Page 17 of Katabasis

“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.