Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

  “What are you going to call them—us—now?” Quin asked.

  “I have no idea. What matters is that, under the Second Reconstitution, there are two coequal Magisteria. People can come up with words for them later.”

  We had reached a place where the crater’s formerly knifelike edge had already softened to a round shoulder under the action of rain and wind. It was dotted with a few opportunistic weeds and etched with colored lines strung between stakes. “The boundaries will run wherever we put them. Here’s one.” I plucked at a red string.

  Quin was aghast. “How can you just do that? Go out and stake a claim? The lawyers must be going crazy.”

  “We have a small army of Procians running their mouths for us. The lawyers don’t stand a chance.”

  “So everything on this side of the string is your property?”

  “Yes. The walls will run parallel to it, just inside.”

  “So you’ll still have walls?”

  “Yes. With gateways—but no gates,” I said.

  “Then why bother building the walls?”

  “They have symbolic content,” I said. “They say, ‘you’re passing into a different Magisterium now, and there are certain things you must leave behind.’” But I knew I was not being altogether forthright. Half a mile away I could make out half a dozen people in bolts, peering through instruments and pounding in stakes: Lio and the crowd of ex-Ringing Vale avout he ran with now. I knew exactly what they were discussing: when war breaks out between the Magisteria and we plug the holes in the wall with gates, we’ll want interlocking fields of fire between this bastion and the next to repel any assault on the intervening stretch of wall…

  I whistled between my fingers. They looked over at us. I pointed to the bundles of stakes that Quin and I had just dropped. A couple of the Valers began sprinting to fetch them. Quin and I turned to descend the way we’d come. But we were pulled up short by an answering whistle, which I recognized as Lio’s. I looked his way. He gestured down the outer slope of the crater wall, trying to get me to see something. There wasn’t much to reward looking: just a long slope of boiled earth, burned wood, shredded insulation, and pulverized stone. Farther away, a flat place where pilgrims like Quin had parked their vehicles. Finally, though, I saw what Lio wanted me to see: a vein of yellow starblossom rushing up the slope.

  “What is it?” Quin asked.

  “Barbarian invasion,” I said. “Long story.” I waved to Lio.

  Quin and I turned around and began the descent into the crater. We had enough time to go on a detour to a certain terrace that my Edharian fraas and suurs and I had built soon after we had come to this place. Unlike most of the terraces, which were beginning to sprout plants that would eventually grow up into tangles, this one was covered with scrap-metal trellises that would one day support library vines. Some months ago, Fraa Haligastreme had paid us a visit from Edhar, and he’d brought with him root stock from Orolo’s old vineyard. We’d planted it in the ground beneath these trellises, and since then visited it frequently to see whether the vines, in a fit of pique, were committing suicide. But they were sending out new growth all over the place. We were near the equator, but almost two miles high, so the sun was intense but the weather was cool. Who would’ve thought that rockets and grapevines liked the same sorts of places?

  As we were walking back down to the lake’s edge, Quin—who had been silent for a while—cleared his throat. “You mentioned that there were certain things you have to leave behind when you enter this new Magisterium,” he reminded me. “Does that include religion?”

  One measure of how much things had changed was that this didn’t make me the least bit nervous. “I’m glad you brought that up,” I said. “I noticed that Artisan Flec came with you.”

  “Flec’s been going through rough times,” Quin wanted me to know. “His wife divorced him. Business hasn’t been so good. The whole Warden of Heaven thing sent him into a tailspin. He just needed to get out of town. Then, Barb spent the whole drive, er…”

  “Planing him?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I just want to say, if his presence here is not appropriate…”

  “The rule of thumb we’ve been using is that Deolaters are welcome as long as they’re not certain they’re right,” I said. “As soon as you’re sure you’re right, there’s no point in your being here.”

  “Flec’s not sure of anything now,” Quin assured me. Then, after a minute: “Can you even have an Ark, if you’re not sure you’re right? Isn’t it just a social club, in that case?”

  I slowed, and pointed to an outcropping of bedrock that protruded from the curving wall of the crater. Smoke was braiding up from a fire that had been kindled on its top, before the entrance of a tent. My fraa was up there burning his breakfast. “Flec should hike up to Arsibalt’s Dowment,” I suggested. “It is going to be a center for working on that sort of thing.”

  Quin made a wry grin. “I’m not sure if Flec wants to work on it.”

  “He just wants to be told?”

  “Yes. Or at least, that’s what he’s used to—what he’s comfortable with.”

  “I have a few Laterran friends now,” I said, “and one of them, the other day, was telling me about a philosopher named Emerson who had some useful upsights about the difference between poets and mystics. I’m thinking that it’s just as applicable in our cosmos as it is in his.”

  “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 ha
d 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.

  As noon drew near, we launched into a version of the Hylaean Anathem that Arsibalt had chosen for what he called its “temporal elasticity,” meaning that if the clock malfunctioned we’d be able to cover it up. But at some point—I have no idea whether it was even close to true solar noon—I saw Jesry spring up out of his clock-hovel, fling his goggles aside, and take off toward us at a run. I could tell by his gait that the news was good. The trigger line was getting noticeably tighter. I looked over at Yul, who was under the tripod, and drew my thumb across my throat. He grabbed Barb in a bear hug and jerked him back to safety. A moment later, a mechanism snapped and the stone dropped into its place with a thud that we all felt in our ankles. There was applause and cheering, which I didn’t really get to take part in since Arsibalt—presiding at a lectern, and leading the Anathem—was staring into my eyes and jerking his head in the direction of a tent a short ways up the hill. “Okay,” I mouthed, and obeyed.

  Yul reached the tent a few moments after I did. He helped me change into a fancy Tredegarh-style bolt while I helped him put on a formal going-to-Ark suit. And both of us proved so incompetent at our respective tasks that these preparations outlasted the aut, and led to audible restlessness and rude comments from the crowd milling around just on the other side of the canvas. Emman Beldo had to tear himself away from bothering Suur Karvall, come into the tent, and intervene on Yul’s behalf. Meanwhile my overwraps were pleated and fixed into place by, of all people, Fraa Lodoghir, who had showed up probably to make sure that Saunt Orolo’s would include an influential Procian faculty.

  Yul and I dithered and swapped after-yous at the threshold—which was obviated when the threshold ceased to exist. Lio and some of the Valers had lost patience, cut the tent’s guy ropes, and swept it off over our heads, like unveiling a couple of statues.

  And, as a matter of fact, statues is probably what we acted like when we caught sight of Ala and Cord, who had done a much better job of getting dressed. I’d expected that my bride would be garlanded with starblossom and other invasive species. But I understood, now, that Quin’s fetch had been loaded with proper flowers, raised in faraway fields and hothouses.

  The aut was a little complicated, since I had to give away Yul’s bride, but it had all been worked out by better minds. Cord and Yul were joined in matrimony by Magister Sark, who pulled it off pretty well, considering he’d been up until three A.M. in Dialog with Arsibalt over bottles of wine. He used the occasion to uncork one of his amazing, exasperating sermons, filled with wisdom and upsight and human truths, fettered to a cosmographical scheme that had been blown out of the water four thousand years ago.

  When Sark’s part of the ceremony was complete, I, seconded by Jesry, and Ala, backed up by Tulia, came together in the presence of Fraa Paphlagon, and, to the accompaniment of a joyous song, and the distant rumble of Ma Cartas rolling over in her chalcedony sarcophagus, joined ourselves together in a Perelithian liaison.

  It was traditional for the pre
siding fraa or suur to deliver some remarks, so we came to a place in the aut when all of the avout fell silent and turned their eyes to Fraa Paphlagon. This could have been awkward, since there was no avoiding the fact that the listeners would view his words, not entirely in their own light, but as a counterbalance to what Magister Sark had said. I thought it good that Paphlagon did not try to sneak around this.

  “Since we pride ourselves on our Dialogs, let me welcome Magister Sark as a respected interlocutor. In his words I clearly see the traces left, thousands of years ago, when one of his forebears hit on an upsight and a way of expressing it that, for that moment, were true. As when the parts of a clock tick into alignment, and a pin falls into a slot, and something happens: a gate swings open, there’s a little Apert, and through it, a glimpse into the next cosmos. Or—in light of recent developments—perhaps I should say a next cosmos.” As he was saying this, Paphlagon looked around and made eye contact with Urnudans, Troäns, Laterrans, and Fthosians. “Those who were there when that gate opened, knew it for a real upsight, wrote it down, made it part of their religion—which is a way of saying that they did all that was in their power to pass it on to the ones they loved. We can, on some other occasion, have a lively debate as to whether they succeeded; I regret to say that in my case they did not.”

  I couldn’t help looking over at Ganelial Crade to see how he was reacting. I saw no trace of the old fuming resentment that had used to come over him when he felt that we were disrespecting his beliefs. Something had changed for him at Orithena.

  “We are gathered at a place named after Fraa Orolo, who was a fid of mine for a little while,” Paphlagon continued. “When he was only a little older than some of you,” and here he looked at me and Ala, then Jesry, Tulia, and the others who had come from Edhar or from the Convox, “he spoke to me once of why he had made Eliger with my Order. For he could have left the mathic world at Apert and found a life in the Saeculum, or, having decided to remain a fraa, he might just as well have joined the New Circle. Orolo said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. That’s why he’d chosen the path that he had. Now the coming of our friends from Urnud, Tro, Earth, and Fthos has demonstrated certain things about how the polycosm works that we had only speculated about before. We must all of us re-examine everything we know and believe in the light of these revelations. That is the work that begins here now. It is a great and gradual beginning that encompasses many smaller but no less beautiful beginnings—such as the union of Ala and Erasmas.”