“Thought I’d find you here. Sure it’s safe down there?”
Pedro didn’t look up. “I borrowed your tools to repair the malfunction. Hope that’s all right.”
He was crouching on the narrow shelf where Piazza Luna abruptly terminated. “I don’t understand it. I’ve been taking depth samples. There’s no deviation from what’s normal at this time of year.”
“That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. The individual partials of a Wave don’t need to move to transfer energy. For buio, the past, present, and future don’t come in any sequence. They’re just different states of existence, permeable states.”
“Oh,” Pedro said, frowning, “that explains this then.”
He scooped up some water in a beaker and held it still until tiny globules began breaking free. They hovered above the surface until the wind took them or they ran out of energy and fell.
“That’s right,” said Giovanni. “Whatever’s causing this is weak because it’s in the future. It’s growing stronger as we get closer.”
They both looked at the river gloomily until Giovanni said, “I’m the same person I was.”
“No, Captain, you’re not. If the truth got out, it would tear Rasenna apart again. They’d fight for the privilege of hanging you. Does the Doc know?”
“No one knows. Sofia didn’t either.”
Pedro laughed suddenly. “I know that. The Contessa would have cut your heart out. If by some miracle Rasenna survives this, you have to go.”
“I know.”
“So, can we survive it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been working on it but—” Giovanni struggled to maintain a philosophical distance. “Only another Wave, out of sync by half a pulse, can cancel a Wave. But it must be as strong or stronger.”
Pedro looked back at the river. “What’s stronger than that?”
“No power in the world—none that I know.”
Pedro threw down the beaker. “Where’s your salt, Captain? Before I knew anything about Natural Philosophy, I used to figure out things by hearing what they did. Show me how the Wave works . . .”
Sketches and scribbled-out calculations were strewn all over the studiola’s floor.
Working alone, Giovanni hadn’t made much progress. He tried to explain the impasse. “Thinking the Wave is something than can be unleashed overnight keeps Etruria terrified, but it can’t: it takes huge amounts of energy.”
“From where?”
“The Curia’s Architects were obsessed by acoustics. That’s how my grandfather won the competition to build the Molè: his design was a great spiral based on Euclid’s extreme and mean ratio, a number that the Curia believed revealed the name of God. My grandfather wasn’t that superstitious, but he did believe it was a power he could harness.”
Giovanni took out the main lens of Pedro’s magnifier. He extended the segments and said, “The engineers secretly built another building under the Molè with that same spiral reversed.” He flicked his wrist, and the magnifier inverted. “An anti-Molè, if you will. Together they amplify whatever power is generated within. The Curia wanted a cathedral filled with songs of praise. My grandfather had other plans. After the Revolution, the Beast became a prison for men and water, the perfect place to collect, distill, and perfect fear. Over time, the Water comes to associate Man with this torture, so when it’s finally set loose on a town—”
“—the Wave is triggered by the town’s own population. Elegant,” Pedro said with uneasy admiration. “What was he like, Giovanni?”
“I barely remember. Always busy. I saw even less of him than my father. What I did see was that everyone respected him. I was different then; I would have done anything to impress him.”
“Sorry; I shouldn’t have asked.”
Giovanni shook his head angrily, then looked up. “So. Any ideas?”
Pedro was doodling. “Maybe. You?”
“Maybe. Remember the day I came here? Sofia told me signaling was your primitive way of communicating. I found it ingenious, though I didn’t contradict her.”
Pedro smiled. “Fast learner.”
“It’s an efficient means of communication if you have limited power. We can’t hope to match the Molè’s power—unless we steal some.”
He showed Pedro a sketch of something like a church spire connected to an engine. “A machine that transmits a signal with a pulse frequency of 1.6 will resonate with the Molè.”
“Allowing their magnifier to magnify our own signal.”
“That’s the idea—like the signals the eggs emit, but over a longer distance. If the buio hear it as they approach Rasenna, the Wave won’t form. But it’ll take time to build, and this isn’t something we can afford to mess up. What’s your idea?”
Pedro held up Giovanni’s Whistler. “This thing works by listening for the echo, right? Can you teach it a new tune?” He handed Giovanni a sheet on which he had matched a sequence of numbers and musical notes. “Something with a progression that occurs at the intervals equal to the ratio—”
Giovanni read, “1-2-3-5-8—”
“And so on. We can play it at the bridge, so if anything gets past your transmitter or we miscalculate, it’s a fail-safe.”
“It’s an elegant solution. An engineer’s solution. Vettori would be proud.”
Pedro reddened as he adjusted the rod’s dial. “Wonder what a golden spiral sounds like.”
“Don’t underestimate them again,” the Doctor cautioned. “It won’t be long before they figure out the Wave signal is blocked. That’s if your plan works.”
“It’ll work.”
The Doctor shrugged. “If it doesn’t, we won’t be around to worry about it. Assuming it does, Podesta, I think we need to start making friends with other giants. You’re looking down at your bridge, as usual. Try looking beyond.”
“South?”
“A year ago all those towns exhausted by war or bankrupted by condottieri were resigned to vassalage. Now we’ve reminded them that Rasenna once led a Southern League against Concord.”
Giovanni looked at the land south of Rasenna, cooling as night drew on, and he imagined the wild possibility of Tarquinia, Salerno, Ariminum, Caere, Vulci, and Veii not as rivals but as allies. Some would be suspicious of any gesture of friendship, some would wait and let rivals risk the wrath of Concord, but might some raise a flag?
“You think we can bring the south together?”
The Doctor showed the letter he’d drafted. “Podesta, we have to. I don’t know why Concord is willing to waste another Wave on us, but that willingness tells me they won’t back down easily.”
“We’ll bring it to the Signoria tomorrow.” Giovanni stopped on his way down the ladder. “That lament Sofia sang on the night the bridge opened—”
“‘The River’s Song.’”
“Where did she learn it?”
“From me. It was something my sister taught me—a strange lullaby, but then, my sister was a strange woman. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Golden dreams, Doctor.”
The Doctor grabbed an orange, looked south, and whistled. A grand alliance was optimistic, but the inescapable fact was that only with a miracle or combination of miracles could Rasenna survive.
“What do you think, ugly? We got a prayer?”
Cat moaned skeptically.
He threw an orange peel. “Bah. All cats are pessimists.”