Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“How many? I don’t know. Fifty or so.”

“And how many would follow you faithfully? A dozen, at least?”

“Yeah, thereabout. Why?”

Orso grinned deliriously and tapped the side of his head. “I don’t know what it is about mortal panic,” he said, “but it keeps giving me the best scrumming ideas. We’re just going to need to file some paperwork. And maybe buy some property.”

The Scrappers exchanged a glance. “Oh boy,” said Gio quietly.

Sancia sat opposite Berenice, watching as the girl dashed from blackboard to parchment to scriving blocks, writing strings of sigils on any surface she could find with a mesmerizing, liquid grace. She’d finished two definition plates so far. The plates themselves were about two feet in diameter, wrought of steel, and they were covered in looping spirals of impossibly delicate bronze sigils — all put there by Berenice’s flowing stylus.

Berenice looked up from her work, a strand of hair clinging to her sweaty forehead. She seemed to glow with a happy energy — and Sancia could not look away.

“Ask it if it says anything about elevation,” Berenice said breathlessly.

Sancia blinked, startled. “Huh? What?”

“Ask the rig if it needs anything about elevation!”

“I told you, it doesn’t respond well to my questi—”

“Just do it!”

Sancia did so. She shut her eyes, then opened them and said, “It doesn’t seem to know what elevation even is.”

“Perfect!” cried Berenice.

“Is it?” asked Sancia.

“It’s one less hole I need to fill,” said Berenice, scribbling away.

Orso walked up and looked over Sancia’s shoulder. “We’ve done our part. Where are we here?”

Berenice peered through a massive magnifying lens at the third definition plate. She wrote one last string in her tiny script, then set the plate aside and picked up the fourth empty one. She said, “Three done. One left.”

“Good,” said Orso. “I’ll load them into the test lexicon.”

He took the definition plates away. Sancia kept her eyes and her hands on the gravity rig — but as she heard Orso clinking and clanking away behind her, the rig suddenly glowed brighter, and brighter…and then it started talking to her.

said the rig with a mad cheer.

“Oh my God,” she said lowly. “It’s working.”

“Excellent,” said Berenice. “What’s it asking for now?”

“I think it wants to know how dense the mass is. In other words, it wants to know how much of a force to effect on the item touching the plates.” She swallowed. “Which will be my body.”

Berenice paused and sat back. “Ah…Well. I have a question for you here.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t have time to make really fine controls. So you’re going to have to tell the plates the density of this mass — how fast you want to go, basically,” said Berenice. “You’ll have to tell it, say, that there are six Earths in the sky — and then you’ll be pulled up at six times the rate of Earth’s gravity, minus Earth’s own actual gravitational effects. See?”

Sancia furrowed her brow. “So…you’re saying there’s a huge scrumming margin of error here.”

“Unimaginably huge.”

“And…what’s the question you have for me?” said Sancia.

“I actually don’t have a question,” said Berenice. “I just wanted to tell you all this without you immediately panicking.” She went back to work.

“Great,” said Sancia faintly.

Another hour ticked by. Then another.

Orso kept an eye on the Michiel clock tower out the window. “Six o’clock,” he said nervously.

“Almost finished,” said Berenice.

“You keep saying that. You said that an hour ago.”

“But I mean it this time.”

“You said that an hour ago too.”

“Orso,” said Sancia, “shut the hell up and let her work!”

Another sigil. Another massive sheaf of parchment. Another dozen styli ruined, another dozen inkpots and bowls of melted bronze. But then, at eight o’clock…

Berenice paused, squinting through the lens. Then she sat back and sighed, looking exhausted. “I…I think I’m done.”

Orso grabbed the definition without a word, ran to the test lexicon, put it in, and turned it on. “Sancia!” he called. “How’s it look?”

The rig now glowed bright in her hands — but not solidly bright. It wasn’t a complete rig, in other words, just most of one. But from what Berenice had said, they might not need the whole thing.

said the rig with a manic happiness.

Her belly squirmed with anxiety. She wanted to make sure she understood how this thing worked before she told it what to do.

squealed the plates.

She was beginning to understand. she said.

said the plates.

Instantly, Sancia’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, like she had a live mouse running around in her intestines. Something had…changed. Her head felt heavy — much like her blood was being pulled up into her skull.

“Well?” said Orso impatiently.

Sancia took a breath, and stood up.

But then…she just kept going.

She stared around, terrified, as her body rose up toward the ceiling at a steady pace. It wasn’t fast, but it felt fast, probably because she was panicking. “Oh my God!” she said. “Holy shit! Somebody grab me!”

They did not grab her. They just stared.

“Looks like it works, yeah,” said Gio.

To her relief, she started to come back down again — but she seemed to be falling toward a big stack of empty metal bowls on a nearby table. “Shit!” she said. “Shit, shit!” She kicked around helplessly, and they all watched as she slowly, inevitably collided with the pile of bowls, which went crashing and clanging all over the workshop.

Sancia shouted at the rig.

Instantly, the lightness died inside her, and she crashed onto the table and fell to the ground.

Berenice, delighted, stood up and punched a fist into the air. “Yes. Yes! Yes! I did it, I did it, I did it! ”

Sancia, groaning, stared up at the ceiling.

“This is what she’s going to do to stop Estelle?” said Gio. “She’s going to do that?”

“Let’s call this,” said Orso, “a qualified success.”

An hour later, and they reviewed their plan.

“So we have what we need,” said Orso. “But…we still need to get our empty box within a mile and a half of the Mountain. That’s the farthest the gravity rig will work.”

“So we still need a way through the walls?” said Claudia. “Into the campo?”

“Yes. But only a bit,” said Orso. “A quarter mile or so.”

Claudia sighed. “I don’t suppose Sancia could use the rig to jump over the walls and open the gates from the inside.”

“Not without getting shot to bits,” said Gio. “If the whole campo’s locked down, the guards at the gates will shoot anyone who gets close.”