Prosper's Demon

by K. J. Parker

  Sigh. Oh, why not? Just think. Open your mind, just for once. Imagine a man, a single man who contributes more to his species than anyone else, ever. The whole world made bright and glorious by his genius, his ideas—

  Which you put in his head.

  Not entirely. Sixty percent. Well, maybe sixty-five. Yes, She said, and what’s wrong with that, for pity’s sake? Like that saying you have: his money’s as good as yours. The ideas are pure gold. Well, aren’t they?

  Principles of Mathematics. And Madonna of the Oak Trees. And the Ninth Symphony. And why should the angels have all the best tunes? There’s got to be something in it for you, I said.

  Twinkle. Of course there is. But, like I told you, it’s the big picture. So big, it probably won’t even start working out and coming good in your lifetime. So—not your problem, not your fault. Or would you rather be remembered as the man who murdered Prosper of Schanz?

  I’d always hated all of Them, on sight, instinctively. But not all of Them are alike. The same level of difference as between, say, me and Master Prosper.

  This whole thing, I said, was your idea.

  By “this whole thing,” you mean—

  The philosopher-king. The perfect society.

  Oh, that. No, that wasn’t me. That’s the grand design. Well, a part of it.

  Sixty per—?

  Much smaller. Say five. That’s one of the good things about not having to die, you can plan for the long term. On the other hand, you do have to be accountable for your mistakes. You’ve got to face the music, you can’t just cheerfully die before you’re found out.

  Your grand design, I said. I could stop it.

  She thought about it. Stop it, She said, probably not. Derail it, divert it, make it take some other shape entirely—well, maybe you could and maybe you couldn’t. But don’t quote me on that.

  Your grand design.

  Yes. But, stop and think, will you?

  What on earth could there possibly be to think about?

  —At which point I heard myself talking to someone.

  “I’ve answered your question?”

  “Perfectly. Now I know.”

  “Knowledge is everything.”

  —and I knew the audience was over. She couldn’t get rid of me, but Prosper could. It all comes down to who’s stronger, after all.

  Knowledge is everything? Bullshit. Besides, it’s not what you know—

  Their grand design. Think about it, as They would.

  They can think long-term much more easily than we can. So, long-term, what would be the worst damage They could do with the ingredients currently under Their control?

  The trouble is, you can’t always think like Them, just as you can’t walk up a wall like a spider, even though you have legs too. Different sort of legs. So, if it were me, designing the grand design—

  Easy peasy. Here’s a child with all the advantages—monarch of all he surveys, which is always a good place to start from, and also educated by the great man himself, the greatest man ever, who’s taught him everything he knows. And no secret has been made of this; everyone knows that this kid is destined to be the Superman, the ultimate human being. Absolute power, backed up by absolute and universal goodwill. Just think what the instruments of darkness could do with that.

  Just think; not as we think, we mortals, we mayflies. Instead, think as They think, aiming for a bigger, better result a hundred years from now, five hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand. And in the meantime, five thousand years of meantime, while their grand design is working itself out . . . Cities will rise and fall, civilizations. Dust and grass and sand will cover all of us, all our achievements, apart from those of Master Prosper, whose work will survive in translations of translations of translations, while our bones and stones will lie forgotten in the wet earth, unless the plow turns them up, and scholars will puzzle themselves to death trying to decipher our work. And still the grand design won’t be complete, the hammer won’t have fallen, the snare won’t have tightened round the ankle of poor stupid mayfly humanity; so that, when it does, who the hell will there be to connect cause to effect?

  But I could stop it. And the price we’d all have to pay would be the life and work of Prosper of Schanz. I ask you, what would you do?

  * * *

  What would He do?

  (All my life, I’ve met so many people, but for me there’s only ever one Him.) Why would I ask myself a question like that? I’d known Him all my life, so I knew (among other things) that He wasn’t exactly bright, certainly not a towering genius like Master Prosper. But I knew Him so well I knew His finer qualities.

  Oh, They have them, for sure. It’s a bizarre but widespread myth that only heroes have good qualities, and the only qualities heroes have are good; villains are, by definition, all bad. Bullshit.

  Think about it. Think of the qualities it takes to be a successful or even a competent criminal. You need courage—to climb into a stranger’s house, the floor plan of which you don’t know, fully aware that the householder is almost certainly well provided with weapons, large dogs, strong and active servants—would you want to do that?—and for what? A sackful of small, portable artworks, for which you’ll probably get ten groschen on the kreutzer. To which add a calm, deliberate mind, resourcefulness, a steady hand, a delicate touch, the ability to work quickly and methodically. And that’s just your scum-of-the-earth, back-alley burglar. Take the truly dreadful, evil men of history, slaughterers of nations in the name of some twisted ideal. Of necessity you must allow them to have had Faith (which moves mountains, and without which mere works are in vain) and Hope, Loyalty, and Self-Sacrifice in the Name of the Cause, and practically every other noble and glorious characteristic you can possibly think of, except for the small matter of being in the right. . . .

  (Which—the older I get, the more convinced I am—is just fashion anyhow, like the brims on hats or the trimming of ladies’ sleeves. And if you don’t believe me, just think how much morality has changed—in your lifetime—and then read a little history and ask yourself: Do you really, honestly think these changes will be permanent?)

  So, He has finer qualities. He knows, instinctively, what’s worth suffering pain for, and what isn’t. He knows when to leave quickly and gracefully, and when to stick around and be torn out by the roots. In judging whether the game is worth the candle, He knows the price of candles better than anyone else I ever met.

  It’s not something you tell people about, obviously. Not your parents, not your friends, not your dear old uncle or your favorite aunt: I can see the devil in people. I can see the devil in you. And, when you’re just a kid, you don’t know the rules, what’s expected, what is and isn’t done, and there’s nobody to ask, and you’re scared. But you keep on seeing the cat, out of the corner of your eye, and it becomes unbearable not to bark, chase, bite.

  Maybe I was different; maybe I’m just a thoroughly bad person, with loads of bad, wicked qualities, such as wanting to bark and liking to bite. Whatever. I managed to keep myself on the leash until I met Him again, in the eyes of my enemy, and that was it, all my self-possession used up. From then on, I was out of control. If I saw one of Them, I went for the throat, and that was that.

  We had to move; several times; a lot. Sometimes it was because of all the desperate people crowding round our door, begging, imploring—heal me, make my son better, please cure my mother, she’s going to die—and nothing I could do, because it wasn’t Them, it was consumption or fever or all the thousands of things that tear you up and kill you that aren’t Them. And sometimes it was because It wouldn’t go quietly, or reckoned I was only a kid and could be messed with, and you can guess by now how that ended.

  Word gets around. They—the other they, the good guys—tracked me down and took me away, and taught me to be a better dog; faster, neater, slicker, deadlier. They told me: in all our years of doing this, we’ve never found one quite like you. Quite a few of them said that to me, but none of them car
ed to explain exactly what they meant by it.

  Ours is a small, select order. We don’t have hierarchies, endowments, liturgies, orthodoxies, prebendaries, cathedrals. We aren’t exactly popular or fashionable. Kings don’t give us vast estates, people don’t leave us money in their wills, we don’t have handsome vestments or valuable silverware; just authority. But what we lack in wealth and the younger sons of the nobility we make up for in efficiency. And we do have respect. Nothing clears a crowded street faster than one of us.

  We don’t have a hierarchy, but we can’t help having the occasional dog who’s even bigger, faster, nastier than the other big, fast, nasty dogs. Nobody wants to be like that—another thing we don’t have is ambition, that’d be like pushing and shoving to get to the front of the queue for the gallows—but it happens. It happened to me, and I owe it all to—

  * * *

  You again.

  I smiled. Me.

  I was younger then, of course. Twenty-three, and four years a qualified professional. Cocky as hell and enjoying myself.

  Look, He said. This is stupid. You can’t keep picking on me like this. It’s unreasonable.

  (Curious thing: As I grew older, more articulate, better educated, so did He. First few times we met, He talked in grunts. But when I started reading books and going to lectures, He started using long words and complex syntax. Would you care to speculate about how that happened? I can’t be bothered.)

  Fuck unreasonable, I said. Get out. Now.

  Also, I couldn’t help noticing, He was getting smarter. More sophisticated, let’s say. Impossible, because He was thousands or millions of years old when I was born, so it wasn’t as though we were growing up together. But definitely more cunning. Sure, He said. If you really want me to.

  The host this time was, believe it or not, the public executioner for the southeastern district of Elagaba Province. He’d been acting funny, people said, for a long time. One day he’d be happy as birds in springtime, whistling, smiling, taking his hat off to ladies in the street. Next day, you’d find him sitting in the dark somewhere, head in hands, crying his eyes out. And the effect on his work—it’s quite a skilled business, they told me, there’s far more to it than people realize. You need to be able to figure out the length of drop based on the individual’s height and weight. You need to judge angles and the precise degree of power to sever the spinal cord. Otherwise, you get people’s heads coming off when they’re hanged, and not coming off when they’re beheaded, and that sort of thing reflects on the community as a whole.

  You can pull me out, if you really want to, He said. You know you can.

  I looked a little bit closer, and got that shivery feeling. Sophisticated; He must have been in there quite some time before it started to show, because He’d sort of expanded into all the tendrils and nerve endings, like grass growing up through netting. Sure, I could pull Him out, but—

  You’ve been busy, I said.

  I’ll be straight with you, He said. I’ve had a rough time of it the last few years. Every time I’ve got anything settled, one of you bastards comes and moves me on, and every one of you was rough. There’s such a thing as proportionate use of force, you know. Or wasn’t that on the syllabus where you were?

  I was away sick that day.

  What I need, He said reproachfully, is somewhere I can rest up, just for a bit, long enough to get myself back together, in one piece.

  What you need, I said, is to get out of there right now.

  Oh, come on, He said. Be reasonable, for once in your life. I’m not doing any real harm in here. All right, sometimes he’s dead miserable, but sometimes he’s really happy. It’s not like he’s biting people or bashing his head against walls.

  I grinned. You’re interfering with his duties.

  Yes, sure. People aren’t getting killed on time, and what an appalling state of affairs that must be. You do realize, most of the people he’d have killed, but for me, are completely innocent.

  Most?

  He sort of shrugged. Roughly sixty percent. That’s innocent lives prolonged, because of me. That’s a good thing, surely? Anyway, here’s the deal: You go away and come back in six months, and I promise faithfully, I’ll undo all my clever little knots and unpick my stitches and I’ll go quiet as a lamb, and not a mark on him. Or you can force me out now, and what’s left of his brain will leak out of his ears like honey. Up to you.

  I shook my head. You’re bluffing, I told Him. You’re playing me for an idiot. I know you. If I leave you in there, you’ll just intertwine your way deeper and deeper inside.

  No, I promise. Word of honor.

  Have you any idea, I told Him, how much I could hurt you, getting you out of there by force?

  He took a moment to answer. Actually, yes.

  And are you asking me to believe that you’d risk that, just to play games with me?

  There was a sort of artful gleam about Him, though He tried to hide it. It’s not about how much it hurts me, surely, He said. It’s how much it hurts him.

  I smiled at Him. Can’t let the likes of you get away with anything, I said. Bad precedent. Rule One, we don’t negotiate with the instruments of darkness. If the host is injured, that’s very regrettable, but it’s entirely your fault, not ours.

  I told you, He said, and for all I know, His distress was genuine; for all I care. Word of honor, I said, didn’t I? We can’t break our word, you know that. Don’t you? Didn’t they teach you that at wizard school?

  They taught me Rule One, I said. No negotiating. Besides, you think you’ve been really clever, but you’re stupid. I can have you out of there with a flick of the wrist, and hardly any damage to speak of. To him, I added. Not to you.

  Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Which of us did you say was bluffing?

  I don’t appreciate being spoken to like that, not by one of Them, not by Him. Besides, I honestly believed I could do it, without too much friendly harm. We all make honest mistakes sometimes, even the best of us.

  Just as well that nobody really likes public executioners, even though they do a necessary job that nobody else is prepared to do. And word gets about. It must have been a colossal, titanic struggle, people said (even among my own order, who should know better; should have known me better), or it wouldn’t have made such a godawful mess of a battlefield. And anyone capable of winning a battle that did so much damage must be—well. A real piece of work, I think was the term they used. Meant kindly, I’m sure.

  * * *

  She sent for me.

  For Her, of course, I wouldn’t have gone. For Master Prosper, I had no choice. I could have refused, theoretically; in which case, a range of options, from being thrown out of the Duchy to being dragged into the palace by my heels. I gather schoolmasters have a saying when they’re about to thrash some poor kid within an inch of his life: this will hurt me more than it hurts you. Bullshit.

  Master Prosper received me in the Alabaster Room, which he’d taken over and converted into a drawing office, studio, and workshop. The end wall had been whitewashed—covering a thousand-year-old fresco of the Ascension of the Invincible Sun—and on it, the great man had sketched out in charcoal, actual size, the seven components of the great bronze horse. He was standing on a ladder with the charcoal in his hand, motionless, when I was shown in. He turned his head and smiled at me.

  “We were talking,” he said, “about the power of art to do good.”

  “I remember.”

  “This—” He waggled the stick of charcoal. “—will be my masterpiece. What do you think?”

  When all else fails, tell the truth. “Magnificent,” I said.

  He backed down the ladder, feeling for the rungs with his toes. “As a work of art,” he said, “and as a piece of engineering. Nothing—nothing—on this scale has ever been attempted before.”

  “Is that right?”

  He laughed. “Take my word for it,” he said, “as an engineer.”

  The Alabaster Room is w
here they used to hold state banquets and receptions for really important ambassadors. The end wall is vast. It was only just big enough. “I suppose it won’t be easy,” I said, “casting something that big.”

  “You could say that.” He sat down, waved to me to do the same. “One hundred and forty tons of bronze.” He smiled at me once more. “If I tried to cast it in one piece, the sheer weight of the liquid metal would burst the mold, unless I made a mold the size of a mountain, which in turn would crush the wax core inside it as it was built up. But if I make it in pieces, how do I put the pieces together? And consider this: Molten metal cools from the outside, while the inside remains hot, and as it cools it shrinks. With an ordinary statue, say life-size, it hardly matters, but on a scale like this, the force of the contraction will shatter the casting. There’s a reason—many reasons—why nobody has ever made a statue this big before. Quite simply, it can’t be done.”

  He paused. I think I was supposed to say something, but I didn’t.

  “The statue,” he said, “will be my present to the young Prince. It will be unveiled on the day of his baptism, two months from now.”

  “That doesn’t leave you very much—”

  “Can’t be done.” He grinned at me. “Simply bringing about the golden age isn’t enough. People have to be convinced, or they won’t believe. They need miracles. My job is to provide them. Simple as that.”

  I nodded blankly. “Was there something?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You sent for me.”

  He gave me a mild frown. “You were interested,” he said. “In beauty and the power of art.”

  He had a point there. I’d forgotten. “Naturally,” I said. “But you’re a very busy man. I didn’t imagine you could spare the time to talk to someone like me. Not unless there was something I could do for you.”

  He paused again, looking at me as though deciding how best to cut me into sections, for ease of remanufacture (in his image, presumably). “You didn’t come here to ask me a facile, pointless question, of no possible relevance to yourself.”

  “No.”

  “I know who you are. I know what you do. You know I don’t believe in any of it.”