Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

He found himself promptly disabused of these notions when he entered the lexicon chamber and instantly heard the words, “Who the shit are you?”

Gregor blinked in the dim light while his eyes adjusted. The lexicon chamber was wide, dark, and mostly empty. There was a thick glass wall at the back with an open door set in its center, and a tall, thin man stood in the doorway, staring at Gregor. He wore a thick apron, thick gloves, and a pair of thick, dark goggles. He held in his hands a threatening-looking tool, some kind of bendy, looped metal wand with a lot of sharp teeth.

“P-pardon?” said Gregor.

The man tossed the wand away, lifted his goggles, and a pair of pale, deep-set, harsh eyes stared at him. “I said, who. The shit. Are you ?” asked Orso Ignacio, this time much louder.

Orso had the look of an artist or sculptor who’d just stepped away from his studio, wearing a stained, beige shirt and off-white hose under his apron, and his beaked shoes — customary for the highest echelons — were ratty and had holes in the toes. His white hair rose up in a wild, unkempt shock, and his once-handsome face was dark and lined and skeletally thin, as if the man had sat for too long in a fish curer’s shed.

Gregor cleared his throat. “I apologize. Good morning, Hypatus. I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you during this most diffic—”

Orso rolled his eyes and looked across the room. “Who is he?”

Gregor peered through the shadows, and saw that there was someone else at the back of the room, someone he’d missed: a tall, rather pretty girl with a still, closed face. She was sitting on the floor before a tray of scriving blocks — an abacus-like device that scrivers used to test scriving strings — and she was popping the blocks in and out with a frightening speed, like a professional scivoli player moving their pieces across the board, creating a steady clackclackclack sound.

The girl paused and glanced at Gregor, her face immaculately inscrutable. “I believe,” she said, in a quiet, even voice, “that that is Captain Gregor Dandolo.”

Gregor frowned at her, surprised. He’d never met this girl in his life. The girl calmly resumed slotting the blocks in and out of the tray.

“Oh,” said Orso. “Ofelia’s boy?” He peered at Gregor. “My God , you’ve gained weight.”

The girl — Gregor suspected she was Orso’s assistant of some kind — cringed ever so slightly.

But Gregor was not insulted. The last time Orso had glimpsed him he’d probably just returned from the wars. “Yes,” said Gregor. “That tends to happen when a person goes from a place that has no food at all to a place that has some.”

“Fascinating,” said Orso. “So. What the hell are you doing down here, Captain?”

“Yes, I—”

“You’re still slumming it down at the waterfront, right?” His eyes suddenly burned with a strange fury. “If there is still a waterfront to slum in, that is.”

“Yes, and in fact I—”

“Well, as you may notice, Captain…” He held his hands out and gestured to the large, dark, empty room. “Our current environs are bereft of waters, as well as fronts of all kinds. Not much for you to do here, it seems. Got plenty of doors, though. Loads of ’em.” Orso turned to examine something behind him. “I advise you scrumming make use of one. Any one, I frankly don’t care.”

Gregor strode forward into the chamber, and said in a slightly louder voice, “I am here to ask you, Hypatus…” Then he stopped, wincing as a headache pulsed through his skull, and rubbed his forehead.

Orso looked at him. “Yes?” he said.

Gregor took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Take your time.”

He swallowed and tried to collect himself — but the headache persisted. “Does that…does that go away?”

“No.” Orso was smiling unpleasantly. “Never been near a lexicon before?”

“I have, but this one seems very…”

“Big?”

“Yes. Big. The machine is off, isn’t it? I mean — that’s the problem, correct?”

Orso scoffed and turned to stare at the device behind him. “Right now, it is not ‘off,’ as you put it — the more accurate term is reduced . It’s difficult to turn a lexicon just off —it’s not a damned windmill, it’s a collection of assertions about physics and reality. Turning it off would be like, oh, converting a striper into all the carbon and calcium and nitrogen and whatever else makes it up — conceptually feasible? Sure, why not. Practically possible? Not scrumming likely.”

“I…see,” said Gregor. Though in truth he was nowhere close to seeing.

Orso’s assistant exhaled softly, as if to say— Here he goes again.

Orso grinned at Gregor over his shoulder. “Want to come closer? Take a look?”

Gregor knew Orso was goading him — the closer you got to a lexicon, the more uncomfortable it felt. But Gregor wanted to put Orso’s guard down, however he could — and allowing himself to be toyed with was one option.

Squinting in pain, he walked over to the glass wall and looked in at the lexicon. It resembled a huge metal can lying on its side, only the can had been cut into tiny slivers or discs — thousands of them, or maybe even millions. He knew in vague terms that each disc was full of scriving definitions — the instructions or arguments that convinced scrived devices to work the way they ought to — though he was aware that he understood this to about the same degree that he understood that his brain was what did all his thinking for him.

“I’ve never seen one this close before,” said Gregor.

“Almost no one has,” said Orso. “The stress of all that meaning, forcing reality to comply with so many arguments — it makes the thing hot as hell, and damned difficult to be around. And yet, last night this device — all its assertions about reality — went poof , and turned off. Like blowing out a damned candle. Which, as I have just generously described to you, ought to be impossible.”

“How?” asked Gregor.

“Beats the ever-living shit out of me!” said Orso with savage cheer. He joined the girl at the scriving blocks and watched as she plugged in strings one after the other, the tiny metal cubes flying in and out as her fingers danced over the tray with blinding speed. Each time, a tiny glass at the top of the tiles would glow softly. “Now all kinds of goddamn strings work!” he said. “They work perfectly, implacably, and inarguably! How comforting. It’s like the whole thing never happened.”

“I see,” said Gregor. “And, may I ask — who is this, exactly?” He nodded at the girl.

“Her?” Orso seemed surprised by the question. “She’s my fab.”

Gregor did not know what a “fab” was, and the girl seemed uninterested in answering, ignoring them as she tested string after string of sigils. He decided to move on.

“Was it sabotage?” he asked. “Another merchant house?”

“Again — beats the ever-living shit out of me,” said Orso. “I’ve checked all the infrastructural scrivings that keep the thing afloat, and those strings are all working away, cheery as can be. The lexicon itself doesn’t show any damage. It shows no sign of having been properly or improperly reduced. If the dumb piece of shit who’s in charge of maintenance could confirm the thing’s regularly scheduled checkups, I could rule that out. And the tiles are all arranged in some pretty basic, boring, conventional configurations. Right?”