Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  Except for the clockwork spider. The machine was the size of a large dog and was at once frightening and marvelous when it crawled above the curvature of the Tower. Steam gassed from the joints of its eight steel legs. Its internal gears were visible through its copper skeleton. It was the most intricate and elegant clockworks Senlin had ever seen. As it drew nearer, he saw a red light, piercing as a ruby, glowing steadily at the heart of the machine.

  Senlin was too awed to be afraid of the chattering machine, but he was careful to remain silent when he pointed it out to Edith. She took in a quick breath and gripped his arm, but it was soon apparent that the clockwork spider was indifferent to them. It stalked with the surety of a fly on a wall, its feet shoed with dark rubber pads. Just when Senlin began to wonder if the thing wasn’t some sort of grand toy, its function became clear. It was repairing the Tower. It scoured the facade for flaws that it repaired by spraying some sort of gel. The gel appeared to harden quickly and soon glistened like quartz. Senlin watched the machine move from crack to crack, ripping out birds’ nests and patching the gaps, until it had passed again out of sight.

  It was an ingenious little automaton: practical and efficient. Seeing it gave him a little hope. The Tower was not all terror and confusion. There were wonders here.

  Though all the wonders felt small and far away.

  Neither of them speculated aloud about how long they would be kept, or whether they would be brought food or water, or whether this birdcage was to be their coffin. Voicing such thoughts would only make the wait more unbearable. But after another half hour of silence, Edith gave a sudden exasperated groan and said, “My imagination is driving me mad! I have now reviewed every embarrassment that might’ve been watched by spies, and every possible manner that we could die in this coop.”

  Senlin cleared his throat, “Me too. I just began to wonder how many vultures would have to perch on this cage before their weight combined with ours would be enough…”

  “We have to talk about something else.” She interrupted, clapping her hands on the tops of her legs. “So, your name is Thomas Senlin, you’re a headmaster, and you are married.” This had come out during the Receptionist’s inquisition, of course. “For many years?”

  “No.” Normally, his answer would have concluded there, but something pushed him now to confess more. Perhaps it was only out of camaraderie that naturally arises from shared trauma. Or perhaps, and he could hardly admit the possibility, he was dimly aware that the moment wasn’t without… intimacy, and that with intimacy came temptation. To stave off the whole guilty train of thought, he blurted out, “I’m on our honeymoon; we’re on my honeymoon.”

  He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d laughed. But she didn’t, and her response was slow in coming. She stroked her cheek, scrubbing off dried blood. She seemed to be trying to decide whether to ask the obvious question. Where is your wife?

  He was a little surprised, but relieved, when she instead began to speak of her own past. Since there was nothing else to do, her anecdotes quickly evolved into a history. It became apparent to him that she meant to not just summarize, but also to embellish her story with all manner of small detail. He’d always been troubled by long-winded confessions. He never knew what to say. And yet, as she went on, he began to relax a little. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected when he had first met her in her peach dress and she had ordered him about like a footman. She wasn’t melodramatic or vain. She was quite likable, in fact. He liked her.

  She told him more about her family’s farmland and the acreage she had been responsible for sowing. There was pride in her voice as she described her talent for farming. She knew when to sacrifice blighted rows; she knew how to manage buffer yields and droughts, how to ferret out the dishonest foremen, the drunks, and where to recruit replacements. She had two brothers, both older, neither of whom had any talent for, or interest in, the family business. Both managed small plots, and did so poorly. Her yields were always superior. Her father, who wanted to spend his twilight years hunting and pressing the fruits of his orchards into cider, was proudest of her. He called her the Generaless of the Garden.

  Then, a little more than a year ago, her father had talked her into marrying a family friend, a man named Franklin Winters, who owned a modestly productive vineyard. She, the Generaless who needed no husband, had agreed only because her father pressed the point they both had tried for years to avoid: her brothers were feckless, lazy, and worse yet, they were disloyal. If he left the land to them, they would only sell it and squander the profits. But he could not bequeath his fortune to an unmarried woman; she would be vulnerable to lawsuits, not least of all from her brothers. But if she were married, she would be safe from such attacks; she could continue to run the farm as she pleased.

  Mr. Franklin Winters was an inoffensive enough mate. He was a little gaunt of feature and bland of character, but he hadn’t any debts and his employees thought he was fair, which she took as good signs. Most importantly, he was amenable to her conditions for the marriage: her role in the operations of the farm would not change. She would remain the Generaless. He agreed, but had a caveat of his own. She could run the farm so long as it posed no risk to her health.

  Edith wasn’t a fool. She knew that Winters expected her to become pregnant, and for that to be excuse enough to pull her from the field. Her father, too, held out hope that she would have children and continue the bloodline. She found the whole thing ridiculous. It was plain from her expression that motherhood held no charms for her. She agreed to Winters’ request only because she knew it would never be an issue. She was hearty and stolid but also barren, the result of a riding accident years earlier. It was a fact only she and the county doctor knew.

  The conditions were formalized, an agreement was signed, and they were married.

  But soon after she became Mrs. Franklin Winters (in a ceremony that she described as “unsentimental”), Franklin found an excuse to exploit their contract. She developed a slight allergy to a weed which grew everywhere in the spring along the lanes and the caps of rows. It was the same long weed that she had once habitually chewed on when roaming the freshly plowed fields, checking the vitality of the soil. Now, the weed’s blooming made her wheeze. It was excuse enough for Winters to pull her from her horse. Never mind that half the foremen had one ailment or another: gout or syphilis or cataracts. She had to hang up her reins, shelve her clod stompers, tie a ribbon around her straw hat, and accept that she was too delicate to manage a farm. She suspected the whole thing was to punish her for not bringing forth a son. To be fair, Winters himself had been unable to offer much support to that venture.

  Senlin might’ve blushed if he hadn’t already been so flush from the heat. “So you divorced him?”

  “I did,” she said. “Though he hasn’t returned the courtesy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either!” She laughed, and a warm burst of wind tangled her dark hair about her face. “He refused to give me a divorce, so I refused to stay.”

  “And so you came here...”

  “To fritter his money, my money.”

  “And play a socialite’s wife,” Senlin said merrily, but saw her expression turn stormy. He grimaced apologetically.

  “It was a stupid play.” She again forced down her ballooning crinoline skirts. “I had to play dress-stuffer while those two twits talked about business. Neither of them knew a thing about business. The stock market of the heart! Please! If it’s not quantifiable, it’s not stock. That is the basic characteristic of stock. And, as far as I know, no one knows how much love weighs, how voluminous it is, whether it can be divided or compounded… How many units of love does it take to make a romance? Five love units? Twenty? Stock market of the heart! If the one twit hadn’t gone berserk, I would’ve.” She was nearly raving, but there was a welcome edge of comedy to it.

  Before he could respond, the hatch in the iron door opened.

  They both crowded to it
and were met by a young man’s face, smiling broadly under a carefully waxed mustache.

  “My God, it’s warm,” the face said, and a handkerchief briefly obscured it as he patted the frilly square across his forehead.

  “You must let us in! This is ludicrous; we’re in danger out here!” Senlin couldn’t keep the desperation entirely from his voice. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Yes, no, I understand, but I have to investigate your case first, or they’ll just heave you right back in here.”

  “Then investigate faster,” Edith said.

  The youth cleared his throat. “I am the Assistant to the Registrar. My name is Anen Ceph, and I will be assisting you today.” The pattern of his speech was full of halts and gulps, and Senlin recognized in his manner a rank amateur.

  “Faster,” Edith repeated.

  “I have concluded my inquiry, and I have reported my findings to the Registrar and he has returned with his decision...”

  “Who is the Registrar? What is his authority?” Senlin interrupted.

  Ceph smiled, the lines about his mouth rippling out. “What wonderful humor!” Then, just as quickly, his expression flattened like a swamp closing over a footprint. “You, Mr. Thomas Senlin, will be escorted to the third floor, which is really very lovely. Do you like peacocks?”

  “I have no opinion of them.”

  “The Baths are filled with peacocks and spas and warm springs.”

  “It sounds wonderful. Take us there,” Edith said.

  “Ah. Well.” The grin wrinkled his nose, making him seem more juvenile, and he again cleared his throat. “Ms. Edith Winters is not going to the third floor. She is being expelled to the first floor.”

  “Expelled? Why?” Edith said. “You locked me in with a murderer and I was attacked.”

  “Not me. I didn’t lock you in any room, and you, as I understand, had a key, and went into that particular stage house of the Parlor voluntarily.” Senlin recognized in Ceph’s answer the slithering cowardice of an administrator. The boy was a blooming bureaucrat. “There are two matters at issue. First, there is the issue of your exit, which was illegal. As you were told, characters must each exit into their original halls.”

  “We were being chased by a lunatic with a gun!” Edith reiterated, jabbing her finger too near the youth’s nose for his liking. He again waved his handkerchief over his face.

  “Yes. But, there remains the second issue of the fires, Ms. Winters,” he continued. “You agreed when you entered the Parlor to stoke the fires of the rooms you entered. We have much evidence of Mr. Senlin doing this small chore, but it appears that you, Ms. Winters, were irresponsible with this charge. As a result, several fires went out.”

  “What does it matter? Get me a match and I will restart them,” she said.

  “The damage is done, I’m afraid. You will be removed, and you will not be allowed to reenter the Parlor. That is the Registrar’s decision and it...”

  “Excuse me,” Senlin interrupted, and using his lecturing voice said, “Young man, we are injured. We are perilously suspended over a great height. We are hungry and thirsty and frightened. I adjure you to return to your superior, your Registrar, with a clear message: we will be freed, and we will continue, the both of us, to the Baths. We insist that we be given a chance to account for ourselves in your courts, whatever they might be, and we insist that we be removed from this inhuman birdcage you’ve unjustly imprisoned us in.” He spoke with force and confidence he did not feel.

  This seemed to momentarily dash Ceph’s mask of officiousness, but he quickly gathered himself and recovered his smile. “I will speak to him and return. In the meantime, I have supper.” Ceph passed through the hatch a tin flask and a small sack of toughly crusted bread.

  “Will you please let us wait inside?” Edith said, restraining her anger for the moment. But Ceph had already closed the hatch. She struck the closed plate with the heel of her hand. “Numskull!”

  They collapsed back to their lounging positions, mute with frustration.

  Not a half mile in the distance, an airship banked over the Market, seeming to have recently lifted off. From this angle, Senlin could make out the gondola, which was shaped like a square-nosed barge, and the heavy rigging that tethered the ship to the balloon. The voluminous envelope of gas was as round and red as a child’s ball. Senlin felt a pang of envy. Oh, to fly! To be a balloon, to be a kite!

  Edith stared dumbly at the byzantine sprawl of the Market and said, “You’ve heard what they do when they kick you out to make sure you can never come back? Tom,” she said in such a familiar way, he felt disarmed. “They’re going to brand me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “If you ever discover that you are bored in the Parlor, wake up. You are asleep and having a tedious dream.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, III. LI

  Ever since childhood, he had been fond of kites. He liked their serenity. A kite might tug, and dive, and lunge about, but it never panicked, not even if an unexpected gust snapped the line. The person flying the kite might panic, but the kite never did.

  He’d built box kites, shield kites, and sled kites of all shapes and sizes. Every month, he’d order a new sheaf of colored rice paper from Ms. Berks, and every month, she would puzzle aloud over his chosen pastime. While other men in the village spent their idle hours repairing garden walls and framing rowboats, the Headmaster was off in a field with a kite. “How will you ever find a wife spending all your time on toys?” Ms. Berks wanted to know. He didn’t care. For many years he just didn’t care. He flew kites. Ms. Berks rolled her eyes.

  It was a more romantic gesture than Ms. Berks would’ve guessed when, late in their secret courtship, Senlin built Marya a kite and arranged an afternoon picnic. He constructed a simple diamond-shaped kite from red paper because it was her favorite color. He chose a secluded, dramatic spot for their picnic: Woolgatherer Bluff. The bluff rose above the pebble cove where Isaugh’s fleet of fishing boats nodded on gentle waves. It was an uncommonly warm spring day. A steady wind blew inland. The only obstacle in the expansive field of clover was an old, fruitless apple tree.

  After launching the kite, he stood behind her with his arms around her waist, holding her wrists as she gripped the spool of string. He said, “The clouds give us a hint of what the wind is doing. See? We can see them stretch out and speed along and pile up together. But the kite shows the air in more detail. You can follow every jet and downdraft. It’s like a flying weathercock.”

  She pulled at the kite string with a hooked finger and bumped against him, saying, “I was thinking the same thing. It’s like a flying weathercock.” He knew her teasing was good for him. It kept him from being so terribly earnest all the time.

  And still, he blushed and backed away a step. He took refuge in the lesson, explaining how to make the kite dive and swoop and rise. She listened and practiced and yelled at the kite as if it were a poorly trained dog. Senlin gave her more room and tried to keep from kibitzing.

  It wasn’t long before the kite became snagged in the apple tree’s branches. The collision occurred when Marya panicked at seeing the kite turn down from its towering perch and course straight down, directly at the solitary tree. Too excited to listen to Senlin’s directions, she yanked hard on the line, which only sped the red missal on its way.

  The crash didn’t upset him. He had destroyed whole flocks of kites over the years. Marya was more sentimental. She insisted that the token be rescued. Senlin suggested, quite reasonably he thought, that they could wait for a gust to free the kite. It might be a little torn, but it would be easy enough to repair.

  Marya insisted that she would save it, and while he protested, she stripped off her shoes and socks, knotted her skirt up above her knees, and began scaling the tree.

  Though he could hardly admit it, he was stirred by the sight of her bare legs wrapped about the branch. Despite the town’s later suspicions, their courtship had been quite chaste. />
  The limb swayed as she shinnied out toward the kite. Senlin made a conscious effort to not bite his nails. A moment more, and she had untangled the kite, shinnied back, and climbed down with it. Welts from the rough bark stood out on her arms and knees. She hardly noticed. She was giddy from her adventure and only laughed when she tripped over a root buried in the thick clover.

  She was beautiful in the most unguarded, unaffected way.

  He drummed up the courage to say what he’d arranged the whole occasion for.

  He set his knee in the clover. He took up her hand, her arm like the string of a kite, her face floating above him with the sun lighting her auburn hair. She was suddenly so serene.

  The kite never panics. This time neither did he.

  He couldn’t believe it would happen— not here. They would never brand a woman. This was the Tower for pity’s sake! If anything, the ordeal had made him doubt the morality and sanity of his fellow tourists. How different might the Tower be if the tourists would stop dragging their afflictions and flaws in with them! There were natives to the Tower, Senlin knew, who had never set foot on the ground. Their minds were naturally elevated by an environment that invented and ascended. Their influence would win out. Reason would prevail!

  He refused to console Edith because he refused to believe she was in any real danger. An answer would come soon, and they would be freed. He gave her arm a pat-pat. It was the sort of cool reassurance he offered nervous students on a first day of class. His patting seemed to say, “There, there! It’s not as bad as all that.”