The Books of Ember Omnibus

by Jeanne DuPrau

  In the days that followed, Doon went farther and farther into the Pipeworks, holding on to the hope that he might find something not only interesting but important. But what he found didn’t seem important at all. Once he came upon an old pair of pliers that someone had dropped and left behind. Twice he found a coin. He discovered a supply closet that appeared to have been completely forgotten, but all it held were some boxes of plugs and washers and a rusty box containing shriveled bits of what must once have been someone’s lunch.

  He found another supply closet at the far south end of the Pipeworks—at least, he assumed that’s what it was. It was at the end of a tunnel with a rope strung across it; a sign hanging from the rope said, “Caved In. No Entry.” Doon entered anyway, ducking under the rope. He found no sign of a cave-in, but there were no lights. He groped his way forward for twenty steps or so, and there the tunnel ended in a securely locked door—he couldn’t see it, but he felt it. He retraced his steps, ducked back under the rope again, and walked on. A short distance away, he found a hatch in the ceiling of the tunnel—a square wooden panel that must lead, he thought, up into the storerooms. If he’d had something to stand on, he could have reached it and tried to open it, but it was about a foot above his upstretched hand. Probably it was locked anyhow. He wondered if the Builders had used openings like this one during the construction of the city to get more easily from one place to another.

  On days when his job was near the main tunnel, he sometimes walked along the river after he’d finished working. He stayed away from the east end, where the generator was; he didn’t want to think about the generator. Instead, he went the other way, toward the place where the river rushed out of the Pipeworks. The path grew less level at this end, and less smooth. The river here was bordered with clumps of wrinkled rock that seemed to grow out of the ground like fungus. Doon liked to sit on these clumps, running his fingers along the strange creases and crevices that must have been carved somehow by running or dripping water. In some places there were grooves that looked almost like writing.

  But as for things of importance, Doon found none. It seemed that the Pipeworks was no use after all to a person who wanted to save the city. The generator was hopeless. He would never understand electricity. He used to think he could use electricity to invent a movable light, if he studied hard enough. He took apart light bulbs; he took apart the electric outlets on the wall to see how the wires inside wound together and in the process, got a painful, vibrating jolt all through his body. But when he tried to wind wires of his own together in exactly the same way, nothing happened. It was what came through the wires that made the light, he finally understood, and he had no idea what that was.

  Now he could see only two courses of action: he could give up and do nothing, or he could start to work on a different kind of movable light.

  Doon didn’t want to give up. So on his day off one Thursday, he went to the Ember Library to look up fire.

  The library occupied an entire building on one side of Bilbollio Square. Its door was at the end of a short passage in the middle of the building. Doon went down the passage, pushed open the door, and walked in. No one was there except for the librarian, ancient Edward Pocket, who sat behind his desk writing something with a tiny pencil clutched in his gnarled hand. The library had two big rooms, one for fiction, which was stories people made up out of their imaginations, and the other for fact, which was information about the real world. The walls of both rooms were lined with shelves, and on most of the shelves were hundreds of packets of pages. Each packet was held together with stout loops of string. The packets leaned against each other at angles and lay in untidy stacks. Some were thick, and some were so slim that only a clip was needed to hold them together. The pages of the oldest packets were yellowed and warped, and their edges were uneven rows of ripples.

  These were the books of Ember, written over the years by its citizens. They contained in their close-written pages much that was imagined and everything that was known.

  Edward Pocket looked up and nodded briefly at Doon, one of his most frequent visitors. Doon nodded back. He went into the fact room, to the section of shelves labeled “F.” The books were arranged by subject, but even so, it wasn’t easy to find what you wanted. A book about moths, for instance, might be under “M” for moths, or “I” for insects, or “B” for bugs. It might even be under “F” for flying things. Usually you had to browse through the entire library to make sure you’d found all the books on one subject. But since he was looking for “fire,” he thought he might as well start with “F.”

  Fire was rare in Ember. When there was a fire, it was because there had been an accident—someone had left a dishtowel too close to an electric burner on a stove, or a cord had frayed and a spark had flown out and ignited curtains. Then the citizens would rush in with buckets of water, and the fire was quickly drowned. But it was, of course, possible to start a fire on purpose. You could hold a sliver of wood to the stove burner until it burst into flame, and then for a moment it would flare brightly, giving off orange light.

  The trick was to find a way to make the light last. If you had a light that would keep going, you could go out into the Unknown Regions and see what was there. Finding a way to explore the Unknown Regions was the only thing Doon could think of to do.

  He took down a book from the “F” shelf. Fungus, it was called. He put it back. The next book was called How to Repair Furniture. He put that back, too. He went through Foot Diseases, Fun with String, Coping with Failure, and Canned Fruit Recipes before he finally found a book called All About Fire. He sat down at one of the library’s square tables to read it.

  But the person who had written the book knew no more about fire than Doon. Mostly the book described the dangers of fire. A long section of it was about a building in Winifred Square that had caught fire forty years ago, and how all its doors and all its furniture had burned up and smoke had filled the air for days. Another part was about what to do if your oven caught on fire.

  Doon closed the book and sighed. It was useless. He could write a better book than that. He got up and wandered restlessly around the library. Sometimes you could find useful things just by choosing randomly from the shelves. He had done this many times—just reached out and grabbed something—in the hope that by accident he might come upon the very piece of information he needed. It would be something that another person had written down without understanding its significance, just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light in Doon’s mind, fitting together with things he already knew to make a solution to everything.

  Although he’d often found something interesting in these searches, he’d never found anything important. Today was no different. He did come across a collection called Mysterious Words from the Past, which he read for a while. It was about words and phrases so old that their meanings had been forgotten. He read a few pages.

  Heavens above

  Indicates surprise. What “heavens” means is unclear. It might be another word for “floodlight.”

  Hogwash

  Means “nonsense,” though no one knows what a “hog” is or why one would wash it.

  Batting a thousand

  Indicates great success. This might possibly refer to killing bugs.

  All in the same boat

  Means “all in the same predicament.” The meaning of “boat” is unknown.

  Interesting, but not useful. He put the book back on the shelf and was about to leave when the door of the library opened, and Lina Mayfleet came in.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  The Door in the Roped-Off Tunnel

  Lina saw Doon immediately—he was reaching up to set a book back on its shelf. He saw her, too, when he turned around, and his dark eyebrows flew up in surprise as she hurried over to him.

  “Your father told me you were here,” she said. “Doon, I found something. I want to show it to you.”

  “To me? Why?”

  “I think
it’s important. It has to do with the Pipeworks. Will you come to my house and see it?”

  “Now?” Doon asked.

  Lina nodded.

  Doon grabbed his old brown jacket and followed Lina out of the library and across the city to Quillium Square.

  Granny’s shop was closed and dark when they arrived, and so Lina was surprised when they went upstairs and saw Evaleen Murdo sitting in her place by the window. “Your grandmother’s in her bedroom,” Mrs. Murdo said. “She didn’t feel well, so she asked me to come.”

  Poppy was sitting on the floor, banging a spoon on the leg of a chair.

  Lina introduced Doon, then led him into the room she shared with Poppy. He looked around, and Lina felt suddenly self-conscious, seeing her room through his eyes. It was a small room with a lot crammed into it. There were two narrow beds, a very small table that fit into a corner, and a four-legged stool to sit on. On the wall, clothes hung from hooks, and more clothes were strewn untidily on the floor. Beneath the window was a brown stain made by the bean seed in its pot on the windowsill. Lina had been watering it every night because she’d promised Clary she would, but it was still nothing but dirt, flat and unpromising.

  A couple of shelves beside the window held Lina’s important possessions: the pieces of paper she’d collected for drawing, her pencils, a scarf with a silver thread woven through it. On the parts of the wall that had no hooks and no shelves, she had pinned up some of her pictures.

  “What are those?” Doon asked.

  “They’re from my imagination,” Lina said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “They’re pictures of . . . another city.”

  “Oh. You made it up.”

  “Sort of. Sometimes I dream of it.”

  “I draw, too,” said Doon. “But I draw other kinds of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mostly insects,” said Doon. He told her about his collection of drawings and the worm he was currently observing.

  To Lina, this sounded far less interesting than an undiscovered city, but she didn’t say so. She led Doon over to the table. “Here’s what I want to show you,” she said. She lifted the metal box. Before she could reach for the papers underneath, Doon took the box and started examining it.

  “Where did this come from?” he asked.

  “It was in the closet,” Lina said. She told him about Granny’s wild search and about finding the box with its lid open and Poppy with paper in her mouth. As she talked, Doon turned the box over in his hands, opened and closed its lid, and peered at the latch.

  “There’s some sort of odd mechanism here,” he said. He tapped at a small metal compartment at the front of the box. “I’d like to see inside this.”

  “Here’s what was in the box,” said Lina, lifting the covering paper from her patchwork of scraps. “At least, it’s what’s left of what was in there.”

  Doon bent over, his hands on either side of the paper.

  Lina said, “It’s called ‘Instructions for Egreston.’ Or maybe ‘Egresman.’ Someone’s name, anyhow. Maybe a mayor, or a guard. I just call it ‘The Instructions.’ I told the mayor about it—I thought maybe it was important. I wrote him a note, but he hasn’t answered. I don’t think he’s interested.”

  Doon said nothing.

  “You don’t have to hold your breath,” said Lina. “I glued the pieces down. Look,” she said, pointing. “This word must be Pipeworks. And this one river. And look at this one—door.”

  Doon didn’t answer. His hair had fallen forward, so Lina couldn’t see the expression on his face.

  “I thought at first,” Lina went on, “that it must be instructions for how to do something. How to fix the electricity, maybe. But then I thought, What if it’s instructions for going to another place?” Doon said nothing, so Lina went on. “I mean someplace that isn’t here, like another city. I think these instructions say, ‘Go down into the Pipeworks and look for a door.’ ”

  Doon brushed the hair back from his face, but he didn’t straighten up. He gazed at the broken words and frowned. “Edge,” he murmured. “Small steel pan. What would that mean?”

  “A frying pan?” said Lina. “But I don’t know why there’d be a frying pan in the Pipeworks.”

  But Doon didn’t answer. He seemed to be talking to himself. He kept reading, moving a finger along the lines of words. “Open,” he whispered. “Follow.”

  Finally he turned to look at Lina. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think this is important.”

  “Oh, I was sure you’d think so!” Lina cried. She was so relieved that her words poured out in a rush. “Because you take things seriously! You told the truth to the mayor on Assignment Day. I didn’t want to believe it, but then came the long blackout, and I knew—I knew things were as bad as you said.” She stopped, breathless. She pointed to a word on the document. “This door,” she said. “It has to be a door that leads out of Ember.”

  “I don’t know,” said Doon. “Maybe. Or a door that leads to something important, even if it isn’t that.”

  “But it must be that—what else could be important enough to lock up in a fancy box?”

  “Well . . . I suppose it could be a storage room with some special tools in it or something—” A look of surprise came over his face. “Actually, I saw a door where I didn’t expect to see one—out in Tunnel 351. It was locked. I thought it was an old supply closet. I wonder if that could be it.”

  “It must be!” cried Lina. Her heart sped up.

  “It wasn’t anywhere near the river,” Doon said doubtfully.

  “That doesn’t matter!” Lina said. “The river goes through the Pipeworks, that’s all. It’s probably something like, ‘Go down by the river, then go this way, then that way . . .’ ”

  “Maybe,” said Doon.

  “It must be!” Lina cried. “I know it is! It’s the door that leads out of Ember.”

  “I don’t know if that makes sense,” said Doon. “A door in the Pipeworks could only lead to something underground, and how could that . . .”

  Lina had no patience for Doon’s reasoning. She wanted to dance around the room, she was so excited. “We have to find out,” she said. “We have to find out right away!”

  Doon looked startled. “Well, I can go and try the door again,” he said. “It was locked before, but I suppose . . .”

  “I want to go, too,” said Lina.

  “You want to come down into the Pipeworks?”

  “Yes! Can you get me in?”

  Doon thought for a moment. “I think I can. If you come just at quitting time and wait outside the door, I’ll stay out of sight until everyone has gone, and then I’ll let you in.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  Lina stopped at home the next day only long enough to change out of her messenger jacket, and then she dashed across town to the Pipeworks. Doon met her just outside the door, and she followed him inside, where he handed her a slicker and boots to put on. They descended the long stone stairway, and when they came out into the main tunnel, Lina stood still, staring at the river. “I didn’t know the river was so big,” she said, after she found her voice.

  “Yes,” said Doon. “Every few years, they say, someone falls in. If you fall in, there’s no hope of fishing you out. The river swallows you and sweeps you away.”

  Lina shivered. It was cold down here, a cold that she felt all the way through, cold flesh, cold blood, cold bones.

  Doon led her up the path beside the water. After a while they came to an opening in the wall, and they turned into it and left the river behind. Doon led the way through winding tunnels. Their rubber boots splashed in pools of water on the floor. Lina thought how awful it would be to work down here all day, every day. It was a creepy place, a place where it seemed people didn’t belong. That black river . . . it was like something in a bad dream.

  “You have to duck here,” said Doon.

  They had come to a roped-off tunnel. “But there
’s no light in there,” Lina said.

  “No,” said Doon. “We have to feel our way. It isn’t far.” He ducked under the rope and went in, and Lina did the same. They stepped forward into the dark. Lina kept a hand against the damp wall and placed her feet carefully.

  “It’s right here,” said Doon. He had stopped a few feet ahead of Lina. She came up behind him. “Put your hands out,” he said. “You’ll feel it.”

  Lina felt a smooth, hard surface. There was a round metal knob, and below the knob, a keyhole. It seemed an ordinary door—not at all like the entrance to a new world. But that was what made things so exciting—nothing was ever how you expected it to be.

  “Let’s try it,” she whispered.

  Doon took hold of the knob and twisted. “Locked,” he said.

  “Is there a pan anywhere?”

  “A pan?”

  “The instructions said ‘small steel pan.’ Maybe that would have the key in it.”

  They felt around, but there was nothing—just the rocky walls. They patted the walls, they put their ears to the door, they jiggled the knob and pulled it and pushed it. Finally, Doon said, “Well, we can’t get in. I guess we’d better go.”

  And that was when they heard the noise. It was a scuffling, scraping noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere nearby. Lina stopped breathing. She clutched Doon’s arm.

  “Quick,” Doon whispered. He made his way back toward the lighted tunnel, with Lina following. They ducked under the rope and rounded a turn, then stopped, stood still, and listened. A harsh scraping sound. A thud. A pause . . . and then the sound of an impact, a short, explosive breath, and a muttered word in a gruff, low voice.

  Then slow footsteps, getting closer.

  They flattened themselves against the wall and stood motionless. The footsteps stopped briefly, and there was another grunt. Then the steps continued, but seemed to be fading. In a moment, from a distance, there was another sound: the chink of a key turning in a lock, and the click of a latch opening.