The Book of the Night

by Pearl North

  She didn’t know why, but she knew she had to stop him.

  She ran after him, part of a rising tide of people running toward the relative shelter of the Libyrinth.

  But not even the Libyrinth was the Libyrinth anymore. The walls, the dome, the floor, it was all books now, books flowing clockwise in a slow vortex.

  Where the central console had been was a large circular hole, with steps made of books spiraling down into the depths of the stacks.

  Most people were huddling along the walls but Siblea and his party—Selene saw Peliac and Ayma with him—headed straight for the steps. Selene ran after them.

  She followed Siblea and the others down the spiraling stair of books, and down, and down. Lines of text, unmoored from their tomes, floated up around them, undulating in long sinuous threads of words, like smoke, like songlines.

  They went down and down, into the bowels of the Libyrinth to the face where the Egg had been installed by Gyneth, to where the book player was.

  She ran as fast as she could but Siblea was even longer of leg than she was. She was just barely able to keep him within sight around the curve of the stairs.

  At last they reached the bottom. The face where the Egg rested was one of the few things that had not changed. Or at least, not changed much. The mouth was open now. Siblea bent over it, the paperback novel The Book of the Night in his hand.

  “Stop! Siblea, no!”

  He turned to face her, regret written in every gaunt line of his face. “It must be done, Selene.” He gestured around him to the streaming chaos of books and words shifting and fragmenting all around them. “Can’t you see that?”

  She hastened to his side. Between the parted lips of the face was a space just the perfect size for a book to slide in. “But if you play that book, you’ll cause the whole world to reset to the world of The Book of the Night. We’re not in that book, Siblea. No one alive today in the Plain of Ayor is in that book!”

  Siblea compressed his lips to a hard, flat line. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “You’ll kill us all!” She reached for the book. If she could just get it away from him …

  Siblea backed away from her. “And what’s the alternative? The basic integrity of this world has been completely compromised by the pen and the Silence. We’re all going to die anyway. At least this way the world will continue. It can start over. People will live here again.”

  He was right. “But Clauda, Haly…”

  “Yes. And you, and me, and Ayma. Everyone.” Tears streamed down his face. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to…” His voice faltered. He closed his eyes, and when he spoke again his voice had steadied. “But someone must and I’m the only one capable of it. I have to—” He broke off and rushed to the face.

  Selene intercepted him, slamming hard into his chest and knocking him sideways. “No. There’s got to be another way.”

  “What, then?” Spittle flew from Siblea’s mouth. “You tell me. What?”

  Selene reached into the pocket of her robe and took out the book she’d been writing tirelessly ever since Po’s sacrifice. “What about this?”

  Siblea gave a little shake of his head. “What is it?”

  “It’s my account of all that has transpired since I first discovered the location of Theselaides’ Book of the Night in the secret vault.”

  Siblea’s gaze darted back and forth between her face and the book in her hand. “An account of recent events?”

  “As accurate as I could make it.”

  Siblea bit his lip. “Will it work?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not finished.”

  “That’s probably just as well.”

  “Open-ended.”

  “Yes.” Siblea paced, waving one finger as he thought. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Of course.”

  “Write something like, ‘There are many more people alive in this book than are mentioned in it.’”

  “Oh! Yes, I see.” Selene took her pen, thought on it a moment, and wrote, “There are many more people alive in this world that this book is about than are mentioned in these pages. They are the descendents of the people who lived in the world of the paperback novel The Book of the Night by Roger Theselaides and they lived through a time when no book played in BookWorld. Those who are alive now, as Selene Tadamos, daughter of Thela Tadamos, is about to put this book in the book player, continue to live whether they are mentioned in this book or not.”

  “Good. That’s good,” said Siblea. A sinkhole suddenly appeared in the floor not ten paces from where the player stood. Books poured down its steep slopes. “Hurry!”

  Selene stood before the open mouth, her book in her hands. Could she really do this? Her words would become this world’s reality. She’d been as honest as she knew how to be, but—

  “Hurry! For Yammon’s sake!”

  “Wait!” Selene opened the book again. The ground shook. She braced herself against the side of the face and wrote, above the first line, “This story begins where the words end.”

  Siblea put his hands on her shoulders. “You must. Now.”

  Selene closed her eyes. Praying to the Mother, the Ocean, Time, and the Seven Tales that this was right, she slid the book through the lips of the face at the bottom of the Libyrinth.

  The lips closed and the eyes opened. A hum like the opening bars of the Song filled the air.

  The books stopped sliding into the vortex. And then the flow reversed. Bit by bit the world knitted itself back together. The books slid back into their proper places and the shelves reformed. Stray wisps of text that had floated off drifted back and rejoined their books.

  * * *

  Clauda was relieved to find the wing relatively unchanged. She climbed inside, stepping over a foot-tall house populated by anthropomorphic mice in shorts and jackets. Once inside the wing she sealed the hatch, approached the statue, and said the proper words.

  She sank into the interface and merged with the wing. And that was when all normality ceased. In the synesthetic perceptions of the wing, the chaos of their disintegrating world was magnified. The tremors and chasms raked her golden skin like claws. She fought for the sky to get away from the terrible upheaval on the ground, but that wasn’t much better. Lightning sent shock waves of electricity skittering through her senses. The fiery paper scorched her skin when it touched her but did little damage. More frightening were the glimpses of deep maroon unspace she caught in the gaps in the sky through which they fell.

  Clauda forced herself to focus on gaining altitude and getting an overall view of what was happening. If she could detect some pattern to what was going on, maybe …

  But there was no pattern. No emerging order to the chaos. All she’d really done was get herself a better view for the end of the world.

  And she’d left Selene down there alone.

  But there was one speck of order amid the constantly shifting reality. A young man lay facedown in a field. His hands … his hands were fractured, and somehow, in their fragmentation they knitted in with the broken words of the world. He’d held it together so far but now his strength was failing.

  Coherence. That was what the world needed. The people who had made this world, the People Who Walk Sideways in Time, transcended three-dimensional, temporal existence by comprehending and manipulating the underlying coherence implicate in the quantum structures of their world.

  The Song was their key. It was a transcendent experience for those who listened to it because it was itself the sound of transcendence. With the right energy and the right instruments, any Ayorite could do the same so long as she knew the Song.

  Clauda had long speculated that the light that emanated from the wing was the optical equivalent of the Song. She unleashed it now in a broad canopy, to encompass the whole world.

  It seemed to help. The earth stopped shaking and the sky closed up. The rain of burning pages ceased.

  But just as Clauda-in-the-Wing was congratulating herself
on her success, new holes and fractures appeared, as bad if not worse than those before.

  Someone was working against her, undoing all that she did. She searched for the source.

  And what she found was Haly-in-the-Silence, grief-stricken, single-handedly trying to unwrite everything Queen Thela had written and devouring her world in the process.

  Clauda used the wing’s light beam to support Po, to bolster his coherence and help him to survive. Then she turned her attention to Haly.

  Darkness met light, Silence met Song. “Haly-in-the-Silence,” said Clauda-in-the-Wing, “it’s time to stop. This was useful in the beginning but if you continue, you’ll destroy us all.”

  “Destroy what? We’re not real. We’re just a construct, a program. We’re not real.”

  “No. You’ve got it the wrong way around. The People Who Walk Sideways in Time were the programs, the constructs. We’re meat puppets. For them, creating biological life was as simple as baking a loaf of bread. We’re no collection of numbers and operations. We’re real.”

  “But I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to get out. It’s dark and I’m hungry.”

  “Follow me. Let me guide you.” Clauda directed the wing’s energy beam to Haly-in-the-Silence, surrounding her with light and warmth. “You are still our Redeemer.”

  The Silence followed the beam’s path and surfaced. Clauda landed. They were in a canyon that may or may not have been there before. The world appeared to have stabilized, though she wasn’t sure why.

  Clauda disembarked from the wing just as Haly was climbing out of the Silence. The two old friends went to each other.

  “Gyneth!” said Haly, her face wet.

  “I know.” Clauda hugged her. “I’m sorry.”

  23

  Everything

  Haly pulled the orb from her pocket. “This is what is left of Endymion. She told me she wanted to join her friends.”

  “She set us free. After what she did for us, we should do that for her,” said Clauda.

  Haly set the orb down on the ground and climbed the rocky side of the canyon. She took refuge behind an outcrop and watched as Clauda took the wing up into the air. She hovered over the canyon. A beam of golden light issued from the bottom of the wing and struck the ground. Dust and smoke flew up, but also something else: a figure made of light. A woman with straight shoulder-length hair and a rapt expression on her upturned face. She was made of light, or perhaps light caught in dust. She rose up, her outspread arms smearing in her passage, until they resembled wings.

  And then the wind caught her and she was gone.

  Clauda landed and got out and Haly climbed back down to the valley floor and they looked around on the ground where the orb had been. There was nothing there.

  * * *

  “Seven Tales, this stuff is thick.”

  “I know, did you ever see the like?”

  “No, not even when Thela made the plain green.”

  “Hey, over here, I think I found him.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know. Help me cut these vines away.”

  “Yammon’s tonsils, he’s a mess.”

  “Shut up and help me. Easy now. Watch it!”

  From a great distance, Po felt something move. Something that was not the Song. There was pain there, too, but it was far away, and he was nestled in the embrace of the world. He paid it no mind.

  * * *

  Light and sound. Colors. At first he could make no sense of any of it. Shouldn’t he be dead by now? And because that was a thought, he realized he must not be. He became aware that he breathed. Someone was squeezing his hand and saying, “Wake up for me, Po. Come on, now. We need you.” It was Burke.

  Po opened his eyes and blinked at the bright light. Burke’s face slowly came into focus, and then, behind her, the infirmary tent at the community. He was home. He looked to where she held his hand. “Shouldn’t that hurt?” he asked, his voice thick.

  Burke smiled, and it erased the dread that had been there a moment ago. “Thela used the pen to do that to you, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Sort of.”

  She shrugged. “Well, Haly may have nearly killed us all in the process, but she did succeed in undoing all of Thela’s work with the pen.”

  “That means that if she used the pen to kill—”

  “Yes! They’re alive. Look!” She lifted up the side of the tent so he could see out of it. There, in a field already sprouting with green things, stood Baris. He walked behind Hilloa, who drove the plow, drawn by Zam. Baris was doing something odd with his hands. Waving them. Jan was picking up rocks and throwing them in a wheelbarrow.

  Zam spotted him first, and trumpeted. “Po!” shouted Hilloa, leaping from the plow. She, Jan, Baris, and Zam all ran across the field, Zam trumpeting but slowing her gait like a good elephant and not trampling the town.

  “This is your fault, isn’t it?” said Baris, blood dripping from his fingertips. Where it pattered on the ground, seedlings sprouted. “That stupid story of yours. Too bad I can’t cry at the drop of a hat like you.”

  “Po! We thought you were dead,” said Jan. He got down on his knees and hugged Po tight.

  “I thought you were all dead,” said Po.

  “We were,” said Hilloa. “Well, sort of. Maybe not really. We were just … not, I guess. Strange.”

  Jan released him and Hilloa hugged him.

  “But now you’re back. And … and the pen?”

  “Gone. No more pen,” said Hilloa, sitting down on the side of his cot. She took his hand. “This is what we’re stuck with now. No changing things at the drop of a hat.”

  Po tightened his grip on her hand. His fingers were stiff, but there was no pain. “Good.”

  * * *

  There were no bones to inter, but they waited the customary year anyway, and chose Gyneth’s notebook and pencil as worthy substitutes. Alone in the stacks, Haly placed the box that held them behind Endymion’s journal. She stood a moment and ran a finger slowly down its spine. “You’ll be happy to know you were right about almost everything, Gyneth. And … I miss you.”

  But she didn’t linger long. She’d mourned him every day since his fall, and now her grief was an accustomed thing, like an old garment, soft with repeated washing.

  Despite the formation of the council, and the elections, her life was just as full as ever. She was an elected representative now under the leadership of Chair Burke, and she fought many battles with Councilmember Peliac, and spent many nights strategizing with Councilmember Rossiter. In all her decisions she did her best to bear in mind what Gyneth had said about truth.

  The Song was with her still, and they all still shared in the daily tasks of life at the Libyrinth. In the last month or so she’d begun to think she might fall in love again someday, if she met the right person, but for now it was enough that she had time to read. She pulled a book from the shelf and walked up the stairs and out of the Great Hall.

  She walked out into the thriving town that now surrounded the Libyrinth. They lived in peace with Ilysies and Thesia now, but they were their own country.

  Everywhere there was activity. The sides of the infirmary tent were rolled up to let the cool breeze in. Inside she could see Po tending his patients. With Burke acting as chair of the council now, he was in charge. Hilloa ran in with a book in her hand and they embraced.

  The wind picked up, ruffling Haly’s hair and the roof of the tent. Haly looked up to see the wing soaring overhead. Clauda and Selene were off on another expedition exploring the lands beyond the sea.

  Haly turned from the settlement and walked out to the outcrop that overlooked their lush fields. She lifted her face up to the sky. It was a cloudless day. The sky was a bright blue shading deeper at the zenith. That blue was infinity. She couldn’t see it all from here, of course, but she knew she looked out, not just at her universe, but at all the universes in all the numberless tales of time. But this sky, this tale, this world w
as already so big. It was big enough for everything.

  WHERE TO FIND WHAT THE BOOKS SAID

  PROLOGUE

  “‘We are all going on an Expedition,’ said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. ‘Thank you, Pooh.’” A.A. Milne, The World of Pooh. New York: E.P. Dutton, 2010.

  “Tucker Mouse took himself very seriously now that he was the manager of a famous concert artist.” George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square. New York: Yearling, 1970.

  “Once the fire lizards settled to the business of eating, Piemur glanced at Menolly, wondering if she’d heard the drum message.” Anne McCaffrey, Dragondrums. New York: Del Rey, 1979.

  “‘When he broke that commitment to art, to making beauty, to recording, to bearing witness, to saying yessiree to the life spirit, whose only request sometimes is just that you acknowledge you truly see it, he broke something in Hal.…’” Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1989.

  “After that I was lost for a long time, doing dreamtime without end while my body paid the price.” Joan Vinge, Psion. New York: Tor Books, 1982.

  CHAPTER 4

  “The study of the origins of words may be regarded as a sort of archeology of our thought process,” David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge, 1980.

  “Exhausted from old age, Moses’ last act was to write down on a scroll all the important events that had happened to the Hebrew people.” Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. New York: Viking, 1998.

  “Behind the child blared the noise of the TV set; the sound worked but not the picture.” Philip K. Dick, Clans of the Alphane Moon. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964.

  “When finally he found the bottom of his sadness he looked up and wiped his eyes on his forearm.” Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

  “It’s true that you could ask the same question a hundred different times and get a hundred seemingly different answers. But the S’kang concept of “truth” was indirect, malleable, subtle.” Joe Haldeman, All My Sins Remembered. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.