Babel, page 52
‘How do you think it works?’ asked Victoire.
‘Perhaps they’re all linked, somehow.’ He passed it to her. ‘That’s how Griffin knew we were in trouble – he must have been carrying one on his person.’
‘But who else has one of these?’ She turned it over in her hands, ran her fingers over the shrivelled wick. ‘Who do you think is on the other side?’
‘Friends, I hope. What do you think we should tell them?’
She thought for a moment. ‘A call to arms.’
He glanced at her. ‘We’re really doing this?’
‘I don’t see what other choice we have.’
‘You know, there’s a Chinese idiom that goes sǐ zhū bú pà kāi shuǐ tàng.* Dead pigs don’t fear scalding water.’
She gave him a wan smile. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’
‘We’re dead men walking.’
‘But that’s what makes us frightening.’ She set the lamp down between them. ‘We’ve nothing left to lose.’
They rummaged through the desk for pen and paper, then set about composing their message. The remaining oil in the lamp looked dangerously low; the wick was burnt down to a stub. Their message would have to be as succinct and unambiguous as possible. There could be no questioning what they meant. When they’d agreed on what to say, Victoire held the candle to the lamp. There was a tentative flicker, then a sudden whoosh, until flames over a foot tall leapt and danced before their eyes.
They weren’t sure about the mechanics of the beacon. Robin had spoken the Mandarin match-pair out loud, but they could only hope that the second, mysterious match-pair was designed to endure in effect. They’d come up with an exhaustive list of every method they could think to try. They recited the message into the flame. They clapped it in Morse code. They repeated the code, this time by thrusting a metal rod through the flame, so it flickered with every dot and dash. Finally, as the oil began sputtering, they fed the paper into the lamp.
The effect was immediate. The fire tripled in size; long tongues lashed outwards and then back in around the paper, like some demonic creature devouring their words. The paper did not burn or crumple; it simply vanished. A moment later, the oil ran out, the flames sputtered to nothing, and the room dimmed.
‘You think that did it?’ Victoire asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone’s even listening.’ Robin set the lamp down. He felt unbearably tired, his limbs like lead. He did not know what they’d just set into motion. Part of him never wanted to find out, wanted to curl up in this cool, dark space and disappear. He had a duty, he knew, to finish the job, and when tomorrow came, he would summon what strength he had left to face it. But for now, he wanted to sleep like the dead. ‘I suppose we’ll see.’
At daybreak they sneaked across town to the Old Library. Dozens of policemen stood stationed around the building – perhaps they were lying in wait, to see if anyone was foolish enough to return. Robin and Victoire crept forth cautiously from the forest behind the yard. This was stupid, yes, but they could not resist the urge to tally the damage. They’d hoped they might have a chance to creep inside and retrieve some supplies, but the police presence was too thick for them to pull it off.
So instead they came to stand witness, for, despite the risks, someone had to remember the sight of the betrayal. Someone had to register the loss.
The Old Library was utterly destroyed. The whole back had been blown away, a gaping wound exposing the library’s naked insides in a way that felt cruel and humiliating. The shelves were half-bare. What books had not been burnt in the explosions were stacked up in wheelbarrows all around the building to be carted away, Robin assumed, for analysis by Babel’s own scholars. He doubted most of that work would ever see the light of day.
All that wonderful, original research, hidden away in the imperial archives for fear of what it could inspire.
Only when he crept closer did he see that bodies still lay in the rubble. He saw a pale arm, half-buried beneath fallen bricks. He saw a shoe buckle attached to a charred shin. Near the side of the Old Library he saw a mass of hair, black, dust-covered. He turned away before he could glimpse the face beneath.
‘They haven’t cleared the bodies.’ He felt dizzy.
Victoire touched a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, dear God.’
‘They haven’t cleared the bodies—’
He stood up. He didn’t know what he meant to do – pull them into the forest one by one? Dig their graves right by the library? Place a cloth, at least, over their open, staring eyes? He didn’t know, only it felt so wrong to leave them there, exposed and vulnerable.
But Victoire was already pulling him back behind the trees. ‘We can’t, you know we can’t—’
‘They’re just lying there – Anthony, Vimal, Ramy—’
They hadn’t carted them to the morgue. Hadn’t even covered them. They’d simply left the dead where they’d fallen, bleeding across the bricks and pages, were simply stepping around them on their way to excavate the library. Was this their petty revenge, retribution for a lifetime of inconvenience? Or did they simply not care?
The world has to break, he thought. Someone has to answer for this. Someone has to bleed. But Victoire yanked him down the way they’d come, and her vicelike grip was the only thing that kept him from racing into the fray.
‘There’s nothing here for us,’ she whispered. ‘It’s time, Robin. We’ve got to go.’
They’d chosen a good day for revolution.
It was the first day of term, and one of the rare days in Oxford when the weather was deceitfully marvellous; when its warmth promised more sunshine and joy than the relentless rain and sleet Hilary inevitably brought. Everything was clear blue skies and zesty hints of spring winds. Everyone would be inside today – faculty, graduate fellows, and students – and the tower lobby would be empty of clients, for this year Babel was closed for reshelving and renovations during the first week of the term. No civilians would be caught in the crossfire.
The question, then, was how to get into the tower.
They could not simply stroll up to the front door and go in. Their faces were plastered on newspapers all over London; certainly some of the scholars knew, even if the whole thing had been covered up in Oxford. The front door was still manned with half a dozen police. And by now, certainly, Professor Playfair had destroyed the blood vials that marked their belonging.
Still, they had three advantages at their disposal: Griffin’s explōdere distraction, the invisibility bar, and the fact that the wards around the door were designed to keep materials in, not out. This latter fact was only a theory, but a strong one. As far as they knew, the wards had only ever activated upon exit, not upon entrance. Thieves had always got in fine, so far as someone held the door open; it was leaving that was trouble.*
And if they did what they set out to do here today, they would not leave the tower for a very long time.
Victoire took a deep breath. ‘Ready?’
There was no other way. They had racked their brains all night and come up short. Nothing to do now but act.
Robin nodded.
‘Explōdere,’ he whispered, and flung Griffin’s bar across the green.
The air shattered. The bar was harmless, Robin knew in theory, but still its noise was dreadful, was the sound of cities breaking, pyramids collapsing. He felt an instinct to scarper, to find safety, and though he knew it was only the silver manifesting on his mind, he had to overcome every impulse not to run in the other direction.
‘Let’s go,’ Victoire insisted, jerking at his arm.
As expected, the police had gone across the green; the door was swinging shut behind a handful of scholars. Robin and Victoire dashed up the pavement, around the seal, and pushed their way in behind them. Robin held his breath as they stepped over the threshold, but no sirens went off; no traps were sprung. They were in; they were safe.
The lobby felt more crowded than usual. Had their message been seen, then? Had some of these people come to answer their call? He had no way of knowing who was with Hermes and who wasn’t; everyone who met his gaze gave him the same disinterested, polite nod before moving on with their business. It all felt so absurdly normal. Did no one here know the world had broken?
Across the rotunda Professor Playfair leaned against the second-floor balcony, chatting with Professor Chakravarti. Professor Chakravarti must have made a joke, for Professor Playfair laughed, shook his head, and looked out over the lobby. He met Robin’s gaze. His eyes bulged.
Robin jumped up onto a table in the centre of the lobby just as Professor Playfair rushed to the staircase.
‘Listen to me!’ he shouted.
The bustling tower paid him no heed. Victoire climbed up next to him, wielding the ceremonial bell Professor Playfair used to announce exam results. She raised it over her head and gave it three furious shakes. The tower fell silent.
‘Thank you,’ said Robin. ‘Ah. So. I’ve got to say something.’ His mind promptly went blank at the sight of so many staring faces. For several seconds he merely blinked, mute and startled, until at last the words came back to his tongue. He took a deep breath. ‘We’re shutting down the tower.’
Professor Craft pushed her way to the front of the lobby. ‘Mr Swift, what in God’s name are you doing?’
‘Hold on,’ said Professor Harding. ‘You’re not supposed to be here, Jerome said—’
‘There’s a war going on,’ Robin blurted. He winced as the words left his mouth; they were so clumsy, unpersuasive. He’d had a speech prepared, but suddenly he could remember only the highlights, and those sounded ridiculous even as he spoke them aloud. Across the lobby and along the balconies of the floors above, he saw alternating expressions of scepticism, amusement, and annoyance. Even Professor Playfair, now panting at the base of the stairs, looked more baffled than agitated. Robin felt dizzy. He wanted to vomit.
Griffin would have known how to compel them. Griffin was the storyteller, the true revolutionary; he could paint the necessary picture of imperial expansion, complicity, guilt, and responsibility with a handful of gutting phrases. But Griffin wasn’t here, and the best Robin could do was to channel his dead brother’s spirit.
‘Parliament is debating military action on Canton.’ He forced his voice to grow, to take up more space in the room than he ever had. ‘There is no just pretext, apart from the greed of the trading companies. They’re planning to force opium on the Chinese at gunpoint, and causing a diplomatic fiasco during my cohort’s voyage was the excuse to do it.’
There, he’d said something that made sense. Around the tower, impatience changed to curiosity, confusion.
‘What’s Parliament got to do with us?’ asked one of the fellows in Legal – Coalbrook or Conway, or something like that.
‘The British Empire does nothing without our help,’ said Robin. ‘We write the bars that power their guns, their ships. We polish the knives of domination. We draw up their treaties. If we withdraw our help, then Parliament can’t move on China—’
‘I still don’t see how it’s our problem,’ said Coalbrook or Conway.
‘It’s our problem because it’s our professors who are behind it,’ Victoire cut in. Her voice was shaky, but still louder, more sure than Robin’s. ‘They’re running out of silver, this whole country’s running a deficit, and some of our faculty think the way to fix it is by injecting opium into a foreign market. They’ll do anything to push this through; they’re murdering people who’ve been trying to leak it. They killed Anthony Ribben—’
‘Anthony Ribben died at sea,’ said Professor Craft.
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Victoire. ‘He’s been in hiding, working to stop the Empire from doing exactly this. They shot him last week. And Vimal Srinivasan, Ilse Dejima, and Cathy O’Nell – go up to Jericho, go to the old building behind the forest past the bridge and you’ll see the rubble, the bodies . . .’
This elicited murmurs. Vimal, Ilse, and Cathy were all well-liked in the faculty. The whispers grew; it was apparent now that they were not present, and no one could account for where they were.
‘They’re insane,’ snapped Professor Playfair. He’d regained his composure, like an actor who’d remembered his lines. He pointed a dramatic, accusing finger at the two of them. ‘They’re insane, they’re working with a band of rioting thieves, they ought to be in prison—’
But this seemed even more difficult for the room to swallow than Robin’s story. Professor Playfair’s booming voice, usually so engaging, had the contrary effect of making this seem like mere theatrics. No one else had a clue what the three of them were talking about; from the outside, it seemed as though they were all putting on a show.
‘Why don’t you tell us what happened to Richard Lovell?’ Professor Playfair demanded. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’
‘Richard Lovell is one of the architects of this war,’ Robin shouted. ‘He went to Canton to obtain military intelligence from British spies, he’s in direct contact with Palmerston—’
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Professor Craft. ‘That can’t be true, that’s—’
‘We have papers,’ Robin said. It crossed his mind, then, that those papers were now certainly destroyed or confiscated, but still, as rhetoric, it worked. ‘We have quotes, proof – it’s all there. He’s been planning this for years. Playfair’s in on it, ask him—’
‘He’s lying,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘He’s rambling, Margaret, the boy’s gone mad—’
‘But madness is incoherent.’ Professor Craft frowned, glancing back and forth between the two of them. ‘And lies are self-serving. This story – it benefits no one, certainly not these two,’ she said, pointing at Robin and Victoire, ‘and it is coherent.’
‘I assure you, Margaret—’
‘Professor.’ Robin appealed directly to Professor Craft. ‘Professor, please – he wants a war, he’s been planning it for years. Go and look in his office. In Professor Lovell’s office. Go through their papers. It’s all there.’
‘No,’ Professor Craft murmured. Her brows furrowed. Her eyes flickered across Robin and Victoire, and she seemed to register something – their hollow exhaustion, perhaps, the sag of their shoulders, or the grief seeping through their bones. ‘No, I believe you . . .’ She turned. ‘Jerome? Did you know?’
Professor Playfair paused a moment, as if deliberating whether it was worth trying to keep up the pretence. Then he huffed. ‘Don’t act so shocked. You know what runs this tower. You knew the balance of power had to shift, you knew we had to do something about the deficit—’
‘But to declare war on innocent people—’
‘Don’t pretend this is where you’ll draw the line,’ he said. ‘You were just fine with everything else – it’s not as if China has much to offer the world apart from its consumers. Why wouldn’t we—’ He stopped. He seemed to have realized his mistake, that he’d just validated their story.
It was too late. The atmosphere in the tower changed. The scepticism evaporated. Irritation turned to a dawning realization that this was not a farce, not a bout of hysteria, but something real.
The real world so seldom interfered with the tower. They didn’t know what to do with it.
‘We use the languages of other countries to enrich this one.’ Robin gazed around the tower as he spoke. He was not trying to convince Professor Playfair, he reminded himself; he had to appeal to the room. ‘We take so much knowledge that isn’t ours. The least we can do is stop this from happening. It’s the only ethical thing.’
‘Then what are you planning?’ asked Matthew Houndslow. He didn’t sound hostile; only tentative, confused. ‘It’s in Parliament’s hands now, as you said, so how—’
‘We go on strike.’
Yes, he was on solid footing now; here was a question to which he knew the answer. He lifted his chin, tried to inject his voice with all the authority of Griffin and Anthony. ‘We shut down the tower. From this day forward, no clients enter the lobby. No one creates, sells, or maintains silver bars. We deny Britain all translation services until they capitulate – and they will capitulate, because they need us. They need us more than anything. That’s how we win.’ He paused. The room was silent. He couldn’t tell if he’d convinced them, couldn’t tell if he was looking at expressions of grudging realization or incredulity. ‘Look, if we all just—’
‘But you’d need to secure the tower.’ Professor Playfair gave a short, mean laugh. ‘I mean, you’d have to subdue all of us.’
‘I suppose we do,’ said Victoire. ‘I suppose we’re doing that right now.’
Next came a very funny pause as it slowly dawned upon a building of Oxford scholars that whatever came next was a matter of force.
‘You.’ Professor Playfair pointed to the student nearest the door. ‘Go and get the constables, let them in—’
The student didn’t move. He was a second year – Ibrahim, Robin recalled, an Arabic scholar from Egypt. He seemed incredibly young, a baby-faced boy; were second years always that young? Ibrahim glanced to Robin and Victoire, then back at Professor Playfair, frowning. ‘But, sir . . .’
‘Don’t,’ Professor Craft told him, just as a pair of third years broke suddenly for the exit. One shoved Ibrahim against a shelf. Robin hurled a silver bar at the door. ‘Explōdere, explode.’ A great, horrible noise filled the lobby; this time a screeching howl. The third years scrambled away from the door like frightened rabbits.
Robin pulled another silver bar from his front pocket and waved it above his head.
‘I killed Richard Lovell with this.’ He couldn’t believe these words were coming out of his mouth. This was not him speaking; this was the ghost of Griffin, the braver, madder brother, reaching through the underworld to pull his strings. ‘If anyone takes a step towards me, and if anyone tries to call for help, I’ll destroy them.’
They all looked so terrified. They believed him.
That worried him. This had all been too easy. He’d been sure he would face more resistance, but the room seemed utterly subdued. Even the professors did not move; indeed, Professors Leblanc and De Vreese huddled together under a table, as if bracing for cannon fire. He could tell them to dance a jig, to rip the pages out of their books one by one, and they would obey.
