Page 10 of Katabasis
“But magick—”
“But Cambridge—”
“The throne of the intellectual world,” said the more intact girl. “Privileged beyond belief.”
“It is the only rational choice,” declared the boy with glasses. He spoke with such authority, the other undergraduates seemed momentarily to shrink behind him, as if giving him permission to speak for the group. His voice deepened. He gestured as he spoke, in imitation of a professor. “You see, given the population on Earth it is overwhelmingly likely we will be reincarnated into lives under the poverty level. Most of the world population never go to school, let alone come to Cambridge. An unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates tells us. Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living. For instance, once reincarnated, we could end up doing something like—I don’t know, working rice paddies in China.”
“Milking cows in Arkansas,” agreed the more intact girl.
“Mining diamonds in Africa.”
“Now, look here,” said Alice. “That’s rather prejudiced—”
“Being an idiot.”
“Being an idiot!” All four Shades shuddered; a quivering mass of jelly. “Oh, the horror! Oh, to not be clever!” And one of them wailed, “What if you never learn toread!”
“But you’re dead.” This had gone too far; Alice had to intervene. Undergraduates did this often—they worked each other up over the wrong ideas, compared problem sets and confused themselves so much that untangling their thoughts took twice the work. Undergraduates were five blind men and an elephant; were three blind mice leading one another in a circle. “You’re in Hell. That seems the worst state to be in.”
“We’re deadmagicians,” said the boy with glasses. “That’s different.”
“It’s not different at all,” said Peter. “You’re still stuck here.”
“But why are you here?” asked the more intact girl. “Why’d you come?”
They seized on this line of interrogation with glee.
“Why?”
“Why indeed?”
“Half a lifetime—”
“The price—”
“The price!”
“That’s different,” said Alice. “We could still be magicians.That’sworth it.”
“Oh,” said the more intact girl. And then she employed that most annoying of argumentative tactics, which was to agree, while making it clear they thought her reasoning was stupid. “All rightthen.”
The other undergraduates said nothing. What rejoinder need they make? They only watched her, bearing identical expressions of silent reproach; until their forms began to fade, until their burns became glimmers, until they disappeared into still air.
“Wow,” said Peter. “I think we’ve been told to fuck off.”
“Oh, leave them to it,” Alice muttered. She felt a spasm of irritation, a lurking unease, and she did not want to think about these undergraduates anymore. Hell was full of minor tragedies. There was no point fretting over this one. “They have eternity to figure it out.”
Chapter Three
The line of white was indeed a wall: a great, flat surface that disappeared into the sky and stretched infinitely into either direction. Below, a great mass of Shades shuffled impatiently about, their voices like wind rustling through dried leaves.
“Been here forages—”
“Nothing’s moving—”
“Birth rate’s gone down, they said.”
“Has it?”
