by Dave Butler
“Those men are Prussian. From eastern Germany,” the rabbi said. “They are here because Bismarck—he’s not the kaiser, but he basically rules Prussia—wants the landgrave to join him in invading France.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Charlie said.
“Apparently, it seems like a good idea to Bismarck. Land is involved, and mines, and wealth. Also pride. But there’s never been any shortage of people who want to rule and control other folk, even with good intentions. And I’m sure Bismarck would tell you how good it would be for Marburg to be part of the kaiser’s state.”
“I’m just here to get Thomas,” Charlie said.
“I’m here to get…something else.” Thomas looked down at his feet. “Something the landgrave has.”
“You can stay as long as you like, Thomas,” the rabbi said, “whatever it is you’re looking for. You’re a delightful houseguest—this week has fairly flown past.”
The door opened abruptly, and Rachel came in. Behind her followed a short person with fine features—a kobold, though a tall one. Bob and Ollie leaped to their feet, and Charlie sprang back.
“You never said he was a broken!” Bob cried.
The kobold wore a long white coat, in the breast pocket of which was a series of metal prods. Other pockets clanked softly with other tools. Bright red hair shot straight up around the kobold’s big ears. Craggy red eyebrows furrowed but then rose up in surprise, revealing icy gray eyes beneath. It was Jan Wijmoor, the library engineer Charlie had seen crossing the lawn earlier.
The kobold looked at Thomas, and then at Charlie. His lip trembled, and his eyes filled with water as if he were struggling with some powerful emotion. Finally, he sniffed and rubbed his nose on the back of his sleeve.
“Broken?” Wijmoor said. “I am certainly not broken.”
“Broken home, gnome.” Ollie was breathing hard. He looked like a bull about to charge. “On account of you’re a gnome. It rhymes, see? Plus, it’s kind of a joke about redcaps. You know, your wizards who break things.”
The kobold tut-tutted, seeming to get his emotions under control. “Yes, I am a kobold. My name is Meneer Professor Doktor Ingenieur Jan Wijmoor.” That was even more titles than Rachel had given him. “And whatever you’ve heard about my people, we are not all redcaps. Very few of us specialize in breaking machinery; I think I can safely say that, Nondisclosure. I make and repair things, exclusively. I keep my duty of Compliance. Yes, that’s one thing you can certainly say about me: I keep my duties. I’m very good at repairing machinery, in fact, and I’ve retrieved my tools and come back to repair the Thomas unit.”
Nondisclosure? Duty of Compliance?
“Thomas ain’t a unit,” Ollie growled. “He’s just Thomas.”
The kobold blinked. “Fine. Shall I reattach its hand?”
“His,” Bob said. “His hand.”
“His hand.” Wijmoor shook his head. “Though I have not heard such dangerous talk as this for many years. This is Library Machine talk, and I don’t like it. Not outside the library, Nondisclosure.”
“No one thinks you’re Zahnkrieger,” the rabbi’s daughter said gently. “Would you please repair Thomas’s hand?”
“Zahnkrieger?” the rabbi murmured.
Charlie tensed up, fighting a sudden urge to knock the kobold down and run. Heinrich Zahnkrieger was the real name of Henry Clockswain, the kobold whom he had known as his father’s business partner, but who had betrayed Bap to his death. “Zahnkrieger?” He tried not to shout. “Heinrich Zahnkrieger?”
The kobold took lunette-shaped spectacles from a coat pocket and perched them on his long nose, staring through the lenses at Charlie. “Are you also a Thomas unit?”
“I’m…My name is Charlie. Charlie Pondicherry. I once knew a kobold named Heinrich Zahnkrieger. Is that the same person you’re talking about?”
“I taught Zahnkrieger,” the kobold said slowly. Water returned to his eyes, and he blinked it away. “I was his advisor, his mentor. I urged him not to tamper with the Library Machine. And when I had to, I testified against him before the Internal Auditor at his terminal review. I think I can safely tell you this much, yes.”
“You don’t sound quite like old ’Einrich,” Bob said grudgingly.
“I’m from the Dutch division of the Marburger Syndikat,” Wijmoor said. “Formerly of the Eindhoven Conglomeraat, before the merger. Zahnkrieger is German, from the Marburger Kompanie.”
“But—” Ollie started.
“And that is all I will say about Heinrich Zahnkrieger,” the kobold said, his mouth snapping on the other kobold’s name like a trap slamming shut. “Nondisclosure.”
He sobbed once and looked away.
Charlie felt a hundred questions boiling up inside, but before he could ask any of them, Thomas pushed past Bob and Ollie and took his hand from Charlie’s grasp. “Please, Doktor…Professor…Doktor Wijmoor.”
“The short form of address is Meneer Doktor,” Wijmoor said.
“Meneer Doktor.” Thomas was trembling. His father, the inventor Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had designed Charlie to be shy and fearful on purpose. “I don’t care whether you think of me as a unit or not. Will you please fix my hand?”
The kobold took a deep breath and sighed. “Of course I will…Thomas. And…the other thing?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “That too.”
“What other thing?” Charlie asked.
The kobold jabbed an index finger at the ceiling, his fine-featured face breaking into a grin that, under his tall red hair and with his eyes puffy from crying, made his face look like a clown’s. “I’m going to teach Thomas to speak German!”
“I’d like you to teach me German,” Charlie said. That would let him understand what people were saying on the street around him. “If you can. I mean, if you can do it for me, too.”
Could he trust the kobold? After all, Wijmoor knew Zahnkrieger. On the other hand, he wasn’t making any secret of knowing the other kobold, and he seemed pretty tortured by that relationship. Also, the Rosenbaums trusted Jan Wijmoor, and they both seemed honest and friendly.
And Charlie really wanted to speak other languages.
Plus, his friends were here. If something went wrong, Lloyd and the chimney sweeps could intervene.
“Ha-ha!” Wijmoor snapped his fingers and pointed at the ceiling. “Mind you, I won’t be teaching it to you, not exactly. And it won’t be just German.”
“I understand.” That was a lie: Charlie didn’t quite follow what the kobold was saying. “That is…what will you do, exactly?”
Jan Wijmoor chuckled. “I’ll install a piece of technology in you, you see. It goes right back to Jacob Grimm, though it’s not the Library Machine, per se, and it’s called the Babel Card.”
“Babel has something to do with lots of languages, right?” Charlie said.
“It’s from the Bible, boyo,” Lloyd Shankin answered. “The Tower of Babel is an old story about why there are so many languages in the world.”
“Mmm,” Levi Rosenbaum agreed. “This Babel Card sounds like a very nice thing to have. I might be able to use it myself, when I have my meeting with the landgrave and the Prussians tomorrow.”
“That will be in German, surely?” Lloyd Shankin asked.
The rabbi spread his hands. “I’ve been told the undergravine and some of her fairy advisors will attend. Might there also be French people? Hulders? Diplomats from the Low Countries? The more people who are there to talk, the better, I say. The more people talking, the fewer shooting.”
“Why is it a card?” Bob asked.
“Good question.” Wijmoor snapped his fingers and pointed at the ceiling. “That has to do with how a unit like—with how Charlie processes data.”
“You mean ’ow ’is brain works?”
“Right! Char
lie’s brain reads patterns punched into tiny cards made of finely hammered gold.”
“You’re going to stick a gold card into Charlie’s brain, and that will let him…what?” Ollie asked. “Speak German?”
“And Thomas’s, too. It will let them speak any language,” Wijmoor answered. “Or almost any language. Even read the languages, I think.”
“You’ll insert the Babel Card in my head and then I’ll understand and speak German,” Charlie said. “And Dutch.”
“And anything else the card’s algorithms can unravel.” Wijmoor nodded vigorously. “I expect any human language, and maybe the languages of some other folk to boot. I doubt you’ll get a perfect mesh with Pixie, for instance, due to all the nonverbal elements. And Ghoul…well, is that even a language? The Babel Card still needs field testing.”
Charlie wasn’t quite sure what an algorithm was, but it sounded magical. He wanted what the kobold was describing. “And you’ll do this…as a gift?”
Jan Wijmoor’s lip trembled and he bit it. “Hmm, oh no, I’ll have to charge you. Both of you, really. Best Efforts, you know. What do you have to offer?”
“I have money.” Charlie showed the kobold the remainder of his bap’s banknotes.
“Hmm, not worth so much around here, though.”
“So I’ve learned.”
“Tell you what.” Jan Wijmoor snapped his fingers and pointed at the ceiling. “I’m helping you with the Babel Card, so how about you owe me an equal assistance? When I get in a pickle, will you and Thomas come help me out?”
“That seems fair,” Levi Rosenbaum said. “They seem like boys who would honor that promise.”
Charlie nodded.
“You drive a hard bargain, Charlie Pondicherry.” The kobold grinned.
“What’s an algorithm?” Thomas asked. Charlie was happy he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the word.
“Algorithms are bits of complex math that the card will teach your brain to do. The algorithms aren’t instantaneous; they take a little time to decipher, and they build on your existing vocabulary as well as contextual clues. The card lets you learn as any baby learns, only much faster. That’s why the Babel Card will allow you to understand any language—or most languages—rather than just one. Would you like to see the card?”
Charlie nodded.
Wijmoor pulled a small wooden box and a pair of fine-nosed pincers from two separate pockets. With the pincers, he extracted something from the container. Moving slowly, he turned to show his prize to Charlie and Thomas.
Charlie saw a flake of gold, thin as the thinnest foil he could imagine, and no larger than one of his fingernails. Squinting closer, he saw that the foil was dimpled all across its surface in an elaborate pattern.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
Wijmoor made eye contact with the rabbi. “May we use your library? That seems like an auspicious room for it, all things considered.”
“I would feel bad if you didn’t.”
“Come over here with me.” Wijmoor led Charlie into the library, in the center of which stood a broad coffee table. Ollie clutched the green Almanack under his arm as if it were a permanent part of him. The rabbi laid two sofa cushions on the table, and the kobold patted one with his free hand. “Lie down here. On your stomach.”
“Like for a doctor, innit?” Bob asked.
“Yes,” Wijmoor agreed. “Not strictly necessary, because I could insert the card with the—with Charlie and Thomas standing up. But this will be more comfortable.”
Charlie stretched himself out on his belly on the upholstered table. He shoved a hand into his coat pocket and wrapped his fingers around the two broken halves of his bap’s smoking pipe. “What now?”
Wijmoor tapped his foot on the carpet. “You too, Thomas. I’ll work you in at the same time, here.”
Charlie turned his head to watch Thomas climb up onto the table next to him. He smiled at his brother as he felt the kobold’s long, slender fingers touch the back of his head, and then his vision went black.
* * *
Charlie stood in a deep pit. With a start, he realized that he’d been here before.
Ribs of stone arched upward gradually all around him. Overhead, Charlie saw a tiny spot of light, somewhere far away.
When had he been here before?
He heard soft weeping. Turning around, he saw a mound of earth, as long as a person was tall and heaped up six inches high. At its head was a stone. There were characters on the stone and Charlie tried to read them, but somehow they were slippery. The characters shifted as he looked at them, flowing from one letter into another in a way that prevented Charlie from making any sense of what was written.
But the low mound had to be a grave.
A person knelt at the side of the mound, wearing a dark coat. The sobbing sounds came from this person, and each sob was louder than the one before, and made the mourning person’s body shake.
“Don’t be sad,” Charlie said. “Your loved one will always be with you.”
He touched the weeping person on the shoulder, and the person turned and looked up at Charlie.
The person weeping was Charlie himself.
Charlie stepped back, and as he did so, the face on the mourner shifted and flowed into another face, as the characters had flowed from one letter to another. By the time Charlie had regained his balance, the person kneeling had Thomas’s pale face and dark hair.
“Papa?” Dream Thomas reached for Charlie.
“I’m your brother,” Charlie said. “Not your father, do you understand?”
Dream Thomas stood. “Why?” he pleaded with Charlie. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“I don’t know what thing you’re talking about. Who did it? What did he do?”
Dream Thomas grabbed Charlie’s wrists, but instead of the small hands he expected, Charlie found himself looking down at adult-sized hands, with skin that was pale almost to the point of being translucent but that felt like India rubber, and fingers with no nails.
Charlie tried to pull away but couldn’t. He looked up—
and Thomas’s face was gone.
In Thomas’s place was Red Cloak. The featureless lower half of Red Cloak’s face writhed as if the monster wanted to say something, and it stared furiously at Charlie with its all-black eyes.
Charlie jerked his hand away—
* * *
Charlie rolled over and fell off the coffee table—and slammed onto the floor.
“Ow.” The carpet was beautiful, an interlocking pattern that was reminiscent of leaves, but it wasn’t especially thick. He lay still, facedown.
“Charlie, wie geht es dir? Wie fühlst du dich? How do you feel, Charlie?”
Charlie hurt from the fall, but not too much.
And then he realized that Jan Wijmoor was speaking to him in German, and Charlie was understanding.
He tried speaking some back. “I good am. I am good. I’m well. I feel good.” He pushed himself up and climbed to his feet.
“Well, my china,” Bob said. “Either that worked, or you’re doing a surprisingly good impression.”
“Yeah, mate.” Ollie rubbed his eyes. “I’d swear you was jabbering in German.”
“It works!” Jan Wijmoor clapped Charlie on the back; Charlie was a little embarrassed at the dust cloud that came off his coat. “Charlie speaks German. And, in time, many other languages.”
“But not Pixie, you say.” Gnat folded her arms proudly across her chest, and she smiled.
“Well, Charlie, we may have to get a bit of Welsh into you. We Cymry call our tongue the language of heaven, you know.” Lloyd smiled at Charlie.
“Steady on, mate.” Ollie flared his nostrils and raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been to Wales. It was many things, but heaven wasn’t one of them.”<
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“Welsh in due time,” Charlie said. “But for now, German is good.” He looked at Thomas, who sat on the upholstered table and grinned.
Thomas smiled, opening and closing the fingers of both his hands, firmly attached to his wrists. “Now I’m ready.”
“I’m coming with you,” Charlie said. “Whatever it is you’re planning.”
“In the morning, gents,” Bob said. “I for one need a bit of Bo.”
The kobold stared at Bob.
“Bo Peep, sleep,” Ollie explained to Wijmoor. “Bob’s a Londoner, born and bred. Sometimes it takes a Londoner to understand him.”
In London, Charlie had accidentally learned that Bob was a girl. She had sworn him to secrecy.
“Rhyming slang!” The rabbi clapped his hands. “Isn’t it marvelous? You can get all the Bo you want right here, my friend! We have beds, don’t we, Rachel?”
The rabbi’s daughter nodded. “The girls can sleep in my room, and we can put the boys in the room where Thomas was.”
“Girls!” Bob snorted. “What girls? If you mean Gnat, there’s only one of ’er! Ollie an’ Lloyd an’ I can sleep on any old bit of floor you got!”
Rachel hesitated, but nodded.
“I must go!” Jan Wijmoor cried, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ceiling. “Compliance!”
The kobold Wijmoor left, shuffling quickly across the rabbi’s garden and disappearing into the door in the side of the tall square building. At least he wasn’t crying anymore.
Charlie’s friends settled in for the night, though for Ollie that meant huddling over the copy of the Almanack and poring over its pages by a little light that came from the hall. Charlie was surprised that Ollie, of all people, should be this attached to a book.
What was he so interested in?
Charlie and Thomas settled down to wait out the darkness. They sat in the shadows of the rabbi’s porch with the lights off, to avoid attracting the attention of the armed men who rolled back and forth along the boulevard all night.