Neal Stephenson - Anathem

“I’ll bite. What’s the difference?”

“The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.”

“Someone here must have said something like that once,” Quin said.

“Oh, yes. It’s a great time to be a Lorite. We have a whole contingent of them here, gearing up for the great project of absorbing the knowledge from the four new cosmi.” I looked toward the tent-cloister where Karvall and Moyra and their fraas and suurs had encamped, but they’d not emerged from under canvas yet. Probably still tying their outfits on. “Anyway, my point is that guys like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there’s an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxional nature of symbols and meaning.”

“Okay, but what’s the pessimistic side telling you?”

“That the poet’s way is a feature of the brain, a specific organ or faculty, that you either have or you don’t. And that those who have it are doomed to be at war forever with those who don’t.”

“Well,” Quin said, “it sounds like you’re going to be spending a lot of time up on that rock with Arsibalt.”

“Well, someone has to keep the poor guy company.”

“For guys like me and Flec, do you have anything? Besides hammering stakes into mud?”

“We are actually building some permanent structures,” I said, “mostly on the island. The new Magisterium needs a headquarters. A capitol. You came just in time to watch the cornerstone being laid.”

“When will that happen?”

I slowed again and checked the position of the bright place in the sky. The sun was almost ready to burn through. “Noon sharp.”

“You have a clock?”

“Working on it.”

“Why today? Is this a special day in your calendar?”

“It will be after today,” I said. “Day Zero, Year Zero.”

Chance or luck had endowed us with half of a causeway to the island: a launch gantry that had gone down like a tall tree in a gust of wind. It was twisted, fractured, and half melted, but still more than able to bear the weight of humans and wheelbarrows. Halfway from shore to island, it ramped beneath the surface. Beyond there we had extended it with pontoons of closed-cell foam, anchored by scavenged cables to the submerged part of the gantry. The last few hundred yards still had to be managed on small boats. Yul liked to swim it. “We would like to build a simple cable-car system,” I told Quin, as we rowed across the gap, “but it is a serious praxic challenge to anchor a tower in the soil of the island, which is still loose. That might be something where father and son could work together.” For Quin, Barb, and I were all crossing together. I don’t think Barb had come along for the companionship so much as because the breeze had shifted and carried the scent of cooking food from island to shore. From his perch in the bow, Barb had already identified the barbecue pits and other such attractions he would be visiting first. “You have an oven!” he exclaimed, pointing to a smoking masonry dome that had just interrupted the skyline.

“That was the first permanent thing we built. Arsibalt started it and Tris finished it. Later we’ll build a kitchen, then a Refectory around it.”

“How about messallans?” Barb asked.

“Maybe a couple of those too,” I allowed, “for those who just can’t get along without servitors.”

“So, this will become the Concent of Saunt Orolo?” Quin asked me.

I hesitated, and shipped the oars, not wanting to clobber Yul, who was wading out to come and tow us in. “It’ll be the something of Saunt Orolo,” I assured Quin. “But we are a little uneasy with the word Concent . We need a new word. Hey, Barb!” For Barb was about to jump off and wade to shore in quest of food. He didn’t hear me, but Yul—who had his big wet hand clamped on our gunwale now—touched Barb’s arm, and pointed to me. Barb turned around. “I will not drown,” he assured me, as if calming a fretful child, “my clothes are made from non-absorbent fibers.”

“You won’t eat, either. That food is for later.”

“How much later?”

“You’re going to have to sit through two auts,” I said. “One at noon. The second immediately after. Then, for the rest of the day, we eat.”

“What time is it?”

“Let’s go ask Jesry.”

Jesry’s clock was taking shape on the summit of the island. It was another of those projects that would not be finished in our natural lifetimes—but at least it was ticking! Jesry’s ideas on how to build “the real one” were so advanced that I could not understand half of them. But we had insisted he have something working for today. He and Cord had been toiling for a couple of months, building and breaking prototypes. The pace of the work had quickened as Cord had gathered in more tools. When Barb, Quin, and I hiked to the top, Cord was absent, having been called away to other preparations. Jesry was up there alone with his machines, like a half-mad holy hermit, watching through goggles as a spot of blinding light crept across a slab of synthetic stone. It was cast by a parabolic mirror that we had all taken a hand in grinding. “Lucky the sun came out,” he said, by way of greeting.

“It often does, this time of day,” I said.

“You ready?”

“Yeah, Arsibalt is a few minutes behind us, and I saw Tulia and Karvall putting their heads together, so…”

“Not for that,” he said. “I mean, are you ready for the other thing?”

“Oh, that?”

“Yeah, that .”

“Sure,” I said, “never been readier.”

“You, my fraa, are a liar.”

“How much time?” I asked, feeling a change of subject was in order.

He pulled his goggles back down over his eyes, judged the distance between the spot of light and a length of wire that lay helpless in its path. “A quarter of an hour,” he decreed. “See you there.”

“Okay, Jesry.”

“Raz? Any Deolaters down there?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Then ask them to pray that this contraption doesn’t fall apart in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Will do.”

We got to the site of the aut by following the trigger line down from the clock. The island had very little flat space, but we had created one just big enough for the cornerstone by scraping it out with hand tools and pounding it flat. Above it Yul had welded together a tripod from scrap steel. The stone—a fragment of the actual rod that the Geometers had thrown from space—was suspended from the tripod’s apex. It had been shaped to a cube by avout stonemasons, of whom we already had several. OF SAVANT OROLO was carved into one face—we’d fill in the blank later, when we’d found a suitable word—and YEAR 0 OF THE SECOND RECONSTITUTION was on another. On a third face—which would be hidden when the structure was built—we’d all been scratching our names. I invited Barb and Quin to add theirs.

Barb got so involved in it that I don’t think he heard a word or a note of the aut and the music that Arsibalt, Tulia, and Karvall had put together for us. But neither did I. I had other matters on my mind, and was too busy, anyway, marveling at all who’d showed up for the event: Ganelial Crade. Ferman Beller, with a couple of Bazian monks in tow. Three of Jesry’s siblings. Estemard and his wife. A contingent of Orithenans. Fraa Paphlagon and Emman Beldo. Geometers of all four races, equipped with nose tubes.