conspiracy

I was a junior scholar at the time, quite bright, very much a star among my colleagues: everything came easily for me, my studies, making friends, the work imposed by my elders — who naturally included my fellow students the senior scholars.

One of these seniors was my equal in every way (even at the time I had to admit this), and of course was my superior in status in the tyranny of student sociality. And I did indeed look up to S___ for the most part. Each junior scholar had a student mentor, and although initially I was assigned to someone else — a cruel person who enjoyed most of all to find (or invent) occasions to inflict bodily suffering upon inferiors — eventually S___ came to my rescue by trumping this beast in some way, as part of the customary wrangling for status among the seniors, and chose me as payment for the debt my 'owner' had incurred upon losing that particular skirmish.

Under S___'s tutelage I not only mastered the complex practice of being a student scholar at the Temple School; I found my way to the joy of the life and love of the mind, for lack of a better way of describing it, a life I have pursued with deep devotion for many years.

Had pursued. Such a life is now impossible, for everyone, and will remain unreachable for as long as can be foreseen. But that segment of the story comes at the end, and I hope to complete my part in this saga before its end claims me, which like as not will come right soon, I can't help but think.

S___ and I became lovers for a time, and I remember with great fondness the lessons my dearest friend imposed upon me. But I begin with S___ not merely to reminisce about old passions, but also to bring up an event that took place during our last year together at the Temple School.

That year the triennial Convention of the Conference of Professional Scholars was convoked at the Temple, and naturally all students in the School were conscripted to help with its preparation and execution. An innovation in the program that year was a series of informal seminars to be held the day before the Convention officially opened, which would provide an opportunity for younger researchers or lesser-known scholars to talk about their work to anyone who might be interested — in contrast to the formal, competitive presentations given during the Convention proper, which required stringent vetting beforehand.

I was deputized as docent for the initial such forum, reserved for first-time presenters; my charge was to make sure that the room was clean, that there were enough seats, and that the display apparati were in working order. The event was scheduled early in the morning of what also happened to be a minor holiday, so attendance promised to be light — in the event, counting me on the presenters' side, the actors outnumbered the audience, at least at the moment when the first speaker took the podium.

This person was older than the other presenters; he also spoke rather softly, and with a peculiar accent that often made him difficult to understand — and, rather than utilize the equipment I had so carefully set up for him, he spread out his materials on the worktable at the front of the room, which made them hard to see. When he finished his somewhat too-long talk, he asked for questions, but no one even looked at him; among the few people in the audience, he had put at least two to sleep. And so the next speaker rose to take his place, while the first man fled to the far side of the room, so flustered that he left his exhibition lying on the table.

After the rest had given their talks, which were engaging but hardly remarkable, the moderator (who had come in late, with a hangover) tried to get a discussion going amongst the handful of folk in the room. But, as none of the speakers knew each other, and the range of their topics was quite large, it was difficult for them to say anything meaningful about one anothers' work, and the members of the audience were so stupefied (perhaps by the early hour) that not one made a sound.

At that point, had I been moderator, I would have sat in utter silence, glaring at the ragtag assembly until someone finally spoke out of desperation. Really: all of these intelligent presenters, even the one who seemed so ill-at-ease, had something interesting to propound (at least to them), and I felt they were entitled to some acknowledgment of their efforts — and for being there at all, at that ridiculous time of day, only to be met by total apathy. It was shameful.

But clearly the moderator, sweating and pale, needed acutely to be somewhere else, and after the briefest pause, he thanked everyone and rushed from the room, without even greeting the guest speakers. Some in the audience stood up and started to leave.

I did my best to compensate for this inauspicious beginning by dashing in amongst the presenters and saying something vaguely relevant to each — except for the first one, whose demonstration, frankly, I did not understand. Going to him at last, I passed by his materials lying on the table, where a large, rugged-looking person with an abundance of black hair all over him stood gazing at them intently. Their owner was still sitting across the room, staring vacantly at the floor. I went over, in order to put him together with the man who was so absorbed in his materials, but when I looked back the huge hairy gentleman was gone. The presenter himself suddenly seemed to realize he'd forgotten his things, and, brushing past me, hurried over to the table, snatched them up, and scurried out of the room.

The handful of remaining people chatted easily, the embarrassing ordeal over at last. I began to reset the equipment for the next session, which concluded my duties in that venue, and in a moment the room was empty. Before departing myself, out of some absurd sense of etiquette and belated fellow-feeling, I tried to recall something of the first speaker's exposition, but nothing came to mind except a fleeting impression of ancient texts in a scattered heap on the table.

And then I forgot about it: it promised to be a terribly busy day.

The next week, I think it was, I finally had a chance to be alone with my dear friend S___, who seemed sad and upset, but wouldn't say why, no matter how much I teased and cajoled. I took offense, and said something I shouldn't have, got the same in return, and just like that we were no longer lovers, and spoke not another word to each other for the rest of the year, at the end of which S___ graduated and took employment in the outside world.

It was badly done, which I regretted, but shortly I formed the opinion that we had been heading for breakup a while; I eased my conscience by proposing to myself that the stress of the Convention had loosened our ties more quickly than either of us expected. But of course that was nonsense. We were simply too different from each other, and the time had come to accept that and to part.

A distraction from my confessedly less than total heartbreak was provided by a scandal that swept through the Temple School like an epidemic after the Convention was over: it was learned that the Council of Governors had imposed Censure and Confiscation upon one of the presenters, a sanction unheard of in living memory. (My ancient instructor in medicine told our class that he remembered his grandfather telling him that when he was a boy, just such a punishment had been meted out upon an apostate scholar who was later burned alive for refusing to recant his heretical pronouncements — or else his grandfather told him that his grandfather had told him the story; my poor old preceptor couldn't remember.)

There eventually emerged two theories vying for adherents in our little community: the first was that the disgraced man was a mere charlatan trying to pass off forged documents as a major find in his province, whatever that was. The other was that he was a formidable heretic, on a mission to recruit disciples to the proposition that the Ancients were not deities at all, but ordinary human beings like ourselves, and that they had brought about the calamity which destroyed their Great Civilization entirely on their own, through their own foolishness, or negligence, or both.

Frankly, I didn't know many among my fellows who cared much whether the Ancients were deities or apes who lived in trees; most thought the whole thing was just a fairy tale our elders told us to scare us into doing what they told us to do...

When asked which I thought was the true story, I replied that I failed to see why both couldn't be true: the Great Heretic needed documents to bolster his outrageous claims, so he forged them himself.

But when I found out who the dangerous felon actually was — that mousy little pedagogue from the provinces whose bumbling, impenetrable talk I had set up at the first seminar of the Convention — I couldn't help myself: I exploded in laughter. The person telling me this was a new acquaintance, a fervid partisan of the Great Heretic Hypothesis, and was dismayed by my reaction. I didn't want to hurt this person's feelings (the poor thing was rather sweet, and very good-looking), so I pretended I had misunderstood what was said, acting as if I'd thought someone else was meant.

Then I looked up, for I sensed someone's eyes upon me. Not far away, there was S___, certainly close enough to have witnessed the entire exchange. Never have I received a look so devastating as the one I saw directed at me in that moment. I was instantly ashamed, and looked down. When I raised my eyes again, S____ was gone.

After completing studies, I was first posted quite a distance from the City, as far from human development as one can get and still have running water, it seemed to me. This was bad enough, but my employer was a very stupid man, no doubt the relative of some minor official in the City, who had less idea of how to make use of an ambitions and clever young person than a dog knows how to employ a songbird.

One day, carrying out some pointless errand for my ridiculous boss, I descried someone I thought I knew from my years at the Temple School: a very large very hirsute person — yes! it was the rugged gentleman I last saw at that classroom worktable all those years before, studying the Great Heretic's lecture aids!

Having completed the tedious chore I had been sent to that desolate neighborhood to perform, I followed him — as much to defer my return to more donkey work at home as to satisfy my curiosity about what he was doing just then just there. I had completely forgotten him since that day, but of course I recognized him at once: all that hair! how did he manage it? The answer: he didn't!

I was just amusing myself with this observation when he abruptly vanished near the canal path just up ahead. I hurried to the corner, but as soon as I rounded it I was seized and lifted off my feet, finding myself a-dangle over the turbid muck of the canal. I heard nearby boatmen hoot and shout as I was shaken like a puppy by the scruff of the neck, and began shrieking, of course, which brought on a surge of laughter from all sides, until at last I was pulled back from danger and flung down upon the path. The hairy giant bent over me, his face the size of my entire torso, inspecting me like a bug. Then he asked, in an oddly gentle voice, 'Is there some way I can assist you, young person?'

I am afraid I burst into tears, to the great delight of everyone watching, which I imagined comprised the entire population of that miniscule settlement. Grasping my arm with his huge paw, he lifted me up, even offering to help me brush myself off, but I fought free of this intention as forcefully as I could. Then he said, his voice kind but firm, 'Walk with me, will you? I would like you to see something.'

Nearly numb with terror, I could only nod assent. He headed up the path beside the canal, with me mostly trotting to keep up, while the boatmen teased me about my flight o'er the waters, and he replied amiably that he'd be glad to do the same for each of them if they didn't tend to their own affairs.

Shortly we turned up a side lane, at the end of which stood a two-story structure I thought might be a stables. He unlocked a door on one side, and we went up a flight of stairs, emerging into an airy bright loft lit by windows in the ceiling.

He told me he was going to make us bark tea, a concoction he said he had learned from a dear friend, with whom he believed I was acquainted. I could not think to whom he was referring, but suddenly I grasped that he must mean that ragged researcher at the Convention those years ago! Seeing me realize this, he smiled and gestured for me to have a look around, then turned away to prepare the tea in a little galley tucked under one hip of the roof.

Although in part I wanted to run away as fast as I could, I also found the giant's workshop fascinating, impossible to resist the desire to explore it. Standing tables ran the length of each side, with shelves built above them all the way to the ceiling — high windows in each wall also had shelves tacked across them, and even the door through which we had entered was encrusted with hooks and compartments crammed with stuff. And every storage space was filled, or nearly so, with curiously-wrought objects whose purpose was difficult to guess. Additional workbenches and heavy cases sat here and there on the floor, all of them covered with tools and mechanical devices of mysterious function...

When the tea was ready, we sat on stools at the end of one workbench, and he asked me if I liked my work, in a manner that implied he already knew all about it. I was still so intimidated that I could only mumble a reply, but then he said, 'I am glad you came to me first, since I did not know quite how to approach you.'

This astonished me, of course, and he smiled as if embarrassed. 'It is unclear how we should start. May I try?' He waited only a moment, then continued before I could reply: 'I saw you earlier, and recognized you at once from the Convention some years ago — the seminar you moderated so skillfully.'

'I? Moderated?'

'I was especially grateful for your kindness to the first presenter, who had so much difficulty with his materials.'

I was unsure where this exchange was tending, and said nothing.

'I can confirm that it was his first attempt,' he said, reading my mind exactly.

'Confirm?' I couldn't help asking.

He regarded me a moment, weighing something. Then, 'I expect too much too soon,' he said, pushing back his stool as if to stand. 'More tea?'

'No, thank you.'

'Its unusual texture is not to your liking.'

'It is unusual...'

'Another sip may work some magic on you...'

'Very well,' I said, with an attempt to smile, and raised it to my lips again. I could hardly stand the smell — which was, to say the least, earthy — and so I hadn't actually tasted the stuff yet. But after a tiny swallow, I felt a kind of soothing warmth spread through my chest, so I nodded with some appreciation.

He carried on. 'I believe you know more about our mutual acquaintance than you feel you can — or should — confide to me; your discretion is wise. But let me share with you what I know, to help you decide your course hereafter.' He raised his eyebrows, each as broad as my thumb, and I nodded again.

He got up then, moved a rolling ladder from one wall to another, then climbed up to a high shelf and fetched down a small metal case, which, after descending again, he placed on the workbench between us. Taking a key from a ring on his belt, he unlocked the case and swung the lid back. Inside, I saw a pile of tatty-looking documents, much marked up in a singular hand. I looked up to see him watching my reaction, then asked, 'His?'

'Yes. Discarded drafts.'

'But,' I protested, 'he must have been ordered to turn over all his materials to the Council.'

'I stole these from him before he could submit them.'

'You stole them?'

'Yes. Otherwise they would have been lost, along with the rest.'

I was horrified: this man was a criminal. If I did not report his theft immediately, I would go to the gibbet with him.

But I knew instantly I would never do that. And I could see he already knew this, or else I would be sucking mud into my lungs at the bottom of the canal instead of gazing at this most precious treasure.

So began my double life as an active intriguer in a vast, multigenerational maze of interconvolute, often conflicting conspiracies: large, small, local, universal, ad-hoc, everlasting. My part in this web of plots and plans is MY precious treasure, whatever else I have been privileged to contribute to the story of the race: to spend the rest of my life tracking down, mapping out, and articulating the whole tangle — whether or not, I must say, I ever understand it at all.

Callous as it sounds, the destruction of the Temple has made my mission incomparably easier, by bringing to an end the longest-lived and most diabolical connivance of them all: that is, the conspiracy to prop up the Ancients as Deities who somehow rule our world from on high, bestowing their authority on every rug-chewing monster who ever dreamed of enslaving the world.

What makes me bark with astonishment, however, is the thought of that pedantic little scholar-manqué being at the center of the whole cockeyed tapestry — for nothing could have been further from his intention or character than the desire to bring about the demolition of an entire world. And yet he did no less, with his sorry little lecture, which at the time no one but my bear-like host knew in the slightest how to really interpret.

The rest of this document I am here contriving, should it survive, is dedicated to telling you, dear myReader, how I came to know all about it. And then to make this small contribution to the furtherance of its utterly revolutionary project.

My new guide and teacher was not himself a principal player in the game, but without him I would not have been brought into the long, multi-branching stream of its intrigues, and the secret history you are now reading would not exist. His pedigree was long in another of the oldest conspiracies of all, a shadowy fellowship of schemers, saboteurs, and mere Keepers of the Secret, which formed during the brutal reign of the last Golias, a vicious Persecuter, many generations ago. This clandestine cabal had no name — presumably for greater secrecy! My mentor would never tell me his name either, so I will simply refer to him as the Fellow. (When we worked together, I called him 'Master', which satisfied him well.)

The Fellow believed himself to be the Last One of his order, if I may call it that, and his mission was, as far as I could discover, to Watch and Wait — for What, he never fully articulated (at least not to me), but I did learn that when he appeared in that Convention pre-seminar years before, it was somehow Revealed to him that the Waiting was Over. What electrified him, of course, was the ancient archive allegedly discovered by... — now what shall we call him, that ham-handed literary sleuth from the hinterlands? If I knew his name I have forgotten it; besides, those old writings brought down enough trouble on his head without my adding to the stain on his memory, so for mercy's sake (and my convenience) let us call him only the Scholar from the House in the Mountains, which indeed rings finely in the mind's mouth, don't you think?

Well. To state the matter succinctly, the artifact that finally brought purpose to the Fellow's life was that ratty old archive of documents discovered by our Mountain House Scholar. I shall expound their significance as I can, but the conspiracy they hint at is the oldest and (therefore?) most tortuous of them all.

Before I can do that, I must provide a fuller context for myScholar's presentation and its reception.

My official employer, he who had dispatched me to the rustic province where the moment of my life came upon me, served the very Council who pronounced that dreadful sentence of Censure and Confiscation upon the dear deluded Scholar. As I may have intimated, this employer of mine was a dolt, and, fortunately for all concerned, was not himself a full Council member, but rather some full member's deputy assistant flunky or something. The Fellow, my true master, knew the Council well, which explains his laying hands on me that afternoon: consider how conveniently I, a well-connected idiot's intelligent servant, was placed to further the Fellow's mission of paying back that corrupt cabal for the heinous injustice against his friend — which mission, I must admit, I was happy enough to facilitate, once I found out about it.

I mean: who could resist the opportunity to avenge every villainy every petty, craven bureaucrat ever inflicted on anybody? by becoming a SPY? I would have slaughtered a rampaging bull every morning of the world to win such an assignment, if I believed there were any deities anywhere who might be pleased with such a sacrifice. Put simply, I was elated, and immediately set about to dig out everything I could of the real story behind the Scholar's disgraceful maltreatment.

This proved less difficult than I would have imagined, for, as often happens, my employer was an inveterate gossip as well as a dunce. I innocently mentioned to him that 'a schoolmate' who had been present at myScholar's little talk — and who had fallen asleep almost immediately, it was so boring — was astonished at the uproar it caused.

Well, this was catnip to Silkywits, as my employer imagined himself to be, and he at once spilled to me everything he knew — which wasn't much beyond what everyone else was whispering, but his breathless narrative did contain a gem or two whose significance he completely missed, though I did not.

The Council member he served during the Convention was among the minority who actually opposed punishing the Scholar severely for his 'heresy', and of course my employer was 'in the know' (as he thought) about the debates that raged behind the Council's closed doors — through which doors he was ordered to traipse, bearing requests for more research and bringing back fruits of same to his own master.

And because he was a complete ninny, my employer was also a fervent partisan of the Great Heretic hypothesis, and thus was forced (as he revealed to me in strictest confidence) to spy upon his superior in order to aid the righteous side (who were ravening to impose the archaic cruelty of Censure and Confiscation) in bringing justice down upon my poor Scholar's balding pate.

The story he conveyed to me (in hushed tones, eyebrows awiggle) formed an appalling jumble of truth, rumor, and fiction that could make sense only to a dunderhead like himself, and so I shall pass over all its absurd and incommensurable particulars in order to summarize my conclusions.

For the Council, the issue was never whether the Ancients were truly divine, but only what people could be required to say they believed — that is, this was a matter of defending Authority, not actual Truth.

1. To say Anything at variance with what the Council had decreed was to challenge its right to compel Obedience — a right that amounted to nothing less than the power to dictate How It Is (actually, How You Will Say It Is, or I Will Make You Regret It...), in this or any domain within the Council's authority, and, for that matter, in discussing any subject upon which the Council wished to make any pronouncement whatsoever.
2. If anyone (even an innocent booby like myScholar) was permitted — no: was seen to be permitted to get away with making such a challenge, however humbly or clumsily he put it forth — this would amount to inviting others to do the same, and such attacks, once begun, or so the Council feared, would inevitably increase in strength and numbers until the entire edifice of its dominion came crashing down. (Which, in a way, is exactly what happened.)

Nothing new here: one masters such sophomoric analysis when one is too young to even know what a paramour is, let alone have one, but when a bright person arrives at the age of intellectual enthusiasm, and the newly-acquired ability to comprehend profound ideas is suddenly ignited by a capacity for strong, focused feeling, thereafter every realization is illumined and warmed (if not incinerated) by the fire of robust emotion. Such was the case with me in that moment of my life: the plight of that naive bookish didact caught in the Temple's degraded political apparatus certainly outraged me, and at the same time I suddenly felt the means to avenge injustice coming into my hands: in short, I acquired a Mission of my own.

Bear with me, dear myReader, only a little more background is required to complete my apology.

The guilty secret the Coucil was so frantic to protect was the inheritance handed down (or up, to use its peculiar spatialization of time) from its forbidding ancestor, the Office of Inquiry, which flourished (if that's the proper word) in the hoary old Age of the Warlords, and whose charge it was to 'ensure proper reverence for the Deities' (ie, the Ancients), by whose authority the Golias (as such Chief Thugs were called at the time) was said to rule.

At the moment of the Scholar's presentation, this rimy concept was already losing adherents at an increasing pace — but at the same time, resistance to its elimination seemed to be stiffening amongst the traditionalist element of the Conference, even winning new adherents, my fatuous employer among them.

The Scholar's timing could not have been worse: had he been able to wait until the next Convention (and three years' practicing his presentation skills would not have been wasted time), there was a chance this flare-up of reactionary spirit might have burned itself out, and his proposition would have been welcomed warmly; he might even have been crowned with the laurel for most significant research ever in history — or maybe not, but at least he would not have been terrorized with the threat of being devoured alive by wild beasts in the arena, which I know for a fact he was.

But he did present his ideas to the wrong people too soon, and the Council did land on him with all four feet, and that was the end of Freedom of Inquiry in the Conference for what remained of its life. This overblown act of repression inspired a fierce and committed reprisal among the junior membership of the Conference, whose cause I believe I would have joined had I remained long enough in the City, but I only found out about their plans when they were brought to fruition, and the Temple was a smoke-belching crater in the blasted earth.

Whatever brought down the Temple also annihilated the proud Council, the mighty Conference, the Great City itself, or that part of it, which was shunned thereafter as if the ground itself were cursed — as it certainly seemed to be, given the venomous stench of the place for years afterward.

In short, it wasn't just pride, or ambition, or even rabid greed that annihilated the Temple and the Great City whose crown it was. It was fear, stupidity, and the sheer nonsense that results from their conjointure — had those who wished to defend the Scholar (or at least oppose his being punished severely) actually shown the slightest conviction, all those poisonous fearmongers would have run away like the bullies they were. (But then I never would have found my mission!)

I don't know what happened to him, my mentor the Fellow. One day I appeared as usual at his atelier to find the door hanging off its hinges and his workshop completely ransacked, apparently by burglars: most of his tools were missing and the devices smashed, the shelves pulled down and the furniture upended, and the usual disgusting signature of such an operation was placed like a centerpiece atop the counter where we had eaten our lunch. I picked through the wreckage and managed to find the metal case containing the Scholar's drafts; it was battered but still locked, and I took it away with me, managing to slip past an officer who had just assumed his post at the head of the lane — to guard the crime scene against further depredation, I supposed at the time, unless he was its perpetrator, a surmise that came to me later.

When I returned to my lodging, my few belongings were stacked on the street outside the door, which my employer was just locking before absconding himself. He hastily wished me luck and scooted away, a coward as well as a moron. I took a change of clothes and some toiletries from the pile of my things on the sidewalk, wrapped them in a pillowcase, and left the rest there for anyone who needed it. I don't know where my employer thought he was going, but I set off directly the other way.

And that is the end of my story, except to say that, after a difficult and exhausting journey, I made it back to the City, and have found a little corner in which to dwell: believe it or not, I live (or at least sleep) inside a giant bell that lies on its side amidst the rubble of its collapsed tower. No one else lives nearby, which suits me well, and I would make a terrible neighbor.

One last item: I reuinted, briefly, with my school chum, S___, who lives in, or haunts, the Temple ruins, not far away. I went there just to see what was left, and there was S___, prowling the precinct, muttering. Mad, it looked to me. I thought I should greet my old sweetheart, but the look on that once-beloved face was so upsetting I turned aside onto another path, and in a moment my old friend was out of sight. But I know where to return if I can get up the courage...

When you find this lengthy missive, dear myReader, please accept my greetings and regards — as well as apologies for whatever inconvenience you've been forced to undergo in order to locate it at all, and then for whatever misfortunes of expression you find here: I can only plead my implausible situation as the cause of my failure to repair them. No excuse, I know.

Wails and clanging in the distance — these alarums used to terrify me, portending some disaster as they do by definition, but I now regard them as a sign that some vestige of the civilization into which I was born has not perished utterly from the earth. In that reassurance, I shall now close, deposit this folorn message in its resting place — inside that battered metal case (atop the Scholar's drafts) tucked up near the clapper-hook in this wonderful old bell — and take a little nap on the rags and leaves that serve as my bed.

Looks like rain. That is well — the bell not only keeps me dry, it sings!