Babel, page 49
Sterling glared at him. He was breathing very hard. It was the strangest thing, Robin thought, how much he’d worked himself up. His cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was beginning to shine with sweat. Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?
‘Your friend Miss Price warned me you’d become a bit of a fanatic.’
This was quite nakedly bait. Robin held his tongue.
‘Go on,’ Sterling sneered. ‘Don’t you want to ask about her? Don’t you want to know why?’
‘I know why. Your sort is predictable.’
Anger twisted over Sterling’s face. He stood up and dragged his chair closer until their knees nearly touched.
‘We have ways of extricating the truth. The word soothe derives from a Proto-Germanic root that means “truth”. We daisy-chain it with the Swedish sand. It lulls you, lets you put your guard down, comforts you until you’re singing.’ Sterling leaned forward. ‘But I’ve always found that one quite boring.
‘Do you know where the word agony comes from?’ He fished inside his coat pocket, then pulled out a pair of silver handcuffs, which he laid across his knees. ‘Greek, by way of Latin and later, Old French. The Greek agōnia means a contest – originally, a sports gathering between athletes. It gained the connotation of suffering much later. But I’m translating from English back into the Greek, so the bar knows to induce suffering, not remove it. Clever, no?’
He gave the cuffs a satisfied smile. There was no malice in that smile – only a gleeful triumph that ancient languages could be hacked apart and reworked for his intended purpose. ‘It took some experimenting before we got it right, but we’ve now perfected the effect. It’ll hurt, Robin Swift. It’ll hurt like hell. I’ve tried it before, just out of curiosity. It’s not a surface-level pain, see; it’s not like being stabbed with a blade, or even like being burned by flames. It’s inside you. Like your wrists are shattering, over and over again, only there’s no upper limit to the agony, because physically, you’re fine – it’s all in your head. It’s quite awful. You’ll strain against it, of course. The body can’t help it, not against pain like that. But every time you struggle, the pain will double, and double again. Would you like to see for yourself?’
I’m tired, thought Robin; I’m so tired; I would rather you shoot me in the head.
‘Here, let me.’ Sterling rose, then knelt down behind him. ‘Try this.’
He snapped the cuffs shut. Robin screamed. He could not help it. He’d wanted to keep silent, to refuse Sterling the satisfaction, but the pain was so overwhelming he had no control, no sense of his body at all except for the pain, which was far worse than Sterling had described. It did not feel like his wrists were breaking. It felt as if someone were hammering thick iron spikes into his bones, straight into the marrow, and every time he writhed, flailing to break free, the pain intensified.
Control, said a voice inside his head, a voice that sounded like Griffin. Control yourself, stop, it’ll hurt less—
But the pain only grew. Sterling hadn’t lied; there was no limit. Every time he thought that this was it, that if he suffered one more moment of this then he would die, it somehow amplified. He had not known human flesh could feel such pain.
Control, said Griffin again.
Then another voice, horribly familiar: That’s one good thing about you. When you’re beaten, you don’t cry.
Restraint. Repression. Had he not practised this his entire life? Let the pain slide off you like raindrops, without acknowledgment, without reaction, because to pretend it is not happening is the only way to survive.
Sweat dripped down his forehead. He fought to push past the blinding agony, to gain a sense of his arms and hold them still. It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done; it felt like he was forcing his own wrists under a hammer.
But the pain subsided. Robin slumped forward, gasping.
‘Impressive,’ said Sterling. ‘See how long you can keep that up. Meanwhile, I’ve got something else to show you.’ He pulled another bar out from his pocket and held it down over Robin’s face. The left side read: φρήν. ‘I don’t suppose you did Ancient Greek? Griffin’s was very poor, but I’m told you’re the better student. You’ll know what phren refers to, then – the seat of intellect and emotion. Only the Greeks didn’t think it resided in the mind. Homer, for instance, describes the phren as being located in the chest.’ He placed the bar into Robin’s front pocket. ‘Imagine what this does, then.’
He drew back his fist and slammed it against Robin’s sternum.
The physical torture was not so bad – more of a hard pressure than acute pain. But the moment Sterling’s knuckles touched his chest, Robin’s mind exploded: feelings and memories flooded to the fore, everything he’d hidden, everything he feared and dreaded, all the truths he dared not acknowledge. He was a babbling idiot, he had no idea what he was saying; words in Chinese and English both spilled out of him without reason or order. Ramy, he said, or thought, he didn’t know; Ramy, Ramy, my fault, father, my father – my father, my mother, three people I have witnessed die and not once could I lift a finger to help—
Vaguely he was aware of Sterling urging him along, trying to guide his fount of babble. ‘Hermes,’ Sterling kept saying. ‘Tell me about Hermes.’
‘Kill me,’ he gasped. He meant it; he’d never wanted anything more in the world. A mind was not meant to feel this much. Only death would silence the chorus. ‘Holy God, kill me—’
‘Oh, no, Robin Swift. You don’t get off that easily. We don’t want you dead; that defies the point.’ Sterling pulled a watch out of his pocket, examined it, and then cocked his ear towards the door as if listening for something. Seconds later, Robin heard Victoire scream. ‘Can’t say the same for her.’
Robin gathered his legs beneath him and launched himself at Sterling’s waist. Sterling stepped to the side. Robin crashed to the ground, his cheek slamming painfully against stone. His wrists pulled against the cuffs, and his arms once again exploded into pain that did not stop until he curled in on himself, gasping, pouring every ounce of his focus into keeping still.
‘Here’s how it works.’ Sterling dangled the watch chain over Robin’s eyes. ‘Tell me everything you know about the Hermes Society, and all of this stops. I’ll remove the cuffs, and I’ll set your friend free. Everything will be all right.’
Robin glared at him, panting.
‘Tell me, and this stops,’ said Sterling once more.
The Old Library was gone. Ramy was dead. Anthony, Cathy, Vimal, and Ilse – all likely dead. They’ve killed the rest, Letty had said. What else was there to give up?
There’s Griffin, spoke a voice. There are those who were in the envelope, there are countless others you don’t know about. And that was the point – he didn’t know who was still out there or what they were doing, and he could not risk revealing anything that put them in danger. He’d made that mistake once before; he could not fail Hermes again.
‘Tell me or we’ll shoot the girl.’ Sterling dangled his pocket watch over Robin’s face. ‘In one minute, at half past the hour, they’re going to put a bullet in her skull. Unless I tell them to stop.’
‘You’re lying,’ Robin gasped.
‘I am not. Fifty seconds.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘We only need one of you alive, and she’s more stubborn to work with.’ Sterling shook the watch again. ‘Forty seconds.’
It was a bluff. It had to be a bluff; they couldn’t possibly have timed things so precisely. And they ought to want them both alive – two sources of information were better than one, weren’t they?
‘Twenty seconds.’
He thought frantically for a passable lie, anything to make the time stop. ‘There are other schools,’ he breathed, ‘there are contacts at other schools, stop—’
‘Ah.’ Sterling put away the pocket watch. ‘Time’s up.’
Down the hall, Victoire screamed. Robin heard a gunshot. The scream broke off.
‘Thank heavens,’ said Sterling. ‘What a screech.’
Robin threw himself at Sterling’s legs. This time it worked; he’d caught Sterling by surprise. They crashed to the floor, Robin above Sterling, cuffed hands above his head. He brought his fists down onto Sterling’s forehead, his shoulders, anywhere he could reach.
‘Agony,’ Sterling gasped. ‘Agōnia.’
The pain in Robin’s wrists redoubled. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. Sterling struggled out from beneath him. He toppled sideways, choking. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Sterling stood over him for a moment, breathing hard. Then he drew his boot back and aimed a vicious kick at Robin’s sternum.
Pain; white-hot, blinding pain. Robin could perceive nothing else. He didn’t have the breath to scream. He had no bodily control at all, no dignity; his eyes were blank, his mouth slack, leaking drool onto the floor.
‘Good Lord.’ Sterling adjusted his necktie as he straightened up. ‘Richard was right. Animals, the lot of you.’
Then Robin was alone again. Sterling did not say when he would return, or what would happen to Robin next. There was only the vast expanse of time and the black grief that engulfed it. He wept until he was hollow. He screamed until it hurt to breathe.
Sometimes the waves of pain subsided ever so slightly and he thought he could organize his thoughts, take stock of his situation, ponder his next move. What came next? Was victory on the table any longer, or was there only survival? But Ramy and Victoire permeated everything. Every time he saw the slightest glimpse of the future, he remembered they would not be in it, and then the tears flowed again, and the suffocating boot of grief came down again on his chest.
He considered dying. It would not be so hard; he needed only to strike his head against stone with enough effort or figure out some way to strangle himself with his cuffs. The pain of it did not frighten him. His whole body felt numb; it seemed impossible that he might feel anything ever again except the overwhelming sense of drowning – and perhaps, he thought, death was the only way to break the surface.
He might not have to do it himself. When they’d wrung everything they could from his mind, wouldn’t they try him in court and then hang him? In his youth he had once glimpsed a hanging at Newcastle; he’d seen the crowd gathered around the gallows during one of his jaunts around the city and, not knowing what he was seeing, drawn closer to the crush. There had been three men standing in a line on the platform. He remembered the whack of the panel giving way, the abrupt snap of their necks. He remembered hearing someone mutter their disappointment that the victims had not kicked.
Death by hanging might be quick – perhaps even easy, painless. He felt guilty for even considering it – that’s selfish, Ramy had said, you don’t get to take the easy way out.
But what in God’s name was he still alive for? Robin could not see how anything he did from now on mattered. His despair was total. They had lost, they had lost with such crushing completeness, and there was nothing left. If he clung to life for the days or weeks he had left, it was solely for Ramy’s sake, because he did not deserve what was easy.
Time crept on. Robin drifted between waking and sleep. Pain and grief made it impossible to truly rest. But he was tired, so tired, and his thoughts spiralled, became vivid, nightmarish memories. He was on the Hellas again, speaking the words that set all this in motion; he was staring down at his father, watching blood bubble over that ruin of a chest. And it was such a perfect tragedy, wasn’t it? An age-old story, parricide. The Greeks loved parricide, Mr Chester had been fond of saying; they loved it for its infinite narrative potential, its invocations of legacy, pride, honour, and dominance. They loved the way it struck every possible emotion because it so deviously inverted the most basic tenet of human existence. One being creates another, moulds and influences it in its own image. The son becomes, then replaces, the father; Kronos destroys Ouranos, Zeus destroys Kronos and, eventually, becomes him. But Robin had never envied his father, never wanted anything of his except his recognition, and he hated to see himself reflected in that cold, dead face. No, not dead – reanimated, haunting; Professor Lovell leered at him, and behind him, opium burned on Canton’s shores, hot and booming and sweet.
‘Get up,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Get up.’
Robin jerked awake. His father’s face became his brother’s. Griffin loomed above him, covered in soot. Behind him, the cell door was in pieces.
Robin stared. ‘How—’
Griffin brandished a silver bar. ‘Same old trick. Wúxíng.’
‘I thought it couldn’t work for you.’
‘Funniest thing, isn’t it? Sit up.’ Griffin knelt down behind him and set to work on Robin’s cuffs. ‘Once you said it for the first time, I finally got it. Like I’ve been waiting for someone to say those words my whole life. Christ, kid, who did this to you?’
‘Sterling Jones.’
‘Of course. Bastard.’ He fiddled a moment with the lock. Metal dug into Robin’s wrists. Robin winced, trying his hardest not to move.
‘Ah, damn it.’ Griffin rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a large pair of shears. ‘I’m cutting through, hold still.’ Robin felt an agonizing, intense pressure – and then nothing. His hands sprang free – still cuffed, but no longer bolted together.
The pain vanished. He sagged from the reprieve. ‘I thought you were in Glasgow.’
‘I was fifty miles out when I got word. Then I jumped out, waited, and hopped onto the first train I could coming back.’
‘Got word?’
‘We have our ways.’ Robin noticed then that Griffin’s right hand shone mottled pale, red, and angry. It looked like a burn scar. ‘Anthony didn’t elaborate, he only sent an emergency signal, but I reckoned it was bad. Then all the rumours from the tower said they’d hauled you lot here, so I skipped the Old Library – would have been dangerous, regardless – and came here. Good bet. Where is Anthony?’
‘He’s dead,’ said Robin.
‘I see.’ Something rippled across Griffin’s face, but he blinked, and his features resumed their calm. ‘And the rest—?’
‘I think they’re all dead.’ Robin felt wretched; he could not meet Griffin’s eyes. ‘Cathy, Vimal, Ilse – everyone in the house – I didn’t see them fall, but I heard the shooting, and then I didn’t see them again.’
‘No other survivors?’
‘There’s Victoire. I know they brought Victoire, but—’
‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robin said miserably. She could be lying dead in her cell. They could have already dragged her body outside, dumped it in a shallow grave. He couldn’t speak the words to explain; that would shatter him.
‘Then let’s look.’ Griffin grabbed his shoulders and gave him a hard shake. ‘Your legs are fine, aren’t they? Come, get up.’
The hallway was miraculously empty. Robin glanced left and right, baffled. ‘Where are all the guards?’
‘Got rid of them.’ Griffin tapped another bar in his belt. ‘A daisy-chain riff on the word explode. The Latin explōdere is a theatre term – it refers to driving an actor off the stage by clapping one’s hands. From there we get the Old English meaning “to reject or drive away with loud noise”. It’s not until the modern English that we get a detonation.’ He looked very pleased with himself. ‘My Latin’s better than my Chinese.’
‘So that didn’t destroy the door?’
‘No, it only makes a sound so awful it drives all listeners away. I got them all running to the second floor, and then I crept up here and locked the doors behind me.’
‘Then what made that hole?’
‘Just black powder.’ Griffin hauled Robin along. ‘Can’t rely on silver for everything. You scholars always forget that.’
They searched every cell in the hall for Victoire. Most were empty, and Robin felt a growing dread as they moved down the doors. He did not want to look; he did not want to see the blood-streaked floor – or worse, her limp body lying where they’d left it, a bullet wound through her head.
‘Here,’ Griffin called from the end of the hallway. He banged on the door. ‘Wake up, dear.’
Robin nearly collapsed with relief when he heard Victoire’s muffled response. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Can you walk?’ Griffin asked.
This time Victoire’s voice was clearer; she must have approached the door. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No, I’m all right.’ Victoire sounded confused. ‘Robin, is that—?’
‘It’s Griffin. Robin’s here too. Don’t fret, we’re going to get you out.’ Griffin reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like an improvised hand grenade – a ceramic sphere a quarter the size of a cricket ball with a fuse sticking out one end.
It seemed rather small to Robin. ‘Can that blow through iron?’
‘Doesn’t have to. The door’s made of wood.’ Griffin raised his voice. ‘Victoire, get against the far corner and put your head between your arms and knees. Ready?’
Victoire yelled her assent. Griffin placed the grenade at the corner of the door, lit it with a match, and hastily dragged Robin several paces down the hall. The bang came seconds later.
Robin waved the smoke from his face, coughing. The door hadn’t blasted apart – any explosion that large would have surely killed Victoire. But it had made a hole at the bottom just large enough for a child to crawl through. Griffin kicked at the charred wood until several large pieces fell away. ‘Victoire, can you—’
She crawled out, coughing. Griffin and Robin seized her by each arm and pulled her through the rest of the way. When at last she slid free, she clambered to her knees and threw her arms around Robin. ‘I thought—’
‘Me too,’ he murmured, hugging her tight. She was, thank God, largely unharmed. Her wrists were somewhat chafed, but free of cuffs, and there was no blood on her, no gaping bullet wounds. Sterling had been bluffing.
