Page 27 of Katabasis
Alice glared at Peter, who said, “St. John’s.”
“A John’s boy!” Moore clapped his hands together. “Goodman! We’re going to have such fun.”
“Excuse me,” said Alice.
Moore ignored her. “Last fellow of any standing to come through was a Durham man,” he informed Peter. “And now, I do have standards, yes, but years of solitude and I thought,Durham, all right, we can work with that. But he was so frightfully dull. Paleontologist. Wouldn’t stop dusting at the floors trying to find ammonites. He’s on the fifth floor now, somewhere, working out a naturalistic theory of the good.”
“Excuse me,” Alice said again, more forcefully.
This time Moore paused, though he glared as if she were a persistent mosquito. “Yes?”
“Please help me understand,” said Alice. If Peter didn’t want to leave, then she’d pry for all the answers she could. “What precisely is keeping us here?”
“How do you mean?”
“Suppose we walk right out the door and leave,” said Alice. “On to the Second Court, that is. Desire. What’s going to stop us?”
“Well, nothing.” He blinked at her as if she were stupid. “You can wander wherever you like, but why would you? You’ve got to stay until you’ve passed. They won’t pass you in Desire if you didn’t pass Pride first.”
“Right,” said Alice. “And who’sthey?”
“The deities, of course. Niutou and Mamian. The Oxhead and the Horseface, balancers of karma, the right and left hand to Lord Yama the Just.” All this Moore rattled off like a schoolboy reciting scripture. “They don’t talk much, but they can understand your heart in an instant. You can beg all you like, but if you’ve incomplete marks on your transcript, then they’ll always know. If your transcript says pride, then you must pass Pride.”
“Sorry—transcript?”
“Haven’t you got your transcripts?”
Alice hesitated.
“Er—” Peter made a show of patting his pockets. “Must have misplaced...”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Moore waved a hand. “They’ll reappear, give them time. Impossible to lose.” He nodded to a slip of paper lying facedown on his desk. “Anyhow, you get marks on your transcript as you go along, you see. The transcript lists your major sins, and then you’ve got to go in order. Pass Pride and you enter Desire, pass Desire and you enter Greed...”
“And then what if we finish at Pride?” Alice pressed on. “If we’re not guilty at Desire, or Greed? Suppose we define the good, whatever that means. What would Niutou and Mamian do then?”
“Ah. Yes.” Moore leaned back. “Well, supposedly they come for you in a ship. Those big doors in the lobby lead to the sands, you know. And past the sands, the river. Supposedly you see a great golden ship on the horizon. Supposedly it glides across dark waters and extends a plank to shore. They’ll be waiting for you there. They’ll help you board.”
“And then?”
“And then they offer you the draft of the Lethe, brewed by the Lady Meng Po herself.” Moore’s eyes grew distant. The lopsided smile sagged off his face. “They say it tastes of dandelions, of dewdrops at dawn. You drink. Your memories are wiped from your soul, like dust from a mantel. You are mere starstuff, like once you were before. Fresh. Clean. And you are then ferried to Lord Yama’s court, to pass through the Gate of Reincarnation to wander back down into that red mortal chamber, to billow among the dust. So they say.”
Silence fell between them.
Moore sucked at his pipe, blinking at nothing. He looked a bit translucent then. Alice could see his diplomas through his neck.
“So you’ve never seen this happen?” Alice was not quite sure she should take Moore’s word for anything.
“What? Oh, no.” Moore stirred. “It’s frightful dense stuff, ethics. Quite impossible to master. No, not a soul’s been invited to cross the Lethe in all my years here. Not even I—” Moore paused, winced. He took another puff of his cigar. “It’s very hard, anyhow.”
“Have you tried many times, then?” Peter asked sympathetically.
“Oh, no, I don’t bother.”
“Why not?”
“Why, the classic dilemma.” Moore spread his hands. “Administration interferes with research. I’m a bit like a dean around here, if you haven’t noticed. The Shades here behaveverypoorly. Hoarding texts. Stealing each other’s notes. Wailing in the stacks—I mean, the number of daily breakdowns in here, it’s unbelievable. Someone’s got to keep them all in line.”
“And you took this job yourself?”
