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Chapter Twenty-Six
Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.
FRANTZ FANON, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox
A hidden door by the Vaults & Garden supply cellar revealed a cramped dirt tunnel, just large enough for them to wriggle through on their hands and knees. It felt endless. They inched forth, groping blindly. Robin wished for a light, but they had no candle, no kindling or flint; they could only trust in Anthony’s word and crawl, their shallow breaths echoing around them. At last, the ceiling of the tunnel sloped upwards, and a rush of cool air bathed their clammy skin. They pawed the earthen wall until they found a door, and then a handle; this they pushed open to find a small, low-ceilinged room, illuminated by moonlight seeping through a tiny grate above.
They stepped inside and blinked around.
Someone had been here recently. A loaf of bread sat on the desk, still so fresh that it was soft to the touch, and a half-melted candle beside it. Victoire rooted in the drawers until she found a box of matches, and then held the lit candle up to the room. ‘So this is where Griffin hid.’ The safe room felt uncannily familiar to Robin, though it took him a moment to realize why. The room’s layout – the desk beneath the grated window, the cot tucked neatly in the corner, the double bookshelves on the opposite wall – was a precise match of the dormitories on Magpie Lane.
Here below Oxford, Griffin – consciously or not – had tried to re-create his college days. ‘Do you think we’re safe here for the night?’ Robin asked. ‘I mean – do you think—’
‘It doesn’t look disturbed.’ Victoire sat down gingerly on the edge of the cot. ‘I think if they knew, they would have torn this place apart.’ ‘I think you’re right.’ He sat down beside her. Only now did he feel the exhaustion, seeping up his legs and into his chest. All the adrenaline of their escape had ebbed, now that they were safe, hidden in the belly of the earth.
He wanted to keel over and never wake up.
Victoire leaned over to the side of the cot, where a barrel of what looked like fresh water stood. She poured some over a bunched-up shirt, then
handed it to Robin. ‘Wipe.’ ‘What?’ ‘There’s blood,’ she said softly. ‘There’s blood all over you.’ He glanced up and looked at her, properly, for the first time since their escape. ‘There’s blood all over you.’ They sat side by side and cleaned themselves in silence. They were covered in an astonishing amount of grime; they went through one shirt each, and then another. Somehow, Griffin’s blood had got not only on Robin’s hands and arms but also across his cheeks, behind his ears, and up in the hollows where his neck met his ears, caked under layers of dust and dirt.
They took turns wiping at each other’s faces. The simple, tactile act felt good; it gave them something to focus on, distracted from all the words that hung heavy and unsaid. It felt good not trying to give them voice. They could not articulate them anyhow; they were not discrete thoughts but black, suffocating clouds. They were both thinking of Ramy and Griffin and Anthony and everyone else who’d been abruptly, brutally torn from this world. But they could not touch that abyss of grief. It was too early yet to give it a name, to shape and tame it with words, and any attempt would crush them. They could only wipe the blood from their skin and try to keep breathing.
At last, they dropped the dirty rags on the floor and leaned back against the wall, against each other. The damp air was cold, and there was no fireplace. They sat close, pulling the flimsy blanket tight around their shoulders. It was a long while before either of them spoke. ‘What do you suppose we do now?’ asked Victoire.
Such a heavy question, uttered in such a small voice. What could they do now? They had spoken of making Babel burn, but how in God’s name was that in their power? The Old Library was destroyed. Their friends were dead. Everyone bolder and better than them was dead. But the two of them
were still here, and it was their duty to ensure their friends had not died in vain. ‘Griffin said you would know what to do,’ said Robin. ‘What did he mean?’ ‘Only that we’d find allies,’ Victoire whispered. ‘That we had more friends than we knew, if we could just get to the safe room.’ ‘We’re here.’ Robin gestured pointlessly about. ‘It’s empty.’ Victoire stood. ‘Oh, don’t be like that.’ They began searching the room for clues. Victoire took the cabinet, Robin the desk. Inside the desk drawers were stacks upon stacks of Griffin’s notes and letters. These he held up to the flickering candle, squinting. It made Robin’s chest ache to read Griffin’s handwriting in English – a cramped, spidered style that looked so similar to Robin’s own, and to their father’s.
These letters, all these narrow, bold, and crowded lines, spoke of a frenetic but meticulous writer, were a glimpse into a version of Griffin that Robin had never known.
And Griffin’s network had been so much vaster than he’d suspected. He saw correspondence addressed to recipients in Boston, in New York, in Cairo, in Singapore. But the names were always coded, always obvious literary references like ‘Mr Pickwick’ and ‘King Ahab’ or names so generically English like ‘Mr Brown’ and ‘Mr Pink’ that they could not possibly be real. ‘Hm.’ Victoire held a small square of paper up to her eyes, frowning.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a letter. Addressed to you.’ ‘Can I see?’ She hesitated a moment before handing it over. The envelope was thin and sealed. There on the back was his name, Robin Swift, dashed out in Griffin’s forceful scrawl. But when had he found the time to write this? It couldn’t have been after Anthony brought them to Hermes; Griffin hadn’t known where they were back then. It could only have been written after Robin had cut ties with Hermes, after Robin had declared he wanted nothing to do with him. ‘Are you going to read it?’ Victoire asked. ‘I – I don’t think I can.’ He passed it back to her. He felt terrified of the contents; it made his breath quicken to even hold it in his hand. He could not
face his brother’s judgment. Not now. ‘Will you keep it for me?’ ‘What if it’s something that can help?’ ‘I don’t think it is,’ said Robin. ‘I think . . . it has to be something else.
Please, Victoire – you can read it later, if you want, but I can’t look at it right now.’ She hesitated, then folded it into her inner pocket. ‘Of course.’ They resumed rooting through Griffin’s belongings. Apart from letters, Griffin had kept an impressive array of weapons – knives, gar-rotes, a number of silver bars, and at least three pistols. Robin refused to touch them; Victoire surveyed the collection, fingers skimming the barrels, before selecting one and tucking it into her belt. ‘Do you know how to use that?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Anthony taught me.’ ‘Wondrous girl, you. Full of surprises.’ She snorted. ‘Oh, you just weren’t paying attention.’ But there was no list of contacts, no clues to other safe houses or possible allies. Griffin had shrouded everything in code, had created a network so invisible that, upon his death, it could never be reconstructed. ‘What’s that?’ Victoire pointed.
Up on top of the bookshelf, pushed so far back it was nearly hidden, was a lamp.
Robin reached for it, hoping wildly – yes, there it was, the familiar glint of silver embedded in the bottom. The beacon, Anthony had yelled. He thought of the burn on Griffin’s hand, of how Griffin had known, even miles away, that something awful had happened.
He turned it over, squinting. Liáo.
Griffin had made this. Liáo, in Mandarin, could mean ‘to burn’ or ‘to illuminate’. It could also refer to a signal lamp. There was a second, smaller silver bar inscribed above the first. Bēacen, it read. It looked like Latin, but Robin, raking his memory, couldn’t come up with its precise meaning or *origin. Germanic, perhaps?
Still, he could guess vaguely at the function of the lamp. This was how Hermes communicated. They sent signals through fire. ‘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 department. 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.
They would obey because he threatened violence.
He couldn’t remember why the thought of acting had scared him so before. Griffin was right – the obstacle was not the struggle, but the failure to imagine it was possible at all, the compulsion to cling to the safe, the survivable status quo. But the whole world was off its hinges now. Every door was wide open. They’d moved past the realm of ideas now, into the realm of action, and this was something Oxford students were wholly unprepared for. ‘For God’s sake,’ snapped Professor Playfair. ‘Someone apprehend them.’ A handful of graduate fellows stepped forward, looking uncertain. All Europeanists, all white. Robin cocked his head. ‘Well, come on.’ What happened next was not dignified, would never be shelved next to great epics of valour and bravery. For Oxford’s scholars were sheltered and coddled, armchair theorists who wrote of blood-stained battlefields with smooth and delicate hands. The seizure of Babel was a clumsy, silly clash of the abstract and the material. The fellows approached the table, reaching with hesitant arms. Robin kicked them away. And it felt like kicking at children, for they were too fearful to be vicious, and they weren’t nearly desperate or angry enough to really hurt him. They seemed unsure of what they even wanted to do – pull him down, grab his legs, or simply graze his ankles – and so his retaliatory blows were, similarly, perfunctory. They were playing at a fight, all of them, amateur actors given a stage direction:
struggle. ‘Victoire!’ he shouted.
One of the scholars had climbed up onto the table behind her. She spun around. The scholar hesitated a moment, looked her up and down, then threw a punch. But he hit like he only knew about the action in theory, like he only knew of its component parts – plant feet, draw arm back, extend fist. He’d misjudged his distance – the effect was nothing more than a light pat on
Victoire’s shoulder. She struck out with her left foot. He doubled over his
shins, whining. ‘Stop!’ The fracas ceased. Somehow, Professor Playfair had acquired a gun. ‘Stop this silliness.’ He pointed it at Robin. ‘Stop this right now.’ ‘Go ahead,’ Robin breathed. He had no idea where this ridiculous fount of courage came from, but he felt not a shred of fear. The gun, somehow, seemed more abstract than real, the bullet wholly incapable of touching him. ‘Go ahead, I dare you.’ He was gambling on Professor Playfair’s cowardice, on the fact that he might wield a gun, but he wouldn’t pull the trigger. Professor Playfair, like every other Babel scholar, hated getting his hands dirty. He designed lethal traps – he never wielded the blades himself. And he didn’t know how much will, or panic, it took to really kill a man.
Robin did not turn around, did not look to see what Victoire was doing.
He knew. He spread his arms, keeping his eyes locked with Professor Playfair’s. ‘What’ll it be?’ Professor Playfair’s face tightened. His fingers moved, and Robin tensed, just as a shot rang out.
Professor Playfair reeled backwards, scarlet exploding across his middle. Screams erupted around the tower. Robin glanced back over his shoulder. And Victoire lowered one of Griffin’s revolvers, smoke tendrils curling up around her face, her eyes enormous. ‘There,’ she breathed, chest heaving. ‘Now we all know how it feels.’ Professor De Vreese dashed suddenly across the hall. He was going for Professor Playfair’s gun. Robin jumped down off the table, but he was too far away – but then Professor Chakravarti threw himself at Professor De Vreese’s side. They hit the floor with a whumph and began to wrestle – a clumsy, inelegant sight, two paunchy, middle-aged professors rolling around on the ground, their gowns flapping over their waists. Robin watched, astonished, as Professor Chakravarti wrenched the gun out of Professor De Vreese’s grasp and pinned him down in a messy hold. ‘Sir?’ ‘Received your message,’ panted Professor Chakravarti. ‘Very well done.’
Professor De Vreese jammed his elbow at Professor Chakravarti’s nose.
Professor Chakravarti lurched back. Professor De Vreese wriggled out of his hold, and the wrestling resumed.
Robin scooped the gun off the floor and pointed it down at Professor De Vreese. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered. ‘Put your hands above your head.’ ‘You don’t know how to use that,’ Professor De Vreese sneered.
Robin pointed the gun at the chandelier and pulled the trigger. The chandelier exploded; glass shards sprinkled across the lobby. It was as if he’d shot into the crowd; everyone shrieked and cringed. Professor De Vreese turned and ran, but his ankle caught on a desk leg and he toppled backwards onto his bum. Robin reset the chamber, just as Griffin had shown him, and then pointed the gun at Professor De Vreese once again. ‘This isn’t a debate,’ he announced. His whole body trembled, flush with the same vicious energy he’d felt when he’d first learned to shoot. ‘This is a takeover. Would anyone else like to have a go?’ No one moved. No one spoke. They all shrank back, terrified. Some were crying; some had their hands clamped over their mouths, as if that were the only way to contain their screams. And all were watching him, waiting for him to dictate what came next.
For a moment the only sound in the tower was of Professor Playfair’s moaning.
He glanced over his shoulder at Victoire. She looked as bewildered as she felt; her gun hung limp at her side. Deep down, neither of them had expected to actually get this far. Their visions of today had involved chaos: a violent and devastating last stand; a fracas that, in all likelihood, ended in death. They’d been prepared for sacrifice; they had not been prepared to win.
But the tower had been taken so very easily, just as Griffin had always predicted. And now they had to act like the victors. ‘Nothing leaves Babel,’ Robin declared. ‘We put a lockdown on the silver-working tools. We stop routine maintenance on the city. We wait for the machine to grind to a halt, and hope they capitulate before we do.’ He didn’t know where these words were coming from, but they sounded good. ‘This country can’t last a month without us. We strike until they bend.’ ‘They’ll set the troops on you,’ said Professor Craft.
‘But they can’t,’ said Victoire. ‘They can’t touch us. No one can touch us.
They need us too badly.’ And that, the key to Griffin’s theory of violence, was why they might win.
They’d finally worked it out. It was why Griffin and Anthony had been so confident in their struggle, why they were convinced the colonies could take on the Empire. Empire needed extraction. Violence shocked the system, because the system could not cannibalize itself and survive. The hands of the Empire were tied, because it could not raze that from which it profited. And like those sugar fields, like those markets, like those bodies of unwilling labour, Babel was an asset. Britain needed Chinese, needed Arabic and Sanskrit and all the languages of colonized territories to function. Britain could not hurt Babel without hurting itself. And so Babel alone, an asset denied, could grind the Empire to a halt. ‘Then what are you going to do?’ demanded Professor De Vreese. ‘Keep us hostage the entire time?’ ‘I hope you’ll join us,’ said Robin. ‘But if you don’t, you can leave the tower. Order the police away first, and then you can file out one by one. No one retrieves anything from the tower – you walk out with what’s on your * person.’He paused. ‘And I’m sure you understand we’ll have to destroy your blood vials if you go.’ As soon as he finished, a shuffle of bodies moved towards the door.
Robin’s heart sank as he counted the numbers. Dozens were leaving – all of the Classicists, all of the Europeanists, and nearly all of the faculty.
Professor Playfair was carried out still moaning, slung ignominiously between Professor De Vreese and Professor Harding.
Only six scholars remained: Professor Chakravarti, Professor Craft, two undergraduates – Ibrahim and a tiny girl named Juliana – and two graduate fellows named Yusuf and Meghana, who worked in Legal and Literature respectively. Faces of colour, faces from the colonies, except for Professor Craft.
But this could work. They could sacrifice their hold on the talent if they retained control of the tower. Babel contained the greatest concentration of silver-working resources in the country: Grammaticas, engraving pens, match-pair ledgers, and reference materials. And more than that, the silver.
Professor Playfair and the others might establish a secondary translation
centre elsewhere, but even if they could reconstruct everything they needed to maintain the country’s silver-work from memory, it would take them weeks, perhaps months, to acquire materials on the scale necessary to replicate the functions of the tower. By then the vote would have already happened. By then, if all went to plan, the country would have already been brought to its knees. ‘What now?’ murmured Victoire.
Blood rushed to Robin’s head as he stepped off the desk. ‘Now we tell the world what’s coming.’
At noon Robin and Victoire climbed up to the north balcony on the eighth floor. The balcony was largely decorative, designed for scholars who’d never internalized the concept of needing fresh air. No one ever stepped out there, and the door was nearly rusted shut. Robin pushed, leaning hard against the frame. When it swung suddenly open, he lurched out and found himself leaning over the ledge for one brief, terrifying moment before he regained his balance.
Oxford looked so tiny beneath him. A dolls’ house, a twee approximation of the real world for boys who would never have to truly engage with it. He wondered if this was how men like Jardine and Matheson saw the world – minuscule, manipulable. If people and places moved around the lines they drew. If cities shattered when they stomped.
Below, the stone steps at the front of the tower were alight with flames.
The blood vials of all but the eight scholars who’d remained within the tower had been smashed against the bricks, doused with oil poured from unused lamps, and set aflame. This was not strictly necessary; all that mattered was that the vials were removed from the tower – but Robin and Victoire had insisted on ceremony. They had learned from Professor Playfair the importance of performance, and this macabre display was a statement, a warning. The castle was stormed, the magician thrown out. ‘Ready?’ Victoire placed a stack of papers on the ledge. Babel did not possess its own printing press, so they’d spent the morning laboriously copying out each of those hundred pamphlets. The declaration borrowed both from Anthony’s coalition-building rhetoric and Griffin’s philosophy of violence. Robin and Victoire had joined their voices – one an eloquent urge to link arms in a fight for justice, the other an uncompromising threat to those who opposed them – into a clear, succinct announcement of their intentions.
We, the students of the Royal Institute of Translation, demand Britain cease consideration of an unlawful war against China. Given this government’s determination to initiate hostilities and its brutal suppression of those working to expose its motives, we have no other option to make our voices heard than to cease all translation and silver-working services by the Institute, until such time as our demands are met. We henceforth declare our strike.
* Such an interesting word, Robin thought, strike.It brought to mind hammers against spikes, bodies throwing themselves against an immovable force. It contained in itself the paradox of the concept; that through nonaction, and nonviolence, one might prove the devastating consequences of refusing to accommodate those one relied upon.
Below them, Oxfordians were going about their merry way. No one glanced up; no one saw the two students leaning over the tallest point in the city. The exiled translators were nowhere in sight; if Playfair had sought the police, they had not yet chosen to act. The city remained serene, clueless as to what was coming.
Oxford, we ask you to stand with us. The strike will cause great hardships for the city in days to come. We ask you to direct your ire to the government that has made such a strike our only recourse. We ask you to stand on the side of justice and fairness.
From there the pamphlets articulated the clear dangers of an influx of silver to the British economy, not only for China and the colonies, but for the working class of England. Robin did not expect anyone to read that far. He did not expect the city to support their strike; to the contrary, once the silver- work began breaking down, he expected they would hate them.
But the tower was impenetrable, and their hate did not matter. All that mattered was that they understood the cause of their inconvenience. ‘How long do you think until they reach London?’ asked Victoire. ‘Hours,’ said Robin. ‘I think this reaches the first train headed from here to Paddington.’ They had chosen the unlikeliest of places for a revolution. Oxford was not the centre of activity, it was a refuge, decades behind the rest of England in every realm but the academic. The university was designed to be a bastion of antiquity, where scholars could fancy themselves in any of the past five centuries, where scandals and turmoil were so scarce that it made the University College newsletter if a red-breast began singing near the end of an exhaustingly long sermon at Christ Church.
But though Oxford was not the seat of power, it produced the occupants thereof. Its alumni ran the Empire. Someone, perhaps this moment, was rushing to Oxford Station with news of the occupation. Someone would recognize its significance, would see it was not a petty students’ game but a crisis of national importance. Someone would get this in front of the Cabinet and the House of Lords. Then Parliament would choose what happened next. ‘Go on.’ Robin nodded to Victoire. Her Classical pronunciation was better than his. ‘Let’s see them fly.’ ‘Polemikós,’ she murmured, holding a bar over the stack. ‘Polemic.
Discutere. Discuss.’ She pushed the stack off the ledge. The pamphlets took flight. The wind carried them soaring across the city; over spires and turrets down onto streets, yards, and gardens; flying down chimneys, darting through grates, slipping into open windows. They accosted everyone they came across, clinging to coats, flapping in faces, sticking persistently to satchels and briefcases. Most would bat them aside, irritated. But a few would pick them up, would read the strikers’ manifesto, would slowly register what this meant for Oxford, for London, and for the Empire. And then no one would be able to ignore them. Then the entire world would be forced to look. ‘Are you all right?’ Robin asked.
Victoire had gone as still as a statue, eyes fixed on the pamphlets as if she could will herself to become a bird, to fly among them. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ ‘I – you know.’ ‘It’s funny.’ She did not turn to meet his eye. ‘I’m waiting for it to hit, but it simply – it never does. Not like with you.’ ‘It wasn’t the same.’ He tried to find words that would comfort, that would make it out to be anything other than it was. ‘It was self-defence. And he might still survive, it might – I mean, it won’t be—’ ‘It was for Anthony,’ she said in a very hard voice. ‘And that’s the last I ever want to speak of it.’
