“I … can’t recall.”
Shelley nodded. “Very well. So what’s all this about the Graiae and their eye?”
Byron nudged his horse into a slow walk. He sighed, apparently tired of this subject. “The Armenian fathers claim that the three sisters were examples of the real, Old Testament nephelim giants, and were captured in Egypt way the hell of a long time ago. They were staked out in the sun until they turned to stone, and then they were carved up for use in architecture, and shackled by having certain restricting designs cut into their bodies. They became drained of energy—unconscious, asleep. But they still had their eye—except that it wasn’t really an eye, and what they did with it wasn’t precisely see.”
Shelley rolled one hand in an And? gesture.
“I wish I could have Father Pasquale explain it to you. With the eye they didn’t so much see as know. They knew, down to decimal points even finer than God Himself ever bothered to figure to, every detail of their surroundings; and therefore they could predict any future event with absolute certainty—as easily as you were able to predict which corner of the room would receive one of those billiard balls you and Allegra were rolling around this afternoon.”
He stared out at the sea for a moment before going on. “Now the world isn’t usually as knowable as this—it isn’t by nature hard and fast in its tiniest details, and that’s why we have the luxury of despising or admiring people, for if our courses really were as predestined as, say, the parabola of a dropped stone, we could hardly … make moral judgments … about the bodies that found themselves conforming to those courses, any more than we can blame a rock that falls on us. Fortune-tellers—and Calvinists—would like living around these things when they’re awake and have their eye, because the Graiae’s sight forbids all randomness, all free will. When they have their sight, the Graiae not only check on things, but also check them.”
“But according to that fat man they don’t have it, their eye hasn’t been restored,” said Shelley. A wave surged in and swirled foam around his horse’s fetlocks. “How did that juggling establish that?”
“Well, Carlo’s an expert coin-tosser, so good at it that he works right up against the bounds of what’s possible; and if you take that as a given, then by having him juggle and try precision-tossing, you can monitor the bounds of the possible. If the eye had been restored, his coin would have landed a good deal closer to the spot of blood; and if they were awake and had the eye, it would have landed squarely on it.”
“And what if they’d been awake this afternoon when he did it? Awake but still blind?”
“That’s what you’ve come to Venice to do—wake them up while they’re still blind—that’s what I was hinting about in my letter. As to what would happen to Carlo’s coin if he was to toss it in that circumstance—I don’t know. I’ve asked him, and he’s tried to explain, but all I can gather is that the coin wouldn’t even exist between the moment of being tossed and the moment of coming to rest; and where it came to rest would have nothing to do with how he threw it; and the penny that landed wouldn’t in any valid sense be the same one that was thrown.”
Shelley was frowning, but after a few moments he nodded slowly. “There’s a sort of insane consistency to it,” he said. “We’re trying to undo determinacy, predestination; these things, these three primordial sisters, cast a … a field, say. If they’ve got their eye, it’s a field of inviolable determinacy—but if they’re blind, it’s a field of expanded possibilities, freedom from coldly mechanical restrictions.” He grinned at Byron, his eyes bright. “You’ll remember that Perseus was careful to ask them his questions while they were casting their blind field—so that what he asked wouldn’t be impossible.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Byron. “And you’re right, if they’re awake but still blind, then many things ordinarily impossible are possible within their focus.”
“And they’re in Venice, the Graiae? And your priests told you how to wake them up?”
“I’m not too confident about waking them, certain very rare fuels have to be acquired … but yes, they’re here—you saw two of them an hour ago standing at the southern end of the Piazza. The third fell into the canal when they were trying to set them up, way back in the twelfth century.” Shelley blinked. “Those columns?”
“Right. The doge at the time, Sebastiano Ziani, promised any favor, any onesta grazia, to whomever could stand the pillars up in safe captivity there on the pavement in front of the Ducal Palace. Some fellow named Nicolò il Barattieri did it—though he did drop one of them in the canal—but then he demanded the eye as payment. In other words he demanded that uncertainty—gambling—be legalized in the vicinity of the square, in the focus of the sisters’ attention. The doge had to stand by his promise, but to counteract it he built the prison right there, and had executions held between the pillars. Blood, fresh-spilt blood, is evidently a fair replacement for the missing eye. Of course, they haven’t had executions there for quite a while now.”
Shelley was trying to hold on to his impression that all this made some kind of sense. “Why should blood be an effective replacement?”
Byron turned his horse back the way they’d come, and set off at a walk. “I’m just quoting the priests now, and I know what you think of priests—but they said that blood contains the … what, the complete, unarguable plan, the design, of the person it comes from. There’s no—”
“That has to be why they need to drink human blood,” interrupted Shelley excitedly. “In order to take human form. They couldn’t do it without the plan, the design, that’s in the blood. If they just drank animal blood, the only forms they could assume would be animals.”
Byron shrugged a little testily. “That could be. Anyway, in blood there’s no room for change—no uncertainty, in other words. It’s a pretty powerful embodiment of predestination. Semen would be the opposite, the embodiment of undefined potentiality. In fact, if you could have sex with a woman, there in the square, that would be a perfect blinder for them.” He laughed and put the spurs to his horse. “I’ll volunteer to try, if you like.”
Shelley was shaking his head. “How can the Austrians want to restore the eye, and make everyone in the area brute slaves to mechanical causality?”
“Well of course they’ve supposedly got this ancient member of the ruling Hapsburg family—some old fellow named Werner who’s apparently been hibernating in the Hapsburg castle in northern Switzerland for the last eight centuries. They want to keep him alive for another few centuries, and medicines and life-prolonging magics work much better near the Graiae—assuming they’re awake and can pay their razory sort of attention to things. The Austrians have apparently been busy shipping him south through the Alps ever since 1814, when they acquired Venice. I—” He laughed uncertainly. “I believe they’ve got him packed in ice.”
Shelley shrugged. “Very well. But back when Venice was a republic—why did the doges want the pillars to have the eye? The doges were always enemies of the Hapsburgs.”
“The Graiae, with the eye, promote stasis, Shelley,” said Byron impatiently. “Every ruler wants to maintain the status quo. And I don’t see that that’s so pernicious, either. Your fields of expanded probability sound to me like the … unformed darkness that was on the deep before God said ‘Let there be light.'”