The Rose Field, page 14
Chief? he wrote.
Yes. Where are you?
Aleppo. Villa Edessa. Where is Oakley Street?
Oakley Street is in Hemel Hempstead.
That made him pause. Then he wrote: So romantic.
The answer came at once: There worketh a spell.
And he replied: Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel.
Good. Tell me what the Magisterium’s doing.
Malcolm wrote down everything he’d observed, including what he’d seen at the Thuringia Potash building, which took some time. As he wrote, the words a sentence or two before faded into the stone, leaving room to write more.
Finally he wrote: And what in the world is this stone? Can anyone else read it?
I have an identical one—there are two of them. It’s a resonating lodestone. They only communicate with each other. Now, why won’t you obey orders? What the hell are you doing in Aleppo?
Recovering from being shot in the hip. I’m going further east.
“Sir, Mr. Polstead, sir, there is a visitor to see you.”
It was the servant who looked after the place. His leather slippers made no noise on the flagstones.
“Who is it, Ali?”
“He would not give a name, sir. He looks not respectable. If you like, I will stay nearby while you talk.”
“Thank you. No need to stay nearby. I’ll call if I need to.”
“Sir.”
The servant withdrew. Malcolm wrote: Visitor, more later, and laid the stone upside down on the papers beside him, and then on second thought laid a piece of paper on top of the stone.
He looked up as the visitor arrived. Ali showed him into the garden and withdrew without a word.
“I am Abdel Ionides, dragoman, interpreter, guide, factotum,” the visitor said. “And I hope that you are Mr. Polstead.”
“I am Malcolm Polstead. Good morning. What can I do for you, Mr. Ionides? Please, do sit down.”
Malcolm indicated another chair. Ionides was intriguing: his clothes were shabby and tattered, almost those of a beggar, but his bearing was easy and confident, and his heavily scarred face expressed a quick and subtle intelligence.
He moved the chair a little into the shade and sat down.
“I heard your name,” he said, “from a young man who is determined to kill you. But there is something strange here, because he referred to you as Mr. Matthew Polstead. And from another source I heard your name as Mr. Malcolm Polstead, and now you yourself say Malcolm. Which is the correct name, sir? Is there another English gentleman with a similar name?”
“Malcolm is correct. And your young man must be Olivier Bonneville.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Where is he now? Do you know?”
“No. I last saw him near one of the dead cities to the west of Aleppo.”
“The one called al-Khan al-Azraq?”
“It has other names, but that is the one, yes. I had a brief conversation with him in which I learned your name, incorrectly as it now seems, and I persuaded him not to kill the person I was guiding towards Aleppo. He might be still in the desert, or he might have arrived in this city; I don’t know.”
“How did you find out where I was?”
“It was not difficult.”
“Why did he want to kill the person you were guiding?”
“In order to get hold of something she had. He is an arrogant young man full of passionate desire for vengeance, which he calls justice.”
“Yes, I believe that. And you came here just to warn me about him?”
“No, not only, Mr. Polstead. I came also to ask you about a particular problem. It concerns the Rusakov field and its associated particle. Dust, of course.”
Asta opened her eyes. She had been lying on a flagstone in the sun, seemingly fast asleep, but now her red-gold fur was anbaric with attention, and Ionides’s gecko dæmon reacted in a similar way: she ran from his shoulder down his arm and then sprang from his hand to the table. Asta leapt up to join her there, and they touched noses cautiously.
“Why do you think I can tell you anything about that?” said Malcolm. “It’s a matter of physics, and I’m an historian.”
“I know you were involved in the transfer of some documents and papers concerning the Rusakov matters.”
“ ‘Involved in the transfer’…” Malcolm had to smile. “You could put it like that. In fact, I stole them, but that was a very long time ago. I’ve never been professionally involved with that field of research. What’s your connection with it?”
“Until ten years ago, I was a professor of mathematics at the University of Alexandria, and I was closely involved in the study of the Rusakov field. My colleagues and I made some discoveries that came to the notice of the authorities, and we were commanded to stop. But we continued, and the institute I directed was forcibly closed. My enemies in the university administration concocted a scandal, entirely false, and made it impossible for me to continue in any academic field. Since then I have lived as a dragoman, guiding, translating, arranging things for my clients. Sometimes a beggar, sometimes a thief. The world forces us into these roles, and we have to play them as well as we can.”
“Tell me about your discoveries about the Rusakov field.”
“Thought experiments only, for the last ten years. At Alexandria, I was studying variations in the field strength. The gravitational field, the anbaromagnetic field, they vary with distance. We all know that. This field, the Rusakov field, seemed to be indifferent to distance. There was a minimum strength that remained the same no matter how far from the source—”
“The source? What’s the source, in this case?”
“This is where the danger begins. This is where it becomes forbidden. The Rusakov field is related closely to human consciousness. When it varies, it does so not because of distance but because of the attention of a human observer. The equations are hard to follow, but the implication is that the Rusakov field permeates everything in the universe. There is consciousness everywhere. Not all the same kind of consciousness in every part, but something it would be hard to call anything else. And that was what the authorities objected to.”
“Of course they would. But in this case, which authorities do you mean?”
“The university, the civil government, and the religious powers. Only the police were not interested. A matter of experimental theology, of philosophy? They can’t investigate that when they have thieves and murderers to catch.
“So now we come to roses. And the imagination.”
Malcolm saw how this beggar-academic was enjoying the process of telling his story, like an actor in front of an attentive audience. Asta and the gecko dæmon were side by side on the little table, listening, and Malcolm thought: Where is the Dust in this garden? It must be surrounding all of them, swirling with currents of understanding and expectation.
“Tashbulak,” said Malcolm. “Karamakan. A red building, fiercely guarded.”
“You know about it. You been there?”
“No. But I’m going there. Tell me about roses and the imagination.”
“The oil they make from their special roses, you know about its power? You know what it can reveal?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know Thuringia Potash?”
“They seem to be involved in these matters, but I don’t know very much about how.”
“They have been trying to synthesize this oil for two years now.”
“Ah,” said Malcolm. “So that’s it.”
“They have been using all their resources, pharmaceutical laboratories, every kind of expertise and research, and a great deal of money—and they can’t do it. It refuses to allow them to do it. There is a molecule in the original rose oil that has different properties according to how they analyze it. They do it one way—such-and-such a result. So they think, that is how to make it! And they synthesize it exactly, and with no result. Just ordinary rose oil. So they analyze it a different way—different result—they try that—still nothing. They try another—same thing. As if it knows what they’re doing and plays a trick on them.”
“As if it…Wait a minute. You mean like the photon that seems to know which slit to go through?”
“Yes. Very like that. Whatever you try, it’s the wrong way. There must be a right way, because the oil exists, but you can never synthesize it. This is the point I get to when I was working on it theoretically. I could have saved TP some time, but I was happy to see them waste their resources.”
“How do you know this? If you’ve got no academic position, how can you follow—”
“I know many people, many things. Now we talk about imagination.”
“Go on, then.”
“Tomorrow the President of the High Council of the Magisterium is going to make a big speech in Constantinople. Here is the text.”
He reached into an inside pocket of his shabby linen jacket and drew out a folded stack of several closely typed pages. Malcolm took it, more puzzled than he’d been for months. He unfolded the sheets and read the heading:
Sur L’Imagination
Doctrine fausse, séduisante et dangereuse
“He’s making war on the imagination now?” he said.
“This is the first time he make it clear. Full, clear, passionate. Mad.”
“How did you get this?”
“I was involved in the transfer.”
“You stole it.”
“Of course.”
“May I keep this to read?”
“If it’s in your hands, it’s dangerous for you and not so dangerous for me. Yes, keep it. Now I have one more thing to tell you, which is why I tell you these other things first, or else you would not hear them with the clarity they deserve. I believe you know my employer.”
“What? Who is your employer?”
“I have been guiding her here from Seleukeia. Her name is Miss Lyra Silvertongue.”
Malcolm felt a rush of emotion along every nerve in his body. He didn’t move.
“Where is she now?” he said, polite, urbane.
“At Hotel de las Palmas, Zakkum Street. I can guide you there in twenty minutes.”
* * *
—
In fact, it took thirty, because Malcolm could go no faster than his leg would let him. Ionides was solicitous, at one point disappearing for a few moments into a bazaar and reappearing with a walking stick for Malcolm to lean on. He refused to accept any money for it.
They found the Hotel de las Palmas in a state of confusion and panic. The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with a yapping terrier dæmon, clearly had no idea what had happened or why, and the guests—some half-dressed, having been interrupted during a siesta, or something else that required little in the way of clothing—were variously angry, frightened, embarrassed, resentful, shocked, and anxious to placate any authority that needed placating, while demanding apologies from everyone that didn’t.
They milled around the lobby, shouting, pleading, explaining, apologizing, accusing, and sobbing. Malcolm and Ionides watched from the doorway, and as soon as someone who might be the concierge appeared, Malcolm stopped him with a firm hand.
“What’s the reason for all this?”
“Police raid, sir. Nothing to matter. All finish, all over. No reason to alarm…” He stood on a chair and clapped his hands. “Messieurs—Dames! S’il vous plaît! Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen! Listen, please! The emergency is all finished! Please go back to your rooms, or carry on whatever your business! The police have gone—no need to concern—do not disquiet yourselves…”
He was trembling and sweating, and he kept trying to smooth down his hair, which was already flat and dank across his head. He went on talking, while Malcolm and Ionides looked at each other and nodded.
Ionides eased himself past a plump man with a small mustache who was jabbing a forefinger into the desktop as he protested in fast and furious French about his luggage. The receptionist spread her hands, baffled, frightened, and Ionides leaned forward and spoke quietly in Greek.
While he was doing that, Malcolm turned to the concierge, who was trying to climb down from his chair, and offered him a hand.
“Thank you—Merci, monsieur—yes, ladies and gentlemen, everything is safe and fine—Monsieur?” Malcolm’s hand was holding a five-dollar bill, and the concierge deftly vanished it into a pocket. “At your service entirely, sir. How can I help?”
“You mentioned the police. Were they looking for someone in particular?”
“I don’t know, sir. They don’t explain. They might not have been police. I had to call them something when I explain just now, and the word police people recognize, you understand.”
“There was a young Englishwoman staying here alone. Was she here when the police came?”
“I don’t think so, monsieur. The middle of the day, she is probably elsewhere. When they left they had no one with them. Let me ask Madame Galatas…”
He turned to the receptionist, but Ionides was already moving away from the desk, shaking his head.
“Not here,” he said.
“Where did you last see her? Was it here?”
“Brazilian Embassy garden. Not far. You walk all right?”
* * *
—
Olivier Bonneville, full of pain, bitter, burning with subdued rage, carried his wounded dæmon to a house not far from the embassy and opened the front door.
A young woman he had previously ignored was sitting behind a desk in the entrance hall. She watched him come in, watched him slouch towards the staircase, watched him set his foot on the first step, and then she said, “Hey.”
“What do you want?” he said.
“He wants you in there,” she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “Right now.”
“I’m busy.”
“You’re in trouble. That beats being busy.”
He turned away from the staircase, glowering. From this angle she could see the scratches on his face, the dust and dirt on his clothes, the torn knee of his trousers. She had no sympathy: the boy was a thug, a spoilt brat, and if someone had taught him a lesson, it was about time.
“What’s he want?” he said.
“Nothing to do with me.”
Her expression was cold and hostile. She knew precisely why he’d ignored her in the past: it was because she wasn’t pretty. He paid enough attention to that blond in the consular department.
He shrugged, which made him wince, and then she saw the broken wing of his dæmon, who lay limp and dull-eyed in his arms. She was shocked enough to feel a moment’s pity, but he moved past and the moment was gone. She heard him knock and heard the man’s snapped reply. The boy opened the door reluctantly and went inside, and then, hearing nothing more, she went back to her magazine.
Bonneville faced the man behind the desk with a look of defiance, or so he thought. The man was Father Gerhardt, the Magisterial Nuncio, and there was someone with him: a woman of forty or so, maybe Persian, in western clothes, with a heavy gold chain around her neck, and eyes darker and larger than he had ever seen in anyone not famous for being beautiful; for she was certainly beautiful, and to the best of his knowledge not famous. Anyway, he had never seen her before, and her presence made him feel even more wretched than he did already.
The nuncio, a lean and sour-faced man, said, “Where have you been?”
The woman looked at Bonneville with frank curiosity. He avoided her eyes and said shortly, “I found the girl.”
“And? What happened?”
“She…I think she must have been deranged.”
“I said, What happened?”
“We fought.”
Bonneville had seldom been so uncomfortable. He could even see, after a flickering glance, a smile playing around the woman’s lips. He looked down at the carpet.
“And the outcome? Stand up straight.”
The pain in Bonneville’s kidneys, where the bitch had kicked him, was almost crippling. He tried to stand up, but had to take it slowly, with a deep breath. His dæmon lolled in his arms.
“What happened to her?” said the woman, indicating the wounded hawk dæmon. Her voice was low, her tone concerned. Perhaps that smile had been sympathetic. With every second that went by, Bonneville felt worse.
“The girl injured her,” he said sullenly.
“Where did this happen?” said Father Gerhardt. “Quickly, now.”
“In the garden of the Brazilian Embassy.”
The woman raised her eyebrows towards the nuncio.
“In effect, a public park,” he explained, and to Bonneville: “Is she there still?”
“Probably not.”
“Speak up, boy!”
“I said probably not,” Bonneville snarled. “But I hurt her too. She might not have gone far. And I can tell you something else.”
“Well?”
“There is a man who has been guiding her. His name is Abdel Ionides. I saw him after I—after she attacked me. But he is not a guide. He knows too much—about the roses, and other things. You should arrest him—he will tell you a great deal about her and where she is going, everything.”
“Abdel Ionides?” said the nuncio, reaching for a pen. “Describe him.”
Bonneville did, with some accuracy. The nuncio wrote it all down.
Then the woman spoke. “The young woman. Was her dæmon with her?”
It was disconcerting, having to face her when she was so beautiful.
“Who is this woman?” Bonneville said to the nuncio.
“Someone of more importance than you. Go and clean yourself up and wait in your room.”
The woman looked at Bonneville and said, “Dr. Leila Pervani.”
He nodded and said, “Olivier Bonneville. And no, her dæmon was not with her.” To Father Gerhardt he said, “What are you going to do?”
