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

It shamed Robin that he hadn’t even considered this.

Upstairs in their Etymology class, Professor Lovell expressed a decidedly more cruel opinion. ‘Don’t worry about them. Just the usual riffraff. Drunkards, malcontents from up north, lowlifes with no better way to express their opinions than shouting about them on the street. I’d prefer they wrote a letter, of course, but I doubt half of them can read.’

‘Is it true they’re out of work?’ asked Victoire.

‘Well, of course. The sort of labour they do is redundant now. It should have been made redundant long ago; there’s simply no reason that weaving, spinning, carding, or roving hasn’t all been mechanized already. This is simply human progress.’

‘They seem rather cross about it,’ Ramy observed.

‘Oh, they’re furious for sure,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘You can imagine why. What has silver-working done for this country over the past decade? Increased agricultural and industrial productivity to an unimaginable extent. It’s made factories so efficient they can run with a quarter of their workers. Take the textile industry – Kay’s flying shuttle, Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s spinning mule, and Cartwright’s loom were all made possible with silver-working. Silver-working has catapulted Britain ahead of every other nation, and put thousands of labourers out of work in the process. So instead of using their wits to learn a skill that might actually be useful, they’ve decided to whine about it on our front steps. Those protests outside aren’t anything new, you know. There’s a sickness in this country.’ Professor Lovell spoke now with a sudden, nasty vehemence. ‘It started with the Luddites – some idiot workers in Nottingham who thought they’d rather smash machinery than adapt to progress – and it’s spread across England since. There are people all over the country who’d rather see us dead. It’s not just Babel that gets attacked like this; no, we don’t even see the worst of it, since our security’s better than most. Up north, those men are pulling off arson, they’re stoning building owners, they’re throwing acid on factory managers. They can’t seem to stop smashing looms in Lancashire. No, this isn’t the first time our faculty have received death threats, it’s only the first time they’ve dared to come as far south as Oxford.’

‘Do you get death threats?’ Letty asked, alarmed.

‘Of course. I get more and more every year.’

‘But doesn’t it bother you?’

Professor Lovell scoffed. ‘Never. I look at those men, and I think of the vast differences between us. I am where I am because I believe in knowledge and scientific progress, and I have used them to my advantage. They are where they are because they have stubbornly refused to move forward with the future. Men like that don’t scare me. Men like that make me laugh.’

‘Is it going to be like this all year?’ Victoire asked in a small voice. ‘Out on the green, I mean.’

‘Not for long,’ Professor Lovell assured her. ‘No, they’ll have cleared off by this evening. Those men have no persistence. They’ll be gone by sunset once they get hungry, or once they wander off in search of a drink. And if they don’t, the wards and the police will move them on.’

But Professor Lovell was wrong. This wasn’t the work of an isolated handful of discontents, nor did they simply dissipate overnight. The police did clear the crowd away that morning, but they returned in smaller numbers; several times a week, a dozen or so men showed up to harass scholars on their way into the tower. One morning, the entire building had to be evacuated when a package making a ticking noise was delivered to Professor Playfair’s office. It turned out to be a clock connected to an explosive. Fortunately, rain had soaked through the package, eroding the fuse.

‘But what happens when it doesn’t rain?’ Ramy asked.

No one had a good answer to that.

Security at the tower doubled overnight. The post was now received and sorted by newly hired clerks at a processing centre halfway across Oxford. A rotating team of policemen guarded the tower entrance at all hours. Professor Playfair installed a new set of silver bars over the front door, though as usual he refused to reveal what match-pairs he’d inscribed them with, or what they would do when triggered.