As the Doctor studied the letter, Giovanni told him Pedro’s scheme in broad strokes.
He chuckled. “Won’t even the odds, but it’ll give them a scare. I hope the legion they send is the Twelfth. Luparino never did have much salt.”
The letter that had brought Giovanni to the Tower Bardini that evening was the latest of the exchange that had been carried out over the summer. In contrast to previous missives, its language was polite, almost timid.
Giovanni was optimistic. “Perhaps we’ll have more time than expected before they grasp our intentions.”
The Doctor rolled up the letter and handed it back. “Podesta, I’ve got a nose for this type of thing. They know. We’d better be ready, stocked up and locked up, within a month.”
Giovanni descended the northern slope less complacently than he’d climbed it. Concord was coming. He had overlooked some crucial factor. The place where he had first met Sofia was now a building site, transubstantiated into valuable real estate by other currents. The bridge was deserted. He stopped by a Lion, looking down at the water, thinking of the old saw about rivers always changing. Perhaps men seemed equally inconsistent to buio.
“Giovanni!”
He looked over to the embankment. “Pedro! You gave me a fright!”
Pedro came up. “One of the eggs malfunctioned. How was the Doc?”
“More illuminating than usual. We’ve got to step up preparations.”
“I suppose we can fix this later. There hasn’t been much buio activity.”
Halfway across the bridge, they stopped. Something was standing at the far end, waiting.
“Turn around slowly, Pedro.”
They turned to find several buio blocking the way north also. Turning again, more buio had joined the first. They began slowly advancing.
“What do we do, Giovanni?”
Jump? No. Surviving the river again was as unlikely as lighting striking twice. Giovanni looked up at Tower Bardini, hoping to see the Doctor’s silhouette against the moon. For once he wasn’t there.
The watery columns seeped closer until they were surrounded.
Giovanni knew that judgment had finally come.
“Pedro, you’ll have to run when they attack me.”
Water must be water.
“Who said that?” Giovanni cried.
We. Our souls hear your soul.
“Who said what?” Pedro asked.
“You can’t hear them?”
“Hear what?”
Many voices spoke at once in his mind. The columns were immobile and indistinguishable. Small ripples passed over and leaped the space between them.
Something has changed, he thought. The Reverend Mother said all water was one—if she was right, then Lucia had accidentally doomed him by having him “contemplate Water.” Now they knew he was a Bernoulli and knew too about Gubbio. Every day he paid a little more, but it didn’t matter. Some debts are too large to pay. However they knew, they’d come for revenge.
Thou shall not kill.
Giovanni looked around at the faceless pillars.
“You drown men!”
Not murder. Water must be water.
“If you didn’t come to kill me—”
You must feel Wind.
The night was still and peaceful.
“. . . no.”
“Giovanni, what are they saying?”
Forgotten much. Wind blows in wet world, not dry world.
“The river?”
We will be part of it. Stop us.
“I don’t understand!”
Water must be water. Stop us.
The buio were sinking away into puddles.
“From doing what?”
Forgotten much.
The puddles flowed over the edge.
“Answer me!” he shouted.
They were alone on the bridge, unchanged, as if the visitation had not happened.
“You didn’t hear anything, Pedro?”
“No, I saw but—what did they say?”
Giovanni looked down into the dark rushing water. What sounded like riddles was obviously much more than that.
“They kept saying ‘Thou shall not kill’ and ‘Water must be water.’”
Pedro could see the Concordian was too upset to reason. “If buio have language, perhaps they have morality of a sort.”
“You don’t consider drowning murder?” Giovanni snapped.
“I’m just trying to be logical! It’s not air that kills fish but fishermen, right? So drowning isn’t murder because it’s natural. What else?”
“They kept talking about a wind in a wet world.”
Both were silent, then, at the same moment. “A current?”
“Madonna!” said Pedro.
“Something’s going to make them kill, and they want us to stop it,” said Giovanni. “They didn’t come for revenge. They came for help.”
Later still, Pedro was somberly studying the calculations scribbled on the studiola wall. “Can we stop it? I mean, power to create a forced Wave; once it’s formed, the energy has to be used. That’s Bernoulli’s Second Law, right?”
“That’s why we can’t let the Wave form. If it forms, we’re sunk—literally. The technology’s moved on since Gubbio, and there’s been time to store enough energy for a Wave five times as large.”
“That would wipe Rasenna off the map! Why not just send an army?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you?” Pedro said with sudden hostility. “Why did you think the buio came to punish you?”
Giovanni shook his head blankly.
Pedro stood up. “Captain, what’s your father’s name?”
“. . . Jacopo.”
“His surname.”
“An engineer’s father is Concord,” he began in a confident voice that faded to nothing. “I knew if anyone figured it out, it would be you.”
Pedro pushed Giovanni over in his chair. “We made you podesta!”
“I told you not to!” Giovanni cried.
Pedro picked the only weapon to hand, a chisel. “My father trusted you. I should kill you.”
Giovanni stood up and faced him. “It’s your right.”
“It’s the right of every Rasenneisi, Concordian!”
Giovanni doubled over with the punch.
“You’re lucky that we need your native cunning.”
Giovanni saw the chisel drop and heard the door slam.