The Weaver Fish

by Robert Edeson

  ‘I would have expected that to be the Palace,’ observed Worse, his gaze lifting to the dominating façade of L’Orphania.

  Nicholas looked around for others that might hear. ‘No one goes to the Palace. That’s why rumours abound. You know they say that the Prince keeps swints in cages. That would be the most irreligious act in Christendom, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m sure there are many good souls in captivity.’ Worse would not be drawn into relativism.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Nicholas, ‘this is the place where the Ferendes graduated from Protectorate to Republic. The Articles were signed in a wonderful Royal Gazebo, part of which is preserved as this.’ Nicholas gestured at the terminus. ‘There was a perfectly opulent royal tram carriage built for the occasion, and still used ceremonially from time to time, I believe.’

  ‘You really do sound like a tour leader, Nicholas,’ returned Worse, but he was enjoying the exposition. He added casually, ‘What do you know about the Palace security?’

  ‘Worse! Whatever you’re thinking, stop there. Impenetrable. Don’t even ask. That’s a fast route to disappearance.’

  ‘It was a perfectly innocent question, I thought,’ said Worse.

  ‘Well, innocence in Madregalo doesn’t mean not guilty.’

  Worse didn’t respond. He was staring at the fishing village, and appeared to change the subject. ‘Is there an heir to the throne here?’

  ‘There are two siblings. The brother is Crown Prince Arnaba. Totally different. A scholar, by contrast; a theologian I think. He chooses to live in exile, and anonymity, not to avoid the people, it is said, but to escape his brother. The sister is Crown Princess Namok; married to Marshal Yiscosh, ex-Egyptologist, and now paramilitary strongman in charge of State security. My friends in the Democrasi call him King Nepotisti, which sounds suitably pharaonic, don’t you think? They call her Runnin’, and while the two of them live off a bottomless royal purse in La Ferste, she pretends to progressive, republican values. She’s a shrill and shameless hypocrite, Worse; living privately like a spoilt princess, while at the same time she airs her cant in public at every opportunity, though I suspect most people by now recognize it for what it is.’

  ‘Well, the older we get, the more discerning we become around that sort of thing. So, a regular messed-up family, then. Was he really an Egyptologist? They’re generally likeable people. Apart from Napoléon, perhaps.’

  ‘Only euphemistically. He traded stolen Old Kingdom artifacts to secretive Asian galleries and collectors. Worse, you need to realize there’s a lot of euphemism in Ferende politics. It’s virtually codified, it’s politesse. The only effective counterforce is ridicule.’

  Worse concealed his distaste, and looked along the pier. There was a tram coming. ‘Let’s ride back.’ Very quietly, he added, ‘And revolution, surely.’

  As they walked across to the terminus, Worse looked out to sea. The cruising, industrial and naval docks were in La Ferste, and only one ship was anchored off Madregalo. It was a Chinese flagged destroyer. Nicholas noted Worse’s interest.

  ‘That’s quite a statement, mooring off here,’ he said. ‘The locals are left in no doubt as to who has influence, who has power. My friends would find that intimidatory. The Chinese will call it a goodwill visit.’

  Worse made no response, but took from a jacket pocket some compact binoculars and studied the vessel for a full minute. Eventually, Nicholas spoke.

  ‘Worse, in Madregalo you need to be careful where you rest your gaze. There is, you know, an invidious Internal Security Act. Paragraph 51; also called the Vanishing Act. No one will tell you they’ve actually seen it, the irony being it has to do with disappearing subjects. But there is a very visible Secretary, named Madam Kohl, who oversees it. Try to avoid her, Worse, and remember that you’re not the same free agent who left Perth.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s good advice, Nicholas,’ said Worse absently, folding the binoculars.

  As they rode the less-than-opulent public tram back to land, Worse noticed work teams setting up banners and decorations along the jetty.

  ‘Is all this regalia normal, or is there some festival about to happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nicholas. ‘We’ll ask this afternoon.’

  * * *

  Apart from its connection with acquisitive Egyptology, the name Napoléon Bonaparte appeared in the context of a recent Cambridge philosophy paper. Candidates were required to present four deconstructions (using, respectively, figmentation theory, credule analysis, Thortelmann path enumeration, and the post-subtlety paradigm) of the following expert statement:

  Many people assume that the Arc de Triomphe was built from the ground up. This is only half true, as the actual order of proceeding was to build it up on one side, across the top, and down to the ground on the other side. (The alarm and ridicule it was feared this might engender were abated by concealing works from the public behind enormous canvas screens, and this explains why no contemporary etchings exist depicting accurately the progress of construction. Those that purport to be so are the wholly predictable fantasies of illustrators allowed no actual viewing.) There was a sound practical reason for this. For Parisian engineers of the early 1800s, it gave confidence that in the future one or other vertical support could be removed, in turn (for restoration, say, or affixing revisionist iconography, or even to accommodate extravagantly broad Napoleonic parades), without risk of the whole structure collapsing. Almost two centuries of continuous good standing has proved their méthode expérimentale inspired. (Lord Enright, Arch and Lintel.)

  32

  ADMIRAL FENG

  They took the tram to its upper terminus, just outside the Palace entry, and walked back down Ahorte, the beautiful tramway boulevard connecting the Palace to the pier, as far as the Kardia, the main square of Madregalo. Nicholas secured an outdoor table at a café, while Worse found a tourist shop. He returned with a map of the city and sat down, unfolding it to study the central streets. Nicholas ordered coffees. Worse spoke without looking up from the map.

  ‘What did you decide to say to Millie about the families?’

  ‘I have told her the story, as well as I remember.’

  ‘We remember the vivid.’

  Nicholas was left to interpret this as approval. When the waiter reappeared with their order, Worse refolded his map with conspicuous ineptitude and asked innocently about the festivities in town.

  ‘Tomorrow is the biggest day for Madregalo, for the Ferendes. It is the signing of the treaty, the great peace and cooperation pact with the Envoy. The Entente.’

  ‘Envoy?’

  ‘Admiral Feng, the Chinese Envoy. The Ferendes will be rich, and protected by our great friend, the People’s Republic. Tomorrow, I will take my son to watch our biggest day. They will have the ceremony on the pier.’

  When the waiter had moved away, Nicholas and Worse exchanged looks. Worse placed the map on the table and leaned over, speaking quietly.

  ‘That was a well-rehearsed enthusiasm. Lacking something, though, didn’t you think?’

  ‘Authenticity,’ agreed Nicholas.

  ‘Joy,’ added Worse. He looked around. Work teams were in the square, erecting enormous portraits of Prince Nefari and Admiral Feng, along with rows of flags of the two nations. ‘It’s depressing how some things never change. Hegemony, exploitation, empire.’

  ‘Anyway, Feng’s not a diplomat, he’s a criminal,’ said Nicholas, lowering his voice when the waiter came close.

  ‘He may be both.’

  As Worse reached for his coffee, they heard sirens approaching. A police car followed by a black limousine entered the Kardia from the south on Ahorte, and stopped about fifteen metres from their café. The occupant of the limousine opened the tinted rear window and surveyed the activities in the square.

  ‘Admiral Feng,’ their waiter announced. ‘He will be visiting the Palace.’

  Feng’s gaze rested approvingly on his own portrait before glancing at the c
afé, where he found his eyes locked on the uncompromising stare of Worse.

  ‘Look down at the map, Nicholas,’ Worse instructed his companion sharply. His own face was partly concealed by the coffee cup, held before his mouth with two hands, elbows resting on the table. Feng sat forward slightly, as if to be absolutely sure of the insolence he was witnessing. Worse’s stare didn’t falter. The waiter, unnerved by the Admiral’s apparent attention, retreated to the kitchen. Half a minute later, Feng’s window closed, the siren restarted, and the motorcade resumed its course.

  ‘Through no fault of my own, I seem to have come to the Admiral’s notice,’ observed Worse drily.

  ‘I thought the Zheng visit presaged that fairly convincingly. What happened to Zheng, by the way?’

  ‘Not entirely sure. Dropped out of sight, quicker than he came.’

  Worse reached into his bag for his laptop and opened it on his knee. The locations of the two satellite phones identified from Fiendisch’s call history were converging, and he was now sure which party attached to each. It didn’t surprise him to confirm that the first call Fiendisch had made when the winery exploded was to Feng, not Nefari. He took up his mobile and dialled Nefari. It was about thirty seconds before the ringtone sounded, at which time it was immediately answered without greeting. Worse guessed that it was a personal handset, and didn’t waste time with niceties.

  ‘Listen carefully, Nefari. Feng isn’t just ripping up forests in the north for timber. He’s mining. He’s shipping out rare earths worth a fortune monetarily and strategically. That’s the mineral wealth of your people, and he’s not paying for it. Go up to the plain and see for yourself. There’re also massive hydrocarbon prospects offshore. Your shore. Feng will pump it dry to the PRC. Don’t sign the Entente tomorrow.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Tell Feng that ugly godson met certain death. Good, there’s Feng at the Palace door now.’

  ‘Zheng is dead?’

  Worse ended the call. Nicholas had gone into the café to pay their bill, and returned in time to hear the last few words. He thought Worse was joking at his expense.

  ‘Who was that? Prince Nefari himself, I suppose. On speaking terms, are you?’

  ‘I did most of the talking,’ Worse said.

  Nicholas’s smile vanished. ‘Jesus, Worse. What have you done?’ He looked around anxiously. ‘This is a police state, for Christ’s sake. We had better get moving.’

  Worse folded his laptop and returned it to his backpack, along with the map. Then, with his hands concealed within the pack, he removed the SIM card from his mobile, replacing it with another.

  ‘Sure,’ he said belatedly, and stood up.

  Across the square from their café, on its northern perimeter, was the historic main branch of Banco Ferende, its façade now partly obscured by national flags. Nicholas pointed it out to Worse, almost ruefully. It had served him well when he lived at the LDI station, and he liked its manager. He decided that today he would not pay his respects as he might normally have done when in the city. Even though Nicholas felt certain that Mr Denari could not be corrupt, the bank itself was demonstrably manipulated by the Prince and Feng Tong.

  There was still half an hour before they were to meet Nicholas’s contacts, in a church a short distance to the east. By now, Worse’s insouciance had calmed Nicholas, and he was keen to show his friend something on the way. He led Worse across the square.

  The centre of the Kardia was dominated by a beautiful fountain, sculpted in glass. From some distance, Worse thought he was looking at a large, rather featureless semi-transparent ice cube with water running down its sides into a circular pool. But as he approached, he could discern its finer form, that the apparent block was a three-dimensional tapestry of fish interwoven most ingeniously.

  Encircling the pool were park benches made of stainless steel and heavy cast glass, and several people were sitting, eating snack lunches, reading, or just looking.

  ‘Weaver fish,’ said Nicholas quietly.

  Worse said nothing. He walked a short distance around the pool, to where there was a vacant seat, but remained standing, staring at the sculpture. Although the object was in front of him, he was trying to recompose its geometry in his mind, trying to understand it, understand how the artist could have made something so beautiful, so impossible, but solid and real.

  Nicholas followed Worse around, sitting down behind him, observing his friend with more interest than he had for the fountain. They were like that for ten minutes, when Worse turned to him.

  ‘You must tell me about weaver fish, Nicholas.’

  Nicholas stood up as Worse set off distractedly in the direction of St Alonzo’s. Halfway across the open space, Nicholas received a call from his friends. They were unable to meet after all, and were reluctant to talk on the phone. He reported this to Worse, whose only response was to change direction, heading for where they had parked the rental car.

  * * *

  Worse was not the first to be entranced by Otavio Fitrina’s glass fountain. Computer simulations have determined the optimal ‘crystalline’ structure of a three-dimensional woven array of weaver fish to be a rectangular prism, and the sculptor has chosen the cube. The secret to the quite magical interior detail is that it was cast sequentially in cubic laminations (there are sixteen). The glass used in each successive casting was composed to have a lower melting point than the previous layer, which was tempered and pre-cooled. In this way, sculptural detail was preserved throughout the solid form. During manufacture, the progressively enlarging core was centred on a tubular titanium mandrel, which now functions as the fountain water conduit.

  There is a small but erudite literature on the flotation physics of the weaver fish superstructure, and how it might be supported. Those fish above the water’s surface lose buoyancy, and it is hypothesized that their weight must be balanced by a subsurface platform of weaver fish arrayed to swim (albeit stationary) uniformly upward, and so precisely numbered as to satisfy equilibrium of forces. Fitrina has portrayed this base layer of vertically columned fish, though it is difficult to discern beneath the water.

  Visitors are advised that the fountain is the most frequently, but most incompetently, photographed attraction in Madregalo, and are urged to purchase one of the beautiful professional images offered commercially, even as postcards. These were obtained using specialized strobe lamp trans-illumination and a research-quality light-field camera, where the image is resynthesized digitally in post-production. The technique reproduces extraordinarily the intricacy of weaver fish intercalation deep within the sculpture.

  You may notice that the fountain water is very slightly purplish, and that seagulls, which are generally a nuisance in the square, never settle in the surrounding pool. The explanation is given that weaver fish, by their nature barely visible, inhabit its depths. Whatever the truth of this, the possibility has certainly deterred vandals.

  33

  LA FERSTE

  Worse asked Nicholas to do the driving to La Ferste. They were both quiet. The forty-kilometre drive was slowed by roadworks and survey teams planning the new motorway, and in places the temporary detour loops were barely passable. Half an hour into the journey, Worse took his mobile from the backpack and pressed a number. Names were not exchanged.

  ‘I can’t make my report until I get some help with punctuation,’ said Worse. ‘Can you recommend a grammarian in these parts?’

  ‘I expected you to ask before you left, and I have a name right here. He’s a philatelist, but a most accomplished apostrophist as well. You will find him excellent.’

  ‘He wouldn’t like Verita’s, would he? How will I know him?’

  ‘By his incomparable grammar. And he speaks ... elliptically. I will tell him to expect you.’

  Worse wrote down some details, finishing the call with, ‘Thank you.’ He then leaned forward to program an address into the car’s GPS. Nicholas contained his curiosity only to that point.

  ‘Wh
at was that about? I can help with grammar, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Not this variety. Special punctuator with remote full stopping. Victor is helping. Do you mind following the instructions?’ Worse leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. It wasn’t difficult for Nicholas to decode.

  ‘Jesus, Worse. Do we need that sort of thing here? You can’t seriously be thinking of, you know, the Prince.’

  ‘We are thinking seriously of everything, Nicholas.’

  Worse hadn’t opened his eyes. He was quiet for a full minute, then added, ‘Feng is on top. Feng runs Nefari and Nefari runs Banco Ferende. Feng ran Fiendisch and Fiendisch ran the Humboldt. Feng ran Fiendisch and Fiendisch ran his team of killers, Stronk and the other two. Feng ran Zheng. Feng runs the northern operation. Feng will run the Entente.’

  Worse was quiet for another minute, then spoke again. ‘So, Feng ordered me dead. Feng ordered you dead. Feng ordered Millie dead. Feng is the one. Don’t waste sympathy on him.’

  Nicholas didn’t respond, and the only voice in the car for the next hour was synthesized in the satnav, guiding them onto the Marshal Yiscosh Expressway. The address was on the other side of the city centre, over the Peril River, and they crossed on the spectacular CoshEx suspension bridge. When Nicholas slowed at the east-side toll plaza, Worse woke up.

  ‘When you get there, drive past while I have a look. We’ll park in the next block. You should wait in the car and I’ll walk back.’

  No more was said. Worse didn’t catch sight of the address as they passed, but he had a street number to identify it, and set off along the footpath. It was a good area of town, with several antique map shops, philatelists, coin and medallion traders, and rare-book sellers. Normally, Worse would have enjoyed browsing in all of them, and perusing his prize purchases in one of the cafés that he passed.

  He pushed open the door of No 303. A short, white-haired, bespectacled man was completing a transaction with a customer. Worse looked at some sheets of historic Ferende stamps, many with depictions of a chariot seemingly drawn by condors in a two-by-two harness. He was studying a framed etching of Madregalo from the sea, dated 1916, when the owner approached him.