Revolving Door: Volume 3
Atlantic Archives - II
Content warnings (may contain spoilers)
This chapter depicts racist microaggressions, implications of racial segregation, assault, and graphic injury.
On their next taxi, the driver assures Felix that there will still be vehicles roaming Brooklyn at ten on the clock.
Marcia cannot help but notice it is always Felix they address, as if seeing her and Vesper merely as his accessories. But the man himself never goes along with it, maintaining conversation with a quiet insistence.
As the noon sun vaults over Brooklyn, they wander to the neighbouring park to await the close of day, listening to the strains of buskers drift over the streets. Picking up a local delicacy—meats, sauces and vegetables squashed between two slices of bread—they find a bench under a lakeside tree.
“What an odd way to dine,” Felix remarks between mouthfuls.
Vesper laughs. “Don’t like touching your food with your hands?”
“It’s a tad unsanitary, don’t you think? Oh, I’m making myself sound like such a snob.”
“As is your God-given right.”
This is a wild park, just the right amount of unkempt, the lake running clear beside them. Marcia watches the parkgoers drift by: a family playing under the trees, a couple strolling by the waters. In the heart of Manhattan, the she felt a quiet disgust that not even Constantinople ever showed her. Most everyone she saw there was pale as the winter moon—and they kept only with alike companions—busy with their books, glaring down their noses at her.
Here, there is less of an imperious air. There may as well be several kingdoms here: she sees faces that she could have glimpsed across Carthage and Constantinople, not so pale or ruddy like Valerius and his children.
Here, soaking in the sunlight and the quiet drone of her companions’ voices, her body eases out of a clenching anxiety she did not notice till now.
She briefly thinks of the other trio. What are Hong Yi, Adelaide and Artur up to now? Poor Hong Yi must be shouldering all the burden of conversation.
She sighs and hugs her legs, resting her chin on her knees. Just beyond her attention, the conversation between Vesper and Felix rambles on, and she lets her mind float upon the names she doesn't know.
“...learned the stories were true. The Thames does smell like a loo.”
Felix sighs. “I have seen things floating in the water that I cannot mention in polite company.”
“Well, one thing they did do right was put up the old smoke downstream of everyone else,” Vesper answers.
Marcia wonders if they have both known the same river, in the same place—whichever place it is that the English language comes from, perhaps.
“For shame,” Felix mutters. “For shame.”
By ten o’clock, the clientele of the Simmons Treasury is thin, and the bartender is finally off her shift. The loiterers, though fewer, are not completely dispersed. Nevertheless the two rowdy men are nowhere to be found.
The first thing the bartender says is her name: Margaret. Then, “We get all kinds here. Sorry you were privy to the worst of it today. Now, how may I help you?”
“We came here expecting a treasury,” Vesper says. “This place looks like no treasury I've ever seen. Is there an owner we can speak to? A Michael Simmons…”
“That would be my father,” Margaret says then, face impassive. “But he is too dead to be running a treasury. I am the owner.”
“Ah, our information must have been out of date, then. On that matter…we’re here to find out about the document copies that your late father held under the name of the treasury. It’s quite important to our ongoing research.”
Margaret hums in thought. “All our copies,” she says, “are upstairs. My father did mean to start that treasury, but I'm afraid it simply never made financial sense.”
“So, the copies are here.”
“Some of them are. Some of them were lost in the fire of Sixty-Four.”
Vesper sighs. “Do you have the one titled…A Theory…on the…”
“The Medium Beyond Space and Time,” Felix reads off his pocketbook.
“Ah, that one.” Margaret’s gaze lifts, then her eyes narrow. “Awfully convenient that you should be asking for the copy so soon after the original disappeared.”
The three look at each other. “We are happy to prove our honest intentions,” Felix answers.
She yawns. “Come again tomorrow, then,” she replies. “The earlier the better. We open at noon.”
*
“It doesn’t sound like she’ll let us take the document with us,” Vesper says as they exit.
“Not at all,” Felix answers. “But perhaps we needn’t take it—a transcription is in the realm of possibility, depending on how long it is. Otherwise, we may simply have to memorise its contents.”
It is only after ten minutes’ walking in the golden lamplit streets that a taxi rolls into their avenue to take them back to their lodgings. Almost no one is around by the time they arrive, save for the counter receptionist, looking halfway to dreamland when they board the elevator and call their floor themselves.
It is a quiet night all round. Rain falls, muffled on stone, and continues gently into the grey morning. When they decide to leave, it is with umbrellas provided by the hotel, and a stash of writing utensils in their pockets.
Today, they are dressed for the windchill, so Vesper has her coat on, a much nicer one than she would normally buy on her own dime, with brass buttons and a tight weave.
They see from up on the mezzanine that the Treasury has two bartenders today, one of whom is Margaret, they can tell from the loosely braided hair draped over one shoulder.
When they descend the stairs into the pub, there are more eyes following them this time. Drinkers, gamblers at a card game on the floor, a smaller number of daters—many kinds of eyes follow them as they press towards the counter. They wave for Margaret before they have reached her, and at this moment she excuses herself and strides calmly from behind the counter.
“Good morrow,” Felix says as they come to meet her. “I hope you rested well?”
“Quite well, despite the anticipation,” she replies, then her voice drops, and her eyes dart across the hall. “I see you are determined to view the article. Well, before I unlock the second floor for you…I will have you understand how important it is that this document, being the sole remaining copy of a century-old text, be returned in the condition you found it in.” There are nods around. Margaret waves them towards the counter door. “For that reason, I shall be asking you for a security deposit.”
Vesper turns to Felix and raises an eyebrow. He meets her eye and frowns, then inhales and reaches into his pocket. From inside he produces his new toy—the pocket watch he bought in San Francisco. As he does, Vesper notices a few glances from the clients in barstools and readies to intercept a robbery, but none make to take it.
“I hope this suffices,” he says. “It’s genuine gold and worth fifteen dollars.”
Margaret recoils. She gestures for their silence, waving them hastily towards the door behind the counter which she kicks ajar. “Don’t be waving that about in the open!” she mutters as the trio funnel through the door into the musty passageway behind, followed by a dozen gazes.
In the shadow of the door, Felix finally hands the watch over. Margaret pops it open to reveal its intricate lattice of cogs and wheels. She holds it up to her eye and gives it a full round of inspection.
“It’s heavy, and I see the maker’s mark. But I’m not convinced.”
“You could take this to the closest watchmaker and they would assure you of its authenticity.”
“I haven’t the time—and nor have you.” With barely a second’s warning, she holds it out in front of her and drops it.
“What are you—” Felix barely completes his sentence, lunging for the watch as it plummets from her hand. His shoulder collides with the wall as he snatches it. The woman meets his panicked stare with a shrug.
“Seems genuine to me,” she says with a satisfied nod, then extends a hand to take it again. “Here with it. You want to see the copies, don’t you?”
This time around, Felix stares at her until she has fully pocketed the timepiece.
*
Beyond that short passageway is a white tiled kitchen with industrial stoves, and beyond that kitchen is a staircase behind a second too-narrow door. The door is propped open with a water-damaged wooden block. They ascend the stairs, which change from stone to wood, and find another door into the floor above, of a finer make than the ones below. Reaching into her vest, Margaret pulls out her keyring.
The lock does not click, but clatters, so large are its internal mechanisms. The latch gives with a groan, and she pushes the door open to reveal a dim hall, two stories tall and clouded with the perfume of old paper. On the wall just overhead glow two rows of narrow windows, one for each floor, barely illuminating half the room. Pigeonhole shelves are stacked up to the ceiling along the walls and stand in rows on the floor, like those of old university libraries Vesper has only seen once or twice. Most are filled with books or paper files.
Margaret grasps a lever beside the door. “If I may ask, why do you want this document so sorely?” She throws the lever, and Vesper feels the shiver of a moving current as a dozen globes mounted between shelves flicker on in a wave of gold.
“We are studying the nature of reality, so as to map its shape and structure,” Marcia answers almost at once. “And the document will be key knowledge towards the completion of our work.”
“A peculiar pursuit, to be sure,” she answers. “But you must have heard about the travelling machine in London, then. Misfired horribly, I read. The passenger vanished into the ether.”
There is a flicker of glances between the three. “A terrible tragedy,” Felix answers carefully. “All the more because we were so excited to see it succeed.”
Seemingly oblivious to their caution, Margaret takes them across the hallway, around two huddles of shelves, to the abandoned reception counter. A pair of glass doors stands shut beside it, peering into an unlit corridor.
“You are lucky that we won't have to hunt down the volume,” she says, approaching a stack of folios on the counter beside a gas lamp, “for the first thing I did when the Archive's news reached me was to check that our copy survives. Now, remember. If you take it beyond the walls of this room, through any of its entries or exits, your watch is forfeit.”
She begins to sift through the stack, before extracting a grey folio, dusting off its cover to peer over the writing. “Here it is—our copy of the missing document. De Doctrina in Medium Inter Spatium et Tempus. I hope you can read Latin.”
*
Margaret is right: from the very first page of the eighty-page folio, every single word is rendered in a language that Felix has only brushed with for an hour a week in school. He makes it two paragraphs before sighing in defeat and turning to hand it to Marcia.
“How much of this can you make out?”
Marcia takes the open file and peers in. “About three quarters of it,” she answers. “This Victor Riparius uses words in odd ways, but that may be because he speaks of something I do not understand.”
“Ah! Well, my good lady, you are a godsend in this time.” He begins to pull from his coat pockets a ruled book and writing utensils. “I doubt we could transcribe the full length of the text in what little time we have today, but if you would read it aloud…”
“That sounds like the best way,” she replies with a nod. “Alright—‘A Theory of the Medium Beyond Time and Space…’”
Marcia reads diligently for the better part of three hours. Across its pages, she unfolds an odd tale from the point of view of the author, Victor, in an older Cambridge, seeing the sky on a rare cloudless night.
“‘Here, one begins to imagine one could see the very farthest edges of space. It was while watching these stars, which formed the same constellations in almost every world, albeit altered, that I began to ponder what lies beyond them…beyond the worlds entirely…’”
The text grows denser as it proceeds, relying on metaphors to describe a vision of something so thoroughly strange that Marcia begins to voice her doubts about her reading. Even then, Felix makes notes of her words.
At four thirty, Marcia finally puts down the folder. “I am going cross-eyed,” she says. “We are almost halfway through.”
“You have done remarkably,” says Felix.
“We’ll return tomorrow,” Vesper answers, “If Maggie lets us. We’ve only been three days—we’re well ahead of schedule.”
By the time they return the folder to its place, Margaret is wrapping up her afternoon shift.
She follows them up to the treasury room, inspects the folder, counts the pages, and gives a satisfied nod. Once they are back in the kitchen, she pulls Felix’s golden watch from her pocket, which he receives with both hands and a proper look at its face and mechanisms.
“Could we return tomorrow to continue our transcription?” asks Vesper.
“You need more time? My shift is at six o’clock tomorrow,” Margaret says. “I’ll see you then.”
Felix, Marcia and Vesper arrive back at the pub slightly later than six the following day, after a supper of pizza. It is rather less greasy than the offerings of future San Francisco and, all considered, Felix doesn’t half mind it, although Marcia—picking hers up with her hands—laughs that he insists on having it with a fork and knife.
When they descend the steps of the Treasury and peer out over the mezzanine, Felix senses some change in the ambience of the venue. It isn’t just that there are more people—and he sees faces he remembers from yesterday—it is a kind of restless bristling, the noise seeming to gutter at the half-full tables when they begin down the stairs. Only a single clink of a glass disrupts the otherwise expectant buzz.
“Lots of people, and lots of looks,” Marcia murmurs.
“Is it a Friday?” Vesper asks.
“It’s Thursday,” Felix replies solemnly. A knot forms in his stomach as they begin across the pub floor, Marcia and Vesper flanking him as before. It takes them until reaching the counter to ease into talking again, until Margaret finishes filling a pint and waves for their attention.
“Welcome back,” she calls, plopping the pint on the counter. From Marcia’s right, a man sidles over, giving the three of them a good eyeful.
“So…do you reckon now’s a good time?” Felix asks. “We seem to be drawing attention.”
Margaret’s face pales.
Felix has only just had a second to notice Marcia leaping at him, when his breath is knocked from his lungs and a lady much taller than himself crashes into the counter beside him with metal flashing.
He hears the air whiz past as the blade sinks into the lacquered countertop with a crunch.
Shouts rise. Chairs and tables scrape the floor. Marcia turns to him and shouts, “Take shelter!” In the same moment, he feels rough hands yank him sideways by the arm, and he begins to protest before seeing that it is only Margaret. He stumbles after, diving behind the fortress of the counter.
The floor is wet, but he keeps his footing. There are woven mats underfoot, some of them soaked. Margaret slams the counter door shut, flips her mop sideways, and wedges it in the gap to bar the exit—then the broom, then a barstool, for good measure. “Whew, I’ve been rehearsing that. Whoa!” She rams Felix with her shoulder, and he tumbles. A pint mug comes flying, shattering against the wall where his head was. She pops up from behind the counter. “Tyrell! That’s going to cost you! I know where you live!”
Felix reels for seconds, both hands planted on the sticky kitchen floor. In any other circumstance, he would be fretting over the state of the floor. This time, he only rises to his knees and wipes his hands on the tea towel hanging near his head.
Peeking over the cover, he is treated to a sight and a half. Bargoers crawl on the floor with bruised eyes and cuts on their cheeks. A growing knot of brawlers orbits the centre, before one is thrown bodily out of the circle and crumples to the floor. Through the gap, he glimpses Vesper, and then the gap is no more.
Amid a crashing of glass shards against the outside of the counter, Margaret crouches down beside him.
“Good heavens,” he breathes, lifting a hand to pull a shroud of light over them.
*
Marcia has not recognised, up till now, how easily she reads a crowd. She not only knows at once that there are fifteen people bearing down on them, but that most of them are drunk. There is almost no doubt that some of them saw the trio as easy pickings.
And perhaps they would be. It’s fifteen on four, or—she casts a glance at the counter, where Felix and Margaret have vanished into thin air—fifteen on two. Fifteen beasts might be fair, but fifteen humans, no matter how inebriated, would be a death match in any other case.
She sees a knife flash—and at the sight of sharpened metal, her muscle memory possesses her. She dives under the stroke and kicks the assailant’s feet out from under them. Nearby she hears a cry and a snap, like a jolt between a hand and a door handle in a thunderstorm. Someone thuds onto the tabletop.
Marcia draws back to her ally’s side. “Stairs,” says Vesper. There is a rote thoughtlessness to her motions. “The railing. Herd them up.” She gasps as a pair of muscled arms lock around her neck from behind, but before the man can take her in a chokehold, she jabs his arm with a spark that stuns him long enough for her to tip him over her shoulders and throw him at the woman running at her with a stool. Both tumble across the floor in a crash of wood.
Long before then, Marcia has already begun to plot her path of egress. “Pathetic throw!” she shouts as a flying table misses Vesper. As soon as the throwers’ attentions swing to her, she begins to shoulder her way up to the staircase, pointing and taunting. Someone flies at her, kneeing her in the back, which throws sparks through her vision. An attempted grapple ends in her flinging them, briefly paralysed by a cocktail of pain chemicals, across the undressed floor.
Herding drunk people is easy, because they will follow the most outstanding sight in their vicinity. What is harder is keeping track of everything that’s happening at the same time. They’ve whittled the crowd down to nine. Vesper has already taken to the other staircase, splitting the throng in two between them. Marcia shouts and cajoles, dragging five up after her. Up the rickety stairs, hands on the brass baluster.
By now, her ally has already reached the mezzanine, both hands gripping the rail. Across the room their eyes meet. “Marcia, let go!” she shouts.
“Hold on tight,” Marcia answers, lifting her own hand away.
Marcia is expecting to hear something, but there is no sound—only a brief silence, like a breath held—before the bargoers touching the rail seize and crumple and sputter, like marionettes briefly unable to control their limbs, hands tightening like vices on the brass.
It is only half a second, but to Marcia, it feels like a minute. When their fingers release the rails, they tumble to their knees, draped over the steps like a carpet of bodies.
Before she can begin to cheer, her eyes fly to a movement in her peripheral vision.
On the floor, someone is creeping over the bar counter, a dagger clutched in one hand. Marcia gasps, points, and begins to kick the half-conscious bodies off the stairs.
But Vesper is faster, and less considered. With a cry, she pommels herself over the mezzanine railing, leaps, and flies, hands seizing the rings of the chandelier.
Marcia’s breath catches. Vesper oscillates once, crystals clinking against each other, chain creaking. It does not give out to her weight.
On the second forward swing, she launches herself across the tables, over the heads of the unmoving crowd, and lands with a practised roll, just feet away from the counter.
The knife flies. Felix cries out and flinches away, but Margaret launches past him, shoving the assailant by the shoulders.
The struggle only lasts two seconds. Then Vesper springs across and yanks the assailant from behind—a clean, strong tug—and throws them, paralysed, to the floor.
Marcia begins to kick bodies off the stairs, which doubles as insurance that none of them are about to make a last-ditch effort to trip her. By now, she can feel a stabbing pain where she took a knee to her back, but it is nothing she hasn’t healed from.
“Is everyone all right?” she shouts as she races to meet them.
Margaret is clearing the blockade over the counter door. Turning as she arrives, Vesper parts her coat and shows a tear in the fabric just above her hip, the blood blooming on the fabric. “Oh, Vesper—”
“I’ve had worse,” Vesper answers in a ragged groan, already leaning against the counter. “Go see to the other two.”
“No, you’re—”
“I didn’t get to him in time, Felix is injured.”
Just past the counter, Felix’s eyes are unfocused, as if he were halfway to fainting. She hears a creak as Margaret finally clears the defences and opens the door, and Marcia slips through.
“Show me the wound,” she mutters, patting his shoulders.
Wordlessly he peels back his collar, where a splotch of blood has stained the white fabric. There is a bloodied cut—she lifts a corner of her sleeve and wipes it away to inspect the wound. His breath hitches in pain.
It is much deeper than a cut, but nothing life-threatening, unless the blade was somehow poison-laced—but certainly the worst he has ever been injured, if his pallour is to go by.
“How bad is it?” he asks.
“You’ll be all right,” she says. “Could you take care of him, Margaret? Do you have bandages?”
“You’ll be surprised how often they come in handy,” she answers, plucking open a counter drawer. “Here, have one for your other friend.” She dumps a handful of woven towels onto the countertop then tosses one white roll of gauze over. Marcia snatches it out of the air. The woman descends to Felix’s side with a sigh. “Oh, you poor thing. Don’t you fret, sir. I’ve been stabbed that deep before. By a glass shard, but you know…”
“Was it so—terribly—painful? Ouch! Is that whiskey?”
Once she is satisfied that Felix is in capable hands, Marcia flies out the door to Vesper. By now, she has dragged herself onto a barstool, and her coat is abandoned haphazardly on the next seat. From where her hand is pressed to her waist, blood is trickling darkly into her belt loops.
“Ah, Marcia…it hurts just a smidge,” she murmurs.
“Vesper! Let me take a look,” she gasps, unrolling the bandage. “You are a fool, pulling that stunt with blood gushing out your side.”
“Saved Felix from a deadly stab wound, didn’t I?”
Marcia frowns, rotating Vesper to face her and lifting her hand off the fabric. “Yes, you did…” She unbuckles her belt, reining back a shudder and pushing a different interpretation of the scene out of her mind. She prises the blood-stiffened cotton from her skin and uncovers the stab wound, the fresh scent of iron hitting her. It is far deeper than Felix’s wound, that is for certain, and she is lucky it was not an inch deeper.
Marcia’s fingers read the inflamed skin. Vesper is doing a good job of not panicking, but the anxiety is there, dulled by a stupour of mild shock. Her body’s natural defences have sprung into action around the injury.
“Water and a spirit?” she calls over the counter.
“Moment.” A clink of two glasses and the gush of a tap. It is quiet in the hall. Margaret pushes the glass of water over the counter then uncaps a bottle, but Marcia wastes no time in dousing the wound.
Vesper winces. “Are you going to…heal me?” she asks, her voice now coming in a mumble as her attention wanes.
“I hope this doesn’t become a habit,” Marcia answers, dampening one of Margaret’s rags with the glass of spirit to wipe the wound. She mops up the remaining blood. One touch speeds the clotting of the wound. The blood is no longer beading. Another brush brings a sigh of relief. There is no serious infection that she can sense, but that may need a minute to develop.
Once she is certain that the wound has stabilised, Marcia pulls the rest of Vesper’s shirt from the band of her trousers and begins to wrap the bandage around her waist. “Really, such a reckless fool. I know you’re a capable warrior, some may say too capable…but you can’t halt a flying knife.” She turns to look over her shoulder.
“They were civilians,” Vesper says, voice starting to regain vigour. “I swore I’d never kill anyone again. It’s harder like that, not getting to use all my power. And…I might’ve hurt you, too.”
Marcia clicks her tongue as she completes a final loop around Vesper’s waist. She picks up the hook at the end of the bandage and latches it into the fabric. “Refusing to kill while risking being killed can only end one way.”
“And yet I am still here, and no one has died,” Vesper answers, with a glance back at the dining hall.
“I know. But I’ll also have you know,” she says with a prod at the bandage, making Vesper flinch away, “you’re lucky that you’re alive.”
“What else could I have done? It’s never just the one person,” she answers simply. “The current decides who it kills.”
For a moment, Marcia feels that those words come from somewhere, some core of terror that she is almost afraid to pry into. But she saves her questions and gives Vesper’s hand a squeeze. “That I understand. It’s a mighty weapon you have there, and it’ll come in useful again.”
“Thank you for the help,” she says, rather than answering. “And the healing. It’s quite something, you know.” Marcia’s fingers linger on Vesper’s hand just long enough that she notices, glancing pointedly at it. “Are you still delivering some sort of treatment?”
“Oh! No.” Marcia withdraws her hand.
“Remarkable work,” Felix says over their shoulders. Both their heads turn. “What a show! You’re both very impressive.”
Vesper sighs. “Keep your flashy watch in your pocket till we’re behind a closed door next time.”
“Point taken. Well, I wouldn’t blame either of you if you decided we should return to complete the task tomorrow…”
“No, no, I am happy to continue,” Marcia replies. “Vesper, however…”
“I’ll watch. Like yesterday. Suits me.”
Despite the carnage in the hall, which Margaret insists on taking care of—without involving the “good-for-nothing” police—the trio return to their work in the library upstairs.
By the time they reach the library counter, the bloodstains on their shirts have dried; Marcia reckons the sight will keep any would-be assaulters at bay. She gives her hands a good wipe before touching the fragile pages, and Felix nods at her with his stationery in hand.
With a deep breath, she resumes at page twenty-eight of sixty.
Victor Riparius carries on in his same rambling, poetic manner. He describes a notion of a medium beyond worlds entirely, not affiliated with any “space-time” and not constituting a “space-time” in itself, but an infinite number of such “space-times.”
A basic comprehension of his theory relies on a knowledge of what a “space-time” is, which Marcia decidedly doesn't have. And so she keeps reading, not understanding her own words, for a transcriber who seems a touch less confused than she.
Now and then, as she reads, Felix stops writing to complain about his wound—typically when he turns his head too fast. In contrast, Vesper seems resolutely unwilling to mention any discomfort at all, even when Marcia accidentally bats the wound site with her elbow and notices her wincing.
It is amid these complaints and pointed looks that she eventually reads up to the fifty-second page—and finds that the text ends there, becoming a list of titles of other works and their authors and years, without any further substance.
“Well, then,” Marcia declares, patting the first page of that section. “I do believe that is all of it. The rest merely lists other texts.”
“Ah, yes, a reference list.” Felix nods, then winces. “Ouch! You’d think I would remember by now that I have an injury. Does that mean we are done here, then? And that I may collect my watch?”
“I think so,” Marcia replies, with a glance at Vesper.
“Go collect your trinket,” Vesper replies. “Great lot of trouble we’ve gone to, on its account.”
*
By the time they return, the downed brawlers have started crawling home, and the smashed glass has all but vanished. The chandelier hangs innocuously from the ceiling with some bulbs askew, their cobwebs tattered.
Felix interrupts Margaret’s assiduous floor-sweeping to retrieve his pocket watch, which she has kept inside her vest this entire time.
He wipes its face and peers at it through his right eye. “It's spotless. Thank you, my good madam.”
“Thank you for doing your part in keeping the rent low,” she answers.
On the way out, the man whom Vesper threw at someone else lifts his mug at the trio, dark eyes crinkling with a smile. She grins back as if they weren’t just in a deathly wrestling match.
Plucking his pocketbook from his inner coat pocket to glance through its pages, Felix says, “Well, then, I hope this is the document Orobelle was after.”