“My mother’s missing,” she said as if the words had bubbled up in her throat and needed to come out.
“Missing? What happened?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know … anything, really!” Elsa took a deep breath; she wasn’t explaining this well at all. She started over. “My mother was taken—abducted from our world.”
He stepped closer. “I am sorry—”
Elsa hugged her arms against her stomach, suddenly regretting her openness and his proximity. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
Leo stopped, rebuffed, and then looked around his lab in mock bewilderment. “Here? I’m fairly certain she isn’t hiding under one of my tarpaulins.”
Curtly, Elsa said, “By ‘here’ I meant Earth, which I’m certain you understood.”
His eyes softened, a silent apology. “Of course. This tongue has a nasty habit of turning everything into a jest, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” she said, morbidly curious. “Is it … some sort of experiment?”
“An experimental replacement tongue? Sadly, no—it’s the one I was born with. Though perhaps it would be wise to pursue an alternative, since this one simply refuses to behave itself.”
Elsa narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re a bit strange, you know.”
“Says the girl from a different world,” he retorted, but there was a grin playing at the corners of his lips, which took the edge from the words. The curve of his mouth made her flush again for an entirely different reason, and she suddenly felt as if she didn’t know where to look.
She frowned at her own silliness. No daughter of Jumi da Veldana would succumb to such hollow charms. “I … should get back to work.”
“Naturally. I’m sure you must get back to whatever it is you’re doing.” He gave her a hopeful look, as if this were an invitation for her to explain more, but Elsa had exceeded her quota of sharing for one day. She just wanted to retreat back to the quiet of her rooms.
“Thanks again for the tools,” she said, and made her way toward the door.
“Oh, and Elsa?” he called.
She turned on the steps to look at him. “Yes?”
“You know you don’t have to do everything alone.”
“Of course,” she answered, thinking, If only that were true.
5
TO APPLY ONESELF TO GREAT INVENTIONS, STARTING FROM THE SMALLEST BEGINNINGS, IS NO TASK FOR ORDINARY MINDS; TO DIVINE THAT WONDERFUL ARTS LIE HID BEHIND TRIVIAL AND CHILDISH THINGS IS A CONCEPTION FOR SUPERHUMAN TALENTS.
—Galileo Galilei
After seeing Leo’s messy but nonetheless well-stocked laboratory, it occurred to Elsa that she could use one of those, too. Jumi’s abductors had used metal canisters of knockout gas, which meant at the very least they had a mechanist and an alchemist in their employ. For a rescue operation to work, Elsa would need the ability to combat every kind of madness.
It wouldn’t surprise her if there were a few extra mechanics labs stashed away in some unused wing of the giant house, but with Porzia already poking around, she doubted her secrets would last very long if she asked Casa for help. Elsa suspected Casa had deliberately arranged her encounter with Leo, for whatever inscrutable reason.
Elsa wasn’t sure she liked Casa’s ever-present watchfulness. It gave the back of her neck that hot, prickly feeling; it reminded her of when she was a child learning to scribe, of how Jumi would hover over her shoulder, judging and correcting her work. Don’t get sloppy with your syntax. Remember, you need specificity in your word choice. Not the most elegant solution, but it will do. Then, at least, the scrutiny had come from a trusted source, whereas now Elsa couldn’t begin to guess at Casa’s motives.
So, that left only one option available to her: she would have to scribe a laboratory for herself. Repairing the Pascaline would have to wait. When she arrived back at her rooms, she set down the clockmaker’s tools and turned to face the scriptology shelves.
Her study came with an ample supply of ready-made empty scriptology books, which made her wonder again who the previous occupant had been. He or she had either been rich enough to purchase such a stock or had made a hobby of bookbinding. Elsa herself didn’t have much experience with bookbinding—they had the technology for crude papermaking in Veldana, but scriptology paper was another matter altogether. Her books had always come imported from Earth.
From the shelf of empty books, Elsa selected as small a volume as she could find, only a little larger than her doorbook. She would never understand why Earth scriptologists favored working with enormous tomes. For a whole world like Veldana, it was admittedly necessary, but a small book would almost always suffice to scribe a single room. There was no telling what obstacles she might face when rescuing her mother, but with a portable lab book, she’d be prepared for anything no matter where she went.
Elsa sat at the writing desk and began with the basics of any usable world: gravity, air, time. The reference library in her study was small compared to the one in Montaigne’s house before it burned, but it had the basics, so Elsa didn’t need to reinvent the entire field of scriptological physics. She merely opened a physics reference book and cited the properties she needed her lab worldbook to take on.
To be useful as a laboratory, she’d need not only work space but also materials to work with. She scribed supply rooms full of tools and chemicals and mechanical components, and then she designed a property such that whatever object she desired would automatically shift to the front of the room. Elsa hated looking for things and not being able to find them.
Focused on her work, she lost track of time until she looked up at the window and was startled to see the daylight dwindling. The little pendulum clock mounted atop the bookcase reported that the dinner hour was nearly upon her.
To her surprise, Elsa found she didn’t dread the thought of seeing Leo again at supper, but she couldn’t afford to form attachments here—these people could only serve to distract her from her goal. She needed to arm herself with a laboratory worldbook and then find her mother. So she looked back down at her work and let the dinner hour pass.
The next day, Elsa stayed sequestered in her rooms. She repaired six more pages of the first of Montaigne’s damaged books, but she reached an impasse with her lab book. A normal scriptologist wouldn’t have use for the technical manuals she’d need to reference in order to stock her laboratory with equipment. She would have to venture forth from her rooms to complete the lab book.
Reluctantly, Elsa broke the silence in her rooms. “Casa, do you have a larger collection of scriptological resources anywhere? Or technical manuals, perhaps?”
“Why yes, signorina. In the library, of course.”
Elsa stood up from her chair. “Might you direct me there?”