Duty

Dear Paul

I hope the weather finds you well and whole. Summer has improved my mood, and if the wind is just right from the sea it flushes the oily taint from the air. I still miss Ravila terribly, but less so in the summer.  I think I will take in some archery to stay in practice, and it wouldn’t hurt to see how the students do as well. 

I bear sad news. Father Juris Pizzaro is senile.

I cannot begin to explain the emotions that went through me when I finally saw the proof. Father Moonwall had called me up to his apartments, I thought for another one of his sessions. He had Father Pizzaro in the State. His eyes were bright and the flush of blood was in his face, but his hands were hovering, hesitating over a small memory deck, unable to find to matches. He had been like that for an hour. Father Moonwall said his decline had been sudden, becoming noticable last summer and then a marked fall over the past 3 months. He is able to conduct himself well in the day to day mundanities of life, but how long that will last no one can say. It has been noted that senility comes suddenly if it is to come in our order, rather than the gradual decline seen in the general population. Moonwall believes that his regular sessions had held it at bay, but who is to say how it really works. That will be an question to be answered in another age.

Being the only other here of the same degree as Pizzaro, Moonwall had me rouse him and take his ring. He was angry, of course. Who would not be, but he accepted the evidence in front of him. I took it to a jewelers shop, who I managed to persuade to let me use his files to make the groove across Father’s seal before returning it to him. I find myself strangely disturbed by having done so.

I have taken it on myself to transcribe Pizzaro’s notes so I may discuss them with him while he is still with us. His mind was truly magnificent. I am very taken with his memory diagrams, the organization is nothing I could have imagined, but now that I have seen it, I feel woefully inadequate for not being able to build anything as elegant. I can see how one starting with this program in youth has an advantage, no wonder his success record is so solid. To spend your whole life meticulously building the palace of one’s memory, and to have it destroyed by ravages of time, it is more tragic than I can say. There are worse fates though. He is old, very old, and has kept his capabilities into his nineties, so I will count him among the fortunate of us.

There is a Frenchman here in New Babbage looking for me. I am loathe to enter a cloistered community, if the need should be necessary, I would appreciate knowing what options are available.

I enclose evidence of my actions. Proper paperwork will come in due course.

in brotherhood,

Dominic

*impression of a two seals, one with a gash cut across it*