Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  The only reason to study war is the reason doctors study a disease; to find a cure. Smallpox is now officially extinct, and the same is probably true of the classical assault-and-blockade siege. There are, of course, plenty more diseases. The siege shaped our society at every level. It brought us together to live behind walls, in cities. Its fundamental influence on the nature of warfare directed political life and development for three thousand years. It was, of course, the mother of many of our essential technologies, from mining to metalworking. It would have been nice, of course, if we could have arrived at the same place without such a monstrous waste of lives, resources and effort. It’s impossible to calculate how many millions of tons of earth were shifted in its name, mostly in wooden shovels tipped with iron, steel being too rare and expensive.

  Well; our ancestors may have been disreputable and violent, but we are their descendants, and we can’t simply wash our hands of our inheritance. Nor, as we cheerfully prepare to destroy the planet itself, can we afford to be too superior in our attitude to our predecessors, who were content simply to wreck cities. The deadly elegance of Vauban’s geometry and the miserable reality of sick, starving men digging trenches ought to teach us some kind of lesson, but that’s probably too much to hope for. Instead, we pack sandwiches and tour the broken walls and slighted castles, marvelling at mankind’s ability to smash up practically anything, given time, money and other people to do the dirty work.

  Let Maps to Others

  There is such a place. And I have been there.

  They all say that, don’t they? They say; I met someone once who spent five years there, disguised as a holy man. Or; the village headman told me his people go there all the time, to trade timber and flour for spices. Or; the priest showed me things that had come from there—a statuette, a small, curiously-fashioned box, a pair of shoes, a book I couldn’t read. Or; from the top of the mountain we looked out across the valley and there it was, on the other side of the river, you could just make out the sun glinting off the spires of the temples. Or; I was taken there, I saw the Great Gate and the Forbidden Palace, I sat and drank goat-butter tea with the Grand Master, who was seven feet tall and had his eyes, nose and mouth set in the middle of his chest.

  You hear them, read them. The first, second, third time, you believe. The fourth time, you want to believe. The fifth time, you notice a disturbing pattern beginning to emerge—how they were always so close they could hear the voices of the children and smell the woodsmoke, but for this reason or that reason they couldn’t go the last two hundred yards and had to turn back (but it was there, it is there, it’s real, it really exists). The sixth time breaks your heart. By the seventh time, you’re a scholar, investigating a myth.

  I am a scholar. I have spent my entire life investigating what I now firmly believe to be a myth. But there is such a place. And I have been there.

  “The duke,” she said, “is watching you.”

  Bearing in mind where we were, who she was and what we’d been doing, I sincerely hoped she was talking figuratively. “You don’t say.”

  “Oh yes.” She tugged at the sheet. Women feel the cold. “He’s very interested in you.”

  Another thing women do is say things that aren’t entirely true. Men do this, of course; but usually for a reason, usually a reason you can perceive; a shape hidden under the lies, like a body under a blanket. You see a blanket, but you can trace where the arms, legs, chest are. Women, by contrast, say untrue things just to see where the path will lead. “I doubt it,” I said. “He won’t have heard of me.”

  “Of course he’s heard of you.”

  I yawned. I didn’t feel like conversation. “My father, possibly,” I said. “Maybe, just conceivably, my brother, because of the lawsuits. Me, no. Nobody’s heard of me.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “Outside of the Studium,” I amended. “And the scholarly fraternity at large. I confess, I’m reasonably well known among my brother scholars. That fool who believes, they call me. Outside of that, though—”

  She nuzzled against me, purely for warmth. “The greatest living authority on Essecuivo,” she said.

  “Exactly. That fool who believes. What on earth could that possibly have to do with the duke?”

  “He’s bought the Company.”

  I felt a shiver that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “Then he’s an idiot,” I said. “Even if he only paid a penny for it.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t.”

  “And it was rather more than a penny,” she went on, talking to the ceiling. “He’s mortgaged Sansify and Gard Hardy and sold his half share in the tin mines to raise the money. He’s serious about it.”

  I frowned; it was dark, so she couldn’t see me. “I feel sorry for his sons,” I replied. “It’s miserable, being the poor son of a rich father. You never quite manage to get away from it. Mind you, there’s a substantial difference in scale. My father was well-off, but nothing at all like—”

  “He thinks it’s a good investment.”

  I really wasn’t in the mood for talking about the duke; especially since the conversation also appeared to involve Essecuivo, a subject I talk about incessantly among scholars and never to outsiders. In fact, I didn’t want to talk at all. I just wanted to go home; but you can’t, can you? Not straight away. “Well,” I said, “I hope his faith turns out to be justified, naturally. If so, I’ll be as pleased as I’ll be amazed.”

  I felt her turn towards me. “It does exist, doesn’t it?” she said. “There is such a place.”

  I sighed. “Yes,” I said. “I believe it exists. Aeneas Peregrinus went there, and he was real enough. But we don’t know where it is.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “And I’m the greatest living authority.” I sighed. “One of the greatest living authorities. Professor Strella, in Aerope, would dispute that last statement, but he’s a fraud. Carchedonius of Luseil—”

  “You must have some idea.”

  I stretched. Time to get up and go. “It exists,” I said. “Somewhere. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. I’d better go.”

  “No.”

  “I’d better. He might come back early, you never know.”

  “It’s the second reading of the Finance Bill,” she said irritably, “he won’t be back till the morning. You never want to stay.”

  “I really should go.”

  “Fine. That’s fine.” You see what I mean. They’re always saying things they don’t mean. “Tomorrow?”

  “Not sure about tomorrow,” I said, “I may have to dine in Hall. And then I’ve got a lecture to prepare. The day after tomorrow would be better.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I slid out of bed, felt for my trousers in the dark. I always find that sort of thing exquisitely distasteful. “Is the House sitting next week?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Of course she knew. But I could look it up in the gazette. I pulled on my shirt, then hesitated. “Is the duke really interested in me?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he’ll be good for a few marks toward the chancel fund,” I said. “It’s getting pretty desperate, the rain’s coming in under the eaves.”

  I was born in the City. My father was a junior partner in the Eastern Sea Company, which at that time was a cross between a bank and a munitions factory. He was on the munitions side of things; he ran the ordnance yard where they cast the cannons and mortars that would be mounted on the ships that would make the journey to Essecuivo, to sell woollen cloth, tin plates, mirrors, shovels, whatever in return for cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, fine red pepper and the curious root that cures plague, syphilis and baldness. Because nobody had discovered Essecuivo yet, there wasn’t exactly a hurry; so, in order to keep the cash flow moving along, the Company sold the cannons and mortars my father made to the kings and dukes of neighbouring states, who always managed to find a
use for them. Back then, money was still pouring in to the Company (because everybody knew it was only a matter of time before someone found Essecuivo), and the directors invested it sensibly in worthwhile projects, to build up the capital against the day when the crucial discovery was made and the Company could launch its first fleet. It was called the Eastern Sea Company because, on the balance of the evidence then available, it was generally held that Essecuivo was somewhere to the east. But if it had turned out to be in the west, they wouldn’t have minded. They were practical men, back then.

  My father was a practical man. He wasn’t convinced that Essecuivo would simply fall into our laps like an overripe pear; it would need finding, so someone would have to find it. Ordinarily he’d have done it himself (he was a great believer in if-you-want-something-done-properly) but he was too busy with supervising the cannon-founders and doing deals with foreign princes to find the time, so it seemed logical to keep it in the family and give the job to his spare son (me). Accordingly, from the age of nine I was tutored in geography, history, languages and book-keeping (for when I’d found Essecuivo and established our first trading post there). When I was sixteen, I was sent to the Studium, which possesses a copy of every book ever written, to continue my studies. And there I stayed, becoming the youngest ever professor of Humanities at age thirty-two.

  Every book, I discovered, except one.

  I first encountered Aeneas Peregrinus when I was twelve. I read about him in Silvianus’ Discourses. Aeneas Peregrinus had been to Essecuivo, three hundred years ago. He set off from the City with a cargo of lemons, heading for Mesembrotia, but was blown off course by a freak storm. The storm lasted for nine days, and when the wind dropped, nobody had any idea where they were; even the stars were different, Aeneas wrote. For four weeks they drifted, until another storm, even more ferocious than the first, picked them up and carried them at terrifying speed for eight days, then died away as suddenly as it had arisen. On the skyline, they could see land. They sat becalmed for a further three days, until a gentle breeze carried them to what turned out to be Essecuivo, where the soil and climate are the best in the world, the people are gentle, sophisticated, wealthy beyond measure and wildly generous, and where they’d never seen a lemon.

  Aeneas sold his cargo for its weight in gold, then spent a month or so travelling round the country talking to noblemen, priests and scholars, finding out everything he could about the wonderful country he’d stumbled across. Most of all, naturally, he wanted to find out where it was. That, apparently, was no problem; the Essecuivans are exceptionally learned in astronomy, geography and all related sciences, and taught him the principles of latitude and the techniques of advanced navigation using the astrolabe, compass and sextant (all previously unknown outside Essecuivo) which every ship’s captain uses to this day. With this knowledge, it was a simple matter for Aeneas to fix the relative positions of Essecuivo and the City and plot a course home. The return journey took him three weeks, partly because he was held up by contrary winds a third of the way over. He arrived home with his cargo of gold ingots, and immediately sat down to write his two great books. The first of these, A Discourse on Navigation, he presented to the Council, who made him a Knight of Equity and set up a ten-foot high statue in his honour in what is now Aeneas Square. The second book, a complete description of Essecuivo, including precise directions for finding it again, he kept to himself, although he occasionally showed selected passages to his close friends. After all, he reasoned, he was determined to go back there and make a second massive fortune, and quite possibly a third, fourth, fifth and sixth, for as long as the Essecuivans were prepared to pay ridiculous prices for lemons. Only an idiot would disclose the secret of unlimited wealth, and risk a flooding of the market.

  Aeneas Peregrinus died suddenly, at the age of forty-six, three hundred and seven years ago. At the time of his death, the whereabouts of the manuscript of his second book were not known. It hasn’t been seen since.

  I’m not sure if I’m a geographer or a historian, or whether geography’s a humanity or a science. What I do know is that, if I really am smart enough to deserve a chair at the Studium, I should’ve asked myself what a senator’s young trophy wife ever saw in me, long before that casual mention of the duke. Still, better late than too late.

  I walked home slowly through the back alleys, and every turning and doorway was crawling with the duke’s men, watching me, taking notes, except that I couldn’t quite see them. By the time I reached the lodge I was exhausted. The porter got up from his nice warm fireside and handed me a note.

  Must see you at once. My rooms.

  Carchedonius

  That’s not his real name, of course. Before he came to the Studium he was Liutprand Thiostulfsen. It cost me twelve angels to find that out, and I never could think of a good way of using it against him. Just knowing it made me feel better, though.

  I should explain about Carchedonius. He’s a fine scholar. He’s painstaking, insightful, clear-headed, occasionally brilliant, always worth listening to. His work on the manuscript tradition of Thraso’s Dialogues was what started me on the road to my finest hour, the deciphering of the Sunao Codex. Between us, we know everything there is to know about Aeneas, and Essecuivo. All in all, it’s a shame we hate each other the way we do.

  But that can’t be helped, any more than you can get an injunction to stop the winter. The stupid thing is, neither of us can account for it. I’ve never done him any real harm, though not for want of trying, and all his wild schemes to encompass my downfall have failed or backfired on him. Apparently he has some kind of grudge based on some relative of his losing a lot of money when the Company went under. If that’s really the case, he must’ve nursed it like a shepherd’s wife with an orphan lamb. I think I hate him so much because he hates me, though I’m not sure I didn’t hate him first. In any case, it’s been going on since we were both seventeen-year-old freshmen. I guess it’s an interest for both of us; cheaper than collecting pre-Mannerist miniatures, slightly more exciting than watching the donkey-cart races.

  Must see you in my rooms at once presumably meant the latest in a long line of laboured, over-elaborate stratagems; presumably it hadn’t occurred to him that I might simply decide not to turn up. He’d make a lousy spider; the patience and dedication to spin a good web, but not a clue about luring flies. His idea of subtlety would be a big notice; WEB THIS WAY. He’d starve.

  I nearly didn’t go. Nearly. If I was a fly, I’d be dead by now.

  Here I go, rattling on about myself and my own inconsequential history. I’m ashamed of myself, as a historian. My part in the sequence of events is significant but limited. I shouldn’t have talked about myself or even acknowledged my own existence for at least another ten pages.

  The Company; the Eastern Ocean Company; actually, the correct name is the College of Merchant Adventurers for the Promotion and Regulation of Trade with the Nations of the Eastern Ocean. It was founded, coincidentally, in the year of my birth—here I am, intruding again—by three clockmakers and a goldsmith, affluent men with a taste for abstruse literature who’d been brought up on secondary accounts of Aeneas Peregrinus, and who could afford to indulge their scientific pretensions by chartering and outfitting a small ship (the Squirrel, 90 tons) to look for Essecuivo. That was all. But, being businessmen, they thought it would be common sense to spread the risk a little. Accordingly, they issued a prospectus, which they hired a couple of layabouts to give away free in the tea-houses around the Golden Carp.

  The year I was born was also the year of the great gold strike in Eroine. For the first time in centuries, the City was awash with money; newly-coined gold angels, tumbling like raindrops, looking for channels, gutters and conduits to drain off the flood. Men who’d been wise enough to take an early stake at Eroine and then sell before the strike worked out were looking around for the next good thing; preferably something a bit more substantial than gold-mining, up and down like a peacock’s tail, as my father use
d to say. Essecuivo was exactly the sort of thing they were after; a solid, long-term venture yielding rich dividends for ever and ever. In a matter of days, copies of the free prospectus (the clockmakers had only printed two hundred) were changing hands for an angel each.

  At this point, something strange and wonderful happened. The clockmakers, in order to keep track of who was investing what, had some more papers printed; not prospectuses this time, but shares. It wasn’t a brand new idea, but it had never really caught on before. That all changed. The first subscription, at one angel a share, sold out in a week. The second subscription, three angels, went in a single morning; meanwhile, in the tea-houses, the disappointed investors who’d missed out on the subscriptions were cheerfully paying six angels apiece for second-hand shares. Twelve subscriptions later, Company stock stood at a hundred and six, and only the clockmakers had any idea how many shares were in circulation. At this point, they quietly sold out their own interests and retired to vast country estates in the Naquite, leaving the Company in the hands of its newly-elected Board, one member of which was my poor father.

  What nobody realised at that moment was that just under a third of the entire value of the Republic was now invested in the Company; whose assets, apart from money, consisted of a fine neo-Archaic mansion house in Widegate, a fair collection of maps and books put together by the clockmakers, four remaining years of a six-year charter of the Squirrel and some second-hand barrels. I think it was this that led my father to decide that someone really ought to find Essecuivo as quickly as possible.