Page 52 of Katabasis
She would come to regret this later, the year everything went south, the year she lost the ability to forget things she should not have heard.
She was napping in the lab that day. She napped in the lab often; no one minded, they just walked around her. And Alice always had a habit of disappearing into the bench. She was slight, and she did not snore; if you didn’t look carefully, you might think she was a pile of coats. She had just awoken when the door opened and Peter walked in, chattering animatedly to someone she didn’t know.
She could have gotten up. It would have been the polite thing to do. But that old impulse, the need to observe Murdoch in every context, made her lie very still.
She tried to make out his interlocutor. It was hard to guess from voice alone; a table blocked her view. She was never sure thereafter of his identity. She could only guess, and the guessing was worse. The guest spoke with an American accent but seemed well-versed in the Cambridge way of magick. A visiting scholar, then. Someone here for a talk, or just passing through, catching up with colleagues. Possibly Princeton. Probably Harvard.
“—not so bad,” Peter was saying. “I mean he has his fits, everyone knows, but you just learn to read his mood. On the whole he’s been pretty good. Nothing like the rumors.”
“What about the girl?” asked his guest.
Alice would always remember how easily the words slid out of Peter’s mouth. There were words you said to create an effect, words constructed to influence your interlocutor. Then there were words you really believed, had believed all along, words just waiting for the right prod to spill.
“Oh, her,” said Peter. “No, I wouldn’t say she has a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s like a bird,” said Murdoch. “Hopping where the seed is. Eating right out of his hand.”
“Burrowing in for warmth,” said his guest.
“Warmth,” Peter drawled, the nastiest sound Alice had ever heard Peter make. There was the sound of fists against palms, some unquestionably vulgar gesture. They both laughed.
Peter suggested they go look at the glass suspensions in Helen Murray’s lab, and his guest agreed. The door clicked shut behind them. Their footsteps faded down the hall.
They probably did not remember this conversation. This was not cruelty for them. They had not decided,Now, since we are misogynists, let us make fun of a girl!These were just words like water; hear them, laugh, and move on. Probably. Peter was not trying to sabotage her then. He just really did not care.
But little impressions spread. Peter never had to think about this, but Alice did; the simmering mass of gossip that underwrote who got positions and power. Academia involved so many hairsplitting decisions between identical candidates, most made ultimately on a whim. The reach of someone’s advisor. A fragment of hearsay. She could never state this theory out loud, because it sounded crazy. But she was certain of it now: she could draw a straight line from that laughter in the lab to her failure to win the Cooke.
Harvard had thrown a Cooke reception in July. The selection committee would have gone. No decisions had been made yet. There would have been wine, and then gossip. Impressions would have solidified. It was very plausible. She was not crazy.
Of course she wanted to be wrong. For months and months she held on to the hope that she was wrong, that it was all in her head, and she was making it all up. Surely no one else lived like this—burdened by the tiniest details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.
This marked the difference between them. Alice fretted, and Peter danced on air.
If ever she brought it up, he truly would not remember. And if she tried ever to explain how he had hurt her, then he would think her mad. “You sabotaged my career,” she would tell him. And to this he would say, quite innocently, “What?”
As they picked their way downthe ridge it became clear they were not alone. A caravan of other journeyers—all Shades, all souls who had passed or bypassed Desire—appeared on the rocks around them. The slope was funneling them all in the same direction. Alice peered round at the Shades’ faces, trying to imagine what they had done. It made sense that so many progressed from Lust to Greed, if one trusted Dante’s account of things. They were both sins of incontinence and desire; only greed was the sin of desire turned against others, a sin committed when one realized that others, too, would do anything it took to get what they wanted.
Could Professor Grimes be here? It was possible, and she supposed she ought to be looking. But she simply didn’t feel Professor Grimes was motivated by riches. No one went into academia if they wanted to get rich. Certainly some were there for the paychecks—and they were bottom-rung, bottom-feeder types who inevitably left for industry. But if what you wanted was money, then you’d just go become a banker or lawyer or something like that. Certainly all of Alice’s undergraduate classmates thought she was crazy, to keep studying at Cambridge when she could have gone and worked in minor magickal industries for six figures and a yearly bonus. At least two folks Alice knew who’d majored in magick were now vice presidents at regional banks. But Alice had never wanted money, she had wanted the truth.
She was certain this was true as well for Professor Grimes, who was always turning down lucrative speaking opportunities so as to focus on his research. No—despite his nice town house, his nice clothes, and his nice collection of scotch, Alice knew that Professor Grimes wasn’t in this field for money. He’d just gotten rich by accident. Maybe minor academics squabbled with each other over funding, but Professor Grimes never had the need. He was simply too good for it all.
“I bet those are trustees.” Peter had made a game of guessing the sins of Shades they encountered, which would have been annoying if his observations weren’t quite so funny. “I bet that’s a serial plagiarizer. I bet those are assistant deans. There’s a special place in Hell for deans, don’t you think? Upping their own salaries when the rest of us are scraping by on digestives?”
Alice did not think Peter had ever scraped by on anything but did not have the energy to contest this.
In time they saw they would not have to trek to the bottom of the abyss after all. There was a bridge, hewn of the very same stone of the cliffs, camouflaged so they had not seen it from above. It was generous in span, wide enough they could walk across comfortably side by side, and ornately carved. Each step was made of a half dozen embellished tiles, each column and window lined with figurines. Alice wondered what deity had done this. It seemed bizarre to construct a bridge down here, hidden against the rock. Like plucking out a chunk of Venice and balancing it inside the Grand Canyon.
A Shade dithered at the center, as if unsure whether to cross. He kept taking a few steps forward, then a few steps back. When he saw them approaching he asked, “Stone seventeen?”
“Sorry?” said Peter.
The Shade waved his transcript at them. “There it says stepping stone seventeen, stone seventeen for three years or until I’ve learned my lesson, whichever comes first.”
Peter frowned at the transcript. “I still don’t—”
“Oh, here.” The Shade darted around them. Alice noticed an empty slot on the bridge, marked with the Roman numeral XVII. The Shade climbed down and assumed a kneeling position. The most extraordinary thing happened then. His features blurred; his extremities faded away; and his grayness deepened. In seconds he had become rock, and the softest sigh emitted from the gap where once had been his mouth; a low note that took several long seconds to fade, and even then, persisted in the wind.
