The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [119]
"Where to?" asked Irene.
"Oxford," the Turk said.
"Are you sure?" Orphan said. "They had a baruchlandau. Why don't they use that?"
"The roads are blocked, Orphan," Irene said. "The only way out is by train. And even that's risky."
"Can you not just stop them there?" Orphan said. "You have means."
"Very few," the Turk admitted. "I am not as powerful as you seem to think I am. I can only calculate and project, not perform miracles."
"Maybe you should start, if you want to survive this," Orphan said cruelly.
Byron suddenly grinned. "Good!" he said. "You still have spirit. Follow them, Orphan. Find the Bookman. Whatever happens, you must bring back the Translation."
Orphan looked at him. He could not read the automaton's face. "What would you do with it?" he said. They didn't answer. "You don't even know, do you?" he said.
"It was promised to us–"
"Promised?" he laughed. He no longer set much faith in promises. Perhaps they could see it in his face.
A pained expression (as fake as the rest of him, Orphan thought) passed over Byron's face. "It has been a long time coming," he said. "It could change the world."
"The world is changing!" Orphan shouted, and heads turned. "And not in a good way!"
"We are trying to stop it!"
"By using me? By using people like pawns in a stupid game?"
"By taking risks, Orphan! By making choices, none of which may be pleasant ones! Damn it, boy, life isn't a book! You can't expect justice to triumph! Not without help! In the real world heroes don't always live through till the end. And sometimes, Orphan, no one gets the girl."
"Sometimes the girl is already dead," Orphan said, bitterness making him spit out the words.
"Leave us," the Turk said. "Do what you think is right. Follow your heart – which is something those of us who have none would like very much to be able to do. We will try to hold the city together."
He gestured with his long arm, the long delicate fingers of the chess player picking out the faces in the crowd all around them, and suddenly it came to Orphan: nothing was left to chance. This was not an accidental gathering. There were the Turk and Byron in their corner and there, on the opposite end, Isabella and Sir Hercules.
And there, too, he saw now, were all the others: he became aware of the undercurrents, the swift glances, the murmured conversations that said one thing but meant another: there, in the darkest corner, beyond a curtain, were two royal lizards (he could just see the tip of a tail emerging from behind the screen); there, in another, a group of lizard boys, their tattoos covered up in tweed jackets, the ridges on their heads hidden under low-slung caps; and there, his face to the window, seen only in profile – the sharp nose, the alert eye, the hint of a smile curved around a Meerschaum pipe – a familiar face, though seen only twice, and in disguise.
And beside him, too busy with his food, it seemed, to notice anything around him – a fat man he well recognised. They were very similar, those two, he thought now.
It was a council of war.
The fate of the city, Orphan thought, would be decided here, over port and cigars, at the end of the meal. Was this how revolutions started? Or was that how they end?
He thought – This is not my concern. It was a sudden relief. The city did not need him. But Lucy did. And the other, too, now. He could not abandon them. He would find the Bookman, and he would face him.
Orphan looked at the Turk.
"I'll go," he said.
THIRTY-FIVE
Down the Rabbit-Hole
The greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection,