Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (39 page)

 
          
Alex
whispered, ‘Are you and Thess planning something? Are you going to spirit her
away to safety? Is she going to give birth invisibly and silently in the
garden? With nothing known until the infant wails? She must have asked you to
help out - to use invisibility somehow!’

 
          
‘It’s
easier to steal a heap of gold than to do what you’re suggesting. I won’t talk
of this.’

 
          
‘Muzi
has guessed about me and Thess. But don’t tell her that! He’s suspicious of you
too; he’s watching.’ ‘I had noticed. Alex, you think too much. Excessive
thinking can sometimes weave illusions.’

           
‘Does that mean Thess told you what
I said to her during the robbery?’

 
          
Gupta
raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid, if you told her something momentous, it has
been eclipsed by a big belly. She has pressing concerns. They press from
within, where your penis pressed. So it isn’t the theft or the birth that
oppresses you?’

 
          
‘No.
Listen to me and hear me out. First I want to ask you one question, Gupta. Have
you heard of the Akademia of the Future at Heuristics, in Arizona, America?’

 
          
After
he had listened carefully to Alex, Gupta said, ‘Be quiet a while.’ He shut his
eyes and stood still for all of two minutes without breathing. Then he opened his
eyes again.

           
‘Alex, I feel I once knew something
about this. Before we both became Babylonians, in the belly of Babel . . .
yes.’

 
          
‘But
no longer?’

 
          
‘A
man of invisibility co-operates with the world. He doesn’t stand silhouetted on
a skyline.’

 
          
‘What
on earth does that mean?’

 
          
‘It
means that you are standing on a skyline. You can still see both ways: into one
valley, or into the next valley. The first valley is like the vale before we
were born; the other valley is our present life. This is a terrible thing you
have suggested to me. Ha ha! Of course I can be invisible - if it is only a
matter of masking part of a pattern! Of course I could steal gold invisibly. If
this is true, then I am invisible to myself. I do not know who I am.’

 
          
‘Months
ago,’ said Alex, ‘while I was still staying at Kamberchanian’s inn, I went to
the Greek Theatre one afternoon. I saw a play by Euripides, about Andromeda.
Andromeda spoke these lines:

 
          
“Like the real Helen who never sailed to
Troy

           
So that men and ships followed a ghost

           
And Priam’s son loved a ghost in bed,

           
A
hallucination sent by gods to craze men ...”

 
          
‘There’s
an old legend that the real Helen never travelled to Troy at all. She went
somewhere else - to some island, or to Egypt, I dunno - and hid herself. A
double, a false Helen went to Troy in place of her. A phantom, says Euripides.’

 
          
Gupta
slapped his brow. ‘Are we all false Helens here? False Alexes, false Guptas?
Here is where we came into existence first of all, with borrowed memories?’

           
‘As so many
elektronik klones
, made by
tekhne
. . .’ ‘So many amber shoots?’

           
‘No,
elektronik
as in lightning and, and . . . damn it.’ Frustration
gripped Alex. ‘I think future
tekhne
is able to copy a person’s mind and memory. Many persons’! Babylon’s the pot
where we all stew together.’

 
          
‘Why
can’t I remember these things?’

 
          
‘Because
now that we’ve all become functioning Babylonians, some of our original
memory-wax has been erased. What was wanted here was true models of human
behaviour. But behaviour springs from real- life experiences. To start with, we
had to remember who we were. Now that we’ve been in Babylon long enough,
experiencing new events, the yarn of our personalities has all been spun from
the original spool on to a new spool.’ Alex sighed. ‘Spools, indeed! I can’t
describe this future
tekhne
except in
Greek, badly. I suppose in Anglika you would say . . .’ Ice gripped his heart
as he sought for English and found only scattered words. Many words, oh yes!
Not just a handful. Words such as ‘nuclear’ and ‘rifle’ and ‘computer’.
‘Christ’ and ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘sociology’ and ‘drop-out’. A whole gang
of words. But they wouldn’t join together. They had no syntax, nothing to set
them in order.

 
          
‘I’ve
lost my native tongue, Gupta.’

 
          
‘I
... so have I. Maybe that is because of the
hypnos
we underwent to learn Babylonian? A
hypnos
undergone not by ghosts, but by real flesh-and-blood people!’ Gupta frowned.
‘Flesh and blood, hmm. That doesn’t quite accord with my philosophy. The
universe is only a veil of illusions spun by time, using energy as its fabric.
Is the false Helen - the
elektronik
avatar - any less real by virtue of being energy locked inside a piece of
tekhne?
The actual Helen herself is just
a pattern of energies.’

           
‘That hardly resolves our dilemma!’

 
          
‘I
must think about this carefully, Alex. I must meditate.’

 
          
‘And
I must wheel this water home.’

 
          
‘Yes,
do keep lots of water in the house for the confinement.’

 
          
‘Canal
water. Ditch water.’

 
          
‘Safe
enough, if boiled.’

 
          
‘The
baby isn’t due yet. It’ll be another five or six weeks.’

 
          
‘Unless
Dr Cassander sharpens his knife prematurely.’

 
          
‘Can’t
you help her at all?’

 
          
‘Yes,
with my yoga.’

 
          
‘What’s
the use of yoga, if Cassander is going to operate anyway? You wouldn’t even
mention yoga - unless you two had other plans!’

 
          
With
sudden briskness Gupta said, ‘Of course there is an alternative. A potion to
induce rapid early labour before the baby is too enormous. That’s what she
wishes me to procure: a potion of ergot. I’m reluctant. Ergot is a
hallucinating poison: and she would need a strong dose. There, I’ve told you
after all; may I be forgiven.’

 
          
‘We
illusions must stick together, eh?’

 
          
‘Hmm.
How much easier - more comforting, even! - it is to talk about birth and ergot,
knives and ditch water . . . than about the other matter. But: pain suffered by
ghosts is perfectly real to the ghosts. The death of a ghost is real to the
ghost.’

 
          
Just
then a Macedonian soldier on horseback hove into view at the end of the lane.
He cantered along till he reached Nettychin’s gate, where he reined in and
hollered.

 
          
Alex
resumed pushing his barrow homeward.

 
          
* * *

 
 
         
After prayers that evening, Muzi made
an announcement:

           
‘Listen, everyone. I got a message
from the palace today. Two weeks from now I'm invited to hunt with the king
himself. He feels vigorous. He wants to see some blood shed. We'll ride out to
the wild beast park and camp by Olympia Spring: the king with me, and General
Perdiccas and Antipater. Along with soldiers and attendants. Irra will squire
me, 'natch. I figure on having a slave with me too; with my wife's say-so. For
the looks of it. It's a question of prestige.’ Muzi directed his gaze at Alex.
‘You, boy, are the only household slave hereabouts.’

 
          
Thessany
exclaimed, ‘What a great honour, Muzi! I’m so proud. Of course you must go; and
of course you must borrow Alex.’ She sounded entirely delighted and sincere.

 
          
‘I
surely intend to go; but it’s gracious of you to let me deprive you of Alex. I
appreciate that.’ He laid his hand on the clay idol of the dog-headed warrior.
‘I promise before our home-god that your slave won’t come to any harm
a-hunting.’

 
          
Harm,
such as what? A mauling by an enraged lioness? Or perhaps a javelin in the back
. . . ? Muzi had given his word, though. Honour was uppermost.

 
          
While
on the top of Thessany’s mind, perhaps, was Gupta and ergot and two or three
days’ liberty . . . Muzi and Alex would return from the hunt to find a baby
prematurely born and Thessany safe from Cas- sander’s knife. Or else to find
Thessany poisoned and Alex’s child dead inside her; or born dead.

 
          
The
baby: product of two ghosts who together had created a third ghost quite as
real and alive as they were. The babies of
Babylon
would have no originals anywhere else, of
whom they were only copies and
klones
. . .

           
Irra grinned at Alex as they were
heading out of the chapel. ‘Can you ride? Or would you rather run alongside
us?’

 
          
‘I
can ride,’ said Alex. ‘I used to live in the country. Somewhere once upon a
time. It wouldn’t look very prestigious, would it, if I arrived at camp hours
late like some beggar, all flaked out, coated in sweat and dust?’

 
          
‘Oh,
you’ll get coated in sweat and dust, whatever happens. Boy.’

 
          
Mama
Zabala had been cooking apricot pastries; and Thessany, swollen with child,
steered herself to the kitchen in pursuit of the sweet aroma which now drifted
through the house. She emerged along the corridor with a pastry in each hand,
her mouth crammed with the remnants of a third.

 
          
Other
odours contended but failed to conquer. During an intrusive house-call the day
before, Dr Cassander had delivered many little bags of crushed myrtle flowers
and knobs of asafoetida gum which he insisted should be strung up all over the
place as prophylactics against any invisible imps of sickness. (Muzi, of
course, concurred.) Everywhere, that is, excluding the kitchen. Mama Zabala
rebelled at the prospect of asafoetida tainting her cuisine with its reek of
garlic; and perhaps she had embarked on her pastry crusade in retaliation.
Certainly she had lured Thessany and beamed as her pregnant mistress stuffed
herself.

 
          
‘Just
the thing! Don’t be coy. Your body knows what it wants.’

 
          
Mama
Zabala had sent Alex packing from the kitchen on an unnecessary errand soon
after Thessany arrived, as though his presence might spoil the complicity of
the two women, thus diminishing the cook’s victory over the male doctor's
prescriptions. Alex had hung about within earshot of the reed door.

           
Out at the back he could hear Tikki
barking excitedly, and the voices of Muzi and Irra. Two maids were giggling
distantly. Anshar had been despatched to the palace with a message about some
detail of the following week’s expedition.

 
          
Now
Thessany emerged, and he had his chance.

 
          
‘Thess!’

 
          
‘Mmmm,’
she munched. She nodded at the door, still rustling from her exit.

 
          
‘I
must talk to you.’

 
          
She
swallowed with several gulps.

 
          
‘Not
here. Now now.’