The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  On the fifteenth day, when the figure topped eighteen thousand, the cat-faced doctor presented an alternative hypothesis. It wasn't airborne at all, he said; it was in the water, just like the contamination at Perigouna. As evidence, he produced maps of the underground cisterns, with the routes of the sewers overlaid in red. The fluctuations Basso had noticed weren't in fact anything to do with the wind, though it had been a reasonable enough mistake; they were in fact linked to the tides. If (the doctor argued) an unusually high level of silt had drifted into the outlets where the City sewers flowed out into the bay, it could alter the course of the currents. Foul water could, under a complex concatenation of circumstances, be flowing out into the sea and immediately be drawn in again by the backdraft; in which case, it would end up in the overflows, which travelled along three-hundred-year-old lead pipes which had been neglected for a long time. It was entirely possible that those pipes were leaking; in which case, contamination could easily enter the cisterns, from which the City drew all its clean water. The fluctuations they'd been observing were consistent with this theory: accelerated incidence of infection when the tide turned (which coincided with some, though not all, of the predictable changes in wind direction), and irregularities in both incidence and mortality that could be explained quite simply by the extent to which the contaminated water was diluted--in other words, whether the cistern tanks in question were empty or full at the time. The evacuation camps, he pointed out, drew water from the cisterns, but by the time it reached the outskirts and the suburbs, a lot of the flow would have been diverted to other places, while additional clean water would have entered the system from the outer rainwater traps and underground springs; accordingly, the contamination in the water that reached the camps was consistently more diluted than it would be further inside the City, hence fewer cases and a lower fatality ratio.

  When he'd finished, Basso said, "But what about the blisters, and the swellings on the face and wrists, and the lumps under the arms? That's plague, not poisoned water, surely."

  "It's plague, but it travels in water," the doctor said. "Obviously a new variety we haven't come across before."

  So they tried again. Aelius rounded up as many immune citizens as his press gangs could catch, and they dug channels to draw off water from the river upstream of the City into the cisterns. It took five days, during which both incidence and mortality declined steadily and substantially. By the time the sluices were opened and the grand dilution programme was finally under way, the death rate was down to twenty or so a day. It went up again almost immediately, but the cause was an outbreak of typhoid, caused by the unfiltered river water, rather than plague.

  Among the very last recorded cases of the plague were six novices at the Studium, all of whom died, and two members of the First Citizen's own household. Because of the quarantine regulations, it was impossible to find out the names of the dead novices until the movement restrictions were lifted. For the same reason, Basso had to wait until Aelius (in charge of coordinating the emergency while he was himself quarantined) told him he was allowed to write to his sister to tell her that their mother had died. He didn't bother telling her that he'd had the plague as well. It was self-evident that he'd recovered, and she wouldn't have been interested in anything solely to do with him.

  One of the first letters he received once the blockade was lifted came in a jar of dates. It read:

  Thought you'd like to know I'm not dead; assume you're not either, but would appreciate confirmation. Heard about the artificial flood and rationale behind same; occurs to me that if plague came from backed-up sewers, as currently favoured hypothesis seems to suggest, it can't have come from ship with all crew dead off the Cape; if so, what did they all die of, and surely a bit of a coincidence. Just thought I'd mention that. Cordially, Bassano.

  That made him wince. Not the water-borne theory, then; in which case, diverting the river and flooding the City had been a complete waste of time. But enough doubt had been cast on his airborne theory to convince him that that had been wrong, too; in which case, everything he'd done had been pointless, and the City had survived in spite of his actions rather than because of them. Not that it mattered a damn, but...

  If Bassano had figured it out, nobody else had. He waited for someone to mention it, but nobody said anything. Eventually, when he told Sentio, the look of total bewilderment and despair on his Chancellor's face told him that he hadn't just been keeping quiet out of respect for the First Citizen's feelings--

  "We did all that," Sentio whispered, "and it wasn't..."

  "Apparently not, no."

  "Oh my God," Sentio said, his eyes wide open. "What if someone finds out?"

  Who, though? One rather wonderful side effect of the plague was that all his most intelligent enemies were dead. Cremutius and Saturninus had died on the first day. Moriscus, Bonosus, Faustinus and Laesianus, the Pupienus brothers; his loathsome cousin Balbinus, a thorn in his side since they were boys, with the added bonus that his wife, uncle and sons died with him, which meant Basso was his next of kin and inherited his very substantial estate, including nine hundred shares in the Shining Star Bank, which left it wide open to a hostile takeover. Olybrias had caught the plague but had recovered, though he'd lost the sight of one eye and most of his hearing, which was bound to curtail his trouble-making potential in both business and politics. The second tier of benefit was that their successors in the Optimate hierarchy were men like Pescennius, Macrianus and Numa, clowns, idiots; idiots who didn't realise they were idiots, by definition the very best sort. Until someone new managed to hack and slither his way up the ladder past these fools, the political opposition was effectively dead. Losses on his own side, by contrast, were almost indecently light, and most of them were men he'd have no trouble doing without: Leontius, who'd challenged him for the nomination; Praeclarus, who couldn't open his mouth without embarrassing the government; Gracilianus, who'd actually voted against him over the Auxentine war. If someone had given him thirty political assassinations of his choice for a birthday present, he couldn't have done better.

  He wrote to Antigonus (who'd had it but survived; shrugged it off, they told him, like it was just a cold or something--not bad for a dying man). He wrote:

  Buy land.

  Not unreasonably, Antigonus wrote back:

  What land?

  Basso replied:

  All of it.

  Which Antigonus proceeded to do. First they drew down on cousin Balbinus' personal fortune. Then they took over the Shining Star and used its entire cash reserve. Then they had to start using their own money, but it didn't matter. With so many deaths, land prices were lower than anybody could remember, at least until word started to spread about the Bank's furious buying spree. A matter of weeks after the end of the plague, land prices were back where they'd been before the outbreak, and the First Citizen was commended by the House for his swift and effective intervention, which had saved the City from potential economic ruin. A certain amount of selling (at the restored prices) restored the Bank's liquidity, leaving Basso with--

  "The good stuff," Antigonus said, looking up from the summary. "I'm impressed."

  Basso shrugged. "It was the obvious thing to do."

  "You were the one who did it."

  "I had the money."

  Antigonus, he thought, was looking better, if anything. The recent ferocious outburst of activity had done him good. The old man must have noticed him looking, because he grinned and said, "You're right. According to the doctors, the plague has actually slowed down the advance of the malignancy. Bizarre, was the word they used."

  Basso smiled. "Maybe some of my luck's starting to rub off on you."

  "Maybe." Antigonus frowned. "A few years ago, I saw a play about a man with a terminal disease. His enemies couldn't wait for it to take its course, so they hired an assassin. The man was stabbed, but he didn't die; in fact, the assassin's knife severed the tumour, which the doctors had said was inoperable, and the man mad
e a full recovery."

  "I remember that one," Basso said. "I thought it was silly."

  "Really? It made me think of you. Basso's luck, I thought."

  "What a strange thing to say."

  "You think so?" Antigonus shrugged. "I thought of you straight away. You have a knack of getting yourself into the most appalling trouble, which then turns out to your advantage. You might argue that a truly fortunate man wouldn't get into the dreadful mess in the first place; he'd live a life of blameless, uneventful rectitude and eventually die, happy and obscure. You, on the other hand, have all the luck; the good sort and the bad. If your enemies took you out into the bay and threw you in the sea, you'd come up a few minutes later with a fistful of pearls."

  "My mother died," Basso said. "Had you heard?"

  Antigonus shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "So am I," Basso replied, "but mostly because I realised I hardly felt anything when they told me. I waited for it to sink in, it has, and I still haven't really felt anything. That's appalling, don't you think?"

  "You should consider yourself lucky," Antigonus replied. "One of the worst things that happens to a man has just happened to you, and you've escaped the suffering."

  Basso nodded. "Mostly," he said, "it's a nuisance; an inconvenience. For instance, I'm trying to remember something that happened when I was a kid. I think, I'll ask Mother, and then I realise I can't; it's annoying, frustrating, it itches where I can't reach, but it's not grief. Unless I lie to myself, the most I can come up with is, it's a loss of information, like a library burning down. There's a whole chunk of my life for which I'm the only source of historical data--well, strictly speaking there's my sister as well, but in practical terms there's just me. It makes me feel, I don't know, vulnerable. What happens when I get old and forgetful? All that part of me, my childhood, will be lost, for ever. I find that intensely disturbing."

  Antigonus touched the decanter. Basso shook his head. "You're afraid," Antigonus said, "that you've lost the capacity to feel. You're worried you're becoming callous and inhuman, and you blame yourself, because of what you've done."

  "Yes," Basso said. "And?"

  "Maybe you're right," he said. "Considering what you've done, the way you conduct your life, it's not an unlikely outcome. But I believe you'll cope."

  "Thank you so much."

  Antigonus smiled. "In fact," he said, "I'm sure of it. Think. You lost part of your hearing when you were a boy. Later, when you were a young man, you lost most of the use of your left hand. But you've learned to adapt. You instinctively turn your head so as to listen with your good ear. You've acquired exceptional dexterity with your right hand, so you barely ever use your left. If you've lost the capacity to feel, I'm sure you'll adapt. Knowing you, I imagine you'll turn the loss into an advantage."

  Basso looked at him. "That's a terrible thing to say."

  "And when I'm dead, who'll be there to say terrible things to you?" Antigonus shook his head. "Which means you'll miss me, and therefore you'll remember me, and therefore I shall not wholly die, as the poets say. You know," he went on, stretching out his feet, implying cramp. "I believe you're the best investment I ever made. You didn't cost me very much when you were young, and now you're paying dividends."

  Basso laughed. "Delighted to hear I've come in useful at last. I always hoped I'd be good for something."

  But Antigonus was suddenly looking very serious. "I do worry," he said, "about what'll become of you after I'm dead. I think I'm the only person you've ever had any respect for--which, if true," he added with a faint smile, "is enormously flattering, but it makes me wish I wasn't going to die quite so soon. I believe there'll be a crisis in your life, bigger and more dangerous than anything you've run into before, and I won't be there to help. But there," he said, making one of his rare big gestures, "I'm probably wrong and almost certainly overvaluing myself. I can't actually recall a single instance where I've told you not to do something and you've listened to me, and things haven't worked out so badly in spite of that."

  Basso didn't say anything for a while. Then he changed the subject.

  A priest called to see him. Usually he didn't see priests without an appointment.

  "My sister sent you," Basso said.

  The priest nodded. He was a tall man, not much older than Basso, with a strong, intelligent face. He didn't seem at all happy about the job in hand. "Thank you for finding the time to see me," he said. "You must be very busy right now."

  "Yes," Basso replied. "Sit down. You're not allowed to drink alcohol on duty, are you?"

  "Actually, that's law-enforcement officers," the priest said, "and I believe doctors. Since, in theory, a priest is never off duty..."

  "Wine or brandy?"

  "Brandy," the priest replied immediately. "We don't get that at the monastery. It's classed as a luxury, therefore prohibited under our vow of poverty. Wine, on the other hand, is a necessity of life, even if it's a thirty-year-old vintage Faralean."

  Basso poured out two glasses. "You've got a sense of humour," he said. "I'd have thought that precluded you from being in my sister's confidence."

  "She's been quite extraordinarily generous to our foundation," the priest said.

  "Ah." Basso nodded. "With my money."

  The priest seemed to have no opinion on that. Instead, he nibbled at his brandy and smiled.

  "Do you know my nephew?" Basso asked.

  "Indeed." The priest put his glass down. "One of the most promising candidates in his year."

  Basso looked up. "One of?"

  "He has the intellect," the priest said, "and--what's the right way of putting it?--he has the necessary disposition of mind. Not many people do," he added. "And not many of them join the Order."

  "But?"

  The priest shrugged. "A large part of being a priest is wanting to be a priest. I'm not talking about faith," he added. "That's a gift from the Invincible Sun, and not everyone is blessed with it. But wanting to be a priest is something rather different."

  "And Bassano doesn't?"

  The priest paused, then said, "He tells me you suggested it to him."

  "That's right. For entirely secular reasons."

  "Perfectly good reasons," the priest said. "A man can want to be a priest and still have no more interest in religion than--well, no disrespect: than you have." Basso grinned at him. "Your nephew doesn't seem to be motivated by those reasons. Let me put it this way. He appreciates the holy offices for the quality of the words and the music--especially the music--and his attitude to the more worldly aspects of the vocation--property management, finances, that side of things--is that one should hire a good chief clerk and not get under his feet. Everybody likes him," the priest added, almost involuntarily. "Even Father Prior, who doesn't really like anybody."

  "Thank you," Basso said. "Now, what's my sister got to say?"

  The priest hesitated, drank most of his brandy, and put the glass down. "She wants to know why you haven't married anybody yet," he said. "Also, she wants you to know how angry she is that her mother's body was burned in the street in a common pyre, rather than decently buried in temple."

  Basso looked at him until he turned away. "I'll answer the second point first," he said. "My mother died of the plague. It's the law that plague victims have to be burned, as soon as possible, and in any event no later than twenty-four hours after death. It's a good law. My father passed it, as a matter of fact. I approve of it, and even if I didn't, there's nothing I could have done."

  The priest looked very sad. "I'm sure your sister would argue that since you're the First Citizen, you could have found a way..."

  "Precisely because I'm First Citizen, I had absolutely no choice in the matter." He stopped, looked down at his hands, then went on: "I'm not inclined to argue the point with you, I'm afraid. There's no earthly point in us having a debate about the issue, and I know my sister won't change her view, no matter what anybody says to her. No offence," he added.

 
"None taken." The priest dipped his head in acknowledgement. "The other matter..."

  Basso sighed. "We've just come out of a national disaster," he said. "I'd have thought I'd be allowed a little extra time, considering. For one thing, I haven't left this building since the plague struck. She's got to admit, that'd cramp anybody's style."

  "Your sister anticipated that line of argument," the priest said carefully. "She instructs me to say that you have two months from today. Otherwise..."

  "Otherwise what?"

  The priest pulled a mournful face. "She didn't confide in me," he said. "Presumably you know."

  "Yes." Basso closed his eyes for a moment. "Fine," he said. "Two months. Agreed." He looked up. "Anything else?"

  "That was all."

  "In that case, thank you. You did a perfectly wretched job very well."

  The priest smiled and stood up. "Thank you very much for the brandy," he said.

  "Take the bottle."

  "I couldn't. I..."

  "Take the bottle," Basso repeated, "and walk home slowly. So long as you don't actually take it into the Studium with you, I don't see where you'd be breaking any rules."

  "I have to report back to your sister first," the priest said. "She has strong views..."

  "Ah." Basso shrugged. "That I can well imagine. Give Bassano my regards."

  There was a Day of National Grief. It rained. Not many people could be bothered to turn out for it; most of the citizens of the Republic had other things they needed to do. Compared with earlier outbreaks of plague, the death toll had been low. Even so, the fact remained that there were fewer pairs of hands to do the work, and extra work for which time had not been allowed in the daily routine.

  Basso went straight from Temple to the House, where the finance committee were waiting for him. It was one of the Optimates' last surviving strongholds (they had a majority of two, left over from the old regime) and they were trying to make him reduce the gold content in the nomisma, from ninety-seven per cent fine to ninety-four, to cover increases in public spending without resorting to an emergency tax.