"Thank you. We choose people to train in our art who are diligent, steady, impartial and of sound mind. Some of that is because of the knowledge they must collect, and the integrity with which they must preserve it. Some of that is because the rumors about the side-effects of ideomotorism are not entirely baseless."

His voice is gentle and schoolmasterly.

"Tamett, you will have been recording on the path up here, won't you? Would you please read out your notes on the view of the sea?" 

"Er..." The fresh-faced scrivener flicks back a couple of pages and reads aloud. "- sky clear, sea surface rough, sun glinting off waves, two large three-masted ships and three steamboats approaching Meridian, four steamboats departing, four long-necked sea creatures with colorful translucent flesh on the horizon avoiding the shipping lanes, high fluffy clouds moving in from south-east -"

He stops. "There weren't any sea creatures out there that I saw. That I remember seeing." 

They would have been notable to Lemrae too, were they visible. The largest animals known to science are whales, and even those would be hard to spot at such great distance.

"I should give you a pamphlet on how we record weather phenomena before you go, to save you some ink," the wizened chronicler says as an affable aside to Tamett.

"Ideomotorism trains us to record what we observe, as we observe it, before the stage of conscious reflection. This has many merits, preventing self-interested biases by putting ink to paper without the involvement of the self. However, that also means that idle figments of the imagination can sometimes intrude unawares, that would otherwise be rejected."

"Your sea creatures and wire locusts are no more real than a stick figure drawn in the margin of a schoolboy's workbook, or the little man one imagines running along the scenery when looking out the window of a moving train. All ideomotorists are taught to ignore these flights of fancy, to leave them out of the notes copied out longhand for others to read."

"Partly that is professional. Partly it is pragmatic. In the past, some chroniclers have developed fixations on the fantastical wildlife that appears in their shorthand. They privilege these imaginings with a response, try and trick their eyes into seeing the creatures their notes describe or collect clues of their existence. In doing so, they make the monsters more real, but only to their own minds."

"They deny themselves sleep or drug themselves in pursuit of the figments, flinching at shadows and convincing themselves they are being stalked. Ultimately they scare themselves to death, or expose themselves to ordinary wild animals that they hallucinate to be more exotic but are no less dangerous, or rend their own flesh in imitation of their imaginings. I have here a few records from the archives of those sad cases, most in the victims' own hands."

He sets out some more scrolls, two of them bearing old bloodstains, all with the same archival ribbons tied around them. 

"Stable, reasonable ideomotorists ignore the imagined beings and are perfectly safe," the chronicler says, his practised lecture shifting to a mild tone of rebuke. "We keep this quiet to avoid sensationalizing the condition, driving more to suffer from it. I would urge you to put these things from your mind and avoid provoking any public panic."

To Tamett, he adds, "If you can refrain from the temptation to read your notes immediately as you write them, that is often the simplest solution."

Tamett has heard all this before. By the end of it, he's fidgeting, holding himself back from speaking up out of turn.

Lemrae's eyes pass over the scrolls. He really needs to learn chronicler's shorthand: it's useful, even to non-ideomotorists, and would allow him to read the archives for himself.

The master's explanation doesn't make sense. Lemrae had not been expecting to see that insectoid creature. He had not been expecting to be attacked. And how could the imaginations of five people -- none of whom had read Tamett's notes, save Tamett himself -- line up perfectly? And Lemrae's injuries... they couldn't have been self-inflicted. Not the ones on his back, at least: he had needed help to dress them, because his arms hadn't been able to touch them. Unless I planted my knife on the ground and rubbed my back along it in some fugue...

"The ideomotorists' minds do not make them truly real, do they? Someone who had not read the notes, or been similarly drugged, would not see any of these imaginary creatures?"

The old man nods and grimaces. "There are those unorthodox chroniclers who hold otherwise, that these imaginings can be shared or made real for all. I find their tales doubtful, and from what I have read the specimens they sometimes produce are of dubious origin."

That's about as close as a chronicler will ever get to outright accusing another of fraud or self-delusion.

He smiles reassuringly. "I can assure you, you are in no danger from any invisible creatures in young Tamett's notes."

Lemrae looks at the old master, and at the increasingly nervous Tamett. Both of their pens scratch as he thinks. My scars would beg to differ. The question is whether he's merely wrong, or lying...

He gestures to the blood-stained scrolls, tone somber. "It sounds like the belief in these imaginary creatures is quite dangerous to an ideomotorist. I assume, then, that one should not share information needlessly. And if one came across persuasive evidence, it would be harmful to share it?"

There. As close as possible to dangling the specimen before his eyes. A liar, trying to conceal the existance of invisible animals, would need to come up with a new lie to figure out what evidence needed to be controlled.

"Not at all, if at all possible. As for 'evidence', that should not pose any danger to one who knows better than to become fixated on the matter. Alas, an objective impartial observer, the chronicling ideal, is a high standard to meet. I do not think I would be endangered, but I would not say that of all my students."

He does not seem to be changing his story.

"I see." Lemrae says no more on it, taking the advice. He really doesn't know. But he might be right about the danger.

"Thank you for your time. Tamett here has been very helpful in our work; I would like to commend him."

Tamett had just been trying to exchange a look with Lemrae about whether to say more. Now he makes a small noise and looks down in embarrassment. 

"He is a bright one! His original teacher recommended him to me, back when there was that unpleasantness in his homeland. It's good to hear he's been making something of himself over here," the wizened archivist says, as though the lad in question is not right there with them. "Lots of potential, be sure to keep him on the right track."

They leave the archival complex in silence. When they come to the part of the path down where the trees clear and the vista of the ocean opens up, Tamett slows to a stop, looking between his notes and the horizon.

"That was..." He trails off, staring out to sea, his features bearing a more mature cast than they had on the way up. "Frustrating. Disappointing? If you put the remains on his desk, he'd prod at them and pronounce it a fake."

Lemrae nods. "Most probably. A live specimen might convince him... but it's quite clear that he doesn't want to know, and I intend to respect that. Besides, I don't think he can help much in our research." He looks out to sea as well. "Sea serpents... I suppose it's not any more fantastic than electrophagic locusts."

They aren't really locusts. But they look insectoid, and they move in swarms, and they destroy useful things.

"How do you suppose those other archivists died? Continuing to experiment could be dangerous. How do we reduce the risk?" He stops himself, realizing what he's assuming. "That is, if you think it's worth the risk. I'd understand if you want to put this out of mind and move onto other things."

"They're not really serpents," he says absently. "I don't see how they'd hold their heads that far out of the water if they were. More like aquatic giraffes?"

"I'm not going to just - close myself off from thinking about these things on his say-so. That man may be my patron, but he's not the one who taught me the ways of science. If he objects - I'll just have to find someone else for patronage."

(The Baelo legal and political structure has traditionally been built on hierarchies of patronage, starting with the village chiefs. They would hear and resolve disputes among their subjects, negotiate with other chiefs for justice when crimes cross between villages, and go to the minor nobility who would patronize them in turn if those negotiations become deadlocked or if their subjects have concerns that would need a more powerful patron to resolve.

Anyone outside that structure would be a foreigner or an orest, the ungendered rootless underclass without representation but also without the burdens of normal social rules and duties.)

(With the mass movement of people to the cities, there is an ever-growing number abandoning the protection of their village patrons to work in factories and on dockyards as orests. For those seeking more respectable employment, there is also a boom in patrons-for-hire. These legal professionals fill the same role of interfacing with government and making introductions among polite society, but for a regular retainer instead of the implicit social obligations of loyalty and obedience associated with a traditional patron.)

"But first of all, I'll - no, first I'll clear my head, then I'll go back there and read those records instead of speculating. We are forbidden to reveal secrets but not to give advice based on those secrets. Even if that exception is usually just for stopping relatives from unknowingly marrying, not guarding ourselves against invisible monsters."