Senlin Ascends

*Senlin Ascends* is the first book in Josiah Bancroft's Books of Babel series.

## Plot

Thomas Senlin, a headmaster of a school in Isaugh, and Marya Berks Senlin, his wife and pianist, arrive via train on their honeymoon at the Tower of Babel. Senlin, who uses a guidebook to help him on the trip, starts to suspect that the Tower isn’t as civilized as the book suggests. The Markets, which lay outside the Tower, is overcrowded and uncivil. Senlin stays behind to watch the luggage while Marya goes to shop for undergarments. After a conversation with another pair of tourists, Senlin realizes his luggage is stolen and Marya is also nowhere to be found.

Senlin spends two days looking for Marya in the Markets. A young man, Adamos “Adam” Boreas, approaches Senlin and explains how common it is for loved ones to get misplaced at the Tower. Adam leads Senlin through the Skirts to the entrance of the Tower where loved ones leave notes for one another. Adam leaves a note for his sister, Voleta, who he hasn’t seen in two years. Senlin hires Adam to be his guide through the Tower, assuming Marya has traveled to the Baths, where they were initially going to vacation. An airship crashes down on the Skirts, and Senlin is horrified to see the ship and bodies ransacked by the people around him.

Adam leads Senlin through the tunnel and into the Basement, the first “ringdom” of the Tower. The two find lodging so Senlin can rest, but when he wakes up, he discovers that Adam robbed him. Senlin purchases a new change of clothes and sees a man trying to sell clothes that he had bought for Marya. He confronts him but is kneed in the crotch. The man, Finn Goll, explains to him that Adam sold him the silks and he did not steal it. Goll takes Senlin to the “Beer-Me-Go-Round” a carousel-like machine powered by riders pedaling on it which results in free beer pouring into troughs. Goll advises him not to trust anyone or tell them that he’s searching for his wife, lest he be taken advantage.

Senlin pays a fee charged by two goons guarding the entrance to the second floor, the Parlor. He meets an older man, Edsel Pining, while in line. Pining explains that they’re waiting for a play that lasts an entire week. An usher reveals that everyone is *in* the play, and that everyone will be assigned one of four roles. Senlin is cast as the butler in a play about a love affair between a wealthy businessman, his wife, and the businessman’s protégé. There are several rules to follow, including that every actor must keep the fires in the fireplaces stoked.

Senlin enters a fake house, and finds the husband, who is played by a drunk, arguing with his protégé, played by Pining. The husband murders Pining in a fit of rage, and chases Senlin and the actress, Edith Winters, playing the wife throughout the house. Senlin and Edith overpower the actor and escape through the door that Senlin had entered through. They are escorted backstage, where Senlin notices that clerks are spying through peepholes at every performance and put in a cage hanging over the Tower while a registrar decides their fate.

Edith reveals that she is a recent divorcee, whose husband took over her farm that her father left them. Anen Ceph, an assistant registrar, announces that Senlin will be sent to the Baths, while Edith, who did not keep the fires stoked, will be branded and sent to the Basement. Senlin fulfills Edith’s request to stay by her side during her punishment. When Ceph leads Senlin to the entrance of the Baths, it’s revealed that even the registrars, assistant registrars, and nurses administering the branding are actors.

Senlin finds the entrance to the Baths guarded by customs officers. The ringdom is filled with hotels, bathhouses, and pools. He meets John Tarrou, a tourist, who invites Senlin to dine with him. For a month, Senlin follows a routine of searching hotels for his wife and dining with Tarrou, who keeps claiming that it is his last night before returning home. Throughout that time, Senlin learns that the Baths are under the control of Commissioner Emmanuel Pound and his agents. Tourists are often forced into slavery, and labelled hods, for falling into debt, while others, who are loosely accused of crime, are slaughtered by the Commissioner’s executioner, the Red Hand, who is strengthened by a glowing red fluid coursing through his veins.

Tarrou harasses a painter, Philip Ogier, outside of the café where Senlin and him regularly dine. Senlin helps Ogier pick up his paintings and sees that his wife is the subject of one. Ogier promises to give him information on Marya if Senlin steals back a painting of his from the Commissioner. Senlin confronts Tarrou about his continued extended stay at the Tower as it’s revealed that Tarrou has been at the Tower for sixteen years. Tarrou also lost his wife but could not find her. His wife found her way home and started sending him money to help him survive. Tarrou, feeling embarrassed that he could not rescue his wife from the Tower, took the money and was taken by the indulgences of the Baths.

Tarrou escorts Senlin, posing as an art critic, to a party thrown at the Commissioner’s mansion and introduces them. Senlin feigns an allergy, claiming that the perfume of Ogier’s painting is setting it off. The Commissioner, who often wears a gas mask due to his intense allergies, is alarmed. Senlin offers to decontaminate the painting for him. The Commissioner agrees but says it must be done so at his Customs Bureau under watch of his security officers. Senlin spends his first day at the Customs Burea surveying the area and notices the Commissioner’s impressive warship *The Ararat*. The following day, Senlin arrives with a copy of the painting from Ogier wrapped around a wine bottle. He shares the wine with the guard, Kristof, who falls asleep. Senlin is able to switch out the real painting with the fake painting. However, Kristof, wakes up, revealing that he’s aware that Senlin intends to steal the painting, and believing him to be working for House Algez, a rival family to the ringdom, allows Senlin to get a head start in exchange for employment as an informant.

Senlin leaves the Customs Bureau and finds Commissioner Pound sentencing Tarrou into slavery for his debt. Senlin gives the painting to Ogier, who tells him that Marya was able to get to the Baths within a few days of losing him but lost her money and had to find work posing for Ogier. She hired an investigator to search for Senlin, but the man was actually a wife-monger who sold her to “the Count”, a man from the powerful Pell family from the fifth ringdom, Pelphia. Ogier gives Senlin passage on a ferry to New Babel as well as a gun disguised as a key, a painting of his wife, and hidden on the back of that painting, the authentic painting that he had him steal.

New Babel is a city ringdom that’s filled with electricity. Senlin’s name is recognized by an amazon woman, Iren, at the port of New Babel. He is chased through the ringdom and caught in a drug den, where he accidentally inhales a hallucinogenic drug called white chrom, or crumb. She brings him to Finn Goll, who is revealed to oversee the port in New Babel, as well as the whorehouses and other operations within the ringdom. He reveals that he and Adam con unsuspecting tourists in the basement, specifically people that Goll intends to hire for work on the ringdom. Goll, impressed with Senlin’s ascent through the Tower, offers him the role of port master. Senlin, despite his suspicion of Goll’s duplicity, accepts due to his lack of money.

Senlin, alongside Adam, improves the efficiency of the port, increasing profits while increasing the wages of the workers, unbeknownst to Goll. Adam reveals that he never lost his sister. Adam and Voleta came from a city outside of the Tower, where his father died fixing the railroads and his dying mother was taken in by his aunt and uncle. Adam went to the Tower for work, while his sister went for adventure. Adam believed he found work as a clerk for the Parlor, when he was actually going into debt as an actor. He was branded and sentenced into slavery but his sister was able to strike a deal with Goll to have Adam work for him. Adam attempted to pay off his debt to Goll, while also paying off the whoremonger, Rodion, from selling his sister as a prostitute. Voleta performs as an acrobat at Rodion’s burlesque show at the Steam Pipe.

Senlin informs Adam on his plan to steal a ship, and taking on Adam, Voleta, and Iren as crew. Adam is uncertain of the plan. The Red Hand breaks into Senlin’s bedroom and interrogates him about the paintings whereabouts. Adam shoots at the Red Hand, but he escapes from the ringdom. Senlin finds a rope hanging off the port, suggesting that someone has tipped off the Commissioner about his location.

Senlin has Iren teach him self-defense in exchange for Senlin teaching her how to read. Goll learns about the deal and has Iren beat Senlin for it. Edith reunites with Senlin at the port. She is a first mate aboard *The Stone Cloud*, and is sporting a new metal arm due to the botched branding nearly killing her (the circumstances around how she got the metal arm are unclear). Senlin reveals his plan to steal *The Stone Cloud*, pretending to offer her captain, Billy Lee, payment to smuggle the painting out of New Babel, tipping off Rodion, then as Rodion and his men are seizing the ship, tipping off Goll, which will create a skirmish that will act as a diversion for Senlin and crew to escape on the Stone Cloud.

Iren forces Senlin to travel to Goll’s home, presumably to kill Senlin for one of his many schemes. Senlin reveals his theory that the Tower is an engine: the Basement pumps the water,  the Parlor heats the water, the steam is stored in the Baths, and electricity is created in New Babel. He also asks Iren to join him in his escape. Goll is livid that Senlin has used profits to increase wages. Senlin considers using his key gun on Goll but is ashamed by that urge when Goll’s children enter the room. Goll lets Senlin off with a final warning and instructs Senlin and Iren to arm the men in case Rodion and his men invade the port.

Senlin is accosted by Billy Lee upon his return, saying that Rodion’s prostitute told him about how Senlin’s wanted by the Commissioner. Billy Lee is interrupted by Rodion, who shoots him starting a fight between *The Stone Cloud* crew and Rodion’s men. Edith and Rodion duel, but Rodion cuts a cable to the ship, causing Edith to fall off. Goll and his men interrupt the fight. Adam warns everyone that the Commissioner is coming, revealing that he’s the one that tipped him off about Senlin’s location. Goll tells Iren to open the crate (a decoy filled with crumb) to retrieve the painting. Senlin shoots Rodion with the key gun as he attempts to shoot Iren.

*The Aratat* enters, firing into the port. The Red Hand and Iren fight but she is knocked unconscious by falling debris. The Commissioner reveals to Senlin that Ogier is a fraud and didn’t make the painting. He has the Red Hand open the decoy crate and crumb explodes everywhere. Edith returns to fight the Red Hand. Senlin and the Commissioner duel as he has a hallucination of Marya. The cables to the Aratat are cut off and the Commissioner is forced to flee onto the ship before it leaves the port. Edith holds the Red Hand by the neck over the port. He warns her that killing him would displease the Sphinx, but she drops him anyway. Senlin, Edith, Iren, Adam, and Voleta escape on *The Stone Cloud.*

Senlin, now under the name of Tom Mudd, writes in his journal about his new crew, while the hallucination of his wife stands at his side.