Page 144 of Babel

What a uniquely terrible torture. What genius had thought this up? The point was, surely, to inundate him with the despair of every other poor soul who had been imprisoned here, to fill him with such unfathomable sadness that, when questioned, he would give up anyone and anything to make it stop.

But these whispers were redundant. They did not darken his thoughts; they merely echoed them. Ramy was dead; Hermes was lost. The world could not go on. The future was only a vast expanse of black, and the only thing that gave him a shred of hope was the promise that someday, all this would end.

The door opened. Robin jerked awake, startled by the creaking hinges. In walked a graceful young man, blond hair gathered into a knot just above his neck.

‘Hello, Robin Swift,’ he said. His voice was gentle, musical. ‘Do you remember me?’

Of course not, Robin almost said, but then the man walked closer, and the words died on his tongue. He wore the same features as the likeness in the frieze in the University College chapel: the same straight, aristocratic nose and intelligent, deep-set eyes. Robin had seen this face just once, over three years ago, in Professor Lovell’s dining room. He’d never forget it.

‘You’re Sterling.’ Brilliant, famed Sterling Jones, nephew of Sir William Jones, the greatest translator of the age. His appearance here was so unexpected that for a moment Robin could only blink at him. ‘Why—’

‘Why am I here?’ Sterling laughed. Even his laughter was graceful. ‘I couldn’t miss it. Not after they told me they’d caught Griffin Lovell’s little brother.’

Sterling drew two chairs into the room and sat down opposite Robin, crossing his legs at the knees. He tugged his jacket down to straighten it, then cocked his head at Robin. ‘My word. You’ve really grown alike. You’re a bit easier on the eye, though. Griffin was all sneers and hackles. Like a wet dog.’ He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. ‘So you killed your father, did you? You don’t look like a killer.’

‘And you don’t look like a county policeman,’ said Robin.

But even as he said this, the last false binary he’d constructed in his head – the one between scholars and the blades of empire – fell away. He recalled Griffin’s words. He recalled his father’s letters. Slave traders and soldiers. Ready killers, all of them.

‘You are so like your brother.’ Sterling shook his head. ‘What’s the Chinese expression? Badgers of the same mound, or jackals of the same tribe? Cheeky, impudent, and so unbearably self-righteous.’ He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back, appraising him. ‘Help me understand. I could never figure this out with Griffin. Simply – why? You got everything you could possibly want. You’ll never have to work a day in your life – not real work, anyhow; it doesn’t count when it’s scholarship. You’re swimming in riches.’

‘My countrymen aren’t,’ said Robin.

‘But you aren’t your countrymen!’ exclaimed Sterling. ‘You are the exception. You are the lucky one, the elevated. Or do you really find more in common with those poor fools in Canton than your fellow Oxfordians?’

‘I do,’ said Robin. ‘Your country reminds me every day that I do.’

‘Is that the problem, then? Some white Brits weren’t very nice to you?’

Robin saw no point in arguing further. It had been foolish to play along at all. Sterling Jones was just the same as Letty, except without the shallow sympathy of purported friendship. They both thought this was a matter of individual fortunes instead of systematic oppression, and neither could see outside the perspective of people who looked and spoke just like them.

‘Oh, don’t tell me.’ Sterling sighed. ‘You’ve formed the half-baked idea that empire is somehow a bad thing, haven’t you?’

‘You know what they do is wrong,’ Robin said tiredly. Enough with the euphemisms; he simply could not, would not believe that intelligent men like Sterling Jones, Professor Lovell, and Mr Baylis really believed their flimsy excuses were anything but that. Only men like them could justify the exploitation of other peoples and countries with clever rhetoric, verbal ripostes, and convoluted philosophical reasoning. Only men like them thought this was still a matter of debate. ‘You know.’

‘Suppose you have your way,’ said Sterling, conceding nothing. ‘Suppose we don’t go to war, and Canton keeps all of its silver. What do you think they’re doing with it?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Robin, ‘they’ll spend it.’

Sterling scoffed. ‘This world belongs to those who grasp. You and I both know that, that’s how we got to Babel. Meanwhile your motherland is ruled by indolent, lazy aristocrats who are terrified by the very mention of a railroad.’

‘One thing we have in common.’

‘Very funny, Robin Swift. Do you think England should be punished, then, for daring to use those natural gifts given to us by God? Shall we leave the East in the hands of corrupt denigrates who would squander their riches on silks and concubines?’ Sterling leaned forward. His blue eyes glittered. ‘Or shall we lead? Britain hurtles towards a vast, glowing future. You could be part of that future. Why throw it all away?’

Robin said nothing. There was no point; this was not a dialogue in good faith. Sterling wanted nothing but conversion.

Sterling threw his hands in the air. ‘What about this is so difficult to understand, Swift? Why fight the current? Why this absurd impulse to bite the hand that feeds you?’

‘The university doesn’t own me.’

‘Bah. The university gave you everything.’

‘The university ripped us from our homes and made us believe that our futures could only consist of serving the Crown,’ said Robin. ‘The university tells us we are special, chosen, selected, when really we are severed from our motherlands and raised within spitting distance of a class we can never truly become a part of. The university turned us against our own and made us believe our only options were complicity or the streets. That was no favour, Sterling. It was cruelty. Don’t ask me to love my master.’

Sterling glared at him. He was breathing very hard. It was the strangest thing, Robin thought, how much he’d worked himself up. His cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was beginning to shine with sweat. Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?

‘Your friend Miss Price warned me you’d become a bit of a fanatic.’