Page 62 of Katabasis
But Alice had found the records. There was a time—about six months ago—when she became obsessed, and spent a week going through microfilm of city newspapers in the university library, stopping every time she came across mention ofbodyandCambridgeandsuicide. She had to know if Elspeth’s story was real, and if so, what weakness it was that sent her into the river. Was she predisposed to suicide—or had something happened in the lab? How flimsy, really, was the line between each and survival? The students had their own theories, and every retelling ascribed a different motive. Failed her viva voce. Rejected for publication. Turned down for the Durham job. But the news coverage was so scant and offered such vague platitudes. Tragic story. Fragile girl. Graduate school isn’t for everyone.
“Ahhhh!” Archimedes made a happy yowling noise and darted forward, skirting between Elspeth’s legs like they were slalom poles. She laughed in delight and knelt to scratch his head. “Hello, you!”
Archimedes purred. Elspeth beamed up at them. Alice was startled to discover that she was beautiful. The newspaper photograph made her out to be severe and mousy, but in person, she moved with a blinking, birdlike charm. Elspeth was precisely Professor Grimes’s type—slender, underfed, dark hair pulled into a ballerina’s bun—and this identification put a sharp twist in Alice’s gut.
“You’re magicians, then?” Elspeth appraised them. “You’ve got to be. Chalk stains all over.”
“Peter Murdoch,” said Peter. “And that’s—” He did not look at her. “Alice Law.”
“Peter and Alice. My pleasure.” Elspeth grasped their hands in succession and shook vigorously. Her palm was warm and clammy, and Alice jumped to feel her solidity. George Edward Moore would have envied that texture.
“You know Archimedes?” Alice asked.
“Who doesn’t? Here, sweetie.” Elspeth held out her arms. Archimedes jumped up and snuggled against her chest. “So. Ramanujan, was it? Yes. Clever. You’re the first pair I’ve seen who’ve actually managed it, you know. Everyone always gets stuck on Setiya’s Modifications, they don’t have the maths for it.” The words rushed out Elspeth’s mouth without pause or punctuation; she seemed unaware she was speaking in full paragraphs. Perhaps a decade of loneliness did that to you. Perhaps they were the only souls Elspeth had spoken to since her death. Her gaze darted eagerly between them, drinking in their faces. “Journeying to Hell was all the craze during my days. Everyone kept threatening to do it, but no one ever managed it, and the first few years I sat at that bridge watching and waiting for someone to make it over. Five years in I figured they’d just stopped trying. So how much did it cost you?”
She paused so abruptly Alice did not realize they’d been asked a question.
After a beat, Peter said, “Half our natural lifespans.”
“You must have really wanted it.”
“We’re here to—” Peter began.
But Elspeth chattered on. “I wonder about the mechanics. Do you think you’ll age prematurely? Do you think death has set in now, like a cancer? Or that some terrible accident will befall you when you’re fifty? Do you think the ground will just crack open beneath you and the underworld will swallow you up?” All this she uttered without any semblance of tact. Alice could understand this—after a decade in Hell, probably tact didn’t seem so important.
“Er—I really don’t know,” said Peter. “Hopefully not the latter.”
“I suppose it’s a bit scary, though,” said Elspeth. “Hitting forty and wondering if you’ll keel over from a heart attack the next day—”
“What were those things?” Alice cut her off. She felt if Elspeth was going to chatter on like this, she might steer the conversation into productive territory. “You’ve met them before, clearly—”
“Oh, I call them little rovers.” Elspeth made a face. “Apparatuses of bone. Set in motion with power beyond me—but they’re scared of the Lethe, as you’ve noticed. That helps. I’ve been collecting spray bottles for ages.” She waved her staff. “This one’s a perfume bottle. Dior. Smell.”
They sniffed as commanded.
“Very nice,” said Peter.
“But who’s controlling them?” asked Alice. “Is it a deity?”
“Oh, worse. A magician.” Elspeth lowered the staff. “Have either of you ever heard of the Kripkes?”
“No,” said Peter, as Alice said, “Oh, Jesus.”
The Kripkes had not been facultyat Cambridge. Not in their wildest dreams—they were anathema to English academia. Rather the Kripkes were visual artists and illusionists at Berkeley, where that sort of wild and unconventional magick was encouraged. Magnolia Kripke worked with oils and watercolors. Nicomachus Kripke did sleight-of-hand magick tricks. They were the rare academics who could fill both a Vegas auditorium and a lecture hall at Harvard. They could, with only black and white paint, create mazes inside a closet that made entrants feel as if they were walking around an entire courtyard. They could, with nothing but mirrors and light, convince their audience that they’d traveled back decades through time.
Their commercial appeal led many in the academic establishment to discount their scholarship. It was, after all, a golden rule in academia that the more popular one was among the masses, the less valuable one’s research had to be. Alice did not agree—in fact she had been something of a Magnolia Kripke fangirl during her undergraduate years, as were many young magicians of her age, and she felt that beneath the Kripkes’ pomp and spectacle lay truly breathtaking theoretical advancements. But to most of their colleagues, the Kripkes were all smoke and mirrors; showmen only, not serious thinkers. The administration at Berkeley seemed to agree. The same year that the Kripkes sold out a headliner tour across North America, their tenure applications were denied. Insufficient contributions to the field. If only they’d spent less time partying in tour vans and more time publishing.
Possibly this slight led the Kripkes to disappear from the public view for five years—it was rumored they took on private funding from millionaire dilettantes after they lost university affiliation—and then reappear for one dramatic exhibit at Royal Albert Hall. Their latest trick, the Kripkes announced, was to return from Hell.
They distributed invitations all over the country in the weeks before this performance—cryptic, all-black papers with the words “TO HELL AND BACK,” with the subtitle, “Professors Nicomachus and Magnolia Kripke.”
Only a smattering of academics showed up. The way Alice heard it, most people were put off by this ploy for attention. The Kripkes had invited three board members of the Royal Academy of magick, which was the number needed in attendance to verify the efficacy of any new magical technique, but those invitations were declined. Probably the Kripkes would put on some great, Gothic spectacle; lights, hellfire, maybe “summon” a demon or two. A pretty show, but not real magick.
So no one expected it when, in front of a thousand people, Nicomachus and Magnolia Kripke carefully slit one another’s carotid arteries, lay down, and bled to death on stage.
Immediately the academic community distanced themselves from what had happened in London. That wasn’t magick, that was all vulgar theatrics. The International Conference of Magick had a big role in that. They couldn’t have the Kripkes’ reputation bring down the rest of the field. They had come so far from the days they were maligned as a pseudoscience, as witchcraft, and all the pagan, Satanic spectacle of the Kripkes’ work was very damaging to the field’s legitimacy.
Consensus was that the Kripkes had gone mad. The narrative was so convenient. Magick, especially of this variety, made one lose their grip on reality. The first rule every graduate student learned was that at the base of every paradox there existed the truth. That you should never fully believe your own lie, for then you lost power over the pentagram. That magick was an act of tricking the world but not yourself. You had to hold two opposing beliefs in your head at once. You had to know your way back.
