The Library at Mount Char

by Scott Hawkins

  “But?”

  She sighed. “But compassion was all there was. It wasn’t like when we were kids. We didn’t connect. There was this huge gap between us. We used the same words, but they meant different things, and…and…I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.”

  “It’s not surprising. The two of you had very different lives.” Father’s eyes went distant for a moment. “I am sorry, though. I really do know how you feel.”

  “What should I do?”

  Father shook his head. “I can’t answer that, Carolyn. But the way I see it, you have three options.” He held up a finger. “First, you could change the past. Make it so that Steve was Pelapi all along.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I understand why you raised us—raised me—that way, but…there were times…”

  “It was hard, I know. I’m sorry, Carolyn. It was the only way.”

  “I understand that, too. But I’m not sure I want to subject Steve to it. I’m not sure I want to subject anyone to that.” She sighed. “What’s the second choice?”

  “You could abdicate,” Father said. “Change it so that all of you were raised American. You and Steve could grow up together. Quietly. Peacefully.”

  She turned the notion over in her mind—what would happen if she was out of the picture? The Duke would move first, almost certainly. But Barry O’Shea and Liesel couldn’t afford to just stand by while the Duke eliminated intelligent life—there wouldn’t be anything left for them to eat. They’d pretty much have to ally against him, at least temporarily. She frowned. Either way, it wouldn’t be long before people were—

  She felt Father’s eyes upon her. He was smiling slightly.

  “Well…what would you do? If I abdicated.”

  Father shrugged. “I’d have to start looking for my successor again. I’ve looked after this world so long I don’t think I could bear to know it was ruined.” He flashed a small, ferocious smile. “Call me sentimental.”

  She blinked. “If you say so. What would it mean in practical terms?”

  “Hmmm. I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. It took a long time to isolate your bloodline, and longer still to arrange for the lot of you to be in Garrison Oaks. I’d have to do something like that again.” He pursed his lips. “Or I suppose I could start from scratch? Work my way up from base clay? Perhaps I could—well. Never mind. Either way, it would be more complicated this time, and your part of it would be over. All of you, I mean. On Labor Day, 1977, everyone would have a nice picnic and go home sunburned and overfed. A few days after that someone would notice that old Mr. Black has gone missing, and that would be the end of it.” He looked at her. “Is that what you want?”

  Once or twice, Carolyn had wondered about this. “What would we have been, do you think? Without the Library? Without you?”

  “I can tell you exactly. Would you like me to?”

  “Please.”

  “You were quiet,” Father said. “A bit mousy. You and Steve were an item through high school. You took each other’s virginity after your junior prom, but it didn’t last.” He shrugged. “Both of you ended up marrying other people. You were friends, though. You stayed in touch until your forties.”

  “What did I do?”

  “For a living?”

  She nodded.

  “Actually, you were a librarian,” Father said. “The American sort.”

  She snorted laughter. “Seriously?”

  Father chuckled too. “Cross my heart. You can’t make stuff like that up. You had a nice, quiet life. You worked at the University of Oregon. You were really good at office politics, but there weren’t any major challenges. You got a little chubby after the second baby was born, so you took up competing in triathlons.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a kind of race. You swim for a while, then run, then ride a bicycle.”

  “Oh.”

  Father smirked. “Also, you studied French in your spare time.”

  “Ha! Was I any good?”

  “Passable. Your vocabulary and grammar were decent, but your accent was atrocious. You never made it to Paris, though. Thyroid cancer, when you were fifty-nine.”

  “Oh.” She thought about it. “What’s option three?”

  “You could let him go.” He waited a long time, but she didn’t answer. Finally, he said, “Well, you think about it. What was the other part?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You said getting a consult on Steve was part of what you wanted to talk to me about. What was the other part?”

  “Oh. Right. I guess I understand what you did—training me, I mean—but I still don’t understand why. And what do you mean when you say you’re retiring? Are you, I dunno, getting an RV and going to Boca Raton or something like—”

  Father laughed. “Not exactly. You said it’s been, what? Six, eight months?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What catalogs have you been focusing on?”

  “The priority has been strategy and tactics. Q-33 North is in motion, and there have been some rumblings about the Forest God. He has a priestess that—well. Never mind. It’s not your problem anymore.”

  “Any mathematics?”

  “Only peripherally. Why?”

  “Are you familiar with the notion of regression completeness?”

  She had heard the term somewhere, but couldn’t quite call up the meaning. “No.”

  “It’s the idea that however deeply you understand the universe, however many mysteries you solve, there will always be another, deeper mystery behind it.”

  “Ah.”

  “You know I didn’t create this universe, right? I left my mark on it, and I like to think I made improvements, but I was only working with rules that were in place from the third age. Light was one of my touches, and pleasure.”

  “We wondered,” Carolyn said. “No one was sure. But if not you, who?”

  Father shook his head. “I asked that same question, once. If there ever was an answer, it’s been lost.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whoever it was, though…he was a craftsman. I’ve been studying his work for a long time. I’ve picked up some tricks”—he waved his hand, a gesture that took in the uncounted acres of books, scrolls, and folios of the Library—“but I’m no closer to understanding the whole picture than I was when I started.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’ve proven it. This universe is regression complete. I’ll never understand the whole thing. No one will. So I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  “I’m creating my own universe. My place, my rules. That’s my retirement.”

  “Sounds lonely.”

  Father shook his head. “I have my friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “While you were sleeping I resurrected Nobununga. Mithraganhi as well.”

  Carolyn remembered Michael, speaking of his master. You understand that Nobununga is more than just a tiger, yes? She remembered Nobununga trudging into the reissak, his unshakable faith in Father. He said Father would let no harm come to him. And, as it turned out, he was right.

  “Where are they?” She felt uneasy.

  “Waiting for me,” Father said, pointing at the jade staircase. “Would you like to see them?”

  Carolyn thought of Mithraganhi holding out her small, bloody hand, asking, “Moru panh ka seiter?” Why are you doing this to me? She shook her head. “Probably not a good idea.”

  Father nodded. “I understand.”

  For a moment she imagined the three of them together, Father and Nobununga and Mithraganhi, hanging out, maybe playing volleyball or something. It seemed outside of his nature. But she was coming to understand that Father’s nature was, perhaps, something other than what had been presented to her. “May I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You remember the…the day of the bull? David?”

&
nbsp; “Of course.”

  “Why were you smiling?”

  Father looked at her for a long moment. “Walk with me, Carolyn.” He stood, still lithe, and set out through the shelves.

  Carolyn bustled to catch up. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s not far.”

  He led her out of the red catalog—David’s catalog, the meditations on murder and war—and into the violet stacks. Violet was a small catalog, part of Peter’s world. She wasn’t even sure what sort of gem the floor was made of. Amethyst? Garnet? Tanzanite? She didn’t recall ever setting foot in it before.

  Father stopped at a tall dusty shelf filled with titles like Larousse Gastronomique and Le Cordon Bleu at Home and The Joy of Cooking. Carolyn wondered, What the hell are we doing here?

  Father selected a three-ring binder. It was flimsy and cheap and half-hidden behind a book about Cornish pasties. The cover was stamped with the words “Charlie’s Angels.” It had a picture of three pretty women printed on it.

  He handed the notebook to her. Something caught her eye. In the deep shadows of the Library there was a flicker of motion, a small sound.

  “What’s this?”

  “That,” Father said, “is the black folio.”

  Carolyn looked at him. “Seriously?” Supposedly the black folio contained instructions for altering the past. As such, its power was effectively limitless. Early on, she had spent years looking for this. She had finally concluded it didn’t exist.

  He nodded. “It was mis-shelved, I’m afraid. Didn’t want you stumbling over it before you were ready.”

  She opened the binder. The pages inside were ancient vellum, and the handwriting on them was not Father’s. She blinked. As she watched, the writing changed on the page. A moment later it did so again. When it did so a third time she understood that though the verses set down in the black folio did not change, the language in which they were written did. Every few seconds the ink on the page rearranged itself. First it was Arabic, then Swahili, then the poetry of storms. “Oh my God.”

  Father nodded. “Mine too, very possibly.”

  The black folio. “Who wrote this? How old is it?”

  “No one knows.” Father looked at her levelly. “I took it from the Emperor of the third age. It wasn’t his handwriting either.”

  She closed it. “But what does this have to do with—”

  “The reason I was smiling when we put David in the bull was because he begged.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell.

  He held up a hand. “I don’t mean that the way you think.”

  She shook her head, confused.

  “You understand that he was my son, right? I mean, you were all my children in some sense—you most of all, Carolyn—but David’s mother was the only one I had actual sex with.”

  “Father! Ick.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But that…I mean…I guess I don’t understand. Doesn’t that just make it worse? What you did to him? The fact that he was your son, I mean.”

  “It does, yes,” Father said, grave. “Much worse. Worse than you know. Worse than you ever know, I hope.”

  “Then why did you smile?”

  “Because he begged. You never did. Not once.”

  “I might have if you’d tried to put me in that damned thing.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “What? I don’t—”

  He tapped the black folio. “The past kneels before me, Carolyn.”

  “I still don’t see—” Then she did. “David…was supposed to be your heir? In some…some other version of the past?”

  “Correct.”

  “But…it didn’t work out?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because David wasn’t strong enough,” Father said. “The culmination of the training was to conquer a monster. But he never could. I gave him a lot of chances. Too many. Nine times I roasted an innocent child alive so that David would have a monster to kill. Nine different times the monster won. It finally occurred to me that I was training the wrong kid.” He shrugged. “So I gave the monster a shot. That day, when David begged, I knew I’d finally figured it out, finally found my heir.”

  “Nine times?” The belly of the bull, glowing orange in the black of night. “Me?”

  “You never begged,” Father said. “Not once. I still can’t believe it. You don’t remember, of course, but I’ve ridden that bull a couple of times myself.” He shuddered. “Once I even roasted you two times, back to back, so you knew, really knew, what you were in for. I wanted to see what you would do. You just looked at me.” He shook his head. “I still have nightmares.”

  “What was I like?”

  “Like David,” he said. “But so much worse. Worse than me, worse than the Emperor…worse than anything, anywhere, ever. You were a demon. A devil.”

  “Hmm.”

  He waited awhile. “Do you have any more questions?”

  “No. I—” It was on the tip of her tongue to thank him, but she didn’t. Not much later, she would regret that. “No.”

  “Then Ablakha decrees that this fourth age of the world is ended. It’s all yours now, Carolyn. ‘Congratulations’ isn’t the right word, but I know you’ll do well.” Father stood, dusted himself off. “And that means it’s time for me to go.”

  Just like that? “Will I see you again?”

  He shook his head. “No. Never. There is no return from where we are going.”

  “Oh.”

  Father turned and set out walking to the jade staircase, toward Nobununga and Mithraganhi and what came next for such as them.

  Carolyn watched him for a few steps. He did not look back. “Wait!” Carolyn said. “There is one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How did you know? That I’d resurrect you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then what—”

  “I didn’t know, Carolyn. I had faith in you.” Father’s eyes twinkled. “You should probably start getting used to that.”

  She didn’t get the joke.

  Father sighed. “You’re a strong one, Carolyn, but would it kill you to lighten up a little, maybe just every so often?” He snapped his fingers. “Oh! I almost forgot. I left you something.”

  “What?”

  “A surprise.”

  She was wary of Father’s surprises. “A good one?”

  He only smiled.

  She watched him walk away until she was sure he couldn’t hear her. Only then did she whisper, “Good-bye, Father.”

  She never saw him again.

  III

  Steve came back to life on the floor of the penthouse. He was accustomed to dying now; he had clear memories of everything up to the very last moments. Now, the apartment was thick with dust. The glass of Liquid-Plumr had partially dried up while he was away, crystallized. It sat where he had left it…how long ago? He remembered the flavor of it, metallic but not all that unpleasant, remembered also how it had boiled away in his guts. The bottom was crystallized, but there was enough floating at the top for another drink. It’s been waiting for me. Belly up to the bar, pardner!

  For some reason this struck him funny, and he giggled.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?” He turned to the sound of Carolyn’s voice. She was perched on the granite island between the kitchen and living room like a gargoyle, smoking a cigarette.

  “Don’t giggle like that. You sound like Margaret.”

  “But I’m all dusty. Heh. Hee.”

  “It’s been a while.” She tossed him a pack of Marlboros, half full, and Margaret’s lighter.

  He caught them. “Thanks. Where’s Naga?”

  “She went home,” Carolyn said.

  “Back to Africa?”

  Carolyn nodded.

  “Why?”

  “She wanted to be with her people. When, you know, at…” She trailed off.

  “At the end?”

  She nodded
.

  “Jesus, Carolyn. How bad is it out there?”

  Carolyn was silent for a time before she answered. “Well, it’s not the end.” Then, softer, “not yet.”

  Steve nodded. “You haven’t changed.” He looked at the Liquid-Plumr, and suppressed a shudder. Here we go again. Maybe this time I could get ahold of some explos—

  “Actually, I have.” Then, following his gaze to the Liquid-Plumr, “Here.” She held up a pistol. “I’ll make it easy for you. Or isn’t a gun horrible enough?”

  “I suppose I could make it work. Am I getting through to you at all?”

  She just looked at him.

  Steve sat up, brushed the dust off one of the kitchen chairs, lit his cigarette. “You’re getting better at the whole resurrection thing. I’m not even sore this time.”

  “Thanks.”

  He squinted at her over his Marlboro. “You do look different. How long did you say it’s been?”

  “Three or four months, I think. I don’t keep track. Different how?”

  “I’m not sure. You don’t look any older.”

  She snubbed out her cigarette. “I wouldn’t. I don’t age. Not anymore. It’s a trick of Father’s.”

  “You’ve got a couple of lines, though.” He traced his hand across her cheek.

  “Yeah, well. What is it you guys say? ‘It’s not the years, it’s the mileage’?”

  Then he saw it. “I know what it is. You don’t seem so angry. Well…grumpy, maybe. But not like you were.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It used to be that your eyebrows were all crushed together all the time.” He made a face imitating her. “And your jaw muscles kept jumping when you thought no one was looking. Now, less so.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “So, what have you been up to?”

  “This and that,” she said. “Studying, at first. Thinking things over. Then I had a chat with Father.”

  “Seriously? I thought he was dead.”

  She shrugged.

  “Hmm. Just a chat? Not a fight, or anything?”

  “Yeah. It was pretty civil, actually. Why?”

  “Well…I bet an argument between the two of you would be something to see. Did you ever see that movie where King Kong fought the big dinosaur?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”