Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  Didn’t come as a surprise, not one bit. I’d always known, ever since that drunken episode back at Elpis. The last thing Phocas wanted was for there to be a way to turn garbage into gold. After all, the prince owns more gold than anybody else this side of the Eastern Sea, so he’s got the most to lose. Hardly a coincidence that the half-dozen or so incredibly eminent alchemists who’d worked for him before I came, men whose glassware I wouldn’t be worthy to wash out, had died in the palace. Irony; transmutation really and truly isn’t possible. But I can easily picture what happened. Phocas keeps putting pressure on them to achieve results. They can’t do the impossible, so they cheat. Cheating’s easy. There are a dozen reliable recipes for instant gold plating, as many again for fool’s gold that’s practically indistinguishable from the real thing, and let’s not get into the murky realm of rigged experiments, sleight of hand, false-bottomed cupolas, and the third and fourth books of Xenocrates’ Experiments (I lost my copy years ago, but not before I committed the whole of those books to memory). So; they cheated, plausibly enough to convince Phocas that they’d finally done the trick, and that the trick was possible after all. And then he killed them.

  Eudoxia was, of course, much smarter than her brother, and she’d taught herself alchemy to a remarkably high level. She knew transmutation couldn’t be done. I guess she thought, if it gives my brother pleasure to kill a bunch of charlatans, let him. She certainly knew better than to argue with him once he’d got an idea stuck in his head. But she’d read that universally-acclaimed early work of mine, On the Properties of Organic Materials, in which I proved conclusively that an elixir of eternal youth was not only theoretically possible but almost within our grasp.

  Properties was another of my little grey lies. There’s a fault in its logic that’s so huge, I didn’t feel guilty about publishing, on the grounds that anybody who couldn’t spot it deserved to be made a monkey of. But nobody spotted it, not even brilliant Eudoxia. Now, she knew me well enough to know that bullying just doesn’t work. More flies with honey than vinegar has always been the core of her philosophy. She figured that if I was deeply, hopelessly in love with her, I’d make her the elixir to preserve forever the beauty to which I was devoted. To be fair, I don’t think she planned to have me killed after I’d come across with the stuff. She’d just leave me to Phocas. At any rate, she sold the idea of marrying me to him by arguing that a man with my propensity to running away couldn’t be restrained by force. Instead, make me want to stay; and afterwards, when she was a widow, she could marry again. Phocas agreed; not because he was convinced by her arguments, but because he knew she’d very nearly married Opianus, leader of the Popular Tendency and Phocas’ deadliest enemy in politics; her reason being, she’d done the sums and figured out that it was only a matter of time before the Tendency prevailed and Phocas’ head found its way onto a spike on Northgate. If she married Opianus, she could hurry along the inevitable, secure her own position and effectively rule through him, if she could be bothered. I don’t suppose she could, actually. My belief is, she wanted to make sure her head didn’t end up next to her brother’s when the end finally came. In any event, the deal fell through when Opianus was supplanted in a particularly nasty bout of Tendency in-fighting; his successor as Tendency leader, Pescennius, was widely known not to like girls, so she gave up. It was therefore in Phocas’ interests to have his sister safely married to a political nonentity; the collateral benefit of keeping me on a leash, if it actually worked out that way, was just icing on the cake.

  I’d made up my mind to kill her quite some time ago; then I changed it. I’m deeply ashamed of this, but I’m helpless around beautiful women. That’s how I allowed myself to fall in love with Theodosia, and after Phocas killed her, Eudoxia was still there, just as lovely, just as desperate to keep me hooked so I’d brew her stupid elixir for her. Just run away, I told myself, there’s no need for another lovely woman to die. The transmutation of flesh to putrefaction, of warm to cold, is established fact, it doesn’t need proving again. Just run away, and leave them both behind.

  On that occasion I got as far as Lachrima, on the shores of the Great White Lake.

  Extradition. So much to do, so little time.

  The worst part, of course, was knowing I’d have to rely on other people. I have a thing about that. Mostly, I guess, because other people have always let me down, when it mattered; but it’s also this deep-rooted hang-up I’ve got about trusting people. Never really been able to do it. I guess it’s because we always instinctively use ourselves as paradigms of humanity when calculating the likely behaviour of others. I wouldn’t trust me further than I can spit, so why would I trust anybody else?

  Also, there’s some procedures you just can’t rush. It takes time for Element A to react with Essence B and produce Compound C; sometimes you can bustle it along with a little judicious heat, but not always, and if you get it wrong, you screw up Compound C or blow a hole in the roof. Furthermore, it’s never ever a good idea to hurry when you’re using strong acids. Think about it.

  Add fine silver to aqua fortis, then add wood alcohol, as pure as you can make it. I spent years figuring out how to do this reaction so as to produce a stable product. Now I was faced with the tricky problem of making it so it’d be unstable. That too is the story of my life.

  I started with twenty silver dollars; not the crappy government issue, which is ninety parts silver to ten parts copper, but some home-made (I prefer the term hand-made) of my own manufacture, ninety-nine point six pure, which I’d collected from a safe place after I went to see Astyages. One of the reasons I’ve never made any money out of counterfeiting is, I make better coins than the State. Can’t seem to help it. Always the quiet voice in my head telling me; if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.

  Put the dollars in the bottom of a big glass beaker. Slosh in a whole pint of the very best aqua fortis; made it myself, because you can’t get good stuff commercially. Stand well back, because the foul-smelling white steam will kill you if you breathe it in. Watch those little smiling bubbles as the acid eats the silver. Enough to break your heart.

  The guards turned up with the ice I’d asked for. They treated me like a cross between a leper and an active volcano. I smiled, and gave the sergeant the twenty-first dollar.

  “No, really,” I said, as he stared at it. “And thanks.”

  You could see the battle going on in his mind. On the one hand, I was the unbelievably devious master of escapes, who thought nothing of maiming honest soldiers if they got in my way. On the other hand, a silver dollar is a silver dollar is a month’s pay. Of course, it wasn’t a silver dollar, because it was in fact illegally better, but he wasn’t to know that. Eventually his fist closed round it, and he got out of the room really fast.

  I get my wood alcohol from Sirmis. It’s the best money can buy. I put the beaker on the ice, glugged in the wood alcohol, stoppered the bottle and stood well back. So far, so good. As soon as it stopped gushing out killer fumes, I trickled in cold water, to start the crystals growing. Tricky part over; now all I had left to do was the relatively trivial chore of turning base metal into gold.

  I don’t actually know—I’m being totally honest with you now—whether it’s possible or not. Truth is, I’ve never had the enthusiasm to run the experiment to its conclusion. If I’d happened to stumble across the secret before Phocas got hold of me, maybe I’d have been a bit more motivated. As it was, discovering how to do it would’ve been my death warrant, so it stayed entirely theoretical. I didn’t even dare write it down and work it out on paper, in case Eudoxia saw it. It’s been in my head for years, and I never tried it out.

  It’s a six part procedure—you’ll pardon me, I’m sure, if I don’t tell you about it, just in case you’re tempted to give it a go yourself, which (trust me) would lead to all manner of horrible consequences for you as and when your king, prince, duke or city council finds out what you’re up to. The most I can bring myself to do is give you
a hint. You add stuff to stuff, do stuff to the resulting stuff, and you get stuff out at the end, which may or may not be gold, depending on whether or not it works. It’s all quite straightforward and doesn’t need ice; you could do it at home, on the kitchen table, but don’t, please.

  So I did that. Then I ran up three walnut-sized knobs of pulveus fulminans, wrapped them in incredibly thin gold leaf and put them where they wouldn’t be found. I won’t dwell on that stage of the operation. All done, and just in time.

  “I need to see the prince,” I said.

  The sergeant—not the same one as last time—nodded. I got the impression he’d been expecting me to say that, so presumably Phocas intended to say good-bye, as I’d hoped he would. Say what you like about Phocas, he’s always been predictable; a fine quality in an ingredient, essential to a well-controlled experiment.

  (It’d have been so nice if my life had been a well-controlled experiment. You know; start off with your basic ingredients, add education, experiences, events, stirring with a glass rod, when appropriate retarding the reaction with a block of ice. Predictable consequences, intended results, and something worth having at the end. Hasn’t quite worked out like that. As for the result, the product, we’ll have to wait and see. I may yet surprise myself.)

  “The lawyers say it ought to be all right,” Phocas said. He looked grey with worry. “They’ve drawn up the heads of defence and I’ve sent the papers on ahead by express courier, so they’ll be there before you arrive. With any luck—”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Really.” I smiled at him. “You know, I always thought I was smart, but benefit of clergy—”

  “Damn it,” he said, “I almost forgot.” He scrabbled among the papers on his desk, found what he was looking for. “Lucustus Saloninus, do you solemnly swear to perform and uphold the office of deacon in the most holy and sacred convocation of the Company of the Invincible Sun? Say yes.”

  “Yes,” I said, and waited. “Is that it?”

  “That’s it. You’re a priest. Now get out of my sight.”

  “Really a priest?”

  “Yes. Good-bye. Try not to rob anybody or blow anything up.”

  “Phocas.” I looked straight at him, something I wouldn’t usually do. “I need to tell you something before I go.”

  “Well?”

  “In private.”

  He looked dubious, and the scuttlehats went suddenly tense. “Oh come on,” I said. “I’m a priest now. If you can’t trust the clergy—”

  “Fine.” He nodded at the sergeant, and the scuttlehats left the room. “Well?”

  I lowered my voice just a little. “It’s started,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The experiment.” It took a moment for it to sink in, and then his eyes grew round as dollars. “I’ve started it up. It’ll take about five hours.”

  He’d grabbed my sleeve. “You mean—?”

  “In my laboratory,” I said, “on the bench, there’s a stone basin, next to the water-clock. In the basin there’s a handful of iron nails, covered with a pale green liquid. In about an hour from now, you should start to see a pale yellow coating on the nails. Whatever you do, don’t touch them, the stuff in there’ll eat your fingers to the bone. Just let them be, but someone’s going to have to watch the stuff like a hawk. So long as the liquid stays green, it’s fine. If it starts to turn blue, someone’s got to add two drops of the dark brown stuff in the dark green glass bottle; that’ll put it right, but it’s got to be done the moment the liquid starts changing colour. Otherwise the whole experiment’s a write-off and I’ll have to start again, it’d set us back months.” I grinned. “This is about the most inconvenient time they could’ve picked.”

  He frowned at me. “Couldn’t it have waited till you got back?”

  I shook my head. “The principal reagent only stays stable for a day or so,” I said. “It takes nine weeks to mature once you’ve brewed it. Also,” I added quietly, “I may not be coming back. I’d hate to die without having tried.”

  He looked sick. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. “The lawyers—”

  “I’ll write it all out when I get to Mezentia,” I said. “I’ll mail to you via the diplomatic courier.”

  “No.” He looked terrified. “For pity’s sake, don’t do that. We can’t trust anybody with something like this. When you get back, there’ll be plenty of time.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said. “Just make sure there’s someone watching that stuff for the next five hours. That’s all I ask.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, and his voice was just a shade higher than usual. “I’ll do it myself.”

  “Really?”

  “You have my word.”

  I smiled at him. “In that case,” I said, “I’ve got nothing to worry about. Bless you, my son,” I added, and went and banged on the door.

  The story of my life, so far.

  When I was young, I wanted to know the truth. I was impatient. I saw things so very clearly. It’s probably a mistake to teach logic to the young. Logic is a weapon as well as a tool. You learn it, you master it, you can’t wait to go out and use it on someone. At Elpis, I laid about me with the sword of logic till nobody was left to fight. Then, absurdly, the money ran out, and shortly afterwards, so did I.

  Running away; the story of my life. I ran away from philosophy and set about doing stupid things. Stealing is stupid, because sooner or later you get caught. Getting caught is also the story of my life. I always get away, but I always get caught. I used to think I just stumbled into alchemy by accident, but now I’m old enough to know better, I understand that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. The two predominent factors that make me up, philosophy and criminality, when combined together on the block of ice that serves me for a personality go to make up alchemy. We were, to coin a phrase, made for each other.

  The stupid thing is, I probably am the greatest alchemist who ever lived. Not because I may or may not have found out how to turn base metal into gold, but because—well, we’ll come to that later. I’m also a pretty competent philosopher, but only as long as someone’s prepared to pay me to do it. The longer you think about truth and wisdom, the more clearly you come to understand that they’re figments of the imagination; and what does that leave? Well, there’s the sheer pleasure of fencing with logic, which wears a bit thin after a while, and there’s the reasonable living that can be made from lecturing and writing and teaching. I’d have settled for that, if only I’d been left alone, but no such luck.

  Phocas and Eudoxia shaped my life. When I wasn’t running away from them, I was lying to them, to keep from getting killed. I murdered Eudoxia because I had to; too old and tired to run any more, too weary to keep pulling knobs of pulveus fulminans out of my arse and jumping through windows. As for Phocas; I guess he meant well, but that’s no excuse. I’ve meant well at various stages in my life, and there’s no excuse whatsoever for me.

  Curiously enough, one of my greatest talents, before I lost it, was making friends. People instinctively liked me, once upon a time. Theodosia loved me. You’d need to be ten times the scientist I’ll ever be to figure out the chemistry behind that.

  Well. I’m sorry, by the way, that I lied to you earlier. Couldn’t resist. I guess that above all, I’m a showman, a performer, a liar. And you can take that to the bank.

  “For God’s sake,” Pescennius said, scowling at me. “Did you really have to trash the entire palace?”

  He was exaggerating, needless to say. But, “Yes,” I replied. “Omelettes and eggs,” I explained. “Also, if a thing’s worth doing—”

  He poured me a cup of that pale green tea that’s so fashionable these days. Myself, I’d as soon drink rainwater from the gutter. “How did you do it, exactly?” he said.

  Pescennius, formerly head of the Popularist Tendency and now First Citizen of the Republic, is, of course, an old college chum of mine. We go way back. “This stuff tastes like piss,” I said.


  “Yes. How did you—?”

  “All right,” I said wearily. “But it goes no further, right?”

  “You have my word.”

  I knew him too well for that. Still, it didn’t matter. He and I had a murder in common. That sort of mutual bond is something you can trust.

  “Argens fulminans,” I told him, stretching back into his really quite comfortable chair. “Otherwise known as fulminate of silver.”

  “Never heard of—”

  “You wouldn’t have,” I said. “I discovered it. Fulminate of gold’s been around for centuries, it’s in all the books. I wondered if you could get the same effect with silver. They’re both completely useless, of course.”

  He scowled at me. “Slow down,” he said.

  I grinned. “Fulminate of silver,” I said, “is an explosive, a really powerful one. Trouble is, it’s incredibly unstable. Other fulminates blow up when you bang them or drop them. Silver fulminate tends to go off under its own weight. No, I’m serious. The weight of one layer of crystals forming on top of another is enough pressure to detonate it. That’s why it’s so useless. You can’t make more than a tiny quantity before it self-destructs, unless you slow it right down with ice. And when the ice melts—”

  He was thinking really hard, trying to keep up with me. “Go on,” he said.

  “I brewed up a large quantity of silver fulminate,” I said. “On a big block of ice. I left it on the bench in the laboratory, along with another experiment I knew Phocas was interested in. That was just to get him in the same room as the fulminate and keep him there till it blew itself up. And him with it, of course.”