CHAPTER 3
Argenti’s demonstration had strange results on the children. While some became cautious, others took it as licence to indulge all their passions unrestrainedly. That night the city boy, Fifth-Nine, cornered Torbidda in his cubicle. Three other city boys joined in, while a fourth stood at the curtain, watching proceedings. The onlooker was the boy who had caught Torbidda staring. When he said, ‘Enough!’ they stopped. He was handsome, and had a New City accent like Leto’s.
Curtains had to be drawn in the morning to display tidy cubicle, locked wardrobe and neatly made bed. Torbidda was just pulling his open when the monitor walked by. She must have seen his black eye, but all she remarked on was his tardiness: ‘Do better, Sixty. It gets faster.’
And she was right. Those who made it would be landed on the front line, so the Cadets had to become accustomed to the pressure from the start. As days turned to weeks new subjects kept coming, as if there was no time to waste. Flaccus taught the ‘hard’ arts, including Mechanics and Geometry; those subjects requiring anything resembling intuition and imagination he left, contemptuously, to Selector Varro.
The Anatomy Hall had no viewing gallery. ‘Dissection’s not an art learned from afar. We must get our hands wet!’ Varro said gleefully.
It was situated in the large cavern where the main canal entered and exited the mountain. The floor was solid rock, interrupted by a metal grid under which dark channels of water flowed from deeper caverns within Monte Nero. High circular windows allowed smoke-stained swallows and exhausted daylight to enter the cavern, though the shafts of light were bisected by the gauntlet of thin stalactites and dripping chains that hung from the roof and soon dissipated into the larger gloom within. At the back of the cave was a wall of metal which turned constantly, producing a dull animal groan that vied with the water’s roar. On some of the dozens of workstations suspended from long chains were the drying remains of previous dissections. They were bloated with formaldehyde, which added to the stench hanging in the frigid atmosphere. As well as the weight-bearing chains, there were others, great swathes of links that shivered with the same icy luminescence illuminating the orbs of New City. The blue crackling current gave the cave a shifting twilight quality that made even those occupants with peeled skin and gaping chest cavities seem nervously animated.
The Cadets were still searching for tools and fighting for workstations when the selector shuffled to the podium. Varro was short, compact and profoundly hairy. His large, ape-like hands and long dexterous fingers were, like every other part of him except his skull, covered in wiry reddish-brown and grey hair. His heavy red beard, braided in the Ebionite fashion, was a startling contrast to his pale skull.
Ignoring the chaos around him, he launched into his first lecture.
‘You weren’t thinking of taking my workstation, were you?’ The boy’s drawl sounded bored, almost a yawn.
‘I don’t see any names,’ said Torbidda, defiantly.
‘They oughtn’t let slow learners be Cadets.’
The boy’s followers laughed on cue. They were straining with anticipation, like a dog pack, but the boy moved leisurely as a peacock, raising his fists up to Torbidda’s face as though inviting inspection. ‘No names here either. Or didn’t you get enough last night?’
His number was Four. His striking face was perfect, except for the fleshy lips that were set in a perpetual sneer. He had been one of the first inducted on Examination Day, and he acted as if he had been privy to deep secrets his whole life. Four’s swagger drew the rowdier first-years into his orbit; there were a few nobles, including the Fuscus twins, but most were poor city boys, including Fifty-Nine, of course. Like Leto, Four was from the New City, but unlike the Spinthers, his family had only just taken the leap; he was the first son to be sent to the Guild, and he was loud in denigrating both the Curia and aristocracy as yesterday’s men. The nervous boys admired his bluster, and anointed him their seer, to lead them through this strange land and chase away its shadows.
‘Well?’ said Four.
Torbidda recognised there was no way of winning the contest; Four had the high ground. He abandoned his claim to the workstation and found another.
‘Madonna, don’t take it personally, Torbidda. You’re a means to an end, that’s all. Four is consolidating his position—’
‘—by creating opportunities for his crew to prove their loyalty. I know that.’
‘You did the right thing backing down. Don’t let yourself become an object-lesson.’
Leto was right, of course, but Torbidda looked up with dissatisfaction from his colourless lunch and scanned the other tables in the refectory. The Apprenticeship Candidates sat at the high table at the far end of the room. To reach the third year was no small achievement, but still only a handful – a maximum of twelve, usually fewer – were deemed worthy to apply for Apprenticeship; the rest were posted abroad, scattered across the empire. The Candidates’ solemn intensity was a fascinating spectacle, but one might as well look for example to the saints. The second-years at the table opposite, however: they were still mortals.
Usually Leto’s evaluation of military problems was sound, but though Torbidda had backed down to Four, just as the first-years deferred to the second-years, he knew servility wasn’t a long-term stratagem. He looked across at the monitor, who was discussing something while the Cadets around her listened courteously. Compared with the first-years’ rowdy jousting and posturing, the second-years were serenity itself. How was it that peace reigned on that side of the room? How had they learned to cooperate?
Leto saw the direction of his glance and said softly, ‘Forget it, Torbidda. Second-years won’t help – they’ll kill you faster than Four will. At least he needs an excuse.’
But Torbidda was looking for answers, not allies. It would have been easy for the Guild to segregate the lambs from these veterans, so this example had been placed before them for a reason. His life depended on discovering why.
‘Come on,’ said Leto. ‘Flaccus will kill us both if we’re late for Mechanics again.’
The water cut through the stone like paper. Torbidda held the gem to the light, examining it with the intensity of a poacher stalking prey. Gem-cutting had something of Geometry’s precision: the light was perfect or flawed, just as an equation was correct or incorrect. Others complained, but Torbidda understood why they were expected to master practical arts as well as theory. The Guild needed more than rote-trained mules; each Cadet was expected to travel the same road Bernoulli had.
As the Cadets proudly admired their own work and showed their gems off to the others, Torbidda wondered at their pleasure – and envied them, a little. Their work was pedestrian compared to his, but when he studied his jewel’s icy new clarity he felt only confusion at the nausea it inspired in him. It was like fire scorching his insides. He had worked hard, finding the planes then grinding and polishing to reveal the flawless gem within, but now the urge to ruin that perfection was taking hold of him.
He carefully placed it down and moved on to his next task. With Gem-cutting, progress was tangible; some subjects were more about learning to stumble through the darkness.
Alchemistry was taught in a cave cut even deeper into the mountain than the Anatomy Hall – but it was far warmer, thanks to the great furnace at its heart that fed on coal and dripping animal fats. Its roar and the feverish scent of scorched cinnabar filled the cave. The furnace sat on a raised platform beneath a bramble of tubes that stretched to the ceiling and tangled into ever-darker, more intricate knots. The far wall was lost in the gloom; it was only when they got closer, and their eyes had adjusted to the crepuscular light, that they could see it was moving, albeit with glacial slowness.
Varro collected a lubricating yellow syrup from taps that punctured the wall’s metal surface. He was more human than Flaccus; he treated the Cadets like fellow explorers, and took for granted that they shared his curiosity. As he tended to ramble, his classes were an oasis of calm in their crowded schedule, not to mention a chance for some of the Cadets to indulge in games of correspondence chess.
Varro was working the bellows when he suddenly pointed and shouted, ‘You! What’s your name?’
‘Sixty, Sir.’
‘And were you named for your father? The Grand Selector may prefer numbers to people, but he’s not the one asking. Come, lad, your real name.’
‘… Torbidda, Sir.’ He felt exposed before his fellow students; there was safety in anonymity.
‘Torbidda, is it? And how many elements are there?’
‘Ninety-two occur naturally. We’ll make more eventually.’
‘Ninety-two? Flaccus told you that, I suppose. Does that sound like the name of God? We’ll make more, you say, as if it’s a simple thing – it’s easier by far to create a new letter in the alphabet! What would we do if we found it? It would remake all texts. What babble was wrought leaping from Four to Ninety, and you blithely propose to go on? To rebuild the Tower until God throws it down again and sends a more lasting Flood so that we remember the lesson this time—’
This mystical tangent set eyes rolling.
‘Didn’t God die in Forty-Seven, sir?’ said Leto.
Varro erupted with laughter that filled the cave. ‘Oh, very good. What’s your name? And don’t give me a blasted number.’
‘Spinther, sir,’ said Leto loudly.
‘Ah! I knew your father. Well, yes, a certain priestly deity was a casualty of the Re-Formation. But I’m not referring to the idol of those paper-shuffling clerics. Our prey’s an older beast, and killing Him would be a great deed, great indeed. Perhaps one of you will manage it.’ He looked fondly into the furnace. ‘Where was I?’
‘The elements, sir?’
‘Ah, yes!’ Varro threw the bellows aside and picked up a beaker of water that reflected the dangling lights like falling stars frozen. ‘When speaking of primordial matters, best not multiply explanations. Simplify. This glass is the world. This glass is each of you. You are not numbers! You are water! You are air!’
He cast the water on the pipes and it hissed and bubbled and steam wafted up. ‘Look, children: the ghost flees! Catch it, and we’ll have power to move mountains. Air and water are God’s initials, the Aleph and Beth of a world at war. Fools like Flaccus will count the stars and list the elements and remain blind to the larger pattern. The Wave, children! It is majestic and merciless, and it is everywhere, even in the elements. Consider the valence of ordered atoms. It flows up – one, two, three, four, and down, three, two, one – and up again. As below, so above. As above, so below.’
There was a long, embarrassed silence during which Varro collected himself. ‘So,’ he said, ‘that’s what we’re about today: extracting oxygen from water. You’ll see the bitch holds on as fiercely as a mother does her child. Find a station. Take a beaker.’
The Cadets went about the experiment noisily, everyone competing to impersonate the old man’s eccentric manner. Torbidda tried to play along, but it wasn’t easy.
This was just a basic alchemical exercise, yet his hand trembled and his heart pounded. Frustrated at the sluggish pace of Flaccus’ teaching, he’d begun to study independently, and his grasp of Wave Theory was now sufficiently advanced to recognise that Varro’s hints of some grand hidden tapestry were at the very heart of the Bernoullian art. But though Torbidda might be suddenly conscious of the gravity of their search, he was in the minority. Cadets with a family background in engineering had more conservative ideas about the limits of Natural Philosophy, and Four spoke for these: ‘No wonder they keep this relic buried down here,’ he said loudly.
‘He’s the last Naturalist in any position of influence.’
‘But they say Bonnacio is one of his protégés,’ Torbidda said mildly. They were back in the refectory, and Torbidda was keeping his eyes on the second-years, even as he tried to find out what Leto thought of Selector Varro.
‘So much the worse for the Second Apprentice,’ Leto said. ‘The other two are Empiricists. Look, Torbidda: it’s easy to be taken in, but that kind of talk isn’t politic. The old man gets away with it because he fought the good fight in Forty-Seven but if you want to get a decent posting in third year, be an Empiricist. Or at least pretend to be.’
‘Sure.’
Torbidda understood this was a warning. Cadets were always under scrutiny, and not just by the selectors. Although he affected a carelessness, Leto was as manipulative as any of the Cadets; he was just more subtle than most. He’d known exactly how well Torbidda had done in the al-Buni when he had befriended him – indeed, all of Leto’s friends had turned out to be top students – but Torbidda didn’t resent him for his calculation. He took it as a compliment. Now he decided to heed Leto’s warning. Aside from the tyrannical bell, they were given no guidance outside the classroom; no behaviour was proscribed or recommended. They were on their own, and conspicuously following the wrong crowd could be fatal.
His first real fight, however, had nothing to do with political calculation. It was over a girl.