Part 11 (1/2)

'But I don't want to know everything! Just the bits I need! I need maps and charts. I need to learn the lie of the land.'

”That knowledge will come in due course.You will, however, learn the lie of this land only. That is all you will learn.'

'That could take months!' The Doctor waved his arms, dismayed. 'Look, I'm a great skimmer. I can get through anything you care to give me at a rate of knots. I skim so fast sometimes I don't even know what I'm reading. Can't you just -'

'I can educate you, as I educate all Fortaliceans. This is how we work.'

'How long does it last?'

'Twenty years.'

'Impossible! Show me your maps.'

'You are a very impatient person.'

'And you,' the Doctor bridled, 'are an impossible man.' He glared at the librarian, who, at last, blinked. 'I see it now,' said the Doctor slowly. 'My impetuosity appals you. YouVe forced yourself to think like every other Fortalicean.You are beholden to a system of understanding the absolute order of things. The ranking of all empirical knowledge.' The Doctor came out of his little trance with a smile, hoping the librarian would be impressed by his surmise.'But you don't really believe that possible, do you?'

'I believe that the knowledge a.s.sembled here is all there is.'

'I can see in your face that you don't.'

'I must,' said the librarian furiously.

'There will always be gaps. There have to be gaps in what is known.

How else can you find out anything new?'

'We don't care for the new here.'

'Ah yes. Another village of torch-bearing monster-baiting killers, all superst.i.tious, all unruly mob-mentality, all misrule and xenophobia.

Splendid.'

'We prosper.'

'I don't doubt it. Just tell me what I need to know.'

The librarian considered.'You are free to... look where you like.'

'I believe the word you want is browse. I am free to browse, to skim, to sample, pluck, rummage, unpick, deconstruct, misread and in general randomly choose what I want from your splendid - if rather limiting -one thousand and one volumes. Is that it?'

'On your own head be it.'

”Thank you,' said the Doctor, and marched off into the main body of the library.

There was no one indoors reading or learning today. No one was being forced to digest, page by page, text after text, the supposed complete knowledge of Fortalice. Really, the whole thing was preposterous. Even given such a systematic, doctrinaire workload, not every Fortalicean would learn the same material. They didn't stand a chance. The Doctor reflected that he himself absorbed only part of what he read, and remembered less. Frayed ends stuck out everywhere, to be picked up and ravelled out on a second, later reading, while the previous a.s.sertions and reflections laded away or attached themselves to other parts of his thinking. No two Fortaliceans could possibly have the same knowledge. Not of this world, or a single body of knowledge. They couldn't read a single sentence in the same way. No one could.

By the time he came to the ranks of bookcases on which the thousand and one volumes were carefully laid, he had the whole enterprise put down - in his own mind, at least - as a patent absurdity.

As was the series of headings under which volumes one to a thousand and one were categorised. He read the white placards aloud: 'The Self, Temporality, the Referential Gap, Ambiguity, Undecidability, Rhetoric, and Objects (Ordered).'

He wondered where he ought to begin. He was tempted to have a nose around the Referential Gap, thinking that perhaps the Fortaliceans were more aware of the problems and lacunae to do with language and knowledge than they were letting on.

But all I want, he thought, is a nice plain map to tell me how to get to Kestheven.

He plucked outAmbiguity , Volume Two and its first sentence ran, 'Should the Forest of Kestheven exist?' It continued: Should the Forest of Kestheven exist it should consist of the following unknowable and unaccountable objects and beings, all of which are outlawed and decried in this realm. It is an entirely fict.i.tious region of deciduous woodlands, and any resemblance to any living and true Fortalicean s.p.a.ce is entirely coincidental. Located some one hundred fathomless miles from the exact centre of this town. This text exists to establish and verify, the plain impossibility, the ludicrous unknowability of Kestheven, by illuminating and ordering every one of its properties and purported essences.

The Doctor hurried over to a stark wooden bench to read.

Sam had chosen four apples from a basket in the market. 'Not those four,' said the sombre-looking woman under an immense sun hat.

”Those four are reserved.'

'They're the same as all the others!' Sam protested, and the woman shook her head.

'You are free to choose from the remaining fruit.' She s.n.a.t.c.hed the four apples away.

Actually, the rest were all bruised and withered-looking. Sam had taken the pick of the bunch. Sighing, she rummaged in the basket.'Who reserves apples?'

'Everyone does,' she was told.

When Sam met up with Gila later, he had bought six plump, scarlet fish.

He carried them wrapped in damp brown paper. Each had a label attached. ”They've all got names,' he said, laughing.

'Are all the towns here as weird as this?' Sam asked him.

'Oh, yes,' he said.

As the day advanced the atmosphere thickened and curdled. The air was almost too humid and green to breathe as the storm gathered force and small collectives prepared for the impending fracas in the town's various drinking holes. The Doctor's party went their different ways, attracting stares and mutters. Blithely they got on with their business, but all the while the locals were taking note of them, labelling them as visitors, and letting them go safely, knowing full well that when violence broke out - as it certainly would this afternoon - that the visitors would be taken care of.

Iris had found herself a corner table in a dark, smoky tavern, where a horde of ill-dressed men were getting drunk. Unconcerned, she put her feet up and ordered a thin, noxious, local brew which came to her in a bra.s.s pot, set down unceremoniously by the barmaid, who gave the old woman a scathing look. Iris rolled herself a number of lumpy and tatty cigarettes and coolly surveyed the clientele. She thought about doing so with her camcorder, but thought better of it. Everyone was wearing a s.h.a.ggy fur and an old hat at a rakish angle. Some even wore eyepatches. It had been months since Iris had found herself in such insalubrious company and she got goose-flesh at the thought.

The barmaid was in a sheer blue dress and she came tottering over to Iris to refill her jug of foul wine. She told her.'You have lousy timing, you know.'

'I know,' Iris sighed.

'Visitors here get a hard time any day of the year. Don't you know what today is?' Iris must have looked blank. 'It's the annual brawl. The big fracas. The solst.i.tial fisticuffs in the streets. When everyone with a grudge or a secret niggle against their neighbour comes out to let off steam by laying into whoever they can get their hands on. It's murder out there today.'

'I've never been here before,' said Iris worriedly.

'An old woman like you shouldn't be alone today.'

'I can look after myself.'

'Not when this lot have drunk themselves stupid. Every year it's a bloodbath.'