Page 156 of Babel

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 faculty. 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?’