the league want this change?
“My argument’s feeling not so little anymore,” I said, finishing my brandy.
“No,” Scalinou agreed, “quite possibly the most important philosophical debate in Grove history. And I can tell you this, even this argument pales in comparison to having the League here permanently directing philosophical thought.”
I didn’t bother to tell him about the Velle or Anna.
Scalinou rolled his shoulders, stretching. “How will you begin?”
“It’s an argument about stories,” I said, thinking out loud. “About what can be learned or believed because of them. So I guess I’m headed to the annals.”
* * * * *
Each Grove college had its own annals—extensive records and libraries. After talking to Scalinou, I wasn’t sure winning my argument was the right thing for the greater good. Perhaps stories about the Bourne and the Quiet and the Veil could change. Should change. Perhaps losing them would cause no real harm. But something tugged at me every time I considered it. Maybe it was the idea that the League wanted to take some of our stories away. Reduce them to impotent fact.
And then there was Anna.
I could give her back her life. She deserved that. I did, too, by damn.
Regardless, I meant to do a little reading. An ideological stance in this debate would lose. I needed practical story-proof. For that, I decided to search first the annals in the College of Physics. And it had been Scalinou’s planet, Pliny Soray, that had given me the idea. So it was only fair I drag the old cosmologer along. We probably looked a pair, two hunched old Grove-men puttering around the less frequented corners of the physics annals. We’d been at it for six days.
“Don’t you think you’d have better luck with source documents on the old stories in your own college annals?” Scalinou asked. It was a protest against the many books we’d had to browse—physics researchers were copious publishers, and their annals were legion.
I paused, standing up to take a break from the endless reading that we did right there in the aisles. “You familiar with the hypothesis of Continuity?”
Scalinou looked up from the book in his hands. “You mean the existence of erymol, the omnipresent element? In and around everything, binding them all? The one that has failed twice in the Succession of Arguments? That Continuity?”
I ignored the sarcasm. We were both tired and irritable. “Your planet seems to be moving off her course. While down here, fundamental changes—like those proposed by the College of Philosophy—are cropping up.”
“You think they’re related?” Scalinou said with heavy skepticism.
“I don’t know. But the concept of very different things bound together by something common got me thinking.” I tested my legs, which had gone numb from sitting, and carefully started to limp-pace with the help of my cane.
“Ah, hells, you’re looking for the ‘science of belief,’” Scalinou tossed his book aside, a sure sign of his anger—he never tossed books.
“More like the science of stories,” I corrected, and continued to pace, my legs tingling as they came fully awake. “I need to find anything we have that attempts to quantify or explain how a story affects mechanical systems—real things and how they behave. Gravity. Acoustics. If I can show that a story has a measurable relationship to the thing it describes, it would change our thinking on whether or not to rewrite the old stories, wouldn’t it. The Bourne. The Veil.”
Scalinou stood, shook his own legs, then pushed past me.
“Where you heading?” I asked.
“Physicists don’t catalog anything not canonized.” He waved me to follow. “We’re in the wrong damn place.”
He led us through two more floors of books, mumbling all the way. We paused at the top of another set of stairs, holding up lamps in the darkness—these levels weren’t kept lit. The smell of dust was thick, and we’d stirred a veritable
“My argument’s feeling not so little anymore,” I said, finishing my brandy.
“No,” Scalinou agreed, “quite possibly the most important philosophical debate in Grove history. And I can tell you this, even this argument pales in comparison to having the League here permanently directing philosophical thought.”
I didn’t bother to tell him about the Velle or Anna.
Scalinou rolled his shoulders, stretching. “How will you begin?”
“It’s an argument about stories,” I said, thinking out loud. “About what can be learned or believed because of them. So I guess I’m headed to the annals.”
* * * * *
Each Grove college had its own annals—extensive records and libraries. After talking to Scalinou, I wasn’t sure winning my argument was the right thing for the greater good. Perhaps stories about the Bourne and the Quiet and the Veil could change. Should change. Perhaps losing them would cause no real harm. But something tugged at me every time I considered it. Maybe it was the idea that the League wanted to take some of our stories away. Reduce them to impotent fact.
And then there was Anna.
I could give her back her life. She deserved that. I did, too, by damn.
Regardless, I meant to do a little reading. An ideological stance in this debate would lose. I needed practical story-proof. For that, I decided to search first the annals in the College of Physics. And it had been Scalinou’s planet, Pliny Soray, that had given me the idea. So it was only fair I drag the old cosmologer along. We probably looked a pair, two hunched old Grove-men puttering around the less frequented corners of the physics annals. We’d been at it for six days.
“Don’t you think you’d have better luck with source documents on the old stories in your own college annals?” Scalinou asked. It was a protest against the many books we’d had to browse—physics researchers were copious publishers, and their annals were legion.
I paused, standing up to take a break from the endless reading that we did right there in the aisles. “You familiar with the hypothesis of Continuity?”
Scalinou looked up from the book in his hands. “You mean the existence of erymol, the omnipresent element? In and around everything, binding them all? The one that has failed twice in the Succession of Arguments? That Continuity?”
I ignored the sarcasm. We were both tired and irritable. “Your planet seems to be moving off her course. While down here, fundamental changes—like those proposed by the College of Philosophy—are cropping up.”
“You think they’re related?” Scalinou said with heavy skepticism.
“I don’t know. But the concept of very different things bound together by something common got me thinking.” I tested my legs, which had gone numb from sitting, and carefully started to limp-pace with the help of my cane.
“Ah, hells, you’re looking for the ‘science of belief,’” Scalinou tossed his book aside, a sure sign of his anger—he never tossed books.
“More like the science of stories,” I corrected, and continued to pace, my legs tingling as they came fully awake. “I need to find anything we have that attempts to quantify or explain how a story affects mechanical systems—real things and how they behave. Gravity. Acoustics. If I can show that a story has a measurable relationship to the thing it describes, it would change our thinking on whether or not to rewrite the old stories, wouldn’t it. The Bourne. The Veil.”
Scalinou stood, shook his own legs, then pushed past me.
“Where you heading?” I asked.
“Physicists don’t catalog anything not canonized.” He waved me to follow. “We’re in the wrong damn place.”
He led us through two more floors of books, mumbling all the way. We paused at the top of another set of stairs, holding up lamps in the darkness—these levels weren’t kept lit. The smell of dust was thick, and we’d stirred a veritable
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