Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  Astyages was already up and working when I got there. He likes to do his fancy penmanship in the early morning, when the light comes in through his window just so. He was hard at work on a W when I got there. Amazing what you can do with a simple everyday consonant if you’ve got the skill and imagination. He’d turned it into an amazing double-crested wave, with a little ship bobbing desperately on the middle peak. If you wanted to, you could see that as transmuting base material into gold, though if you ask me, it’s pushing it.

  “Green,” I said. “Since when is the sea green?”

  He gave me a filthy look. “For three bits,” he said, “the sea’s green.”

  I grinned at him. Blue is, after all, impossible. Can’t be done. To get blue, you have to go all the way to Ges Eschatoi, buy a thumb-sized slab of lapis lazuli for the price of a good farm, trudge all the way back here, over the mountains and across the desert, grind it up in a pestle and mortar and add spirits of earth and gum. People I know in the painting trade reckon blue is proof positive of Nature’s nasty sense of humour. Blue sky, blue sea, and who the hell can afford to pay for realism? And even if you’ve got a ridiculously wealthy customer who’s prepared to fork out for the best, it’s still only background.

  “Letter for you,” he said.

  I was stunned. “Already?”

  “Royal courier,” Astyages replied, pretending to concentrate on his W. “About an hour ago. It’s on the table, there, next to the glue-pot.”

  Phocas to Saloninus, greetings.

  It’s all right. It was an accident. Well of course it was. I’ve known you for what, ten years? I know you wouldn’t murder my sister.

  And you know me. It’s all right. Really.

  We can sort it all out, I promise; but not if the Watch catches you. You know how things are with me and the Prefect’s office. Pescennius would just love to put you on trial, to get at me. Don’t overestimate what I can do. There will eventually come a point where I can’t protect you any more.

  The best thing would be if you stay put at Sty’s place and have him write me you’re there. I’ll send scuttlehats to bring you out nice and quiet.

  What the hell were you thinking about, running away like that? For crying out loud, Nino.

  “Plain paper,” I said. “His own hand.” Astyages was doing his letter, really concentrating on gold-leafing a loopy-scrolly bit. I folded the letter and put it inside my jacket, safe. Used just right, that letter could be a neat weapon. I picked up a sheet of blank paper from the table. “Do you mind?” I said.

  He looked up. “What?”

  “Better get rid of this,” I said, holding up the sheet.

  “What? Oh, yes, good idea.” He bent his head over the page in front of him. One smudge or ink-blob and he could screw up two days’ work. I went over to the fireplace, made a show of screwing up the paper into a ball and throwing it into the fire. Phocas had always had a genius for details; he’d make sure his men asked; what did he do with the letter once he’d read it?

  “What did it say?” Astyages asked.

  “Come home, all is forgiven.” I sat down on the edge of the table. He scowled at me, and I stood up again. “What do you think?” I asked.

  He took time off to consider his reply. “I honestly couldn’t say,” he said. “Give him his due, he’s a fair-minded man. If he believes it was an accident, he’s capable of forgiving you. Also, I don’t think they ever got on, not even as kids. Especially as kids. And there’s always politics, which I know absolutely nothing about. Could be you’ve done him a favour, for all I know.”

  “Or he could be trying to lure me back so he can have me slowly tortured to death.”

  “That’s possible, yes.” Helpful as ever. “So,” he said, pausing to tweak the hairs of his brush into a sharp point, “what’re you going to do?”

  It’d depend on whom you asked. Ask, say, the Dean of Philosophy at Elpis, and he’d say my crowning achievement was the Dialogues, in which I expound the theory of correlative forms. Ask the master of the Temple, he’d say the Essay on Ethical Theory. Ask the president of the Mystery, he’d tell you it was vis mercuriae, or possibly combining mel fortis with strong acids on a block of ice to make ichor tonans. The chairman of the Literary Association would go for Aspis, though I’d be inclined to doubt he’s ever managed to read all forty-seven cantos; privately he’d tell you he much prefers the sonnets, or Fulvia and Luso. Down at the patents registry, they wouldn’t have to think about it; the Vesani wheel, for forming curves in sheet metal, and if only I’d held on to the patent, instead of selling it for the price of a good pair of boots, I’d have been a rich man at twenty and none of this would ever have happened. If it was the chief of the watch, he’d have no hesitation in going for the Lystra Bank job; I believe it’s still required reading for fast-trackers in the Criminal Investigations division. Ask me what the best thing I’ve ever done is, I’d have to reply; I don’t know, I haven’t done it yet.

  Ask me what I’m proudest of; no problem. None of it.

  Well, hell. There’s a fundamental flaw in the logic of the Dialogues that nobody’s figured out yet, but they will, one day, and then my reputation will be landfill. Ichor tonans was, admittedly, a stroke of genius, but what’s it good for? Blowing things up. I believe they’re allowed to use it in the mines, and for blasting roads through the mountains, but even so. You can’t really glory in the invention of something when getting caught with a thimbleful of it carries the death penalty. Aspis I wrote for money, and they still owe me most of it; Fulvia is derivative, and I didn’t write the sonnets for publication. A lot of bastards got rich from the Vesani wheel, but I didn’t. I take no pride whatsoever in my criminal past. I was moderately pleased with The Madonna with Open Hands (her head is actually too big for her body, but nobody’s ever commented) but that was confiscated when I was arrested the first time, and some toad bought it cheap off the bailiffs, and it hasn’t been seen since.

  Saloninus to Phocas, greetings.

  All right, then, and thanks. But not in daylight. You think you’re scared of the Watch catching me. Try being me.

  Send scuttlehats, in a closed carriage, one hour after sunset. I’ll be here.

  Thanks again. You’re a true friend.

  I left Astyages’ place as soon as he’d sent the letter. I was nervous, but buzzing with energy. Getting the scuttlehats off my back for a while was the nudge I needed to snap me out of my horror-induced lethargy and get me moving again. I still didn’t know how I was going to get out of town, but I knew from experience that when I’m fizzing, I come up with stuff that never ceases to amaze me. Meanwhile, until inspiration struck, I could usefully fill up the time with various necessary chores.

  First, I needed premises. Nothing grand; just an enclosed private space with a hearth and a chimney, at least one window, affordable, discreet landlord. With uncharacteristic foresight, I’d investigated a few possibilities a few weeks earlier. The first was already let, but the man who owned the next on my list (disused storage out back of a tannery; perfect) duly took the two angels Astyages had given me as three months’ rent in advance, handed me the key and forgot he’d ever met me (I got the impression he’d had plenty of practice).

  Next, I needed materials and equipment. With the three angels I’d stolen from the wooden pot on Astyages’ desk (you remember, I sat down on it when he was trying to keep a steady hand) I was able to buy basic glassware and most of what I’d need in the way of ingredients. That was a risk, needless to say. Even in Paraprosdocia, there are only half a dozen places selling that sort of thing, and I’d been expecting all of them to be watched. In fact, I’d tried my level best to think of how I’d get in and buy what I needed without being immediately arrested and my mind just went blank, so I pulled the risk out of my head like someone drawing a bad tooth, and went anyway. I was terrified all the time I was there, and the storekeeper must’ve picked up on that. He gave me a very odd look when he thought I wasn’t looking, but t
hat didn’t stop him from taking two of Astyages’ hard-earned angels. He packed the stuff up for me in a wooden box, stuffed with straw and with a bit of straw rope for a handle. Too heavy and fragile to run with, so I walked as fast as I could back to the tannery. Didn’t see anyone following me.

  One angel and five bits left. I spent four bits on bread and cheese (which is all you need; all other forms of food are self-indulgence). Through the obscure alchemy of trade, the angel transformed into a few basic pieces of hardware, including a short-handled axe, about the only thing even vaguely resembling a useful weapon that a man can legally buy in this benighted town. Transmuting gold into base metal. Ha.

  I was left with four bits. Armed with four bits, a man can go to the central beef warehouse, where they make up the durable provisions for the military, and buy himself a two-foot cube of government surplus ice. By the time I got it back to the tannery, my hands were past aching and into the numb stage.

  You need a calm head and a steady hand to make ichor tonans safely. Once I’d thawed out my frozen fingers over the fire, I found I was shaking like a leaf, and my mind was full of guilt, terror, apprehension and doubt. On the other hand, ice melts, and I didn’t have any money left to buy more. It’s a miracle I managed to get the job done without setting off a blast that’d have meant they had to redraw all the maps.

  It’s a lie, propagated and spread by me, that the slightest little jar will set the stuff off. It needs a good, sharp bump. There’s been times when I’ve walked around for days at a time with a little bottle of the stuff in my coat pocket, though I confess, I died inside every time I got jostled in the street. I left it on the windowsill, went out again, went and sat in that little park just south of the artillery platform, where nobody ever goes. I sat on a low wall and thought about—

  In your mind, picture me mixing the blue distillate with the green reagent. I gave it a little stir, for luck, with a glass rod, and put it on one side. It was fizzing, which I hadn’t been expecting. I weighed out two scruples of vis zephyris, two of sal petris, one of ossa terrae, loaded the mix in an alembic over a low heat. I felt like my mother, fixing dinner out of leftovers. The blue-and-green mix was still frothing, and I thought; I know what’ll sort that out. So I put in two drachms of sal draconis, figuring that the vis alba in the sal would precipitate the fors levis in the blue, which I assumed was what was getting it all worked up. The precipitate would stay behind in the filter when I drained it, so it’d be safe, I thought.

  I was in two minds whether to add the solids to the liquid or the other way round. In the end, I got the biggest block of ice we had in store, put the mix on top and slopped in the solids, after first cooling them off on the ice-block. No explosion; so that was all right. Also, the colour had changed, to a sort of brackish purple. I didn’t know if that had any significance, but I assumed it was a good omen. You know; purple, the colour of royalty and authority. Can’t be bad, surely.

  Soon as it was cool, I filtered it through charcoal and then again through paper; left behind a load of shiny bits, like iron filings. Good, I thought, that’ll be the fors levis. I decanted the stuff into a tall glass beaker, put it on the bench and looked at it.

  The elixir of eternal youth. Well.

  Point is, how would you know if it’d worked?

  If it hadn’t worked, of course, I’d know straight away, in the ten seconds or so it’d take me to die; though, from what I’d gathered from the literature, the failure of my experiment would be pretty low down on my mental agenda during that period. Fors levis eats the brain. I wondered if I’d done the right thing, putting in the sal drac; but the frothing must’ve meant that the lux stellae in the blue was reacting with the cor tenebrae in the green, in which case they’d get together and make lead, and the whole thing’d have been a waste of time. The sal drac was to draw off the malign humour in the cor, which had no useful work to do anyway, and leave behind the benign humour to transmute the malign in the lux. All very simple and straightforward, in theory.

  But if it worked; the elixir of eternal youth, to prevent aging. Fine. You drink it, you look in the mirror. You look just the same as you did five minutes ago. It’d take ten years before you could say for sure if it’d really made any difference. Oh, fine, feed some to a rat, see if it lives longer than other rats. But what does that prove? Here’s a potion that delays aging in rats. Not much call for that in these parts. She’d suggested trying it out on a baby; you’d know within months, if the baby stopped growing. She wouldn’t have had a problem with that. As far as she was concerned, ethics is an excuse for a deficiency in vision and outlook.

  There it was on the bench, just sitting. Well, I asked myself, what’re you waiting for?

  And then she came in.

  I maintain that if our society were properly ordered, and women were allowed to participate directly in the sciences, she’d have been a first-rate alchemist. She never had any trouble following my notes, even though she’d never been taught, she’d just picked it up from books as she went along. Being Phocas’ sister, of course, it was only to be expected she’d share the family obsession. But Phocas, in spite of three years at the university, still couldn’t grasp the fundamentals of the migration of impulses. Eudoxia could do migration equations when she was fourteen. In fact, I have reason to believe she did Phocas’ vacation homework for him, though of course neither of them would ever admit it.

  She’d seen the stuff on the bench. “What’s that?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She gave me that look. “What?”

  I told her what was in it. Took her about five seconds to put the pieces together. I could tell she was impressed. Her eyes were wide, and her face shone with that glow of excitement and greed. “Will it work?”

  “How should I know?”

  She bent over the beaker and sniffed it, pulled back and made a face. “It went volatile.”

  “Yes, but I put in some sal drac to calm it down.”

  Frown, as she worked it out in her head. “Filtered?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Little grey bits like filings?”

  I pointed to the pad of sodden paper. She inspected it, then nodded briskly. “So?”

  I shrugged. “What’s the hurry?” I said. “If it works, I’ll have forever. If it doesn’t—”

  “You’ll make some more,” she said quickly, as if she hadn’t intended to say anything. “For me.”

  I didn’t reply. She scowled at me. “No,” I said.

  “What?”

  “No,” I repeated. “You want to try it, you know the recipe.”

  “What the hell—”

  “Oh come on,” I said, as if she was being stupid. “Let me draw your attention to the precise wording of the marriage ceremony. Till death do us part.” I smiled at her. “Be realistic.”

  She gave me a look that was designed to take all the skin off my face. “You’re pathetic,” she said.

  I’m many things, but not that. “All due respect,” I said, “but immortality is one thing. Being married to you forever and ever, on the other hand—”

  “You bastard.”

  “That’s unfair,” I said. “I’m not divorcing you. We’ll live out the rest of your natural life together, and then I’ll be free. That’s the deal you signed up for.”

  “You’d let me die.”

  “Everybody dies,” I said. “Mortality is the constant that defines our existence.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Besides,” I said, “it probably doesn’t work. If it was that easy, someone’d have done it centuries ago. And it could be poisonous.”

  “If it is,” she said pleasantly, “you’ll die, and I’ll know not to drink it.”

  “Could be it’s one of those poisons that takes hours to work. Or days. Weeks, even. It’d be criminally irresponsible of me to let you drink it.”

  “My brother—”

  “Your brother,” I replied, “values me a damn sight mo
re than he does you. As you should know by now,” I pointed out. “Twice a week you go whimpering to him about me, and what’s he done?”

  “You going to give him some?”

  I smiled. “If it works,” I said, “I may eventually publish. But not till I’ve given it a really thorough trial. Say, two hundred years. Earlier than that, it’d be bad science.”

  “Are you going to give my brother some or aren’t you?”

  “No,” I replied. “He’s funding me to turn lead into gold, which we all know is impossible. This is just a sideline of my own. He doesn’t own the research. This,” I went on, smiling beautifully, “is just for me. Because I’m worth it.”

  I hadn’t noticed her slide her hand round the base of the beaker. Before I could move, she’d lifted it to her mouth. She’d swallowed twice before I was on my feet.

  I shouldn’t have put in the sal draconis, I realise that now. Radix vitae would’ve leached out the malignity from the effervescence, and you can eat that stuff till you burst and be perfectly safe.

  When the man turned up to light the lanterns in the park, I went back to the tannery and picked up the ichor tonans. On my way I’d fished an empty acquavit bottle out of the trash, and washed it out in a public fountain. I decanted the ichor, slowly, corked the bottle and stuffed it in my pocket, the way the drunks do. That, and the fact I’d slept in my clothes and not shaved for two days, really made me look the part. Drunks and beggars are invisible. The perfect disguise.

  I wandered the streets for five hours, really getting into the part. My uncle always said I could’ve been an actor, and I think he was right. What you’ve got to get right, and what most people pretending to be down-and-outs always neglect, is the walk, the length of stride, the dragging of the side of the boot. You’ve got to walk like you’re always leaving, never arriving. A kind man actually stopped me and gave me three bits.

  I reached the Eastgate just after the watch changed. I saw the relief sentry climb up into the watchtower; he’d be there for at least a minute, signing on in the book. That gave me forty-five seconds, more than enough time. I hauled myself up the stairs onto the rampart (nobody was watching, but I couldn’t help staying in character; a slight wobble, as you’d expect from a drunk climbing a steep staircase), looked down to make sure the coast was clear, took the bottle from my pocket, dropped it over the wall, and ran like hell.