A traveller now entered the inn. He was tall and grave and bore the look of one who had seen much and knew of more. He approached the bar. ‘Someone seeking a city?’ he asked.
Maxwell turned upon him. ‘I am.’
‘And what city might that be?’
With pounding temples and the red mist in his eyes, Maxwell said slowly, ‘The City of Rameer. Do you know where it is?’
‘I do,’ said the traveller.
‘You do?’ said Frank and the innkeeper and many patrons too.
‘You do?’ asked Maxwell, knotting his fists.
‘The City of Rameer lies over yonder—’
17
It took at least six strong men to throw Maxwell from the inn. There was quite a lot of unpleasantness, furniture was broken and pictures knocked from the walls.
Maxwell slept the night in the stable with Black Bess. He awoke to the sound of a crowing cock and the smell of horse dung. He had a hangover, a blackened eye and numerous cuts and abrasions. He was not in the best of spirits.
He sat in the straw and set once again to the gathering of his scattered wits. What was he to do now? According to the innkeeper, he had entered a different world, passed from an angry red planet, with its magicians and man-eating rat ogres, into a golden world of namby-pamby knights and old women who struck small boys on the head.
And if there really was no city and no Sultan, there was probably no Ewavett either. Everything he’d gone through, all the privations he’d suffered, had been for nothing. The whole affair was pointless, ludicrous, plain stupid.
‘Stupid!’ Maxwell punched himself in the head. ‘Stupid!’ He punched himself again. ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’ Maxwell stopped punching himself. Well, it was stupid, punching yourself like that.
Maxwell groaned. He’d been rightly stitched up. What was he going to do now?
Go forward?
Go back?
He could go back through the grid, hope to find the flying bed and order it to fly to MacGuffin. If the bed knew where MacGuffin was, of course. And if he could escape the attentions of the gridsters who would be waiting, eager to toast his testicles with gelding tongs or stuff him in the maggot box.
And if he just sneaked out and walked . . .
To where? Through Kakkarta? Then swim the ocean?
‘Aw Hell!’ cried Maxwell. ‘Hell. Hell. Hell.’ He was doomed. Nineteen days to live and no hope of either succeeding in his mission or returning in time. Not good.
Maxwell sat in the straw with his head in his hands and gave things a good thinking through. Perhaps things were not as black as they appeared. Perhaps he was not limited to nineteen days. Not here. Perhaps if what the innkeeper had said was actually true, he was in a different world, which obeyed different natural laws, a world without magic. Perhaps MacGuffin’s magic couldn’t touch him here. Couldn’t reach through the grid and get at him.
‘Yeah,’ said Maxwell. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I won’t die at all. Let him keep my soul. I can learn to live without it. If I tried really really hard, I bet I could keep my temper and not keep wanting to kill people. Yeah, stuff MacGuffin. Stuff him.’
Maxwell raised two fingers towards the oak timbers above. ‘Stuff you!’ he shouted. ‘Stuff you!’
The pain that hit him was unlike any he had known before. It. came from every direction at once. Maxwell had read in a book by George Ryley Scott about the torture of one John Clarke by the Dutch at Amboyna in 1662. Church candles had been lit beneath his feet, which periodically went out due to the quantity of human fat dripping onto them. The very thought of this had caused Maxwell to run to the bathroom and throw up. The pain that tore through him now, was such an agony as had been poor John Clarke’s.
Maxwell rolled about, and through his screams he heard the voice.
‘I hope he is working,’ it said.
The voice of MacGuffin.
‘No,’ shrieked Maxwell. ‘Leave my soul alone.’
The pain subsided and he lay in a wretched heap.
There was no escape. MacGuffin had him. He had shaken the crystal globe containing Maxwell’s soul, no doubt to impress his next victim. The next man for the night flight to Kakkarta.
Maxwell rolled himself into a ball and passed from consciousness.
He awoke from a horrid dream about Dutchmen in clogs to find the innkeeper standing over him.
‘Time to settle your account,’ said this man.
‘Oh yes?’ said Maxwell, with no interest whatsoever.
‘Indeed.’ The innkeeper produced a scroll of paper and began to unroll it. ‘I don’t know how you slept,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been up all night with an abacus working this lot out. I pride myself that I have calculated the exactitude of your owings with a preciseness which leaves error without a peg to hang his hat upon. It covers the ale you consumed; the room you booked, but chose not to occupy; the groom’s charges for tending to your horse and shoeing him while you slept, and the damage caused to fixtures and fittings, which occurred during your unprovoked attack on the travelling cleric and the subsequent mêlée which concluded with your forcible eviction from the premises.
‘Now, my real problem lay in calculating the exact value of the fixtures and fittings. Opinions varied as to the trend in current market prices. Some said they were up, and others down. But I poured oil upon the troubled waters of commercial debate by declaring my philosophy, that the cost of a replacement item does not necessarily equate with the value the owner puts upon the original. For instance, let us take the stool you hit Frank over the head with. I asked Frank what he thought it was worth and, possibly as the result of rage or concussion, he declared that you should be made to pay twenty gold pieces for a new one. Twenty gold pieces, I ask you. “Frank,” I said, “Frank, the stool was not new, it had a wobbly leg and I paid less than five gold pieces when I bought it.” Yet, and here is a curious thing, yet I value that particular stool at one hundred gold pieces, a staggering sum some might think. But if you think that staggering, just listen to how I value some of the other fixtures. Wait now! Unhand me! What are you doing?’
Maxwell rode north. He met a trader and purchased some bread and some fruit. Maxwell asked the trader if he knew where the City of Rameer was. The trader told him and Maxwell punched the trader.
And rode on.
The landscape was more of the same: each valley like the one before and not unlike the next. The golden sun moved up the sky, the grass was green, the horse was white and Maxwell’s rage was red and raw and no nice man was he.
He rode a bit and walked a bit, lay down at times, kicked stones at times and counted little old ladies that clouted little boys.
Noon found him sitting under an oak tree munching an apple, effing and blinding between each bite. It was his helplessness that really got to him; the fact that he could do nothing. If the city had existed he just knew he could have found a way in. And if he’d met the Sultan he just knew he’d have come up with some scheme to win Ewavett away from him. And if he’d got back to MacGuffin, he’d have dealt with him as well. He would have. Maxwell just knew that he would have. He was the Imagineer, after all. The man with the plan. The sport with the thought. The tactician with the vision. Maxwell could think of a hundred more such epithets (which was more than any author could!).
He was doomed. Doomed to ride across valleys until his nineteen days were up. Then kaput.
Maxwell bit a final chunk from his apple and flung the core into the air.
‘Ouch!’ said a small voice.
Maxwell leapt up and made fists. ‘Who is that? Come out.’
‘I’m not doing anything, mister.’
Maxwell looked up into the tree. A small ragged-looking boy clung to a branch. ‘Come down,’ said Maxwell.
‘You won’t hit me, will you?’
‘Possibly not.’
The small boy climbed down and stood looking worried. His face was unwashed and his knees were good and dirty. He wore a gre
y jacket, short trousers and what had once been a white shirt. He had that Just William look to him.
‘What is your name?’ Maxwell asked.
‘It’s William, Mister. Just William.’
‘And what are you doing up the tree, William?’
‘Hiding from my gran.’
‘Well,’ said Maxwell. ‘I think that puts you beyond the category of stupid boy.’
‘Oh, I’m stupid enough in my way.’
‘Do you want an apple?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Oh, yes please.’
Maxwell handed him an apple and the boy tucked into it.
‘Tell me,’ said Maxwell. ‘Out of interest. All these old women who I keep meeting, who clout small boys. Where do they all come from?’
The small boy looked puzzled. ‘Don’t you know that?’
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.’
‘Well,’ the small boy tittered, ‘they come from the same place everybody comes from.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Out of their mummies’ tummies.’
Maxwell clouted William in the head. William rubbed at his head. ‘I was sure I was right that time,’ he said. ‘I must be even more stupid than I thought.’
‘No, you’re not. I’m sorry I hit you.’
‘Oh, don’t be. If I never got smacked round the head, I’d never learn anything, would I?’
‘Well, there are other methods of teaching.’
‘Oh yes,’ said William. ‘But not round here. Round here the elders subscribe to the principle of “beat some sense into them”. It works well enough.’
‘Well, I’ve never actually witnessed the tuition side of it. I’ve only seen the clouting on the head.’
William looked puzzled once more. ‘But I thought that the clouting on the head was the tuition side of it. There’s nothing more involved.’
‘You mean they don’t actually teach you anything? They just keep clouting you on the head?’
‘That’s the way they do it,’ said William. ‘That’s how my father was taught and his before him. You can learn a lot from a clout round the head.’
‘Have you tried learning how to duck?’
‘I tried that once, but I got a clout round the head for it.’
‘Well,’ said Maxwell, ‘I have learned, and partly through having most other parts of me clouted, to keep my nose out of matters that do not concern me. If that’s the way things are done around here, so be it.’
William tucked into his apple.
‘Why were you hiding from your gran, then?’ Maxwell asked.
‘I have become sated with education,’ William said. ‘The old one beats my head with such enthusiasm that I have learned more than it is good for a boy of my years to learn.’
Maxwell smiled, something he hadn’t done for some time.
‘Only yesterday’, William continued, ‘she knocked into my skull certain branches of advanced mathematics. Do you know of quantum theory?’
‘No,’ said Maxwell, scratching his head, something else he hadn’t done for a while.
‘It’s a theory concerning the. behaviour of physical systems based on the idea that they can only possess certain qualities, such as energy and angular movements, in discrete amounts. It’s been developed into several mathematical forms, all of which I am now conversant with.’
‘Good grief,’ said Maxwell. ‘That’s incredible.’
‘Precisely,’ said William. ‘In fact, I don’t credit it at all. Any theory based on the behaviour of physical systems would need to encompass an almost infinite number of variables. How can you judge the qualities that a single system possesses, without first being certain that it interacts with the next only within a three-dimensional framework?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Maxwell. And you learned all this simply by being struck repeatedly on the head?’
‘I suspect there is a knack to the striking,’ said William. ‘I learned absolutely nothing when you hit me just now. It is still my firm conviction that everyone comes out of their mummy’s tummy.’
‘But this knowledge.’ Maxwell shook a head that he now felt might do well for a skilful striking. ‘This knowledge you have. It’s awesome. What do you intend to do with it? What do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘An innkeeper,’ said William.
Maxwell gave his head a shake. ‘I am frankly amazed by this educational system. Have you had anything beaten into your head which might offer an inkling into how it actually works?’
‘Percussive perlocution,’ said William. ‘The theory is, as I understand it, that a man’s thoughts are not wholly his personal property. A man draws his thoughts from a common pool, a common consciousness, comprised of racial memory implanted within his genetic code; experience, which is to say observation and the assimilation of ideas through the vocal structure we call language; and intuitive reasoning, which enables him to envisage the predictable outcome of a certain course of action. But also, and here we step tentatively into the world of metaphysics, by attunement to universal awareness. The head beating induces a morphic resonance within the brain of the beatee which clears the synapses and allows a through-put of knowledge drawn from the common pool. Of course you will ask, what is this common pool—’
‘Of course,’ said Maxwell, re-shaking his head.
‘And there I must answer that nobody knows. Perhaps the universe itself is sentient. Perhaps the planet speaks to us. Perhaps it is God or Goddess.’
‘Phew,’ Maxwell whistled. ‘I am now more amazed than ever I was.’
William looked Maxwell up and down. ‘Can I assume that you were not educated in these parts?’
‘You can.’ Maxwell climbed to his feet. ‘Well, it’s been an, er, education, talking to you. But I must be on my way. To somewhere.’
‘May I ask where you’re riding to?’ William gave his nose a pick and examined the yield.
‘You may ask,’ said Maxwell. ‘Let me ask you this: if I told you that the answer was, “it lies over yonder hill”, what do you suppose the question might be?’
William flicked away his bogey. ‘An interesting conundrum,’ said he. ‘And one that presents again an almost infinite number of variables. However, if we assume that there actually exists one question more likely than all the rest, I would have to answer that the question would be, “Where is the City of Rameer?”’
‘You are correct, of course,’ said Maxwell.
‘Only in principle,’ said William. ‘For here we enter the realms of sylogistics. I have identified the correct question, but the answer is clearly at fault. Because the City of Rameer does not lie over yonder hill.’
‘Something I have learned to my cost,’ said Maxwell.
‘The City of Rameer lies under yonder hill,’ said William.
‘Do what?’
‘Beneath our very feet. It is a subterranean city.’
‘Good grief,’ said Maxwell. ‘But have you actually seen it?’
‘I know where the entrance is. But obviously I have not been inside.’
‘Why, obviously?’
‘Because I would not be discussing it with you now if I had.’
‘You mean whoever enters does not return?’
‘On the contrary. But it is a curious business and one which has played its part in my decision to have done with education. Do you wish me to explain?’
‘Please do.’
‘Then it’s like this. I am nine years of age and on my tenth birthday I must enter the City of Rameer to take my examinations. The curiosity is this, children enter the city, their heads crammed with knowledge, take their examinations, then emerge as men.’
‘Some kind of rite of passage?’
‘Something of the sort. Yet when they emerge, they no longer appear knowledgeable. In fact, they seem to have completely forgotten the greater part of their learning. And when asked about the city, they just stare blankly and say, “The City of Rameer lies over yonder
hill.” I am at a loss to explain this. Can you enlighten me at all?’
Maxwell made a thoughtful face. ‘A sinister explanation springs immediately to mind. The knowledge is somehow extracted from the children and then their memories erased. How this is done, I dread to think. But listen, if adults have no memory of the city, who takes you there on your tenth birthday?’
‘On the night of my brother’s tenth birthday I pretended to be asleep. I watched as a stranger came and took him. When my brother returned four days later, he had become a man and spoke of the city as a fairy-tale.’
‘The stranger who took your brother. How was he dressed?’
‘He wore golden armour and he rode a horse such as yours.
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ said Maxwell.
‘That is the name of your horse?’
‘No it’s not. Now listen, one other thing. If adults no longer know of the city, how do you know of it? How do you know where the entrance is?’
‘The knowledge was knocked into my head along with all the rest.’
‘As likely an explanation as any other, I suppose. William, how would you feel about showing me the entrance?’
‘I am confused by your request. Surely, as an adult, you do not believe a single word I’ve told you.’
‘I believe everything you’ve told me. Although much of it I did not understand. Will you take me to the entrance?’
‘I have no wish to go inside. I want to hold on to my knowledge.’
‘You’re a very bright boy. Perhaps if I succeed in my mission, this land will see its children grow to adulthood with all their knowledge intact.’
A crowd of thoughts now bustled into Maxwell’s head: the rise of a new age of science, precipitated by the fall of the Sultan, and guided by William the philosopher PM; do-it-yourself courses in head banging; the disbanding of a certain regiment of knights; success for Maxwell. Many, many more.
‘How far is it to the entrance, William? And please don’t tell me it lies over yonder hill.’
‘Why should I tell you that? My brother was gone four days. I don’t know how long he spent within the city itself, but the entrance must surely be within two days’ ride of here.’