Libyrinth

by Pearl North

  Haly might need someone who could repair the ravages of time upon the Ancient technology, but Libyrarian Grath was dead. But there was someone else, who might know even more. “Gyneth,” she said, craning her head about. She’d lost track of him in all the excitement. “Where is Gyneth?”

  Haly and Gyneth followed Nod down the steps. The walls of the tube were covered with waving lines that glowed gold as they neared them and then faded back into obscurity once they’d passed. The lines curled and eddied around each other, sometimes in ever-tightening spirals; sometimes in long, graceful arcs that swooped around the entire tunnel. “It’s the Egg that’s doing it, isn’t it? It’s making them glow.”

  Gyneth nodded. “Songlines glow in the presence of an Egg, and that’s probably why we were able to open the seal.”

  Some time later Haly said, “I wonder how far down this goes.” They had been descending for what seemed like a very long time. The opening of the tube above them had dwindled into a tiny circle and then disappeared.

  “Well, we fell on those books with even more appetite than on the food, and in the end, we moved into the house and stayed all winter,” said a book.

  And another: “Everybody wants programmable animals.”

  “One meaning of the term labyrinth is ‘the internal ear,’ ” noted a third.

  In addition to the book voices and the ring of their footsteps on the metal grating of the steps, there was a faint hum. “What is that? That hum?” she asked.

  “That’s the sound of the songlines,” said Gyneth.

  As they descended, Haly concentrated on the sound. It wasn’t as constant as she’d thought; or rather, there were modulations within the sound; a soft rise and fall in pitch. The more attention she paid to it, the more detail it seemed to have. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  “The hum? Yeah,” said Gyneth, giving her a funny look.

  “I mean inside the hum, the different notes. It sounds . . . It sounds like a chorus.”

  Gyneth looked at her blankly. “You mean like voices? No. Just the hum.”

  Haly swallowed. She heard the music more strongly now than ever, as if her ears were learning to hear it. It was the Song.

  At last the tunnel came to an end and they found themselves at the top of an enormous cavern that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. Like the walls of the tunnel, the cavern ceiling was covered with songlines that blazed to light in the presence of the Egg, illuminating what lay below them.

  “Who is she, staring down like the dawn’s eye, bright as the white moon, pure as the hot sun, frightening as visions!” said a book.

  Directly beneath the tunnel opening was a great, golden face. Like the Devouring Silence, it lay flush with the floor and was covered also with songlines. Surrounding it, and going on for as far as the eye could see, were the curving, twisting shelves of the Libyrinth stacks.

  Haly had never seen the stacks from this angle. She was pretty sure no one ever had. Certainly if anyone had come back from a long sojourn and reported seeing this, word would have gotten around.

  Before, Haly had always been in the stacks, pressed close in the narrow spaces between the shelves, unable to discern any sort of overall layout. As it turned out, they formed a true labyrinth, trailing away from the face in all directions. They looked like nothing so much as kinky, wiry gray hair.

  They descended the rest of the staircase, which was nerve-wracking, since now there was nothing between them and the floor except a slender handrail.

  When they finally reached the floor, Haly immediately went to investigate the face. It was rather larger than the Devouring Silence had been, and it was a coppery color similar in hue to the glow of the Egg and the songlines. Its eyes were closed, its lips slightly parted. The curving lines on its face flickered and glowed in the presence of the Egg.

  “The Library is unlimited and cyclical,” said a book.

  Haly looked at Nod. “Where does the Egg go? Does it go in the face?”

  “On her tongue, her tongue,” he said, but then he shook his head and scrambled to the face, crouching beside the chin. He pointed to a discolored patch at the corner of the mouth. It was a whitish, pebbly residue.

  “Corrosion,” said Gyneth. “I don’t think it’s safe to put the Egg in yet.”

  Nod shoved the Egg into Haly’s hands and began to lick at the streaks on the face. As he did this, Haly caught sight of movement at the edge of the clearing. It was the shelves—they were moving. No, not moving; covered with something that was moving.

  Nods, thousands of them, crawling, leaping, and hopping from shelf to shelf. “What does she say? What does she say?” they said in unison. The sound was deafening.

  “Shit,” Gyneth murmured, gripping her hand tightly. “I thought there was just the one.”

  As the Nods swarmed toward them, Haly and Gyneth turned to each other and held on tight, burying their faces in each other’s shoulders. Haly expected to be suffocated by them, perhaps devoured, but that wasn’t what happened. The Nods swept past them and crawled all over the face in the floor, licking and cleaning it.

  Haly released a breathy laugh and looked up at Gyneth. He stared at her. “I guess we’re okay,” he said.

  She nodded. She hadn’t pulled back and he hadn’t, either. She stood up on her tiptoes, and at the same time he bent forward and their lips met. His mouth was warm and it tasted a little like the oatmeal the Singers had been given. She liked it.

  They separated, only to hug each other tightly and then kiss again. This can’t be the right time for this, she thought, but she didn’t care. Gyneth was so warm, and the fuzz on his upper lip felt nice against her skin. This time when they separated she said, “You said you wouldn’t break the rule.”

  “The one I’d break the rule for was out of my reach. I thought so, anyway.”

  “I’m not. I’m right here.”

  “But you’re my Redeemer.”

  She nodded. “And you’re mine.”

  They kissed again and he held her close again. She peeped over his shoulder at the face in the floor. It was still covered with Nods, cleaning away. So many things had happened so quickly. She felt like she’d been fighting one battle after another for days, and she supposed she had. And now, here in this strange place, with Gyneth beside her, it finally came to her how tired she was. “Let’s . . . let’s find someplace to sit down.”

  They wandered hand in hand around the little clearing between the face and the bookshelves. “I never realized there were so many books,” said Gyneth.

  Haly nodded. She was about to tell him about one of her favorites when she spotted a pair of figures huddled against one of the shelves. They wore black robes. “Hello?” Haly said, stepping toward them. Their faces were hidden by the hoods of their robes. They appeared to be sleeping, but who could sleep through the light and noise of their arrival? More to the point, what were they doing here in the first place? A dry, acrid smell filled her nose as she crouched down beside them and put a hand out to touch the shoulder of the nearest one. “Hello?”

  The wool of the figure’s robe was dry and rough. It rasped against something hard beneath it. At Haly’s gentle pressure, the figure shifted and then collapsed. A cloud of dust rose up and she sneezed. When she opened her eyes again, it was to behold a fleshless skull grinning up at her from the shroud of the Libyrarian’s robe. The other figure, too, had collapsed. She saw finger bones protruding from the folds of a sleeve.

  She screamed. Instantly Gyneth was at her side. Backing up swiftly, Haly stumbled. Gyneth helped her to sit down on the floor. She was shaking. She’d heard the stories since childhood: overambitious Libyrarians lost in the stacks, never to return. But it was another thing to see it for herself. “They’re dead. Who are they?” she babbled.

  “Her mommy and daddy,” the Nods muttered absently as they worked away at cleaning the face in the floor.

  “What?” Haly sprang to her feet, grabbed one of the Nods with bot
h hands, and held it before her face at arm’s length to avoid the flailing arms and kicking legs.

  “Put Nod down! She must put Nod down!”

  “No. Not until you explain. These are my parents you say? Then how was I born?”

  The creature squirmed. “Nod helped! Nod didn’t mean for the beasties to die. Not Nod’s fault they had no food! Not Nod’s fault they ran out of water! If Nod hadn’t helped, she would have died, too! Nod saved her life! Nod made her better than beastie parents could. Nod wanted to hear the stories. Nod always cleans books, keeps everything neat and in good repair, but Nod never hears the stories! Is that fair?”

  Haly felt cold. “What did you do?”

  “Mother beastie was dying. Other beastie was already dead. Nod has always wished for a beastie that was at least a little bit like Nod. So Nod took the protobeastie out of the mother beastie. She was very small. She was dying, too. Nod gave her some of Nod’s own code. That made her strong. Nod surrounded her, kept her warm, fed her on Nod’s own bodies so she would grow and live, and hear the stories and then tell them to Nod. When she got big enough, Nod took her to the crèche.”

  Haly dropped the creature, sank to her knees, and vomited. She wasn’t even human. She retched until she could bring up nothing but bile and mucus. It stank. Some of the Nods twittered in consternation and left the face to clean up her mess. Dully she watched them wiping and licking, feeling nothing, gratefully sinking into shock.

  “My mother is a fish,” said a book with a small boy’s voice.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. A human hand.

  Gyneth peered at her. “Haly . . .”

  She looked up at him, not knowing what to say. Some part of her brain noticed that he had used her name, but the rest of her just felt ashamed. He hadn’t known, when he kissed her. She hadn’t known. What was she? “I-I’m sorry,” she managed.

  He knitted his brows and shook his head. “Sorry? For what?”

  “I didn’t know. You didn’t know. What I am. What am I?”

  Gyneth shrugged. “I don’t care what you are. I’m glad. I’m glad they did it, if it was the only way for you to live.”

  “B-but I’m not human.”

  “You’re the Redeemer; of course you’re not entirely human. How could you be?”

  Haly stared at him. Gyneth looked calmly back at her as if it were nothing to be ashamed of. Haly blinked, trying to think of how to get through to him. “But surely this proves I’m not divine,” she said, and suddenly realized there was some tiny part of her that had thought she might be. Now that part was both relieved and disappointed.

  “The sight once seen can never be forgotten, but we turn from it and pursue our way,” said a book.

  Gyneth nodded, biting his lip and looking like he was trying very hard to think of the right thing to say. “I don’t think it matters. I don’t think the Song cares who sings it. Besides, maybe you can do more as a person than as a god. A god is all. A person is change.”

  A person, was she even that? “But . . . little red men?”

  Gyneth laughed sheepishly and hung his head. “I’ll admit it’s a bit embarrassing, especially for people like Censor Siblea, but . . .” A mischievous smile curled the corners of his mouth. “They’ve obviously got it all wrong. You opened my ears to the truth. And I do believe that the divine runs through you, but if it turns out that the divine is a bunch of tiny red demons, well then I think it serves some people right.”

  All of a sudden Haly felt a bit better. She blinked. Gyneth reached for her and she let him wrap her in his arms and for a while they just sat like that, two robed figures huddled together against the bookshelves.

  The Nods finished cleaning the face in the floor, and then one of them unhooked a latch at the side of the face and the rest scrambled to his side and lifted up the face to reveal the machinery inside. It looked like a lot of wires and there was a large copper-colored cup that looked like it might be where the Egg was supposed to go.

  The Nods were busy there a few moments more, and then at last they retreated, muttering sadly as they went. Only one Nod remained, looking up at Haly and Gyneth mournfully. “Heart face clean, still no good. Heart place broken. Beasties must fix.”

  Haly looked at Gyneth. “Can you do it?”

  He looked back at her, wide-eyed. “I don’t know. I haven’t even completed my Circuits yet.” After a thorough examination, Gyneth stood up again. “I think I can fix it, but it will take time. I can start on the tone capacitors right now, but after that I’ll need tools,” he said, “a hand harp, pliers and cutters, and copper chording.”

  Haly frowned. “I don’t know if we have those things.”

  “Gilleach will, and Javer did. If you can get them to send Gilleach down here with anything he can find, and one your own people, too, someone with experience with electronics . . . Do you have anyone like that?”

  “Grath, but he’s dead. His clerk, Thotis . . . I think she’s still alive.”

  Gyneth nodded. “Send them both if you can.”

  “I will. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He was already kneeling over the copper innards of the face in the floor, but he looked up suddenly. “No. You stay up there. You have to do the Redemption.”

  “I’ll wait until you finish.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know how much time we have. They could get another Egg for the horn. You need to do the Redemption as soon as you can.”

  She saw the sense in this. “I’m sorry you’ll miss it.”

  He smiled. “If it’s a real Redemption, I won’t.”

  Around the outside of the Libyrinth’s dome ran a terrace some ten feet wide. It was bordered on its outer edge by a parapet three feet high. The ever-present wind of the Plain of Ayor whipped Haly’s hair around as she stepped onto the terrace from a door in the side of the seventh tower. She went to the parapet and looked down. She was directly above the front gate, and more than fifty feet above the plain. She had that same dizzy feeling she’d had in the amphitheater in the Temple of Yammon, and she stepped back a little.

  “He had felt nothing but fear, sheer naked fear, when he thought about the parachute jump.”

  It was dawn. She had been beneath the Libyrinth for most of the night, and when she resurfaced, it was to find Censor Siblea and Selene and the other Libyrarians waiting for her. Waiting for the Redemption.

  Rossiter’s pills had helped all but two of the Libyrinth wounded, and Burke, her assistants, and those recovered patients who were strong enough to stand had joined the Chorus of the Word. They all stood behind her now, arrayed in the same formation they would have used in a recital hall at the Corvariate Citadel, though there were no steps for them to stand on, and so they arranged themselves with the tallest members in the back and the shortest in the front. Censor Siblea stood beside her.

  Haly looked again at the waking multitude below them. “How can we make ourselves heard?” she wondered aloud.

  “That may be our greatest obstacle,” Siblea admitted.

  Haly turned to face him. “But what did you plan to do? If the Redemption had gone as you expected it to, how did you plan to address the multitudes?”

  Siblea looked chagrined. “If the Redemption had gone as planned you would have translated The Book of the Night for us, we would have memorized it, and then Michander, Orrin, and I would have gone back out to the camp and declared the Redemption accomplished. The horn would have been used, the Chorus of Yammon would have sung the Song to all those near enough to hear it, and then everyone would have gone home. We never had any intention of addressing the multitudes from up here.”

  “Then maybe we’d better go down there ourselves.”

  “That would be dangerous in the extreme. They have already attempted to use the horn; I do not think that any of us would be safe among the multitudes now. No. Yammon smiles upon us. The wind is at our backs. It will carry our voices to the Righteous Chorus. Look, even now they are gathering.
”

  People had spotted them standing up here and begun moving toward the front gate where they stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting.

  Haly’s mouth went dry. She felt as if she could barely whisper, let alone make herself heard by those below. In her hand she held the diary of Anne Frank. She was about to attempt a Redemption without The Book of the Night, with the alphabet song instead of the Song, without anything but the wind to carry her voice, and she herself was not even truly human. This was probably about as far from anyone’s idea of a Redemption as you could get. But they were waiting.

  “The present moment is the only moment when life is available to us.”

  Haly swallowed and held her hand aloft, brandishing the book. “Members of the Righteous Chorus, welcome to the new day!” she shouted. Her words were greeted by a smattering of applause that soon died off. “The first day of the union of the Song and the Word. The errors of the past are cast off, and a new chorus is born”—she turned and lifted her hands to those assembled behind her, and then faced the multitude once more—“the Chorus of the Word, whose members will teach us all a new song, and through the blessing of the Redemption, the Word and the Song will be reunited, to be heard by all and sung by all together, so that none will ever forget the sacred words!”

  Below people were milling about and talking to one another. Haly got the distinct impression that they had heard some of what she’d said, but not all of it, and were now turning to their neighbors in an effort to fill in the gaps. Those further away from the front gate were not even listening. Haly watched as a farmer poured water into a trough for his ox. No matter what Siblea said, they would have to go out among them. There was no way this could be adequate.

  But it was a start. She turned to the chorus and motioned them to begin singing. She and Siblea joined in. “A-B-C-D-E-F-G . . .”

  By the second time through, a few people had started singing along. By the third there were more, and then something amazing happened. The wind picked up, and all at once, all throughout the encampment, everyone turned and looked at Haly. They were all staring up at her, some still singing, others agape in awe.