Cal crept around a stack of shelves, his boots padding lightly on the thin carpet. He had navigated past hundreds of the Mech-height shelving units now, the sound of whispering growing louder with every shuffled step. The units were open on all sides, supported by four thin columns, one at each corner, which allowed him to see right through them to yet more shelves beyond, and more beyond those, on and on and on as far as his light could reach.
He seemed to be in some vast hangar-like room—so big that he couldn’t even begin to guess how far away the walls were. Certainly beyond the limit of his torch, and he suspected it went on for a long way after that.
The shelves were different now. They were still empty, but had been polished as if in preparation for something being placed on them. Quite what that something might turn out to be, Cal didn’t know. He didn’t know if he wanted to know, either, in case it turned out to be his carefully arranged body parts, all laid out with labels and tags.
But no. That was the whispering getting to him. He couldn’t make out a word of it, and yet it was one of the creepiest things he’d ever heard. All those voices, all muttering their secret chorus. In the darkness. Underground. On an alien planet.
“I am so fonked,” he groaned. He shot the blob on his shoulder an encouraging look. “Think you’re up to helping me out here, buddy?” he asked. “I could do with the back-up.”
Splurt had demonstrated countless useful transformations over the months that Cal had known him. He’d been a spider-smashing death machine, a savage multi-limbed monster, and at least one much-loved member of 1980s TV sitcom, The Golden Girls. Whatever form he had taken, he’d proven himself to be violently inventive, reliably murderous, and borderline psychotic—exactly the sort of guy you wanted on your side when the shizz hit the fan.
Now, though, he sagged feebly on Cal’s shoulder, his eyes hanging down like an old woman’s breasts. Cal would find no help there. Not unless he dropped the little guy, and somebody slipped on him.
He filed that away as a possible option and continued on between the stacks.
The creaking metal sound came again. It was close this time, somewhere ahead and to the right.
Eerk. Eerk. Ee.
It stopped. Cal held his breath, his heart thumping with enough force that Splurt trembled with every beat.
The whispers continued, sounding louder in the vacuum that the squeaking had left behind.
Cal suddenly became aware that having his torch on may not be the best idea. Sure, it meant he could see anything directly ahead of him, but it also meant that anything in the immediate vicinity could see him, too.
Reaching up, he flicked the switch. The beam grew brighter, then turned orange.
“Shizz.”
Cal felt around until he found another switch on the torch’s cylindrical body. When he flicked it, a shrill alarm blared out, the sound howling like a foghorn in the darkness. Simultaneously, the orange light began to flash on and off like a car indicator.
“Shh! Jesus! Shut the fonk up!” Cal sobbed, slapping it with the palm of his hand.
A second alarm went off, this one even louder than the first.
Panic made Cal’s movements wild and clumsy. Unable to find the off switch, he wrenched the screaming flashlight off his shoulder, hurled it to the ground, then stomped on it until it coughed and wheezed into silence.
Cal exhaled in relief.
The alarm screamed.
Cal stamped on it again until it was nothing but an assortment of dark, silent pieces on the floor.
He froze then, listening. The whispering continued. Maybe no one had heard.
What was he talking about? Of course, they’d heard. Hell, Mech had probably heard all the way up on the surface, so whoever was down here with him would definitely have picked up on it.
Unless they were deaf, he thought. And blind. God, that would be awesome. Deaf and blind, he could deal with. If they were deaf and blind, he was in the clear.
Something scuffed the ground in the darkness ahead of him. The squeaking returned. Eerk. Eerk. Eerk. It was getting closer.
He could hear something breathing now above the creaking of metal, the air rattling in and out of its throat as it drew steadily nearer. Through the dark, he could just make out the suggestion of an outline advancing toward him.
“I’m armed!” Cal warned, making a grab for the blaster in his leg holster.
It was at this point that he realized he was wearing the holster under his spacesuit and that, as a result, it was completely unreachable.
He shoved his fist in his mouth and bit down on the glove to stop himself from crying out in frustration, then grabbed the Symmorium Sentience in both hands and raised it above his head, ready to bring it down on the skull of whatever came creeping out of the darkness.
A rickety trolley appeared first, squeaking along on its partially seized wheels. A stack of identical hardback books sat atop it, the edges neatly squared off so that everything was just so.
A set of hands arrived next, resting on the trolley’s handle, shoving it along. They were quite small hands, as hands went. Not freakishly tiny, but smaller than his own. There was a pleasing lack of claws or scales or anything else unpleasant, although an angry looking boil near the thumb could probably have done with a visit to a dermatologist.
The sleeves of a sensible cardigan came next, followed by the rest of the cardigan itself. Poking up through the neck hole was a face and, presumably, the rest of the person’s head, although that was still lost in shadow at the moment.
In many ways, the face was the perfect match for the cardigan. It was fascinating in its plainness—average eyes, average nose, average mouth—and struck Cal as a face that may well be the median of every other face that had ever existed anywhere in the galaxy. It was so utterly bland and forgettable, in fact, that every time he blinked he was slightly surprised to see it again when his eyes opened.
Surprised, but not shocked. It wasn’t the sort of face that could ever elicit shock.
The rest of the figure stepped into view, and the trolley squeaked to a stop. She was female, he thought, with lightly graying hair tied back in an upsettingly sensible bun. A set of half-moon spectacles were balanced on her utterly uninteresting nose and secured around her neck by a shiny length of chain. If she’d been human, he’d have put her somewhere in her mid-fifties, but the way her features were arranged suggested she wasn’t exactly human, although she might well be a distant cousin.
“Who the fonk are you?” Cal asked. Behind the woman, a million voices continued to whisper.
“Please keep your voice down,” she said firmly.
“Sorry,” Cal whispered. He didn’t think he’d spoken loudly in the first place, but thought it best not to get on her bad side.
“I am the Librarian,” the woman told him, in a voice that suggested he really ought to have known this. “The real question is—who are you?”
Cal extended a hand. “I’m—”
“Cal Carver. Yes, I know. It was a rhetorical question,” said the Librarian. “So, I suppose the real question is actually, ‘What do you want?’”
Cal opened his mouth.
The Librarian made a sharp swatting motion to silence him.
“Actually, I know that, too,” she said with a sniff. “The real real question is…”
The trolley gave a final eerk as she took a step closer.
“What are we going to do about it?”
Tyrra of the Symmorium and Mizette of the Greyx sat on the unmade bed in Miz’s room, jammed against the headboard by the ship’s uneven slant.
Tyrra leaned against Miz’s powerful shoulder, her dark eyes gazing glassily ahead. She hadn’t spoken since she’d instructed them to go to the Library planet. She hadn’t done much of anything, in fact, beyond emitting the occasional throaty sob.
Miz had an arm around the girl, holding her protectively. Something about the kid had really gotten to her. She was a fighter—a warrior—and yet s
he’d lost everything. Everything she had known, everything she had loved had all been taken from her. Her parents. Her friends. Her entire species. Gone.
Mizette had tried her best to talk to her, to tell her that everything was going to be OK, but all she got in reply were gruff, disinterested grunts.
“Wait a minute,” said Miz, straightening. Tyrra’s head bounced on her shoulder then rested on her upper arm. “Wait a fonking minute.”
Of course. That was why she cared so much about the girl. That was why she had been drawn to her, and why she was consumed with an overwhelming urge to protect her.
“You’re, like, basically me,” Miz said. “We’re both totally the same.”
And she was. And they were.
The ultimate orphans, both the last of their kind. And they had found each other. Somehow, in all the galaxy, they had found each other.
They were the same. They were kin.
They were sisters.
And there, in her off-balance room, for the first time since discovering the fate of her species, Mizette of the Greyx began to cry.
“Tea?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. Thank you,” said Cal, adjusting himself on a plastic chair in a futile attempt to get comfortable.
A delicate cup of deep brown liquid was set in a saucer on the table before him.
“Oh, maybe just a small one,” he said.
He still had the Symmorium Sentience under one arm and looked around for somewhere to put it, before finally settling on the table.
“Not there,” instructed the Librarian before he had the chance. She removed another of the plastic chairs from a stack and placed it beside him. “Sit her there.”
Cal put the Sentience on the chair, held his hands above it until it had stopped wobbling, then sat back.
“Her?” he asked.
The Librarian took her own seat across from him. It was also plastic, but with a floral cushion on the seat. She peered over the top of her spectacles at him, saying nothing.
Cal pointed to his head. “I mean, I guess the voice is female.”
The Librarian nodded curtly, then poured herself a cup of tea from a nondescript metal teapot, added two cubes of sugar from a chipped china bowl, then tipped in just a splash of milk from a little flask.
Replacing the flask’s lid, she turned it until it was tight, tipped the flask upside-down a couple of times to test the seal, then nodded her satisfaction.
That done, she took her cup and raised it to her lips. Her eyes flicked down to Cal’s own cup on the table before him. “You should drink it before it gets cold.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” said Cal, reaching for the cup.
The handle was a problem. It was small and circular, and the hole would have been a tight fit for one of his fingers even if he hadn’t been wearing a spacesuit. As it was, the best he could do was wrap his hand around the outside of the cup, although the smallness of it compared to the largeness of his gloves meant it was almost immediately lost in the fabric.
With some maneuvering, he managed to bring the cup to his mouth, but the glove’s padding meant he couldn’t quite get his lips to the rim. Feeling the pressure to drink it and keep the woman happy, he tried tossing some of the liquid into his mouth. The results, he’d be the first to admit, were mixed, at best.
He erupted in a fit of coughing as half of the liquid sloshed up his nose and found its way into his throat via the side entrance. The other half—arguably the worse half—sloshed into his eyes, temporarily blinding him.
He bent forward, his body wracked by the coughing, tears filling his eyes. “Oh God. Oh God, it burns,” he wheezed, vigorously wiping his face on his sleeve.
After almost a full minute of this, and with the cough now subsiding, Cal straightened and deposited his empty cup on the table. “Thanks,” he said, in a croaky, uneven voice.
The Librarian raised the teapot. “Top up?”
“I’ll pass,” Cal told her.
“And your… friend?” she asked, turning her attention to Splurt for the first time.
Splurt was still sagging on Cal’s shoulder, his eyes two drooping testicles of despair.
“He’s not a big tea guy,” Cal said.
The Librarian looked briefly offended by this, but then nodded graciously and returned the pot to the table.
After they’d met, the Librarian had led Cal through the stacks until they’d reached the area they sat in now. Aside from the addition of the chairs, table, and tea-making facilities, it seemed to be pretty much like any other part of the room—same empty shelves, same whispering voices.
One thing there had been though, and which Cal was pretty delighted about, was a light switch.
“I prefer the dark, actually,” the Librarian had explained, but she’d flicked the switch, anyway, and an area the size of a football field around them had been bathed in a clinical fluorescent light.
The light had revealed more of the same empty shelving units as Cal had already seen, but at least had reassured him that whoever was doing the whispering wasn’t lurking around the corner, ready to jump out at him.
“So,” said the Librarian, taking another sip of her tea. “The Symmorium Sentience.”
Cal glanced at the ball on the chair beside him. It was still dark and dormant, with just the faintest glow throbbing at its center.
“Uh, yeah. I think it’s broken,” Cal said. “But it brought us here.”
“It is not broken. Not exactly,” said the Librarian. She tilted her head a fraction, then nodded, as if in response to some secret voice. “Or rather, it is not broken all the way.”
“Can you fix it?” Cal asked.
“Oh my, no,” said the Librarian. “I could not even begin to start. I am the Librarian. No more. No less.”
“Right. Right,” said Cal, nodding. He looked around at the rows and rows of empty shelves. “I can see you have your work cut out for you.”
“You can say that again,” she replied, either missing the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it completely. “There were more of us at one point. But, you know how it is. Budget cuts.”
She made a clucking noise that made her disapproval very clear.
“They tried to cut my role, too,” she said, gazing into her tea. “There was a petition in the end, I believe, and they kept me.”
“Good,” said Cal. “I mean, great. I’m glad.”
The Librarian nodded curtly. “Librarians are vital. A library is not a library without a librarian. Is it, Mr Carver?”
“I guess not,” said Cal.
The Librarian arched an eyebrow.
“I mean, no. No, it isn’t.”
“It is merely a room filled with books.”
Or not filled with books, Cal thought, shooting another look around.
“And while a room filled with books is quite lovely a thing in and of itself, it is not, as I say, a library. The two are different.”
“Right,” Cal agreed. He laughed a little unconvincingly. “I mean, they’re certainly spelled different.”
The Librarian eyed him above the rim of her cup. “Yes,” she said. “Quite.”
The whispers continued around them. Cal gestured in the direction of the sound. As this was ‘everywhere’ it was quite an elaborate sort of gesture.
“What is that?” he asked. “What’s with all the whispering?”
A frown troubled the Librarian’s brow. She cocked her head, and one of her ears wiggled independently of the other. “Oh, that. Yes. Sorry, I barely notice it these days,” she said. “That, Mr Carver, is the books.”
Cal stole another sideways glance at the empty shelves. “The books?”
“You don’t know what the Library is, do you, Mr Carver?” she asked.
“This library?” asked Cal, pointing to the floor. “Do I know what this library is?”
She placed her cup gently on her saucer and waited
“I mean, I have a pretty good idea,” Cal said. “But you might want to go over it
again, just so we’re both on the same page. Pun intended.”
“Yes. I think that would be wise,” the Librarian agreed. She removed a scrunched-up tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and dabbed around her mouth with it. Once she had returned the tissue to its original hiding place, she neatly crossed her legs, and placed both hands on one knee.
And then, she began.
Sixteen
The Library had not been the first thing in existence, of course. That would have been ludicrous. Impossible, even.
It had been the second thing.
No one really knew how or where it had come from, not even the Librarians themselves. Especially not them, in fact. All they knew was that on that first day there was a shelf, and on that shelf was a book with empty pages. And, as they stood bunched together, all watching in wonder, the words began to write.
To begin with, the words came slowly. Paragraphs appeared over the course of thousands of years, sometimes one laborious word at a time, sometimes all at once. Those early entries spoke of expansion and fire, of matter colliding in the void, of nothing becoming something, albeit nothing much.
Not yet.
Time passed. The infant Universe cooled. The Librarians discovered a little cupboard with a kettle in it, and half a packet of coconut fingers in a little plastic tub. And lo, they gave thanks. Although, they did wonder among themselves if it would’ve killed whoever had bequeathed the coconut fingers to have left the whole packet.
Still, they didn’t complain. And they were right not to because, it transpired, regardless of how many coconut fingers were removed from the packet, there was always half a pack left over. None of the Librarians really understood this, but they also instinctively knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so never questioned it aloud.
And beyond the library’s walls, infinity took shape.
Over the next few million years, things picked up, and the pages flew by. The Librarians all gathered together one afternoon and watched as the words in the book crept the last few inches down the final page. They had no idea what would happen when there was no space left to write on.
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