Time of Breath

by Paul Mannering

  “On account of all the dirt, no doubt.”

  “It’s a fine thought, Pudding. However, the accepted theory is because Pathia has a long and continuous history of civilisation. Which means there is a lot of it to dig up.”

  “Convenient. Much like that exit…”

  Leaving the terminal building, I readied myself for the wave of heat; what took me by surprise was the smell of drifting smoke.

  “Is there a fire?” I asked our guide.

  “Pathia doesn’t use empathic energy the way other countries do,” Harenae explained.

  “But that building, it has smoke coming out of it.”

  “Yes, because it is burning fuel to generate electricity,” Harenae replied with the calm patience of someone who has had the same conversation with tourists many times before.

  “Isn’t that, well, a fire hazard?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t work.”

  Where I expected to see cars, instead I saw people. Mostly they were walking, though some were riding on raised platforms carried on the shoulders of teams of athletic young people.

  “I thought there would be more Moo-rise,” I said in an attempt to appear less inept.

  Harenae continued in the same patient tone, “The spelling is M-u-r-r-a-i, but it is pronounced Murray. And yes, they are made of stone. They were the main labour force of Pathia for centuries. Murrai are the only working examples of empathically powered devices used in Pathia. Walk or ride?”

  “I think we will walk,” Drakeforth replied. “Destination, the Hotel Dust.”

  “Hotel Dust,” Harenae nodded and whistled at three men huddled in the shade. They came over and picked up our luggage.

  “Hotel Dust,” she said to the three porters. They squared their shoulders, wiped their feet on the smooth stone, and headed off with our bags. We fell into step behind Harenae and the luggage bearers.

  “Are all the roads in Pathia made the same way?” I asked Drake­forth.

  “Many of them are made from local quarried stone. There was a time when all construction work was done by murrai, but they’re less common these days.”

  “Then, we’re not actually walking on people?”

  Drakeforth did the thing where he walks in a straight line while turning his head to regard me with his unique blend of contempt and curiosity. It would have been more annoying, if he hadn’t made it look effortless.

  “Pathia, means the place of paths,” he said. “However, unless we are walking on an osteopath, then it is unlikely that we are walking on human remains.”

  “Of course.” I tried to snort, but the air was very dry so it came out as more of a whistle. “That would make Harenae a pathologist?”

  “Yes,” Drakeforth turned his attention back to the way ahead.

  We walked on smooth stones, a mosaic jigsaw of well-fitted pieces that, the more I stared at it, the more it hinted at a pattern. Some kind of structure, perhaps a written language in letters too large or ancient to be understood.

  “Don’t look down,” Harenae announced.

  “Hmm?” I replied with a sliver of attention.

  “Look ahead, above or behind, never down. You might see something you like.”

  “I can almost make out…something.”

  “The secrets of the path are not for our eyes. They are all that remains of the ancient world. Well, that and the murrai, the pyramids, and the museum archives.”

  “The pyramids? Oh yes, I read about those,” I said brightly, still not wanting to appear like a complete tourist.

  “You read what was in the guide books,” Harenae said. Her lack of confidence clear.

  “Uhh, yes?” I could almost hear Drakeforth rolling his eyes.

  Harenae continued, “Don’t stare at the stones, or the gaps between them. They came from ancient pyramids; we call it crazy paving because those who stare too long go pyramad.”

  “Pyramad?”

  “It’s a well-documented mental condition,” Drakeforth said.

  “Okay…” I glanced once more at the pattern of lines between the stones and wrenched my eyes away.

  We walked along a winding path between buildings made of sand-coloured stone. This is what sand castles must look like to a crab crossing the beach between tides.

  The Hotel Dust—a tower of sand coloured blocks with a hanging sign of mummified wood creaking in the breeze. The only recognisable part of the sign were the five stars, faded, cracked and all but two had been scratched out.

  A stencilled image in fresh red paint on one wall looked like a credit stick. I wondered why, as I hadn’t seen any terminals for making electronic transactions outside the airport.

  “Your destination,” Harenae said. The porters lifted our luggage down and smiled at me, their hands outstretched, palms up.

  Drakeforth slipped a folded, handwritten note into each empty hand, which struck me as weird, but the locals smiled and nodded.

  “We’ll send word if we require your services again,” he said.

  Harenae nodded and followed the porters as they marched off into the sweltering heat.

  I followed Drakeforth into the cool, cave-like interior of the hotel.

  Chapter 8

  “Two rooms, with working air-conditioning and windows. Preferably ones that close,” Drakeforth explained to the long-haired youth behind the stone block that served as a counter. Two cats lounged in the only chairs available in the guest side of the reception area, their expressions suggesting the faded cushions would only be pried from their cold, dead paws.

  “How many nights?” The youth sounded male. It surprised me: in the gloom I had assumed he was a girl.

  “Let’s not make assumptions,” Drakeforth replied.

  “We have one room available, it’s the honeymoon suite.”

  “Oh, we’re not—” I said quickly.

  Drakeforth took a pencil and scrap of paper from his pocket. He wrote something on it and slid it over the counter.

  “Here’s an idea,” he said. The young man glanced down and took the paper, leaving the key unattended as he swept the note out of sight.

  “Bring the bags,” Drakeforth said, as he started up a flight of stone steps.

  The youth and I cycled through an eternity of not making eye contact, then glancing at each other questioningly, then feeling awkward until I grabbed one of my suitcases and headed it up the stairs.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Drakeforth when I found him on the third floor. “I’ll get the bags.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to ask twice,” Drakeforth replied.

  I put the case down and went back downstairs to collect the others. In the lobby, a discussion was warming rapidly. I stopped just out of sight and listened.

  “He always stays here.” A woman’s voice.

  “No one chooses to stay here,” the boy behind the stone counter replied.

  “Vole Drakeforth is a creature of habit. Many of them quite inexplicable, but it does make him predictable.”

  Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, I stepped down and picked up two more suitcases.

  “Cacolet-leather,” the woman said.

  I mentally sighed. “Yes.”

  “Are you here with Vole?”

  “That would depend on who wants to know.”

  She wore a loose robe of pale green cloth that draped and twisted, giving her the appearance of being woven into the centre of some archaic knot. Her skin was tanned, but her eyes and hair were as light as the sand. However, unlike the sand, her eyes were blue.

  “I told him to come,” she said.

  “Ah.” I lifted the suitcases and started up the stairs.

  “You don’t believe me?” she said to my back.

  “Quite right.”

 
I heard the scuff of her feet on the stone steps behind me as I stepped around a cat escorting me up the stairs.

  “Drakeforth never does anything anyone tells him,” I explained.

  “Well, he listens to me,” she said as we climbed past the second floor.

  “You must have something serious to blackmail him with,” I replied.

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that. I’m his wife.”

  Chapter 9

  After we climbed to the third floor, I sat down on the top step. “Wife?” I repeated.

  “Yes, it’s complicated. We aren’t together in the normal sense. In fact, the entire marriage was simply so I could work here in Pathia.”

  “A marriage of convenience?”

  “A marriage of inconvenience. We had to live together for a year to prove it wasn’t an immigration scam.”

  “But…it was?”

  “Totally.”

  Questions jostled in my mind trying to get to the head of the queue. I picked one at random.

  “What sort of work do you do?”

  She sat down on the step next to me and spoke quietly. “I’m an archaeologist.”

  “Oh. Marine zoo construction or fossicking in the dirt for ancient history?”

  “Shhh…” she hushed me, and looked around the empty stair­case. “Not so loud. There are some very strict rules about history in Pathia. Officially, I’m a librarian at the Museum of Pathia.”

  “That sounds interesting…” I worked on breathing. The zip-lag, sweatbox temperatures, and strange revelations had combined to leave me weak and light-headed.

  “It’s more interesting than studying economic modelling forecasts based on consideration of factors culminating in alternative outcomes to historically valid events.”

  My memory latched on to the strangely familiar that bobbed to the surface on the shifting tide. “Beaufort College…”

  “Vole and I met there as students,” the woman in green replied.

  “Was he insufferable in those days?” I rested my head against the wall; the warmth and texture of it made me feel like I was leaning against a sleeping armadillo.

  “Vole was…difficult. Fiercely intelligent and utterly helpless. He spent far too much time in the local teahouses. If I hadn’t tutored him, he would have dropped out.”

  “He never mentioned you.”

  “He never mentioned you, either,” she replied.

  “Charlotte Pudding.” I extended a pale hand.

  “Eade Notschnott.” We shook on it.

  Eade helped with the luggage and, with an unsettling confidence, went directly to the Honeymoon Suite, Room 3.14. Drakeforth was inside, on his hands and knees, tapping the stone block that made the bed base, a frown of concentration on his face.

  “Still solid?” Eade asked as she set my luggage down.

  “Notschnott, have you met Pudding?”

  “Yes, Vole we’ve met.”

  I came in and closed the door in my wake. I set the last of the bags down and through the film of sweat evaporating from my eyes, I saw a refrigerator. I went to it and found bottles of water chilled to perfection. I drank one and took three more with me to where Eade was watching Drakeforth continue his crawl around the room’s only bed.

  “Water?” I offered one of the bottles.

  “Thank you.” She took it and saluted me with the bottle before taking a long drink.

  “Will he be long, do you think?” I asked as I sipped my second bottle of ice water.

  “It would help to pass the time if I explain.”

  “It’s really not necessary.”

  “It would help me pass the time,” Eade clarified. “Vole Drake­forth has some issues.”

  I gave a snort. “He’s like a weekly magazine with legs.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” Drakeforth said from the other side of the bed.

  “Of course you can.” Eade managed to avoid sounding totally condescending. I was impressed.

  Eade continued to talk to me as if Drakeforth were not present. “His current concern relates to the truth about the double-e flux known as empathic energy; he has some strange ideas about where the Godden Corporation gets its source material from.”

  I brightened. “Oh yes, we had that adventure. Turns out that Drakeforth was right to be concerned. The Godden Corporation are harvesting the essence of the living to capture the empathic energy that they then use to power everything.”

  “Vole, you were actually right about something?” Eade sounded surprised.

  “Yes,” Drakeforth snapped.

  “Well done, you should write that down somewhere. Perhaps note it in your diary so you can celebrate the anniversary of the day you got something right.”

  Drakeforth stood up.

  “Yes,” he said, dusting his hands off. “Yes. I should do that.”

  I expected Drakeforth to unleash his particularly biting sarcasm, finely honed in the depths of the Sarkazian Clubs where sarcasm was practised with the intensity and devastating effect of a martial art.

  “You’re probably wondering why I insisted you come at once,” Eade continued.

  It was Drakeforth’s turn to give Eade his full attention for the first time: “There is only one reason you would contact me and insist I come back to Pathia. Either you have found something, or you have lost something. No one ever enlists the help of others when they find something. Therefore, you have lost something. Given that we are in Pathia, it’s probably something that you can’t tell anyone in authority about. Something you were responsible for, which means it is an Arthurian artefact.”

  Eade shook her head. “That would be ridiculous. This crisis is far bigger than library robbery.” She took a deep breath. “Professor Bombilate is missing.”

  “Good,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Good? Good? Are you completely deranged? The professor goes missing and all you can say is good?”

  “I could say, great, outstanding. Wonderful and about bingo time.”

  Eade turned on me. “Has Vole suffered any recent blows to the head that you know of?”

  I did a quick mental count. “Several.”

  Drakeforth raised a hand to stop Eade as she stepped forward, hands raised ready to examine his skull. “My brain is fine. A great deal has happened since you and I last saw each other, Notschnott. You should know, I got religion.”

  “Oh, Vole!” Eade pressed her palm against Drakeforth’s forehead, as if checking him for a fever.

  “He’s not sick,” I said. “At least, not like that. Drakeforth is Arthur.”

  “Water, quickly,” Eade waved a hand at me as she pushed Drakeforth into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. I handed over a bottle. Eade twisted the lid off and threw the contents in Drakeforth’s face.

  “Snap out of it, for mango’s sake!” she shouted.

  “Fargarble!” Drakeforth shouted. He stood up and swept water off his face. “For once in your life, would you just listen?” he demanded.

  “Why? Are you finally going to say something worth listening to?” Eade retorted.

  “Yes! Probably! I—Oh, never mind…”

  At its core, capitalism is about bridging the gap between the customer (the mark with the money) and the guy wanting to unburden them of all that credit. Customer service is the nice arch over the bottomless chasm that makes the customer appreciate the bridge as something more than a piece of clever engineering. With this in mind, I took a deep breath.

  “Would it help if I explained?”

  “Probably not,” Drakeforth replied.

  “Go on then,” Eade said, regarding me as if I was a puppy being encouraged to perform a trick.

  “Drakeforth was right. About everything. I don’t know how or why, but he is also Arthur, the found
er and actual god of Arthurianism. Honestly, if you thought he was odd before, you should hang out with him for an hour and then we can compare notes.”

  “Well, that answers that question,” Eade said.

  “Which question?” I asked warily.

  “The ‘Have I called upon the right person in my time of greatest need?’ question. The answer is clearly no.”

  “We are here now, so you may as well make the best of it,” Drakeforth said.

  “Professor Bombilate?” I suggested.

  “What?” Eade blinked. “Oh! Yes, Professor Bombilate is missing.

  “Have you checked between the sofa cushions?” I said, with a fixed expression of calm.

  Eade gave me a pitying look.

  “Who is Professor Bombilate?” I said, feeling my face redden.

  “Professor Bombilate is the world’s leading informist,” Eade replied.

  “What is—?” I stopped as Drakeforth raised a hand.

  “Pathia has a knowledge-based economy, Pudding. You did read the guide book, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, I listened to the audio version and I have used it for reference a couple of times.”

  “In Pathia, an informist analyses the value of, and tracks the ups and downs of, the economy, exactly as an economist does back home. Except instead of shares, products, services, interest rates, employment figures and apple-core futures, an informist analyses the flow and changing value of information.”

  “So how do people pay for things?”

  “By the sharing of information.”

  I had a flash of understanding. “There was something written on the paper you gave the porters and you whispered something to Harenae, the guide. You were paying them for their services.”

  Eade applauded. “Aren’t you clever? Vole, give her a treat.”

  “Most of the world’s economies are based on scarcity,” Drakeforth continued. “Living Oak, for example, was used as a currency for a while, because it was rare and considered valuable, so people hoarded it like gold. Information, on the other hand, is abundant. It’s like trying to base your economy on units of air.”

  “Which is only important if you’re not getting any,” I said, and realised that there was a second line to that joke, but I had messed up the delivery. “Uhm…”