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 founder 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…”
“Information is exactly the same,” Drakeforth nodded. “People always believe that there is something essential they do not know. It’s like a fish worrying that they don’t have enough water. Or a billipede counting its feet.”
“So…the perception of scarcity, even in the abundance of information, is what gives it variable value?” I was relieved that Eade remained silent. I took it to mean I had made a decent contribution to the conversation.
“Sure, why not?” Drakeforth shrugged. “It’s also because Pathians have developed a finely tuned and well-functioning economy based on the idea of an idea. Now it’s so entrenched that they can’t for a moment consider that it’s all ridiculous because then the entire place would collapse into chaos overnight.”
“But that’s true for most… Oh…” I fell silent. There are some things that people aren’t meant to look at too closely. Ideas and the systems that keep everything ticking along, the lights on, and the bills paid, are among them.
Drakeforth nodded at my realisation. “There are some abysses that you shouldn’t stare too long into. If you do, then they stare back, and you start wondering if they are staring at you, or if it’s someone behind you. Then you might think you should say something, or is it that the abyss said something and you didn’t hear it? The important thing is to remember, that way lies asparagus.”
“Asparagus…?” I whispered.
“Best avoided,” Drakeforth nodded.
I mentally grabbed the steering wheel and did a handbrake turn on the conversation, “I saw a sign on a wall. It looked like a credit stick.”
“Where?” Eade asked sharply.
“In the street, outside the hotel.”
“Lore Officers will remove it. It’s the symbol of a terrorist group. They call themselves The Credit Union.”
I waited in silence, determined not to ask the stupid question for once.
Eade looked disappointed. “The CU want Pathia to abandon the knowledge economy and adopt the more universal credit system. Electronic banking in the form of digital currency, rather than the more tangible knowledge that is currently used.
“They are considered a terrorist organisation because their ideas are potentially disruptive to the economy and society as a whole.”
“Do they blow up buildings or kidnap people?” I asked.
“No, but they are growing in influence, and more people are starting to consider their ideas.”
“Maybe they kidnapped Professor Bombilate?”
“Maybe they didn’t,” Drakeforth said.
“Oooh… That would make a great conspiracy theory. They didn’t actually kidnap Professor Bombilate. They just want everyone to think they did.”
“They have a lot to answer for,” Drakeforth agreed.
“It was more fun when I didn’t know who they were,” I said with a sudden pang of seriousness.
“It was joyous when they didn’t know who we were,” Drakeforth said dryly.
Neither of us had noticed that Eade had left.
Drakeforth sighed and suddenly smiled. “Sofa cushions.” He chuckled in a way that sounded like someone who had never chuckled before thought it should sound. “That was good.”