Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  I thought; do I really have to go through with this?

  They found me, in the end.

  Picture the scene. Phocas and me, at the university, two fresh-faced young intellectual drunks bumping along a narrow alley, having been thrown out of the Divine Forbearance, on our way to create the circumstances that led to us being thrown out of the Charity and Social Justice (breathing with intent gets you slung out of the Forbearance, or it did in my day, but in order to get bounced from the Charity, you really have to try). Talking, the way students do; too loud, too fast, from the bottom of our hearts, about things we understood in theory and principle, though we hadn’t got a clue about the proof and the practice.

  “Hell of a good way to make money, though,” I think I said.

  “Alchemy.” He snorted. It’s thing people only do when they’re drunk.

  “Not that it’s possible,” I pointed out. “Can’t be done.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he replied darkly. “Amazing, what people can do. Look at cattle-breeding. Or glass-making, I mean, there’s a case in point. I mean, who’d have thought you could take a load of sand, like just ordinary sand, off a beach, any God’s amount of the stuff, and you stick it in a crucible and heat it up really, really, really hot, and next thing you know, you got glass. I mean,” he added with intense feeling, “glass. Impossible.”

  “No it’s not,” I felt obliged to point out. “Glass is actually no big deal. People make the stuff every day.”

  “Yes, but it shouldn’t be possible, is what I’m saying,” he said. “Stuff that’s solid, so you can touch it, so it’s really there, but you can’t see it, you can just see through it. That’s not possible.” He paused to regain his balance, which had temporarily escaped him. “It’s more like bloody magic than anything sensible. Well, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. I’d forgotten what point he was trying to make.

  “So,” he went on, his face screwed up in concentration, “maybe the same thing goes for alchemy. Base stuff into gold. Just because we can’t do it now doesn’t mean to say it can’t be done. Well?”

  “But it can’t be done,” I said patiently. “Because of basic alchemical theory.”

  He spat; so much, then, for basic alchemical theory. “And bloody good job too,” he said. “You know what? If ever I get to be prince—”

  He paused, stopped dead and swallowed hard half a dozen times. I took a long step back, recognising the symptoms. But he was all right this time. “If ever I get to be prince,” he went on, “first thing I’m going to do. Want to guess?”

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “Hunt down all the alchemists,” he said, “string the buggers up. No mercy, no exceptions. You know why?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Because,” he said, “alchemists are the greatest potential danger to the state. Really. Because,” he went on, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger, “what’s the basis of government revenue? The gold standard. Why? Because gold is scarce. You get some bastard comes along, figures out how to turn base metal into gold, what d’you get? Total fiscal chaos, that’s what. Market flooded, gold worthless, billions of angels wiped out of the economy in a matter of hours.”

  I wasn’t really interested in the subject, but I felt obliged to argue, because when you’re that age, and a student, and drunk, you argue the toss about everything. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Surely the trick would be, to keep it to yourself. Not let everybody know about it. Then you could have your tame alchemists down in the cellar cooking up millions of angels, and only you’d know it wasn’t the good stuff. You’d be rich, everybody’d be fine, no problem, surely.”

  He gave me a filthy look. “Wouldn’t work,” he said. “Can’t keep something like that a secret for long. Bound to get out, and then you’re screwed. Only thing you can do, lure all the really good alchemists to you with bribes and stuff, keep a really, really close eye on them; then, soon as they look like they’re on to something—” He did that finger-across-the-throat thing, and hiccoughed.

  “Bit harsh,” I said.

  “Harsh,” he replied, “but right. The right thing to do. Always do the right thing, if you’re the prince. Hold on there a second, gotta take a leak.”

  He paused in the doorway of the Convent of the Sisters of Divine Grace, and there was a trickling noise. Then he scampered to catch me up.

  “So that’s what you’ll do, then, is it?” I asked. “When you’re the prince.”

  He laughed. “Not going to be the prince.”

  “Really?”

  “Impossible,” he said. “Can’t happen.”

  When I got back to my laboratory, the gold ingot was almost, but not quite, where I’d left it. Ah, I thought.

  “Four guards,” the guard said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Four guards,” he repeated. “Outside your door, at all times, from now on.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said.

  He gave me a look. “And private Syriscus is in the hospital. You cracked his skull.”

  From time to time, I really hate myself. It doesn’t last long and then it goes away, and then it comes back. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, and left the room. I heard the lock. So what? I thought. He was a scuttlehat. They get paid to stand in harm’s way. He was there to keep me from getting out, and I’m a free man, a citizen of the universe, not a chicken in a coop. I never set out to hurt anybody, not ever. Well, not often. And when I do, it’s never the primary purpose, just an unfortunate inevitable consequence. Mostly.

  I sat down and read a book; Arcadius on functions, which is fundamentally flawed but still makes a kind of sense. They brought me something to eat; fresh bread, strong white cheese, five slices of farm sausage, an apple. “How’s Syriscus getting on?” I asked. They just looked at me. I ate the food, then put my feet up on the bench and closed my eyes, but all I could see was her face just below the surface of the honey. Not guilt; more like the first stirring of an idea. I got up, found some paper and a pen and some ink, and started to write. (And if you happen to be a student in your second year at any decent Vesani university, you’d recognise what I wrote. Hell, you can probably recite the opening paragraph by heart, which is more than I can. There’s a really basic flaw on page three, by the way. A small prize if you can spot it).

  I must’ve fallen asleep, because when they woke me, I was face down on the paper, with the ink forming a small lake on the bench-top. I looked up. Scuttlehats.

  “Come with us,” they said.

  “Do I have to?” I said, with a yawn. “It’s been a really long day.”

  “On your feet,” they explained. I got up, and they shunted me out of the door. I wasn’t happy about being manhandled, but then I thought about the man whose skull I’d broken and decided not to make an issue of it. Memo to self, I thought; must make special effort not to hurt people.

  Phocas was waiting for me in the South Library. Disconcerting. I’d been in there twice before, once as a friend and honoured guest, once when I was burgling the palace (long story) and took a wrong turning. It’s a hell of a room; on the small side, by palace standards—you could just about squeeze a cavalry squadron in there, but they’d have to leave their horses outside in the corridor—half-panelled in rich golden oak with late Idealist carvings of harvest and pastoral subjects, with a moulded-plaster roof gilded and painted in trompe l’oeil to represent a canopy of vines and mulberries (traditionally there’s a two-angel prize for new visitors if they can spot the life-size moulded wren hidden among the vine-tendrils; I didn’t find it until my second visit); five free-standing bookcases, unchained, one of which houses the current prince’s own personal collection of books. I was touched to note that three shelves of this bookcase were taken up with the collected works of Saloninus.

  “You’re impossible,” he said.

  “Strictly speaking, no. Highly improbable, yes, but—”

  “You put a
guard in the hospital.” Phocas not in mood for jokes. “The other one lost two jaw teeth.” He paused, and looked at me. “Where did you learn to punch like that?” he said. “Not at the university.”

  “I sort of picked it up as I went along,” I said truthfully. “Look, I’m really sorry about the guards. It wasn’t—”

  “Deliberate?” He shook his head. “Well, they’re the least of our problems.” He picked up a sheet of paper and waved it at me. “You know what this is?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “It’s a warrant of friendly rendition,” he said, and I saw that his face was milk-white. “Sworn and sealed by the Mezentine charge d’affaires, relating to charges of forgery, sedition and false coining. You know what that means?”

  In other words, extradition. I just about managed to keep a straight face. “You won’t let them take me,” I said.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “I really don’t see that I have a choice,” he said. “It’s a properly-drawn warrant, there’s a valid treaty, they know you’re here, and they went to the Senate instead of me personally. If I try and bury this, the Tendency’ll have my head on a pike.”

  I didn’t dare look him in the eye, so I concentrated on the tiny plaster wren, directly above his head. It seemed as though it was singing to me. Extradition; I get formally handed over at the Northgate into the custody of three or four armed couriers. I go quietly. Sooner or later we stop at an inn or a post-house or a road station. A walnut-sized gob of pulveus fulminans goes in the fire, I go out through the window; free and clear. Of course, most of the major governments know me quite well by now, there’d be searches, including body cavities. But if it came down to a choice between my dignity and comfort and my life, no contest. You can easily hide enough pulveus fulminans to take out a wall where the sun doesn’t shine.

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t let them do this. It’s the gibbet for coining in Mezentia.”

  “Should’ve thought of that before you did it.” He paused. “You did do it.”

  I nodded. I make it a rule to tell the truth when there’s nothing much riding on it. “I was starving,” I said. “I met some men in a bar. They said it was for jewellery, not counterfeiting.”

  “Nino, you idiot.” There was something in his voice, something so close to genuine feeling, that for a moment I felt physically ill. “What can I do? Come on, you’re the genius. Suggest something.”

  “I’m not a lawyer,” I said. “Ask the professionals, it’s what you pay them for.”

  “I already did,” he snapped, turning his head a little so he wasn’t meeting my eye. “They couldn’t think of a damned thing. Best they could come up with was a plea of benefit of clergy. But that won’t wash unless it’s made when you’re on Mezentine soil.”

  Benefit of clergy, I thought, now that’s smart. I liked it. Never been a priest before. “Will it work?”

  He scowled, a sure sign of deep concentration. “They believe so,” he said. “The treaty’s four hundred years old, it was meant to protect our missionaries when they made trouble for themselves preaching the overthrow of the Guilds, but it’s still in force and it specifically covers sedition and related offences. So, yes, probably.”

  “So you can get me out.”

  “Only if we let them take you in first.” He rubbed his eyes, as though he’d been awake for three days. “It’s those bastards in the Tendency,” he said, “using you to get at me. Bet you anything you like they put the Mezentines up to it.”

  “Let’s think about this,” I said, in my best serious voice. “If you try and bury it, like you said, you’ll play into their hands and you’ll have a constitutional crisis. If we go along with it, due procedure, all straight and above board, you can get me out and stick it to the Tendency at the same time.” I shrugged. “Looks pretty straight-forward to me,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  He sat still and quiet for a while, during which time I had to make an effort to remember to breathe. Then he seemed to come to a decision, then pull back from it. “Talk about timing,” he said. “When you’re so close—”

  He looked up as he said that. There’s a card game we used to play in the prison hulk at Phrontis Tropaea. I forget the name of it, but there’s a point in the game where you’ve got the option of deliberately letting the other players see your cards. Never played it against Phocas, but I bet he’d have been good at it.

  (When I’d gone back to the laboratory after my last outing, I’d picked up the gold ingot, once I’d noticed that it had been moved, and checked the underside. Sure enough, there was a thin line scribed on it, deep enough to cut through the layer of gold plating formed over the silvered copper by the Polycrates process. What I think I neglected to mention was the other ingot, which I’d cast some time earlier from the same mould, out of pure gold, which I’d put next to it. Archestratus in the Materials conjectures that the transmutation process starts with the outside and works slowly inwards, like the thawing of frozen meat.)

  I managed to make myself look offended. “I said six weeks,” I said. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

  The enormity of that lie filled the room for a moment, then dissipated like gas in a breeze. “You’re following Archestratus?”

  I pulled a disdainful face. “Hardly,” I said. “But it looks like he may have been right about something, for a change. But it’s not ready,” I went on. “If you’d cut into that bar with a chisel, you’d have found it’s still copper half-way through.”

  (Which was true. Hell of a job, casting gold round a copper core. I had to support the copper bar inside the mould with four copper nails, so the molten gold would flow round and under it. Attention to detail, you see. It’s everything.)

  “If I let them take you—”

  “Don’t worry,” I said bravely. “I’ll be fine. And when I get back, I can finish the job.”

  It’s been on my conscience for some time now that I haven’t been exactly straight with you. What really happened was this.

  She came in. She saw the stuff on the bench. “What’s that?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She gave me that look. “What?”

  I told her what was in it, leaving out one key ingredient. Took her about five seconds to put the pieces together. “Will it work?”

  “How should I know?”

  She bent over the beaker and sniffed it, pulled back and made a face. “It went volatile.”

  “Yes, but I put in some sweet spirits of colocynth to calm it down.”

  She inspected it, then nodded briskly. “So?”

  I shrugged. “What’s the hurry?” I said. “If it works, I’ll have forever. If it doesn’t—”

  “You’ll make some more,” she said quickly, as if she hadn’t intended to say anything. “For me.”

  I didn’t reply. She scowled at me. “No,” I said.

  “What?”

  “No,” I repeated. “You want to try it, you know the recipe.”

  “What the hell—”

  “All due respect,” I said, “but immortality is one thing. Being married to you for ever and ever, on the other hand—”

  “You bastard.”

  “That’s unfair,” I said. “I’m not divorcing you. We’ll live out the rest of your natural life together, and then I’ll be free. That’s the deal you signed up for.”

  “You’d let me die.”

  “Everybody dies,” I said. “Mortality is the constant that defines our existence.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Besides,” I said, “it probably doesn’t work. And it could be poisonous.”

  “If it is,” she said pleasantly, “you’ll die, and I’ll know not to drink it.”

  “Could be it takes hours to work. Or days. Weeks, even. It’d be criminally irresponsible of me to let you drink it.”

  “You going to give Phocas some?”

  I smiled. “If it works,” I said, “I may eventually publish. But not till I’ve given
it a really thorough trial. Say, two hundred years. Earlier than that, it’d be bad science.”

  “Are you going to give my brother some or aren’t you?”

  “No,” I replied. “He’s funding me to turn lead into gold, which we all know is impossible. This is just a sideline of my own. He doesn’t own the research. This,” I went on, smiling beautifully, “is just for me. Because I’m worth it.”

  I saw her slide her hand round the base of the beaker. With a really rather graceful movement, she lifted it to her mouth. I sat back in my chair to watch the show. When it was over (and it wasn’t long; I chose sal draconis because it’s quick) I got up and stood over her, turned her face with my foot so I could see her eyes. Not a flicker.

  One down, I thought. I’d known, ever since college when she came up to visit Phocas and met me for the first time, that she was trouble. When Phocas more or less kidnapped me and brought me to Paraprosdocia, in the ludicrous but utterly sincere belief that I could figure out how to turn base metal into gold one day, she didn’t object. Far from it. Don’t you ever let him go, I heard her say to him once; it was the third, no, sorry, make that the fourth time I tried to escape. I was wandering aimlessly through the palace trying to find a door that led to the street, and I happened to stray into the small cloister garden, where they were drinking wine beside the fountain. He assured her that the only journey I’d be making from the palace was the short distance from the back door to the midden—technically outside the palace grounds, because it’s on the other side of the curtain wall. Soon as he’s cracked transmutation, I get rid of him, Phocas said. Don’t you dare, she replied, not till he’s made me the elixir. He grinned at her. Oh, go on, then, he said. But then—