‘Either we are close, or we’ve followed Glimpse to a dead end where he had to find another way, in which case so will we,’ said Nicholas.
Worse was walking across the clearing. He kicked the dirt.
‘I think he camped here,’ he said. ‘This has been a fire.’
The others came over to look.
‘By my reckoning,’ said Worse, ‘we’re only a few kilometres from the edge. I vote we eat and then hike it from here.’
Worse plotted a compass course, but it wasn’t difficult to follow Glimpse’s trail. At intervals they could see drag marks as if something had been pulled along the ground. That would probably be a sack of josephites, headed for the truck, suggested Paulo.
The ground was still rising. At one point the path seemed to become clearer. Paulo commented on the fact, and they stopped to examine it. The demarcation from surrounding forest was subtle but definite.
‘You know, Nicholas,’ said Paulo. ‘If the big josephites you saw in the second chamber came from the volcano, how did those people get them there?’
Nicholas had considered this.
‘A lot of labour. Sleds of some kind. What are you thinking, Paulo?’
‘I wonder if we are on Glimpse’s Volcano Road, and he discovered traces of an ancient path between here and the caves.’
‘Are you meaning Neolithic, that sort of ancient?’ asked Worse.
‘Possibly,’ said Paulo.
‘Neolithic roads have been identified,’ said Nicholas. ‘Quite a number in Europe. Some in the UK. I went on a school excursion to see one.’
They all looked at the ground.
‘Poor Edvard. Now he’ll need to find the right archaeologists for an excavation out here,’ said Paulo. He was smiling.
The incline became noticeably steeper, which they took as indicating that their objective was close. Nicholas was leading the way when he suddenly stopped, raising a hand.
‘Listen,’ he said.
The others stopped, but could hear nothing unusual.
‘That’s swint song,’ said Nicholas, ‘but quite unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s …’ He hesitated, concentrating. ‘I think it’s terza rima. My God.’
He was urgently removing recording equipment from his pack, and set off holding a microphone high in the air while he adjusted an amplifier in his other hand. Paulo and Worse looked at each other, and followed him, staying back to minimize noise.
Nicholas was about twenty metres ahead of them when he stopped again, still holding up the microphone. He turned and beckoned. Paulo was the first to reach him. Worse held back a little, recording their position.
When Worse climbed the final few metres to the rim of the caldera, he had just a few moments to take in the scene before an extraordinary thing happened.
As one, millions of swints rose from the forest in front of them, blackening the sky across the volcanic plain. Nicholas stopped recording; that sound would not be analysable.
‘I think some have recognized you as their saviour at the palace, Worse,’ he said, ‘and they’re letting the others know.’
Worse stayed focused on their project.
‘See if you can pick up Glimpse’s tracks from here.’
A short distance to their left they found drag marks similar to those seen before, and followed the trail into the caldera. The swints were gradually resettling, and seemed unperturbed when the three men passed close to large groups feasting on seki fruit. Nicholas began recording again.
‘We seem to have discovered the secret food bowl of our swints,’ whispered Paulo to Worse. ‘The seki here may have higher levels of gold—volcanic gold. Swints need that for their blood.’
Glimpse’s track was easily followed. Two hundred metres in, they reached a small clearing where the vegetation was cut back and the ground had obviously been disturbed. Without exchanging words, they all knew that here was Glimpse’s mine site.
Worse detached a long sound from the back of Paulo’s pack. He tested the ground near the centre of the previous excavation, moving outwards to the edge. His expectation was that any readily accessible josephites would have been taken, but pristine samples might be found at the perimeter of the dig.
And it was there, at the boundary of the turned-over soil, where the sound struck stone at half a metre. Paulo came over with a spade and set about digging. Within a few minutes he lifted to the surface a twenty-centimetre-diameter clear josephite and held it up, brushing peat-like earth from its surface. Worse quickly supplied a black plastic bag to protect it from the light.
All this time, no words passed between them. Nicholas, wearing bulky headphones, had watched the exercise as he held a boom microphone high into the vines, capturing the chatter of inquisitive swints.
The seki vine is known to concentrate gold from alluvial soils, and Paulo surmised that this might occur even more so in volcanic strata. Seki fruit is the main source of this essential element for swints, whose yellow blood cells seasonally utilize a gold-heteroglobin for oxygen transport, in place of iron-containing haemoglobin (see note to previous chapter).
The presumed acclamation of the swints, attributed by Nicholas to recognition of their saviour from the palace, might have a different explanation. In being the third to appear on the caldera rim, Worse completed a human thrice. Avian psychologists suspect that sums to 1 or 2 (mod 3) cause population anxiety in swints.
Nicholas soon came to realize that the changeable infrared radiance he had studied was not due to subsurface volcanic activity, but explained by the thermal mass of enormous swint roosts. In subsequent weeks he obtained high-resolution radar imaging and gravity mapping of the region. These reveal a rising elevation at the centre of the plain, many kilometres from where they had explored. When informed of the findings, Tøssentern, whose imagination can have a leaping, consternating character, immediately suggested that in the past the caldera accommodated a lake with a central island, evoking once more the Circular Sea and Rep’husela’s throne. He would need yet another team of specialists to test that hypothesis.
24 SIMILE OF THE CAVE
When they returned to their vehicles, it was too late in the day for safe navigation back to the Madregalo road. This had been anticipated and they were well prepared for a night camping. Worse raked dry fuel away from the remains of Glimpse’s camp oven, dug it out, and started a fire. All three knew it wasn’t necessary for warmth, light, cooking or protection from beasts, but it was indefinably comforting. Paulo set out folding chairs, and Worse chose to sit with his back to the forest, the fire between him and the Land Rovers.
It was still light, and Worse offered to make proper tea. The others wondered what an Australian might mean by that in the remoteness of a forest, and were curious when he produced a billy requisitioned from the LDI canteen storeroom. Worse filled it with water, supporting it over the fire on a rig fashioned from the steel sound and two makeshift uprights.
They talked about the day’s events, and discussed how the discovery of the volcano should be handled. Paulo had researched the subject and found no references to their occurrence in the Ferendes, which had never been considered as volcanic in origin. It was decided he should refer the question to Edvard, who would inform the appropriate ministries and propose research policies.
Night fell quickly. Worse noticed that Nicholas had been unusually quiet.
‘The swint song has stopped,’ said Worse.
Nicholas looked up from the fire.
‘We think that they still sing very softly at this time of day, just within the thrice.’
‘As in vespers, perhaps?’ asked Worse.
‘We shall shortly know, I believe.’
By virtue of his schooling, Worse had once been well read in talmudic, biblical and koranic legend, but for many years his atheistic interest had been narrowed to the exquisite Second Letter to the Syllabines (its precursor is lost) and the first-century Gospel of St Ignorius, or more particularly the fragmentary writings o
f its Renaissance interpreter, Leonardo di Boccardo. Fundamentally ethical and free of mendacious provenance, these were more agreeably humanist, with a worldliness and occasional irony that Worse found suited to modern life.
Naturally, he was very interested in Nicholas’s programme of birdsong decipherment, particularly any elucidation of the swint’s counting ability. Solving those challenges would be a monumental achievement of experimental design, applied acoustics and computational analysis, quite apart from its existential significance to human civilization. He was, with others, unimpressed that certain combatants in the Chirping Wars had chosen skirmish over civil engagement, voicing prejudgement in the popular press. Worse had no such concerns with Nicholas, whom he knew to be a scrupulously unbiased thinker. That last answer he gave, ending in ‘I believe’, had nothing religious about it. It just sounded enormously respectful.
‘If the mythology is proven, that swints really are the true Prophet and Apostles of God, how imperilled will they be?’
Worse was looking at the fire, but Nicholas knew the question was to him. He was shocked at the thought.
‘They will be revered, Worse. They will be properly revered.’
‘Not by all, Nicholas.’
It was quick, definite and blunt. Nicholas was dismayed.
‘Are you thinking of some kind of slaughter of the innocents?’ asked Paulo. His spectacles reflected red flame light.
The barbarity imaged in the softly spoken question might reposition some in their thinking, but Worse was already there. He was still watching the fire.
‘Well, that never really came to an end, did it? The dogs bark, but the caravan of tyrannies moves on.’
Paulo and Nicholas stayed silent. Worse was not finished.
‘The charlatan saint is a many-layered fiend.’
It was a line from Monica Moreish, spoken by Virgil in the underworld. Worse omitted the canto’s unpeeling vileness, and its ‘core of kneeling lust’ conclusion.
Nicholas was clearly upset. He summoned his mathematician’s idealism.
‘It’s a matter of education, Worse. If they prove to be what you say, the swint gospel, as it were, will speak for itself. Surely.’
Ah yes, thought Worse. Listen to the thriced. But in the matter of learning, Leonardo had also written
Reason turns a Devil’s spell:
The remedied to good,
But not the infidel.
It made Worse depressed, and he offered no reply to Nicholas.
Every so often, Paulo or Nicholas would stand up to do a chore, and Worse could see their dramatically enlarged shadows projected on the Land Rover sides. Fire, cave, shadow, prayer, treachery, and walking the path of ancient peoples carrying supernatural crystals—if we know and hold the human condition by inheritance, then these were surely in its altar-burse of passing-pieces.
With a pennyweight of melancholy as well. Worse looked upwards to the earliest stars, then back at his two friends across the fire. It was the remorseless hour, when the compass of inconsequential mortal being becomes those small infinities of night.
He thought again about the swints, and for the first time felt drawn to one preferred truth: out here, in the forest, lost in wonder, he hoped their holiness would be proved. That made him depressed again.
On the trek back to the campsite, Worse had collected some foliage that he found interesting. To lighten his mood he now retrieved a handful from where it was dumped near the front vehicle. As he walked around the fire, a new shadow took form, alive, fleeting, and not identifiably his.
He returned to his seat, tearing leaves into thin strips that he piled on his lap. Nicholas and Paulo watched in silence, concerned that Worse’s idea of proper tea was to brew these suspect pickings of the forest trail. There was also a palpable quiet left over from the swint conversation.
Quite unexpectedly for the others, Worse leaned forward and threw the strips not into the billy, but directly onto the fire. There was a sudden, loud whoosh, and a flare of brilliant blue-white light that died within a second. Paulo and Nicholas recoiled instinctively. Even Worse was surprised at the result of his experiment.
‘What was that, Worse?’ asked Nicholas, with undisguised reproach.
‘The leaves reminded me of a tree from my childhood,’ said Worse. ‘A similar terebinth smell, I thought. Rich in volatiles, obviously. Interesting.’
Alarming, more than interesting, the others were thinking.
‘It’s boiling,’ reported Paulo. He hadn’t spoken since the Herod reference.
Worse stood up and threw black tea leaves into the water. He watched the turbulence for a minute before lifting the sound off the fire, carrying the billy with it.
‘Watch carefully,’ he said.
Worse grasped the lidless billy’s wire handle, using green forest leaves for insulation. He stood back from the fire, and began to swing the billy like a pendulum. Suddenly, from a forward under-swing, it went full circle at high speed, revolving around and around at arm’s length, the boiling tea retained by nothing but centrifugal force. He stopped the exercise by running forward as it slowed.
‘Settles the tea leaves. Not for use indoors.’
Nicholas and Paulo, scientists as they were, still looked disbelieving. Worse walked around the fire to them.
‘Hold out your mugs. This is genuine outback billy tea, for which we can thank physics.’
The next afternoon, Nicholas took Worse for a walk to see the Edge. This is the southern escarpment of the Joseph Plateau, high over the plain that extends to the Bergamot Sea. Their path ended at a clearing that had functioned as the anchor station for Tøssentern’s research balloon Abel, which was lost in a storm the previous year. LDI kept a few shelters and storage facilities there, but it mostly served as a constitutional retreat for staff, particularly in the evenings.
Nicholas unfolded two canvas chairs and set them up overlooking the sea. For those fortunate to have explored outside the main population centres of the Ferendes, this was one of the most beautiful views in the whole country. Nicholas had something on his mind.
‘Are you looking forward to having Millie come to Perth?’
Worse turned to look at him.
‘Of course. Very much so.’
Nicholas continued looking into the distance. It was as if he had felt the need to raise a subject only to find he had nothing to say. Worse was slightly discomforted. He spoke unnecessarily.
‘I’ve offered that she stay in the spare apartment, until she can organize exactly what she wants,’ he said.
Nicholas didn’t speak for several seconds.
‘You know, this is a special place for us. When Edvard was missing, we would spend a lot of time here, looking out. Especially Anna. I think we all hoped that Abel would float into view, come into dock, and Edvard would walk over and sit beside us with some amazing adventure story to explain his disappearance.’
‘I can imagine how hard that time must have been,’ said Worse.
‘Now, I gather Edvard is thinking this would be a good place to site offices and labs for all the teams he’s putting together, archaeologists and the rest,’ continued Nicholas. ‘They will need accommodation as well, seminar rooms, dining hall, and so on. Very likely, there will be graduate students out here too. Placing everything at the Edge will be Edvard’s way of protecting the LDI educational and language functions from disruption by all the new cave and volcano studies.’
‘So, a Ferende campus of Cambridge, effectively?’ said Worse, looking around the clearing.
‘Something like that,’ said Nicholas.
‘How do you feel about all that change coming?’
‘I think it will be fantastic.’
‘There’s no talk of a replacement for Abel?’ asked Worse.
‘None at all. Edvard’s done that. He’s seen weaver fish.’
Mention of Abel set Nicholas staring out to sea again. Worse relaxed in his chair. They stayed like that for several minutes,
until Nicholas spoke.
‘I’ve been thinking over the things you said last night. About swints.’
Worse waited. Nicholas continued.
‘It brings up that old science–ethics dilemma. Should one—should I—do research that foreseeably could have social or other harm as a consequence?’
Worse remained quiet.
‘It’s not a question that mathematicians need to ask normally,’ said Nicholas.
Worse didn’t speak. He hadn’t been asked to.
‘I would value your opinion, Worse,’ said Nicholas a minute later.
Worse spoke slowly, still looking at the sea.
‘In the case of your swint studies, my view would be that you are entitled to continue with a clear conscience,’ he said. ‘More than entitled. Obligated.’
Nicholas waited. Worse resumed speaking, softly.
‘We are servants of the lighthouse
—all of us,
carrying wood to the fire,
making light.
Making shadows.’
‘Satroit?’ asked Nicholas after a moment.
‘It’s about Pharos of Alexandria, but I think he’s saying we are all responsible for a truthful world.’ Worse looked at his friend. ‘Light falls guiltless even on the tyrant, Nicholas. Meaning, the evil in a shadow is not of light’s making.’
They were quiet again for some minutes. Worse was the first to speak.
‘Nicholas. As I understand it, you have in mind that in the near future you will be able to interpret swint speech, synthesize it, then presumably hold conversations, interrogate them, perhaps.’
‘Yes.’
‘What will be the first thing you say?’
Nicholas smiled. ‘Hello. My name is Nicholas. Tell me everything you know.’ He stood up. ‘Perhaps we should get back to Paulo.’ As he folded the chairs for storage, he said, ‘You know, Worse, Millie likes you.’ He met Worse’s eye in a way that added to the words without repeating them.
They walked back to the station in silence.
Bad to Worse Page 17