Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

  This explanation was too long for the four slines, who turned their backs to me as soon as I got past the rake fight. I noticed that one of them—the one with his arm in a sling—had a curious, bony ridge running up his spine and protruding a few inches above the collar of his jersey. Normally this was concealed by his trailing burnoose, but when he turned away from me I saw it clearly. It was like a second, exoskeletal spine attached to the natural one. At its top was a rectangular tab, smaller than the palm of my hand, bearing a Kinagram in which a large stick figure struck a smaller one with his fist. It was one of the spine clamps Quin had described to me and Orolo. I guessed it had disabled the man’s right arm.

  A fresco on the ceiling at the far end showed the eruption of Ecba and the destruction of the temple. The following series of galleries contained pictures and artifacts from the ensuing Peregrin period, with separate alcoves dedicated to the Forty Lesser and the Seven Great Peregrins.

  From there we came out into the great elliptical chamber with its statues and frescoes of the theoric golden age centered on the city-state of Ethras. Protas, gazing up at the clouds painted on the ceiling, anchored one end. His teacher Thelenes commanded the other, striding across the Plane with his interlocutors—variously awed, charmed, chastened, or indignant. The two bringing up the rear had their heads together, conspiring—a foreshadowing of Thelenes’s trial and ritual execution. A large painting of the city made it easy for me to point out the Deolaters’ temples atop its highest hill, where Thelenes had been put to death; its market, the Periklyne, wrapped around the hill’s base; a flat open area in the center of the Periklyne, called ‘the Plane,’ where geometers would draw figures in the dust or engage in public debate; and the vine-covered bowers around the edges, in whose shade some theors would teach their fids, from which we got the word suvin, meaning “under the vines.” As far as the nun was concerned, that one moment made the whole trip worth the trouble.

  As we worked our way to the farther end, we began seeing theors standing at the right hands of generals and emperors, which led naturally enough to the last of the great chambers in the Hylaean Way, which was all about the glory that was Baz, its temples, its capitol, its walls, roads, and armies, its library, and (increasingly, as we approached the end) its Ark. After a certain point it was priests and prelates of the Ark of Baz, instead of theors, advising those generals and emperors. Theors had to be sought out as small figures in the deep background, reclining on the steps of the Library or going into the Capitol to spill wise counsel into the dead ears of the high and mighty.

  Frescoes depicting the Sack of Baz and the burning of the library flanked the exit: an incongruously narrow, austere archway that you might miss if it weren’t for the statue of Saunt Cartas cradling a few singed and tattered books in one arm, looking back over her shoulder to beckon us toward the exit. This led to a high stone-walled chamber, devoid of decoration and containing nothing except air. It symbolized the retreat to the maths and the dawn of the Old Mathic Age, generally pegged at Negative 1512.

  From there the Hylaean Way took a lap around the Unarian Cloister and petered out. There was room on the other side where exhibits might one day be added about the rise of the Mystagogues, the Rebirth, the Praxic Age, and possibly even the Harbingers and the Terrible Events. But we had seen all the good stuff, and this was customarily the end of the tour.

  I thanked them all for coming, invited them to backtrack if they wanted to spend more time with any of what they’d seen, reminded them that all were welcome at the Tenth Night supper, and told them I’d be happy to answer questions.

  The slines seemed happy for now to savor the pictures of Imperial Bazian galley combat and library-burning. A retired burger stepped up to thank me for my time. The suvin kids asked me what sorts of things I had been studying lately. The two visitors who had rushed in at the last minute bided their time as I tried to explain to the kids certain theorical topics that they’d never heard of. After a minute the nun took pity on me (or possibly on the kids) and hustled them away.

  The latecomers were a man and a woman, both probably in their fifth decades of life. I did not get the sense that they were having a liaison. Both were attired for commerce, so perhaps they were colleagues in a business. Around each one’s neck was a lanyard leading to a flasher of the type used extramuros to demonstrate one’s identity and control access to places. Since such things weren’t needed here, both of them had tucked their flashers into their breast pockets. They had been appreciative tourists, trailing the group, cocking their heads toward each other to discuss fine details that one or the other had noticed.

  “I was intrigued by your remarks about the daughters of Cnoüs,” the man announced. His accent marked him as coming from a part of this continent where cities were bigger and closer together than around here, and where a concent might house a dozen or more chapters in contrast to our three.

  He went on, “It’s just that normally I would expect an avout to emphasize what made them different. But I almost got the idea you were hinting at a—” And here he stopped, as though groping for a word that was not in the Fluccish lexicon.

  “Common ground?” suggested the woman. “A parallel between them?” Her accent—as well as the bone structure of her face and the hue of her skin—marked her as coming from the continent that, in this age, was the seat of the Saecular Power. And so by this point I had made up a reasonable story in my head about these two: they lived in big cities far away, they worked for the same employer, a business of global scope, they were visiting its local office for some purpose, they’d heard it was the last day of Apert and had decided to spend a couple of hours taking in the sights. Both, I guessed, had spent at least a few years in a Unarian math when younger. Perhaps the man’s Orth had grown some rust and he was more comfortable confining the discussion to Fluccish.

  “Well, I think many scholars would agree that Deät and Hylaea both say that one should not confuse the symbol with the thing symbolized,” I said.

  He looked as if I’d poked him in the eye. “What kind of way to begin a sentence is that? ‘I think many scholars would agree…’ Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

  “All right. Deät and Hylaea both say that one should not confuse the symbol with the thing symbolized.”

  “That’s better.”

  “For Deät the symbol is an idol. For Hylaea it’s a triangular shape on a tablet. For Deät, the thing symbolized is an actual god in heaven. For Hylaea, it’s a pure theorical triangle in the HTW. So, do you agree that I can speak about that commonality in itself?”

  “Yes,” the man said, reluctantly, “but an avout rarely takes an argument that far only to drop it. I keep waiting for you to base some further argument on it, the way they do in the dialogs.”

  “I take your point clearly,” I said. “But I was not in dialog at the time.”

  “But you are now!”

  I took this as a joke and chuckled in a way I hoped would seem polite. His face showed a trace of dry amusement but on the whole he looked serious. The woman seemed a bit uneasy.

  “But I wasn’t then,” I said, “and then I had a story to tell, and it had to make sense. It makes sense if Deät and Hylaea took the same idea and mapped it onto different domains. But if I’d described them as saying totally contradictory things about their father’s vision, it wouldn’t have made sense.”

  “It would have made perfect sense if you had made Deät out to be a lunatic,” he demurred.

  “Well, that’s true. Maybe because there were so many Deolaters in the group I avoided being so blunt.”

  “So you said something you don’t actually believe, just to be polite?”

  “It’s more a matter of emphasis. I do believe what I said before about the commonality—and so do you, because you agreed with me to that point.”

  “How widespread do you suppose that mentality is within this concent?”

  Hearing this, the woman looked as if she had got a whiff of s
omething foul. She turned sideways to me and spoke in a subdued voice to the man. “Mentality is a pejorative term, isn’t it?”

  “All right,” the man said, never taking his eyes off me. “How many here see it your way?”

  “It’s a typical Procian versus Halikaarnian dispute,” I said. “Avout who follow in the way of Halikaarn, Evenedric, and Edhar seek truth in pure theorics. On the Procian/Faanian side, there is a suspicion of the whole idea of absolute truth and more of a tendency to classify the story of Cnoüs as a fairy tale. They pay lip service to Hylaea just because of what she symbolizes and because she wasn’t as bad as her sister. But I don’t think that they believe that the HTW is real any more than they believe that there is a Heaven.”

  “Whereas Edharians do believe in it?”

  The woman shot him a look, and he made the following adjustment: “I specify Edharians only because this is the Concent of Saunt Edhar, after all.”

  If this man had been one of my fraas I might have spoken more freely now. But he was a Saecular, strangely well-informed, and he behaved as though he were important. Even so, I might have blurted something out if this had been the first day of Apert. But our gates had been open for ten days: long enough for me to grow some crude political reflexes. So I answered not for myself but for my concent. More specifically for the Edharian order; for all of the Edharian chapters in other concents around the world looked to us as their mother, and had pictures of our Mynster up in their chapterhouses.

  “If you ask an Edharian flat out, he’ll be reluctant to admit to it,” I began.

  “Why? Again, this is the Concent of Saunt Edhar.”

  “It was broken up,” I told him. “After the Third Sack, two-thirds of the Edharians were relocated to other concents, to make room for a New Circle and a Reformed Old Faanite chapter.”

  “Ah, the Powers That Be put a bunch of Procians in here to keep an eye on you, did they?” This actually caused the woman to reach out and put her hand on his forearm.

  “You seem to be assuming I’m an Edharian myself,” I said, “but I have not yet made Eliger. I don’t even know if the Order of Saunt Edhar would accept me.”

  “I hope so for your sake,” he said.

  The conversation had become steadily odder from its very beginning and had reached a point where it was difficult for me to see a way forward. Fortunately the woman got us out of the jam: “It’s just that with all that’s been going on with the Warden of Heaven, we were speculating, as we were on our way here, whether the avout were feeling any pressure to change their views. And we wondered if your take on Deät and Hylaea might have reflected some Saecular influence.”

  “Ah. That’s an interesting point,” I said. “As it happens, I’d never heard of the Warden of Heaven until a few days ago. So if my take on Deät and Hylaea reflects anything at all, it’s what I’ve been thinking about lately for my own reasons.”

  “Very well,” the man said, and turned away. The woman mouthed a “thank you” at me over her shoulder and together they strolled off into the Cloister.

  Not long after, the bells began to chime Provener. I walked across the Unarian campus, which had been turned inside-out. Many avout, as well as some extramuros contract labor, were cleaning the dormitories to make them ready for the crop that would be starting their year tomorrow.

  For once, I reached the Mynster with plenty of time to spare. I sought out Arsibalt and warned him to be on the lookout for those four slines. Lio overheard the end of that conversation and so I had to repeat it as we were getting our robes on. Jesry showed up last, and drunk. His family had thrown a reception for him at their house.

  When the Primate entered the chancel, just before the beginning of the service, he had two purple-robed visitors in tow. It was not unusual for hierarchs from other concents to show up in this way, so I didn’t think twice about it. The shape of their hats was a little unusual. Arsibalt was the first to recognize them. “It appears that we have two honored guests from the Inquisition,” he said.

  I looked across the chancel and recognized the faces of the man and woman I’d been talking to earlier.

  I spent the afternoon striping the meadow with rows of tables. Fortunately, Arsibalt was my partner. He might be a little high-strung in some ways, but beneath the fat he had the frame of an ox from winding the clock.

  For three thousand years it had been the concent’s policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo.

  “You’d think that after all this time someone might have invented…oh, say…the wheel,” Arsibalt mentioned at one point, as we were wrestling with a twelve-foot-long monster that looked like it might have stopped spears during the Old Mathic Age.

  Dragging these artifacts up from the cellars and down from the rafters was an almost perfectly stupid task. It was not much more difficult to get Arsibalt talking about Inquisitors and the Inquisition.

  The gist of it was that the arrival of two Inquisitors wasn’t a big deal at all, unless it was a big deal, in which case it was a really big deal. The Inquisition long ago had become a “relatively non-psychotic, even bureaucratized, process.” This was evidenced by the fact that we saw the Warden Regulant and her officers all the time even when we weren’t in trouble. Though they reported to the Primate, they were technically a branch of the Inquisition. They even had the power to depose a Primate in certain circumstances (Arsibalt, warming to the task, here threw in some precedents of yore involving insane or criminal Primates). Consistent standards had to be maintained across all the world’s concents, or else the Reconstitution would be null and void. And how could that be achieved unless there existed this elite class of hierarchs—typically, Wardens Regulant who had doled out so much penance to their long-suffering fraas and suurs that they’d been noticed, and promoted—who traveled from concent to concent to poke around and keep an eye on things? It happened all the time. I just hadn’t noticed it until now.

  “I’m a little rattled by something that happened just before Provener,” I told him.

  We were out in the meadow, working on our second acre of tables. Suurs and younger fraas were scurrying around in our wake, lining the tables with chairs, covering them with paper. Older and wiser fraas were hauling on lines, causing a framework of almost weightless struts to rise up above our heads; later these would support a canopy. In an open-air kitchen in the center of the meadow, older suurs were trying to kill us with the fragrance of dishes that were many hours away from being served. Arsibalt and I had been trying for ten minutes to defeat the latching mechanism on the legs of an especially over-designed table: military surplus from a Fifth Century world war. Certain levers and buttons had to be depressed in the right sequence or the legs would not deploy. A dark brown leaf, folded many times, had been wedged into the undercarriage: helpful instructions written in the year 940 by one Fraa Bolo, who had succeeded in getting the table open and wanted to brag about it to generations of unborn avout. But he used incredibly recondite terminology to denote the different parts of the table, and the leaf had been attacked by mice. At a moment when we were about to lose our tempers, throw the table off the Praesidium, consign Fraa Bolo’s useless instructions to the fires of Hell, and run out the Decade Gate in search of strong drink, Fraa Arsibalt and I agreed to sit down for
a moment and take a break. That was when I told Arsibalt about my conversation with Varax and Onali—as the male and female Inquisitors were called, according to the grapevine.

  “Inquisitors in disguise, hmm, I don’t think I’ve heard of that,” Arsibalt said. Gazing worriedly at the look on my face, he added: “Which means nothing. It is selection bias: Inquisitors who can’t be distinguished from the general populace would of course go unnoticed and unremarked on.”

  Somehow I didn’t find that very comforting.

  “They have to move about somehow,” Arsibalt insisted. “It never occurred to me to wonder how exactly. They can’t very well have their own special aerocraft and trains, can they? Much more sensible for them to put on normal clothing and buy a ticket just like anyone else. I would guess that they happened to come in from the aerodrome just as your tour was beginning, and decided on the spur of the moment to tag along so that they could view the statues in the Rotunda, which anyone would want to see.”

  “Your words make sense but I still feel…burned.”

  “Burned?”

  “Yeah. That Varax tricked me into saying things I’d never have said to an Inquisitor.”