Page 36 of Katabasis
“Fun?”
“Yes! We’re off the edge of the map, literally. Where theory meets its limits. Where the closed loop runs out.” He spread his hands. “Here there be dragons!”
She wiped her eyes against her sleeve. “That’s a pretty way to say we have no idea what we’re doing.”
“Wouldn’t be a contribution to the field otherwise, would it?” He nudged her with his elbow. “Trust your brain, Law. Trust the process. We’reGrimes’sstudents. Best in the world. We’ll be all right.”
Yes, thought Alice;yes, I can do that, I can believe that.
This was after all the trick of magick. There was a camp of analytic magicians called the Intuitionists, who argued the following: When it came down to it, magick was not really about how much complicated maths or logic or linguistics you had. Rather, the final push to make a spell work was just the power of belief. It wasn’t about the algorithms at all, it was about self-deception. You had to assemble enough proof to convince yourself the world could be another way, and as long as you could trick yourself, then you could trick the world. Even the non-Intuitionists practiced what the Intuitionists thought, because why not? You did the work, you drew your spell, and still at the end, you closed your eyes and hoped. When it came down to it magick was a wish, a prayer, and a little, anchoring fiction.
So was personhood, for that matter.
So was a coherent subjectivity.
And so was the courage to get up every morning and not plan to die.
It wasn’t so difficult. Alice was very practiced at this. She knew the mental gymnastics involved: you assembled the smallest staircase you needed to get through the day and as long as you held the steps in your head you would make it to the next. So she took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and climbed her staircase.
I am Alice Law. I am a postgraduate at Cambridge. I study analytic magick. I am in Hell. And everything is going just fine, just fine,just fine...
A blur shot across the flame. Peter jumped, Alice shrieked—but it was only Archimedes, reappeared from wherever he’d fucked off to. He looked properly spooked—fur frizzed, eyes wide, his pupils dilated to pinpricks. Alice lifted her elbow. He needed no further invitation; he hurled himself against her ribs.
“Now, what happened to you?” Alice murmured, scratching his head.
Archimedes pushed his face into her side and stayed there, quivering. Something had gotten him in the side, Alice saw. Dried blood streaked across his fur.
“Bone-things, was it?” Peter asked.
Archimedes swished his tail, which seemed like a yes.
Had any of the sojourner’s accounts mentioned this lurking threat? Alice racked her mind as she stroked Archimedes’s trembling flank but could think of no mention of the bone-things. Orpheus, Dante, Aeneas, Lucian, Seneca, Saint Brendan—their accounts were doom and gloom, no doubt, but the dangers they described were divine and obvious. They ran from Satan. They quarreled with gods. But no one mentioned the skittering creep, the terror of being watched by something not of Hell’s own making.
No one except Eliot.
TheWaste Landcame to mind, the most recent sojourner’s account on record.Your shadow at morning striding behind you, wrote Eliot.Your shadow at evening rising to meet you. Alice shuddered as she stared out over the dunes.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Chapter Nine
To Alice’s great surprise, Archimedes was still with them by morning. She suspected he only liked them as human shields, but she could not complain. Cats had many talents, and one of them was finding paths. Once they’d finished breakfast (Archimedes demanded, and ate, an alarming amount of Lembas Bread mixed in with tea), he marched several steps forward, tail pointing straight up, and glanced back expectantly at them.
“The second court?” Alice asked.
Archimedes blinked as if to say,Where else?
“Is it very far off?”
Archimedes turned to show her his bum.
“Are you excited?” Peter asked as they packed up camp.
“What on earth for?”
“Why, the Court of Desire.” He waggled his fingers. “Filthy lust. Don’t you want to meet Jezebel? Bathsheba?”
She snorted. “You think Desire is all brothels?”
