The Stolen Future Box Set

by Brian K. Lowe

  “You read them. There’s writing inside… What kind of a librarian are you?”

  Opening the book, he ignored me. “Fascinating. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “How can you call yourself a librarian if you’ve never seen a book before?”

  He seemed to recall me with a start and put the book away.

  “I’m sorry, sir. How can I help you?”

  “You can start by answering my question!”

  “I call myself a Librarian because that is what I am. Since until I met you I had never heard of a book, I don’t know how else to answer you.”

  I had to sit down. The chair made a comfortable place to ponder, but the librarian’s hovering made it difficult. He put another brandy on the tabouret. He pulled more books from the shelves and made a point of pretending to examine them while he examined me. Eventually he went away, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was always right over my shoulder.

  Sure enough, when I stood up, there he was.

  “Where am I?”

  “You are in Library Two, Nuum Administrative Tower, Vardan, Thora.”

  “Vardan? Thora?” I repeated, pronouncing the latter in the German style. “What are those?” Of course, I was already familiar with the terms, having heard them from Bantos Han, but the librarian might provide more information.

  The librarian seemed not at all nonplused by my questions. “Vardan is the name of this city. Thora is the name of this planet.”

  “I thought this was Earth.”

  This did seem to give him pause. He stood perfectly still for at least two seconds, not long in most situations but quite noticeable in a conversation.

  “This planet has not been called Earth for approximately 800,000 years. Yours is the first contemporary reference to that name of which I am aware since I was initialized.”

  As with so many facts I had recently become to know, I believe that I had already decided that the librarian was not a man, but the confirmation did not fill me with any sense of satisfaction. Rather it filled me with apprehension. I knew now how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole.

  “Where I come from,” I said in what I believed to be a remarkably normal voice, “it is called Earth. I am a time traveler from the 20th century.”

  “Really,” he replied distantly. “Time travel is number thirteen on the list of those subjects whose research I am instructed to report to the Nuum.”

  “However,” he continued, “my human programmers have blocked that instruction.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, even though I wasn’t completely sure why. “Initialized?” “Programmers?” There were gaps in my education that needed to be remedied immediately. Belatedly I realized that Hori Han must have had exactly that thought in mind when she left me here.

  “Librarian, where can I find books that will help me to live in this century?”

  “That is a wide field.” He placed one hand on his chin, supporting his elbow with the opposite hand exactly as one of the dons in my college had done. Now that I looked, I could see that don’s features on the librarian, mixed in with those of other men I had known. The effect was pleasant, if unsettling when you dwelled upon it. At least, for all that he was a machine, he sounded far more human than the elevator. “I can give you a general education, but much of it will depend on concepts with which you are unfamiliar: hierarchical mathematics, biosoftware conceptualization, psycholinguistics, genetic engineering, dataspherics, atypical physics, prescient causality…and of course, more history than your brain might absorb.”

  I stared at him. “I can’t learn all that—I’m only going to be here one night!”

  True to his form, he tsked, then gently led me back to the chair. He took a book off a shelf.

  “Since you are familiar with these books, I can use them as your interface. Just open it as you would normally.”

  “But I can’t read it. I don’t understand this alphabet.”

  “Then that will be the first thing we teach you. I will transfer the information directly into your unconscious mind while you sleep. Some things you will retain better than others, because you have already studied them. Those neural pathways are established and can be expanded upon. And muscle memory, for example, can only be learned over time.”

  I opened the book…

  There was no sensation of awakening other than the knowledge that I had been asleep. The librarian stood over me in the same position he had been in before. He was smiling again.

  “Don’t try to get up just yet. Your neural networks are not as developed as were those for whom this program was written. It might give you a headache.”

  He was right about that. My first winter in England had greeted me with snow and a terrible head cold, and that was how I felt now. My skull was throbbing all over. The librarian handed me a pill and a glass of water, both of which I took with thanks. Immediately my discomfort began to fade into the background, but I was content to let him speak on.

  “I gave you as much basic general knowledge as I thought safe. Your brain is more disposed toward artistic than logical endeavors, so your grounding in mathematics is quite limited. This was particularly necessary since your own education was very primitive in those areas.” He bent down to peer into my eyes before continuing. “On the other hand, given your dilemma, I thought it superfluous to feed you a deep understanding of contemporary art and literature.”

  “My dilemma?” Any attention I was paying to my headache was now diverted. “What dilemma?”

  “My original programming goes beyond simple data input and output. I was designed to assist patrons in sifting through research and synthesizing outlines. Moreover, I have been operational for over 600,000 years. In that time I have continued to develop through self-programming. It is my analysis that once your presence here is known, you will immediately become the most valuable man on Thora.”

  I felt a warning chill. Even though I knew the answer, I had to ask, “Why?”

  “Time travel is a highly-prized commodity, sir,” the Librarian informed me. “Both the Nuum and the Thoran resisters would pay dearly to possess it. Once they learn of your origin, they will want to take you into their custody.”

  “But I don’t know anything… What about the men who followed me here?”

  “If the presence of additional time travelers were known, they would rank equal to you as a goal.”

  I paused to consider my options. “Then if anyone finds out about them, I’ll lose my chance to get home.”

  For the second time, the librarian did not answer me immediately, but this time instead of freezing, he paced slowly before the fireplace. It made him more human, more familiar; had he done more while I was asleep than simply give me information? Had he taken information from me as well?

  “That is not necessarily true. I am only a branch librarian, but the main library in Hebrone might have more information on time travel. It is even possible that a time machine still exists.”

  “Are you sure? Where?”

  “I don’t know. The only information on time travel in my database is very old: The last known incidence of a time traveler arriving from the past occurred approximately 100,000 years ago. And I cannot access Hebrone mainframe on a classified subject through the datasphere. It could be picked up by the Nuum, and traced to you.”

  The datasphere was a worldwide information network telepathically accessible only by the Nuum—and by the Library. That information came automatically; I had not known it before, but I did now. Its existence contributed to the fact that the Library was empty, since most of the data useful on a day-to-day basis was directly available to any individual authorized to have such information. Thorans, naturally, did not, which explained why it had never come up in my conversations with Bantos Han and his family.

  “What if I went to Hebrone? Could I download the information from the library there?” I didn’t even notice when I started using new words; they were simply there for me.
r />   “Yes, but Hebrone is a very long way from here.” He handed me a book, whose title I could now read: World Geography. I opened it at random and saw a map of the Northern Hemisphere with my location and that of Hebrone clearly marked. I noted in passing that time had changed the face of the earth, but I saw much more clearly than that how far I had to go. If I were still in what was once France, Hebrone was what in my time had been called California. “I must also warn you that, if the Nuum were to conduct an audit of the library records, they would discover your search.”

  That slowed me. “And that could lead them to me.”

  “Researchers’ identities are private,” he assured me. “But the results of your research are not.”

  I considered this for a moment. Even were I to find a way back, it might take time to use it. I might even have to build a machine from scratch—assuming I found the plans for one. And I would be leaving behind a roadmap for an alien race to conquer not only this planet, but all of Time, as well…

  He who hesitates is lost.

  “Can you give me a copy of this map?”

  “I can do better than that,” he replied. He held in his hand a metal sphere about the size of a large marble. “This is a mini-branch library. It contains information that your brain couldn’t hold. I have programmed it with geographic, political, and other data that will aid you on your journey. You can access it by voice command.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he warned, shaking his head. “This machine is forbidden by the Nuum. If they catch you with it, it is a capital crime.”

  I thought of my pistol, hidden in Bantos Han’s house. That, too, was a capital offense. Suddenly I thought of Hori Han, and I asked the librarian how long I had been there. It was far less than it seemed, but there was still much to learn, so little time! The irony had never been more poignant. Just a few hours ago I had witnessed the aftermath of an incredible bestial atrocity, and now I as I looked around I saw myself surrounded by the summit of knowledge of almost a million years of mankind.

  Surely in this library were the answers to more than my simple problems.

  “Librarian, given your grasp of history, can you estimate the how long it will be before the Nuum empire falls?”

  “Given the current trends and allowing for no significant outside forces, the Nuum will be absorbed into the Thoran population in approximately 253 years.”

  I squinted at him suspiciously. “That didn’t take you long.”

  “You were not the first person to ask that question.”

  I attempted to learn the identity of the other researcher, as much to test his resolve as to discover an answer, but try as I might, he refused to divulge the name, and I eventually gave up. Time was fleeting and there was much else to learn.

  Following the Librarian’s advice, I finally satisfied myself with picking random volumes and skimming them for what I could understand: Tantalizing glimpses of scientific discoveries, bizarre cultures, pioneering space colonies, unimaginable human atrocities. I learned in one night about the rise and fall of human civilizations in eerily consistent cycles of one hundred thousand years; of the constancy of man’s devotion to love and hate; of the similarities of alien races spawned on opposite sides of the galaxy. When Hori Han opened the door in the morning, I walked out of the library with my head in the clouds.

  When we arrived back at their home, Bantos Han and Hana were awaiting us. When they had heard how I had survived the rioting and how Hori had found me in the Nuum’s own headquarters, they had both notified their employers that they would not be in that day. Following the disturbances, many businesses had closed, so there was no problem with their decision to stay home. Hori had gone in as usual, solely to retrieve me, then made her excuses and left early.

  They greeted me with hugs such as I would have expected from my own family upon my return from France. Hana threw her arms around my neck in a fashion I found especially enjoyable. When she pulled back to look at my face, tears streaming down her cheeks, she kissed me right there before her siblings, God, and everyone.

  “You’ve found something! I can tell,” she said breathlessly.

  “Perhaps,” I replied. “Perhaps not. Let’s go into the living room so I can tell you about it.”

  As we sat down, I used the time to consider my words. The Hans, especially my Hana, had earned the right to the truth, but now that so much more than my own life hung in the balance, in, could I trust that this mind-reading, tyrannical society would allow them to keep it to themselves?

  As usual, my hosts were far ahead of me.

  “If you did find something, maybe you should keep the details to yourself,” Bantos Han suggested. His caution surprised me, until I recalled our conversation in the garden, his hatred of the Nuum and his covetous looks at my Webley. Perhaps Bantos Han had secrets of his own that the Nuum would pay to discover…

  In general terms, then, I outlined my visit to the Library, my assumption of so much useful contemporary knowledge. I told them that a way to return to my own time might exist, although uncovering it would engender its own dangers. The existence of my branch library remained a secret. I also described for them the advent of the riots, but for Hana and Hori’s sake I stuck to an outline of that subject as well. I could give the details to Bantos Han later; from his look I believed that, given a chance, he would soon press me for that information regardless.

  “So what will you do?” asked Hori. “If you find your information, it could place a terrible technology in reach of the Nuum, and if you don’t, you’re stuck here forever.”

  “Unless the Silver Men find me and kill me,” I said. “Or the Nuum find out who I am and kill me. If it exists at all, the time travel technology has been locked away for ages. No one has stumbled across it until now, and there’s no reason to suppose anyone will find it because of me, if I don’t attract any attention to myself. Maybe I can even destroy it before I go.” And if not, I reminded myself, the Nuum will be gone soon. That knowledge had been lost for 100,000 years. It would stay hidden another two hundred. “All I have to do is keep a low profile.”

  We were interrupted by the buzzing of the door. As I was the nearest, I passed my hand over the light which activated the visitor screen. When I spoke of what I saw, it was as though my voice were coming from far away.

  “It’s the Nuum,” I said. “They’ve found me.”

  Chapter 12

  Kidnapped

  Farren strolled into the house as though he owned it—which in a sense he did. During the period in I had been learning how to carry myself as though I belonged in this place and time, Farren had been a frequent, if unwelcome, visitor. His attentions upon Hana had never varied: insistent, boorish, and in vain.

  Had I not witnessed his visit that first night, I might have taken Hana’s present reaction to him as reassurance that her heart leaned toward me, but having seen them together before I made my appearance, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that in this, at least, my presence was immaterial. She despised him, man or Nuum, and he just wouldn’t take the hint.

  It seemed that now, however, he had comprehended his problem and was prepared to use the force typical of his race to remedy his other shortcomings.

  On his prior visits, moreover, he had aroused in me only the relatively impersonal outrage that came from seeing a woman subjected to unwanted attentions, the kind of seething anger any gentleman would experience when he was helpless to step in and halt the injustice. Now, however, my rage was infinitely more personal—this time he was threatening the person I held most dear in this utterly alien world. If he were to lay a hand on Hana in my presence now, one of us would soon lie dead on the floor.

  Yet this visit was different in another sense. Always before, Farren had arrived alone to pursue his vain ambition; this time he brought another. The second Nuum stood back from the proceedings at all times, his eyes flickering ceaselessly between the family members, and me. Me most often of all. Sp
eculation as to why Farren suddenly foresaw the need for a bodyguard gnawed anxiously.

  Now he strode brusquely straight to Hana as though the rest of us did not exist. She grasped her sister’s arm as he spoke.

  “Hana Wen, gather your things. You are coming with me.”

  For a moment, the world stood still, then Bantos Han stepped forward—to protest, to strike, I did not know, but Farren’s bodyguard did not wait to learn. He flashed before his employer and struck at my friend’s head with a short club he had carried at his waist. It was a wicked, swift blow designed to incapacitate or worse, and likely would have split Bantos Han’s skull.

  I got there first.

  Farren gaped and the bodyguard frowned when I grabbed the club in mid-swing, holding it fast. The effort nearly broke my hand, but I kept the pain of my face by concentrating on my overwhelming anger. I easily twisted the club out of the other man’s hand and flung it aside.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I demanded before Farren could open his mouth to do the same.

  It doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong as long as you take the initiative. His self-control faltered in the slightest degree. He had not expected to find another lion guarding the sheep-pen, nor did he find looking up at me a pleasant experience. Men like Farren are used to looking down their noses at others, regardless of height. I refused to let him.

  “I am Farren ten Paset,” he announced, not without a heavy touch. “Ten” indicated a Nuum of high noble state. If he expected me to retire from the field at the sound of his name, however, he must have been quite surprised when I did not move or speak. “I’m here to speak to Hana Wen. Alone.”

  I laughed softly, glancing from his retainer back to him. My continued silence goaded him into impatience.

  “Whatever your business here, it is done. Move aside. Better yet, go. The woman is mine, now.”

  Oh, that was his game! He thought I was another of Hana Wen’s suitors, a powerful man in the eyes of the rabble, but sure to step aside when a true lord of lords such as he entered the picture. It did seem a convenient way of explaining my presence.