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A dark corner where you can think

Once inside, they retreated to a dark corner where they could think. Not that any corner of that brilliantly lit basilica was dark, or quiet enough for thinking. But in the corner at least they ran less risk of being trampled by pilgrims rushing from one extremity of the building to another.

Is this what you expected? Sally asked.

WHAT? Leonard asked.

IS THIS WHAT YOU EXPECTED? Sally asked.

Leonard hadn’t expected anything, and certainly not this. Double aisles flanked each side of an enormous central hall, each aisle marked by columns as tall as any building in the Business District back home. And the length of it — at least one-tenth of a verst! The ceiling was timbered and painted, and along each wall were placed innumerable alcoves, each lit by lamps and decorated with golden objects and paintings of yet more enormous men and women, all, it seemed, wearing what appeared to be gowns. Each of the alcoves was mobbed by pilgrims who clustered and clamored, each trying to touch or kiss the golden objects, or crying out and swooning to the ground. Others held torches and scurried from alcove to alcove. There was no order to their frantic peregrinations as they zigzagged across the aisles, circumventing or, more often, bumping into clumps of pilgrims who picnicked on fish and vegetables or sang songs, accompanied by stringed instruments. This chaos disturbed Leonard perhaps even more than the church’s awesome scale and strangeness.

Sally moved closer so they might converse without shouting — so close, in fact, that their tunics touched. Leonard remembered the day before, more than seven hundred years in the future, when Sally’s orange-skin gown, in contact with his leg, shimmered like electricity.

He scooched that final inch closer; she didn’t seem to mind.

How many people do you think are here? Sally asked, pulling out the last of their provisions: two bridies and two dried ham stix.

A lakh?

Half a lakh, anyway, Sally said, munching on a bridie. The crowd seemed to make her smaller.

I love you, Leonard reminded her, dividing his dried ham stix into five pieces so it might last longer.

I don’t like it here, she said in a small voice.

It’s not so bad, he said, passing Sally one of the pieces of his dried ham stix. It’s like an adventure. Shall we walk around?

I don’t want to, Sally said.

We need to know what’s here, for security’s sake, Leonard said.

Sally couldn’t argue with that, though she probably knew that Leonard was merely curious — about those alcoves over there, and what those people were doing over there and there.

I’ll come with you, she said. If I don’t, you’ll lose me and never find me again.

They walked down the aisle that separated the main hall from the outer aisle, thus observing but not participating in the chaos around the alcoves, where the infirm, crippled, and aged discovered new vitality, pushing and shoving and maneuvering with sharp elbows, as did relatives holding stretchers. Others sang boisterously in huddled candlelit circles or read loudly from little books; a few twitched and jerked as if possessed. On the floor and on the walls by the alcoves, Leonard saw the small objects they’d earlier seen for sale — a horse, a chain, a ship — as well as tiny paintings of little pilgrims, their palms pressed together in front of their faces — forgotten, probably, by pilgrims exhausted by their quest.

Crammed between the alcoves were stone figures sleeping on stone boxes — tombs, he heard a guide explain to six red-haired Swabians, and the alcoves were shrines, and the glittering pictures made from colored bits were mosaics. The stone figures were enthusiastically embraced by pilgrims; an old man lay outstretched on one, snoring.

What is that tall lady doing? Sally whispered.

She seems to be sweeping dust from a tomb into a travel pocket.

Can’t be.

Leonard had to agree: it couldn’t.

Between the shrines and tombs, the walls were covered by richly brocaded throw-cloths, and multicolored orbs tinkled mysteriously against one another; they appeared suspended in air, though in fact they hung from candleholders by tendrils of nearly invisible metal threading.

Why do you like this? Sally asked. I thought you liked your White Room. This is nothing like a White Room.

I did, Leonard said. Maybe because I didn’t know places like this existed. Look! he said, and pointed at a brazen figure of a seated man holding a key. Pilgrims were queuing to talk to this figure and to kiss its shiny toe.

Milione was right, he said. The world is full of wonders. You have only to look and pay attention.

Milione?

Another long story.

I’m tired of your long stories.

I’ll tell you everything when I can, Leonard said.

I’m tired of everything, Sally said. I didn’t nap this afternoon like you did, you know.

We’ll rest soon.

Do you think we’re safe? Sally asked.

I’m sure of it.

Will you look for signs and wonders, just to be sure?

Leonard put his arm around Sally’s shoulder but was tsk-tsked by a nun in a sweeping gray habit.

The strangeness and wonder of the world

And so they circled the great hall, which was actually transected at the far end by a shorter hall, Sally looking over her shoulder all the while for the man with the loud boots or the Frankish woman who thought they were evil, while Leonard marveled at the gilded candle-holding devices that hung ingeniously from the ceiling.

Leonard counted one hundred columns: eighty-eight in four rows separating the central hall from the four outer aisles, plus an additional twelve around the area where the two halls intersected. Again, he approved the decision, one hundred being ten squared, ten being the tetractys, or sum of the only numbers needed to geometrically define known objects (which is to say 1 + 2 + 3 + 4), but he found perplexing the variety of columns, which were not of uniform size or shape: the two in the front were black, for example, which anyone should know was a mistake.

When they finally returned to their corner, Sally said, Keep looking for signs and wonders, then fell promptly asleep on his shoulder.

Leonard closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then another, then maybe twenty more, and felt the strangeness and wonder of the world breathing through him in one great circular breath. He remembered Mill’s words — you have only to pay attention, to give yourself over to wonder — then opened his eyes and saw, with exquisite precision, clear at the other end of the hall, on a triumphal arch, a mosaic — a mosaic of the building itself, being offered to a scruffy man on a throne, and inside that building, a mosaic of the mosaic within the building, being offered to a man on a throne, and in that mosaic of the building, a mosaic of the building, and so on. All possible mosaics of the building locked into place, and Leonard saw them as if they were one cubit before him, their infinite edges sharp and clear. He looked away and saw the bloody bandage around a pilgrim’s head across the basilica; he smelled the man’s fear. He closed his eyes and smelled a hundred smells, each of them distinct: incense coiling from every shrine, the smell of the unwashed, every pilgrim with his or her particular scent, the odor of fish dinners, a dozen species of fish cooked according to the customs of a dozen lands. He heard a cacophony of languages; the shriekings and cryings, in all their echoing discord and variety, were as stirring and majestic as the NP theme song. He felt the innumerable gradations of cool marble against his back, and the pressure of Sally’s head against his shoulder: sweet Sally!