Time of Breath

by Paul Mannering

  “Maybe they keep going because they don’t know they shouldn’t?”

  “Quite possible,” Drakeforth nodded. “Best not tell them then.”

  Beyond the archway, a sign welcomed us to Exhibit Hall A. The hall was filled with well-lit glass cases. I stopped at the first one, which held swords. The display card explained that they were actually part of an ancient Pathian ploughing machine.

  “Pathians have always been a practical people,” Drakeforth observed. “They invented farming implements for use in activities both agrarian and aggressive, depending on the season.”

  “I remember Dad saying that blood and bone was good for the garden.”

  “If that were true, Pathia should be a botanist’s paradise.”

  You are a tourist, I reminded myself. So do something touristy. The museum was laden with exotic and interesting artefacts. I investigated a glass cabinet with a display of coins. Various historical attempts at currency. Tiny fragments of order. The stamped profiles of various kings, queens, emperors, chairpersons, and the occasional elected official, decorated the back of each token.

  I moved slowly through the gallery, intrigued and absorbed by the long tapestry of history so carefully preserved here. Given that Pathia now operated on some kind of knowledge-based economy, I wondered where the important information was. This was fascinating, but farming implements, old coins, and decorated shards of pottery hardly seemed to be the secrets of an entire nation.

  A large metal cylinder stood against one wall. It seemed oddly out of place with Do Not Touch tape criss-crossing the surface. Scraps of packaging material and tools were stacked up next to the gleaming metal object. I wondered if it was an historical relic or part of the air conditioning.

  I stopped and frowned. Hushed voices, speaking with intense anger, came to me from among the shelves and haphazard stacks of innumerable artefacts.

  “Will you keep your voice down?” a man insisted.

  “No, I won’t. In fact, I think I will raise my voice. How do you like them guppy-apples?” It took me a moment to recognise Eade Notschnott. She sounded angrier than a football full of hornets.

  With Drakeforth having disappeared into the silent chambers of history, I was in the awkward position of interrupting what appeared to be a private argument. Or possibly a crime of passion with no witnesses and plenty of time to come up with a plausible alibi.

  “What in the name of Saint Capricious do you expect me to do about it?” The man had taken to sounding petulant.

  “Careful, you know the penalty for invoking such names,” Eade warned.

  “If I go down, you go down. They’ll bury us head first next to each other.”

  “In the same plot? Well that would be appropriate, I suppose,” Eade sounded more relaxed now. Her opponent was defeated and the rest of the argument was just the cuddling afterwards.

  “I can’t give you anything,” the man insisted. “It’s all monitored closely. You could end more than your own career if you insist on making this outrageous claim public.”

  “You won’t be held accountable. It has to have happened with­out your knowledge,” Eade soothed.

  “Without my knowledge?!” the man snapped, and then got control of himself. “Without my knowledge? Nothing could happen to that collection without my knowledge. I’m the curator. I’m supposed to be the one with all the knowledge.”

  “Oh come on,” said Eade balancing exasperation with charm. “If you knew everything, you would have retired to the Aardvarks or Glystonberry by now. Cashed up and free.”

  “Knowledge never lets you be free,” the man replied. He sighed. “If you can find out who is responsible, then we can fix this before anyone else finds out.”

  Eade gave a snort. “Who is going to find out? No one cares.”

  “I care,” the man insisted, the tone making it clear that his wounded pride was breathing its last.

  “Of course you care, as do I. And whoever committed this grave crime must have cared, too.”

  “We cannot let anyone find out,” the man insisted.

  “We also have to investigate. We cannot let them get away with it.”

  “They have already gotten away with it!” the curator snapped.

  “Only if we let them,” Eade replied.

  “Pudding?” Drakeforth called from the dark wings of the Hall of Histrionics, where displays of ancient theatrical costumes and props were kept.

  The two disembodied voices stopped immediately and Eade came bustling out of the rows of shelves.

  “Charlotte?” she blinked.

  “Hi,” I said, with a guilty wave.

  “What are you doing here?” Eade asked.

  “It’s a museum. I’m a tourist on vacation. It seemed like the logical place to visit.”

  Eade nodded, her cold stare suggesting she didn’t believe a word I said.

  The curator had slipped away into the archived shadows.

  “Pudding, I found something.” Drakeforth joined us and almost reared back when he saw Eade standing next to me.

  “Eade,” he said, making it sound like a bad word.

  “Vole,” she smiled.

  “What are you doing here?” they both said at once.

  They locked eyes in silence. I waited until the silence went beyond palatable to kneadable. With a dusting of flour and a spoon­ful of fresh yeast, it could have been bread.

  “I was just saying to Eade, that visiting the museum seemed like the perfect activity while we are on vacation.”

  “We’re not on vacation.” Drakeforth’s eyes never wavered from Eade’s line of sight.

  “Of course we are.” I tried to keep things light by smiling. The rotten ice of embarrassment was starting to give way and threatening to plunge me into a chasm of anxiety.

  “You’re not on vacation,” Eade echoed. “I know why you are here. We may as well get this over with.” She blinked, a gesture as sharp and subtle as a paper cut.

  We followed Eade past rows of stone shelves. Each was stacked with scrolls, books, and cartons. She came to a round vault door, shining steel and matt gold, glinting in the gloom. I felt a pang of homesickness for my own vault as Eade peered into the retina-scanning sensor. She spun the spoked wheel and with a final glance around, she pulled the door open.

  Chapter 22

  Moosebumps rippled up my arms as soon as the door closed behind us. Unlike most of Pathia, this room felt cold. Not icy cold, just dry and chilled. A wine critic might say the room had pear and chamomile notes, with a light bergamot spice in the finish.

  The walls were familiar stone with no obvious mortar, or grout, or…?

  “Drakeforth, what is holding this building up?” I asked, a weird form of claustrophobia suddenly pressing in from all sides.

  “Faith,” Drakeforth replied immediately.

  “Really?” I raised a cynical eyebrow.

  “Of course not. The entire building is the product of millennia of trial and error in the fine art of stone masonry, engineering, mathematics, and architecture. Not to mention the applied science of interior decorating.”

  “Interior decorating is hardly an applied science.” I almost snorted, not willing to be caught out twice by sarcasm.

  “Clearly you have never studied the delicate interplay of balance and harmony in a matrix of repetition on a sub-basement scale.”

  “Well no, but—”

  “Over here,” Eade announced, “is a stela by Stella.” She waved at a worn panel of carefully etched sandstone. “It depicts Arudda, son of Attila, sister of Asail, famous for her navel manoeuvres.”

  “A seafaring family?” I asked.

  “Asail was a renowned belly-dancer,” Eade replied. My brain would go cross-eyed before I could be sure that she wasn’t being sarcastic.

  “Moving on,”
Eade said. “We now come to where the trouble started.”

  Drakeforth trotted on her heels like a trained weasel. I lagged behind and took a moment to appreciate the familiar oddness all around me.

  My mother had taken a fine arts degree and turned it into a career restoring artefacts in museums. They are special places, full of fascinating history, culture, and T-shirt slogans. Like a movie set or a stage, what you see is just a façade. The presented displays and props are carefully curated images. An illusion for public consumption. The work that goes on behind the scenes is where the magic truly happens. People like my mother studied, archived, protected, and curated everything from A’zron rings to gourds of Z’aron. Most of the things in museums remain unseen. Which, if you have seen a Z’aron gourd, is not such a bad thing.

  The room reminded me of the few times Mum had taken me into her workplace. None of the polish and romance of display choreography found in the museum out front. This was all steel shelves and lighting as far removed from romantic as a garland of fish-guts.

  On a steel table with work lamps that would not be out of place in an operating theatre, lay a large slab of stone. I stopped and peered at it. Chiselled words in an ancient script formed neat lines and the occasional stick figure. Someone had been working on translation and I read a note stuck to one carefully cleaned section.

  Translation GS of Murk. Quanta VII. Section B. Linear Apex.

  The student came unto the Master meditating in The Garden. Under The [Living Oak?] Tree. And spake he unto Him.

  Master. What is the most annoying question in the world?

  The Master replied: Good book?

  And the student was enlightened.

  “Charlotte,” Eade called. I straightened with a guilty start and joined the librarian and Drakeforth at a polished stone bench. A wooden case, about the length and width of an extraordinarily tragic coffin, waited for us. The wood showed signs of exposure to the elements. The roughly hewn panels were cracked and dried to a silver-grey. A strangely familiar scent of herbal oil wafted from the interior.

  “Patchouli!” I said.

  “Bless you,” Eade replied. “Vole, put the gloves on. Take that end, and help me open this.”

  Drakeforth’s scowl deepened and he slid his hands into some soft white gloves. With a sulky air, he helped remove the lid of the case. I waited to see what could be in such an ancient box in the depths of a back room of Pathia’s most secure containment facility.

  “I see,” Drakeforth said, his scowl deepening.

  “I don’t,” I spoke up, trying to lean forward to change that.

  With Eade giving instructions, they lifted a bundle of grey fabric out of the box and set it down on the bench. Under the bright lights, the sheet had the same aged silver look as the wooden case. Eade delicately unfolded it, revealing a faded pattern of lines, circles and stick figures that appeared to be drawn with mud.

  “Behold, the Shroud of Tureen,” Eade announced.

  The annoying part of my subconscious sighed as I wracked my brain trying to think why I should know what the Shroud of Tureen was.

  “It’s a dirty sheet,” Drakeforth said. He worked the linen gloves off and dropped them on the table.

  “It sure is,” Eade said, with sickly sarcasm. “The Moaning Lizard is just a bit of paint slapped on a canvas, too.”

  I clenched my fists to avoid high-fiving Eade for her casual takedown. Drakeforth gave her a mildly suffering sigh.

  “Eade, the Shroud of Tureen is a joke. It’s what happens when a good idea gets written down and is subsequently pillaged by idiots who wouldn’t know the truth if it convinced them to marry it so it could get a work visa to Pathia.”

  “Oh, Drakeforth.” Eade almost looked concerned. “You’re lett­ing your issues show.”

  “My issues!?” Drakeforth stopped and exhaled slowly. “My issues? You lied to me. You lied to everyone. You, Eade Notschnott, are a liar.”

  “So?” Eade shrugged. I waited for Drakeforth to explode. To rant, to curse and stamp his foot. To let his outrage erupt like a volcano and seal us all in the scalding ashes of his fury.

  “Nothing, I was just making conversation.” Drakeforth was as calm as a corpse. I found it more unsettling than his outburst.

  “Fine,” Eade replied, making it clear that things were so far from fine, you would need a valid passport to get anywhere near fine.

  “I remember seeing a sen-show about the Shroud of Tureen,” I spoke up. “It’s the controversial Arthurian artefact, kept by those guys… the uhm…Fossicks?”

  Never being one to miss an opportunity to make someone feel inferior, Eade spoke up. “The Knotstick Order. Also known as The Men of The Cloth.”

  Drakeforth picked up where she drew breath. “Those waggamoles have been claiming that the shroud is the original text of Arthur’s first attempt at recording his teachings.”

  “Well, you would know, right?” I asked.

  “Of course. And while yes, there was a sheet used to record my original ideas, this is not that sheet.”

  “Scientific analysis,” Eade insisted with extra emphasis, “has proven inconclusive on the origins and provenance of the shroud.”

  “It’s a sheet. It could have come from any shop that sells bed­room linen. It has faded marks of dirt on it. There’s no mystery, no divine value to any of it. It’s just mud.”

  Eade put her hands on the edge of the table and leaned in. “Vole, there have been centuries of warfare, persecution, peace and enlightenment because of the ideas recorded on that ancient fabric. It has no value, because it is priceless.”

  Drakeforth’s eyes narrowed. “It’s only priceless because hapless fools are still paying for it with their lives and with their reason. I should have kept the ideas to myself and never tried to explain them.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Vole,” Eade straightened.

  “Nonsense is a social disease. Any two people come into contact and sooner or later, one of them will convince the other of some nonsense. In the worst cases they combine it with their own nonsense, and it mutates into some abomination of a new idea that is complete and otter nonsense.”

  “Yes, he does mean otter,” I interjected, before Eade could.

  “The Shroud of Tureen is the greatest artefact in all of Pathia. In this or any other library,” Eade insisted.

  “It’s a soiled piece of linen. There is more spirituality in a mocktail,” Drakeforth snapped.

  “The belief of the faithful is what gives it spirituality,” Eade replied calmly. “Of course it is a sheet. It is the sheet. Did Abomasum of Biddlebunk not say ‘sheet happens’?”

  Drakeforth waved the claim aside. “Abomasum may have been the second Grand Linteum of the Knotstick Order, but he was the first to realise that the public interest in the Shroud could have a commercial value. It’s the only reason the order still exists.”

  “The Knotstick Order are one of our most favourable patrons. Without their knowledge, we couldn’t afford to keep this place open.”

  “It isn’t really, though is it?” I suggested.

  Eade blinked for the first time in a while and cocked her head in my direction. It was the view a worm would have right before the bird strikes.

  “Isn’t what?” she asked.

  “Open. I mean, look around you. There’s no one here. It’s the weekend, assuming you have weekends in Pathia. So the doors should be open. Tourists should be gawping. Bored kids should be slouching around the exhibits. Tour guides should be droning on. Except there’s no one here.”

  “This is the premiere repository of knowledge in all of Pathia. We can’t let people just go wandering around. What if they learned something?”

  “Imagine,” I said.

  “The entire economy would collapse. There would be rioting in the streets. Information would become…”
Eade trailed off in shock.

  “Free?” Drakeforth suggested.

  “Biscuits and tea!” Eade yelped. “That would be even worse!”

  “I get it,” I said soothingly. “Pathia runs on a knowledge economy. It’s weird, but it works for you. How does anyone learn anything?”

  “Through hard work and fair payment, obviously,” Eade replied.

  “International trade must be a nightmare,” I said.

  “I’m sure it is no worse for us than it is for anyone else.” Eade folded her arms in a defensive posture. “And you are still talking nonsense, Vole.”

  “Am I? Fine. I’ll let Arthur convince you.” Drakeforth closed his eyes and started to mutter under his breath. “Yes now. No, this is not the time to arg—All right. Yes, I have been keeping a tight rein on things. Look, will you please ju—”

  Drakeforth’s eyes flicked open and I felt a chill. Vole Drakeforth wasn’t in right now, but we could probably leave a message.

  “The Knotstick Church,” Arthur said in a voice like warm charcoal, “are just one of a legion of people who completely missed the point. Arthurianism has always been about the incredible nature of what we think of as the Universe. It was never about answers, or understanding why things are the way they are. It is about the pleasure of wonder. The sheer delight of realising the fundamental truth of how the Universe is really, really, weird. Making it into a religion completely ruined it. Sure, they have contributed to the advancement of theoretical physics and that has made for some pretty neat inventions and technology. But at what price?”

  “Empathic energy,” I said. “The faithful giving up their quanta to provide the power to make the world run. That is the price.”

  “Chimp change,” Arthur said. “The quantum effects of Living Oak would have been discovered and used for profit by someone sooner or later.”

  “Possibly, except that under the guise of Arthurianism, the Godden Corporation got away with murder for decades.”