Free The Devil You Know by K. J. Parker Page B

alternative version. Anything. Anything I can sincerely believe in. Otherwise, you don’t need me to tell you, we’re in real trouble.”
    He looked at me, and I could see what he was thinking; no,
you’re
in trouble, not me, thank goodness. I was annoyed by that. For pity’s sake, we’re all on the same side, the same team. Why can’t people accept that and work together? Still, there you go. “The only other explanation,” he said, “is that our system of archives and information storage and retrieval is so hopelessly inefficient and shot through with so many systemic faults and errors that in a case like this—irregular, as it were, not complying with normal practice in several key areas—a human could simply slip through the net, so to speak. But that,” he added sternly, “is impossible.”
    “Is it? I’m asking you as a friend. Be honest with me.”
    “Absolutely,” replied the deputy chief archivist. “It could never happen.”
    * * *
    Next I went to see my supervisor. “I can spare you five minutes,” he said. His idea of a joke.
    “It’s alchemy,” I told him. “It has to be.”
    “It does look that way,” he replied. “Unfortunate.”
    I was amazed at how calmly he seemed to be taking it. “Saloninus has found a method of performing alchemical transmutation that actually works,” I told him. “That’s a disaster, surely.”
    He pursed his lips. “It’s very bad,” he said. “Given the contractual relationship.”
    That struck me as an odd thing to say. “It changes everything, surely.”
    He chose to interpret that as a play on words, which I hadn’t intended it to be, and gave me a thin smile. “Not quite everything,” he said. “It’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened.”
    News to me. “You mean, there have been others?”
    “Oh yes.” He nodded solemnly. “None of which ever came to anything. The outbreak was always contained, if you want to look at it in those terms. The contagion never spread. The alchemist always died very soon after making his discovery, and his secret always died with him. Usually,” he added, “there was an explosion. Dreadfully unstable materials these people use. A terrific explosion, and all the notes and equipments destroyed in the blast.”
    I wasn’t entirely sure I liked the sound of that. “You make it sound like the explosions weren’t accidents.”
    He frowned at me. “Alchemy is an abomination,” he said. “It’s not natural. Unnatural things can’t exist in nature, they’re intrinsically unstable. That’s why the materials alchemists use are so exceptionally volatile. It’s in their nature to blow up.”
    I decided I didn’t want to think about the implications of that. “Saloninus succeeded,” I said. “And survived.”
    “Well, he’s a special case, isn’t he?” my supervisor snapped. “Extraordinary man. He sets up the ultimate experiment and then walks away before it’s complete. He sets it up precisely because he
knows
it’s liable to explode—taking all his enemies with it, yes, but to start the procedure and not to care about the result; it’s unthinkable, literally. He had the answer to the secret of the universe in his hands, but he was more interested in saving his own neck and making money. Extraordinary man.”
    “He is.”
    “Yes. And that’s not a good thing. You do realise,” he went on, “that the contract means that if he’s conducting alchemical research, even if he blows himself up, he won’t die. It won’t stop him. We’ve guaranteed that he can’t die in war or by accident.” Suddenly he laughed, not in a healthy way. “You have to hand it to him,” he said. “The contract, selling his soul to us, is the only way he could be sure of conducting his research and living to tell the tale.”
    My head was starting to spin. “If he’s made this woman immortal,” I said, “what’s to prevent him doing the same thing to himself?”
    My supervisor looked at me.