I looked around. Herring gull nests were perched on the Shoulders of Statues and crammed onto Plinths; there was one tucked between the Legs of the Statue of an Elephant and another balanced in the Crown of an Elderly King. Peeking out of the nest in the Crown I could see two white fragments. Cautiously I approached and climbed up a neighbouring Statue to examine it. Immediately two gulls attacked me, screaming their indignation and dashing at me with wings and beaks. But I was equally determined. With one arm I hauled Myself up the Statue and with the other I beat back the birds.
The nest was a ramshackle, untidy thing built of dry seaweed and fishbones; woven into its structure were five or six scraps of paper with writing on them. I dismounted and retreated to the middle of the Hall away from the Walls, the nests and the attacking gulls.
I considered what I ought to do. There was no possibility of retrieving the missing pieces now. The herring gulls would never permit me to dismantle their nests – nor did I want to. No, I must wait until late summer – or, even better, early autumn – when the gulls had abandoned the nests and the young were grown. Then I could come back and get all the missing pieces.
I placed the forty-seven pieces carefully in my pack and continued my journey home.
The Other explains that he has said all this before
entry for the twenty-second day of the sixth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
This morning I took my Star Maps to the Second South-Western Hall.
I found the Other leaning back against the Empty Plinth, his ankles crossed and his elbows resting on the Plinth. He looked relaxed. He wore an immaculate suit of a dark navy colour and a brilliant white shirt. He gave me a friendly smile. ‘How’re the shoes?’ he asked.
‘Excellent!’ I said. ‘Brilliant! Thank you! But what I value even more than the shoes themselves is the proof they give of our friendship! I consider the possession of such a friend as you to be one of the greatest happinesses of my Life!’
‘I do my best,’ said the Other. ‘So tell me. How have you been getting on? Now that you’ve got the shoes.’
‘I have already visited the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall!’
‘OK. And did you see what stars there were? Did you make notes?’
‘I did make notes,’ I said. ‘But I have not brought them with me since I remember everything I have to tell you.’
Then I told him what I had seen in the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall. ‘The Statues are its most remarkable feature. I mean other than the Single Door and the No-Windows. The Moonlight picked out one Statue in particular – the image of a Young Man. He seemed to me to represent the Virtues of—’
‘Don’t bother with all that. You know I’m not interested in statues. Tell me about the stars,’ said the Other. ‘What could you see?’
‘I will show you.’ I opened one of my Star Maps and placed it on the top of the Empty Plinth. He came and stood by me. ‘I saw the Rose, the Good Mother and the Lamp-post. Towards morning these were followed by the Shoemaker and the Iron Snake.’ (These were some of the names I had given the Constellations.)
The Other examined the Map carefully. Then he picked up his shining device and made some notes.
‘Are any of these stars particularly bright?’ he asked.
‘Yes. This Star here. It forms part of the Good Mother. It is the tip of her extended arm, so to speak. It is one of the brightest Stars in the Sky.’
‘Perfect,’ said the Other. ‘The brightest star to symbolise the greatest knowledge. Well, while you’ve been doing all that I’ve come to a decision. I’ve decided that I will go to this room and perform the ritual there. Obviously it’s much further into the labyrinth than I’ve ever been before, so there are risks …’ He paused for a moment and looked very determined, as if steeling himself to something. ‘ … but balancing the risks against the rewards – well, the rewards are potentially immense. This information you’ve brought me is invaluable and what I need you to do now is to go back there and establish what constellations can be seen at different times of year.’
Now was the time for me to explain my Revelation concerning the Great and Secret Knowledge.
‘As to that,’ I said, ‘I too have something to say. Something has been revealed to me that I must now share with you, something that has farreaching implications for all our future research. We must cease our search for the Knowledge! When we began, we believed that it was a worthy endeavour, deserving all our attention, but it turns out that it is not. We should abandon it straightaway and, in its place, establish a new programme of scientific research!’
The Other was not paying attention. He was making notes on his shining device. ‘Mmm? What?’ he said.
‘I am speaking of our search for the Knowledge,’ I said, ‘and of how the House has revealed to me that we should abandon it.’
The Other stopped tapping. He took a moment to process what I had just said. Then he put the device down on the Empty Plinth, covered his face with his hands, made a sort of groaning noise and massaged his eyes. ‘Oh, God! Not this again,’ he said.
He uncovered his eyes. He turned away and stared off into the distance. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he said (though I had not uttered another word). ‘I need to think.’
There was a long silence at the end of which he seemed to come to a decision. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
We sat down together on the Pavement of the Hall. I sat cross-legged and he sat with his knees bent, his back against the Empty Plinth.
There was a sort of glowering darkness in his face. He seemed to be finding it difficult to look at me. By these signs I knew that he was angry but struggling not to show it.
He coughed. ‘OK,’ he said in a controlled voice. ‘There are three reasons – three – why you shouldn’t stop looking for the knowledge. I’m going to go through all of them now and at the end, I think you’ll see I’m right. I just need you to listen to me. You can do that, can’t you?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Tell me the three reasons.’
‘OK, the first reason is this. It may seem to you that what I’m doing is rather selfish – trying to get the knowledge for myself. But the reality is quite different. This search that you and I are embarked on, it’s a truly great project. Momentous. One of the most important in humanity’s history. The knowledge we seek isn’t something new. It’s old. Really old. Once upon a time people possessed it and they used it to do great things, miraculous things. They should have held on to it. They should have respected it. But they didn’t. They abandoned it for the sake of something they called progress. And it’s up to us to get it back. We’re not doing this for ourselves; we’re doing it for humanity. To get back something humanity has foolishly lost.’
‘I see,’ I said. (This did indeed put things in a slightly different light.)
‘And personally,’ continued the Other, ‘I think that this search is so important, so absolutely vital that I have to keep going. No matter what. I don’t have any choice. If your decision is to stop looking – well, in that case I suppose we’d no longer be colleagues. Our meetings on Tuesdays and Fridays – we’d no longer have them. Because what would be the point? I’d be pursuing my researches and you’d be off’ – he gestured vaguely –‘doing whatever it is that you do. This isn’t what I want of course, let me be very clear about that, but it is the way things would have to be. So that’s the second reason.’