Boneland

by Alan Garner

  ‘Simple physics, in this case.’

  ‘But who worked out the trinities? Ash, thorn, oak. Birch, holly, fir. Timber. Logs. Firelighters.’

  ‘Empirical pragmatism,’ said Colin. ‘Nothing mystical or esoteric; though some would have it so. Now let’s have a whiff of adventure, shall we?’ He fitted a head torch on his brow and opened the door.

  The hut sat in a corner of the quarry, and at the junction of the two sides was a tunnel into the rock. It had a gate of iron bars. He unlocked the gate and pushed it open.

  ‘I want to show you something special. I think there’ll be enough daylight. There it is. Look along the wall near the floor to the right. What can you see?’

  ‘Rock,’ said Meg.

  ‘What’s on the rock, just at the edge of darkness?’

  ‘Oh, yes! It’s beautiful! The rock’s glowing. Green. Green jewels.’

  ‘Go and touch them.’

  Meg went into the tunnel.

  ‘They’ve scarpered! There’s nothing here!’

  ‘Come back to the entrance and look again,’ said Colin.

  ‘Yes! I can see them! What is it?’

  ‘Goblin gold,’ said Colin. ‘More correctly, Schistostega pennata. It’s a moss; quite rare. It grows at the limit of photosynthesis, where there’s no competition. The effect’s caused by the protonemata, which have adapted to capture the light in a narrow focus; a bit like cats’ eyes on a road. So when you’re at the right distance and angle they reflect. But when you go up close they appear to vanish; hence the popular name.’

  ‘You’re a rum little devil, our Colin,’ said Meg.

  ‘Party tricks. I don’t really “know” very much, if anything, at all.’

  ‘Well, you know more than me.’

  ‘Don’t we all tend to dismiss our own areas of expertise?’

  Meg looked at him. ‘Now that’s insight. Though I still don’t see why an astrophysicist needs to know about moss. You’re daft, but you’re not stupid.’

  ‘The electro-magnetic spectrum is what’s in common,’ said Colin. ‘Now let’s get ourselves something to complement the meal.’

  He stepped up into the tunnel and switched on his torch.

  ‘What is this?’ said Meg.

  ‘Questions, always questions,’ said Colin. ‘It’s a trial adit to test the quality of the rock. It runs along the horizon between the conglomerate and the dimension stone.’

  ‘So the next question is: what’s dimension stone?’

  Colin laughed. ‘Now that is a very good question. Which is it? Eighth? Ninth? Eleventh? Twelfth? Nth? Who can tell? But it’s only the term the quarrymen used for the fine unlaminated sandstones that cut well in all directions. They drove the adit to see whether it was worth extending the quarry. It wasn’t; so they stopped after twenty-seven metres. But it still has its worth. It makes an excellent cellar. Come along.’

  ‘The way the pebbles catch the light,’ said Meg. ‘They’re big, too.’

  ‘Yes; and fine specimens. But we need to be further in, where it’s darker.’

  The entrance to the adit was round and wide, and became a narrower slot where Colin had to stoop.

  ‘Here should be about right.’ Colin took two small quartz pebbles from his pocket and switched off the torch. ‘Watch this.’ He held one in each hand and rubbed them hard together.

  ‘Oh!’

  There was a shimmer of cold moonlight from the pebbles.

  ‘That’s beautiful!’ said Meg.

  Colin rubbed them again. Again the light. He lifted a hand to the roof and rubbed one of the big pebbles in the rock. The light was brighter.

  ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘Triboluminescence,’ said Colin. ‘To oversimplify. Quartz, and bone for that matter, is a substance that contains piezo-electrical charge which changes polarisation when mechanical stress is applied, which manifests itself as light. We don’t know for sure how this happens, but one theory is that the impact causes electrons to jump to a higher energy shell, then when they jump back to the original shell orbit their transition creates the light.’

  ‘Yes, I did ask, didn’t I?’ said Meg. ‘I did ask. I did. Wae’s me. I did.’

  ‘Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth’s crust, and is made up of a framework of silicon-oxygen tetrahydra,’ said Colin. ‘And silicon lies directly below carbon in the periodic table, so that much of its basic chemistry is similar to carbon, which is the foundation of life here; which makes me wonder whether we’re merely carbon chauvinists.’

  ‘Breathe in,’ said Meg.

  ‘I’m not out of breath.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Theoretically,’ said Colin, ‘under the right conditions, you could have a silicon-based life source, and I personally am prepared to accept that, though the evidence for it is not yet stable. But, as we all know, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The idea of a quartz bone appeals to me.’

  ‘Stupid of me not to think of that,’ said Meg. ‘Tut.’

  ‘Carbon, however, is more adaptive. Which is why we’re more than soggy bags of electrolytes. Am I boring you, am I?’

  ‘You are not boring me,’ said Meg. ‘You’re more fun than living with a library. Stone bone. I like that. It sounds right.’

  ‘Your library’s far bigger,’ said Colin. ‘And much better looking.’

  ‘Oh, flattery, flattery,’ said Meg. ‘Stone bone. Bone stone. Mm.’

  ‘Let’s see, now.’ Colin switched the torch back on. ‘What have we here?’

  One side of the adit was lined with wine racks. Colin moved along the rows of bottles.

  ‘I think this one,’ he said. ‘And this. Ah, and I hadn’t thought of these. They’ll do nicely.’

  The adit was straight, and from the end the day showed as a nimbus of another world.

  ‘And while we’re here—’

  ‘Colin, we can’t drink this much. We’ll be paralytic.’

  ‘Choice, Meg, choice. Quality and balance. We may carouse without oblivion. There’s a difference between inebriation and exultation. The god within and the god without.’

  ‘Just so long as you can tell the difference,’ said Meg.

  ‘There’s no point in drinking if you are unable to recall the taste,’ said Colin. ‘Here. Take these two, please. Careful. It would be a tragedy to drop them.’

  They went back to the entrance and Colin locked the gate.

  ‘New potatoes, carrots and broccoli, with garlic bread. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds pretty good to me,’ said Meg. ‘Did you grow all this yourself?’

  ‘Apart from the dead sheep. I’ll just show the broccoli the water while we have an aperitif.’ Colin opened a bottle and poured into crystal glass. ‘Welcome to Imazaz, Meg.’

  ‘Thanks, Colin. Cheers. Down the hatch. Whoa! This is the real stuff!’

  ‘What else should it be?’ said Colin.

  He lay in the lodge and waited. She would come. Now she would come. He knew.

  ‘A drop more to finish your plate?’ said Colin.

  ‘Thanks. What I’d like to know is how do you manage to keep a perspective?’ said Meg. ‘Don’t you get lost in it all? The immensities?’

  ‘It’s only maths.’

  ‘“Only”.’

  ‘Well of course it’s difficult to begin with,’ said Colin. ‘You have to try not to think of the implications while you’re assembling the data. My first professor had a way of dealing with that. He said that if we go out to the limit of the cosmos and in, to the sub-atomic extreme, the human body is more or less at the middle of mensuration. We’re at the point of balance. It may well be that we are that point of balance. Now, since he said it, I can show, from our present knowledge of the cosmos, that he was wrong; but then I don’t know how far the particle physicists have moved in the other direction. We may still be at the middle. And that’s only for this universe. Anyway, it’s a helpful reference point to keep in min
d.’

  ‘Leonardo would have loved your professor,’ said Meg.

  ‘But there’s always the moment when the data are all collected and it’s just you and them,’ said Colin. ‘That’s when it can be hard. You’re on your own. But it doesn’t happen every week, thank goodness. Then you have to treat it as a game, and play around; and sooner or later you “see” the obvious; though proving it can take longer. Much longer. But, at the heart, all discovery is play.’

  ‘How do you know when you’ve finished?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no finish. Sometimes you see the answer first, then spend years finding what the question is. That’s the nearest you come to finishing. This is donkey and carrot country. If I ever finished, I don’t know what I’d do. I might as well peel potatoes.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with scrubbing a few spuds,’ said Meg, ‘to go with the carrots; very tasty, by the way. But are you saying there’s no final answer?’

  ‘I hope there isn’t,’ said Colin. ‘I’m for uncertainty. As soon as you think you know, you’re done for. You don’t listen and you can’t hear. If you’re certain of anything, you shut the door on the possibility of revelation, of discovery. You can think. You can believe. But you can’t, you mustn’t, “know”. There’s the real entropy.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I can show you best with a story.’

  ‘Oh, stories! Stories freak me out. Tell me one.’

  ‘Right,’ said Colin, and took a mouthful of wine. ‘Ready? Well. One day, Vishnu, otherwise Delta Capricorni, is sitting alone on the top of Chomolungma.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The highest of all mountains.’

  ‘Do you mean Everest?’

  ‘That’s an imposed, impertinent, imperial arrogance,’ said Colin. ‘Its name is Chomolungma; or Sagarmāthā. Now shall I tell you this story or not?’

  ‘Oops. Into the Naughty Corner, Meg. Please tell me the story.’

  ‘Right. So Vishnu is sitting on the top of Chomolungma, and crying.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, Meg. Do be quiet. You’re worse than a child.’

  She turned her mouth down.

  ‘Vishnu is crying. And along comes Hanuman, Alpha Boötes, the monkey god, and he says, “Why are you crying? And what are all those ants down there on the Earth so excited about?” “They’re not ants,” says Vishnu. “They’re people. I was holding the Jewel of Absolute Wisdom; and I dropped it; and it fell into the World and broke. Everybody down there has got a tiny splinter of it; but they each think they’ve got the whole thing, and they’re all running around and shouting and telling each other, but no one is listening.” That’s the story.’

  ‘Wow. That’s a true story,’ said Meg. ‘Just love it.’

  ‘For “ants” you could substitute “cosmologists”,’ said Colin.

  ‘And most of the medical fraternity,’ said Meg. ‘So there’s the reason why you’d rather be the donkey.’

  ‘There’s the reason why I’d rather be the donkey.’

  ‘I’ll take a high five on that,’ said Meg.

  ‘Take a what?’ said Colin.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Meg, and lowered her hand.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Colin. ‘If a painter ever achieved perfection, what else would there be to do? The same goes for a sculptor; or a composer; a potter; or anyone.’

  ‘Even a physicist?’ said Meg. ‘I see. Especially a physicist. So you’re one of the “try again, fail again, fail better” crew. Without differentiating between science and art. That’s excellent.’ She laid her knife and fork on the plate and savoured her wine. ‘Colin, this has to be the best nosh I’ve eaten since I don’t know when.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it. Shall we have our cheese by the fire?’

  He put more wood on the embers.

  ‘Why not? But isn’t it a bit of a lot dead?’ said Meg.

  ‘It needs to breathe, that’s all.’ He set the cheese board between them on a stool, and opened a bottle. ‘I think you’ll find this goes particularly well with Stinking Bishop.’

  Flames began to curl.

  ‘It goes a treat,’ said Meg.

  They sat in silence, watching the fire.

  ‘What a day,’ said Meg. ‘What a day this has been.’

  ‘I hope it still is,’ said Colin.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Meg. ‘I’m thinking about two things in particular.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘All those names and initials cut in the soft coloured stone at Castle Rock.’

  ‘They do rather spoil the look of the place, don’t they?’ said Colin.

  ‘But every one of them meant something when they were cut.’

  ‘I suppose they did.’

  ‘And they do now,’ said Meg.

  ‘I take your point, even though I may not agree.’

  ‘Then the carving on the hard bit: the face, labyrinth thingy. That’s not vandalism, is it? You’d keep that.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Colin.

  ‘Because it’s art? Because it’s old? It was a graffito when it was fresh, surely, wasn’t it?’

  ‘But for other reasons?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Numen?’

  ‘So how old does a graffito have to be before it’s numinous?’

  ‘It may not be age alone,’ said Colin. ‘I acknowledge that “JH” and “AF” bashed inside a heart give a relationship more permanence than it may have had historically, but perhaps the enigmatic graffito, from the beginning, held more of a charge. And holds it yet. The intensity of the moment may remain.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘I do. And why was it not cut on the soft rock? It would have been easier.’

  ‘Mm. But not as enduring. I get you. So it was conscious relative permanence. They knew.’

  ‘I can recommend the Stilton.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What was the second thing?’ said Colin.

  ‘The pebbles in the tunnel. How long have they been shut in that stone?’

  ‘Two hundred and forty-three million years; approximately.’

  ‘Two hundred and forty-three million? How can they bear it?’

  ‘Meg, are you claiming that the inanimate is also sensate?’

  ‘Probably not. More like I’m projecting my own twinge of panic. Like taking your vest off under the bedclothes. But I still feel queasy that those lovely things can’t move. Perhaps animism is the human default.’

  ‘But they are moving,’ said Colin. ‘They can’t not be.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do you really want me to tell you?’

  ‘I really want you to tell me.’

  ‘Really really?’ His eyes were mischief.

  ‘Really really.’

  ‘Really really really?’

  ‘Really really really.’

  ‘Really really really really really?’

  ‘Colin!’

  ‘Let me refresh your glass. Here comes a party trick.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s plenty,’ said Meg. ‘So what’s the party trick?’

  ‘Well now,’ said Colin. ‘Let’s assume that time is linear and unidirectional, otherwise we could soon be lost.’

  ‘You mean it isn’t?’ said Meg

  ‘Not in my opinion; and thought experiments show this, but by the nature of things not everyone agrees with the premise. I say that time is multi-dimensional and exists in different forms. We’ve opted for the advancing linear flow, “The Arrow of Time”, because it’s the most efficient for our needs, and so the easiest to handle, perhaps for Darwinian reasons.’

  ‘Oh yes. Charlie,’ said Meg. ‘Where should we be without him?’

  ‘Now then. First there’s continental drift. Our piece of the Eurasian sheet is currently moving east by east-north-east at a relative speed of one point nine centimetres per year, which gives an absolute velocity of zero point nine five centimetres per year. Clear?
’

  ‘Yerrs … For the moment. I’ll tell you when I’m not. But take it easy.’

  ‘So, I’m the Earth.’ Colin spread out his arms, holding his glass in one hand, the bottle in the other. ‘The Earth, at our latitude, is rotating at one thousand and four point nine one kilometres per hour, like this.’ He began to turn slowly. ‘And it’s moving in orbit around the Sun at one hundred and seven thousand and four point eight seven kilometres per hour.’ Still turning, Colin circled the room. ‘I’ll keep going, but the rest you’ll have to imagine. The relative speeds I’m demonstrating are not accurate, but for illustration only. Right?’

  ‘Right. Just about. But watch your glass.’

  ‘Next, the solar system, let’s say this hut, which necessarily would be a lot bigger if it were to scale, is travelling towards the star Lambda Herculis at twenty kilometres per second, and rising at ninety degrees to the plane of the Galaxy at twenty-five thousand one hundred and forty-four point three nine kilometres per hour,’ he took a sip of his drink, ‘while orbiting the centre of the Galaxy at two hundred kilometres per second. And the Galaxy itself is being drawn by gravitational attraction towards the Local Group at two million one hundred and twenty-one thousand two hundred and ninety-eight point eight kilometres per hour—’

  Meg snorted into her wine.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can anyone play?’

  ‘I’ll ignore that—and ninety-eight point eight kilometres per hour at six hundred kilometres per second relative to the cosmic background of this universe, as opposed to any others that may exist, which—’

  ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘I am. I would argue it’s more than likely—which appears to be expanding currently at eighty kilometres per second per Megapasec; a Megapasec, of course, being three point two six million light years.’

  ‘Of course. How could I be so ignorant? It’s common knowledge.’ She kept her face straight. ‘But which way is Up?’

  ‘These figures are approximate, it goes without saying, and could change, and there are smaller perturbations and turbulations, which we needn’t take into account, but they show that your pebble is not in stasis. I think I did that rather well.’ Colin plumped down on a chair at the table. ‘Don’t you? And I’m not even dizzy.’