Anathem Read online

  “Orolo is an impressive theorician,” Fraa Corlandin said. “I regret that I haven’t been suvined by him more.”

  The flaw in this was obvious: odds were that Corlandin was going to spend sixty or seventy more years in the same math with Orolo. If he really meant what he said, why didn’t he simply pick up his stew-bowl and walk across the Refectory to Orolo’s table?

  Fortunately my mouth was full of bread, and so I did not subject Fraa Corlandin to a withering blast of Thelenean analysis. Chewing my food gave me time to realize that he was just speaking polite nothings. Edharians never talked this way. Spending all my time around Edharians, I’d forgotten how to do it.

  I tried to unlimber those parts of my mind that were used for polite conversation: probably a good thing to do anyway, on Apert eve. “I’m sure you could arrange to be suvined by Orolo, if you sat down near him and said something wrong.”

  Fraa Corlandin chuckled at my joke. “I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the stars even to say something wrong.”

  “Well, today for once he said something that wasn’t about stars.”

  “That’s what I heard. Who could have guessed that our cosmographer was an enthusiast for dead languages?”

  This entire sentence went by me—a little like when you are eating a slice of canned fruit and suddenly it slides down your throat before you’ve had a chance to chew it. Having finally got the hang of polite chitchat, I returned the favor of chuckling at his remark. But before I could really think about what he was saying, I noticed Lio and Jesry carrying their bowls to the kitchen. Two other fids stood, as though caught up in their wake, and followed them.

  Following their glances, I noticed Grandsuur Tamura standing by the exit with her arms folded.

  She reacted as if I had hit her with a spitball from across a crowded chalk hall, swiveling her head to strafe me with her eyes. I still had no idea what was going on, but I excused myself from Fraa Corlandin and carried my bowl into the kitchen. Seven of the other fids were there, hurriedly cleaning their bowls, but none of them knew any more than I did.

  * * *

  Incanter: A legendary figure, associated in the Saecular mind with the mathic world, said to be able to alter physical reality by the incantation of certain coded words or phrases. The idea is traceable to work conducted in the mathic world prior to the Third Sack. It was wildly inflated in popular culture, where fictionalized Incanters (supposedly linked to Halikaarnian traditions) dueled their mortal foes, the Rhetors (supposedly linked to Procians), in more or less spectacular style. An influential suvin among historical scholars holds that the inability of many Saeculars to distinguish between such entertainments and reality was largely responsible for the Third Sack.

  —THE DICTIONARY, 4th edition, A.R. 3000

  A few minutes later, all thirty-two fids and Grandsuur Tamura were together in Saunt Grod’s chalk hall, which was normally considered to hold eighteen. “Shall we move over to Saunt Venster where there’s more room?” suggested Suur Ala. She was the self-appointed boss of the bell-ringing team—and of everyone else in range of her searchlight eyes. Behind Ala’s back, people liked to say that, of all the current crop of fids, she was the most likely to end up being Warden Regulant.

  Grandsuur Tamura pretended not to hear. She had lived here seventy-five years and well knew the sizes of the available halls. She must have chosen this one for a reason—probably, I realized, because no one could hide ignorance, or boredom, when we were packed in so tightly. There wasn’t room to make our spheres into stools, and so we kept them pilled up and tucked inside our bolts.

  I noticed that some of the suurs were standing even closer together than was strictly necessary, and sniffling into one another’s shoulders. One of them was Tulia, whom I liked quite a bit. I was eighteen. Tulia was a bit younger. Lately I had dreamed of having a liaison with her once she had come of age. In general I looked at her more often than was strictly necessary. Sometimes she looked back. But when I tried to meet her eye now, she pointedly looked away, and fixed her red and swollen eyes on the big stained-glass window above the slate. Since (a) it was dark outside and (b) the window depicted Saunt Grod and his research assistants being beaten with rubber hoses in the dungeons of some Praxic Age spy bureau and (c) Tulia had already spent something like a quarter of her life in this room, I reckoned that inspecting the window wasn’t really the point.

  Dense though I am, I finally put it together that this was the last time that our crop of thirty-two fids would be gathered together, as such, in our lives. The girls with their preternatural ability for noticing such things were responding, the boys with our equally uncanny obtuseness were only affected inasmuch as the girls we fancied were crying.

  Grandsuur Tamura was not doing this to be sentimental, though. “Our topic is the Iconographies and their origins,” she announced. “If I am satisfied that you know enough and that you understand the importance of what you know, then you shall be free to roam about extramuros during the ten days of Apert. Otherwise, you shall remain in the Cloister for your own safety. Fid Erasmas, what are the Iconographies and why do we concern ourselves with them?”

  Why had Grandsuur Tamura directed the first question at me? Probably because I’d been transcribing those interviews with Fraa Orolo, and had an advantage over the others. I decided to frame my answer accordingly. “Well, the extras—”

  “The Saeculars,” Tamura corrected me.

  “The Saeculars know that we exist. They don’t know quite what to make of us. The truth is too complicated for them to keep in their heads. Instead of the truth, they have simplified representations—caricatures—of us. Those come and go, and have done since the days of Thelenes. But if you stand back and look at them, you see certain patterns that recur again and again, like, like—attractors in a chaotic system.”

  “Spare me the poetry,” said Grandsuur Tamura with a roll of the eyes. There was a lot of tittering, and I had to force myself not to glance in Tulia’s direction.

  I went on, “Well, long ago those patterns were identified and written down in a systematic way by avout who make a study of extramuros. They are called Iconographies. They are important because if we know which iconography a given extra—pardon me, a given Saecular—is carrying around in his head, we’ll have a good idea what they think of us and how they might react to us.”

  Grandsuur Tamura gave no sign of whether she liked my answer or not. But she turned her eyes away from me, which was the most I could hope for. “Fid Ostabon,” she said, staring now at a twenty-one-year-old fraa with a ragged beard. “What is the Temnestrian Iconography?”

  “It is the oldest,” he began.

  “I didn’t ask how old it was.”

  “It’s from an ancient comedy,” he tried.

  “I didn’t ask where it was from.”

  “The Temnestrian Iconography…” he rebegan.

  “I know what it’s called. What is it?”

  “It depicts us as clowns,” Fraa Ostabon said, a little brusquely. “But…clowns with a sinister aspect. It is a two-phase iconography: at the beginning, we are shown, say, prancing around with butterfly nets or looking at shapes in the clouds…”

  “Talking to spiders,” someone put in. Then, when no reprimand came from Grandsuur Tamura, someone else said: “Reading books upside-down.” Another: “Putting our urine up in test tubes.”

  “So at first it seems only comical,” said Fraa Ostabon, regaining the floor. “But then in the second phase, a dark side is shown—an impressionable youngster is seduced, a responsible mother lured into insanity, a political leader led into decisions that are pure folly.”

  “It’s a way of blaming the degeneracy of society on us—making us the original degenerates,” said Grandsuur Tamura. “Its origins? Fid Dulien?”

  “The Cloud-weaver, a satirical play by the Ethran playwright Temnestra that mocks Thelenes by name and that was used as evidence in his trial.”

  “How to know if someone you m
eet is a subscriber to this iconography? Fid Olph?”

  “Probably they will be civil as long as the conversation is limited to what they understand, but they’ll become strangely hostile if we begin speaking of abstractions…?”

  “Abstractions?”

  “Well…let’s say anything that comes to us from our mother Hylaea.”

  “Level of dangerousness, on a scale of 1 to 10?”

  “Given what happened to Thelenes, I’d say 10.”

  Grandsuur Tamura didn’t favor the answer. “I can’t be too hard on you for over-estimating the risk, but—”

  “Thelenes was executed in an orderly judicial proceeding by the Saecular Power—not a mob action,” volunteered Lio, “and mob actions are less predictable, thus, more difficult to defend against.”

  “Very good,” said Grandsuur Tamura, obviously surprised to hear such a cogent answer coming from Lio. “So let us rate its level of danger as 8. Fid Halak, what is the origin of the Doxan Iconography?”

  “A Praxic Age moving picture serial. An adventure drama about a military spaceship sent to a remote part of the galaxy to prevent hostile aliens from establishing hegemony, and marooned when their hyperdrive is damaged in an ambush. The captain of the ship was passionate, a hothead. His second-in-command was Dox, a theorician, brilliant, but unemotional and cold.”

  “Fid Jesry, what does the Doxan Iconography say of us?”

  “That we are useful to the Saecular Power. Our gifts are to be celebrated. But we are blinded, or crippled—take your pick—by, er…”

  “By the very same qualities that make us useful,” said Fid Tulia. Which was why I couldn’t get her out of my mind: in a heartbeat, she could go from blubbering to being the cleverest person in the room.

  “How to identify one who is under the influence of the Doxan Iconography? Fid Tulia, again?”

  “They’ll be curious about our knowledge, impressed by us, but patronizing—certain that we must be subordinated to intuitive, common-sense leaders.”

  “Danger level? Fid Branch?”

  “I would put it very low. It is basically the situation we are living in anyway.”

  This got a laugh, which Grandsuur Tamura didn’t like very much. “Fid Ala. What does the Yorran Iconography have in common with the Doxan?”

  Suur Ala had to think for a minute before trying: “Also from a Praxic Age entertainment serial? But it was an illustrated book, wasn’t it?”

  “Later they made moving pictures of it,” put in Fraa Lio.

  Someone muttered a hint into Ala’s ear, and then she remembered everything. “Yes. Yorr is identified as a theorician, but if you see how he actually spends his time, he’s really more of a praxic. He has turned green from working with chemicals, and he has a tentacle sprouting from the back of his skull. Always wears a white laboratory smock. Criminally insane. Always has a scheme to take over the world.”

  “Fraa Arsibalt, what iconography surrounds the Rhetors?”

  He was so ready. “Fiendishly gifted at twisting words and confusing Saeculars—or, what is worse, influencing them in ways so subtle they don’t even know it’s happening. They use Unarian maths to recruit and groom minions, whom they send out into the Saecular world to get influential positions as Burgers—but in truth they are all puppets of a Rhetor conspiracy.”

  “Well, that one makes sense, anyway!” said Fid Olph.

  Everyone looked at him to make out whether he was joking. He looked taken aback.

  “Guess we know which order you’ll be signing up for!” said one irritated suur, who everyone knew was headed for the New Circle.

  “Because he’s a Procian-hater? Or just because he’s socially inept?” said one of her companions in a low voice that was, however, clearly audible.

  “That’s enough!” said Grandsuur Tamura. “The Saeculars don’t know about the differences between our Orders and so all of us—not just the Procians—are equally vulnerable to the iconography that Fraa Arsibalt has just explained. Let’s move on.”

  And so it went. The Muncostran Iconography: eccentric, lovable, disheveled theorician, absent-minded, means well. The Pendarthan: fraas as high-strung, nervous, meddling know-it-alls who simply don’t understand the realities; lacking physical courage, they always lose out to more masculine Saeculars. The Klevan Iconography: theor as an awesomely wise elder statesman who can solve all the problems of the Saecular world. The Baudan Iconography: we are grossly cynical frauds living in luxury at the expense of the common man. The Penthabrian: we are guardians of ancient mystical secrets of the universe handed down to us by Cnoüs himself, and all of our talk about theorics is just a smoke-screen to hide our true power from the unwashed multitude.

  In all, there were a round dozen iconographies that Grandsuur Tamura wanted to talk about. I’d heard of all of them, but I hadn’t realized that there were so many until she made us sort through them one by one. Particularly interesting was the rating of their relative dangers. After much back-and-forth we concluded that the most dangerous of the lot was not the Yorran, as one might have expected, but rather the Moshianic, which was a hybrid of the Klevan and the Penthabrian: it held that we were going to emerge from the gates and bring enlightenment to the world and usher in a new age. It tended to peak every hundred or thousand years, as people got ready for the Centenarian or Millenarian gates to open. It was dangerous because it raised people’s expectations to the point of delirium, and drew many pilgrims and much attention.

  Because of my work with Fraa Orolo, I knew that the Moshianic Iconography was ascendant, in the guise of the so-called Warden of Heaven. Our hierarchs had become aware of this, and the Warden Fendant had asked Grandsuur Tamura to lead us in this discussion.

  In the end, she gave the whole crop permission to go extramuros during Apert, which surprised no one: the threat of locking us up had only been to make us pay heed.

  The discussion had actually become quite interesting, and the only thing that ended it was the ringing of the curfew bell. It was part of our Discipline never to sleep two nights in a row in the same cell. Assignments were posted each evening on a slate in the refectory. We had to go back there to find out where we’d be sleeping and whom we’d be chumming with. So the entire group made its way out of the chalk hall and around the Cloister, chattering and laughing about Dox and Yorr and the other funny characters that the extras had dreamed up in an effort to make sense of us. Older fraas and suurs sat on the benches that faced into the Cloister, assembling sandals—normally our sort of job—and giving us dirty looks.

  It was important that I not let any one of the sandal-makers catch my eye, so I looked elsewhere. I noticed Fraa Orolo emerging from one of the other chalk halls with a sheaf of leaves, cluttered with calculations, tucked under his arm. He started one way, then, seeing our crowd, turned into the garden instead, and headed off in the direction of the Mynster. This gave me a little twinge, for a certain tablet of Saunt Tancred’s Nebula was gathering dust on a table in a workroom up in the starhenge, holding down a couple of leaves stained with inconclusive notes and scratch-outs in my handwriting. Orolo would notice, and know I hadn’t worked on it in days.

  A few minutes later I was in the cell that I was to share that night with two other fraas, wrapping myself up in my bolt and making my sphere a pillow. You might expect that, as I lay there trying to get to sleep, I’d be thinking about Apert or about the iconographies. But spying Fraa Orolo in the Cloister had put me in mind of the slippery sentence that Fraa Corlandin had spoken at dinner, and that I’d swallowed without tasting. Now it had become one of those unwelcome thoughts I didn’t know how to get rid of.

  That’s what I heard, Fraa Corlandin had said. But my dialog with Orolo had taken place only an hour before dinner. Who among the spectators had run off to spread the story in the New Circle chapterhouse? Why did anyone care?

  Until last year, Corlandin had been in a liaison with Suur Trestanas, also of the New Circle. Then one day the bells had rung to signa
l the aut of Regred, meaning that someone had made the decision to go into retirement. We had convened in the Mynster and the Primate had called out a name: that of our Warden Regulant. Despite all of the penance that this man had meted out to us over the years, we all felt sorrow as we sang the chants of the aut, for he’d been reasonable and wise.

  Statho—the Primate—had then named Suur Trestanas the new Warden Regulant. It was a little bit of a surprise because she was young, but not controversial since everyone knew she was bright. She’d moved to the Primate’s Compound where she now had a cell to herself, and took her meals with the other hierarchs. But rumor had it that her liaison with Fraa Corlandin continued. Some avout, of a suspicious mindset, believed that the hierarchs had devices salted around the concent that enabled them to know what we were saying. Believing so was a fad that came and went depending on what people thought of the hierarchs at a given time. It had been on the rise since Suur Trestanas had been appointed Warden Regulant. It was impossible for me not to think of it now. Perhaps she had listened to my dialog with Orolo and then passed it on to Corlandin.

  On the other hand (said the part of my mind that pleaded with such thoughts to go away), I had to admit that I myself had thought it strange that Orolo would suddenly take an interest in Old Orth translation errors.

  Who could have guessed that our cosmographer was an enthusiast for dead languages? Well, enthusiast was one of those unkillable words that had passed almost unchanged from Proto-Orth all the way up into Fluccish. In Fluccish—which was how I assumed, at first, Corlandin had used it—it simply meant one who liked something. The Proto-Orth meaning, however, was not a very complimentary one to hang on a fraa, especially a theorician like Orolo. And dead languages too was an interesting choice of words. Was it really dead if Orolo was reading it? And if Orolo was right about the translations, then by calling the original “dead,” wasn’t Corlandin sort of making a point—and doing it in a sneaky way, without going to the effort of proving it?