Better to be caged, she thought when her door remained shut the next time the coffin appeared. This time, however, when the grimy capsule opened, a fat little man—maybe the bearded creature she had seen surrounded by book stacks in the second dome—leaped gingerly onto the platform and looked around with the curiosity of a newborn, a queer impression enhanced by the rosy gloss of his skin, which looked as soft as undercooked meat.
In age he looked close to sixty, and although he was dressed too expensively to be a notary, he looked like one to Sofia. Beneath squinting eyes his neat beard circled a small mouth bent up into a nervous smile around which his fingers played; his hands were neither a fighter’s nor a worker’s—a scholar, then.
He glanced at his solemn escort from time to time as if seeking approval. The youngest Apprentice was more accustomed to the pit, and his attention didn’t wander as he led the way to her cell. Sofia instinctively took a step back on seeing the boy in yellow approach. The boy’s large hands and sure strength reminded Sofia powerfully of the Doc: he took his time but was confident in his power. He had a pallor strange to see on one in such obvious rude health. This period of his education was evidentially conducted indoors, far from the kindly eye of the sun.
Sofia couldn’t help but think of an oversized infant accompanied by a diminutive adult.
“Has it revolved today?” the little man asked.
“Probably not,” said the boy wearily.
“I wonder,” he began with a nervous titter, “would it be possible, do you suppose, to see it?”
“The current’s activated by a random algorithm.”
The fat man blinked innocently.
“I can’t turn it off,” the boy said slowly. “If we’re here, we’ll be shocked too.”
“Oh, I so wanted to see it!”
“Well, there’s a manual switch for each cell.”
He clapped his hands. “Really? May I? They—I mean, you—wouldn’t mind, would you?”
The boy sighed. “Why not question her first?”
“Oh! Yes, capital idea! Hello, hello in there?”
Sofia looked at the little face peering in the window.
“Do I have the great honor of greeting the Contessa Sofia Scaligeri?”
“What do you want?”
“Ha! Direct, isn’t she, Third Apprentice! In a word, Contessa, to be as forthright as you manage to be without apparently trying, what I want is a thing, a very small thing, useless to you but most precious to—”
“Names,” said the boy.
“I didn’t have any for you. I don’t have any for him.”
The little man chuckled, a sound like a blasphemy in this hopeless place.
“Not that kind of information, Contessa, oh, no! What did the Apprentices want to know, secret battle plans? Troop positions and such? Oh, no, I leave war to the experts. Wars start to interest me only when the contestants have been dead for a couple of decades. Which is to say, I am merely a humble historian. Though perhaps, ha ha, I should say with all modesty that ‘merely’ does not do my status full justice; I am, you see, rather well known in Concord—I daresay in all Etruria.”
He drew himself up to his full height, though the difference was hardly noticeable. “I am Count Titus Tremellius Pomptinus,” he announced, “Knight of the Order of Saint Jorge, Laureate of the Empire, and Librarian of the Imperial Record.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper as he went on. “I should add that several Tremellius generations were Concordian gonfaloniere—of course, that was when the office still existed!”
Sofia backed away to escape the historian’s breath. She suspected his performance was not only for her benefit.
The historian’s eyes bulged dramatically and he turned to the boy. “I mention that only as historical record.”
“Fine.”
Tremellius’s pudgy fingers played with his beard. “It is relevant, you see: she’s a noble too, so this will make her at ease with me.”
He didn’t seem to notice or care that she could hear every word. He turned back with an unctuous smile.
“Forgive my manners; we’ve become very proletarian these days. This is Torbidda, our current Third Apprentice!”
“We’ve met,” the boy said.
“Ah, well, then, you know already what a tremendously bright young fellow he is. Someday he’ll be First Apprentice, captaining our great ship of state, and you’ll remember my kindness then, won’t you?” He reached out as if to grab a cheek, then thought better of it.
“He helps me hold back the deluge. Ceaselessly! It pours ceaselessly in from the world’s every corner—Europa too. Some of them write, you know—so much information: tax forms, geographical and mineralogical surveys, political reports, census and books, so many books—in so many languages! The babble of the Hebrews I learned, the dusty tongues of Aegyptus, Grecia, and Etrusca, I exhumed, unwrapped, and conjured life into. Then came the hard bit, wrestling sense from them! My masters need information on so many subjects, and Contessa—”
Sofia drew back as he leaned in confidentially and whispered, “They are so impatient!” Crossly, he added, “I do it all alone! Well, perhaps not all alone.” Again he reached out to scruff the Apprentice’s hair, and again he changed his mind.
“As I mentioned, I am also a historian, and it is History that brings me here. And you to me, Contessa, in a manner of speaking, ha ha! We are all moved by its current; our tragedy is that we only become aware of it after its passage. Just like the Wave over Rasenna—you never saw it coming, did you? Ha ha! There’s still so much to understand about Concord’s rebirth, how it came to be, who drove it, and why. I of course have coursing blue blood in my veins, Contessa, like you, so you will assume I am, like you, biased against engineers . . .” He glanced at the boy.
“Well, you would be wrong! Quite wrong! Knowledge enlightens me, gives me the perspective to cast off the shackles of class consciousness and rejoice at liberation. The true value of the Concordian Empire is not land or slaves or new towns to tax, no, no, no! It is the Empire of Knowledge we have built. What was dark, Girolamo Bernoulli illuminated; that which was mystery, Nature and the Elements, we now understand, and in understanding, we control. The World, from Rasenna to Gubbio, has been flooded with our knowledge.”
“What do you want, fat man?”
“The proverbial blunt Rasenneisi. Is this the switch, Third Apprentice?”
The boy nodded. Tremellius turned the lever, and Sofia’s cell was suddenly flooded with blue light. She fell, immobile, to the ground.
Tremellius giggled uncontrollably as he looked in. “Contessa, the Apprentices don’t need you. I do. You’ll die soon without me. I can give you food, and if you cooperate—think of this!—I can get you transferred to another prison!” His innocent face was free of malice, simply happy.
“I ask only for names, dear child: sons, fathers, grandfathers. I am writing a history of Etruria, and you are the Scaligeri heir. I expect that you know all the branches of Rasenna’s family trees; I simply require a guide to help me navigate that tangled forest. It’s not going to hurt anyone. The people I’m interested in are long past harm. What say you, Contessa?”
Sofia tried to answer but only succeeded in drooling. “Guhsplurl.”
“She’ll be like this for an hour or so,” said the Third Apprentice.
“Really? Oh, merda—you might have warned me! I wanted to begin today!” Tremellius leaned into the window. “I can see you’re tired. Sleep on it, dear child. Dream dreams of gold and freedom.”
Next day, he came alone.
“Eat slowly,” he said as he handed a plate of dry chicken and hard bread to her.
Sofia placed the food on the floor. “Aren’t you going to hit the switch?”
“Oh, an accident, my dear! This old place just needs maintenance. Bernoulli said the body is the perfect machine, and you need maintenance too, ha ha! You must recover your strength. Let’s start over. Look! I brought a gift.”
He handed a rolled-up cloth though the barred window. “Now, I’m not silly enough to give a Rasenneisi a stick to go with a banner, but look, Contessa! The black and gold! Don’t you recognize Scaligeri colors? You see, I understand that blood matters. I knew it would give you some comfort to have it back, finally. Aren’t you going to unroll it?”
“A pillow. Thanks.” She threw it, still rolled up, into the corner. “You want information? So do I. How is it that the Apprentices know Water Style?”
The historian looked around cautiously as if expecting to find an Apprentice at his shoulder. “Well, they don’t call it that anymore, but I understand that Bernoulli taught it to his First Apprentice, the First Apprentice taught the Second, and so on.”
“But how did Bernoulli learn it?”
“You could say he taught himself. After the Re-Formation, the clergy weren’t exactly cooperative. You see, it’s said that men were originally taught by angels—”
“I’ve heard that one,” she said, crunching on the bread.
“Like so many old stories, once freed of religious trappings, it was explicable by Natural Philosophy. Bernoulli speculated these angels were pseudonaiades.”
“But the Wave made the buio.”
“Or perhaps it only brought them to our attention. In any case, in controlling rivers, Bernoulli also controlled the pseudonaiades.”
“Tortured them, you mean.” Sofia felt a strange foreboding. “You’re saying all engineers know it?”
The historian smiled. “Dear, silly child, of course not. Only the very gifted are even capable of learning it, and no one ever mastered it like Bernoulli. It’s taught in some elementary form to all cadets who become Apprenticeship candidates, which, I suppose, isn’t many.” He sighed wistfully. “Everything’s less romantic these days, isn’t it?”
Sofia looked up from the food. “If the body’s the perfect machine, why build a machine to ruin it? That’s what this is, right?”
“Only the Apprentices know the Molè’s purpose,” he said grudgingly, then smiled. “Besides, Bernoulli also said, ‘To know man, dissect man,’ which I’ve always taken to mean that you never truly appreciate something until you’ve taken it apart, ha ha, rather like History.”
“Don’t you ever think for yourself? What makes Bernoulli so special?”
Tremellius took the question as a great joke; his jowls started wobbling as he chuckled. “Ha ha! Where to begin? Bernoulli cast off the superstition that previously shackled us. I speak of Man, you understand, not merely Concordians. When the Molè falls and Time grinds the mountains to sand, Bernoulli’s proofs will remain inviolate.”
Sofia let him drone on until she had emptied the plate. She was still ravenous, but the food had given her a clearer head. “All right, what do you want to know?” she asked.
Days ground by. The drip still fell into its groove, but Sofia had given up trying to stop it. The Apprentices had given up on her too; they probably assumed she was dead, Tremellius joked. Most prisoners didn’t last to the water.
That was for the best. If there was to be any chance of escape, the Apprentices’ attentions had to be elsewhere. Nobody was coming to rescue her, certainly not the Doc; without Quintus Morello or the Reverend Mother to restrain him, Rasenna was his, as he had planned all along. Giovanni would have come for her, but he was dead.
Tremellius visited daily, feeding her in return for information. After Sofia ran out of Rasenneisi genealogies, she began to invent obscure dynasties until Tremellius finally became suspicious. In desperation, Sofia asked about his writing.
It was like a dam breaking.
Gurgling with pride, the fat little man told Sofia his book would be unique. “Bernoulli is naturally the central figure of my History, but mark me, Contessa, mine will be a realistic and sober portrait, with dark strokes when necessary.”
Feigning enthusiasm was unnecessary; Tremellius was enthusiastic enough for both of them. “We live in a new age because of him, Contessa! Think of the strength it took for a medieval mind to thrust us into this future. How he lifted us onto his giant shoulders is the subject of my tale. Most men are shaped by History’s current. Girolamo Bernoulli was a man who stood outside it.”