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

They were holed up in an office on the sixth floor, poring through the ledgers to find portents of future disasters. They’d already been through the Oxford town appointments up to the next year. London’s maintenance schedules were harder to find – Babel’s bookkeeping was astonishingly bad, and the categorization system used by its clerks seemed not to be organized by date, which would have been logical, or by language, which would have made less but at least some sense, but by the postal code of the London neighbourhood in question.

Robin tapped his ledger. ‘I think we might be close to a breaking point.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re due for maintenance on Westminster Bridge in a week. They contracted for silver-work at the same time that the New London Bridge was built in 1825, and the bars were meant to expire after fifteen years. That’s now.’

‘So what happens?’ asked Victoire. ‘The turnstiles lock in?’

‘I don’t think so, it was quite a major . . . F is code for foundation, isn’t it?’ Robin trailed off, then fell silent. His eyes darted up and down the ledger, trying to confirm what was in front of him. It was quite a large entry, a list of silver bars and match-pairs in various languages that stretched nearly half a page. A good number of them had corresponding numbers in a subsequent column – an indication they employed resonance links. He turned the page, then blinked. The column continued over the next two pages. ‘I think it just falls right into the river.’

Victoire leaned back and exhaled very slowly, deflating.

The implications were enormous. Westminster Bridge was not the only bridge to cross the Thames, but it saw the heaviest traffic. And if Westminster Bridge fell into the river, then no steamers, no houseboats, no sculls or canoes would be able to get around the wreckage. If Westminster Bridge went down, the whole city stopped moving.

And in the weeks to come, when the bars that kept the Thames clean of sewage and pollution from gas factories and chemical works at last expired, the waters would revert to a state of diseased and putrid fermentation. Fish would float belly-up to the surface, dead and stinking. Urine and feces, already moving sluggishly through sewer drains, would solidify.

Egypt would suffer her ten plagues.

But as Robin explained this, Victoire’s face mirrored none of his glee. Rather, she was looking at him with a very odd expression, brows furrowed and lips pursed, and it turned his insides with discomfort.

‘It’s Armageddon,’ he insisted, spreading his hands in the air. How could he make her see? ‘It’s the worst possible thing that could happen.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Except once you’ve played it, we’ve nothing left.’

‘We won’t need anything else,’ he said. ‘We only need to turn the screws once, to push them to the limit—’

‘A limit you know they’ll ignore? Please, Robin—’

‘Then what’s the alternative? Defanging ourselves?’

‘It’s giving them time, it’s letting them see the consequences—’

‘What more is there to see?’ He had not meant to yell. He took a deep breath. ‘Victoire, please, I just think we need to escalate, otherwise—’

‘I think you want it to fall,’ she accused. ‘I think this is just retribution for you, because you want to see it fall.’

‘And why not?’

They’d had this argument before. The ghosts of Anthony and Griffin loomed between them: one guided by the conviction that the enemy would at least act in rational self-interest, if not altruism, and the other guided less by conviction, less by telos, and more by sheer, untrammelled rage.

‘I know it hurts.’ Victoire’s throat pulsed. ‘I know – I know it feels impossible to move on. But your motivating goal cannot be to join Ramy.’

A silence. Robin considered denying this. But there was no point lying to Victoire, or to himself.

‘Doesn’t it kill you?’ His voice broke. ‘Knowing what they’ve done? Seeing their faces? I can’t imagine a world where we coexist with them. Doesn’t it split you apart?’

‘Of course it does,’ she cried. ‘But that’s no excuse not to keep living.’

‘I’m not trying to die.’

‘What do you think making this bridge collapse does, then? What do you think they’ll do to us?’

‘What would you do?’ he asked. ‘End this strike? Open up the tower?’

‘If I tried,’ she said, ‘could you stop me?’

They both stared at the ledger. Neither of them spoke for a very long time. They did not want to follow this conversation where it might lead. Neither of them could bear any more heartbreak.

‘A vote,’ Robin proposed at last, unable to take this any longer. ‘We can’t – we can’t just break the strike like this. It’s not up to us. Let’s not decide, Victoire.’

Victoire’s shoulders sagged. He saw such sorrow on her face. She lifted her chin, and for a moment he thought she might argue further, but all she did then was nod.