Page 68 of Katabasis
“And what’s that?” asked Peter.
“Why, the True Contradiction,” said Elspeth. “The Dialetheia.”
Alice nearly dropped her plate with excitement. The power of a true contradiction—Contradiction Explosion—was the first thing anyone learned in logic class.Ex contradictione quodlibet—from a contradiction, anything follows. If you had a True Contradiction, then you could prove anything. Indeed, it exploded your boundaries of proof. She had been taught the silly, informal version: if you could accept the simple contradiction that one and two were the same, you could prove you were the Pope. You and the Pope are two. Therefore you and the Pope are one. More rigorously, once you had a logical contradiction in hand, you could inject any statement into a proof using disjunction. You could prove the sky was green. That rocks were bread, and water wine.
For a long time Alice had pursued the Contradiction Explosion as a way to get Professor Grimes out of Hell. But the trail kept running cold, and eventually she’d given up. The only basis anyone had for believing there existed a True Contradiction was the unlikelihood of Persephone’s persimmon seeds, but those seeds might never have existed at all.
“I thought the Dialetheia was a myth.” Peter echoed her thoughts. “There’s just no literature—I mean, it’s all just conjectures—”
“Only because no one in the modern era’s found one.” Elspeth huffed. “But we’re overdue for a discovery, and mark my words, it’s going to be me.”
“Wait.” Alice leaned forward. “You know where to find one?”
“I have some leads,” said Elspeth. “I’ve been at this for a decade. One does make some modest progress.”
Peter asked, “So where is it?”
But Elspeth’s face closed up. She looked between the two of them, fingers tapping against the floor. “Well,” she said after a pause. “Don’t suppose I’m about to just tell you.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “Sorry—”
“Don’t get me wrong. You seem like very nice kids. It’s only I barely know you, and all that. And it’s not like there’s dozens of True Contradictions to go around.”
There was an awkward silence—not unlike that which descended on a room of scholars who realized they were all interviewing for the same job.
Alice felt a bit wounded, for she had thought they were getting along quite well. But then she supposed, from Elspeth’s perspective, they were no different than the Kripkes. They’d both only come to Hell for research purposes. And they were both Cantabrigians.
“You’re welcome to stay on the boat, though.” Elspeth gathered up their plates, tipping the bones carefully into a tin can. “I’m not like Nick and Magnolia. I won’t drain your blood in your sleep. Only I hope you’re not offended if I don’t share everything I know.”
“No, of course.” Peter’s voice was curiously flat. Alice could not read his face. She thought she saw something dark in his expression, but what to make of it, she didn’t know. “You’ve been very generous. We couldn’t ask for more.”
“Anytime,” said Elspeth. “We’ve got to look out for each other, we magicians. It’s a sad world when we don’t.”
Chapter Sixteen
The sun slipped under the horizon. The river turned black; in the absence of a moon all Alice could see was the light of Elspeth’s lanterns and endless dark around them. They could have been floating in the middle of space; boundless, weightless. Elspeth led them to the hold below deck, a cramped but homey room that she had filled mostly with books.
“My humble paradise,” she told them. “Behold.”
Alice held the lantern against the walls, squinting at the spines. Elspeth had acquired books of every style from every era, most waterlogged, tattered, and missing entire chunks; some mere pages strung together with twine. “You have quite a collection.”
“You’d be surprised how many books end up here down under,” said Elspeth. “Whenever I get bored I go fishing on the shores of Desire.”
“Why Desire?”
“Don’t know, really—but that’s where all the books from above end up. Lots of romance novels. Really dirty stuff, I can’t get enough of it. You can borrow some if you like. Though I try to spend my time educating myself on the classics. Plato, Aristotle, you know. When I get really desperate I duck into the library in Pride, they have lots of wholesome pretentious material.” Elspeth led them to a nook that must have been at the front, for the wall was slightly curved like the prow. “Why don’t you sleep down here? I’ll be up top. The Kripkes don’t generally bother me when I’m over water, but you can’t be too cautious.”
“Sorry,” said Peter. “Could I, that is—where’s the best place to take a leak—?”
“Oh—sure.” Elspeth pointed behind her. “Just up that ladder and to your left. You can use one of the tins. Only empty it out when you’re done.”
“Thanks very much,” said Peter, and headed up the ladder.
“Nice boy.” Elspeth turned to Alice. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to date within your department?”
“We’re just colleagues,” said Alice.
“Oh, sure.”
