Katabasis — Chapter no 6

Chapter Six

Alice felt a little thrill passing under that gate.

She had always delighted in starting a new term at a new institution— elementary, middle, high school, college, and at last Cambridge. She liked learning her way around the buildings, getting library access, nestling into tucked-away study nooks, finding her favorite shortcuts between her department and the dormitories. She liked becoming a person that befit the institution. With each new matriculation you had the chance to reinvent yourself, to deserve your place there. And now Alice felt, though she knew this was dangerous, an instinctive want to fit into this place.

If Hell was just another institution, then it couldn’t be so bad. It wasn’t even a city university, which would have involved horrifying things like shopping malls and subway stations. No brutalist eyesores here. Hell was ancient in the comforting way, an Old World campus, neoclassical pales over American reds. There were no trees or grassy lawns, for nothing grew down here, but that was all right; the silt was arranged in its own elegant manner. All told, this current Hell was rather pleasant. And she would have thought she was right back above, save for the quiet.

It was the absence of undergraduates, she decided. It was undergraduates who made a university come alive, with their clumsy hustle, their self-importance and newfound freedom. Undergraduates were fresh blood. They asked questions. They brought ideas, and when they couldn’t come up with ideas they at least brought problems. Without their chatter, campus was frightfully still. But even this failed to frighten Alice as it should have. It had been so loud in her mind for so long. She liked the

quiet.

“You might be right,” said Peter.

“What?”

“It might be progressive,” he conceded. “It might be there’s only one way forward.”

Alice saw what he was seeing. Unlike other campuses, there was no crisscrossing of roads and shortcuts. There was only the one path, and when

Alice tried to trace where it led, she found that most of the campus blurred in her vision, undeniably present, but pushed to the background. All she could see in detail was a round building directly before them, several stories tall, its sides ringed with columns, and its top curving into a dome. There were no windows, only plinths, and atop each stood robed statues of scholarly affect.

You cannot go back and forth, Hell informed them. You cannot jump this queue. You can only proceed in order. The First Court, and then the others.

“The map’s decided, then,” said Alice. “We’ll go one by one.”

So they strode up to the building and pulled open the heavy doors of the First Court, Superbia, the Court of Pride.

PRIDE WAS A LIBRARY.

In fact, Pride had everything Alice liked in a library. Pride had pale marble tiles and polished wooden shelves; high ceilings and sloping walls; lovely stained-glass patterns of vaguely religious imagery; leather reading chairs with generous backs. Pride had leather spines arranged not on flimsy plastic shelves nor Erector set metal, but heavy wooden cases. The best libraries were like the best churches: old and musty, preindustrial.

Everyone knew that the nicer a library was, the better the work you did within it. Nice libraries meant donors, meant support, meant the time and resources to accumulate the best collections. More important, nice libraries put you in a certain frame of mind. You could unpack the precise same set of archives in the Rad Cam or a nondescript warehouse, and still you’d do better work in the Rad Cam. The atmosphere mattered. You became the thinker the library expected you to be. Nice libraries whispered: Everyone who has passed through here is very important, and so are you.

How bad could Hell be, if it housed a place like this? Alice wondered.

The doors opened to stacks upon stacks, shelves stretching in every direction, and researchers bustling about with arms piled over with manuscripts. There was no screaming, no hissing or flaying of skin. The books looked normal, smelled normal; even had normal titles, written in English, on subjects that had nothing obviously to do with death. The air was just a bit too chilly, like in all university libraries, but otherwise it was quite comfortable. There were even green, softly lit banker’s lamps of the

sort that always induced contentment in Alice’s brain. For a moment she had a terrible fear that Hell had been a hallucination, that she’d fallen asleep in the stacks and was now right back where she’d started. But then she saw the Shades passing straight through shelves, their bodies solidifying only when they reached to take down a book and flip through its pages.

“It’s nicer than expected.” Peter peered around. “I fear death a bit less

now.”

“Ouch!”

Something hard dug into Alice’s hip. She flinched back. The Shade who had bumped her stormed past, a great stack of books teetering in his arms.

Alice rubbed her hip. “Excuse you.”

The Shade tossed her an impatient grunt and marched off.

Now Alice noticed the Shades here were not quite so content as she had thought. They were, in fact, rather hostile. As they wandered deeper in, she began picking up a tense, busy energy about the place, akin to the college libraries during exam time. The simmering frustration of exhausted, exasperated souls. This sort of mood was contagious. Alice’s skin prickled with unease. Around the stacks she heard a symphony of angry mutters and books slamming onto tables. Someone sneezed, and half a dozen voices went, “Shush!”

Several rows over a Shade stood hunched over a big, yellowing manuscript with a magnifying glass. He looked harmless enough, which was to say, he looked like an archivist. Alice got up the courage to ask him, “What’s going on?”

He blinked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“What’s everyone researching?”

“Oh.” Annoyance crossed his face. “Freshly dead, then?”

“Actually, we’re—” Alice began, but Peter cut her off.

“Yes,” he said. “Just got here, and very confused. What’re you reading for?”

The Shade pointed to a brass plaque on a wall behind him. It read, in big

serif font, DEFINE THE GOOD.

“I don’t understand,” said Peter.

“Just what it says.” The Shade waved his hand impatiently. “Figure it out, give an oral defense, and they pass you through.”

“Figure what out, though?”

“Law, look.” Peter picked a printed sheet off the table. Alice glanced over his shoulder. It was titled “Recommended Reading,” followed by a list of authors. Immanuel Kant. Jeremy Bentham. Herbert Spencer. “Oh, look.

Nietzsche.”

Alice ignored him. “What do you mean, pass through?” she asked the Shade. “Who passes you? How long does that take?”

“Christ,” said the Shade. “Do I look like your tutor?”

“But can’t you just tell me—”

The Shade turned his back to her, pressing his face determinedly against his magnifying glass.

“Let’s walk a bit,” Peter suggested, gently tugging Alice away. “See if there’s a floor plan, or a librarian deity, maybe.”

They wove round and round the maze of shelves, dodging irritable Shades, until they came upon an area that seemed like a main lobby. The stacks stretched radially from a circular study zone, and the ceiling opened to reveal a great central staircase. They looked up. The staircase went on and on, adorned at every floor by great bronze statues in various postures of deep thinking. The library had seemed finite from the outside—Alice was sure she’d seen the roof of the tower—but from within it stretched onward as far as the eye could see, floors spiraling toward an ever-tinier center, and Shades moving busily all throughout.

Like all good scholars Alice sometimes had fantasies of an infinite library, a Borgian Library of Babel in which one could be forever lost. But this sight now gave her stabs of panic. It was so vast. And they had no time.

Professor Grimes was moving with purpose, the Shade at the wall had said.

He was bent on getting through, and when Grimes was bent on something it was like walls did not exist. They had to reach him before he reincarnated; they could not dally.

“Gosh.” Peter looked similarly helpless. “Should we just split up and

search one by one?”

“That could take forever.”

“But maybe there’s some order,” said Peter. “Could be it’s chronological, could be more recent arrivals are near the bottom.”

“Hold on.” Alice rubbed her temples. “Let’s just—give me a second to think.”

Pride, superbia, arrogance. Hubris, the defiance of gods; māna, the puffed-up mind. None of the sojourners’ accounts said anything about a

university library, and so she had to return to first principles, philosophical basics. She riffled through texts, images, treatises, that resided in her mind.

Icarus, hurtling from the sky; Arachne, limbs splitting into eight. What was pride? For Augustine, the original sin; for Pope Gregory, the root of all evil.

For Plato, the First Court punished those possessed of a timocratic soul— the soul who purported to love justice and honor and beauty, but who cared more about preserving the appearance of such things rather than making the sacrifices necessary to fulfill those things themselves. For Confucius, the Court of Pride housed the xiaoren, the petty men, who chased the names of things but not their nature. A mismatch between the name and the thing— yes, that was it, the common thread running through all these theories. But what did all this have to do with defining the good? And how did one go about defining the good? If she just could figure this out, then she could retrace Professor Grimes’s path, for he surely would have cracked this in an instant.

But she found it so hard to think. Her thoughts kept flying away from her even as she tried her best to sort through what she knew. The library no longer seemed quite so hallowed. Noises kept crowding her mind— bickering, whispering, scratching, coughing, breathing, pens scratching, pens clicking—none of it above an atypical volume, but it was all so blindingly present, harsh to distraction. And someone the next shelf over kept moaning, an insufferable sound that grew louder and louder.

She whirled round the shelf. “For heaven’s sake!”

It was the Shade of a young man, skinny and long limbed, hunched on the floor with his knees drawn to his chest as he rocked back and forth. He had the look of a law student, though Alice couldn’t say why; she just felt this was the case. Something about his chin. Books lay scattered all around him, and streaks of spilled ink marred the carpet. At the sight of Alice and Peter, he wailed even louder. “They won’t pass me. Seventeen times, seventeen times and they still won’t pass me, I’m such an idiot . . .”

“Oh, no, no.” Alice was sorry she had snapped. She was familiar with sights like this, and normally when people had mental breakdowns in the college library you spoke to them in a soft, calming voice and confiscated all the sharp items on the table and sent them off for a biscuit and a nap.

“You’re not an idiot.”

“But I’ve done everything,” hiccupped the Shade. “Read all the recommended texts. Read Russell, for Christ’s sake.” He smacked his palm

against the side of his head. “I even followed the regimen in The Republic. I studied mathematics—oh!”

He slumped sideways and knocked against the table leg, which sent a stack of notes cascading across the floor. At this, he made a keening noise and rolled forward onto his hands and knees. “And now my notes are out of order.”

Peter knelt down to help him collect them. “Here—”

The young Shade clutched them to his chest. “They’re color-coded,” he wailed. “Not that they care.”

“Werner, please.” A second Shade, a shorter and older-looking fellow, hurried down the aisle toward them. He placed his hands under Werner’s armpits and, grunting, hauled him upright. “We have talked about this. You may not have mental breakdowns in the stacks.”

“They failed me again,” sobbed Werner. “They hate me.”

“Yes, I know.” The older Shade patted him on the cheeks. “But pull yourself together, please. There’ve been noise complaints.”

“I’ll never get out . . .”

“Crying fits are to be conducted in private, that’s library rules.” The older Shade clapped him on the back. “I’ve booked you a place. Study room C-56. Third floor. Go on.”

Werner, still weeping into his hands, stumbled obediently off toward the staircase.

“Good man.” The older Shade dusted off his palms, then turned to Alice and Peter. “So very sorry, won’t happen again—why, you look new! Just

arrived?”

“Yes indeed,” said Alice.

“Double suicide,” Peter added, which Alice found rather dramatic but did not challenge.

“You’re remarkably well-presenting!” The Shade brushed the back of his hand across Peter’s shoulder. “The stitching on your collar. Incredible.

How do you manage?”

“Er,” said Peter. “I really try?”

“It’s quite magnificent! You wouldn’t believe the laziness that passes here. Most new arrivals don’t even bother with a face.” The Shade bowed low before them, hands clasped as if in prayer. “George Edward Moore. At your service.”

He was the most human-looking Shade Alice had seen thus far, which was to say that every part of him was richly detailed and solid, from the gray wisps atop his head to the scuffed tips of his leather shoes. He had the slightly lopsided smile of lifelong pipe smokers—and yes, there it was, a pipe hanging from his left hand. This he waved in their direction. “And you are . . . ?”

“Peter Murdoch.” They answered both at once. “Alice Law.”

“And where did you study, Peter Murdoch?”

“Oh, I’m—we’re at Cambridge,” said Peter. “Department of—”

“Ah, Cambridge!” Moore grasped Peter’s hand and shook vigorously.

Alice he ignored. “A Cambridge man! What wonderful news. I was at Trinity myself. Come, come. Let me give you the tour.”

He set off for the staircase. Alice glanced to Peter, who shrugged as if to say, Why not?

No better options presented themselves, and Moore did not look obviously dangerous—in any case Alice did not know of any demonic entity calling itself George Edward Moore—so they fell into step. Moore, turning, gestured magnanimously toward the first floor.

“Now, the floors alternate between workspaces and stacks. Stacks are organized in ascending order chronologically by century, and then alphabetically within discipline. It is a bit complicated, but I do recommend starting at the sixth century BC and working your way up.” Moore paused, overlooking the first floor, which was indeed composed of busy study tables and endless hallways of study rooms. “You’ll find it a shock at first, being newly deceased and all, but there are no bathroom facilities or kitchens. No one needs to sleep or eat. They are freed to engage full-time in their work.”

“Defining the good,” supplied Peter.

“Quite right. So the plaques tell us. That’s the only rule of this place: figure out the meaning of the good. When someone comes up with a definition they like, they go out to the shore for an oral defense. If they pass, they cross on. If they fail—well, you saw poor Werner.” Moore nodded over the dozens of toiling Shades. “Most have been at it for years.

Look at them go.”

Alice felt the twitch of an impulse to join them. Not because the project sounded so interesting—in fact it sounded overly vague and a little annoying—but because there was pleasure in being handed a simple, defined task and pursuing it with vigor. All those Shades looked so diligent

and purposeful, which seemed somehow virtuous. It was always good to be engaged in research. As Aristotle put it, complete happiness was some form of study.

“But that doesn’t seem so difficult,” said Peter.

“That’s what you think.”

“But isn’t it just like—you know, good things?”

“Ah,” said Moore. “But that’s a tautology.”

“Happiness, then,” said Peter. “And justice. And kindness, and . . .”

“You’re just saying synonyms now.”

“But surely they’re all parts of the good—”

“Oh, so there is a complete list? And what else qualifies for your list?

What is the common quality of all virtues on your list? Can you give me a comprehensive, tightly defined version of your list?”

Peter paused. “I see.”

“It’s harder than you think.” Moore smiled. “Everyone comes in believing they already know the answer, and they fail many times before they turn to the literature. And now the really severe cases, they never make any progress at all and then they end up bronzing—”

“Bronzing?” Peter repeated.

“A terrible affliction. Starts in your feet, and then you can’t move, and then you’re stuck where you are. We move them to the pedestals when that happens. Look, there’s Newton.”

Alice had been leaning on a plinth; she flinched back. “These statues are people?”

“Yes indeed, every one.” Moore knocked his knuckles against a plinth that read, Galileo. He continued up toward the second floor. “They do wake up, though who knows after how long. Between you and me I think they like it in there—they get a break from the work, and everyone has to marvel at them.”

“So what puts in you in this court?” asked Alice. “I mean, what’s everyone in for?”

“Don’t ask! You’re not supposed to ask, that’s the first rule you’ve got to learn. It is considered very rude.” Moore lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Though rumors travel, of course. People get distracted and leave their transcripts where anyone can see.” He pointed.

“For instance, that fellow there—he told everyone he taught at Oxford, where really he taught at Oxford Brookes.”

“That’s enough to put you in Pride?”

“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t believe the sort we get in here.” Moore kept pointing as they walked. “That one there, he rejected submissions if they hadn’t cited his own work.

“That one gave eighty-two presentations on Goethe.

“That one likes to remind folks that Dartmouth is in the Ivy League.

“And over there—creative writing students.” This was said in reference to a study room of eight Shades, all glowering at one another in silence.

“Somehow they always come in groups. Can’t understand why.”

They passed another study room, where one Shade was droning on to another in a very loud voice, “. . . of course, it’s all very Derridean, which I am uncomfortable with because of Derrida’s obsession with feces. Did you know I saw Derrida speak at a conference once? All anyone could talk about was how he got high on LSD and smeared feces all over the walls.”

“Continental philosophers.” Moore shuddered. “Here we have dozens.”

The procession of petty sins continued as they circled up the floors.

Moore seemed to delight very much in explicating the moral failure of his fellow residents, for his hushed whispers nevertheless carried over the floors, eliciting the occasional peeved glare. “Now, that one self-published self-help productivity books.

“Calls himself a Communist, but hasn’t read Das Kapital.

“Recites pi to show off.

“Had more of a comment, not a question.

“Wouldn’t accept papers written in the first person.

“Turned his exam papers over very loudly.

“Still asks people what they got on their A-levels.

“Still tells people what he got on his A-levels.

“Made his wife call him Doctor. He’s a medievalist, mind you.

“Now, that one keeps saying he went to school in Boston and expecting everyone to know what he means. Every few years the other Shades gang up on him and brick him up behind the stacks.”

They passed a series of rooms overflowing with texts. “Book hoarders,”

Moore explained.

“Why would you hoard books in a library?”

“To prove that you’ve found them,” said Moore. “To prove you know of them. To prove you have proximity to them. But reading them, that’s too much.”

At this point Alice had made up her mind Professor Grimes could not have been sentenced to Pride. She felt indignant, actually, at the thought of this gossipy little man lumping Grimes in with these posers and imposters.

Yes, Professor Grimes was occasionally very rude; yes, the whole Royal Academy called him arrogant behind his back; yes, he habitually reduced undergraduates to tears. But weren’t all great thinkers of their generation a little prickly? And hadn’t he earned his prickle? She recalled that Aristotle distinguished between proper and improper pride. The worthy man could justly boast of his accomplishments, so long as he had actually done them.

Professor Grimes could only be charged with behaving as befit his station, which was lofty, and Alice really did not think this was as morally egregious as calling oneself a Marxist.

Anyhow, Professor Grimes hated peacocking. She knew this because once she had been caught up with the thrill of competition herself. At her first conference—after a dizzying night of cocktails with students from Oxford and London, all comparing the sizes of their stipends, their research budgets, who had recently published where—she had gone up to Professor Grimes in the hotel lobby and blustered, drunk on superiority, “Can you believe they don’t have a proseminar at Imperial?” She had thought he might laugh, that they could share this condescension. But he had looked down at her with such blistering disdain. “Don’t play stupid games, Law.”

Peter was there; he snickered. And Alice spent the night in red-faced shame.

It was a lesson worth learning. She had not repeated this mistake. Those who had nothing substantial to brag about bragged the loudest. Stay silent and ignore the chattering crowd—this was proof you had something real to be proud of.

She fell back so she could speak to Peter. Moore did not notice. He had worked himself up into a rant about psychoanalysts, and his arms flapped so vehemently that should Alice and Peter have kept pace, he might have whacked them in the face.

“He’s not here,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a waste of time.” Her irritation had sharpened to urgency. Every minute spent here was a minute in which Professor Grimes pushed further into Hell. “And Moore said we were the first from Cambridge in years, so he would have met him—”

“Well, maybe they didn’t cross paths.”

“Then let’s ditch him and search on our own. He’s a clown—”

“He’s not so bad.”

“He’s a petty gossip!”

“He’s the first Shade we’ve met who will explain anything to us,” said Peter. “We’ve no idea how Hell works, Law. We’ve got no other leads.”

“Aha!” Up ahead, Moore turned and waved enthusiastically. He gestured to a door. “Here we are. My office. Do come in.”

ALICE HAD SEEN OFFICES LIKE MOORE’S many times before. They were offices of decadent accretion, offices of men who had earned tenure back when earning tenure just involved being friends with the department head and who treated their space like a clubhouse until they grew old enough the university could boot them out. A massive, cluttered desk; plump armchairs; porcelain tea sets; memorabilia from trips to Asia and Africa—where Moore had found a Turkish carpet in the Underworld, Alice had no idea.

Books overflowed from the shelves, lay scattered in piles on the floor and the desk. These included, she noticed, the aforementioned copy of Meditations. Framed diplomas hung on every wall—from where, Alice had no idea, because she was not aware of any degree-granting accredited institutions in Hell.

“Please, please.” Moore ushered them in. “My little sanctuary. Be comfortable.”

Alice and Peter sat gingerly on the couch, while Moore bustled around his desk, muttering things like “If I’d known I’d have company . . .” and “Pardon the mess.”

“There we go!” He turned round and offered them a tobacco tin.

“Smoke?”

They both shook their heads. Shrugging, Moore packed his own pipe, lit it, and sucked in with great relish. He exhaled. Thick smoke wafted into their faces. Peter suffered the mist with blinking, eye-watering fortuity.

Alice coughed.

“So!” Moore plopped himself down across them and kicked his feet up on the ottoman. “A Cambridge man. What college, may I ask?”

Alice glared at Peter, who said, “St. John’s.”

“A John’s boy!” Moore clapped his hands together. “Good man! We’re

going to have such fun.”

“Excuse me,” said Alice.

Moore ignored her. “Last fellow of any standing to come through was a Durham man,” he informed Peter. “And now, I do have standards, yes, but years of solitude and I thought, Durham, all right, we can work with that.

But he was so frightfully dull. Paleontologist. Wouldn’t stop dusting at the floors trying to find ammonites. He’s on the fifth floor now, somewhere, working out a naturalistic theory of the good.”

“Excuse me,” Alice said again, more forcefully.

This time Moore paused, though he glared as if she were a persistent mosquito. “Yes?”

“Please help me understand,” said Alice. If Peter didn’t want to leave, then she’d pry for all the answers she could. “What precisely is keeping us

here?”

“How do you mean?”

“Suppose we walk right out the door and leave,” said Alice. “On to the Second Court, that is. Desire. What’s going to stop us?”

“Well, nothing.” He blinked at her as if she were stupid. “You can wander wherever you like, but why would you? You’ve got to stay until you’ve passed. They won’t pass you in Desire if you didn’t pass Pride first.”

“Right,” said Alice. “And who’s they?”

“The deities, of course. Niutou and Mamian. The Oxhead and the Horseface, balancers of karma, the right and left hand to Lord Yama the Just.” All this Moore rattled off like a schoolboy reciting scripture. “They don’t talk much, but they can understand your heart in an instant. You can beg all you like, but if you’ve incomplete marks on your transcript, then they’ll always know. If your transcript says pride, then you must pass

Pride.”

“Sorry—transcript?”

“Haven’t you got your transcripts?”

Alice hesitated.

“Er—” Peter made a show of patting his pockets. “Must have misplaced . . .”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Moore waved a hand. “They’ll reappear, give them time. Impossible to lose.” He nodded to a slip of paper lying facedown on his desk. “Anyhow, you get marks on your transcript as you

go along, you see. The transcript lists your major sins, and then you’ve got to go in order. Pass Pride and you enter Desire, pass Desire and you enter Greed . . .”

“And then what if we finish at Pride?” Alice pressed on. “If we’re not guilty at Desire, or Greed? Suppose we define the good, whatever that means. What would Niutou and Mamian do then?”

“Ah. Yes.” Moore leaned back. “Well, supposedly they come for you in a ship. Those big doors in the lobby lead to the sands, you know. And past the sands, the river. Supposedly you see a great golden ship on the horizon.

Supposedly it glides across dark waters and extends a plank to shore.

They’ll be waiting for you there. They’ll help you board.”

“And then?”

“And then they offer you the draft of the Lethe, brewed by the Lady Meng Po herself.” Moore’s eyes grew distant. The lopsided smile sagged off his face. “They say it tastes of dandelions, of dewdrops at dawn. You drink. Your memories are wiped from your soul, like dust from a mantel.

You are mere starstuff, like once you were before. Fresh. Clean. And you are then ferried to Lord Yama’s court, to pass through the Gate of Reincarnation to wander back down into that red mortal chamber, to billow

among the dust. So they say.”

Silence fell between them.

Moore sucked at his pipe, blinking at nothing. He looked a bit translucent then. Alice could see his diplomas through his neck.

“So you’ve never seen this happen?” Alice was not quite sure she should take Moore’s word for anything.

“What? Oh, no.” Moore stirred. “It’s frightful dense stuff, ethics. Quite impossible to master. No, not a soul’s been invited to cross the Lethe in all my years here. Not even I—” Moore paused, winced. He took another puff of his cigar. “It’s very hard, anyhow.”

“Have you tried many times, then?” Peter asked sympathetically.

“Oh, no, I don’t bother.”

“Why not?”

“Why, the classic dilemma.” Moore spread his hands. “Administration interferes with research. I’m a bit like a dean around here, if you haven’t noticed. The Shades here behave very poorly. Hoarding texts. Stealing each other’s notes. Wailing in the stacks—I mean, the number of daily

breakdowns in here, it’s unbelievable. Someone’s got to keep them all in

line.”

“And you took this job yourself?”

“Happily.”

“But then you never get to leave.”

“Noblesse oblige,” said Moore. “We’re Cambridge men. We must set the example.”

“I see.” Peter’s brows furrowed, but he clearly thought better of arguing the point. “Well, that’s very generous of you.”

Moore beamed. “So you’ll help.”

“Sorry?”

“It has been so long. So long since a real scholar came through. A Cambridge man. You and I, we could really whip this place into shape.”

“Oh dear,” said Peter. “I don’t think—”

“There’s an empty office just down the hall, we’ll have you set up in no time at all, I have rugs and furniture to spare. We can alternate floors. I’ll do odds, the study rooms are where all the riots happen—”

“Look.” Alice had had quite enough of this; indeed, if Moore said Cambridge man one more time, she might explode. “Professor Moore. We hadn’t actually planned to stay.”

“But you can’t go.” Moore stood. He exhaled slowly, and the smoke unfurling out his mouth formed a thick, purple cloud that condensed and hung rather pointedly in front of the door. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”

“Well, we might just step outside,” said Peter. “If you don’t mind—”

“But you haven’t defined the good.” Moore’s voice took on a singsong lilt. “You haven’t passed, you can’t go on, it’s the rules.”

“We’ll take a chance on that,” said Peter.

“I really don’t think you should.”

Smoke continued unfurling from Moore’s pipe.

They all three stood, regarding one another. Alice recalled then that very few of the affable pipe-smoking fellows in college were that genial through and through. The manners and smiles were always a veneer for something a bit rotten. Good old-fashioned misogyny, usually. Racism on a good day.

Snobbery in most cases. Sometimes dementia. So many old men in the Senior Common Room who demanded you help find their glasses, and also explain what all those colored folk were on about. In this case, what lay

beneath was a hollowed-out and wide-eyed look that seemed quite lonely,

and quite mad.

The smoke thickened.

“About that office,” said Moore. “I think a maroon design, perhaps.”

Alice had a wild thought then. It was a page stolen from Peter’s book— a logician’s page, and a pedantic one at that—but if ever there was a time for pedantry it was now.

“How’s this,” she said. “If you can prove to me we ought to stay here, then we will stay. If you can’t, then you let us leave. But it must be a proper proof. You must compel us with pure reason.”

“Easy enough,” huffed Moore. “I am indeed a man of reason.”

“Aren’t we all,” said Alice. “Break the argument into two premises and a conclusion. A, you can only leave the Court of Pride once you pass. B, we have not passed. Therefore, C, we cannot depart.”

“Right as rain!” Moore lifted his pipe in triumph. “You see?”

“But I refuse to accept the conclusion,” said Alice. “I don’t see why one and two lead to three.”

“Because it is the rules of Hell,” Moore snorted. “That’s all there is to it!”

“Okay,” said Alice. “Let me see if I can get it all straight. A, you can only leave Pride once you pass. B, we have not passed. C, we must follow the rules of Hell. Therefore, Z, we cannot depart. Is that right?”

“It’s obvious, dearie,” Moore scoffed. “Logic compels you.”

“But I refuse again to accept the conclusion,” said Alice. “Why do A, B, and C lead to Z?”

“Then add another premise,” Moore scoffed. “If you accept A and B and C, then you must accept Z.”

“Okay.” Alice took a deep breath and recited it all back. “A, we can only leave Pride once we pass. B, we have not passed. C, we must follow the rules of Hell. D, if we accept A and B and C, then we must accept Z, that we cannot pass.”

“Precisely!” Moore cried. “You’ve said it perfectly!”

“Still I refuse to accept that,” said Alice. “I simply don’t get it.”

“Are you dim, girl?”

“I am not dim. I am simply uncompelled by this syllogism.”

“But it’s so simple!” Moore bent over his deck, dipped a pen in ink, and began scrawling furiously. “I shall spell it out for you. A, you can only

leave Pride once you pass. B, you have not passed. C, you must follow the rules of Hell. And then you simply add another premise, D—” He stopped himself, and muttered something that sounded like, “No, then we must add an E . . . but to get those fools to accept the conclusion of E, very simple, we must add an F . . .”

Alice tugged at Peter’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Moore hardly glanced up as they tiptoed their way past his desk. By the time they were at the door, he was on premise J: “And this will do it, this little extra premise is all you need . . .”

“Nicely done,” said Peter as they hurried down the hall.

“Oh, it’s nonsense,” said Alice. “I’m shocked he hasn’t read Carroll.”

“It’s a big problem for logic, actually!” Peter flapped his hands in the air. “Why should any two premises compel the conclusion, valid though they might be? No one has a good solution. You actually can’t prove modus ponens. But if we don’t have modus ponens, then we might as well be in the Stone Age, because modus ponens is the foundation for everything else . . .”

“Not you, too.” She smacked him in the arm. “Come on.”

They hurried down the stairs and back out into the lobby, past the squeaking and squelching bookshelves, the flickering study lamps, the squabbling study groups, and Shades sobbing within the stacks, until they saw a set of double doors. These were not the doors they came in, but at this point it did not matter. Above, a howling came from Moore’s office. Below in the lobby, all the Shades suddenly pointed their way, whispering excitedly. Passed, they whispered, someone thinks they’ve passed. The curious crowd surged forth. There was no time. Alice gambled and pushed.

The doors swung open, and they stumbled out of that frightful, chilly space

into blissful quiet, the dead outside.

This time, they faced the river.

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