His assignment in the lounge of the Consortium’s building was also reaching its natural conclusion. Book had produced what had been asked of him; that is, to distil from the six letters those passages that truly described the events of that fortnight in the Colony. The six courtiers described the events so differently from each other that it was impossible for those studying the letters to decide which account was closer to the truth. The face-to-face interrogation – and also the cross-examination which was conducted in Paris – confused things even more because the oral testimony proved to be more contradictory and fanciful than the letters themselves. Book had not been given the opportunity of talking with the six courtiers, but he held their written accounts, which sufficed for him to draw reliable conclusions.
He explained to the bald man that the truth was fragmented among the six letters, for although none of them represented the whole truth, not one of them was a complete fabrication either. Before Book they had spent hours getting nowhere by analysis, synthesis and cross-referencing but he had applied his own method, listening to the letters. His ultra-sensitive ear easily picked up pretence, exaggeration, fantasy, vindictiveness, obsession and despair, which he could then filter out to clear the texts. What remained started off as piecemeal as a mosaic, but it contained bits of the truth that could be synthesised into a remarkably continuous and uniform whole.
He spread the relevant sheets on the table and demonstrated how the six courtiers had gone from fear to desperation and, from there, to mental confusion and murder, following a path that the Seventy-Five had laid out for them. They hadn’t deviated from their prescribed path nor had they resisted; in fact they had hardly ever even questioned it. The innumerable objections that they’d raised throughout the fortnight were but bridges, rationalisations if you prefer, that they themselves had constructed to guide them back to the path whenever they might stray from it.
After Friday the 21st of August, when they’d found Governor Bera dead, they were faced by the first irrationality since the regulations do not allow for such an event and ignore the problem of succession. Gradually confusion and fear grew in them until independent, constructive thought was crowded out of their brains by the clever manipulations of the second Governor Bera. He, in turn, was comfortably manoeuvering on pre-prepared terrain. As can be imagined, neither his appearance nor his behaviour nor his commands would have achieved the recorded results if the Seventy-Five’s masterminds hadn’t spent the past twenty years paving the way. All the mythical elements, including the anticipation of the destruction of Sodom, were firmly entrenched in their minds and were simply, but cleverly, activated. The colonists, despite their apparent reactions, weren’t really taken by surprise because events were in keeping with what they’d been led to expect. They were overawed, not surprised.
There were some elements of the case that seemed metaphysical, like the “pirate’s” dive from the railing in front of an amazed Lieutenant Richmond and the Black Ship that ploughed through semi-solid sea. Here Book declared incompetence, since only the Seventy-Five knew whether they’d cleverly stage-managed these events or whether they were a product of the witnesses’ disturbed fantasy. He could attest, however, that the witnesses experienced everything as reality and didn’t in the least doubt the veracity of what they saw, smelt, heard and touched, particularly in the case of the Black Ship. Taking into consideration that Lieutenant Richmond, who was the first to herald the arrival of the Angel of Retribution, shouldn’t have been a member of the Green Box’s procession, Book could again discern the machinations of the Seventy-Five. Was it a chance virus that had laid low all the ship’s officers and forced Cortez to replace the First Mate with the unbalanced Richmond, thus bringing the latter into contact with the courtiers? The fog and the ensuing curfew which condemned the Lieutenant and the Judge to spend the evening discussing in a wine cellar – was that pure chance as well? Could the Seventy-Five control the weather? It wouldn’t take much for Book to believe even that.
If the Consortium had conducted this staged crime as a test of the colonists’ reflexes, then the results must be more than gratifying. The six courtiers went through their paces like robots. They submitted to the young Governor, no matter how outrageous he appeared and no matter how outrageous his directives were. To be exact, the more extreme he became, the more certain the six were that he’d been sent by the Seventy-Five. The moment the young Governor deviated from his expected pattern, he was immediately declared a fraud and was executed in the belief that the Seventy-Five would have demanded it of them. Then they’d carved up the body and burnt it in the kitchen ovens to avoid contaminating the salt just as the regulations prescribe – thus displaying obedience even after the murder. They then realised that they’d re-enacted what they’d done a fortnight before to the first Bera’s body. The pattern was repeating itself. They had every reason, therefore, to suspect that the next Governor Bera would appear at any moment. Afterwards, they’d gathered, naked again, wrapped in strips of curtains and pot lids, pretending to try to break into the Green Box so that the newcomer would find them in the same position his predecessor had. Twenty-four hours passed without anyone showing up. They became worried. They couldn’t fathom why things weren’t evolving as expected. Had they done something wrong or interpreted their orders incorrectly? They’d then panicked. They’d split into separate rooms and written the letters, which, although they resembled reports or confessions, were in reality protests about the Seventy-Five not keeping to the pattern, when they themselves had performed their part so perfectly. The interesting point in the case was that they’d cut the keychain from around their victim’s neck and put it into the folder, along with the six letters, without thinking that they could’ve used the key to look through the Box. The scenario that they were following demanded that they would try to break into the Box without success. Your administrative model has triumphed at all levels.
Deep in thought, the bald man studied the pages that Phileas Book had spread on the table.
“So, in your opinion, Mr Book, is this the correct order of events?”
“Yes, this is the true order of events. As I’ve told you, the truth is spread throughout the six letters and only if you read the excerpts in the order I’ve indicated will you get a true picture. I’m afraid that I’ve had to exclude most of the pages of Priest Montenegro’s letter because they get lost in the same visions and nightmares that haunt him again and again. I’ve found, however, occasional islands of honesty and clarity in this sea of madness and I’ve used these.”
“And what about the Epistleword?”
“The crossword, like every one of my Epistlewords, doesn’t refer to the facts but to an attitude towards them. Here my work was quite a bit more difficult.”
He placed his notebook upright on the table so that the man could have a clear view of the square crossword. Book showed the man the horizontal and vertical lines, explaining to him that those were separated chronologically, as the former corresponded to initial thoughts and the latter their further development. The letter-writers were writing to their employers, whom they considered, not unjustly, responsible for the hellish fortnight, and they basically were telling them what was on the first line:
We hate you for testing us.
Book rotated his notebook by ninety degrees and the first vertical line read:
We admire you for doing it so successfully.
Book explained that this crossword lacked depth but that he could do nothing about it.With only six letters the diagram was two-dimensional, and that applied to its importance and its interpretation, too.
The man could not conceal his annoyance.
“Two measly cut and dried sentences, is that all? Isn’t that disappointing for the hours you’ve spent studying, Mr Book? Are you certain that the authors have nothing else they wish to convey in these hundreds of pages?”
Book nodded in agreement. No matter how hard he’d looked and no matter with how much concentration he’d �
��listened” to the authors, he hadn’t found anything more than these two straightforward sentences. He hadn’t found traces of remorse nor even uneasiness since they’d had no intention of changing anything in their lives. Just hatred mixed up with admiration. We hate you for testing us. We admire you for doing it so successfully. Since they believed that the Consortium had sent the “pirate” to ascertain whether the Star Bearers and the Private Secretary would commit murder to protect its interests, the six were satisfied with themselves.
“They blindly obeyed him as long as they thought that he was the Governor and they killed him the moment they realised that he wasn’t. In both instances their reflexes were perfect and they acted promptly without second thoughts. The experiment, as you can see, was a complete success,” said Book.
The man rubbed his forehead in consternation but he didn’t respond.
Book carried on, putting emphasis on his words. “Of course I’ve no idea if the execution of your experimental Governor and the burning of the Colony was part of the plan or if the plan went to hell but your subjects reacted just as you’d trained them to.”
The man remained silent.
“I see that you are dissatisfied,” observed Book.
The man admitted that he had hoped to get richer information from such a charismatic interpreter of letters. Book indicated that he understood the problem. He said that the paper had been thinking of terminating his employment for some time now, but that he was sure that the Seventy-Five would expedite the matter so that upon leaving this building he’d be totally at their mercy. They shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble since he was already at their mercy from the moment he had betrayed his Epistleword for their thirty pieces of silver. He would resign from the paper because, after this disgrace, he couldn’t presume to design another meandros. Grudgingly he conceded that the Seventy-Five were particularly generous to those they destroy, so, in gratitude, he’d taken the initiative to go one step further to expand the drab square crossword and he’d contrived a diagonal which represented the gist of the hypothetical answer of the Seventy-Five. In other words, what the letter to the six colonists would have said, if the Consortium had deigned to compose it. He turned over the page of the notebook and showed the answer:
We have no idea what you are talking about.
Book leant back in his chair and revelled in the man’s surprise. He had rarely enjoyed anything so much in his life. He contemplated the thought that the Seventy-Five had probably registered a similar horror when they’d read the six letters since nothing that they contained was remotely part of any plan, scheme or decision of theirs.
To be precise, from the letters they must have learnt in horror of Governor Bera’s death on the 21st of August, that his place had been taken by some unknown in a pirate’s costume and that the Colony had been set afire. News takes three weeks to reach Paris, so even time had been against them. They’d immediately sent a team of inspectors with a contingent of armed guards but the expedition had taken another three weeks to reach the Dead Sea and so, when it finally disembarked in the Colony, it had been met by rebellious colonists and ashes. It was an unprecedented fiasco. Book could only imagine the panic that had gripped the higher echelons of the Consortium and the resulting mayhem. A large proportion of top management must have been fired, the team of advisors fined, all high-ranking employees raked over the coals and the Seventy-Five rendered deeply suspicious of each other (if indeed there are seventy-five of them).
The matter of the identity of the pirate who appeared out of the blue only compounded the mystery. His body was never found as the conscientious courtiers had burnt it to protect the salt. The ashes from the oven were sent for analysis, the Palace was searched inch by inch by forensic experts and the seven people who had seen him were hauled to Paris for interrogation – eight including Lieutenant Richmond. Within fifteen days the mysterious imposter had managed to dismantle the construct of the Seventy-Five and reduce it almost entirely to cinders, to destroy most of the saltworks and to be responsible for the resignation of thousands of enraged colonists, while those who had accepted to stay demanded a renegotiation of their terms of employment.
One thing that shone through the murky confusion of reality and fantasy was that one-third of the daily production of salt was stolen in the manner described by the six courtiers in their letters. The inspectors immediately visited the sandy plateau in the desert where the bags had been stacked by Drake’s conscientious caravans and, of course, found it empty. An elementary study of world consumption would immediately lead on to the conclusion that the salt had found its way to the Suez Mamelukes’ black markets, but even a detailed one couldn’t penetrate the labyrinth of illegal trade links and identify the first one.
In Book’s opinion, what had fundamentally disturbed the Seventy-Five was that the perpetrator had been no mere fraudster good at conning people and forging signatures. The “pirate” arrived at the scene inexplicably well informed about everyone and everything. He was even cognisant of the highly confidential files of the six courtiers when that information is kept under lock and key in Paris. He was also fully aware of the administrative system of the Colony, was an expert on the Palace, the desert and on the salt production process – in short, so many areas of expertise that they didn’t know where to turn their suspicions. Who’d informed, trained and guided this youth so superbly?
“Governor Bera, of course,” Book offered.
He hadn’t needed to read more than a few pages of the letters to realise that Governor Bera was malevolently taking revenge on his employers. It hadn’t even been necessary to reach the part where the “pirate”, quite rightly, introduces himself as Bera, to send the message of the late Governor to the Seventy-Five. Book had guessed it when he’d read that the six were standing shocked at the sight of his smiling corpse, at a loss about what to do since the Governor had chosen not to inform the six about their secret responsibilities. It was obvious that the Star Bearers had to follow certain guidelines when the Governor was unable to perform his duties (that was the whole point of the Purple Star and why the Governor’s wife was included), but it was equally obvious that they were unaware of that because this specific Governor took advantage of the fact that he was the sole link between the Colony and the Consortium’s headquarters and he had improvised. Their dulled minds received his death as an inexplicable inconsistency of the regulations which snowballed, opening the door for the “pirate”, the alter ego of the deceased, the avenging corsair Bera, who robbed the Consortium and burnt Sodom. The unwritten, clandestine and totalitarian forms of government unfortunately share a serious drawback: they allow an individual to become all-powerful. At the same time the rest of society is emasculated because the totally subjugated citizen can have no judgment and in the final analysis that proves dangerous. The reason that Governor Bera might have had to hate his employers and creators with enough passion to take his vengeance on them in such a symbolic fashion was probably something the Seventy-Five should seek in their perfect administrative system, but Book couldn’t help them there. The colonists, on the other hand, when weakened by systematic psychological pressures, become terrified rather than able to think constructively, so the system works only for as long as events follow the pattern. If and whenever something arbitrary or contradictory occurs, the system collapses like a house of cards because blind obedience cannot cope with the paradoxical.
“You amaze me, Mr Book. Can you explain how you’ve reached these outrageous conclusions?”
“Letters keep no secrets from Phileas Book, sir, and the creation reproduces all the characteristics of the creator. The six courtiers, products of the Seventy-Five, composed the most transparent letters that I’ve ever read. Through their personalities I’ve become acquainted with the personalities of their creators. The perfect administrative system has been laid bare before my eyes, and I seriously suggest that you re-examine it because it’s inexcusably disaster-prone.”
The bald man s
lowly gathered the piles of pages from the table and gave Book a sideways glance. “We underestimated you, Mr Book.”
“Anything but, I’m afraid.You had me pegged just as I am, a coward who would not dare defy you. You weren’t wrong, even my shadow refuses to grow and stubbornly remains stuck at one metre forty-eight centimetres to dispel any doubts about my small stature. You can rest assured about my confidentiality but the fiasco is far too large to be covered up. The colonists consider you to be the orchestrators of this dangerous experiment and some might even admire you for it. But what would they think if they were to learn that you were hoodwinked by the Governor that you’d trained, that your perfect system was full of holes and that the Colony was defenceless against any imposter? What will world markets have to say? Will international justice press charges? Here you are, interrogating even me only because my name is mentioned in the letters, which means that you have no idea where to begin looking for suspects!”
“You are very far from the truth, Mr Book,” the man interrupted him with annoyance.
“The tarnished image of the Seventy-Five is so evident in these letters that I am truly at a loss as to why you bother to defend it. Accepted, there must be many things that I’m unaware of, that I can’t even suspect; there are parameters that escape me, details I can’t imagine; but I’m certain that I can’t be as far from the truth as you say. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t have been talking to me. To go so far as to solicit the help of humble Phileas Book, you must be nearing the pits of desperation.”
What Lot's Wife Saw Page 38
