by C. A. Pack
Jackson rolled his shoulders. Even with the help of the dumbwaiter, removing enchanted books from the most accessible stacks turned out to be a back breaker. He had worked well into the evening, and had conked out on the sofa in the main reading room.
He spent most of the following morning re-populating the shelves with the old unenchanted books they had stored in the basement. Good thing we never sold these back to Bebe’s Bibliothèque. He was almost done when he heard someone banging on the front door.
“Are you from The Guys Next Door?” It was a dumb question. Their uniforms had the company name emblazoned across them, and they stood next to a huge box decorated with a full-size picture of a sixty-inch flat-screen TV.
“Yeah. Where do you want it?”
Jackson surveyed the library. In the back of his mind, he had always thought it would be cool to have a TV rise out of the back of the circulation desk, but that would require special cabinetry. And a budget (he had learned about the importance of budgeting when he opened the petty-cash box the day before and found only $11.45 for coffee and cookies. The bill was actually four times that amount, and he ended up paying the difference with his own money). Regardless, the circulation desk seemed like the most logical place for a TV. “Put it here, facing those chairs.”
“You got an antenna or cable hookup back here?”
It was another one of those questions he didn’t know the answer to. “You go ahead and unpack it while I find out.” He consulted Johanna’s diary in the antechamber. He didn’t want the repairmen to think he was some kind of nut when he asked it a question.
*
Outside the Terrorian library, Heil 66 lumbered along, hidden in the shadows of the building across the way. He had been delayed making maps for the war effort, and needed to leave them for the troops gathering in Building 7. He saw Nero 51 reenter the library and knew he had missed that night’s meeting. Seconds later, he saw a fleeting shadow in a second-floor library window. Nero 51 was strong, but not necessarily quick. Heil 66 doubted his compatriot could have reached the upper level so swiftly. He watched, waiting. The shadow appeared a second time, several minutes after the first darkening. The mapmaker waited to see if anyone would emerge from the Library of Illumination. Anyone trying to escape the building would have to use the front door, because the rear entrance had been sealed shortly after the start of the Two Millennia War and had never been reopened. The night was raw, and Heil 66 wrapped his unoccupied tentacles around his body to keep his moist emissions from evaporating.
An hour elapsed. There had been no further shadows or disturbances of any kind, so the Terrorian continued on his journey. It’s probably nothing. Still, as he hurried along to Building 7, he made a mental note to mention the shadows to Nero 51.
LOI
CHAPTER 7
Johanna sat at the edge of her cot staring into space. Jackson’s voice broke the silence. “Do we have a cable hookup or TV antenna near the circulation desk?”
She had no idea, but she knew where to find the information. She asked Mal’s diary. She waited several minutes for an answer.
No need. Any device inside the library will wirelessly absorb any transmission signals. Just plug it in and let it warm up. No further setup is required.
She relayed the message to Jackson, wondering what she would find when she returned to the library. My library.
That night, Johanna slept restlessly. Her only solace was that at the end of her sentence, she could burrow beneath the blankets of her own bed.
Finally she fell asleep, but could not escape her dreams.
She worked feverishly in the cupola of the Terrorian library, trying to clean obelisks. Every time she reached for one, it floated away. Nero 51 had ordered her to clean them all, or she would not be allowed to leave the Twelfth Realm. With her future at stake, Johanna chased the crystals around the cupola, trying to grab them, but as soon as she wrapped her fingers around one, it fell to the floor and shattered.
She panicked, sweat oozing from her pores. She tried picking up the broken pieces, but could barely see them through the hazy mist. Perspiration made her hands slippery, and the shards she found slipped through her fingers, cutting her hands and making them bleed. She managed to push the pieces off into a misty corner where she hoped they would not be discovered. She reached for another obelisk, but again, it eluded her. Try as she might, she could not grab on to it.
“Did I hear an obelisk break?” roared Nero 51.
She was so startled by his sudden appearance, her arm hit the shelf, and several of the crystal manuscripts crashed to the floor.
“She is willfully destroying library property,” he shouted. “Off with her head.”
Two other Terrorians appeared behind him, their tentacles snaking toward Johanna, to take her into custody. She tried to grab an obelisk to hurl at her captors, but the crystals continued to evade her grasp. Finally, she snatched one out of the air and hurled it at one of the Terrorians, but it bounced off his chest and dropped to the floor, where it bounced again, but didn’t break. Amazement overcame her. Instead of continuing her attack, she dove for the unbroken obelisk. It was fashioned out of a plastic-like material that looked like the crystal obelisks but was indestructible. “Counterfeits,” she screamed. “Fakes. Noh-nohs.”
“Kill her now!”
Johanna felt a tentacle wrap around her throat. Another held her wrists while a third bound her feet. She gagged.
*
Ω The workday will begin in twenty minutes.
Johanna’s eyes flew open. She reached for her throat. The chain attached to Mal’s diary had tangled around her neck. She pulled it loose, got out of bed, and splashed water on her face. It was a dream. She dropped down onto the chair. “Sustenance.” A bowl of cold gruel and an apple appeared. The gruel had no taste, but it filled her stomach and stopped it from growling. The apple, at least, had flavor. She also received a tankard of weak tea, but no honey or sugar to sweeten it. She drank it to quench her thirst, knowing she had only one bottle of water left.
The dream haunted her. She thought of the obelisk that would not break. If the Terrorians had counterfeits, where would they be? Not on a shelf where anyone could find them. More than likely, they would be on a shelf that no one looked at. The Cupola? True, it was a seldom-used area of the library, but it meant carrying heavy obelisks up five flights of stairs. The least likely place would be among the main-floor stacks, the ones closest to the back wall, by the antiquities.
She berated herself for being so predictable. The obelisks she had polished were the most visible ones. Maybe today she would pick up a clue by investigating the ones buried in the stacks.
She exited her room. Nero 51 stood at the circulation desk, placing glass microscope slides into a box. That can’t be right. They looked like microscope slides, but Johanna had a hunch they were documents of some sort.
She went to the utility closet and grabbed a rag and the jar of oily paste. She could feel Nero 51’s eyes boring into the back of her head as she walked to an interior shelf and started polishing.
*
The curator slipped the last bit of glass into a padded box. Time was of the essence, and he could not stop to bother about the girl, even though she was a nuisance. Let her clean obelisks. She’s not going to find anything. Even if she does, it’s too late.
He picked up the box and walked out the front door, switching off the humidity fans as he passed by. Terrorian soldiers awaited the information he carried—detailing the different realms, their curators, and the conditions rebel troops might face on each world. They had less than twenty-four hours to review maps and other forms of intelligence and complete their war preparations.
Nero 51 had grown up learning about the Two Millennia War and dreaming about the part he could have played in it. He imagined winning the war and being proclaimed “Grand Guardian of all the Libraries,” a master of twelve different worlds—thirteen if you counted Lumina, the home of the Board of Ov
erseers. He desired ultimate rule, and he would not allow some insignificant human female from Fantasia to disrupt his plans. Johanna Charette, curator of the Eleventh Realm, I will make sure you are taken alive. I want to watch you being tortured. Yours will be a slow, painful death that will give me great pleasure.
*
Jackson entered Johanna’s apartment. He felt uncomfortable being in her residence without her. He had debated asking her diary where he could find a blanket and a pillow, but didn’t want to write something that might distract her—in a bad way. He knew they had to be there. Casanova had used them.
He stopped in front of two closed doors. He’d seen them during his previous visits to her home. He selected the one on the left and entered her private sanctuary. A four-poster bed dominated the space, and the comforter that topped it looked so fluffy, Jackson knew if he lay down on it he would sink halfway to the floor in a cloud of goose down. He looked around the room. Additional closed doors beckoned him. He pulled one open and found an en suite bathroom with a huge built-in tub. Creamy-white pillar candles decorated the back ledge, and he imagined them flickering, their light reflecting on the polished marble walls and mirrored surfaces while Johanna soaked in a mountain of bubbles. No blanket or pillow in here.
He pulled open the second door. It contained an L-shaped walk-in closet filled with very few clothes. Johanna dressed nicely, but he knew she didn’t splurge on clothing the way Cassie and Brittany did. He sniffed. Her closet smelled just like her—baby powder and roses. He looked at an empty hanging rod. If I ever move in with Johanna, there’s plenty of space for my stuff, he thought, then shook his head. Talk about a pipe dream.
He walked back into the hallway and opened the other door. It was a linen closet, and sitting on the upper shelf, right at eye-level, he found a blanket and pillow. In the back of his mind he knew they would be there, but if he had opened that door first, he would not have had an excuse to explore her bedroom. Tour over. He grabbed the linens and carried them downstairs.
Jackson stretched out on the sofa. All he had left to do was test the visual presentation he had created for the group of visiting librarians, but that could wait until morning. I’ve got it all under control, he thought, before rolling onto his side and falling asleep.
*
Johanna noticed the sudden silence when Nero 51 exited the building.
She continued polishing obelisks, but soon realized if she wanted to find what she sought, it would make more sense to pick the crystals up and hope the fakes felt different. She calculated fifty or sixty obelisks on each shelf, and hundreds of shelves. Thousands, even. She also had to consider the private book rooms, antiquities, erotica, periodicals ... she rubbed her temples as she felt the beginnings of a headache. What if they’re on a sub-level?
She heard the front door open. She dipped a rag in the wax and polished another obelisk.
“Nero 51, are you here?”
“I told you he wouldn’t be here,” a second voice said. “He’s probably already at Building 7.”
“Where’s the Fantasian creature? Shouldn’t she be here? I want to get a look at her. I hear she’s hideous.”
Johanna could hear the Terrorians flat feet slapping against the floor. She continued polishing.
“Oh. Here she is.”
“What a pathetic little beast.”
“I know. But she’s the key to our victory. The portals wouldn’t be open if she weren’t here.”
“Shhh!”
“She can’t understand us. I doubt she can speak Terrorian.”
“Just hold your tongue. Anyway, there’s nothing for us here. Let’s go meet the others.”
Johanna focused on their words. The portals are open because I’m here. And I’m the key to their victory. When she heard the door open, she peeked around the edge of the stacks and watched them leave. She began grabbing obelisks at random, hoping to find one that would prove to be false. She wanted to be able to give the Board of Overseers the proof they needed. Unfortunately, the obelisks all looked alike, so she had to pay very close attention to make sure she made progress.
Ω Johanna Charette, you may take a one-hour meal break.
She finished the shelf she’d been working on and left her cleaning supplies there, so she would know where she left off. She needed sustenance, and she wanted to tell Mal what the Terrorians had said. She choked down dense, grainy bread with some kind of vegetable mash, and followed it with orange juice. This cuisine will never earn a Michelin star.
She detailed what she had heard in Mal’s diary. “What should I do?”
She waited quite a while before a reply appeared.
Nothing. You are only there to serve out your sentence.
She gritted her teeth. Her jaw clenched so tightly it gave her a headache. I should have brought aspirin.
Johanna left her room and looked around the library. It didn’t look like anyone was there. She grabbed the rag and paste and climbed up to the second level. She placed her ear against the door of the residence, listening for any sounds coming from within. She heard nothing, and quietly said, “Bli z’ Bril.” The door opened, and she ducked inside.
The light of day brightened the room, and she tried to estimate the number of weapons. They were piled everywhere. She grabbed one from an inconspicuous area and left, but froze outside the door to the residence, her mind racing. The quickest way to her room was down the curator’s staircase, but if Nero 51 walked in, he would surely take those stairs. Her intuition told her to take the stone steps by the front door. They would provide more cover once she got there, and she could ditch the gun behind the steps if she heard anyone enter. Using them, however, would force her to run around the very visible second balcony to the opposite end of the library, and then past the circulation desk on the main floor. That would be too much time out in the open. The Terrorians would not think twice about killing her.
Stop wasting time. By now she could have run down the stairs and been safely back in her room.
She heard a noise in the outer vestibule. She sprinted down the spiral stairs with the weapon raised above her head so it would not bang against the handrail. As she reached the bottom step, the front door screeched open. The “juvenile” stacks should shield me from view. She prayed she wouldn’t be seen darting past the gaps that allowed light to flow throughout the space.
When she got into her room, she threw the weapon under her cot, sat down, and said, “Sustenance.” A bowl filled with yogurt appeared, a ripe peach and a cup of coffee beside it. She bit a huge chunk out of the peach and felt its juice run down her chin as her heart pounded. She could hear it quite clearly, even if it wasn’t as loud as the pounding on her door.
LOI
CHAPTER 8
“Come in,” she called out, as she stuffed a spoon of yogurt in her mouth.
“You’re supposed to be working.” Nero 51’s eyes darted around the room.
“If the overseers told me my break was over, I would have heard them.” Even as she said it, she racked her brain trying to remember if the message might have been drowned out by her escapade.
Ω Johanna Charette, your break period has ended.
The announcement came as if on cue. She bit into the peach again before standing up. “I guess I’ll save this for later.”
“You will not,” Nero 51 said, grabbing the uneaten food in a tentacle and stretching it out the door and across the main reading room to dump it in a trash bin. “Get to work.”
Johanna glared at him, but did not defy him. He took one last look around the room, which made her heart pound. Plato Indelicat had removed the mist that might prevent Nero 51 from seeing the weapon, yet he did not comment on it. She worried that he had seen it but failed to mention it because he wanted her to lapse into a false sense of security. She had no recourse but to get back to polishing obelisks.
The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end. She had left the cleaning tools upstairs by the ladder. If Nero
51 saw them, he would know she had been snooping near the residence. She disappeared behind a stack and wondered what her next move should be.
*
Jackson shot off the sofa when the television turned itself on at sunrise. He stumbled and then realized where he was. He looked to see if he had rolled over on the remote control, but found it on the circulation desk where he’d left it the previous night. He shut off the TV and walked around the library to make sure everything was secure. The main level seemed fine, and the public portions of the other levels appeared to be clear. Up in the cupola, he inspected the portal window he and Johanna had used. It looked sealed, but how could it be if Johanna had to use it to return home? The notion that Nero 51 and his pals could come flying through it at any given moment made him shiver. Thank God Johanna’s coming home tonight and the portals will be sealed.
His imagination shifted into overdrive. What if a few Terrorians slipped through with her when she returned and held them hostage? Would the College of Overseers even know if that happened? They would have to know. One of them will probably escort Johanna home. The Terrorians would have to take the overseer hostage as well, and then everyone would know what had happened, because it would mean the beginning of a revolutionary multi-world war.
Stop it. You’re making yourself crazy. Although, craziness might explain his sudden desire to buy a gun—just in case.
*
“Have you lost your mind? Who do you think is going to sell a gun to a seventeen-year-old?” Logan bellowed over the telephone.
“Lots of people our age get guns. I hear about them all the time.”
“It’s illegal.”
“All right. Forget I ever mentioned it.”
“No. I want to know why you need a gun.”
“What part of ‘just forget it’ don’t you understand?”
“All of it.”
“I’ve got to get back to work.” Jackson disconnected the call. The phone rang almost immediately, but the teen ignored it when he saw Logan’s name on caller ID.