‘Do you mean the Great and Secret Knowledge, sir?’
‘Exactly that.’
‘Yes.’
‘And is he still searching for it?’
‘Yes.’
‘How amusing,’ he said. ‘He’ll never find it. It’s not here. It doesn’t exist.’
‘I was beginning to wonder if that might be the case,’ I said.
‘Then you are a good deal brighter than him. The idea that it’s hidden here – I’m afraid he got that from me too. Before I had seen this world, I thought that the knowledge that created it would somehow still be here, lying about, ready to be picked up and claimed. Of course, as soon as I got here, I realised how ridiculous that was. Imagine water flowing underground. It flows through the same cracks year after year and it wears away at the stone. Millennia later you have a cave system. But what you don’t have is the water that originally created it. That’s long gone. Seeped away into the earth. Same thing here. But Ketterley is an egotist. He always thinks in terms of utility. He cannot imagine why anything should exist if he cannot make use of it.’
‘Is that why there are Statues?’ I asked.
‘Is what why there are Statues?’
‘Do the Statues exist because they embody the Ideas and Knowledge that flowed out of the other World into this one?’
‘Oh! I never thought of that!’ he said, pleased. ‘What an intelligent observation. Yes, yes! I think that highly likely! Perhaps in some remote area of the labyrinth, statues of obsolete computers are coming into being as we speak!’ He paused. ‘I must not stay long. I am all too well aware of the consequences of lingering in this place: amnesia, total mental collapse, etcetera, etcetera. Though I must say that you are surprisingly coherent. Poor James Ritter could barely string a sentence together by the end and he wasn’t here half as long as you. No, what I really came here to tell you is this.’ He wrapped his cold, bony, papery hand round my hand; then he jerked me sharply towards him. He smelt of paper and ink, of a finely balanced perfume of violet and aniseed, and, beneath these scents, a faint but unmistakeable trace of something unclean, almost faecal. ‘Someone is looking for you,’ he said.
‘16?’ I asked.
‘Remind me what you mean by that.’
‘The Sixteenth Person.’
He put his head on one side to consider. ‘Yeh-e-es … Yes. Why not? Let us say that it is, in fact, “16”.’
‘But I thought that 16 was looking for the Other,’ I said. ‘16 is the Other’s enemy. That was what the Other said.’
‘The other …? Ah, yes, Ketterley! No, no! 16 is not looking for Ketterley. You see what I mean about him being an egotist? Thinks everything’s about him. No, it’s you 16 is looking for. 16 has asked me how to find you. Now while I have no particular wish to oblige 16 – I have no particular wish to oblige anybody – I’m all in favour of doing Ketterley an ill turn. I hate him. He’s spent the last twenty-five years slandering me to anyone who would listen. So I shall give 16 copious directions to get here. Minute instructions.’
‘Sir, please do not do that,’ I said. ‘The Other says that 16 is a malevolent person.’
‘Malevolent? I wouldn’t say so. No more than most people. No, I’m sorry, but I simply must tell 16 the way. I want to put the cat among the pigeons and there’s no better way to do it than to send 16 here. Of course, there’s always the possibility – a very strong possibility really – that 16 will never get here. Very few people can come here unless someone shows them the way. In fact, the only person I ever knew who managed it – apart from myself – was Sylvia D’Agostino. She seemed to have a talent for slipping in between, if you follow me. Ketterley was absolutely dreadful at it, even after I had shown him numerous times. He could never get here without equipment – candles and uprights to represent a door and a ritual and all sorts of nonsense. Well, you saw all that when he brought you here, I suppose. Sylvia on the other hand could just slip away at any moment. Now you see her. Now you don’t. Some animals have the facility. Cats. Birds. And I had a capuchin monkey in the early eighties who could find the way any time. I shall tell 16 the way and after that it all depends on how talented 16 is. What you need to remember is that Ketterley is afraid of 16. The closer 16 gets, the more dangerous Ketterley will become. In fact I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t resort to violence of some kind. You might like to head off the danger by killing him or something.’ (He pronounced ‘off’ as ‘orrf’.) He smiled at me. ‘I’m going now,’ he said. ‘We shan’t meet again.’
‘Then, sir, may your Paths be safe,’ I said, ‘your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.’
He was silent for a moment. He seemed to contemplate my face and as he did so, a last thought occurred to him. ‘You know I don’t regret refusing to see you when you asked me before. That letter you wrote to me. I thought you sounded an arrogant little shit. You probably were then. But now … Charming. Quite charming.’
He picked up a raincoat that was lying in a heap on the Pavement. Then he walked in an unhurried manner to the Doorway leading to the Second Eastern Hall.
I consider the words of the Prophet
entry for the twenty-first day of the seventh month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
Naturally I was very excited about this unexpected meeting. I went immediately and fetched this Journal and wrote it all down. I titled the entry The Prophet, because that is what he must have been. He explained the Creation of the World and told me other things that only a Prophet could have known.
I took time to study his words carefully. There was a great deal I did not understand though this, I expect, is usual with prophets, their minds being very great and their thoughts following strange paths.
I do not intend to stay. I am only passing through.
From this I understood that he inhabited Far Distant Halls and intended to return there immediately.
I can see how you might conclude that I am ‘16’. But I am not.
I had already determined this statement to be true. Perhaps (I hypothesised freely) the Prophet believed that the fifteen people who inhabited my Halls should be counted as one set of People, while in the Far Distant Halls there lived another set and he ought to be counted as one of them. Perhaps among his own People he was the Third Person or the Tenth. Perhaps he was even some dizzyingly high number like the Seventy-Fifth Person!
But I digress into what is surely fantasy.
I came here and I sent others here.
Could the Prophet have sent some of my own Dead to these Halls? The Fish-Leather Man or the Folded-Up Child? This was pure speculation. Like so many of the Prophet’s statements, it remained, for the time being, impenetrable.
We all paid a terrible price in the end. Mine was prison.
I could make nothing of this.
… that dishy young Italian … Stan Ovenden… Sylvia D’Agostino … poor James Ritter …
The Prophet mentioned four names. Or, to be more accurate, three names and a designation (‘that dishy young Italian’). This was a great addition to my knowledge of the World. If the Prophet had said no more than this, then his words would still have been priceless. The Prophet indicated that three of the names belonged to the Dead (Stan Ovenden, Sylvia D’Agostino and ‘that dishy young Italian’). The status of ‘poor James Ritter’ was unclear to me. Did the Prophet mean that he was to be counted among the Dead too? Or was he one of the Prophet’s own people in the Far Distant Halls? I could not tell.