Part 7 (1/2)

So you keep saying. '. . .' he said, then realised he'd forgotten the rest.

She was a round-faced, stocky woman in her late forties, with short grey hair, bright black eyes and a prominent double chin. 'You've been very sick,' she went on, 'but the doctor's given you something that'll sort you out, just you wait and see.'

Gannadius felt annoyed at that; b.l.o.o.d.y doctor's been using me to try out his lethal new remedies, he wanted to say. Dangerous clown, he shouldn't be allowed near a patient. 'Thank you,' he croaked. 'Where . . . ?'

The woman smiled. 'This is Blancharber,' she said. 'Have you heard of it?'

Gannadius thought for a moment. 'No,' he said.

'Ah. Well, it's a little village about half a day's walk inland from Ap' Amodi'. She p.r.o.nounced the name as one word, not two. 'Roughly the same distance from Ap' Amodi and the old City.'

'Where . . . ?'

'Perimadeia. You're in King Temrai's country,' she added. 'You're safe now.'

Eseutz Mesatges, free trader of the Island, to her sister in commerce Athli Zeuxis; greetings.

This is a horrible place, and the people are loathsome. On the other hand, they surely do have a lot of feathers.

Which is where you come in. I'm now in a position to supply, FOB the Market Forces, sixty-seven standard volume barrels of premium white goose-wing feathers, all graded by wing polarity - to be precise, thirty-five barrels of right-wing, thirty-two of left-wing - suitable for fletching all standard-spine military arrows, at the ridiculously low price of twelve quarters (City) per barrel - well, almost. There's just one trivial shard of detail standing between me and this fantastic opportunity. I'm as broke as a dropped pot.

But I wouldn't be, beloved sister in commerce, if you supplied me with a letter of credit drawn on that bank of yours in the paltry sum of 268 quarters (City); then I'd have my feathers, you'd have your usual one-third cut, these people here would have an incentive to set up a regular, ongoing deal and everybody would be happy. Except the geese, of course; but I don't think they were planning on going anywhere.

Now then: if the Squirrel gets in as per schedule, you should be reading this on the sixth - plenty of time for you to scribble out the magic words and send the letter round to the master of the King of Beasts, which I happen to know is expected here on the seventeenth (so presumably it's not leaving the Island till the eighth at the very earliest). Provided you do your stuff with all due diligence, I can close the deal on or before the twentieth and be home on the Market Forces, with feathers, by Remembrance. As simple as that.

Well, that's it, really; but there's still plenty of s.p.a.ce left on this sheet of high-quality paper, so I might as well fill it with something.

Let's see; what sort of thing do you want to know? Of course, you've actually been here, as I recall - didn't you come here with your friend the fencer, before the coup and all? I don't suppose it was much better then; worse, probably. Say what you like about the military regime and Butcher Gorgas, they give every impression of being good for business. If they made or grew anything at all worth selling (except, of course, for these utterly magnificent feathers you're getting a vicarious slice of), there'd be some nice opportunities here in the import/export line, since there's basically zip local compet.i.tion; no merchant venturers, no producers' cartels, no aristocratic or royal monopolies, and even the government tariff is only two and a half per cent. It's what comes of having a government run by amateurs, I suppose.

It makes me wonder, though. Why did Gorgas Loredan go to all the trouble of taking the place over if he's not going to do anything with it now he's got it? After all, it's such an extreme thing to do, steal a country from the people who live there. Usually, of course, it's pretty obvious - someone wants the iron ore, or the warm-water port, or the osier beds, or the growing timber or the saffron plantations, or to stop someone else having it, or just so as to be able to draw a nice straight line down the map, or to have the complete set of islands. And when it isn't something blindingly obvious like that, you can bet it's a steady source of revenue - poll taxes and sales taxes and import taxes and road taxes and spice taxes and wedding taxes and taxes on every third heifer and scutage and heriot and t.i.thes in ordinary. There's always a reason - except in this case, and it's bothering me to bits trying to figure it out. For one thing, a cool, calculating type like Gorgas Loredan doesn't do anything without a reason. What's he up to, Athli? You know about this sort of thing. Won't you let me in on the secret?

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 friends.h.i.+p and fair dealing, ESEUTZ.

'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 pa.s.sed 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. 'h.e.l.lo, 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 a.s.sume 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 n.o.body 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. 'n.o.body'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.'