The Folding Knife

by Parker, K. J.

  "I suppose I'm honoured," Basso said, scowling at it. "The great man wants to see me. My lucky day."

  Cinio, who'd been secretly wondering about the chances of getting his copy of The Mist of Reason signed, said: "It'd be fantastic publicity. Segimerus comes all the way here just to consult the First Citizen. You could appear on the balcony together."

  Basso mouthed something under his breath. "Well," he said, "Bassano likes his stuff. All right, fit him in somewhere. And find out if he actually wants anything, apart from lunch."

  Yes, he did want something, but no, he wasn't going to tell anybody but Bassianus Severus, in person. "Typical," Basso muttered, when they told him. "An overrated hack doing his wizard impersonation. So much more important than simply running the country."

  Segimerus didn't look anything like what Basso had expected. He was quite young, maybe thirty-four or five; short-haired, clean-shaven, neatly and conventionally dressed, with rather a long nose and soft, dull grey eyes. Apparently he'd signed Cinio's book without a murmur.

  "I'd like a passport," Segimerus said, "so I can go to Mavortis. I gather that since I'm a civilian, I need a travel warrant signed by you personally."

  Basso looked at him hard. "Why on earth would you want to go there? There's a war on."

  Segimerus nodded. "That's why," he said. "War is the single most significant human activity, and I've never actually seen one. So writing about war would be like writing a guidebook to somewhere you've never been."

  "Which is what most guidebook writers do," Basso said. "But I take your point. On the other hand..."

  Segimerus smiled. "I know," he said. "You can't guarantee my safety, it'd be a distraction and you'd have to tie up personnel who have more than enough work already."

  "Yes."

  "Then it's quite simple," Segimerus said. "I'll go entirely at my own risk, and you don't have to provide me with a bodyguard. I can pay my own way, and I'm happy to sleep on a blanket on the ground."

  "Not quite as simple as that," Basso replied. "First, it's all very well saying you don't want guards, but if anything happens to you while you're there, I'll get lynched. Second, the only ships going there are Vesani naval vessels, and I know you'll happily sleep in a lifeboat, but I can't let you, or I'll look a fool. Paying your own way is meaningless--Mavortis doesn't have a functioning economy, so there's nobody you could buy anything from. Sorry, but you go as an honoured guest of the Republic or not at all, and the latter would be so much more convenient for us."

  Segimerus nodded slowly. "I do understand," he said. "It's an awful lot to ask, I know, and you're a very busy man. But I do believe it's important that I go there. I think I can be of use."

  "Really," Basso said. "What as?"

  "I imagine you might need interpreters," Segimerus replied.

  "You know Mavortine?"

  "Not yet. But I should be able to learn it in a fortnight; that's how long it generally takes me. Probably less in this case, since Mavortine is part of the Pelasgian group of languages, and I already know Blemmyate and Hus."

  Basso frowned. "You know Blemmyate?"

  "I should do. I was born there. Of course," Segimerus went on, "my degree, from the University of Gopessus, was in civil engineering, and I did work for five years on bridge-building projects in Auxentia. I'm sure you have translators, but how many of them can explain to a Mavortine work gang how to build a bridge?"

  Basso nodded slowly. "You call yourself a philosopher," he said.

  "Actually, I prefer to think of myself as a scientist," Segimerus said. "But the difference is largely semantic."

  "Indeed." Basso picked up his inkwell and moved it from one side of the desk to the other. "And you want to go to Mavortis to study the war, and you're prepared to get your hands dirty working for us, if that's what it takes."

  "That's right."

  "How about observer effect?" Basso said. "As a scientist..."

  Segimerus smiled at him--the happy beam of someone meeting a compatriot in a strange land. "Precisely," he said. "I've been worrying about that myself. If I participate, how can I be an impartial observer? You've read Choniates, I take it."

  Basso shook his head. "Just a summary," he replied. "In Mist of Reason. I guess I should've gone back to the original source, but I couldn't be bothered, so I thought I'd take your word for it."

  Segimerus nodded eagerly. "That's why I want to go," he said. "To test the effect on myself, if you like. I think it's important, and nobody's ever done it before. It could have implications for the very foundation of scientific method."

  Basso was grinning. "So that's the reason," he said.

  "Yes."

  "One of the reasons." Basso laughed. "To be perfectly honest with you," he said, "I don't like your books and I don't accept your conclusions. But my nephew thinks highly of you, and he's the brains in our family." He made a show of thinking about it, then said: "Come back in ten days and explain to my wife in Mavortine how you'd go about building a breakwater in Bilemvasia Sound. If she says you can go, you can have your travel warrant. Fair enough?"

  Segimerus looked delighted. "Thank you," he said. "I'm extremely grateful." He stood up to leave. Basso let him get as far as the door, then said, "You're really from Blemmya?"

  "Yes."

  "What's it like?"

  "Horrible," Segimerus said. "That's why I left."

  "Where have you been, the last three years?"

  "In prison," Segimerus replied. "I was arrested for propagating Dobunnius' theory of rotation of the stars in Scleria. I spent eighteen months breaking rocks in a quarry. Fascinating experience, and a unique chance to study stratification in rock formations."

  Basso nodded. "A stroke of luck, then, really."

  "Quite so. Thank you again, First Citizen."

  An ambassador arrived from his divine majesty the Emperor Timoleon, equal of the prophets, viceroy of Heaven. He was five feet tall, with a completely hairless head, a square-cut white beard and skin the colour of rust; all his clothes were purple, with gold-wire embroidery at the cuffs and hems, and everywhere he went he carried a hooded peregrine falcon (whether it was always the same bird or whether he had several of them, nobody liked to ask). He was the first Easterner to appear in the City for seventy years, and the first Imperial diplomat to make an official visit since the Republic broke away from the Empire over two centuries ago. He brought with him a number of gifts, lavish and rather bewildering: an elephant, two white bears, a dozen parakeets ("Thoughtful of him to bring lunch," Basso observed); a life-size clockwork silver-gilt dancing girl; a musical instrument the size of a small shed--you poured fifty gallons of water down a funnel at the top, and it made a sound like trumpets; a gold tiara encrusted with rubies; a mechanical chamber pot with a cistern that flushed its contents away down a pipe when you pushed down on a lever; fifty square yards of tapestries with mildly pornographic designs; a box of brown tubers, a bit like rusty apples, allegedly edible; a rather inferior horn-and-sinew bow and a huge jar of pickled seaweed. The ambassador (he refused to give his name; since he was merely his emperor's spokesman, he didn't need one) was attended by fifty eunuchs, a hundred men-at-arms and twenty-five choristers, who sang his official statements in plainsong.

  "I have no idea," Sentio said wretchedly. "There just isn't a building in this town big enough."

  Basso rubbed his forehead. "Well," he said, "we can park the secretarial staff in the Goldsmiths' Hall, maybe. And the soldiers'll just have to rough it in barracks."

  Furio, the home affairs secretary, cleared his throat. "With respect," he said, "the lowest-ranking bodyguard is a Domestic of the Bedchamber, which is sort of like an earl. He's got estates bigger than the Cazar Peninsula. Asking them to sleep in wooden huts would basically be a declaration of war."

  Basso sighed. "What about the choir?"

  "Noble families," Furio confirmed. "Knights of Equity or Counts of the Stable. The eunuchs aren't aristocracy as such, but the ambassador won't let them o
ut of his sight." He was keeping a straight face, but his hands were twitching. "There is one building."

  Basso scowled at him. "First, it's too small," he said. "Second, what am I supposed to do? Go and stay with my sister for a month?"

  "I wasn't thinking of here," Furio said. "What I had in mind was the House."

  Basso stared at him; the rest of the cabinet managed to convey, without words, that they had no idea who this strange man was. "You want me to tell the representatives of the Vesani people that we're going to have to meet in some barn somewhere so the Emperor's errand boy's elephant-handlers can doss down in the House. I don't think so."

  "I think it's a deliberate ploy to embarrass us," Cinio said. "They must know--"

  "Oh, I doubt it," Basso said. "To impress us, maybe, but I don't suppose they're that well informed. Everything the Empire knows about us will be at least two hundred years out of date." He thought for a moment, then said, "Where are they now?"

  Frontino, the cabinet secretary, said, "In a sort of tented city, out back of the Westgate."

  Basso narrowed his eyes. "You mean they're camping out on the racetrack."

  Frontino nodded. "It's the only open space big enough."

  "Fine," Basso said. "They can stay there, and let's hope it doesn't rain. By the way," he added, "is there any particular reason why all this came as a sudden shock? We've known they were coming for a week."

  "They didn't see fit to mention their accommodation requirements," Furio mumbled. "We assumed..."

  "Yes," Basso said. "Anyway, that's what we'll do. Make up some story." He scowled at the desk, then said, "We consulted the auguries, and it would be inauspicious for them to enter the City at this time. They think we're barbarians, so they'll believe it if we imply we're hopelessly superstitious."

  Furio nodded gratefully. Sentio said: "If they can't come inside the City..."

  "Hire all the posh tents you can find," Basso said. "We'll have our own tented city right next to theirs. Call them pavilions, it sounds better. Suggest that it's a quaint throwback to our nomadic past."

  "We haven't got a nomadic--"

  "They won't know that. Right," Basso went on, "what else did you get out of their protocol officer?"

  "Food," Furio said. "They're extremely fussy about what they eat."

  "You amaze me. Go on."

  "Basically," Furio said, "it's lightly steamed white fish, lentils, carrots, bread and green tea."

  "And?"

  "That's it." Furio shrugged. "Apparently, the higher up the social scale you go, the plainer and more miserable the food you eat. The Emperor lives on coarse wheat bread, unpeeled fruit and water."

  "Water."

  Furio nodded. "Water brought a thousand miles from one spring in the foothills of the Carausius Mountains, yes. Anything else you want to know, or is that it?"

  There was a lot more. Later, when he repeated as much of it as he could remember to Melsuntha (in her official capacity as director of protocol)--

  "What are they doing here?" she interrupted.

  Basso grinned, and twitched the covers his way. "It's a threat," he said. "Which is very encouraging."

  She snatched the sheet back before he could stop her. "Why?"

  "It's because of Voroe," he said. "We stole their island. But, instead of sending an army, they've sent an ambassador, an elephant and a bunch of expensive toys. Diplomacy's always been the Empire's last resort. They'd far rather launch a massive pre-emptive attack, burn our fleet in the dock and burn down the City. If they haven't, it strongly suggests they can't. Not at the moment, anyway."

  She nodded gravely. "You believe they intend to attack," she said.

  "Goes without saying," Basso replied. "As far as they're concerned, we're rebels. Everything they've lost over the last three hundred years they fully intend to get back, just as soon as they've sorted out their internal problems. That's why..." He shrugged. "You've heard all that. The good thing about this performance is the scale of it. The full works, laying it on a foot thick. I've been reading ancient history. Full-scale Imperial embassies tended to get written up in detail, because they were so impressive and quaint, and the model hasn't changed much in five hundred years. This is practically the full presentation. And, judging by the precedents, it's what they do when they know they won't be in a position to make war for quite some time. In which case, overawe them, put them in their place, make them realise the Empire's infinitely bigger and stronger. Actually, it's the best vote of confidence we could possibly ask for."

  "I understand," she said. "What do you intend to do?"

  Basso smiled. "Show them what they expect to see," he replied. "As far as they're concerned, we're semi-barbarian upstarts with a thin wash of civilisation. We need to be gauche, nouveau and deeply impressed. They'll want evidence that we've seriously underestimated them and overestimated ourselves."

  "Such as?"

  Basso moulded the pillow with the back of his head. "I was thinking, a guided tour of the shipyards. Not the Severus yard, of course, the government yard. They'll already have counted the number of ships in the docks, so they'll know we're serious about sea power. Ah yes, they'll be able to say when they get home, they may have a lot of ships now, but their construction facilities are rubbish. Orthodox Imperial doctrine is that thirty per cent of naval shipping gets sunk or put out of action in the first six weeks of a war."

  "That's not--"

  "No," Basso said. "But presumably it was true five hundred years ago, and they haven't got around to updating the textbooks. While we're at it, we'll let them see some trials at the artillery ground. We'll dig out some old Type Nines and pretend they're the cutting edge."

  She frowned. "If they think we're less powerful than we are, won't that make them more likely to attack?"

  Basso lifted his head off the pillow and shook it. "The reason they're taking an interest in us now is because of the war," he said. "There's a lot of other ground they've got to take back before they get round to us; under normal circumstances, we'd just have to be patient and wait our turn. But they know about the war, they've seen that we're aggressive and full of ourselves, and they need to know if we're likely to grow into a serious threat before they get to us. If so, they'll reschedule and deal with us now. I need to reassure them that we're nothing to worry about."

  "I see." She thought for a moment, then said, "Will they have observers watching the war?"

  "Of course," Basso said. "I gave a passport to one of them just the other day. They'll be getting first-class intelligence, probably quicker than I am."

  She looked startled. "Segimerus the philosopher? He's a..."

  Basso grinned at her. "You hadn't figured that out for yourself?"

  "Why do you think he's an Imperial agent?"

  Basso pulled his share of sheet up under his chin. "He said he's a Blemmyan. He's not. Blemmya's a good place to say you came from if you don't want to be traced. But he was born in the Empire, and Segimerus isn't his real name. He did go to Gopessus. They have excellent records there, and I've got friends in the faculty, remember. While he was pretending to learn Mavortine--"

  "He does know Mavortine. He's very fluent."

  "Sure," Basso said. "I expect he learnt it before he came here. He certainly didn't learn it while he was here, because I had him watched, and he didn't go anywhere near a teacher or buy a Mavortine grammar."

  "He could have brought a book with him."

  "Could have," Basso said; "didn't. I had his luggage searched. So, if a man lies to you, what's his reason?"

  "And you let him go."

  "Of course," Basso replied. "First, he's a top-grade investigator, must be or the Empire wouldn't have assigned him. So he'll write really good, accurate, independent reports, which I shall no doubt find useful and informative. Second, he can be fed war news, and news from here, that may not be entirely true. Once you know a man's a spy, he's much more use to you than his employer."

  "But he's a genius," Melsunt
ha said. "Bassano thinks so."

  "Quite probably he is," Basso replied. "No reason he can't be a great philosopher and a spy at the same time. Oh, and he said he was in prison in Scleria."

  "He wasn't, then."

  "Oh, he was. But not for disseminating heresy. The Empire got him released in a prisoner exchange." He smiled. "One of my spies told me that. Of course, I employ professionals, not talented dilettantes."

  The ambassador stayed for a week. On the last day of his visit, he summoned the world-famous philosopher Segimerus for an audience. He was disappointed--Segimerus was laid low by a particularly vicious bout of food poisoning, and had to decline. On the day that the ambassador set sail, a messenger arrived at the philosopher's lodgings bearing a token of Imperial esteem: a pair of jewelled slippers and a jar of cucumbers preserved in honey.

  The letter was sewn into the slippers, between the sole and the upper. From his extensive knowledge of the Vesani, the ambassador asked, could Segimerus confirm or contradict the following assertions and implications, made by the Vesani during the ambassador's stay: that the Vesani were descended from a tribe of nomadic horsemen; that they were a superstitious people, much influenced by astrology, augury and similar practices; that they tolerated gross inefficiency in their state-run factories; that the state had a monopoly of the manufacture of weapons and military hardware, including warships; that the First Citizen was deaf in one ear; that the attack on Voroe was the result of the Vesani's inability to control their Hus allies?

  Basso had the slippers carefully repaired, and delivered to Segimerus. Then he had the City's most celebrated forger paroled from jail, showed him examples of Segimerus' handwriting, and had him write "All perfectly true" on the flyleaf of a copy of The Mist of Reason, which he sent by commercial courier to await the ambassador's ship's arrival at Glycis, its next scheduled call.

  Fourteen

  From Bassano--

  ... After the battle, when they promised me it was safe, I rode out to have a look. I have no idea why. Guess I felt I ought to, for some reason.