Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

Some students started to pile kindling at the foot of the tower. Robin felt his first stab of worry. This was no idle threat; they really meant to set the place alight.

He shoved the window open and stuck his head outside. ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘You burn us, and you’ll never get your city in working order.’

Someone hurled a glass bottle at his face. He was too high up, and the bottle spiralled down before it came close, but still Professor Chakravarti yanked Robin backwards and slammed the window shut.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘No sense reasoning with madmen, I think.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’ Ibrahim demanded. ‘They’re going to burn us alive!’

‘The tower’s made of stone,’ Yusuf said dismissively. ‘We’ll be fine.’

‘But the smoke—’

‘We’ve got something,’ Professor Chakravarti said abruptly as if only just remembering. ‘Upstairs, under the Burma files—’

‘Anand!’ Professor Craft exclaimed. ‘They’re civilians.’

‘It’s self-defence,’ said Professor Chakravarti. ‘Justified, I think.’

Professor Craft peered back out at the crowd. Her mouth pressed in a thin line. ‘Oh, very well.’

Without further explanation, the two of them made for the staircase. The rest glanced around at each other for a moment, at a loss for what to do.

Robin reached to open the window with one hand, fumbling around his inner front pocket with the other. Victoire grasped his wrist. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Griffin’s bar,’ he murmured. ‘You know, the one—’

‘Are you mad?’

‘They’re trying to burn us alive, let’s not debate the morals—’

‘That could set all the oil alight.’ Her grip tightened, so much that it hurt. ‘That’ll kill half a dozen people. Calm down, will you?’

Robin put the bar back into his pocket, took a deep breath, and wondered at the hammering in his veins. He wanted a fight. He wanted to jump down there and bloody their faces with his fists. Wanted them to know exactly what he was, which was their worst nightmare – uncivilized, brutal, violent.

But it was over before it started. Like Professor Playfair, Pendennis and his sort were not soldiers. They liked to threaten and bluster. They liked to pretend the world obeyed their every whim. But at the end of the day, they were not meant for material struggle. They hadn’t the faintest clue how much effort it might take to bring down a tower, and Babel was the most fortified tower on earth.

Pendennis lowered his torch and set light to the kindling. The crowd cheered as the flames licked up the walls. But the fire failed to take. The flames jumped hungrily, reaching with orange tendrils as if seeking a foothold, but pointlessly fell back again. Several students ran up to the tower walls in some badly thought-out attempt to scale them, but they scarcely touched the bricks before some unseen force hurled them back against the green.

Professor Chakravarti came panting down the stairs, bearing a silver bar that read भिन्त्ते.^* ‘Sanskrit,’ he explained. ‘It’ll split them.’

He leaned out of the window, observed the fracas for a moment, and then hurled the bar at the centre of the mob. In seconds, the crowd began to dispel. Robin couldn’t quite tell what was going on, but there seemed to be an argument on the ground, and the agitators wore looks of alternating irritation and confusion as they milled around like ducks circling each other on a pond. Then, one by one, they drifted away from the tower; to home, to dinner, to waiting wives and husbands and children.

A small number of students lingered on for a little while. Elton Pendennis was still pontificating on the green, waving his torch above his head, yelling curses that they could not hear through the wards. But the tower, clearly, was never going to catch fire. The kindling burned pointlessly against the stone, and then spluttered out. The protestors’ voices grew hoarse with shouting; their cries faltered, and then finally died out completely. By sunset, the last of the rabble had straggled home.

The translators did not have supper until nearly midnight; unseasoned gruel, peach preserves, and two tea biscuits each. After much begging, Professor Craft relented and permitted them to bring up several bottles of red wine from the cellar. ‘Well,’ she said, pouring out generous glasses with a shaky hand. ‘Wasn’t that exciting.’

The next morning, the translators commenced the fortification of Babel.

They’d never been in any real danger the day before; even Juliana, who’d quietly cried herself to sleep, now laughed at the memory. But that prenatal riot was only the beginning. Oxford would continue to crumble, and the city would only hate them more. They had to prepare for next time.