She’d asked—Why is that?
Because no one has ever tested shutting down the flow of cooling water to a lexicon. They need a lot of water to stay cool, and if they don’t get it, well…A lexicon is just a giant pile of scrivings and arguments that make reality weak and confused. If the lexicon unravels, and everything gets too confused…That would be very bad for not only us, but everyone who lives within about a mile of the Hypatus Building. So let’s be conservative and say you only have ten seconds to drop the cube in.
Sancia stared at the pipes in the floor.
Ten seconds. Great.
“Son of a bitch!” cried the guards in the smoking room. “What in hell did he put in this pot?”
She started unscrewing the valve, very, very slowly.
If I get this wrong…Well. At least Orso won’t be able to scream at me.
She kept unscrewing it until it had only a few threads left. Then she placed a bare hand to the side of the pipe, and listened.
<BURST OF BUBBLES,> shouted the pipes. <PUSHING, TUMBLING, RUSHING, SLOSHING, DOWN AND DOWN AND DOWN AND DOWN…>
She winced. She wasn’t surprised to find that the arguments within the pipe were unusually powerful—this was a critical part of the lexicon, after all—but this meant it’d take time to convince them…and then, worse, more time to restore them to their original arguments, and allow the water to resume flowing.
She took a breath. Scrivings have trouble with distance, direction, and time, she told herself. These are always the doors. These are always the way you can unlock them.
<Who told you what down was?> she asked it.
<WHAT?> said the pipes. <WHAT WAS THAT?>
<I said,> she told it, <what is down?>
It responded. <WELL, DOWN IS…> Sancia listened, and then began applying her arguments, one after the other, as fast as she could.
“Ugh,” said one of the guards. “It’s smoked up the ceiling…Should we get a mop?”
<I SEE,> said the pipes after they’d listened. <VERY WELL, THEN. ABOVE THIS JUNCTURE, I SHALL FORCE ALL WATER OUT.>
Sancia swallowed as she watched the pipes begin to force water away from the valve…which meant that, as of right now, the lexicon far below her would start to unravel.
She started counting.
One.
She fumbled with the valve, unscrewing it as fast as she could.
Two.
The valve came loose, and she almost dropped it—which would have alerted the guards to her presence. She snatched it, and carefully laid it on the floor, one bare hand still applied to the pipe.
Three.
She fumbled for the little metal cube in her pocket, and pulled it out.
“Just put the pot out!” cried one of the guards. “You know we’re not allowed in here anyway!”
Four.
She flexed her scrived sight. The lexicon below her was beginning to burn a strangely bright, unsettling shade of white…
She stuffed the little cube into the pipe and delicately picked the valve top back up.
Five.
She started screwing it in, one turn, then another, then another—just far enough.
Six.
<Actually, I was wrong!> she cried to the pipes.
<MM? WRONG ABOUT WHAT? WHAT IS THERE TO BE WRONG ABOUT?>
The lexicon below her was now a disturbing pink.
“The damned thing’s still burning hot!” screamed one of the guards.
<I was wrong about where down was!> She forced her arguments upon the pipes, one after the other.
Seven.
<I…I SUPPOSE THAT COULD MAKE SENSE,> said the pipes. <BUT CAN YOU REMIND ME WHAT WATER IS, AGAIN?>
“Shit, shit, shit,” whispered Sancia. She focused as hard as she could, telling the pipes what water was, how it worked, how it felt, how to recognize it, activating its bindings one after another.
Eight…
“No, no, no!” shouted a guard. “Don’t drop the pot on his damned bed!”
<AH. I SEE NOW,> said the pipes. <VERY CLEVER. VERY CLEVER INDEED.>
<So—you’ll put water through again?> she asked desperately.
<WHY, OF COURSE! OF COURSE…>
She heard the slosh of water within the pipes, and a loud, oddly pleasing gurgling. She looked down at the lexicon far below her.
For a moment it did nothing—the pink just intensified unpleasantly, and she felt her belly blossom with utter terror…
Well. I did it. I killed a lexicon. And now we’re all going to scrumming die.
But then the pinkness faded, very slowly, bit by bit…until it had returned to the usual bright white.
She almost sighed, overwhelmed with relief. But then she remembered the little cube.
She looked back down, and saw she could track its passage through the pipes of the lexicon: it was a bright little star of white-hot scrivings, swooping and tumbling about in the flow of the waters—until it grew close to the massive rig.
At this point, the little cube’s density scrivings were activated, and it dropped like a stone, sticking to the bottom of the pipe and refusing to budge in the rush of the water. It was practically right in the belly of the thing. It held fast.
I did it. Holy shit, I did it…
“And just how are we going to explain to the hypatus that we set his bed on fire!” screamed a guard inside Moretti’s chambers.
Sancia shut the hatch and slipped away.
* * *
—
Two floors above, Sancia opened the locked door and was met by the sight of a half dozen Michiel scrivers lying on the floor, groaning and moaning, their faces and bodies covered in bright-red welts.
“Is it over?” she asked. “Sorry, I got hit by a few and I just…I just ducked in and hid in that office there…”
The Michiel scrivers glared at her and pulled themselves to their feet, not bothering to respond.
“Did the box work?” she asked. “Do we need to do any more testing?”
“No!” snapped Moretti, whose face paint and hair were now an absolute mess. There were even holes in his robes from where the little glass beads had shot through. “What the devil were you doing in there?”
“I told you, sheltering from th—”