Pisces of Fate
Page 20
“I have an idea.” Magnesia shifted her focus to practical matters and vanished into the fog bank outside the dye factory.
She returned a few minutes later, carrying a large white sheet.
“Take this corner and this corner,” Magnesia instructed.
She took the other end and they stretched the fabric out over the diagram. “Now, carefully lay it down on the mud.”
They lowered the cloth until it lay in the mud across the complicated lines and circles of Arthur’s image.
“Okay, lift it straight up, don’t let it flap.” Magnesia and Arthur rose to their feet. The diagram showed on the sheet in perfect mud-stained detail.‡
“Once it dries, you should be able to take the picture with you anywhere,” Magnesia said.
“It’s going to need words to explain it all,” Arthur said, chewing his lip.
Magnesia nodded. “We’ll have to get another sheet.”
“Donut Bleech puts colour on cloth, right?” Arthur said, still holding the damp cloth in the evening air.
“I think so. They seem to be able to make any number of colours from a few basic ones.”
“What if instead of dying a whole sheet, we just asked him to put word-marks on it?”
“Isn’t that what the embroiderers do?”
“Yes, but they only make one or two sheets and it takes too long. I’m thinking about making exact copies of the same words and putting them on lots of sheets.”
Magnesia turned to regard the mud-stained cloth. “You want Donut to put your picture and your words on lots of bed linen?
“Can you imagine, people going to bed and reading my ideas?”
“I think some people do other things when they go to bed,” Magnesia said carefully.
“You mean, sleep? They can do that afterwards.”
“Sure, let’s say that’s what I meant.”
“This is going to take a lot of bedding,” Arthur mused.
“Why does it have to be so big? Why not make the sheets smaller. Get an embroiderer to stitch them together along one side so they don’t get lost or out of order. Then you can put all your ideas on a bunch of sheets that people can take with them without needing some kind of pack animal to carry it.”
“An excellent idea.” Arthur grinned enthusiastically. “Except, I don’t know how to read or write.”
“Maybe you can learn? Or, if that’s not how it works, we can ask someone to make the marks that mean what you say.”
Arthur flapped the sheet. “Then they can tell other people what the marks mean.”
“As long as they tell the people that can’t read what the marks really mean, and don’t make something up.” Magnesia frowned at the possibility.
Such distortion of truth was beyond Arthur’s comprehension. “Why would anyone do that? If they have their own ideas, they can make their own sheets.”
Magnesia nodded. “And because what is on the sheets is true, no one needs to change it. They just have to say it.”
They walked down Tureen Street in the rising dusk, the sheet stretched out between them.
“Accuracy will be important,” Magnesia said. “We don’t want people to misinterpret anything you say.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Arthur said. “I’m not sure anyone will be that interested anyway.”
* * *
* The herds of wandering goats had centuries ago destroyed any apple trees that may once have existed on the grassy plains.
† A century after the brothers’ death, the Palindrome Order was engulfed in the cleansing tide of the Edict of Erasable, which decreed that all thought, once committed to the permanence of parchment, stone, or lavatory door graffiti, loses its essence. Therefore all recorded knowledge must be swept clean to allow the thought to be reincarnated as a new and original idea. It has also been suggested that this was simply an attempt to subvert the then-newly conceived idea of copyright law.
‡ Protected by the Knotstick Church of Arthur for hundreds of years, debate over the authenticity of the ‘Shroud of Tureen’ continues. Modern scientific analysis has proven inconclusive in determining the age of the cloth and the source of the mud stains that the Men of the Cloth claim are on it.