Chapter 21

With Goat’s help, we dismounted and trod the warm sands towards the museum. I followed Drakeforth on to a narrow flight of stairs that went up at an angle as if it were climbing a hill. The stairs switchbacked across the front of the building and we covered more ground than necessary in reaching the grand entrance.

To my complete lack of surprise, the massive doors were made of stone. Drakeforth pulled a rope handle protruding from the centre of one. The metre-thick slab of rock swung outwards with the silent ease of a whale doing a headstand.

We walked into an interior that had a pleasant chill to it, as if the only cold air in the country had been safely stored here.

I inhaled the special smell of museums: the slightly dusty, oddly chemical, musty scent of old things gathered in one place. It smelled like curiosity and the thrill of discovery.

My pace quickened, along with my pulse, as we entered the museum gift shop. Arrayed on shelves and racks were souvenirs and T-shirts with catchy slogans. Everything about the place felt as tacky as a mile of spilled honey. She was here already, sitting cross-legged on the counter top, chin in her hands watching us come in. Her impossibly dark hair stirred gently, like eggs in a soufflé mix.

Drakeforth moved left with the certainty of a bloodhound suffer­ing a sinus infection, and collided with a postcard stand.

“Where is everyone?” I whispered.

“I’m here, you’re here,” Drakeforth replied.

“And everyone else?” I chose to ignore his wilful ignorance of my hallucination, who was now lying on her back on the counter, one leg crossed over the other knee, wiggling her toes to the beat of some unheard music.

“Minding their own business, I expect,” Drakeforth said.

“Do we pay an entry fee?” I asked.

Drakeforth stepped around a display of icecube-sized stone blocks, labelled as genuine pyramid stone. “In Pathia, this place is the equivalent of a bank. Getting in is free; getting out, however, may cost you everything.”

We passed through an archway of perfectly stacked stone blocks, flanked by a pair of murrai. After my experience with the Godden Corporation’s answer to humanity, these animated stone statues made me nervous.

“Do you think these are real?” I whispered.

“No, they’re an illusion; it’s all done with mirrors and clever use of light.”

“I mean: are they actual murrais?”

Drakeforth gave them a moment of his attention, reaching out and tapping one on its chiselled features. “Yes.”

“They remind me of those RABITs the Godden Corp was making.”

“Similar idea, though these are artisanal pieces. Carved from local stone by masters of the art.”

“I thought the Pathians didn’t use empathic energy?”

“They don’t, at least not anymore. They did use it, centuries ago. When the pyramids were built and the murrai were empath­ically powered. Then attitudes changed, the murrai fell out of favour and became museum pieces.”

“What about the ones we saw carrying litters?”

“It’s not like they break down, some people still use them. It’s just harder to make a living when you are competing for work against a stone man who doesn’t need payment or bathroom breaks.”

“I didn’t read any of that in the guidebook.”

“Tourism is also an illusion, Pudding.”

“Wait…” the thought that had been itching at the back of my mind for a while intensified. “Godden and his fellow deplorables discovered Double-e flux a century ago. How can that be, if the Pathians were using it hundreds of years ago?”

Drakeforth rolled his neck as if my insistence on finding out things caused him pain.

“There is a school of philosophy that suggests if you can’t see something, it doesn’t exist. This makes as much sense as most philosophy, in that it’s good for a laugh, but really is best not given too much attention when it comes to practical applications like manufacturing products for the visually impaired. There is also a raft of other disciplines that explore the cycle of the rise and fall of civilisations, the acquirement and loss of technology and, oddly enough, the constant of tea.”

My nodding along stopped. “The constant of tea?”

“Every civilisation throughout recorded history, and probably before, has had a form of tea. It has the same social structures and is always prepared using the same basic ingredients of hot water and dried leaves of a local plant. Tea is the one constant found in all countries, cultures, and civilisations. People have gone centuries without cottoning on to the idea of the wheel, or the prepaid gift card, but every single one of those tribes, regardless of size or complexity, has understood tea.”

“Which relates to my original question how, exactly?”

“It’s called tangential speech, Pudding. I thought you studied language structure at university.”

I shrugged, my mind flashing to a joke the linguistics lecturer told about a man who fell asleep while sunbathing naked.

“Empathic energy was known to, and utilised by, the ancient Pathians. They stopped using it centuries ago and since then, like most countries separated from others by an ocean, Pathia remained happily isolated and doing its own thing. Exactly why Pathians stopped using empathic energy has always been the subject of conjecture. Now, I suspect it was because they realised what it actually is,” Drakeforth continued.

“They figured out that empathic energy is the life energy of actual people?” I asked.

“Enough to make the decision to stop using it for anything,” Drakeforth replied. “The knowledge appears to have fallen out of use for centuries, then rediscovered by three college students with questionable morals.”

“How can the murrai keep functioning? They should need refuelling, or something.”

“No one is certain. They just keep working.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transformed. So the murrai are self-contained batteries of double-e flux of some kind? Surely, someone has taken one apart and seen how they tick?”

“That’s the thing.” Drakeforth waggled his eyebrows in a mysterious way. “It has been done, there’s nothing inside a murrai except more murrai. Stone, all the way through. Regular desert rock. There is no reason they should be moving at all.”

“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.