I nodded. It was indeed a Dinglian paradox: that everyone knew everything about everyone else except for those select things known only to a select few. Perhaps the ‘Tya-dya-dya Project’ was pet name for some nefarious business matter in which Pyegrave, by reputation not one of the most scrupulous businessmen in the Dell, had engaged to his detriment— a difficult situation made all the more problematical for him should its particulars be broadcast by a retaliatory spouse.
For the time being, the thing would remain a befuddling mystery in both fact and in the very pronunciation of its odd name. But all was destined to come eventually to light, this first stone of revelation having begun its ineluctable and catalytic journey down that mountainside of earlier mention.
— NOTES—
COFFEE, a beverage rarely imbibed in its pure, unadulterated state due to its high cost and scarcity. When drunk by all but the wealthiest class within the Dell, it is most often prepared through infusion at one of two coffeehouses in Milltown that employ an infusing apparatus of local invention. In its pure form it is a drink of luxury for the members of Dingley Dell’s most exclusive club, the Cavendish Coffee-Room.
The beverage is commonly adulterated by one of the following additives: the ground roots of the dandelion (informally denominated “Wishie,” nickname for the mature dandelion clock); carrot (“Orange Brew”); parsnip (“Sativa,” after its species name Pastinaca sativa); beet (“Red-cup”); acorns (“Squirrel Juice”); and beans (“Toots”).
Chapter the Seventh. Saturday, June 21, 2003
week had come and gone and there was no sign of Newman.Alice’s prediction that if her brother was outside the Dell he would make a speedy return had not come to pass.
The worst was contemplated and the worst was ventured in grave whispered voices, but still my brother and sister-in-law had not yet given up wishing and praying for their son’s safe restoration to the bosom of his family. Indeed, there was a small ember of hope that burnt within my heart as well, for I had fabricated a plan: in two days the Outland brokers would make their fortnightly visit to the Summit of Exchange, and I was determined to have a word with them to find out what, if anything, they knew of Newman’s visit. I knew that even though my nephew could be nowhere now but the Outland, there still existed the sliver of a chance that he did not have to go the way of all the other Departed. My meeting on Monday morning would give me opportunity to bellow a little more oxygen into that hope-filled ember. Hundred to one the tradesmen would decline to answer my questions, but I could not let this day go by, no matter how potentially unavailing, without the earnest essay.
The tradesmen were a strange and mysterious breed, saying and indicating little as a rule beyond those things that served to grease the wheels of our mutual commerce: wheels that had spun with well-oiled ease for above a century, and which through all those years of uninterrupted mercantile intercourse, had afforded a good many Dinglians lives of relative comfort, and for a smaller, more privileged few among us, lives of inordinate amenity. This is not to say that the privileged did not have their own interpersonal conflicts to resolve or the occasional accident (consider Mrs. Pyegrave) or debilitating illness from which to recover (though hardly ever did illness in the Dell rise to the level of outright epidemic or plague, and we knew that we were quite blest in this respect).
Nor were we ever so unfortunate as to have been visited by any other form of pestilential pollution. Nor was it required that we should withstand the incursion of marauding Outlanders, nor even the intrusion of a single rogue Beyonder who through individual initiative might seek to perpetrate some act of vandalistic destruction or highway robbery upon us. Nor did any other such harmful purposed calamity threaten our collective well-being, owing, we believed, to the trust that had been built between the tradesmen and ourselves — a trust which had been induratively cemented long, long ago. We came over time to believe that the Outland brokers were in some large way responsible for our protection, were men of probity and honour, were men dedicated to the continuation of our unique way of life. It is for this reason that our own brokers who contracted with these men trucked with the utmost caution and respect.
It is also for this reason that I made it known to my brother late on the Saturday night preceding their impending visit that this newly-hatched scheme of his for returning his son to loving parental embrace — a plot that required the unwilling participation of said tradesmen — was dangerous in all of its aspects and stupid upon an unprecedented scale.
“Not in one million years, Augustus. And for a myriad of reasons, let alone the fact that Muntle would never allow it. Nobody would agree to it, for that matter, given the grave risk it poses to us all.”
My brother slammed his ceramic mug down upon the table, the hot liquid spattering the cloth, and pinned me with a glare. “For what reason would we even tell him, Freddie? For what reason would we tell anybody?”
“Even without confiding your ridiculous plan to a single soul, brother, how could you ever believe that such a scheme wouldn’t get out? Kidnapping a tradesman, holding him hostage. You don’t think that after the other tradesmen make it known to our own brokers that one of their number has been gagged and sedated and rudely dragged from the Summit, that our deed shouldn’t within a matter of minutes find its way to the ken of everyone in the Dell? Have you mislaid the very last remnant of your declining sanity and good sense?”
“Still, I believe the plan to have some merit.”
I looked at my brother as if he had suddenly grown horns. “What merit? Tell me.”
“The opportunity to extract information from the kidnapped tradesman — not only intelligence about Newman, but about everybody who has ever ventured into the Terra Incognita. It is my hope that should our captive be the sort of divulger who will be happy to cooperate with us in lieu of having his fingers bent back in a manner in which fingers do not generally go, we should find out a most amazing catalogue of things about those who have left us, and especially about those who have failed to return.”
Charlotte entered the room, pressing a moist cloth to her head. Fixing me with her pain-squeezed gaze, she asked what had got the two of us so noisy and overwrought.
“This stratagem of your husband’s to kidnap one of the tradesmen and force him to tell us what has happened to Newman.”
Calmly, because she was weary, but also because she was just beginning to succumb to the effects of the medicinal draught she’d taken, Charlotte asked if it was really necessary to kidnap the man to ask him such a thing.
I answered for my brother with a violent shake of the head. “Which is why I plan to go to the Summit of Exchange at the early hour of daybreak on Monday and do that very thing without complicating the matter with the sort of applied duress your husband puts forward as would a raving fool.”
“You compare me to a raving fool, simply because I wish to act?” rejoined my brother.
I shook my head in silent rebuttal. Augustus’ irrational argument had tired me. The whole business was enervating and depressing, and I slumped more heavily into the lap of my chair. Although hope still had reason to abide with us on this night, yet I could not allow my brother to attire it in ways that did not serve. After a silent interval I resumed, “Consider this, Augustus: what if after the fingers have been successfully bent backwards the kidnapped tradesman still refuses to tell us what we demand to know? What then? Do we put him on the rack? Do we pour hot oil down upon his head? Think sensibly here, brother. How quickly would any such torturous act drive all of the other tradesmen permanently from our society? Is it your wish for every man, woman and child in this valley to die a slow and inconvenient death in want of those things the tradesmen bring us that are crucial for our survival?”