K Parker - The Belly of the Bow

There was an embarrassed silence, broken by one Bimond Faim saying, ‘According to our mystical friend here, the army’s been cut to ribbons.’

‘Oh,’ said Mihel Bovert’s wife. ‘Which army? You mean the great big one that’s dealing with those horrid rebels?’

‘That’s right,’ grunted Mihel Bovert, ‘the one our son’s serving with. Doctor Gannadius, would you say you’re mad, divinely inspired or just very, very tactless?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gannadius said. ‘I – Something came over me, I suppose.’

‘Quite,’ replied Bimond Faim, lifting a dove off the tray with his fingers. ‘The spirit moved you, or whatever. Apart from what your inner voice tells you, have you any proof of this rather disturbing claim?’

‘No,’ Gannadius said. ‘Please, I’m so sorry, forget I said anything. Really-’

One of the dinner guests, a big grey-bearded man, shook his head. ‘Easier said than done, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘The plain fact is, you don’t import a genuine Perimadeian wizard and then ignore his occult sayings. Be straight with us, Doctor: should we pay attention to what you’re saying or not? Presumably this sort of thing’s happened to you before.’

Gannadius nodded. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘Well, similar things.’

‘And on these previous occasions, has the little angel voice been right or wrong? Or is it hit and miss?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ Gannadius replied defensively. Mihel Bovert’s wife went out, and came back a moment later with a silver sauce-boat. ‘You see, I’m only telling you what someone else is telling me.’

‘Someone on Scona, though,’ said a small, stout woman at the opposite end of the table. ‘Your spirit guide, or whatever the technical term is.’

Gannadius didn’t correct her choice of terminology; his head was starting to hurt, making it hard for him to concentrate. ‘Someone on Scona, yes. Patriarch Alexius, as it happens. And he wouldn’t lie to me, so I do know for a fact that Alexius believes that Sten Mogre is dead and his army has been defeated. That’s all I can be certain about, though.’

A bald, heavily built middle-aged man opposite him frowned. ‘But you can’t be certain ,’ he said. ‘Let’s be scientific, shall we? After all, we’re supposed to be men of science. On previous occasions, when you’ve had these-’ He hesitated.

‘Funny turns?’ suggested Bimond Faim.

‘These experiences,’ the bald man said. ‘On your word of honour as a philosopher, can you honestly tell me you’ve proved to your own satisfaction that these insights are genuine? That you’ve somehow communicated with someone far away?’

Gannadius nodded. ‘I’ve spoken to the other person involved – face to face, I mean, in the usual way – and they’ve confirmed that they had the same, or roughly the same, experience, and that they said the words I heard. Particularly Alexius; I’ve communicated with him quite a few times, it’s as if we have some sort of link. I’m not saying there aren’t alternative explanations,’ he added. ‘For a start, it’s perfectly possible that two people of very similar backgrounds who know each other well, thinking about the same problem, might come up with the same idea at roughly the same time, in a way that makes it look like they’re in contact with each other.’

‘Highly likely, I’d say,’ Bimond Faim said, through a mouthful of rye bread.

‘I think so too,’ Gannadius replied. ‘In fact, I have an idea that’s something to do with how this link works; literally, a meeting of like-thinking minds. But that’s just theory. I know Alexius thinks what I just told you is true.’

The silence that followed was distinctly uncomfortable.

‘All right,’ said Mihel Bovert, his thick brows furrowed. ‘As scientists and philosophers, we’ll take your word for it that you’ve verified your findings in an acceptable manner, at least for now. Obviously, the next question is what we do about it.’

Faim looked up from his plate. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Mihel. You aren’t seriously suggesting we should base policy on this magical nonsense?’

Bovert shook his head. ‘That’s not up to us,’ he said, ‘it’s up to Chapter. If you’re asking me whether we should pass this information on to Chapter, then I think I have to say yes, we should.’

‘Leave me out of it, please,’ someone else said hastily. ‘I really don’t like the mental image I’m getting of what our esteemed Separatist colleagues are going to say when we tell them we want to rethink the war because some – excuse me, Doctor – some foreign self-proclaimed wizard has been hearing distant voices in his head.’

‘There’ll be bite-sized bits of our credibility scattered between here and Tornoys,’ growled Bimond Faim. ‘We’ll be lucky if any of us gets so much as a junior fellowship ever again.’

Bovert smiled. ‘There’s ways and ways,’ he said. ‘Jaufre,’ he continued, turning to the young man on his right, ‘you play chess with Anaut Mogre’s son, don’t you?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Splendid. Go round there now, spin him some yarn about having fallen out dreadfully with your uncle or me, and by way of a terrible revenge on us, tell young Mogre we’ve got vital information about the war but we’re keeping it hushed up for faction reasons. You don’t know what the information is, of course, you just know it’s terribly important, and we’ve all been locked in a secret meeting for the last couple of hours. If you’re quick, we’ll get the summons to Chapter in about an hour and a half, just time to finish dinner and digest.’

Bovert’s prediction was reasonably accurate; two hours later he was getting to his feet in a packed, bad-tempered Chapter.

‘Essentially,’ he said, ‘what Anaut’s just said is true. I have received what could be important news about the war, and I haven’t told anybody. The reason is, I don’t believe a word of it.’

On the Separatist benches, Anaut Mogre didn’t seem to be aware of his closeness to the mouth of the trap. ‘Perhaps this assembly ought to be the judge of that,’ he said. ‘Be so kind as to share your news with us.’

Mihel Bovert was only too happy to oblige. ‘So you see,’ he concluded after making his report, ‘I really didn’t feel justified in troubling this assembly with a cock-and-bull story based on magic and mysticism, when even the magician himself isn’t sure the message is actually true.’ Redemptionist laughter; awkward silence on the Separatist side. They knew they were now going to have to believe officially in Doctor Gannadius’ inspiration – it was that or agree with the Redemptionists, and admit they’d wasted everybody’s time calling the Chapter – and demand that action be taken based on it. If the crisis turned out to be a false alarm, they’d be ridiculed for believing in magic. If the crisis proved to be real, the Redemptionists wouldn’t find it hard to snatch the credit for sending the reinforcements, since it was their man, at their dinner-party, who’d obtained the vital information. It was time for quick thinking.

‘I’m a scientist,’ said Anaut Mogre. ‘And one of the most important things in science is being able to admit you don’t know. I admit, I don’t know whether to believe in this magic story or not. For all I know, it could be meaningless babble, or a true vision, maybe something in between. Personally, I’ve always preferred to keep an open mind about this whole applied-philosophy issue, as anybody who heard my keynote address at Convocation last year will confirm. But what I’d like you all to consider is this. If there’s no crisis and we send another army, what’s the worst outcome? We look idiots – I look an idiot, as do my colleagues on this side of the chamber – the army comes home again, no harm done. Now, suppose we ignore this message and there really has been a disaster on Scona? Worst outcome: we lose the war. Colleagues, in this case I’d far rather be humiliated than justified, because I’d really like this all to be a hoax or a mistake, I really want to find out that my cousin Sten and his army are safely in one piece and getting on with the job in hand. But if there’s the slightest chance otherwise, I say send an army, and I don’t care who hears me.’