12



The laboratory of Dr. Sabbatine is as colossal and melodramatic as you had expected: inside, it resembles a dirigible hangar, its walls lined with electric and pneumatic machinery, its circumference ringed by a metallic walkway.

Near the entrance, a lone young woman in a red jacket checks credentials and directs the teeming multitudes. You count fifteen soldiers, twenty or more scientists, and a half dozen people like Alexius: merchants, diplomats, and functionaries. A velvet rope holds back over thirty journalists, who keep shouting questions at anyone who gets close enough.

As the night deepens, you wait for the gaslights. Instead the room floods suddenly with the eye-stinging radiance of electric lightbulbs. The journalists fall silent, writing in their notebooks about this marvel.

The eye-searing radiance illuminates some kind of raised platform at the far end of the chamber. Maybe twenty feet in diameter, its floor resembles a huge, reflective mirror. Amid the brass consoles, switches, and wheels, you see what appears to be a brass nameplate: The Specular.

The soldiers all appear to be men, but you spot a few women among the journalists and curiosity-seekers. Several female researchers circulate along the walkway, though those holding letters from the doctor form a bickering knot of men young and old that seems unwilling to admit outsiders.

Everyone keeps glancing at the huge central clock as if they know when the doctor will appear. You don't, but you seem to have a few minutes before the big moment.