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Something pulsed in the silver – something alive, something forceful and bold; a gale of wind, a crashing wave; and in that fraction of a second Robin felt the source of its power, that sublime, unnameable place where meaning was created, that place which words approximated but could not, could never pin down; the place which could only be invoked, imperfectly, but even so would make its presence felt. A bright, warm sphere of light shone out of the bar and grew until it enveloped them both. Robin had not specified what sort of understanding this light would signify; he had not planned that far; yet in that moment he knew perfectly and, from the look on Professor Chakravarti’s face, his supervisor did too.
He dropped the bar. It stopped glowing. It lay inert on the desk between them, a perfectly ordinary hunk of metal.
‘Very good,’ was all Professor Chakravarti said. ‘Will you retrieve Mr Mirza?’
Letty was waiting for him outside the tower. She’d calmed significantly; the colour had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes were no longer wide with panic. She must have just dashed to the bakery up the street, for she held a crumpled paper bag in her hands.
‘Lemon biscuit?’ she asked as he approached.
He realized he was starving. ‘Yes please, thanks.’
She passed him the bag. ‘How’d it go?’
‘All right. It wasn’t the precise effect I wanted, but it was something.’ Robin hesitated, biscuit halfway to his mouth, not wanting to celebrate nor elaborate in case she’d failed.
But she beamed at him. ‘Same. I just wanted something to happen, and then it did, and oh, Robin, it was so wonderful—’
‘Like rewriting the world,’ he said.
‘Like drawing with the hand of God,’ she said. ‘Like nothing I’d ever felt before.’
They grinned at each other. Robin savoured the taste of the biscuit melting in his mouth – he saw why these were Letty’s favourite; they were so buttery that they dissolved instantly, and the lemony sweetness spread across his tongue like honey. They’d done it. Everything was okay; the world could keep moving; nothing else mattered, because they’d done it.
The bells rang for one o’clock, and the doors opened again. Ramy strode out, grinning widely.
‘It worked for you too, eh?’ He helped himself to a biscuit.
‘How do you know?’ asked Robin.
‘Because Letty’s eating,’ he said, chewing. ‘If either of you’d failed, she’d be pummelling these biscuits to crumbs.’
Victoire took the longest. It was nearly an hour before she emerged from the building, scowling and flustered. Immediately Ramy was at her side, one arm slung around her shoulder. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’
‘I gave them a Kreyòl-French match-pair,’ Victoire said. ‘And it worked, worked like a charm, only Professor Leblanc said they couldn’t put it in the Current Ledger because he didn’t see how a Kreyòl match-pair would be useful to anyone who doesn’t speak Kreyòl. And then I said it’d be of great use to people in Haiti, and then he laughed.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Letty rubbed her shoulder. ‘Did they let you try a different one?’
She’d asked the wrong question. Robin saw a flash of irritation in Victoire’s eyes, but it was gone in an instant. She sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, the French-English one didn’t work quite so well, and I was a bit too shaken so I think my handwriting was off, but it did have some effect.’
Letty made a sympathetic noise. ‘I’m sure you’ll pass.’
Victoire reached for a biscuit. ‘Oh, I passed.’
‘How do you know?’
Victoire shot her a puzzled look. ‘I asked. Professor Leblanc said I’d passed. He said we’d all passed. What, none of you knew?’
They stared at her for a moment in surprise, and then they burst out into laughter.
If only one could engrave entire memories in silver, thought Robin, to be manifested again and again for years to come – not the cruel distortion of the daguerreotype, but a pure and impossible distillation of emotions and sensations. For simple ink on paper was not enough to describe this golden afternoon; the warmth of uncomplicated friendship, all fights forgotten, all sins forgiven; the sunlight melting away the memory of the classroom chill; the sticky taste of lemon on their tongues and their startled, delighted relief.
