Katabasis

When they stop for the night, Peter, who excels at math, proposes the construction of a magical paradox where they “bound the infinite space of Hell” (119) into a shortcut to where Grimes is most likely to be. His test pentagram fades upon drawing, as does Alice’s. They realize they cannot draw chalk pentagrams to do magick in Hell, which frightens Alice, as that is their only defense.

Alice begins to despair, and Peter distracts her with talk of chalk. He insists that they are Grimes’s students and so will find a way to survive. The cat Archimedes joins them. He is terrified and has been hurt by the bone-things. Alice tries to think of accounts that have mentioned being pursued in Hell and remembers how T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land describes “your shadow” (126) following you morning and night.

The next morning, Archimedes leads them toward Desire, the Second Court. This Court “trapped you with enticements” and “made you the cause of your own suffering” (128). Alice recalls a speech Grimes gave when they were first years about how they should adhere to intellectualism and discipline, and not that which “is degeneracy, is bodily, is filth” (130). Alice tried to integrate this asceticism into her life. She would withhold food for most of the day, but always broke before reaching “Zen” (131).

A storm rains down as they reach Desire, which looks like a student center. Around the building is a hallway with endless doors. Inside each, a Shade sits, trapped in a repetitive pleasure-seeking act like masturbating, drinking, or sniffing old books. The acts grow more extreme as they proceed, and Alice wonders what types of desires Peter craves. Alice becomes judgmental about desires so deep that they overcome the mind. She insists Grimes is not there, but Peter thinks there’s a chance he is. He opens a door, behind which two Shades are having intercourse. Alice starts having a series of hallucinations of objectified and sexualized women, and she feels like her body is far away. She runs out of the building into the rain and vomits.

In a flashback of their Italy trip the previous summer, Grimes asks Alice what she desires. She says success and lists its trappings. He calls those the “by-products of desire” (139) and repeats his question, grabbing her wrist aggressively. He says she has to desire the work itself, not its benefits. She remembers watching him speak and being overcome by the “realization of what she could become,” a feeling “inextricably bound up in him” (141).

They walk away from the building through the storm and see 12 bone-things running toward them. Archimedes takes off, and Alice and Peter run for the Lethe again. Alice takes two hunting knives out of her pack. When they reach the river, they try to tell the bone-things they mean no harm, but are attacked. Peter tells Alice to aim for their spines. She runs to the Lethe and is accidentally splashed: She scoops some up in her flask and sprays it over the bone-things, sizzling their chalk parts. The creatures attack her, and they fall together into the water.

Alice wakes with Peter above her, asking if she remembers him and herself. She hasn’t lost any memories. All the bone-things are destroyed. When they make camp, Peter wants to test Alice’s memory. She tells him she can’t forget anything and reveals a carved pentagram on her skin. She confirms it was Grimes’s work. In Italy the previous summer, he had experimented on animals until deciding to try on Alice. Though she gave her permission under duress, she’d been extremely afraid. The procedure made her pass out and vomit blood, but it was successful. They did a series of experiments to prove she could no longer forget anything. Though she now understands the need to forget, Alice convinced herself that the pros outweigh the cons. Grimes told her not to tell anyone. After they returned from Italy, Grimes moved on to other tasks and stopped checking on her.

Peter apologizes that Grimes put her in that position, which frustrates Alice, who believes she wanted it to happen. She thinks back to conferences and how other women would react when they found out Grimes was her advisor, warning her of Grimes’s misconduct. Peter asks if Grimes ever asked her to do anything else that “felt unscrupulous” (157). She lies and says no. Peter tells her Grimes once asked him to harvest human colons from corpses for his experiments, which Peter did. They begin to trade stories of the unethical things Grimes asked them to do.

Peter reminisces on Grimes’s department funeral and the kind platitudes people levied at him. He says he and Alice are the only ones who really knew Grimes. They believe they were “tormented” (162) because they were strong enough to stand it. Alice wants to thank Peter for listening and commiserating, but she doesn’t.

She takes the first shift sleeping, replacing Peter’s watch after a couple of hours. While he sleeps, she curiously investigates notes sticking out of his bag. She recognizes the equations for organic exchange and realizes Peter is going to trade her soul for Grimes’s.

This chapter begins by explaining two principles of classical logic. The Law of Noncontradiction, which means contradictory propositions can’t be true, and the Law of the Excluded Middle, meaning propositions are either true or false. Several famous paradoxes threaten to break this logic, as do human relationships.

Alice thinks back to her first dinner at Cambridge, where their entire cohort but Peter was present. Everyone else started talking about Peter’s accomplishments and academic parentage until he showed up. When he introduced himself to Alice, she told him she was Grimes’s other student. They made plans to get drinks the next evening and discuss their projects. She showed up the next day, but Peter never arrived.

Over the next year, she learned that Peter rarely kept his appointments. She and the rest of her cohort hypothesized about why, but no one knew. When he did show up, he was bright, interested, and reliable. During their first two years, they nevertheless shared good memories, and Alice had thought she’d be able to crack his armor, but he always pulled away.