This sort of thing is to be expected.
Human beings, it turns out, are wired to perceive time in fractions — fractions of the amount of time they’ve lived so far. So while a summer stretches on for an impressive 1/24th of a six-year-old child’s accumulated timeframe, a man or woman of eighty perceives the same summer as only 1/320th of his or her own life, barely worthy of a tick on the octogenarian’s subjective, fractional clock. For the eighty-year-old human, seasons pass like freeway traffic.
Extend this phenomenon to people who’ve lived ten thousand years. For decamillennials, a single season amounts to no more than 1/40,000th of accumulated time, the perceptual equivalent of roughly six and a half hours from a thirty-year-old’s perspective. For most decamillennials, a week is barely a blip on the radar, and as for days, hours, and minutes — well, units of time this small aren’t noticed at all. A day is as significant to your average decamillennial as a dust mite is to a giant.
In short, you’ll have to forgive Punt for having difficulty keeping pace with the minute-to-minute rush of recent events.
We now return to the story.
“I’ve got it!” boomed Punt. “The very thing we need to put the kibosh on the IPT. What we need,” he continued, possibly with an impish grin somewhere beneath the huge moustache, “is a narrowly targeted strike.”
“I won’t countenance violence!” announced Lori 8. “A military strike on the IPT would —”
Punt guffawed an interruption. “You mistake me, Madame 6.”
“8,” said Lori.
“8?”
“Yes, 8.”
“You’re certain about that, are you?” said the Colonel.
“I would be, Colonel, as it’s my name.”
“Could’ve sworn it was 6.”
“No. It’s 8. Lori 8. You see, the name is a play on the word lau—”
“Have it your way then. Huaargh! 8 it is. What I was saying, Madame 8, is that we need to cause a strike — not a military manoeuvre, but the other sort: a labour disruption. Picket lines, protestors, greedy blighters hoisting signs. Occupy the IPT. That sort of thing. Easiest thing in the world. Just give the ruddy beggars a shove in the right direction and they’ll have the IPT service bunged up instanta.” He punctuated his last remark by downing the contents of his flask.
“So,” said the Solicitor, “you can cause the transport workers to disrupt the IPT?”
“Of course I can, lad!” Punt hollered. “I’m Guildmaster. Huaargh! Control the wages and whatnot. Time to take a firm hand, put the scallywags in line, remind them whose guild this is. Faugh! I’ll hit the filthy blighters with a pay cut. Nothing drastic, mind. Two per cent. Don’t want riots after all — hard on the machinery.”
“This could work,” said Mary Finn, shrewdly, “there would be a public reaction, of course. The citizens aren’t likely to look favourably on striking transport workers, particularly if the public is nervous about these rumours you mention.”
“Bah,” harrumphed Punt, turning toward the City Solicitor. “You’ll manage the civvies, laddie. Always do. Just table a back-to-work thingummy, keep it bogged down in committees until we want to re-open the network. Debates, public inquiries, that sort of thing. Your Joe Sixpacks and Johnny Lunchpails won’t pay any bally rumours a bit of mind. If the city were in peril, they’ll think — if they ever think, the ruddy nuggets — why would the government be fretting about a strike? Huaargh. It’ll distract the herd from the rumours, keep the blighters stuck in the city, and —”
“— and save you two per cent of your workers’ salaries,” wheezed Fleshpound.
“I’ll drink to that!” roared Punt.
The City Solicitor smiled. “Madame Chair, Chamber members,” he said, “I trust that Colonel Punt’s plan meets with your approval?”
A spreading mumble of assent showed that it did.
“Then I shan’t detain you further,” said the Solicitor.
Twenty-three seconds later the CoC had bustled noisily from the room, leaving Isaac standing alone before the City Solicitor’s desk with his head inclined respectfully.
“Report,” said the Solicitor.
“I’ve taken the minutes as ordered, m’lord. I can also report that Socrates’ mission proceeds apace.”
“Very well,” said the Solicitor. “And your impressions of the meeting?”
“Useful,” said Isaac, “albeit a little over-long. Unusual though.”
“How so?” said the Solicitor.
“The representatives claim to fear the One Foretold, yet were perfectly content to ignore the prophecies so long as their own commercial interests were protected,” said Isaac. “They obviously did not believe your denials of knowledge concerning the One Foretold, yet they failed to press the matter once their purses were protected.”
“More concerned with profits than with prophets?” said the Solicitor, smiling wryly.
“Excuse me, Your Eminence?” said Isaac, who would have found the wordplay more amusing had he been able to see it in print.
“Unimportant,” said the Solicitor, waving a hand dismissively. “You said the meeting was useful. Why do you think so?”
“The closure of the IPT,” said Isaac. “It will assist you in your own search for the One Foretold, limiting her ability to escape to the wild, where your ability to locate and control her would be compromised.”
“Indeed,” said the Solicitor, withdrawing a quill from his desk and dipping it into a silver inkwell before scribbling something into his ledger. “That reminds me, Isaac: access my personal agenda. Check off item seven under today’s date and delete all records of item thirty-nine.”
“Of course, sir,” said Isaac, who punched a key on his datalink to retrieve his master’s agenda. Item seven was “Meeting with CoC.” Item thirty-nine was “Arrange for Closure of IPT.”
Isaac’s eyes widened only slightly as he read item thirty-nine. He was used to this sort of thing. Meetings with the City Solicitor were a lot like late-night drives. You would start out at point A (viz, some particular point of view) and then end up at point B (that is, a settled intention to do whatever it is the City Solicitor wanted) with no clear recollection of how you’d managed to cross the space between. Isaac had found it disconcerting during his first few decades of serving the City Solicitor. Now he simply wrote it off as one of those things.
“Will you require anything further, m’lord?” asked Isaac.
“A small matter,” said the City Solicitor, still scribbling in his ledger. He stopped for a moment, laid down his quill, and withdrew a sheet of paper from a folder atop his desk. He slid the paper across his desk and rotated it toward Isaac. “What do you make of this symbol?” he asked.
The paper bore this figure:
Ω
“Hmm,” said Isaac. But what he thought was this:
Ω = σxσp ≥ ħ−2 .
In lay language, this meant that he was uncertain. Variants of the omega symbol were common enough, but divorced of any context they could mean anything.
“This symbol,” said the City Solicitor, “was featured on several tattoos. Tattoos found on the forearms of assorted members of Ms. Finn’s Order, part of a group she called the Eighth Street Chapter.”
“The group encountered by Socrates in his search for the One Foretold,” said Isaac, filling the dead air with an obvious observation, as people are wont to do.
The City Solicitor hmm’d in the affirmative while continuing to make entries in his ledger.
Isaac furrowed his brow. “Hypothesis,” he said. “The placement of the symbol in a tattoo suggests semiotic significance. Perhaps an insignia for a fraternal order or, to use the current vernacular, a gang symbol, a logo. Its acquisition might serve a ritualistic bonding function. Or perhaps it refers to a shared political movement. As for the symbol’s intrinsic meaning,”
Isaac continued, “it’s difficult to say. Obviously, the omega symbol may indicate an end, presumably the end of something significant to this group, though whether they seek or fear this ending is unclear.”
The City Solicitor gave another dismissive wave. “Yes, yes, all perfectly obvious,” he said. “Speculation is inadequate. I have an assignment for you, Isaac. You will collect and review whatever information you can discover about this symbol — its cultural relevance, semiotic etymology, occurrence in popular culture, et cetera. Place particular emphasis on its possible use as an insignia of anti-government sentiment, or an element of religious iconography, particularly religions featuring messianic prophecy.”
“It will be done, Your Eminence,” said Isaac, bowing slightly. He gave the symbol a final glance, folded the paper, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He turned to leave the lair, aware of a growing sense of imminent escape: the feeling he always felt when leaving the City Solicitor’s presence.
He opened the double doors and started across the threshold.
“Isaac,” called the Solicitor.
“Yes, my lord,” said Isaac, turning.
“Have you been taking your pills?”
“Of course, my lord. Every morning.”
“Very good,” said the Solicitor. “Carry on.”
* * *
24In response to requested impositions on the City Solicitor’s time, Isaac would say “I can’t be certain.” And he meant it.
Chapter 10
There was a bang.
There was a thump.
There was a crinkly sort of ping and a muffled “bugger.”
They were the sort of sounds you get when a mental patient who is shimmying through an air duct smacks his forehead on a beam.
The patient in this particular duct was Rhinnick Feynman, and the duct in which he shimmied was part of Detroit Mercy’s ventilation system. This particular duct led from an access panel near Rhinnick’s quarters — the room he shared with Ian Brown — toward the hospice’s infirmary. The duct was also a shade too narrow to permit a proper shimmy, let alone a respectable crawl or a full spelunk, so Rhinnick contented himself with a worm-like wriggle that carried him forward at a speed of roughly one mile per five weeks. It didn’t help that he was encumbered by his standard-issue DDH robe, by the penlight in his mouth, by the weathered journal in his left hand, and by the stubby, lime-green crayon in his right.
Rhinnick had brought the book and crayon along for the same reason that he always packed these items when setting out on a Perilous Journey. The Author, Rhinnick reasoned, would wish to devote a hefty block of text to Rhinnick’s acts of derring-do. And Rhinnick, surely the most devoted of the Author’s subjects, took it upon himself to save the Author the trouble of coming up with a first draft. It was, after all, any self-respecting Authorite’s highest spiritual calling to carry out the Author’s Work. In Rhinnick’s case, this meant preparing a detailed chronicle of his quests and personal triumphs for later inclusion in the Author’s Final Text.
Besides, having the most exciting bits written from Rhinnick’s unique perspective would give the Work that extra touch of diablerie that makes all the difference.
Rhinnick wriggled his way toward the infirmary, pausing every now and again to open his journal, ready his green crayon, and get down to the sacred business of Literary Composition.
* * *
The trouble began [Rhinnick wrote] when Henry burst into the Sharing Room and babbled a bit of rot about an intruder killing Zeus. Someone has killed Zeus, he’d said, the silly ass. Killed Zeus, forsooth! I mean to say, even Henry, the mouldiest cheese to ever don a hospice robe, ought to have known you can’t kill anyone in Detroit. Whatever had really happened to Zeus, he wasn’t dead. Or rather, he wasn’t any deader than he had been before whatever had happened had happened. QED.
That’s one of the downsides of life in a loony bin, I reflected while wriggling forward through the air duct: there are few reliable sources of information. You can scarcely put your faith in news that comes from a barmy old egg who can’t be trusted with scissors.
Even armed, as we were, with the knowledge that Henry’s grip on reality was about as firm as a runny custard, and knowing that — whatever had happened — Zeus certainly hadn’t been killed, the denizens of the hospice (self included) had reacted with a certain amount of alarm and agitation on hearing that Zeus had been attacked. The Sharing Room had erupted into one of those panicky murmurs you sometimes get when peril rears its head, and the Hospice Goons had mustered in the halls and promptly set about the business of wrangling patients into the dorms, locking each of us in our rooms for added security. The Goons had even secured Tonto in there with us, that Peerless Beauty having insisted that she not be separated from Ian during a time of hullabaloo.
It was at this point that Ian, sporting his usual look of befogged anxiety, spouted a bit of harebrained guff about chaps he called the “Greek gods.”
These Greek gods, Ian claimed, included a larger-than-life bounder who made a habit of chucking thunderbolts o’er the countryside and messing about with swans. This thunder-tosser was allegedly called Zeus, and Ian — that prize fathead — seemed to believe that it was this Zeus who’d been the subject of Henry’s news.
Understandable, I suppose. Not the commonest of names, Zeus. You don’t meet Zeuses every day. Toms, yes, Lewises, perhaps, and Williams, well, you meet Williams by the jug-full, but a Zeus you’re lucky to meet once or twice in an average year. I’ve met several of them myself, but none of them, I assured Ian, took an unhealthy view of swans. The Zeus of recent interest, I explained, was a hospice patient. A princk, in fact, and one whom I’ve long been pleased to list on the roster of my bosomest friends. I hadn’t seen much of this faithful pal of mine since Ian descended on the hospice, mind you, Zeus having been working cheek-by-jowl with Dr. Peericks in recent weeks, and Dr. Peericks being a blighter who it is my policy to sedulously avoid. But rest assured that so chummy were this Zeus and I that I hadn’t taken the news of an attack upon his person with my customary aplomb, if aplomb is the word I want. In fact, I was trembling in the digestive regions — quivering like a jelly, or perhaps shaken like a martini, if you prefer. But regardless of the simile one employs, I was distressed. A pal of mine had fallen into the soup and I yearned for news of the stricken comrade’s status. And say what you will about Rhinnick Feynman, when he hears of a pal in trouble he doesn’t shuffle about in dormitories and passively wait for rumours. He takes charge of the situation, grabbing any passing bulls by the horns (or so the expression is), and hopping to it. And so it was that, after listening at the door to ensure the coast was clear, I took a strengthening swig of Napoleonic Brue, shooed away a protesting Tonto, picked the lock of our chamber door, and hove for the open spaces, intent on undertaking a bit of Zeus-spotting reconnaissance.
A moment later I was in a nearby storage room that I knew provided access, via a panel above the surplus mayonnaise, to a series of open ducts. These ducts, by way of being of considerable assistance to the plot, are conveniently Rhinnick-sized, with sufficient room for the undersigned to wriggle his way throughout the hospice unimpeded by the patient-wrangling efforts of Hospice Goons.
I surmounted the mayonnaise, prised the cover from the duct, and — thanking the Author for declining to include “claustrophobic” in my character sketch — I bunged myself in.
If I’d had an audience they’d have marvelled at the display, for the lissomness with which I leapt ductward could have been matched only by a gazelle, if gazelles are the ones I’m thinking of. One moment: here is Rhinnick in repose, the very picture of terry-clad suavity and polish. The next: What ho? He’s gone! With no evidence of my passage save the usual sense of emptiness and longing that always follows my departure.
For the space of perhaps an hour I wriggled along the ducts, doing my best to plot a course toward the infirmar
y and pausing now and again to add to this record of my adventures. It was at the end of this first hour that I, having perceived a certain niffiness in the air, discerned that I was approaching my destination.
I foresee your objection. “Are you telling us,” you ask, with an unseemly note of incredulity, “that you, Rhinnick Feynman, no doubt as capable a chap who has ever spelunked a vent, are able to navigate such labyrinths by smell alone? Surely this is puffery,” you might add, with a touch of asperity, “surely you ask too much suspension of your public’s disbelief.”
“No, no, dear readers,” I respond, with that patient, soothing air I sometimes get. “Unfurrow your brows and wait for the ready explanation. I will spell out, in shortest order, how it was that I was able to sense the infirmary by smell, for the aforementioned niffiniess was, as intimated above, the only clue I had to my whereabouts.”
A hospice, as you’ll no doubt understand, is a fairly aromatic place at the best of times. But an infirmary in a hospice has a bouquet all its own. An immortal mental patient has an unmatched capacity for creative and prodigious personal injuries, ranging from the trivial to the grotesque. And with a brace of injured patients regenerating from all manner of innard-exposing wounds and ghastly gashes, together with the ointments, unguents, liniments, potions, and whathaveyous assisting them in their convalescing efforts, the overall effect is a scent too rich for the human nostril. An anosmatic wearing a diving helmet could identify the odour, providing only that he had stood among the vapours on at least one prior occasion. Nevertheless, I was drawn to this distinctive fug like a bloodhound on the chase, for if Zeus had been the victim of an attack, it was in the infirmary that I’d find him.
Having had your doubts assuaged you’re no doubt eager to get on with the plot and hop to the bit where I find Zeus. I counsel patience. Before diving into that juicy bit of narrative, dear reader, this Zeus must be explained: those members of my public who aren’t prepared for the promised meeting may express surprise and alarm should they stumble upon the above-named without warning.
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