Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  It had started with a Pronouncement from Murray.

  “I can’t hang round the office when I have real work to do,” he had said, breezily. “I don’t want to wait and read your briefings when they emerge, a bit each day. Just send me to the best general history you have in your database and I’ll free up some time.”

  “Do real work?” Artemisia’s look was mild, but her voice glared.

  “I can figure things out. From books. I’m literate. All I need is a good general text and I’ll be fine.”

  “How good is your nineteenth century French?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The best general book we have on the Middle Ages in this region is volume seven of the general history of Languedoc, published in the middle of the nineteenth century. The only modern material we have is the Catholic Encyclopedia and five megabytes of material on my own personal thumb drive.”

  “I wasn’t kidding.”

  And this is where it became interesting enough for Konig to forget dreaming up new pasts and to pay proper attention. He hadn’t realised until now what a fine grasp of scatological language Dr Wormwood possessed.

  What he noticed particularly was how Murray’s body language had shifted. Murray was looking at Wormwood. With far too much interest. Again. He probably asked for that book on purpose, from the intent way he was enjoying watching her very thoroughly lose her temper.

  This would bear keeping an eye on, Konig thought. Just when the power play had settled down and the hierarchy established, Murray was going to turn things upside down. Ben Konig wondered how he could use it.

  * * *

  24 June (St John the Baptist)

  “It’s midsummer,” said Artemisia brightly. It was hard to be bright over breakfast normally, but today was special. “All sorts of frolics and fun.”

  “Frolics and fun?” Cormac, of course, was instantly fascinated.

  “I don’t know any details,” admitted Artemisia.

  “Didn’t you ask what’s-his-name?”

  “Guilhem. He doesn’t know either. His mother is from Langudeoc, it seems, but not his father and he was brought up by entirely different people in any case and he really doesn’t like the thought of midsummer here. I do adore regionalism.” Artemisia beamed.

  “So you don’t know what will happen today?” Luke looked worried.

  “Not really. Except that I hope it will include dancing. We don’t have much evidence for dancing this early.”

  “People didn’t dance?” Geoff was fascinated.

  “We don’t have dance steps. Or many of them. Just music. And I don’t even know if we have music from this region. Our library has de Grocheo, but he documents Paris.”

  “As usual,” said Sylvia, “That was less than helpful.”

  Artemisia sighed. As usual, Sylvia was less than supportive.

  During that space, Luke had pondered. “Right,” he said. “We’re all confined to the cave until joy has ceased.” He smiled at his little joke.

  “But why?” Several voices spoke at once.

  “Because we don’t know if there’ll be action out here. Orgies on the hillside and whatnot.”

  “Oh surely” said Ben.

  “No.” Luke wasn’t interested. “Indoors, all of us, until I say otherwise.”

  Confinement only lasted two days. Sylvia blamed Artemisia anyway. “Confinement impedes our work,” she proclaimed, loudly.

  On the second night, Luke surprised everyone. During dinner, he tapped on his glass with his spoon. Ben wondered why he didn’t just use that booming voice of his and demand to be heard. Luke had his ways however, and they were a never-ending source of entertainment to his drones.

  Konig thought ‘drones’ and his thought was coloured with resigned contemptuousness. He also wondered why everyone else still believed they were part of a magnificent team. Except maybe Pauline, who thought she was here as a sacrificial lamb and maybe Artemisia who knew full well that the whole damned thing was a mistake.

  And here’s the announcement, Ben thought. Luke loved his bit of drama. Taking his time between one action and the next, so that every person present would hang on every word he uttered. When even Ben Konig was watching him fully, Luke tapped his glass one last time.

  “Well,” he started, “Now that I have your attention…” he smiled around the table until he was certain everyone got his joke. No-one laughed, although Pauline smiled slightly. “A half hour after dinner, there will be music in the recreation room. I expect you all to attend. Murray, I expect a strong performance from you in particular.” He nodded in confirmation, got up and left.

  “I resent that assumption,” Geoff’s voice said, mildly, “and think I have come down with a mild case of laryngitis.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Pauline stated firmly. “I’m not going to lie on your behalf.”

  “You can sing, Geoff, I hear you in the shower,” said Sylvia, earnestly. “Your voice is quite nice.”

  “What are you doing paying attention to me when I’m in the shower?” asked Geoff, mostly amused. “The shower partitions are nearly transparent, you know.”

  “She does know,” said Mac. “That’s why she pays attention.”

  “I shall sing,” said Tony. “I can’t sing, but I shall sing anyway.” The moment he had finished his unexpected pronouncement, he stood up, took his plate and spoon to the sink, and left.

  “Excuse me,” said Artemisia, her voice barely under control. She, too, took her plate and spoon, but rather more hurriedly. Geoff found her in her bedroom, her hands hiding her face. She looked up at his knock. “I think I’m having hysterics,” she said, as he came into her room.

  “Knock it off,” was Geoff’s reply. “It wasn’t that funny.”

  “I’ve heard Tony sing.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Obviously,” Artemisia regained some control of her voice. “Quite obviously. Because if you had heard him sing, you would also be having hysterics.”

  “He’s that bad?” Geoff sat on the bed, close.

  “He has a nice voice, actually. But he’s so right. He can’t sing.”

  “Tone deaf?” Geoff moved just a little closer.

  “Very. But at least he has a voice. And stop that. Now. I need to calm down before our singathon. Quit stirring.”

  Geoff laughed and moved a fraction of an inch away. “It’s going to be fun.”

  “I forgot,” Artemisia said gloomily. “You’re an expert in amateur musical evenings.”

  “Enjoying them is a fine art,” Geoff assured her. “And one at which I have a vast repertoire of skills.”

  “Just pinch me if I start laughing at any stage. Please?”

  The evening wasn’t too bad. Luke’s giant day-voice turned out to be small and a bit pitchy when put to a tune. Ben Konig sang a ballad, almost respectably. Geoff Murray could, of course, sing, and did so with much charm. If Pauline’s looks had been weapons, however, Geoff Murray would have exploded into fragments every single time he sang the chorus of his ditty. He had chosen Shaddup you face, effectively saving himself from ever having to perform in the caverns again.

  Tony sang on two notes, his face solemn.

  Sylvia, to everyone’s surprise, sang divinely. Her voice was high and hard and bright.

  The next time Sylvia drifted to the hilltop, the rest of the group paid attention. This was the sort of place that one sang, if one wasn’t a shower singer. “Or a grouch,” said Artemisia to Geoff, “like you.”

  Sure enough, Sylvia sang to herself, up there above the caverns, when she was supposed to be working. Cormac engineered it so that her previous most comfortable place had developed the wrong kind of rocks. Sylvia wasn’t the sort of person who tolerated discomfort.

  She thought she was singing solitaire to the stars every few nights, but her new spot was close to the opening above the lounge area. And she didn’t realise that she could be heard below. Or that the stone had been placed there very carefully by Cormac
.

  It became a group activity to sit in the cavern, the lights dimmed, in the comfortable chairs, listening to Sylvia run through her favourite melodies. The acoustics were oddly excellent. Cormac, being incorrigible, recorded her echoing soprano and made a compilation of his top ten tunes. He made a second compilation of Sylvia’s goofs, which he saved to play back at her when she condescended towards him once too often.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Soul Sorting

  25 June (Saint Guilhem)

  There was nothing to report from the cave that day. They were all still hunkered down. The only thing of unusual interest in the town was Guilhem getting drunk after church. Everyone watched with great interest and laid bets on how composed he would be.

  Fiz won the bet. Guilhem was calm and courteous throughout. “It’s his temper you want to watch,” he warned, “Not the wine.”

  * * *

  “Watch out for wolves,” Ben reminded them. He said it once a week, like clockwork. He also said that they were highly unlikely to appear before winter. It was mid-summer. And Sylvia was sick and tired of being shut up in those caves. When she got back there would be data to process. Never-ending data. She had to get out.

  She came back looking amused. “I saw the wolf and the wolf saw me. It looked at me. It turned around and it went the other way. Fuss about nothing, if you ask me.”

  “Lucky,” said Geoff, envious.

  “It wasn’t hungry, I guess,” said Sylvia.

  Artemisia tried to help. “Sylvia, that’s not what Geoff—”

  “Forget it,” interrupted Ben.

  Later Ben tried to extract details of the wolf and the sighting and all he got was, “It was grey. Looked like a big dog.” Sylvia was very cagey about the location.

  While Ben was doing his best at improvised inquisition, Geoff was telling Mac about the episode. “How long would it have taken for the wolf to kill Sylvia, if she had spooked it?”

  Mac contemplated this important question. “About five seconds,” he finally concluded.

  “And then, what do you think? Indigestion?”

  “Bad, bad indigestion.”

  * * *

  The most recent data download from the twenty-first century had finally been sorted and Luke was looking harassed. It appeared that the twenty-first century was concerned with paperwork and that not enough had been completed. It also appeared that it had taken twenty-first century administration all this time to discover the insufficiencies. Most of it Luke was able to fill in himself, but every now and again he descended upon the office and stood against the open sky, his shadowed figure dramatically demanding answers to stupid questions.

  “Who here isn’t WASP?” Luke asked. Pauline had brought in cupcakes, making the atmosphere party-like. He still stood at the gap to the outside world, Languedoc’s landscape framing him. There wasn’t enough display space in a cavern for Professor Theodore Lucas Mann.

  Artemisia, from the cover of her computer, called out, “Why?”

  “Not a single bloody one of you put your ethnicity on your personnel forms and some idiot back home picked up last month that I had filled them all in as WASP. Except mine, of course. Obviously. Since I’m not WASP.” That’s right, he said he was a lapsed Catholic, Artemisia thought. Funny. I was sure he was Jewish. Harvey said there was someone Jewish in the team. ‘Can’t have no Jewish scientists. Need our stereotypes.’ Harvey must’ve been wrong. Harvey’s golden voice held so much wrongness that one more bit was neither here nor there.

  Most of the team looked down again at this next statement. Luke was shadowed, but he could see each of their faces perfectly (except Artemisia’s which was safe behind her computer screen.) and not a single one of them wanted to meet his eye when he said, “I’m just asking to make sure I was right. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” said Geoff. “Except that I’m not white, not Anglo-Saxon and I am a fully-functioning atheist.” The white star and head-dress in the middle of his pin-badge stuck defiantly out from Geoff’s lapel.

  “Me neither,” said Artemisia. “Except that I’m white and once was Catholic. Every other molecule of me is Italian.”

  “Wormwood isn’t an Italian surname,” said Geoff, his face swivelling in her direction, almost detaching itself from his head. How does he do that, Artemisia wondered.

  “Artemisia is an Italian Christian name, however. Wormwood is what I chose to be called when I divorced my parents.” No-one knew what to say to that. Artemisia felt proud of herself.

  “I’m white, Saxon and almost Protestant, so you could call me WASPish, perhaps?” Ben offered.

  “WASP to the core, that’s us,” said Pauline, nodding to include Sylvia.

  “Tony?” Luke asked.

  “What?”

  “What’s your ancestry?”

  “My ancestry.” It was a statement, not a question. Finally, he pulled the thought out from deep within himself. “I’m Australian.”

  “Where did your family come from, before Australia?”

  “My mother is Australian. From the Northern Territory,” Tony said. “My father was brought up in France. He was French.”

  “And his mother?” Sylvia was fascinated.

  “She was from Vietnam.”

  Artemisia followed the puzzle further, “What about your mother’s parents? Where were they from?”

  “They were from Malacca. They were Hakka.”

  “They were Malaysian Chinese?” Artemisia was fascinated. Malaysian Chinese fitted with a Northern Territory background, too. She just hadn’t thought it through.

  “They were from Malaya.”

  “Before it became Malaysia?”

  “Yes.” Tony folded his arms and looked down. He had said all he was going to say.

  “My God,” said Sylvia, “It took a historian to work out what sort of Asian he is.”

  “Geoff, when did your family come out?” asked Artemisia, who wondered why Sylvia didn’t think of the rather Ocker Tony as Australian. “Or did it come out? Is it Kanaka, Islander - what?”

  “I don’t want Luke putting it on his bloody form. I’ll tell you later.”

  “You’ll keep, Murray,” Luke had filled in one set of boxes and wanted to move to the next. “How about we check through all of your educations? There are a couple of holes. And Mr Smith appears to have acquired three doctorates. One of them is in the close study of reversing polarities - I assume that refers to Star Trek or Whovian analysis and is a creative doctorate.” Luke’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  “I’ll go get Mac for you,” volunteered Geoff, helpfully. Thus Geoff escaped.

  * * *

  It was the season for small annoyance. The farmers were out doing whatever it was farmers did in late June. Whenever a team member tried to work outdoors, they were driven indoors by whistling peasants and shepherds and other locals. There seemed an inordinate number of them for a desert of souls. It was very hard to work around.

  The locals were abroad very late, because of the full moon. The whole team was confined to quarters and was whingeing about it, only allowed outside for essential matters. The viewings and measurements from above the cave went on as usual, but everything else slowed down. Outside the weather was perfect. Inside, the temperature was even and the atmosphere cold. Artemisia found herself wondering what would happen if one of them committed murder. Then she found herself wondering who would be murdered. Probably me. That’d solve stuff, for certain.

  “Too much,” said Geoff.

  “Too much that I can’t observe,” said Ben.

  “Too much I’m not bloody allowed to document,” Artemisia whispered, and crossed her arms, grumpily. Then she looked at the time and realised she had an escape route.

  Artemisia attired herself most anciently and went to meet with Guilhem in the usual place. Guilhem warned Artemisia, “The men have been remarked upon again. Also a woman.” From his tone, Artemisia knew that Guilhem was referring to Sylvia. She wasn’t even ‘tha
t woman’. She was unworthy of any more than minimal notice. Guilhem was not the forgiving type.

  “I shall tell them,” Artemisia promised.

  This was the last straw. Not for Sylvia, who shrugged her shoulders at the warning. Not for Tony, who ignored everything, as usual, and went about his own business, in his own world. It was the two free-spirited souls (as they liked to describe themselves) who felt caged.

  “Trapped,” Cormac said to Geoff.

  “We’re going to develop cabin fever,” Geoff confided in return.

  “Turn into mass murderers,” agreed Cormac. Obviously, thought Artemisia, the thought was getting around.

  “We need to do something about it.”

  “Too right!”

  That night, they walked out the main door nonchalantly, walked up to where the path met the steep hillside, and they shouted slogans to the air.

  “A bas les restrictions!” cried Mac, in his best faux French.

  “Let us live in freedom or let us die,” shouted Geoff.

  This shouting lasted for about five minutes. The two then sat on rocks, still in the dark, and chatted quietly.

  “What’s up?” Ben asked Sylvia.

  “Ask Luke,” Sylvia’s voice sounded prim. “He gave them permission.”

  After a little while the slogans returned. Then the duo trooped happily indoors.

  “You could have broken your necks,” said Sylvia. All she received in return were looks of consummate smugness.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lure of the Fair Folk

  Guilhem hid his fury well. The bishop of Vivarais had just accepted Philippe’s sovereignty. His friend, the other Philippe, had sent him a message confirming this. He felt betrayed. Guilhem had stood by his principles and ruined his future and the bishop had not. He wanted to slash at someone, and he could not.

  * * *

  Geoff Murray was working. Since there was no-one around, he allowed his air of laziness to disappear. He was intent on his gauges. He was sure they were inaccurate. Either that, or the summer was cool and the rainfall atypical. While this was a possibility, his first reaction was to check his equipment. This took close attention.