‘What happened then?’ asked Robin.
‘Then Richard Lovell joined the faculty,’ said Anthony. ‘I hear he’s something like a genius with Far Eastern languages. He’s contributed two volumes to the Chinese Grammatica alone.’
Reverently, Robin reached out and pulled the first volume of the Chinese Grammatica towards him. The tome felt inordinately heavy, each page weighted down by ink. He recognized Professor Lovell’s cramped, neat handwriting on each page. It covered an astonishing breadth of research. He put the volume down, struck with the unsettling realization that Professor Lovell – a foreigner – knew more about his mother tongue than he did.
‘Why are these under display cases?’ asked Victoire. ‘Seems rather difficult to take them out.’
‘Because these are the only editions in Oxford,’ said Anthony. ‘There are backups at Cambridge, Edinburgh, and the Foreign Offices in London. Those are updated annually to account for new findings. But these are the only comprehensive, authoritative collections of knowledge of every language that exist. New work is added by hand, you’ll notice – it costs too much to reprint every time new additions are made, and besides, our printing presses can’t handle that many foreign scripts.’
‘So if a fire tore through Babel, we could lose a full year of research?’ asked Ramy.
‘A year? Try decades. But that’ll never happen.’ Anthony tapped the table, which Robin noticed was inlaid with dozens of slim silver bars. ‘The Grammaticas are better protected than the Princess Victoria. These books are impervious to fire, flood, and attempted removal by anyone who isn’t in the Institute register. If anyone tried to steal or damage one of these, they’d be struck by an unseen force so powerful they’d lose all sense of self and purpose until the police arrived.’
‘The bars can do that?’ Robin asked, alarmed.
‘Well, something close,’ Anthony said. ‘I’m just guessing. Professor Playfair does the protective wards, and he likes to be mysterious about them. But yes, the security of this tower would astound you. It looks like your standard Oxford building, but if anyone ever tried to break in, they’d find themselves bleeding out on the street. I’ve seen it happen.’
‘That’s a lot of protection for a research building,’ said Robin. His palms felt suddenly clammy; he wiped them on his gown.
‘Well, of course,’ said Anthony. ‘There’s more silver in these walls than in the vaults of the Bank of England.’
‘Truly?’ Letty asked.
‘Of course,’ said Anthony. ‘Babel is one of the richest places in the entire country. Would you like to see why?’
They nodded. Anthony snapped his fingers and beckoned for them to follow him up the stairs.
The eighth floor was the only part of Babel that lay hidden behind doors and walls. The other seven were designed following an open floor plan, with no barriers surrounding the staircase, but the stairs to the eighth floor led to a brick hallway which in turn led to a heavy wooden door.
‘Fire barrier,’ Anthony explained. ‘In case of accidents. Seals off the rest of the building so that the Grammaticas don’t get burnt if something up here explodes.’ He leaned his weight against the door and pushed.
The eighth floor looked more like a workshop than a research library. Scholars stood bent around worktables like mechanics, holding assortments of engraving tools to silver bars of all shapes and sizes. Whirring, humming, drilling sounds filled the air. Something exploded near the window, causing a shower of sparks followed by a round of cursing, but no one so much as glanced up.
A portly, grey-haired white man stood waiting for them in front of the workstations. He had a broad, smile-wrinkled face and the sort of twinkling eyes that could have placed him anywhere between forty and sixty. His black master’s gowns were coated with so much silver dust that he shimmered whenever he moved. His eyebrows were thick, dark, and extraordinarily expressive; they seemed ready to leap off his face with enthusiasm whenever he spoke.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’m Professor Jerome Playfair, chair of the faculty. I dabble in French and Italian, but my first love is German. Thank you, Anthony, you’re free to go. Are you and Woodhouse all set for your Jamaica trip?’
‘Not yet,’ said Anthony. ‘Still need to track down the Patois primer. I suspect Gideon took it without signing it out again.’
‘Get on, then.’
Anthony nodded, tipped an imaginary hat at Robin’s cohort, and retreated back through the heavy door.
Professor Playfair beamed at them. ‘So now you’ve seen Babel. How are we all doing?’
For a moment, no one spoke. Letty, Ramy, and Victoire all seemed as stunned as Robin felt. They’d been exposed to a great deal of information at once, and the effect was that Robin wasn’t sure the ground he stood on was real.
Professor Playfair chuckled. ‘I know. I had the same impression on my first day here as well. It’s rather like an induction into a hidden world, isn’t it? Like taking food in the seelie court. Once you know what happens in the tower, the mundane world doesn’t seem half as interesting.’
‘It’s dazzling, sir,’ said Letty. ‘Incredible.’
Professor Playfair winked at her. ‘It’s the most wonderful place on earth.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Now I’d like to tell a story. Forgive me for being dramatic, but I like to mark this occasion – your first day, after all, in what I believe is the most important research centre in the world. Would that be all right?’
He didn’t need their approval, but they nodded regardless.
‘Thank you. Now, we know this following story from Herodotus.’ He paced several steps before them, like a player marking out his position on the stage. ‘He tells us of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who once formed a pact with Ionian sea raiders to defeat the eleven kings who had betrayed him. After he had overthrown his enemies, he gave large tracts of land to his Ionian allies. But Psammetichus wanted an even better guarantee that the Ionians would not turn on him as his former allies once had. He wanted to prevent wars based on misunderstandings. So he sent young Egyptian boys to live with the Ionians and learn Greek so that when they grew up, they could serve as interpreters between the two peoples.
‘Here at Babel, we take inspiration from Psammetichus.’ He peered around, and his sparkling gaze landed on each of them in turn as he spoke. ‘Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.
‘You’ve noticed by now, surely, that Babel alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin. Nowhere else in this country will you find Hindus, Muslims, Africans, and Chinamen studying under the same roof. We accept you not despite, but because of your foreign backgrounds.’ Professor Playfair emphasized this last part as if it was a matter of great pride. ‘Because of your origins, you have the gift of languages those born in England cannot imitate. And you, like Psammetichus’s boys, are the tongues that will speak this vision of global harmony into being.’
He clasped his hands before him as if in prayer. ‘Anyhow. The postgrads make fun of me for that spiel every year. They think it’s trite. But I think the situation calls for such gravity, don’t you? After all, we’re here to make the unknown known, to make the other familiar. We’re here to make magic with words.’