K. Parker - The Proof House

Anyway; 268 City quarters on the King of Beasts and that’ll be the feather trade sewn up. Best investment you’ll make this year, and that’s a promise.

Yours in friendship and fair dealing,

‘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?’