The Confusion

by Neal Stephenson

  Danny made a sort of throat-clearing noise. "We came here to do that specifically—honor our mum, that is. It's just that in order to do it, we had to settle a score wi' Dad."

  "Well, now that you've settled it," said Jack, pointing to various large swellings on his face, "shut up, because I'm trying to educate you. Before we embarked on theologickal disputations, I was talking about the Palace of the Great Mogul in Shahjahanabad, outside Delhi. It rises above the flood plain of a river, and on that plain, the Great Mogul stages mock-battles between armies of hundreds of elephants, and as many horse and camel. The expense, for elephant-feed alone, is damnable."

  "Let's go! I ha' to see it!" exclaimed Jimmy, all starry-faced.

  "Doahn't be such a shite-for-brayans!" said Danny. "Cahn't you perceive, he's tryin' to payant a picture of Oriental decadence?"

  "I can perceive it as clearly as your ugly fayace! But I ha'n't rode all this friggin' way to beat up Dad an' then go hoahm! I'd not be above seein' a wee sahmple of Oriental decadence afore I leave—assoomin' that'd be all right wi' ye, Parson Brown."

  "You'll see Oriental decadence and then some, if you'll only shut up—but you won't see it in my kingdom. Because the point I was leading up to is as follows. Among those omerah s is a fair sprinkling of Christian artillerymen—renegadoes and Vagabond soldiers from the armies of King Looie and the Holy Roman Emperor. Aurangzeb needs 'em, you see, because they've mastered the al-jebr, which is a sort of mathematickal sorcery that we had the good sense to steal from the Arabs. And by wielding this al-jebr they can predict where cannonballs will land, which is a useful thing to know in a battle. Consequently, Aurangzeb simply cannot make do without 'em."

  "What has this t'do wi' you, Dad, who doahn't know al-jebr from jabber?" said Danny.

  "In the clouded and furious imaginings of the Great Mogul, I am just another Frankish sorcerer. Which is to say that I could be reclining on a silken pillow in Shahjahanabad right now while some Hindoo lass played knick-knack on my chakras. But instead I am here!" And at this point Jack was secretly glad that his sons had been interrupting him the whole way, because the timing had worked out just as in some reasonably well-produced theatrical production: He spurred his donkey forward to the bare top of a hill and swept out a vast arc with his arm. "Look well and carefully upon these domains, my sons—for one day, they will not be yours!"

  "Fook it in that case—we've already seen 'em," said Jimmy. "Which way to Shahjahanabad?"

  "As you can see, my jagir resembles one of those large earthenware trays in which we make saltpeter. It has a flat hard bottom caked with salty mud, in which what little grows is immediately eaten. The sloped sides of the tray, then, are these ranges of hills that surround it on all sides—save in one place, down below us here, which—in this similitude—is the spout of the tray. It is a stretch of marshes, a sort of Reptile Paradise, that leads eventually to the Bay of Bengal."

  "Beggin' your pardon, Dad, but your royal highness's rayan lasts another—what—four months?"

  "One hundred sixteen days and counting."

  "Then whoy should me 'n' Danny give a fook?"

  "If you would shut up for ten consecutive minutes, I'd get to that," said Jack, and took advantage of his altitude to try to find Surendranath and Enoch Root—who seemed to think that the only purpose of going on journeys was to wander about and gawk at all and sundry. Not long after they'd all left the Royal Palace at Bhalupoor (Jack's summer capital, up in the hills), the Banyan and the alchemist had fallen into conversation. Not long after that, they'd evidently lost all interest in the incessant banter of the Shaftoes, and in the last few minutes they had dropped out of the caravan altogether. A retinue of spare palanquin-bearers, bodyguards, aides, and other wallahs had come along with them, and these were spreading out as the gap between Jack's and Enoch's group widened, trying to maintain some sort of contact; Jack could barely see the closest one, and could only hope that that fellow could see the next. The danger lay not in getting lost (for Surendranath knew the way better than Jack), and not in wild animals (according to Jimmy and Danny, Enoch could take care of himself), but in Thugs, Dacoits, and Maratha raiding-parties. Today's journey was taking them along the southern rim of the metaphorical Tray, and at no point were they more than a few miles away from some Maratha fort or outpost.

  Jack realized with mild astonishment that Jimmy and Danny were actually listening to him.

  "Oh, yes. Precisely because the Great Mogul hands out his king-ships on a strictly limited three-year term, every king must devote his energies, from the first day of his reign, to preparing for the day when he will be a king no more. Now here I could speak to you of details for twelve hours, and those of you who are fascinated by tales of Oriental decadence would hear much to marvel at. Instead I will summarize it as follows: There are two approaches to being a king. One, remain in Shahjahanabad and maneuver and strive against all the others in hopes that the Great Mogul will reward thee with another kingship at the end of the three years."

  "I can guess two," said Danny. "Avoid Shahjahanabad as if 'twere a plague-town. Go dwell in your jagir and do all you can to suck it dry, so you can get out wi'a shite-loahd o' money…"

  "Just like an English lord in Ireland," Jimmy added.

  Jack heaved a great sigh; sniffled once; and wiped a tear from his eye. "My sons, you do me proud."

  "That is the course you be steerin', then, Dad?"

  "Not quite. Sucking this jagir dry is like getting blood from beef jerky. My illustrious predecessors have been sucking it dry for millennia. Really it is one great sucking apparatus—there is a zamindar or chief tax collector, who does the sucking on behalf of whomever is king at the moment."

  "That'd be the wog in the palankeen, then…"

  "Surendranath is my zamindar. His agents hover over the markets in my two cities—Bhalupoor in the hills, where we stayed last night, and Dalicot on the coast, where we are going now. For those are the places where the produce of the earth or sea is exchanged for silver. And since I must pay my taxes to the Great Mogul in silver, that is the only place to collect it. The tax rate is fixed. Nothing ever changes. The jagir produces a certain meager income, and there is no way to increase it."

  "So what've you been doin' all these years, Dad?" Jimmy demanded.

  "My first move was to lose some battles—or, at the very least, fail to win them—against the Marathas."

  "Why? Y'know how t'make phosphorus. You could've scared those Marathas shitless and driven 'em into the sea."

  "This was tactical losing, Danny boy. The other omerah s—I mean the intriguing types in Shahjahanabad—had heard tales of that phosphorus. It was in their nature to look on me as a dangerous rival. If I'd gone out and started winning battles, they'd've begun sending assassins my way. And I already have my hands full with French, Spanish, German, and Ottoman assassins."

  "But by makin' yerself out to be a feckless Vagabond shite-for-brayans, you assured yourself of some security," said Jimmy.

  "Moguls and Marathas alike want me to stay alive—for another one hundred and sixteen days, anyway. Otherwise I never would've lasted long enough for you boys to journey out and beat me up."

  "But what then, Dad? Have you done anything here besides losin' battles and mulctin' wretches for pin-money?"

  "Ssh! Listen!" Jack said.

  They listened, and mostly heard their own stomachs growling, and a breeze in the trees. But after a few moments they were able to make out a distant chop, chop, chop.

  "Woodcutters?" Danny guessed.

  "Not just any wood, and not just any cutters," said Jack, spurring his donkey down off the hilltop and riding toward the sound. "Mark this tree over here—no, the big one on the right! That is teak."

  "Tea?"

  "Teak. Teak. It grows all over Hind."

  "What's it good for?"

  "It grows all over Hind, I said. Think about what that means."

  "What's it mean? Just give it to us straight, Dad. We're no
good at riddles," Jimmy said; at which Danny took offense.

  "Speak for yourself, ninny-hammer. He's tryin' to tell us that nothin' succeeds in eatin' this type o' wood."

  "Danny's got it," Jack said. "None of the diverse worms, ants, moths, beetles, and grubs that, sooner or later, eat everything here, can make any headway against teak-wood."

  SEVERAL TALL TEAKS HAD BEEN felled in the clearing, but even so, Danny and Jimmy had to peer around for a quarter of an hour to realize what the place was. In Christendom there would have been a pit full of wood-shavings, and a couple of sawyers playing tug-of-war with a saw-frame the size of a bed-stead, slicing the logs into squarish beams, and looking forward to the end of the day when they could go home to a village some distance down the road. But here, a whole town had sprung up around these fallen trees. It had been a wild place before, and would be wild again in a year, but today, hundreds dwelt here. Most of them were gathering food, cooking, or tending children. Perhaps two score adult males were actually cutting wood, and the largest tool that any of them had was a sort of hand-adze. This trophy was being wielded by an impressive man of perhaps forty, who was being closely supervised—some would say nagged—by a pair of village elders who had an opinion to offer about every stroke of the blade.

  The village's approach to cutting up these great teak-logs had much in common, overall, with how freemasons chipped rough blocks of stone one tiny chisel-blow at a time. At the other end of the village, some of them were scraping away at almost-finished timbers with potshards or fragments of chipped rock. Some of these timbers were square and straight, but others had been carved into very specific curves.

  "That there would be a knee brace," Danny said, looking at a five-hundred-pound V of solid teak.

  "Do not fail to marvel at how the grain of the wood follows the bend of the knee," Jack said.

  "It's as if God formed the tree for this purpose!" said Jimmy, crossing himself.

  "Aye, but then the Devil planted it in the middle of a million others."

  "That might've been part of God's plan," Danny demurred, "as a trial and a test for the faithful."

  "I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am no good at tests of that sort," Jack said, "but these kolis are another matter. They will wander the hills for weeks and look at every single tree. They'll send a child scampering up a promising teak to inspect the place where a bough branches off from the trunk, for that is where the grain-lines of the wood curve just so—and, too, it's where the wood is strongest and heaviest. When they've found the right tree, down it comes! And they move the whole village there until the wood has been shaped and the timbers delivered."

  "I didn't think the Hindoos were seafarin' folk," Jimmy said, "other than wee fishin' boats and such."

  "Most of these kolis will go to their graves, or to be precise, their funeral-pyres, without ever having laid eyes on salt water. They have been roaming the hills forever, going where they find work, supplying timbers for buildings, palanquins, and whatnot. When I became king they started coming here from all over Hindoostan."

  "You must pay 'em summat. I thought you had no revenue."

  "But this comes from a different purse. I am not paying these folk with tax money."

  "Where is the friggin' money comin' from, then?" Jimmy demanded.

  "More than one source. You'll learn in good time."

  "He an' that Banyan must've made a shite-load of money when they brought that caravan home to Shahjahanabad," Danny observed.

  "It wasn't just me and the Banyan, but the whole Cabal—or rather the half of it that had not fallen into the snares of Kottakkal, the Malabar pirate-queen."

  "Hah! Now, there is your Oriental decadence!" Danny exclaimed to Jimmy, who was momentarily speechless.

  "You have no idea," Jack muttered.

  IT TOOK THEM ALMOST TWO hours to track down Enoch and Surendranath, who had wandered quite beyond the frontier of Jack's kingdom and into a sort of lawless zone between it and a Maratha stronghold. Through the center of that no-man's-land ran a small river in a large gulley—a steep-sided channel that the water had cut down through black earth every bit as slowly and patiently as the kolis whittling their beams.

  "I should've predicted that we would find Enoch in the Black Vale of Vhanatiya," Jack said, when he finally caught sight of the alchemist down below.

  "Who's that bloke in the turban?" Jimmy demanded, peering down over the lip of the gulley. Ten fathoms below them, in the bottom of the gorge, Enoch was standing in knee-deep water, conversing with a Hindoo who squatted in the shallows nearby.

  "I have seen men like him once or twice before," Jack said. "He is a Carnaya, which I realize means nothing to you."

  "Obviously he is a gold-miner," Danny said. The Carnaya was holding a round pan between his hands and swirling it around, causing a foamy surge of black river-sand to gyrate around its rim.

  "If this were Christendom, where everything is obvious, he would be a gold-miner," Jack said. "But there is no gold, and naught is simple, in these parts."

  "He must be panning for agates then," Jimmy said.

  "An excellent guess. But there are no agates here." Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered: "Enoch! It is a long ride to Dalicot, and we do not want to be caught in this country after dark!"

  Enoch paid him only the slightest notice. Jimmy and Danny pounded down into the gulley, following their own avalanches into the river, which became cloudy—to the exasperation of the Carnaya. Enoch wound up his conversation. There was much significant pointing, and Jack got the impression that directions were being given out. Jimmy and Danny peered at the Carnaya's pan, and at the heavy bags that he had filled with the results of his panning.

  In time the whole caravan got re-assembled up above, and made ready for a forced march to Dalicot. "Be sure to check your pocket-compass," Enoch suggested before they set out.

  "I know where we are," Jack said. But Enoch prevailed on him to check the compass anyway. Jack got it out and removed the cover: It was just a magnetized needle coated with wax and set afloat in a dish of water, and to get a reading, it was necessary to set it down on something solid and wait for a minute or two. Jack put it on a rock at the lip of the Black Vale of Vhanatiya, and waited for two minutes, then five. But the needle pointed in a direction that obviously was not north. And when Jack moved it to another rock, it pointed in a different direction that was not north.

  "If you are trying to spook me, it has worked. Let's get the hell out of here," Jack said.

  Their inspection of the Carnaya's equipment had left Danny and Jimmy baffled and suspicious respectively. "'Twas nought more'n some dark matter, as dull and gross as anything I've ever seeyen," Danny reported.

  "Certain gemstones look thus, before they have been cut and polished," Jack said.

  "It was all sand and grit, nothing bigger'n a pin-head," Jimmy said. "But Jayzus! Those sacks were heavy."

  Enoch was as close to being excited as Jack had ever seen him. "All right, Enoch—let's have it!" Jack demanded. "I'm king in these parts—stand and deliver!"

  "You are not king there," Enoch said, nodding in the direction of the Black Vale, "nor in the place we will visit tomorrow."

  Jimmy and Danny rolled their eyes in unison, and made guttural scoffing noises. They had been traveling in the company of Enoch the Red for half a year.

  JACK WAS STANDING ON A beach, letting warm surf surge and foam around his sore feet, and watching a couple of Hindoo men working with a fragile-looking bow-drill, using it as a sort of lathe to shape a round peg of wood from the purple heartwood of some outlandish tree. "Peg-makers are a wholly different caste from plank-whittlers, and will on no account intermarry with them, though on certain days of the year they will share food," he remarked.

  No one answered him; no one even heard.

  Enoch, Jimmy, Danny, and Surendranath were standing on the beach a few yards away with their backs to him. On one side they were lit up by the reddish lig
ht of the sun, which (because they were so near the Equator) was making a meteoric descent behind the hills from which they had just descended. They were as motionless as figures in a stained-glass window, and in fact this was no mean similitude, since their heads were tilted back, their lips parted, their eyes clear and wide, much like Shepherds in the hills above Bethlehem or the Three Women in the empty tomb. Waves surged around their ankles and leapt up as high as their knees and they did not move.

  They were beholding a vast Lady that lay on the beach. She was the color of teak. The light of the sun made her flesh glow like iron in a forge. She was far larger than the largest tree that had ever been, and so must have been pieced together from many individual bits of wood, such as this peg that the peg-maker was shaping next to Jack, or that plank that the plank-maker over there was assiduously sculpting out of a giant rough timber. Indeed, if they had come a year ago they might have seen her ribs jutting into the air, and courses of hull-planks still being cut to length, and it would have been evident that she had after all been pieced together. But in her current state it seemed as if she had just grown on the beach, and the way that the grain-lines of the teak followed her every curve did everything to enhance that illusion.

  "Aye," Jack said, after he had allowed a proper silence to go by, "sometimes I think her curves are too perfect to've been shaped by man."

  "They were not shaped, but only discovered, by man," said Enoch Root, and risked a single step towards her. Then he fell into silence again.

  Jack busied himself inspecting various works higher up the beach. For the most part these were makers of planks and pegs. But in one place a shed of woven canes had been erected, and thatched with palm-fronds. Inside it, a woodcarver of higher caste was at work with his chisels and mallets; wood-chips covered the sandy floor and spilled out onto the beach. Jack went in there, bringing Surendranath as his interpreter.

  "For Christ's sake! Look at her! Will you just look at her!? Look at her!" Then a pause while Jack drew breath and Surendranath translated this into Marathi, a couple of octaves lower, and the sculptor muttered something back.