A dozen fires raged beside the causeway: they were edging through the sea, toward the Egyptian fleet. Felix grimaced. Caesar had already fired his ships. Very soon one of them would crash into the dock and set its wooden planks ablaze. Sparks would enter the library and…. There was no time to waste. He joined Carolyn below.
The garden was a lovely precinct with a fountain, flowerbeds, and busts of ancient thinkers. Felix was reminded of his terrace back home. Following a path, they approached the building. Its walls consisted of limestone blocks, with two-centimetre cracks between each one.
“We can scale the wall,” Felix whispered. “The cracks will give us toe-holds.”
“I have a better idea,” Carolyn replied, pointing farther down. “You see that door? I think it’s open. It also looks unguarded.”
Before Felix could answer, she sidled in closer. Trailing drops of water, she reached the door and pushed it slowly. She crossed the threshold and vanished from sight. With a pang of worry, Felix rushed forward. Had she run into trouble? Had the guards been alerted?
His fear was uncalled for. She was crouching over a guard who was lying motionless at the foot of some stairs. Felix looked at her questioningly. She shook her head.
“This isn’t my doing.”
“She’s here,” Felix said, his blood freezing over.
“I was hoping she wouldn’t make it. I guess we’re resourceful, my twin and I. I’m just surprised she hasn’t set the building on fire.”
“It makes sense that she hasn’t,” Felix said. “All of this will burn soon, yet Aceticus’ scroll will survive somehow. If she wants to destroy it, she has to find it first.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“That’s easy. We find it before she does. And we have an advantage. She can’t read Greek and her Latin’s terrible.”
Between them, they carried the guard into the garden, so that he’d be safe when the building caught fire. Returning to the library, Felix closed the door, threw its bolt, and looked around. They were in a marble corridor. On a nearby shelf was a lighted lamp. Farther down there were yet more shelves, each carrying a lamp as well. Every lamp was set in a box of sand to minimize the chance of a fire starting. The second shelf alone was empty: the clone had grabbed its lamp so she could see her way.
Helping himself to a pair of lamps, Felix handed one to Carolyn. He headed down the corridor with care, as if a giant spider were about to jump out. After proceeding five metres, he came upon a doorway. Peering into it, he felt his muscles slacken.
“What is it?” Carolyn hissed. “Can you see the clone?”
Felix didn’t answer. He was transfixed. Before him was a spacious room, with marble floors and a panelled ceiling. It was twenty metres long, had a table and chairs, and pillars set at even intervals — their fluting was Greek and the capitals Egyptian. But the walls were the part that interested him. They had floor-to-ceiling shelves that were neatly stacked with scrolls. Spying a line of writing on a column, Felix brought his lamp in close and looked it over. It read (in Greek) TRAGODIA AI.
He swallowed hard. Stretching out his free hand, he took a scroll from a shelf. It carried a tag that read: AGAMEMNON. His fingers trembling, he returned the scroll and took another. ALCMENE was its title. The next read AMYMONE, then ARGO, ATALANTA, ATHAMAS, BASSARAI …
“Felix? What’s wrong?” Carolyn asked. “Your face is white and your legs are shaking.”
“They’re all here,” he gasped, barely able to breathe. “Everything’s here.”
“What are you talking about? What’s all here?”
He turned to face her. How could he explain? How could she grasp the value of this treasure?
“I’m holding the lost plays of Aeschylus,” he said. “He wrote ninety of them altogether, but only seven survived. Yet here they are. All of Sophocles, too. And then there are the poets who didn’t make it, Choerilus, Bion, Eupolis, Lasus, Moschus, Clephon, Phrynichus, and others. Can you guess how much beauty is here? How much learning? Humour? Science? Wisdom?”
He closed his eyes. His job was clear. He had to pile some of these scrolls together and convey them to the future. There he’d study them and add to his knowledge of the ancient world….
“Felix!”
The question: what should he rescue? In that one room alone there were twenty thousand scrolls. Even if he stripped and made a bag of his tunic, he could carry only a hundred pieces. So what should come and what should stay…?
“Felix!”
Should he take the plays of Aeschylus or rescue an author whose works had vanished altogether? Callimachus, for example, existed in fragments, as did Archimedes, Epicurus, Democritus, and Thales. And there were dozens of lost Roman authors….
He felt a smack followed by a red-hot pain. Opening his eyes, he dodged a second slap from Carolyn.
“Why’d you hit me?” he asked, backing out of reach.
“To bring you to your senses. I know these scrolls are precious, really. But you have to focus on the task in hand. If my clone finds that scroll, we won’t have any home to return to. Not that I can get home without my statue.”
Felix nodded slowly. Fighting his desire to tuck it away, he replaced the scroll he was holding, moved off from the shelf and walked back to the hallway. It ran on for a good fifty metres and had rooms leading off on either side. Each door bore a plaque describing the room’s precise contents.
“That’s comedy,” he said, pointing to a door on his right. “There’s more tragedy and, over here, epic and lyric.”
They had to turn right at the end of the hallway. It led them past additional rooms — which were filled with more Greek literature — and ended in a corridor that veered right again. After following this third passageway, whose rooms were filled with more scrolls in Greek, they wound up at the door leading into the garden.
“Upstairs,” Felix said, pointing to the stairs. He climbed them swiftly two at a time with Carolyn just inches behind. The second floor’s layout was like the one below, with a U-shaped corridor and rooms on either side. Ducking into the first room — it contained the Greek geographers — he looked outside the window to his left. As he feared, a large, burning object was approaching the shore. Caesar’s transport had drifted off course and would collide with the dock in a matter of minutes. It would consume all this learning and …
He tore down the corridor to distract himself from the impending loss. More rooms flew by, medicine, biology, mathematics, astronomy, warfare, ethnography, and philosophy/ethics. Empty-handed, they clambered to the next floor.
Its texts were in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Demotic (or so the different plaques informed him). And the next floor proved equally unhelpful.
“It’s started!” Felix shouted from the front room of the fifth floor. “The docks are burning and sparks are flying everywhere. They’re coming in through the windows below!”
“Just keep looking!” Carolyn said.
They searched the floor — it contained Egyptian texts. By the time they’d circled back to the staircase, smoke was rising from the lower levels. Sparks were entering the front room too and Felix saw a pile of scrolls catch fire. He knew they had to plan their escape, but first they had to track the Historiae down.
“It must be on the top floor!” Even as he spoke, a blast of heat erupted from the window and stairs. He and Carolyn climbed to the topmost level.
They were getting close: the rooms on this floor contained works in Latin. They roamed the corridors, spying plaque after plaque: oratory, architecture, drama, and poets. Opposite the drama room, in the hallway forming the bottom of the U, was a door inlaid with panels showing nine different women. These were the Muses. The door showed no plaque, however, so the pair ignored it. Continuing down the hallway, they saw engineering, politics, legal theory, and … history. Felix ducked into this space.
“You’d better hurry,” Carolyn said. “The fire’s reached this floor.”
Felix didn’t answer. As the smoke
in the space started to thicken, his eyes roamed a series of shelves. In those with authors whose name began with A, he saw Acilius, Albinus, Alimentus, Antipater, Appianus, Asellio, Augustus, and reams of Annales. There was no Aceticus.
“It’s not here!” he shouted.
“That makes sense,” Carolyn mused. “This room will burn like all the others. That means, his scroll would perish, too. It’s somewhere else.”
“But where?”
“What about that door we passed? The one covered with those women?”
“It’s worth a try. Although it doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
They left the room and retraced their steps. Both were coughing on account of the smoke and the floor was hot, unbearably so: the marble was conducting the heat from below. Felix was worried. The flames were thickening. There was no returning to the lower floors or entering the front room and climbing out a window. With mounting panic, he ran to the door with the Muses painted on it. Mercifully it wasn’t locked.
A welcome sight greeted them on the other side. Before them was a “bridge” of stone connecting the library to the rest of the complex. It was enclosed, six feet high, and lined with marble slabs on either side.
“At least we’re safe,” Felix said.
“What do you think these are?” Carolyn asked, running her hand over the marble.
“I don’t know. Are they decoration, maybe?”
Without answering, she pulled at the edge of one slab. It wheeled open, like a cabinet door. Behind it were a series of shelves, each one packed with additional scrolls. Above them was a plaque that read: kai ta loipa. Felix explained this meant “and the rest” in ancient Greek.
“You don’t think…?” Carolyn asked.
Felix was rummaging through these works. Some were in Greek, others in Latin, and none were arranged in alphabetical order. He opened a second door, a third, a fourth and … there it was.
It was a small, ungainly scroll. It was torn a little and its ink was smudged, but the words on its tag were clear as day: HISTORIAE SEXTI PULLII ACETII.
“Is that it?” Carolyn asked.
“That’s it.”
“It’s not much to look at.”
“No.”
“Well then….”
She never finished her sentence. There was a crash as a vase banged down on her skull. Her eyes widened in shock and she crumpled to the floor. Before Felix could react, something struck him in the face. Dimly he spied a hand reach past him, take the scroll, and pluck it away.
Then a whorl of black sucked him under.
Chapter Eighteen
He was out cold for maybe ten seconds. When he came to, the clone was poised in front of the cabinets. “The scroll,” he wondered fitfully. There. She was holding it and looking it over. With her free hand, she was pulling a knife from her tunic. Three steps away, Carolyn was a heap on the floor — the real Carolyn Manes, that is.
Desperate to retrieve the scroll, he planned his attack. Eyeing the clone closely, he spied her hands and was deeply shocked. The skin was dry, veiny and cracked. They didn’t look like Carolyn’s, but the hands of someone older.
A gasp escaped him. Hearing him, the clone approached and brought her face in closer.
This wasn’t Carolyn’s twin, but an old woman of sixty. Her brow was wrinkled, her cheeks were withered, and her hair was tangle of white and grey. Only the eyes were the same. They were hazel with a dying fire at their core.
“You look surprised,” she said, in a gravelly tone. “I guess I’ve aged even more than I imagined. It’s funny, isn’t it? I was sixteen when we last sat together.”
“How…?”
“It’s the accelerated cloning. The more time passes, the faster I age. At this rate, I’ll be eighty by dawn tomorrow. And the day after that my heart will stop beating. Not that it matters. I’ll have done my job.”
“If you destroy that scroll, you know what will happen. I won’t read Aceticus —”
“I know exactly what will happen. I was with you when we returned to an empty world. I heard Sajit Gupta’s broadcast, as well as my dad’s last message. All of it was heartbreaking.”
“So why…?”
“I’ve been programmed to destroy this scroll. It hurts me, really, the same way it’s pained me to hit you, but I have no choice. That’s why …”
She raised her knife to the scroll. But before she could slash it, there was a flurry of movement: the real Carolyn rolled forward and knocked her twin off balance. At the same time Felix charged, slammed the clone, and grabbed at the scroll. As he reeled it in, he felt a burning sensation. The clone had slashed his ribs with her knife and blood was flowing from a angry-looking gash. The blood was warm as it travelled down his leg, but the wound seemed superficial, thank goodness.
“Felix!” Carolyn cried. She’d rolled off from the clone and climbed to her feet. Her twin, too, had caught her balance and was crouching low. Her knife was at the ready and she was willing to kill. Despite her age, she was deadlier than ever.
“You’re bleeding,” she observed. Her tone expressed concern and regret.
“He’s bleeding because of you!” Carolyn yelled.
“I can’t help it. He’s interfering. I’m sorry, Felix, really. You can’t guess how much I love you but … hand me that scroll or I’ll cut your throat!”
“You monster!” Carolyn cried.
“A monster?” she asked, stepping in close with her blade. “I’m you, Carolyn. If I’m a monster, you are, too.”
“You’re not me! You’re just some test-tube freak!”
“Then explain how I know this!” Here the clone sang in a wavering voice, “O mouse whose nose is oh so pink/shall I tell you mousey what I think/ I think no mom is as lucky as I/ I’ll love you mousey till the day I die.”
“How did you…?” Carolyn trailed off, astonished.
“I remember mom singing to us. I remember, too, the day she died and how we crawled into our closet and cried and cried.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Carolyn said. Her tone was even, but her eyes were twitching. “After all, you want to destroy our world!”
“That’s something I can’t help,” she said, laughing slightly. By now she was two steps from her twin. “And at least I’m not cold, like you. If I could, I’d act on my feelings for Felix, whereas you …”
“You’re a killer!” Carolyn spat at her twin. They rushed each other an instant later.
It was as though they were in an old-fashioned film that was playing in slow motion. The clone drew her knife back, to strike her twin. To distract her, Felix yelled in a deep, drawn out voice, “Don’t! You can have it!” He tossed her the scroll and it sailed through the air with the speed of a stone moving through molasses. As the clone spun to catch it, Carolyn landed a side-kick (it seemed like her foot took an hour to strike its target). Falling sideways, the clone dropped to the floor. With the fire roaring on the far side of the door, she struggled to her feet, Felix leaped forward, and Carolyn jumped high in the air (for what seemed like ten minutes) only to land on her twin with a crunch. The trio then separated: Felix stood smiling with the scroll in hand, Carolyn assumed a crouching position, while the clone just lay there with a look of pain. In the silence that followed, time jumped back to normal. There was an ugly choking sound and the clone finally spoke.
“Carolyn,” she gasped.
“Stay there or I’ll hit you again!”
“Carolyn. Felix,” she gurgled. Her voice was weak and her breath was spastic. Felix glimpsed the pool of blood before he spied the knife protruding from her chest.
“Carolyn!” he yelled, running to the clone. He ripped her outer tunic off and pressed it to her wound. At the same time he examined the knife: its blade was buried in her heart. The blood was everywhere. It swamped Felix’s hands and was pooling round his knees. Despite her many wrinkles, Felix could see Carolyn’s face before him. The light was draining from her live
ly stare.
“Carolyn,” he moaned, “stay with us!”
“Carolyn, come closer,” the clone pleaded with her twin. With a look that Felix couldn’t decipher, Carolyn kneeled and clutched her clone’s hand.
“Listen,” the clone whispered, “Listen. I know you. Be true to … your heart. Otherwise … regret all your life. I know you … I know … and you, we could be … happy. So sorry … about … everything. The snow … sea … sun … so beautiful….”
Using the last of her strength, she joined Carolyn’s hand to Felix’s. Then her eyes opened immeasurably wide and death streamed in, extinguishing her fires in one fell swoop.
Felix was staring at a water fountain. A stone satyr was spitting water from his mouth and the spray was iridescent in the morning light. A short ways off, men were battling the fire that had consumed the library and ten centuries of human thought. And farther on, a roar persisted as Romans and Egyptians still pounded each other, with neither side willing to concede defeat. They were faced with death on every side, but for the moment Felix’s only wish was to sit and watch the play of water.
When Carolyn’s clone died, Felix had taken the scroll, returned it to the shelf, and closed the marble panel. With this done, he’d been sure the scroll would survive and so allow him to fight the plague down the road. Before leaving, he’d covered the clone with her tunic, blind to the fact that her blood was staining his clothes. As he’d spied her eyes one final time, so wide and abandoned in the face of death, he’d had to steel himself to keep his knees from buckling.
The real Carolyn had been no help. As soon as she’d spied the knife in her twin, she’d stopped speaking. Her eyes had dulled and her spirit had left her, as if she’d killed herself when she’d driven the knife home. She probably had a concussion as well, from the severe blow that the clone had delivered. Hearing footsteps advance, Felix had steered her through a length of hallways, past rooms containing all sorts of exhibits, clothes, tools, weapons, sculptures, as well as beasts of every stripe and colour, some preserved, others mere skeletons. He’d remembered that, among its other functions, the complex had served as a natural history museum. After wandering blindly for twenty minutes, he and Carolyn had finally stepped outside and reached this courtyard with the satyr fountain.
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