He remained seated.
“I said, stand!”
Still, he stayed in his chair.
“I think this is good,” she said. “But I’m not sure. What if I really have to mean the command? Perhaps I didn’t truly want you to stand, because I want you to be free. So maybe by having my will oppose my words, I’m doing it incorrectly.”
Neil blinked slowly, and the tissue of his eyelids looked softer now, like discolored skin caked in gray sand. She knew he had thoughts, that he wanted to communicate them, but it would have to wait.
They stayed in the early twenty-first century Mediterranean, where the Time Corps could easily reach them by phone. A week passed and they took on supplies. Once Neil could move his hands he could write in a rough fashion. His desires were mainly for water and a comfortable chair. A few times, he asked Hazel to play violin for him. As the days passed, his mouth softened and became wet, as did his eyes and he regained the ability to speak.
“I order you to give me that cup,” said Hazel.
Neil shook his head. “I refuse.”
Hazel thought she saw a tiny smile, but it was hard to tell.
“I think this exercise is futile,” he said. His voice was low and dry, as if he were recovering from laryngitis, but to Hazel it was beautiful. “There are two possibilities. Either I am free, and that is that. Or, if you are my new master, then your will is for me to be free. Unless you change your mind, then I am truly free.”
She supposed it would have to do. But there were so many unanswered questions. What, precisely, had she done to bring him back? And could he be killed again, and if so, by whom?
By the time a fortnight had passed, Neil was back to normal except for rough earthen patches on some parts of his extremities. His fingers were stiff, but usable. His vision was completely clear and he could move with his usual strength and agility.
It was time.
She called the Time Corps house, and then a Door appeared on deck. Felicia and the Professor stepped through with Astrid, all of them bearing bags of equipment.
“It’s going to be dangerous, Professor,” said Hazel. “Are you certain you want to come?”
“First off, I could say the same to you. You worry me sick out on the sea in that ship with only monkeys for company.”
“Neil is on board too, sometimes.”
“Yes, and I can’t say I sleep as easy as I once did. I thought he was some kind of genetically modified human man.”
“You know him as well as I do, and he’d never do me harm. Right now, he’s getting ready to go save his partner, at great risk to himself. And he has helped us both countless times.”
She watched the Professor take a deep breath and look out over the ocean.
“I know he’s not a bad person,” he said. “But I’d rather you weren’t so attached to him. Someday, I’d like you to find a nice man. Don’t you want that?”
Hazel watched him study her, gauging her reaction.
“Well, I think Santiago is handsome,” she said, keeping a straight face. “Do you think he fancies me?”
“Dear mother of—you know what I’m talking about.”
“Right now, we are talking about going into the Library.”
“So we are,” he said. “Now, Felicia and I aren’t going into the Library at all. We will stay here. Then, if Astrid can’t make a Door out or your machine doesn’t work, we’ll see what we can do on our end.”
That was sensible, Hazel supposed. It meant that their rescue crew included their top infiltrators, Pangur Ban and Huginn, Yukiko as translator and illusionist, Astrid the Door, the many copies of Neil and then Hazel. She was the only one with no special skills or abilities, and for a moment she lamented the fact. But then, what difference did that make? She’d fight as hard as any of them. She checked her pistol, made sure she had extra ammunition in her gun belt and pulled on a coat.
They docked the ship, disembarked, and Neil took one of the time machines up the beach. He made a time rip and stepped through. A minute later, he reappeared, a day or a week older, Hazel could not guess. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his duster as various other Neils began to gather, some from up the beach, some from over a nearby hill. Each of them but the youngest had been through the Library and returned to this moment to do it all over again. She watched as the Neils spoke to each other.
Mr. Escobar took the ship out to sea, where the crew would wait for their return. Astrid and the Professor discussed the logistics of using Astrid’s Door with the Professor’s machine while Felicia and Hazel set up the machinery.
Hazel’s stomach twisted in knots at the thought of the Library. Sure, she had traveled in time before. She had taken Skidbladnir from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. But when she had, she knew from Felicia and Neil that the future world was a decent place to go. A miraculous one, to her way of thinking, full of fast cars and faster planes, telephones and radio, motion pictures and computers. But the Library was different. It was outside of time, and if Astrid had trouble making a Door there, then she might not be able to make one out. A time machine might not work either since all of its calculations were based upon having a starting point as well as a destination inside space and time. What if they couldn’t find Elliot? What if they all ended up trapped there?
Hazel ran cables and checked the machinery. Astrid put her hand on Hazel’s shoulder and leaned in close to her ear. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Hazel looked up in surprise. “For what?”
“For going. It’s dangerous, and Elliot isn’t even your family.”
“Neither is the Professor, technically. But he’s family to me. Elliot is my friend and colleague.”
“But it didn’t occur to you to leave him? Or to just let everyone else go after him? After all, Pangur Ban and Huginn are pretty old. Even Yukiko has lived beyond a normal human lifespan. You’re still young.”
“You’re younger than I am and you’re going.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But you have your ship and crew and Neil and the Professor. You have a whole life.”
“That’s an odd thing to say. So do you.”
“I don’t have family except for Elliot. I do, but they won’t speak to me.”
“Are you talking about your parents?”
“My mother and aunt. I don’t know where my father is.”
Hazel tried to think of something to say, but came up with nothing. She knew precisely where her parents were. They were buried in a small cemetery outside of New Orleans.
“You have the other psychopomps,” said Hazel. “And you have your art school to go to.”
“I guess so, but that all seems so far away now.”
“Well, it’s only going to get farther once we’re through the Door. Can you fasten that coupling there?”
Astrid did, and the two finished setting up the machinery in silence. Hazel considered Astrid. The young woman was sullen and quiet, the complete opposite of her sunny, ever-cheerful cousin. And even if Astrid hadn’t protested enough over the delivery of the triplets and was overly familiar with the drake, Hazel knew she was a basically decent person at heart.
Hazel hadn’t understood until now that Astrid, in some ways, was more of an orphan than she was. Hazel had the Professor and Felicia, her crew and Neil. Astrid had no one other than Sister and Elliot, and both of them were in other times. While Hazel was free to do as she pleased aboard her magnificent ship, Astrid’s life was consumed by the demands of the psychopomps and the Seelie, and now the order from the drake to have dinners with him. In some ways, this twenty-first-century woman’s life was far more constrained than the lives of Hazel’s fellow Southern women during the Civil War.
Hazel glanced up as a shadow fell over her. It was Neil, probably the oldest one of the batch. H
e would have all the memories of the others. She checked the last fastener, stood and brushed off her pantaloons.
“We’re going to survive this, aren’t we?” she said.
“Is your gun loaded?”
“Yes, and I brought extra ammunition.”
“Good.”
They backed up as the Professor hurried around the devices, powering them up and checking various readings. Astrid stood in the center of the machines, her navy blue jacket zipped up to her throat. She looked small and young and frightened.
At last, she made the Door. It flickered between various locations and the Professor adjusted a few of the machines. After a few tries, the Door held steady. The Professor took readings, confirmed them with Felicia, and then he stepped back with a grin.
“The readings match. It’s the Library.”
Pangur Ban went through first, followed by Huginn and Yukiko and then the Neils. Hazel counted fourteen of them. She and the oldest Neil went through last, dragging a trunk with the time machine.
Once through the Door, the first thing that struck Hazel was the feeling of space inside the Library. She had been on a beach a moment earlier, the sky open and clear, but the Library felt even more open. The ceiling soared overhead, supported by massive columns with countless shelves, three stories of them, lining every inch of wall space.
The next thing she noticed was the intensity of the light. Hazel had grown up in a time before electricity was common, and she still noticed luxuries like indoor plumbing and central heating. The light here was bright and diffused, pouring through multiple translucent white panes up along the top edges of the room.
“We need three teams,” said Neil.
“No, we stay together,” said Hazel. “We all stay with the Door.”
Then she understood. This was the oldest Neil, the one who knew what the Library held. Only the youngest one was as lost as they were. “Very well,” she sighed. “Which way?”
“Some of us will go with Pangur Ban and Huginn. Others will go with you, Yukiko and Astrid. And a few are on their own. They’ll be looking for information on golems.”
“Why? Why split up? If you know where Elliot is, let’s get the golem information, get him and then go.”
“He’s on the move. He doesn’t know we’re here yet. And there’s something Huginn needs to find. It’s necessary to get us out.”
“Are you going to tell us where to go?”
“I can’t. You know how it is.”
She did. If the oldest Neil told them everything they needed to do, then the information would form an unstable time loop, going from the older Neil to Hazel and the Time Corps. Then the youngest Neil would learn from Hazel only to pass the information on to Hazel once more.
They agreed to meet up in that exact spot in an hour.
“And you?” Hazel asked Neil. “Which team will you be on?”
As the oldest of the Neils, he would be the most experienced and therefore the most valuable.
“Yours, of course,” he said.
Chapter 46
Ready to take flight at any moment, Huginn rode on the shoulder of one of the four Neils that joined him and Pangur Ban. Occasionally he flew upward to look down an upstairs corridor or peer through an opening here or there that was large enough for a bird or cat, but not for a man. He flew upward to examine a high opening, but it turned out to be a storage area filled with torn pages and damaged books.
“You said I needed to find Elliot, right?” Huginn asked Neil, returning to his shoulder.
“I said there’s something you need to find.”
Huginn pondered this. What else could he want to find? A group of three Neils had already gone to find golem information, and seven Neils had accompanied Yukiko, Astrid and Hazel to locate Elliot. What else could he hope to find?
Pangur Ban fell into step beside Neil.
“Perhaps we ought to be searching for a way out of the Library,” she said.
“Then why did we need to leave Hazel?” asked Huginn. “She has the time machine with her.”
There had to be something else, but Neil couldn’t tell him without creating an informational time loop. Huginn imagined that he were Julius, a being dedicated to research and learning. What would Julius look for here? What would he seek? Huginn wished he had his brother’s memories. Then he could search them and come up with an idea.
“There’s not much time,” said Neil.
“Until what?”
Neil tipped his face upward, ever so slightly, as if smelling something. Huginn smelled nothing, and his own sense of smell was excellent. Pangur Ban had not mentioned a strange smell either.
“We should just hurry,” Neil said. “The Librarian—”
A giant tortoise stepped out in front of them.
“New arrivals! And so many,” he said. He squinted as he examined the four identical Neils.
“What sort are you?” the tortoise asked.
“New arrivals, as you said,” Pangur Ban said. “We’re here as a group from the Americas. We have research to accomplish.”
“And your topic of study?” asked the tortoise.
The Neils moved to stand together silently, perhaps with the intention of appearing as one being in four parts, which, Huginn thought, they were. He wished he could think of a kind of being that came in quadruplets, but he could not remember.
“We seek information about a Norse raven, an old one,” said Huginn, a sudden flash of inspiration coming to him. “His name was Muninn, and I believe he is dead.”
“Dead in what time?” asked the tortoise.
Ah, yes. He would not know what time they came from unless he tried to guess by the Neils’ clothing.
“We do not know when he died, but he was still alive a thousand years after the first Library of Alexandria burned.”
“So he lived in a time of written records.”
Huginn tried to remember. “Yes, we had writing. But we did not begin that way. We began with stories told by one person to another.”
“I see,” said the tortoise. Huginn imagined that if the creature had hands, he would have scratched his head. “You might try the Northern archives. Four stories up and about four minutes that way.” He motioned with a paw.
Then the tortoise jerked his head, as if he had just heard his name called. “No,” he said, almost to himself. “No, down two floors and five rooms along the corridor to the right. The Room of Speech.”
The tortoise muttered something to himself and then looked up at Huginn, studying him with one shiny black eye. “I can hear it, but it’s not the one here.”
“I am here,” said Huginn.
“No, the other one,” said the tortoise, who then turned and shuffled a few feet away and looked up into the face of a Roman bust in a display niche. “It’s too much. It’s too many of them.”
“I think his mind is touched,” said Pangur Ban.
“No,” said Huginn. “I know insane, and he’s not insane. He’s hearing things. He’s talking to someone we can’t see.”
“I believe that would be the very definition of insanity,” said the cat.
The Neils remained silent, and Huginn wondered why fourteen of them had come. Why not fewer or more? What need had he and Pangur Ban of four unnaturally strong bodyguards?
“We go where the tortoise said, to this Room of Speech,” said Huginn.
They went downstairs, found the room and stepped inside. All along the edges and sitting on long tables running the length of the room were statues. Some were crudely carved wood, others polished marble. Some were weathered bronze and others faceless figures of chiseled stone.
“A display area. Like a museum,” said Pangur Ban, walking down the length of the room.
Huginn flew ov
er the statues, landing and examining a few, and then moving on.
“Huginn,” said Pangur Ban. “You ought to come see this.”
She sat in front of a raven statue made of dark wood. Its wings were folded and it perched on a round object, like a small globe. It was precisely his own size and shape.
“Do you suppose this is you or your brother?” asked Pangur Ban.
“I don’t know,” he said. And then he thought he understood what the room contained. “Statue, are you capable of speech?”
The beak opened. “I am.”
Huginn took an involuntary hop backwards and a shiver passed through him. The voice was his, but not his.
“Are you Muninn?”
“No. But I possess some of his information.”
“Only some? Not all?”
“I do not contain all of his information, no.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“He is dead.”
The words hit Huginn like a wall of frigid air. He had not realized how tightly he was holding onto the hope of seeing Muninn again. And now, that hope was dashed. Without his brother, he was truly lost. Without his memories, what was he?
“When did he die?” he asked. “And how?”
“He died in the early twenty-first century, Gregorian calendar, in Los Angeles, California, United States, Terra, Sol System.”
Well, that was terribly specific.
Something stirred inside him, a feeling, a very familiar one, as if a key had slipped into a lock and was turning, but had not yet clicked into place.
“How did he die?” Huginn asked.
“Unknown.”
“Why did he go to Los Angeles?”
“Unknown.”
“Where was he before that? Where has he been these long years?”
“Unknown.”
“Gods! What good are you then?” Huginn cried. The stupid thing was useless and rage roared to life inside him. He wanted to tear at the statue’s face, to peck out its eyes.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 113