Day 41
Miss Diviou and I have been carefully avoiding meeting—we don't want the authorities to suspect that we're working together—so I was surprised to see her at a bookstore that we had agreed was one of the ones I would search for novels that might have clues. Wasn't having any luck, anyway.
She was browsing a little ahead of me, and I saw her slip a piece of paper into one of the books and then leave. I purchased the volume, of course, and stepped into a nearby alley to read her note.
“I knew you would be here,” it read. “I urgently need to speak with you. Meet me back at the park.”
I dutifully went back to our rendezvous point, and she was there waiting for me. “You have to hear this,” she said. “It changes everything.”
She then proceeded to tell me the most fantastic tale. We'd agreed that the factories are central to the whole thing—for some reason I keep forgetting about that, so now I glance at my journal every day. We'd also agreed that it was far too dangerous to attempt to enter one.
Or at any rate I thought we had.
Miss Diviou, showing a bold and adventurous nature that I would not expect from someone of her sex, had gone and sneaked into one of the factories at night. It was a daring story she told, full of picking locks and nearly getting caught by guards and whatnot, but the important bit is what she discovered.
“They have massive printing presses there,” she said. “Guess what they're printing?”
I reached for what I thought was the obvious answer. “Seditious pamphlets? Anarchist propaganda?”
“Maps!” she answered, and I came very near to falling out of my chair. “Maps of every city and country in Europe! All different designs, different publishers' names...this city must have a monopoly on map-printing for the whole continent!”
It had never occurred to me, it shames me to admit, to wonder where the maps I draw are actually printed. One ships them off to the publisher and lets them deal with that sort of thing.
She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. “I smuggled out a map of London. I know it's your home and thought you might want to look at it.”
I looked at it and was instantly horrified.
“This isn't London,” I said. “I mean, it broadly is, but look. This street doesn't exist at all. This one does, but it bends a different way. This one—Hellfire and Damnation!”
I would never say such things around a lady, you understand, but I was profoundly moved.
“They are encoding some of their symbols into their maps of London.”
Miss Diviou understood immediately. “Do you mean they are attempting to reshape London as they do their own city?”
“Not as profoundly, I think, but yes. They are trying to change the city to—” I caught myself this time—“who knows what ends.”
“Your country and mine must know of this,” Miss Diviou said. “They could be changing cities all over Europe.”
I agreed. My goal of maping this one city suddenly seemed inconsequential.
I will depart, but first I need to inform Biffy. I don't fully understand the nature of these people, but it is possible that his life is in danger.