Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  “Here I am,” the dead man said. “What can I do for you?”

  I looked at Him. “Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t recognise You there for a minute.”

  “That’s all right,” He said.

  “Well?” I asked Him. “Are You keeping well? Are You eating properly?”

  “I am the Invincible Sun,” He said. “I don’t eat.”

  Fair point. At that moment He was everywhere around me, burning, a white heat blazing down from the sky, rising up from the hot sand. “What do You want me to do?” I asked.

  “You’ve done so much,” He said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He had no eyes, but they were filled with pity. “I want you to go to the City,” He said. “Give yourself up. Submit to the cruelty and hatred of our enemies. They will put you in prison and they will hang you, and when you die, all the sins of the world will die with you. You don’t mind, do you?” He added. “If you’d rather not, I’ll understand.”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. “Is there anything You want me to say?”

  “Tell them that you were wrong,” he said. “Tell them that the miracles were true miracles, that it was I who cured the sick and ended the war, that the scriptures are My holy word, that I saved you from the prison and I sent you back. Tell them everything is true, and everything is good, and that motive is irrelevant, only the outcome matters. It’s essential that you tell them, and that they understand. Will you do that for Me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Anything else?”

  He smiled. “I think that’s quite enough to be going on with. I will send others, later, to do the rest.”

  “It doesn’t seem very much,” I said. “Go home, give up, tell a few lies, get killed. Are you sure there isn’t more I can do to help?”

  “Nothing that you’re capable of doing,” He replied, not unkindly.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Why me?”

  He smiled. “Why did I choose you as my high priest, out of all the people in all the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean you haven’t—” He stopped, grinned, composed His face. “Your name, of course.”

  “My name?”

  “That’s right. Eps eps. Joke.”

  I looked Him in the eye. “I don’t believe it.”

  His gaze rested on me like the noonday sun, bright and intolerable, so that I couldn’t help remembering Anaximander. “Are you seriously suggesting,” He said, “that God has no sense of humour? Now, there’s blasphemy.”

  “But it’s not even particularly funny—” I stopped. I was talking to a desiccated corpse. Ah well, I thought.

  Later that day, a caravan of salt traders on their way to the coast stopped at the oasis. They were amazed to find anyone there. They said they ought to kill me, for stealing their water, but since I was a lunatic and a holy man, they’d overlook it just this once. I explained that I had to get to the coast as quickly as possible; I have a message from God, I told them. Of course you have, they said.

  I didn’t feel much like talking on the long walk to the coast, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. How did you survive, they asked; how did you manage for food? I told them I had a vague memory of eating beetles, or something of the sort. They laughed and shook their heads; no beetles in the desert, they said. I shrugged. The Invincible Sun must have sent them, I said, so that I wouldn’t starve. They gave me an odd look. Your god sent you beetles to live on, they said, that’s pathetic. Would it have killed Him to send you sausages and honey-cakes? I thought about that for a moment and said, I think He must have sent the beetles, because clearly there weren’t any living there under normal circumstances. I saw no sign that insects had attacked the dead body. What dead body, they said.

  Two kettlehats were waiting for me at the quay. For some reason, I was in ridiculously high spirits, that end-of-term feeling I hadn’t felt since I’d walked out into the sunlight after six days in the Examination Halls, at the end of my last year at the Studium. I waved to the kettlehats as I walked down the gangplank. They looked at me.

  “I’m Eps,” I said, before they had a chance to open their mouths. “Sorry, Father Deodatus, if that’s the name on the warrant. Are you here to arrest me?”

  “No talking,” they said. “You’re with us.”

  They had one of those closed carriages; a pity, because I’d have liked to look out of the window. It was a bright, sunny day, and the City is always at its best in sunshine; it brings out that deep honey yellow in the stonework, and sparkles on the copper roofs of the temples. I’ve always admired it; that day, knowing what I did about the Sun, I could understand. It was because He loved the City so much, the buildings and the people looking at them. I was proud of Him for that.

  They must have known well in advance that I was coming, because everything was ready. They’d built the scaffold in the Golden Square, presumably so that the nobility could watch from the windows of their town houses without having to come down and mingle with the common people. For them, the imperial carpenters had built seventeen (I counted them) rows of bleachers, which only goes to show that the moaners are quite wrong and the government can get things done quickly and well if it sets its mind to it. On the outskirts there were the usual mulled wine and hot sausage stalls, quite a few other traders—I noticed a man selling quality imported textiles, and another doing a brisk trade in commemorative pottery figurines. Three squadrons of the Household Cavalry added a touch of that colour and pageantry we’ve always done so well in the City. I couldn’t tell from where I was whether they were charging people for admission, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t.

  A kettlehat captain in a magnificent gilded breastplate took charge of me and led me through a cordon of dismounted guardsmen to the scaffold steps. I asked him, “Will I have a chance to make a speech?” He shook his head. I was disappointed. I had a message to deliver, after all, and I was surprised to find that no opportunity had been provided. How about a priest, I asked. Shake of the head. But I want to confess my sins, I told him (we were getting closer and closer to the scaffold), I want to tell the people that I’ve seen the error of my ways and urge them to love and obey the Ecumenical Council. Sorry, he said, and then we were there.

  I was starting to panic. I had, after all, been sent there to pass on the word of the Invincible Sun; my death was merely ancillary to that, and there was a terrible risk of missing the point of the exercise. I tried to protest, but the kettlehats proved to be very skillful at moving a person who didn’t want to be moved, efficiently and unobtrusively. Mostly it was done by judicious barging and blocking, with firm but gentle pressure from a hand in the small of the back; you have to go where you’re nudged, or you lose your balance and fall over. I guess they’d had the practice, but still, I was impressed.

  “Gentlemen, be reasonable,” I said. We were at the foot of the steps. “A few last words, is that too much to ask? I just want to—”

  “Sorry.” A knee pressed the back of my knee, and somehow I was standing on the first step. If I’d been ten times stronger and trained from boyhood in the secret arts of the warrior, I don’t think there was anything I could’ve done. I could see the hangman waiting for me at the top of the steps. He had a sort of black bag over his head. This was all wrong. I had to deliver my message, but time was running out. I thought; if He could be bothered to level the Potteries with an earthquake to let me escape the first time, surely He can do something, some little thing, to give me a chance to carry out His explicit instructions. Made no sense. I’d done exactly what I’d been told, so what had gone wrong?

  I looked up and there He was, a round white eye in a sea of clear blue, watching, not doing anything. I let them nudge me up the steps, and the hangman grabbed me and put the noose round my neck. “Excuse me,” I started to say, but he tightened the knot so I couldn’t speak. He trod on my toe, making me ste
p back so I was properly centred on the trapdoor. “Just a—” I croaked, and he pulled the lever.

  Now then, let’s see.

  Motivation, we have been taught, doesn’t matter. All that counts is the outcome, the end result. Therefore, it didn’t matter that my colleagues and I had started the Church as a criminal conspiracy to cheat gullible people out of money. Clear away the nettles and brambles of motive, and underneath them you find a set of circumstances capable of producing the desired result. You find a group of people with a unique combination of talents and abilities—the scientist, the poet, the skilled forger, the scholar and the preacher. Driven by, motivated by, an urgent need of their own, they set about the task of bringing a god to the attention of the public. Consider how many religions, how many gods, show up on our streets in any twelve-month period; scores, hundreds even, and how many of them make it to mainstream acceptance? Quite. But, I dare say, a fair proportion of those religions, those gods, have perfectly viable doctrines, sufficient to serve as the basis for a thoroughly satisfactory Church. The margin, is what I’m trying to say, the edge, the difference between the three hundred failures and the one success, is tiny; but it’s real, it’s there. It’s not just a matter of luck. To succeed, you need the perfectly pitched message, the unforgettably phrased scriptures, the eye-catching iconography, the significant moments indelibly etched on the public consciousness. The trouble with most religions is the people who propound them. They may be charismatic and inspirational, but they’re not quite charismatic and inspirational enough. Also, they’re deficient in those core skills we’ve just examined. Their scriptures are written in a pedestrian style. They’re too new, without the sanctity of ancientness. They’re internally inconsistent, or they ask people to believe stuff that ordinary folk can’t quite stomach. Their preachers lack that certain indefinable but absolutely indispensable something. They are, in other words, amateurs. They lack the professional touch.

  We, by contrast—well. Think about it. Suppose you were the Invincible Sun, with the whole human race to choose from. We were conmen, whose business was getting sceptical people to believe us. Would you really select a bunch of unskilled nobodies—farm workers, fishermen, carpenters—or would you insist on nothing but the best; well-born, university-educated, intelligent and naturally articulate, and motivated (I’m repeating that word so you’ll notice it) by ferociously intense self-interest. Well, wouldn’t you? If you want a house built, you hire builders. If you want a gallstone taken out, you pay the best doctor you can afford. So, if you want people persuaded, you enlist the best persuaders in the business.

  Once you realise the simple truth that motive is irrelevant, it all makes sense. Really, you don’t need a special flash of insight direct from the lips of the Invincible Sun to figure that one out. There is no right and wrong, only good and bad. Faith is good; it’s essential, if you want to survive in a perverse and gratuitously cruel universe. Nihilism is bad; it deprives the world of meaning, so why the hell bother with anything? Anything that can induce people to have faith, have hope, believe that there is meaning, is good. Motive is irrelevant.

  I woke up.

  Later, I figured out that I must’ve banged my head on the gallows frame or the edge of the trap, which made me pass out. I had a lump the size of an egg and a splitting headache. I was lying on a bed. It hurt when I breathed in. There was someone sitting looking down at me. It was Zanipulus.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Awful,” I said. Then I frowned. “Zan?”

  “Hello, Eps.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Talking hurt. “I was expecting someone else.”

  He laughed. “No doubt you were,” he said. “But you’ll have to make do with me. Now then, you’ve probably got a bad head and a hell of a stiff neck, but basically you’re fine. You should be up and about in no time.”

  “You—” I paused. “For God’s—for pity’s sake. What happened?”

  He smiled. “Exactly what we wanted to happen,” he said. “Just for once, everything went according to plan, no balls-ups, no hitches. It was a complete success.”

  I frowned at him. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m still alive.”

  He stared at me; then he burst out laughing. “Eps, you idiot,” he said. “You didn’t seriously believe we actually wanted to kill you? Oh come on. We’re your friends.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “We staged your execution,” he said. “We made a martyr of you. Well? Isn’t that what you told Accila you wanted?”

  A martyr’s crown. “I thought—”

  “For crying out loud, Eps.” He was amused, but also a little bit hurt, a little bit angry. “Obviously, when we realised you had issues with the direction we were going in, we knew it was time for you to go your separate way. And, equally obviously, we couldn’t have you wandering off making a nuisance of yourself. So, we thought about it and decided that the best thing would be to stage your death, in public, so everyone could see, so there’d be no chance of you making a comeback and being a pain in the bum for the rest of us. Also, there was a fantastic opportunity to move the business up to the next level, by making you the Church’s first martyr. Which has worked,” he added, “beyond our wildest dreams. Where before we had one thrivingly successful Church, we now have two, in a state of perfect schism, the Orthodox and the Deodatists. Overall attendances are up twenty-one per cent. And,” he added with a grin, “the Deodatists—your lot, I guess; our wholly owned subsidiary—are particularly generous with their donations. At this rate, we should be in a position to retire by the end of the current financial year.” He stopped and frowned. “Hang on,” he said. “Didn’t Accila explain all this to you, the night before the—?”

  Earthquake. I winced. I could see precisely what had happened. In our brief conversation in my cell, I’d so annoyed Accila that he’d flounced off in a huff—intending, no doubt, to come back later and try again when he’d had a chance to simmer down. But then the earthquake happened, I vanished; Accila either neglected to mention to the others that he hadn’t had a chance to fill me in on the plan, or else was ashamed of having flown off the handle and cocked it up, so kept quiet. Bloody fool. Next time I saw him, I’d kick his arse.

  “Of course he did,” I said. “Sorry, I’m being a bit slow. I think I may have banged my head.”

  Zanipulus relaxed and grinned at me. “That’s all right,” he said. “For a moment there, I was really worried. I thought, what must he be thinking of us? He must reckon we’re horrible.”

  “You might have warned me,” I said, “about the hanging thing. It was really convincing. If I hadn’t known—”

  “Oh, that.” He tried not to look smug. “Basically, just a really carefully padded noose and a precisely calculated drop, though there’s a bit more to it than that, obviously. I’ll draw it out for you some day, if you’re interested.”

  “So,” I said. “I’m dead. What now?”

  He shrugged. “Up to you entirely,” he said. “We’ve worked out your share.” He named a figure, which made my head swim. “Accila was all for deducting the money you took from us with all those weird schemes of yours, but the rest of us managed to calm him down, make him see it was ultimately good for business—laying the foundations for the Deodatist schism, that sort of thing—and he came round in the end and he’s fine about it now.” He grinned. “If it’s all right with you, we’ll pay you half now in cash and the balance in instalments over, say, ten years, to save us from liquidity problems. Or if you prefer, we can give you rentcharges, the reversions on Church properties, it’s entirely up to you. After all, we owe you a great deal. We’d never have maintained and increased our rate of exponential growth without you.”

  “Cash and instalments will be just fine,” I told him.

  “Splendid.” He sat up a bit straighter. “So,” he said, “any idea what you’re going to do next? The world, as they say, is your oyster.”

&n
bsp; “I hate oysters.”

  “So you do, I’d forgotten. Any plans? Or are you just going to bugger off to the sun and enjoy yourself?”

  Interesting choice of words. Deliberate? Who gives a shit? Motive is irrelevant. “I think that’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Looking back, I never enjoyed my life particularly much. So I’m hoping my death will be one long giggle.”

  As part of my severance package, I received a one-fifth share in the net profits of Officina Solis Invicti, a wholly-owned trading consortium with interests in, among other things, shipbuilding and arms production. That has proved to be a real slice of luck—heaven-sent, you might say—what with the dreadful wars we’ve been having lately, between the Orthodox empire and the Deodatist Aelians and Vesani. As I write this, Zanipulus is in the process of setting up a chain of arm’s-length offshore subsidiaries so that OSI can open factories in Aelia and the Vesani republic, and we can start selling ships and weapons to both sides. And why not? It’s only fair; last I heard, the Vesani had taken a hell of a beating from the empire, on account of their vastly superior military technology. It wouldn’t do for God to be seen to be taking sides.

  Motive is irrelevant. The war is a terrible thing, but it was coming anyway, it was inevitable; once the empire had sorted out its traditional enemy the Herulians, it was only a matter of time before it picked a fight with the Vesani, the Aelians, anyone else it could find. By having the war now, and over religion rather than trade or boundaries, we limit the damage. It’s highly unlikely that the empire will win, particularly if OSI arms the opposition. Defeat, or a stalemate, will put a limit on imperial expansionism for a century or more. As a result, tens of thousands of soldiers won’t die, millions of civilians won’t be enslaved. History will thank us, I have absolutely no doubt.