The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

* * *

We had a little encounter on the road out of the Abbey which stiffened my determination to get clear of the place. We had to stand aside while the mailman came by on his rounds. The poor bastard was sweating like a dog, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of him. Whatever was in it must have weighed a ton. But I couldn’t see because there was a tarpaulin of some kind covering the contents.

When he came abreast of us he set down the wheelbarrow and heaved a sigh of relief. Then, straightening up and massaging his back, he gave us a polite smile.

“G’d afternoon, folks.”

“What’s in the wheelbarrow?” asked Angela.

The mailman sighed. Then, grimacing ruefully, he flipped off the tarpaulin. Nestled in the barrow was another of those stone tablets. The letters inscribed on it were practically shooting jets of flame. The heat drove us back a step or two.

“Really pissed today, He is,” announced the mailman. He pointed to the lettering. “I can’t read but a bit of it, you’ll understand, on account of the cipher is that Order of the Knights Rampant stuff. But I can recognize some phrases, well enough.”

His finger moved about, indicating the most fiery clauses in the message ” `Fry in hell,’ that one. This is `eternal damnation.’ Over there’s a bit about the `tortures of the netherworld.’ The real big lettering at the bottom says: `BURN, BITCH, BURN!’ ”

The mailman clucked his tongue. “He really shouldn’t talk that way to an Abbess, I don’t think. Even if He is God Himself.”

I took Jenny and Angela by the arms and started hustling them down the road. “We’re outa here!” I hissed.

* * *

By late afternoon we were off Abbey land and back into the coach which Oscar and the boys had kept ready. I started to relax. Left to himself, without an Abbess sticking her nonsensical notions into the works, Greyboar’s silly fiddling with “ethical entropy” wouldn’t lead to anything more annoying than laziness. Philosophy’s a pain in the ass, sure, but left to its own devices it’s really pretty harmless. It’s when it starts getting filled with all that moral content business that it starts getting really dangerous.

So, at least, I told myself. But it was all a fool’s paradise. For, just as Greyboar had said, the fact that a sane man doesn’t recognize philosophy does not prevent philosophy from recognizing him.

Or, to put it in more mundane terms, you can play around with cause and effect all you want. Doesn’t change the fact that effects are caused by causes, and that causes are caused by people fiddling around with the damned things. Then, as sure as effect follows cause, you’re in that one-way tunnel to disaster that philosophers call “the logic of events.” Which sensible fellows like me preferred to think of as “what happens when you mess around with stuff you had no business messing around with in the first place.”

Or, as the wise man puts it: “If you want to stay out of trouble, don’t trouble yourself.”

But that’s the way it works. One thing leads to another. A small problem turns into a big one, which turns into an unholy mess, which turns into a crisis, which leads to a disaster, which ends in calamity.

I’d seen it coming, sure enough. But what I didn’t know, as we made our way back to New Sfinctr, was that the crisis was already upon us.

Chapter 16.

Twenty Bob on th’Lady!

We heard the story from Leuwen as soon as we got back in

town. He was normally close-mouthed, Leuwen, like any good Flankn barkeep. For sure and certain, he didn’t want to tell this particular story. Especially to Greyboar. Really especially, not to Greyboar. I could tell—the lack of color in his normally ruddy cheeks, the shifting eyes, the twitching fingers, the fat body poised for desperate flight, the sweat pouring down his face, the gulping voice. As the wizard Zulkeh would say, these are the classic symptoms of the bearer of sad tidings in the grip of le terreur d’étrangler en plein fureur, as described in the ancient writings of the great physician and scholar Hippocrates Sfondrati-Piccolomini.