’d be dead.
If it worked out, I’d probably have done the wrong thing, but what the hell.
What do people expect from me? I’m nobody.
Kotkel had snapped my billhook like a carrot, but that didn’t actually prove anything. So I stole the sword of St Jotapian from Svangerd’s room – she’d only hidden it under the bed, wrapped in a pillowcase; I despair of her sometimes – and went to find the captain of the guard.
“You again.”
“Yes,” I said. “Look, I need to have the run of the guest wing tonight. That’s not a problem, is it?”
He gazed at me. “I can’t let you do that.”
“I’ll be armed,” I went on, “but nothing you need to worry about. Just keep your sentries off the second and third levels. I wouldn’t want them getting hurt.
And if they hear anything – yelling, screams, sounds of a struggle – tell them to stay put and not interfere.
I can go and get it in writing from Vitimer if you like, but I’d rather not bother him right now.
He’s got a lot on his plate, poor devil. ”
“I ought to arrest you.”
“On what charge? Conspiracy to help? Besides, if you do that, I’ll tell Vitimer I could’ve stopped the monster only you wouldn’t let me, and then you’ll be really popular.
Look, it’s not like your men could do anything except get themselves killed, so why don’t you just give them the night off and leave everything to me? ”
I realised what I was doing. I was bullying him, the way I used to bully Kotkel. I guess that wherever I go, even now, I take a tiny bit of the Mesoge with me. “Sure,” he said, giving me a look I deserved. “I’ll make a note in the log: you’re assuming full responsibility.”
“Thank you,” I said, too little and too late. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I do actually know what I’m doing. This is all about the Mesoge. There’s no reason you and your men should have to suffer for it.”
He gave me a doubtful look – fair enough, because I was lying – and walked away. Fine, I thought. I needn’t have done any of that: I just wanted to. Old habits, among other things, die hard.
But what else could I do, I asked myself as I wandered along the corridor, looking for anything that might give me the faintest scrap of tactical advantage.
If Kotkel was got rid of, or if I was dead, that would take care of the threat to Svangerd, which was the main thing.
And if Kotkel didn’t show up, or both of us survived the night, I’d just have to do as I’d been told and trash the ceasefire, unleashing schism on Holy Mother Church and reserving myself a nice prison cell for the rest of my life, or the gallows, which on balance would be preferable.
Of course, following that line of argument to its logical conclusion, what I really should have done was slash my wrists straight away and have done with it – no me, no threat to Svangerd, no schism.
But that logic was just a bit too icily perfect for my taste.
To the dickens with logic, or words to that effect.
I scrounged a small lamp from an alcove, sat down on the floor outside a room chosen at random with my back to the wall, put the sword where I could grab it in a hurry, opened Nicephorus at random and started to read.
Dualism (said the bit of Nicephorus that caught my eye) is a fertile breeding-ground of heresy.
The Miletian anathema, for example, would have us believe that Good and Evil are equal and opposite forces, allowing for the possibility that Evil may one day prevail.
At the other extreme, the Bomite heresy of dualistic unity regards Evil as nothing more than a subsection of the Good principle; a subordinate department in the celestial bureaucracy, but answering to the same hierarchy and the same officers as the Blessed Angels.
The Invincible Sun, so the Bomites argue, created everything, therefore He must have created Evil.
Therefore, Evil has a purpose. Its function is to be the dark background against which the light shines: without darkness, there can be no light.
In more practical terms, the celestial agents assigned to Evil are tasked with the job of weeding out the weak and the malignant, those who are unfit to partake in the kingdom of heaven.
This is necessary, not to say holy work, and the angels who carry it out are no less servants of the divine plan than their more iridescent colleagues, and for this reason they have come to be known as His Celestial Majesty’s Loyal –
I looked up. He scowled at me and trod on my lamp.
“Clumsy idiot,” I said. “You never did learn to look where you’re going.”