Republic-because we’re not. We do nothing unusual, so the people are barely aware we’re alive. We don’t matter. But your behavior puts us all in danger. Everyone must be talking about you by now. The servants can hardly be expected to keep silence about you.”
“Yes, I see that now,” said Rigg. “Forgive my selfishness. I will be as humble, harmless, and boring as possible from now on.” Unspoken was the statement: Now that everybody knows that I’m alive and here in the same house with you, I can afford to be circumspect. But Rigg was sure she understood exactly what he was doing.
“So what do you plan to do with yourself?”
“I’m in Aressa Sessamo,” said Rigg, as if that were answer enough.
“But you aren’t,” said Mother. “You’re in this house. You could be dancing along the Ring for all that you’ll see of Aressa Sessamo.”
“You misunderstand me, dear mother. I have no intention of going out among the crowds. But my father and I-the man I called ‘Father,’ that is-had always meant to come here to study in the library.”
“There are several hundred libraries in Aressa Sessamo,” said Mother, “and they will not let you visit any of them.”
“I understand completely,” said Rigg. “But the libraries that are grouped together as the Great Library of Aressa-aren’t they public libraries? Aren’t scholars permitted to borrow books for their research and take them home?”
“Are you suggesting that you’re a scholar?” asked Mother, now looking amused.
“My only professor was Father,” said Rigg, “but I think perhaps he was enough. We shared a love of science, before he died. There were questions he had not yet answered, and others to which he did not know any useful answer. All the learning that has survived within this wallfold for the past ten thousand years is in the library-if the answer is knowable, I want it.”
“For what purpose?”
“To know why the Tower of O was built,” said Rigg, and he did not have to fake his passion. “To know what is known about the lands outside the wallfold. Are there people in the other folds? Why was the Wall built at all? How does it work? It can’t be a natural artifact-someone made the Wall. Do you see?”
“And what will you do with these answers when you find them?”
“I’ll know them!” said Rigg. “And if the Council thinks the knowledge I find out might be useful to others, then I’ll publish them. Don’t you see? Don’t they see? As long as they don’t let us do anything, then the only thing we are is the former royal family. But if I can become a credible scholar, publishing papers that only a scientist would want to read, then I’m not royal any more, am I? I’m a scholar!”
“A royal scholar.”
“Of course. But in time, in years, I’ll be an old man who is known for his publications far more than for my parentage. No one will fear me, or put some idiotic revolutionary hopes in me, or any of our family, because we’ll be something else.”
“They won’t let you go to the library anyway.”
“But perhaps your dear friend Flacommo will send a servant to carry my letters to the librarians and help me find the books I need.”
“You aren’t a scholar,” said Mother. “I’m just telling you what I know Flacommo will say.”
“Then why not invite scholars to come and examine me, to see if I’m scholar enough to be worth giving access to the library? I’m not suggesting that we actually talk face to face-the last thing I want is for some scholar who cares nothing for politics to get dragged into contact with us. But let them sit in one room, and send me written questions. Then I’ll answer them aloud, so they can hear my voice and know that someone else is not writing my answers for me. I’ll submit myself completely to their judgment.”
“It sounds complicated, and I can’t think why any scholars would bother to do it.”
“I can’t either. But what if they were willing?”
“It’s worth suggesting to Flacommo.”
“Tell him that my father was a remarkable man. Being educated by him was like attending the finest college in the wallfold.”
“You mean the finest college in the Republic,” said Mother.
“The borders are identical.”
“But someone might think you were saying ‘wallfold’ to avoid saying ‘the Republic.’”
Rigg suddenly grew grave. “Oh, I never thought-yes, I will always say ‘the Republic’ from now on. Let no one think I wish to forget or show disrespect to the Revolutionary Council. I think of the Council and the Wall as being equally everlasting.”
“I have one other concern,” said Mother. “Your father-your real father, my husband, my beloved Knosso Sissamik-was obsessed with the Wall, with the science around the Wall. He spent his life in pursuit of a theoretical way through the Wall. He died in an attempt to cross it.”
“I never heard of the Wall killing anybody,” said Rigg.
“He thought of passing through the Wall in a boat.”
“Surely that’s been tried a thousand times-by accident, if no other way-as fishermen got carried off in a storm.”
“You know the Wall puts a madness on people who try to pass through. The nearer they get to the Wall, the madder, until they either flee from it screaming, or completely lose their minds and wander around in a stupor from which they never emerge. Fishermen who get swept through the Wall are almost certainly madmen when their boat reaches the other side-none have returned.”
“You shared my father Knosso’s interest?”
“Not at all,” said Mother. “But I loved him, and so I listened to all his theories and tried to serve him as I’m serving you now-by raising objections.”
“Then tell me how Father Knosso thought he might solve the problem?”
“His idea was to pass through the Wall unconscious,” said Mother. “There are herbs known to the surgeons. They create distillations and concentrations of them, and then inject them into their patients before cutting them. They can’t be aroused by any pain. And yet in a few hours they wake up, remembering nothing of the surgery.”
“I heard that such things were possible in the past,” said Rigg. “But I also heard that the secrets of those herbs had been lost.”
“Found again,” said Mother.
“In the Great Library?” asked Rigg.
“By your father Knosso,” said Mother. “You see, you weren’t the first royal to think of becoming a scholar.”
“Well, there it is!” cried Rigg. “Did they let Father Knosso have access to the library?”
“They did,” said Mother. “In person. He would walk there-it wasn’t far.”
“And now the surgeons of Aressa Sessamo-and the wallfold, too-I mean, the Republic-have benefitted!”
“Your father lay down in a boat, which was placed in a swift current that moved through the Wall in the north, far beyond the western coast. He injected himself with a dose that the surgeons agreed was right to keep a man of his weight deeply asleep for three hours. There were floats rigged on the boat so it couldn’t capsize, even if it ran into shore breakers before he could wake up. And he brought along more doses, so he could row himself to an inflowing current and repeat the process and return to us.”
“Did he make it through?” asked Rigg.
“Yes-though we have no way of knowing if he was made insane by the passage through the Wall. Because he died without waking.”
“And you know this because he never returned?”
“We know this because no sooner was he beyond the Wall on the far side than his boat sank into the water.”
“Sank!”
“Trusted scientists watched through spyglasses, though he was three miles away. The floats came off and drifted away. Then the boat simply sank straight down into the water. Knosso bobbed on the surface for a few moments, and then he, too, sank.”
