Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1)

by Josiah Bancroft

The Tower of Babel is sometimes called the Sink of Humanity. Its immensity, the variety of its ringdoms, its mysterious and luxurious heights are irresistible to all comers. We are drawn to it like water to a drain. —Introduction to Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel (Fourteenth Edition)

Since turning toward the Tower, they had been unable to see the grand spire from their cabin window. But this did not discourage Senlin’s description of it. “There is a lot of debate over how many levels there are. Some scholars say there are fifty-two, others say as many as sixty. It’s impossible to judge from the ground,” Senlin said, continuing the litany of facts he’d brought to his young wife’s attention over the course of their journey. “A number of men, mostly aeronauts and mystics, say that they have seen the top of it. Of course, none of them have any evidence to back up their boasts. Some of those explorers even claim that the Tower is still being raised, if you can believe that.” These trivial facts comforted him, as all facts did. Thomas Senlin was a reserved and naturally timid man who took confidence in schedules and regimens and written accounts.

He’d never expected to make the journey as a honeymooner. More to the point, he never imagined he’d find a woman who’d have him. Marya was his junior by a dozen years, but being in his midthirties himself, Senlin did not think their recent marriage very remarkable. It had raised a few eyebrows in Isaugh, though. Perched on rock bluffs by the Niro Ocean, the townsfolk of Isaugh were suspicious of anything that fell outside the regular rhythms of tides and fishing seasons. But as the headmaster, and the only teacher, of Isaugh’s school, Senlin was generally indifferent to gossip. He’d certainly heard enough of it. To his thinking, gossip was the theater of the uneducated, and he hadn’t gotten married to enliven anyone’s breakfast-table conversation. He’d married for entirely practical reasons. Marya was a good match. She was good tempered and well read; thoughtful, though not brooding; and mannered without being aloof. She tolerated his long hours of study and his general quiet, which others often mistook for stoicism. He imagined she had married him because he was kind, even tempered, and securely employed. He made fifteen shekels a week, for an annual salary of thirteen minas; it wasn’t a fortune by any means, but it was sufficient for a comfortable life. She certainly hadn’t married him for his looks. While his features were separately handsome enough, taken altogether they seemed a little stretched and misplaced.

Their honeymoon had been delayed by the natural course of the school year. He could’ve opted for a more convenient and frugal destination, a seaside hotel or country cottage in which they might’ve secluded themselves for a weekend, but the Tower of Babel was so much more than a vacation spot. A whole world stood balanced on a bedrock foundation. As a young man, he’d read about the Tower’s cultural contributions to theater and art, its advances in the sciences, and its profound technologies. Even electricity, still an unheard-of commodity in all but the largest cities of Ur, was rumored to flow freely in the Tower’s higher levels. It was the lighthouse of civilization. The old saying went, “The earth doesn’t shake the Tower; the Tower shakes the earth.”

The Tower had taken a thousand years to erect. More, according to some historians. Overwhelmed with wonder and the intense teeming of the Market, Senlin shivered. Marya squeezed his hand reassuringly, and his back straightened. He was a headmaster, after all, a leader of a modest community. Yes, there was a crowd to push through, but once they reached the Tower, the throng would thin. They would be able to stretch a little and would, almost certainly, find themselves among more pleasant company. In a few hours, they would be drinking a glass of port in a reasonable but hospitable lodging on the third level of the Tower—the Baths, locals called it—just as they had planned. They would calmly survey this same human swarm, but from a more comfortable distance.

Assuming that he referred to the overwhelming breadth of the Lost and Found, Boreas said, “I’ve spent my fair share of hours crossing my eyes at this wall.” “You’ve lost someone?” “My sister, Voleta.” “How long ago?” “Two years and a month.” “Oh, my word.” Senlin felt faint. His knees gave without warning, and he dropped into an awkward crouch with his back to the Tower. “What about the local authorities, the magistrates? Who polices the bazaar?” “There are a few roaming constables. You’ll occasionally see a man in a khaki uniform. But half of the time they aren’t really officials of any kind. They’re thugs who stole the uniform or bought it. Even the real constables can be treacherous. I’ve known more than a few men who’ve been beaten and robbed by them.”

“Is the Tower entirely ungoverned?” “It’s a little better inside, and even better higher up. There are many ringdoms where one power or another has taken up the law.”

In a panic, he felt the waistband of his trousers. The telltale lump of bills was still there. He let out a rueful laugh. How clever he had been to insist on the secret pockets! Though, really, how clever could he be? This marked the second time in as many days that he had been robbed.

He couldn’t help but feel disappointed: This was not the glittering center of culture he expected. The Basement might’ve been, for all its lackluster, a port town where sailors came to lose their sea legs. There were fountains of beer everywhere, for heaven’s sake! He’d passed six more since the first. The Everyman’s Guide was a little vague in its description of the Basement’s atmosphere, casting it as something of an amiable gateway to the greater attractions above, but even this seemed an exaggeration. It was more comforting to think of the Basement as the Tower’s mudroom. It was the place where one knocked the road from their boots before entering the hallowed halls above.

When Goll came up gasping for air, he said, “Don’t tell anyone you’re looking for your wife.” “Then how will I find her?” Senlin’s tone was incredulous, almost patronizing. He took to his own straw, still chugging away at the pedals. “With your eyes and your wits and all on your own. Most likely, you won’t find her at all. Women get sucked up the Tower like embers up a flue.” He flapped one hand and gave a buzzing whistle. “Anything in a skirt floats! Did you tell the boy who robbed you about your dear old dame?” “I did.” “And how did that go? He said kind things, hopeful things, I bet. He made you a babe in arms. He rocked you to sleep, and then he robbed you.” Goll shook his head until sweat whipped off his dark curls. “Not a solitary soul will help you here. The good souls don’t have the means or mind for it, and the bad souls will only bleed you dry. They’ll sell you rumors, maps, guidebooks, things more suited for wrapping fish than finding wives! You’ll get so much help you won’t have a shekel left. Assuming that you aren’t poor as a hod already …” He belched.

Soon as the pretty miss had passed through the warmly glowing glass doors, Senlin undertook what he hoped was a confident and resolute march toward the space between the guards, his head cocked high as a lord. But even as he approached, the gap closed, and he had to finally stop and recognize the imposters blocking him. “Not so quick, there, Master Long Shanks,” the larger guard said wryly. “There’s a two-shekel safe passage fee to proceed into the Parlor.” In his most reasonable tone, Senlin said, “I noted the lady ahead of me was not taxed for her safety. It seems hardly fair that she be given an exception while I—” His argument met a quick end as the shorter of the imposters drove his fist into Senlin’s stomach. As Senlin doubled forward, a second rabbit punch followed the first. He had been naive to think that such obvious thugs would respond to a rational discussion. There was nothing to do but learn the lesson, pay the two shekels, and carry on. “There is a four-shekel safe passage fee to proceed into the Parlor,” the larger guard said with mechanical grimness.

Love, as the poets so often painted it, was just bald lust wearing a pompous wig. He believed true love was more like an education: It was deep and subtle and never complete.

If the actors are any good, or the script is, or the director, then the audience will be as quiet as a sigh. Unless, of course, the play is a comedy. Then quiet is a terrible and tormenting thing. —Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, III. XI

Senlin felt the return of his rational mind, and the first thought to emerge from the dark of his instinct was as clear as it was heartbreaking: Marya will never know if I die. If I die, she’ll think I abandoned her.

The attendant’s face was stony; if he had any compunction about shooting a man, he showed no sign of it now.

Senlin had to pass several alcoves before he glimpsed the object of their attention. It was a brass eyepiece of the sort one might find on a telescope. The implication was almost immediately clear. The brass nubs in the walls of the staged mansion weren’t valves. They were peepholes. It took him a moment more to realize that this was good news. One man’s spy is another man’s witness! There had to be a witness to the ordeal. Someone witnessed Pining’s murder. Someone saw Mayfair fire at them and then drag Edith away with what must’ve been, Senlin shuddered to think, the vilest of intentions. Their play hadn’t been without an audience after all. He and Edith would be vindicated!

Senlin had no notion of what more he could’ve said to Edith, in any case. Perhaps it was just as well they avoid a final, awkward farewell. She was bound for home, and he still had more of the Tower to climb. He hoped she would be on her farm soon enough, hoped she could again become the Generaless, and hoped that he would become just a minor actor in a horror story she’d strive to forget. How could he say all of that in a goodbye? Better to leave them both with some dignity. So much had already been taken from them.

His voice was hoarse but forceful. “But you would do well to speak more quietly about the commissioner’s sins. His ears are everywhere. There are men who would welcome a revolution, but we are few.” “Then why don’t you just leave?” Senlin said with disarming honesty, peeling Tarrou’s hand from his arm. Tarrou looked as if he’d been pricked. “Of course, I am. In the morning.” “I need another glass before I dive after that little fable,” Senlin said.

“I am upset because we have pooled our human genius into the building of an elaborate Tower and have filled it up with the same tyrants that have plagued our race since we crawled from the sea. Why does our innovation never extend to our conscience?”

And, Senlin neglected to say, he was increasingly worried that home was where he would find Marya, long since returned by some easy means he’d failed to imagine. She was probably enduring all sorts of gossip and speculation. What had she told their neighbors? That her new husband had abandoned her? That she was perhaps a widow? What choice did he have but to go home? He was running out of money, and his ticket wouldn’t be honored forever. If only he could afford to fly, he could bypass the whole slog back down the Tower! “I am going home,” Tarrou said, chin on his chest. “I’m serious.” “So am I.” “How long have you been here, Tarrou? Six months? A year? You seem more a fixture than a visitor.” The large man’s jaw worked, sawed nearly, until the words hissed out. “Sixteen years.”

The painted scene was of a bench. Behind it, the reservoir scintillated with morning sun, and the conch-like silhouette of the Fountain spiraled upward, jets of steam whistling out in white spokes. It was an evocative scene, if not an unusual style. But it was not the style or backdrop that struck him now. Sitting on the bench in the near foreground was a woman. Her form had been captured in just a few strokes, yet Senlin couldn’t mistake her figure or the crimson-colored helmet. The humiliated painter had finally risen and was brushing the street dust from his knees when Senlin hooked his arm tightly, holding the canvas before him. “Where did you paint this? When did you paint this? Where is this woman?” he asked desperately, and pointed to the captured image of Marya.

The truth, when finally told, will often sound strange, while a lie is so often familiar.

A cabin boy on the waiting ferry rang a bell three times, and the women began to file across the treacherous, jouncing gangplank. “Thomas, I am sorry that I couldn’t trust you from the beginning. I thought that the Count had sent you. I was sure you were a spy trying to catch me out. I know I tested you viciously. I’m sorry.”

“What about you? What if Pound suspects—” Senlin began, but Ogier quickly broke in. “As much as he might like to, the commissioner won’t touch me. There are greater forces at work, and fortunately for me, greater forces need me alive.” “I don’t understand,” Senlin said. “And there isn’t time to explain. Bon voyage, my friend.”

It is easier to accept who you’ve become than to recollect who you were. Go after her. Drearily Yours, J. Tarrou

There is a narcotic, unique to the Tower and in particular New Babel, called White Chrom or Crumb, among other things. The porters call it Crumb because it makes the real world seem like the sort of thing a mouse could eat in one bite and still be hungry. —Every Man’s Tower, One Man’s Travails by T. Senlin

“I bet you didn’t learn those tricks from your guidebook!” Senlin refused to cringe at any of this, despite a sudden sense of humiliation. He turned and frowned in a shrugging way, and said, “I’m not going to defend that pap. I find it incredible that a guidebook could be so misguided and still see a fourteenth edition.” “It’s not so surprising if you know that most of the writers who worked on it never actually set foot in the Tower.” “Surely not,” Senlin scoffed.

Goll said, his voice lilting up merrily. “Let me tell you the most useful fact that every one of those bog rolls leaves out: The Tower is a tar pit. Once you put a toe in her, you’re caught forever. No one leaves. No one goes home.” “Of course people go home,” Senlin said, suppressing a rueful snort. He was finding it increasingly impossible to be convivial. Who was Goll to patronize and intimidate him like this? “I wouldn’t have taken you for a conspiratorial sort, Mr. Goll.” Senlin pulled himself up. He attempted to tidy his cuffs, though both were soiled with grease, the result of his recent flight. Goll watched his preening with amusement. “People go home,” Senlin insisted. “I and my wife will go home.”

Goll continued in his own vein, unperturbed by Senlin’s protest. “But why, I’m sure you’re wondering, why not just recruit a new port master from the comfort of my own port? Why go all the way down to the Basement to scrabble about for talent? All I have to do is sit on my back stoop and quiz the incoming masses. I could just ask every knuckle-dragging mouth-breather through the gate, ‘Are you any good with numbers? Are you loyal? Are you honest? Are you reasonable?’” Goll ticked the virtues off on splayed, thick fingers. “That’s exactly what I did, too, and I ended up with a string of incompetent, unreliable liars who almost robbed me blind. Because, see, by the time they get this deep into the Tower, most have had the character beaten out of them. They are willing to say anything to get what they want. You can’t reason with them or trust them. To know a person, to understand their character, you must know who they were before the Tower shook them to their roots. If you do not know how they changed, you do not know who they became.

“Powerful men fail just as much, if not more often, than the failures. The exceptional thing is that they admit it; they take and hold up their failures. They claim their disappointments; they move on!”

An ancient and beloved teacher once told me that a journal is the only book a man can undertake and know for certain he will one day finish.

Between the heel of the rod and the first line were the words, “The Genesis.” Then, above the next line, “Algez’s Parlor,” and above the next, “The Baths.” It was a model of the Tower—a three-dimensional map! It took him a half hour to clean it fully and a half hour more to oil it and file down several obnoxious burrs. There were thirty-five segments in all, and though many of the segments were blank or had been purposefully scratched out, nineteen of the sections were clearly marked. Senlin saw evidence of at least three different hands in the shaping of the letters. It was marvelous!

He wished that he could put off the remainder of Adam’s miserable confession. But, as is often the case with men, once the silence has been broken, it can’t be recovered until everything has been said.

Though thrown off balance by the outburst, Adam stubbornly pressed the point. “Even if you don’t have the painting, you could sell him information about who does. With just a little money in our pocket—” Senlin cut him off. “No, Adam! No, I am not going to bargain with the commissioner. That’s the end of it!” Senlin pounded the table once, making his book jump. Adam looked as if he’d been slapped, which Senlin regretted, though it did not cool his response. “Look, you will never have enough money to pry Voleta loose of her contract because Rodion sees no advantage in letting her go. He will just take your money and sell her again to someone else. Why not? What will you do to stop him? If you want to see your sister freed, we will have to do it ourselves!”

It wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for: a silk cord tied carefully to an eyelet screwed close to the edge on the underside of the pier. He couldn’t see where the cord ended because it ran down and around the limb of the Tower, but he was sure it led to the Baths. The Red Hand had had a long and treacherous climb up, but a quick slide back down. Senlin set a hook knife to the cord and snipped the line. One thing was certain: Someone in the Port of Goll had tied the line and let it out. Someone in New Babel was conspiring with the commissioner.

I’m going to feel very weak, and you’re going to feel very dumb. But that’s how it always is in the beginning. Learning starts with failure.”

… Iren, dearie, please read the directions I’ve given you.” She studied the scrap of paper, her brow furrowing with the effort. The words came in fits and starts. “Make … a fist … with your hand and … put it to Tom’s head … three … tims.” “That last word is times, dearie. Seems you didn’t enact such a miracle after all, Tom.” Goll drew a whistling breath. Iren stood in a stupor, staring down at the note in her hands. Senlin watched as she grappled with the decision, and he found himself silently willing her to strike him before it was too late. Goll was testing her loyalty. She had to strike before suspicion set in. She recovered herself in an instant. Stepping forward, she took Senlin by the collar and without ceremony, struck him in the face again and again and again. The only mercy she paid him was to spread her blows evenly across his head, and still it felt like the kick of a mule. “Ho, ho, hold there, Iren. That’s good. That’s five! I only asked for three!” Goll was greatly amused by the extra blows. Senlin’s face streaked with blood and tears. Iren dropped him, and he fell right through his knees to his tailbone. He bounced against the ground and spilled onto his back. The world was haloed in red, and at the center was Goll’s round face. “Tom, you would’ve done well to have taught her to count before you began the alphabet,” Goll said. “At our age, education is a waste. You can’t defend yourself, she can’t count, and I can’t learn to trust. We are too deep in our ru...

Everything I’ve read on the subject suggests that five able bodies are required to make a skeletal crew. Counting myself, Adam, and Voleta, and presuming that I can recruit Iren, I’m still one short. I suppose I could advertise in the station yard: Aeronaut wanted for crusade into certain peril and probable death. Low wages, moral reward; philanthropists preferred.

“Well, thank you. To my point! There are many men in the Basement who spend all day pumping water on these machines called beer-me-go-rounds. The name says it all, really; the men pump and are paid a pitiful amount of bad beer. Even so, there is never a shortage of men willing to pump, and there are dozens of beer-mes, so amounts of water are being drawn every hour from the deep wells under the valley.” “I don’t care,” Iren said. “In the Parlor, people pay to roam around in costumes, acting important, and bickering, sometimes with swords. For this privilege, they must do two things: pay, which is diabolical, and work. The real task of the ‘visitor’ is to keep the fires stoked. The whole thing is an elaborate means of making and maintaining fires to produce heat, and cheaply so. The pumped water is heated inside the chimneys through what must be the most esoteric system of plumbing in the history of the world. The heated pipes run all throughout the Parlor, up to the Baths, where they converge into a single source. The Baths act as both a regulator of heat and pressure. Excess steam is vented, and tourists pay to romp in the byproduct of this immense engine.”

“We think of the Tower as an attraction or a market, but it’s neither. It is an engine. The whole bottom four ringdoms are just a single, immense dynamo. Water, fire, steam, and then it turns into spark here, in New Babel!” Senlin held up his hands, as if to receive applause. Iren continued to hunker before him like an implacable toad. He dropped his hands in exasperation. “Where does all that energy go? A small amount trickles out locally to gross, dim bulbs and static overflows, yes, but think of it: Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men and women are working tirelessly to produce an energy that is not for them. So, who built it? Who is it for? What are they doing with all this power? Why are we paying for it and suffering to make something that does not help us—that in fact enslaves us?”

It was not fair that she, who’d already suffered so much, be punished a second time for keeping his company. It was not fair, but neither was it a surprise. Not if he was honest. Obsession made him dangerous to his friends. They fell so he could climb.

Perhaps not. But then, could any of these arguments, sanguine as they were, ever restore his trust in Adam? Senlin was unsure, but he decided, with only minutes remaining to his life, that he would try to forgive Adam at least.

I still recall a line from that feckless Everyman’s Guide. It said something like, “the Tower’s real trade is in whimsy, adventure, and romance.” I cannot imagine a less accurate trio. Though, who in their right minds would’ve come if the editors had said, “the Tower’s true trade is in tyranny, dismemberment, and heartbreak”?

“Scour the port. Bring me any cargo that you find!” he ordered his men, and then turning to Senlin, said, “If you only knew whom you have troubled with this idiotic caper.” His voice buzzed through the blunt silver tusks of his mask. “I’m not even allowed to kill you, because there is a long and illustrious line of men who want to contribute to your demise. They will have to hold a lottery, I suppose, or draw straws for the pleasure of dissecting you.”

I must remind myself that Marya will not have gone unchanged by the Tower. I only need to look in the mirror to convince myself of that. She may be posing as another man’s wife, or she may have been ruined, as Voleta was so nearly ruined, or she might be mangled, like poor Edith. Whatever Marya’s state, whatever mine, I will find her, and I will carry her home.