The Proof House Part 27

Gorgas turned and stared at her, making her shiver. 'And what's that supposed to mean?' he said.

'Oh, come on. Listen to yourself. And just out of interest, has it slipped your mind that Uncle Bardas murdered your son and made his body into a-'

'Quiet.' Gorgas took a deep breath, making himself stay calm. 'If we keep on bashing ourselves, bashing each other, over what we've all done, then we might as well all give up now. It's not what we've done that matters, it's what we're going to do - just so long as we all try. At last we've got everything we need - we've got the farm, we've got each other, there aren't any landlords or outsiders breathing down our necks-'

'What about the provincial office?' Niessa interrupted, still staring out of the window. 'I suppose they just melted away into thin air.'

'I can handle them,' Gorgas replied. 'They're nothing to worry about. Really and truly, there isn't anything to worry about any more, just so long as we're together, as a family. We've done the hard part, we've all been through the bad times; it's been a long haul, we've all had to go miles out of our way just to get back here again, but it's all right now, we're home. And if you could all just understand that-'

Clefas stood up and walked towards the door.

'Where are you going?' Gorgas demanded.

'To see to the pigs,' Clefas said.

'Oh.' He breathed out, as if in relief. 'Tell you what, why don't we all go and see to the pigs? Do some useful and constructive work for a change, instead of sitting round here moping like a lot of owls?'

His tone of voice suggested that partic.i.p.ation wasn't optional.

Outside, it was beginning to get dark. The rain had turned the bottom end of the yard into a swamp; the drainage ditch was blocked with cow-parsley again, and n.o.body had got around to clearing it out yet. Niessa, who only had the sandals she'd been wearing in the desert, could feel the mud between her toes.

'How much longer do you think we'll have to put up with this?' It was Iseutz, whispering in her ear. 'Does he really think we're going to stay here and play let's-pretend-nothing-happened for the rest of our lives?'

Niessa turned her head away. 'I don't care what he thinks,' she said out loud, 'or what you think, for that matter. This is obviously ridiculous. Now go away and leave me alone.'

Iseutz grinned. 'You think you'll be able to snap him out of it,' she said. 'Pull rank on him, as if you were both still on Scona. Well, I don't think it's going to work, he's way too far gone for that. Still, look on the bright side; as I understand it he's practically given this horrid country to the Empire; sooner or later they'll round him up and put him out of his misery, and then we can get on with what we're supposed to be doing.'

The pig house smelt bad. n.o.body had got around to mucking it out for a week and the rain was pouring through a hole in the roof and flushing a stream of slurry under the door and out into the yard. Gorgas didn't seem to mind the rain; his new silk shirt was probably ruined already, but he hadn't noticed, or he didn't care. He's like a young kid, all excited at being allowed to help, Iseutz thought. Too bad. On balance, it would be fun to have Uncle Bardas here as well. He and Uncle Gorgas could bash each other to death, knee-deep in pigs.h.i.t.

'Come on, Zonaras, get me the rake,' Gorgas was saying. 'Niessa, you get the shovel.' (Niessa stayed exactly where she was.) 'Clefas, where's the wheelbarrow? Oh, for crying out loud, don't say you haven't mended it yet, I thought I told you to do that last week. Doesn't anybody else do any work around here, except me?

'Family reunion,' said Bardas Loredan, staying where he was. 'I suppose I ought to say haven't you grown, or something like that.'

Theudas Morosin stopped dead in the doorway of the tent. 'I thought you'd be pleased to see me,' he said.

Bardas closed his eyes and let his head loll back. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean it like that. I just wish you hadn't come here.'

Theudas stiffened. 'Oh?'

'If I said I hoped you were out of my life for good,' Bardas went on, 'you'd think I was being horrible. What you probably wouldn't understand is, I hoped it for your sake.' He opened his eyes and stood up, but didn't approach the boy. 'I'm really pleased that you're safe and well,' he went on, 'you've got to believe me when I say that; but you shouldn't be here, not getting mixed up in this war. You should have stayed on the Island, you've got a future there.'

Theudas was about to say something, but changed his mind. He looks different, he thought. I was expecting he'd look different, probably older, thinner, I don't know, but he doesn't. If anything, he looks younger. 'I want to be here,' he replied instead. 'I want to see you defeat Temrai, pay him back for what he did. I know you can do it, and I want to be here when you do. Is there anything terrible in that?'

Bardas smiled. 'Yes,' he said, 'but don't let it worry you. You're here now, we're together again; I suppose you might as well make yourself useful.'

Theudas grinned with relief; it was the tone of voice when he said make yourself useful, just like the old times. He should have known there wouldn't have been any show of emotion, no hugs or tears; he wouldn't have wanted that anyhow. What he really wanted was for things to pick up where they'd left off, that day when the Shastel soldiers broke into their house and everything changed. 'All right,' he said. 'What do you want me to do?'

Bardas yawned; now he did look tired. 'Let's see what Athli's taught you about keeping books,' he said. 'If you've been paying attention, you could come in quite handy. And n.o.body could ever make sense of paperwork like Athli. How is she, by the way?'

There was something in the way he'd said that - he hasn't heard yet. Why? Why haven't they told him? 'She was fine,' Theudas said cautiously, 'the last time I saw her.'

'That's good. And what about Alexius? How's he doing? Have you seen him lately?'

This time Theudas didn't know what to say. He really didn't want to be the one to tell him - not if he also had to break the news about what had happened on the Island. But he'd have to do it sooner or later, and he didn't want to have to lie . . . 'Alexius,' he repeated. 'You haven't heard.'

Bardas looked up sharply. 'Haven't heard what? He's not ill or anything, is he?'

'He's dead,' Theudas said.

Bardas sat very still. 'Both of them,' he said.

'What?'

Bardas shook his head. 'Nothing,' he said, 'sorry. I just heard yesterday, another friend of mine's died, a man I used to work with at the proof house. When did he die?'

Theudas' mouth was dry. 'Quite some time ago,' he said. 'I'm really sorry, I thought you must have known.'

'It's all right,' Bardas said (it's customary to die first after all, even if there are exceptions). 'He was an old man, these things happen. It's just - well, odd. I'd have thought I'd have known, if you see what I mean.'

'You were quite close at one time, weren't you?' Theudas said, knowing as he said it that he couldn't have put it much worse if he'd really tried.

'Yes,' Bardas replied. 'But I haven't seen him for years. If you remember exactly when he died, I'd be interested. Now then, let's find something for you to do; or do you want to have a rest? I suppose you've been travelling all day.'

'That's all right,' Theudas said. 'Did you say you wanted me to do the accounts or something? I suppose there's a lot of paperwork and stuff, running an army.'

Bardas smiled. 'You wouldn't believe it,' he said. 'Or at least, there is with this army; somehow we never seemed to bother with it when I was with Maxen's crowd. These people, though, they need dockets and requisitions and reports and G.o.ds know what else, or nothing gets done.'

Theudas sat down behind the small, rickety folding desk, the top of which was covered with bits of paper and wax tablets. He hadn't served any formal apprenticeship or term of articles while he'd been on the Island, but he knew enough about clerkship to recognise a pig's ear when he saw one. 'I can make a start on reconciling your sun-and-moon ledger if you like,' he said. 'Have you got any counters?'

'In the wooden box,' Bardas replied. 'What's a sun-and-moon ledger?'

Theudas smiled. 'Sorry,' he said, 'it's what they call standard double-entry format where I come from - I mean, on the Island.' The smile was still there on his face, like the visor of a bascinet, a false steel face. 'You know, receipts and expenditures. We draw a little sun on the left-hand side and a little moon on the right.'

'Ah. Well, yes, by all means. That'd be a great help.'

Theudas opened the box; it was cedarwood, sweet-smelling, pale with a faint green tinge. Inside was a little velvet bag, drawn tight at the neck with silk braid. He loosened the knot and shook out a handful of the most exquisite counters he'd ever seen - b.u.t.ter-yellow gold, Imperial fine, with allegorical figures in high relief on both the obverse and reverse. Neither the figures nor the legends in the exergues meant anything to him, of course; these were Imperial make, ill.u.s.trating scenes from the literature of the Sons of Heaven and inscribed in their script.

'They belonged to a man called Estar,' Bardas said. 'I inherited them, along with this army. You can keep them if you like; I hate doing exchequer work.'

'Thank you,' Theudas said. In the box with the counters was a small piece of chalk, which he used to draw his lines - full lines for full tens, broken lines for the intermediate fives. 'But are you sure? They look as if they're pretty valuable.'

'Never given it any thought, to be honest with you,' Bardas replied. 'Once you've spent time with these people, you start a.s.sessing value in a different way, if you see what I mean.'

Theudas didn't see at all, but he nodded anyway. 'If you're sure,' he said. 'It's a pleasure to use them.'

Bardas smiled. 'I think that's the general idea,' he said. 'Look, we're getting ready to move on - we've been stuck here for far longer than we'd expected, and we're horribly behind schedule. I've got to go and see to a few things. Will you be all right here on your own for a bit?'

'I should think so,' Theudas replied, setting out counters on the lines. 'I've got plenty here to keep me busy for a while.'

For an hour or so the work more or less filled his mind, as he wrestled with divisors, quotients and multiplicands, traced misplaced entries, struggled to make sense of Bardas' handwriting. It was enough to feel the textile-soft texture of the counters between the tips of his fingers, or hear the gentle click they made as he dropped one back into the bag. But as he was drawn deeper into the calculations, so the images embossed on the counters began to a.s.sert themselves in the back of his mind, like splinters of metal thrown off the grindstone embedding themselves in your hand. There was an army marching to war; in the foreground a Son of Heaven on a tall, thin horse, behind him a sea of heads and bodies, each one no more than a few cursory strokes of the die-engraver's cutter. There was a trophy of captured arms, set up on a battlefield to celebrate a victory - swords and spears, helmets and breastplates and arms and legs heaped up, and at the summit, like a beacon on a mountain, the radiate-sun standard of the Empire. There was a city under siege; high towers and bastions in the background, and at the front of the field, engineers digging the mouth of a sap, sheltered from the arrows and missiles of the defenders by tall wicker shields. There was an armoury, where two men raised a helmet over a stake while a third watched. Because he couldn't understand the words, Theudas didn't know which wars and sieges and cities were being commemorated here, but it didn't really matter; they could be any war, any siege or city you wanted them to be (since all wars and sieges and cities are pretty much alike, seen from a distance, from outside the field). For all Theudas knew, it might have been deliberate; since the Empire is eternally at war, eternally celebrating some new victory, it was sound practical sense to keep the celebrations of victory vague and generic, whether they be the images on counters or the marching-songs of the army.

He remembered that he'd forgotten something; on the floor, where he'd dumped it, was his luggage - one small kitbag and a long parcel wrapped in oiled cloth. Fortuitously, that was when Bardas walked in.

'I've just remembered something,' Theudas said. 'I'm sorry, it slipped my mind. I've brought something for you.'

Bardas raised his eyebrows. 'Really? That's nice. What is it?'

Theudas knelt down, picked up the parcel and handed it to him. Maybe his face changed a little while he was picking at the knots in the twine; it was completely free of any sort of expression when he pulled out the Guelan broadsword.

'I see,' was all he said; then he put it back. 'How are the books coming along? Made any sense of them yet?'

'Of course you're perfectly at liberty to leave at any time,' the man in the department of aliens had told him. 'As a citizen of Shastel, you're unaffected by what's happened here.' Then he'd gone on to point out that there weren't any ships leaving for Shastel, now or in the foreseeable future - in other words, if he wanted to exercise his undisputed right to leave the Island, he was going to have to walk home across the sea to Shastel.

So he went back to Athli's house, which was empty. They'd come and collected all the files and papers, not to mention the ten ma.s.sive cast-iron strongboxes in which she kept the Bank deposits; they'd cut the chains and bolts with cold chisels and big hammers, leaving behind them scars in the walls and floors like the cavities left behind when teeth have been pulled. They hadn't touched anything else, however; this was an annexation, not a fall or a sack. Much more polite than either of those, and for obvious reasons; after all, where's the point of stealing your own property?

But they hadn't taken the food; so he cut himself a thick slice out of the new loaf, and a big square of cheese, and took them over to the window where it was pleasantly cool but he could still see the sunlight. From where he was sitting he could just make out the tops of the masts of ships, riding at anchor in the Drutz. Any day now, they'd be going where he'd just come from, to take the war to Temrai and avenge Perimadeia. Or something of the kind.

He closed his eyes; and then he was somehow underneath the town, directly under Athli's house, in a tunnel, the usual tunnel, that reeked of coriander and wet clay. 'Look, is this really . . . ? he started to protest, but the floor of the tunnel was giving way under his feet, and he was falling - - Down into another tunnel (the usual tunnel), where they were scooping up the spoil and loading it on to the dolly-trucks; and mixed in with the spoil he could see all manner of artefacts and curios from a time several hundred years ago. Some of the pieces were familiar; others weren't, and some of the unfamiliar ones were a very strange shape indeed - parts of suits of armour for creatures that were far from human, or part human, part something else.

You again.

Gannadius looked round. There wasn't anybody there that he could see, just helmets and pieces of armour - Over here. That's it, you're looking straight at me.

An elegant, if somewhat battered, barbute sallet, the sort of helmet that covers the face completely apart from narrow slits for the eyes and mouth. 'Is that you?' Gannadius asked. 'You remind me of someone I used to work with, but I can't quite . . .'

Well, of course I do. It's me. Here inside this blasted tin hat.

No great mystery; they'd run the tunnel through the middle of a burial ground, a ma.s.s grave for the losers of some battle long ago; or else they'd reopened a tunnel from some previous siege, where a cave-in had buried an a.s.sault party. 'Just a minute,' Gannadius said, 'you aren't Alexius, you don't sound a bit like him. Who are you?'

Does it matter?

'It matters to me,' Gannadius replied, turning the helmet over. It was empty.

Alexius couldn't make it, so he sent me instead. I'm a friend of Bardas Loredan's, if it actually matters at all. And you're Gannadius, right? The wizard?

'No, I . . . Yes, the wizard.' Gannadius couldn't sit down, there wasn't room, so he leaned his back against the curved, damp wall of the tunnel. 'Is there actually a point to this, or is it just that big hunk of cheese I ate?'

You wound me.

'I'm sorry,' Gannadius replied, feeling rather self-conscious about apologising to a hallucination. 'So I take it there is a reason for this?'

Of course. Welcome to the proof house.

Gannadius frowned. 'The what house?'

This is where you come to be bashed and buried, though it's considered good form to die first. Still, you weren't to know that; we can make allowances. Now then, let's see. If asked to identify the Principle with one of the following, a river or a wheel, which would you choose?

'I'm not sure,' Gannadius replied. 'To be honest with you, I don't think either comparison is a perfect fit. Besides, why are you asking me this?'

Answer the question. River, wheel; which?

'Oh . . .' Gannadius shrugged. 'All right, on balance I'd say the Principle is more like a river than a wheel. Satisfied?'

Explain your reasoning.

Gannadius scowled. 'If I treated my students like that, I'd be out of a job.'

Explain your reasoning.

'If I do, can I wake up?'

Explain your reasoning.

Gannadius sighed. 'All right,' he said. 'I hold that the Principle flows like a river along a bed of circ.u.mstance and context; it goes where it goes because the landscape takes it there. I hold that it flows from a beginning to an end, and as and when it reaches that end, it'll stop. I hold that the course of the Principle can be deflected, but only by diverting it from one set of circ.u.mstance and context into another; further, that only the future course can be diverted - it's impossible to change the past. How am I doing?'

Now explain why the Principle resembles a wheel. In your own words.

'If you insist. I hold that the Principle revolves, like a wheel, around an event; but, like a wheel, as it turns on firm ground it pulls itself forward, thereby moving its own axis forward with it - which explains why we don't live the same day over and over again. The a.n.a.logy breaks down because the events that form the axis, or do I mean axle, are constantly changing, but the wheel continues to revolve around them without loss of continuity - which is why it's better to think of the events as the bed and banks of a river, in my opinion. I'll admit, though, that the wheel a.n.a.logy is preferable because it brings out the repet.i.tive aspect of the Principle, something which is rather understated in the river image; it's still there, of course, because a water-course only comes into being after hundreds of years, when countless cycles of rain and flood have eroded a channel for it to run down. Actually, both images are misleading; the Principle doesn't repeat itself, it just tends to make the same sort of thing happen over and over again. Anyway, to get back to the wheel, you can't divert the wheel itself - it can only go round - but by shifting the axle you can steer those revolutions on to a different road. In theory, that is. In practice, anybody fool enough to try interfering will probably get run over - or drowned, if you prefer. There, will that do?'

It's adequate.

'Adequate,' Gannadius repeated. 'Well, thank you ever so much.'

Adequate isn't good enough; you're our man on the spot at a crucial turning point in history. Adequate won't make head or tail of this - - And the roof caved in, and the town came crashing down through it, and after that the whole world; but not enough to fill the tunnel. For a moment Gannadius could see it all - cities and roads and towns and fortresses, villages and fields and forests, tumbling into the hole like milk through a tin funnel and soaking away into the black clay. There was a rich stench of garlic, and all around him Gannadius could see the Sons of Heaven, watching in silent, detached appreciation, as if this was a ballet or a lecture. He could see ships, vast fleets of them spilling infinite numbers of steel men on to all the beaches and headlands in the world, until the steel men covered the face of the earth - 'As if the world was wearing armour,' he said aloud. 'Nice touch.'

- and under every city and town and village he could see tunnels and galleries and saps, where steel men burrowed and hammered and bashed steel limbs and heads over anvils, until all the cities and towns were undermined and fell down into the camouflets, and the skin of steel closed over where they'd stood. In the mines, the steel men skinned the steel off the bodies of the dead, cutting the straps with thin-bladed knives, peeling away the steel plate to reach the flesh beneath; the steel went into the sc.r.a.p, the trash, piled up in pyramids that touched the roof, while the hammers bashed and pounded the flesh, breaking up the fibres to make it easier to cook. And all the flesh went into the mouths of the Children of Heaven, and all the steel went back into the melt, to be drawn off in blooms, hammered into billets, hammered again into plates, hammered again into the shapes of limbs, hammered again by the sword and the axe and the mace and the flail and the morningstar and the halberd and the long-shafted war-hammer, at every stage put to proof (proof, if proof were needed) and hammered to the point of failure, which is the point at which the chrysalis fails at the seams and bursts open, releasing the b.u.t.terfly.

'That's an interesting hypothesis,' Gannadius murmured.

Then the images merged, as all the cities became one city, all the countries one country, all the steel one suit of proof, all the people one man; and he was standing over his anvil swinging his hammer, letting it fall in its own weight, pinching the metal between the hammer and the anvil so that it flowed like a sluggish river, or the stream of lava from a volcano.

'Alexius?' Gannadius asked.

But the man shook his head. 'Close,' he replied, 'but no grapefruit. Alexius is dead, I'm afraid - we just couldn't make an exception for him any longer - and so is Anax, Bardas Loredan's friend, and a lot of others too. They went in the sc.r.a.p, and the sc.r.a.p went into the melt, and the melt became billets, and the billets become me. You're seeing me as Alexius because of your basic human need for a rea.s.suringly friendly face.'

'Ah,' Gannadius said.

'Which is misleading, of course,' he went on, 'because I'm not rea.s.suring and I'm sure as h.e.l.l not friendly. You see, the Principle is the Empire; it's the melt and the anvil; it's a river that drowns you, or a wheel that runs you over. The lava stream is a good image too, as far as it goes. But personally, I like the idea of the Principle being the proof house, because for every inch of development there has to be a crumpled and wrecked yard of destruction; otherwise, how do you ever get on to the next stage?'

'I'm not sure I follow,' Gannadius said.

'Fair enough,' he replied, as his hammer distorted the metal. 'It's because you can't see the beginning, the points it started from. You see, every act of destruction begins with a first small moment of failure - the first point where the metal stresses and tears, the first crack, the first place where the material is beaten thin. Once you have that, everything around it fails and everything falls in - it's like the one prop you pull out to set off a camouflet, and then the city falls through the hole. Gorgas Loredan was a point of failure, where the stress became too much; there were others - centuries ago, some of them, like the moment when the Sons of Heaven first broke through, or very recent, like the Empire getting its hands on a fleet of ships, which is the failure that'll pull down the cities across the sea. There was a moment of failure when Alexius stupidly agreed to place the curse on Bardas, and that ripped open a whole seam. You could say it was like splitting a log - one wedge opens a crack to put the next wedge in. That's the progressive element of the Principle.' He laughed. 'Definitely not rea.s.suring,' he said with a smile. 'And definitely not friendly. Another really major failure was the moment when you agreed to carry the duck from Perimadeia to the Island; that was a disaster from which the world may never recover. But try not to feel guilty about it; you weren't to know. Quite probably, you were only trying to be helpful.'

'That's right,' Gannadius said. 'I was.'

He nodded. 'Comic,' he said, 'in a grotesque sort of a way; destruction and ruin swoop down on the west, sewn up in the crop of a duck. Well, that ought to have given you plenty to think about. Thanks for watching.'

- And his eyes were open again, as the plate toppled off his knees and the crusty end of the bread rolled under the chair. d.a.m.n, he thought. But I'm not sure I'm convinced. It's a specious enough theory, but I'd like to see some hard proof.