by Chris Hawley
CHAPTER NINE
A LIBRARY WITHOUT BOOKS
As we stepped through the doorway of the library, I saw no books whatsoever. But of course, a civilization as advanced as theirs, they had certainly found a more economical way of storing books than that. But I could see no hardware of any kind either.
Michu and I had reached the library along a narrow path that wound steadily upwards along the side of the cavern, leaving the dining area immediately below. As we were near the roof of the cavern, I had had an opportunity to examine more closely the brilliant crystals that reflected the soft lights so beautifully. They were of varying sizes, from small ones of five centimetres to large ones measuring almost twenty centimetres. I had not been able to count their faces exactly but I had estimated that each one had around fifty.
‘Each crystal has exactly eighty one faces,’ Michu told me. ‘But not all of them are visible.’
It had crossed my mind to ask her what was the source of the light but we had now reached the opening to the library. Inside, I scanned the enclosure. It was about thirty metres long and fifteen metres wide. A low parapet wall of rough stone extended the length of the room facing the cavern. On the other side the rock face was flat and had a sheen, a bit like marble but not shiny. The arched roof was only a few metres above the floor. The only furnishings in the long room were a rough carpet in a natural colour and a few cushions similar to the ones in the dining room. There was nothing whatsoever to show that it was a library.
Michu turned to me and smiled. ‘Like you we have the internet, you might call it the Uninet, because it is truly universal,’ she said. ‘The difference is, we don’t use hardware. We communicate to it with our minds.’ The smile broadened to show her fine white teeth.
‘You talk to your Uninet?’
‘We don’t talk to it but we communicate through thoughts, subconscious communication. Not only the Uninet, but we communicate with your internet too.’
‘So how do you access the information?’ I asked.
‘I was coming to that.’ Michu then closed her eyes and stretched out her arms with the palms of her hands facing forwards. I watched her face in fascination. After a few moments an orange glow appeared in the centre of her forehead and a beam of light shone onto the rock face in front of her. It was like being in the cinema. As yet the large screen was blank.
‘What would you like to see?’ she asked, still keeping her eyes closed and her head facing the wall.
I thought for a moment. ‘Some sports news, the football results, how Man. United got on in their first game of the season against Chelsea.’ I was not sure if they had finished playing. I had left on Saturday morning but couldn’t work out in my mind how long ago that was.
Michu again closed her eyes and her lips moved slightly. On the screen there appeared a webpage, which gave a summary of the principal sporting events of the day.
One of the items was the match I was interested in. She concentrated and another page appeared, giving an up to date account of the match.
‘So they won 4-0, that’s fantastic!’ I said. But how strange! I am on the planet Mars, having the experience of my life and I am so stupid as to be worried about a ball game halfway across the Universe.
‘You Earth people take your sport very seriously, don’t you?’
‘Much too much, I am beginning to think, Michu.’
‘Would you like to see something on the Uninet?
‘Sure.’
Michu thought for a moment and then her face brightened up. ‘I know something that will interest you,’ she said. ‘It’s a website placed by the Global Ministry of Tourism on the planet Sonam.
‘Never heard of it!’ I said.
‘I know you haven’t. It cannot possibly be seen from Earth, even with the most powerful telescopes. But you know the star called Rigel.’
‘I’ve heard of it, yes, but I’ve no idea where it is.’
‘Sonam is the largest of several planets in the solar system of Rigel. Your astronomers have not yet discovered them. Rigel is one of the brightest stars visible from our solar system. It appears in the constellation of Orion. But it is incredibly far away, some 900 light years.
‘Phew!’ I paused. ‘But, Michu, this tourism website you are showing me must have been created more than 900 years ago for us to be able to see it, because light takes that time to reach us.’
‘You are quite right,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘But the beings living on Sonam and the other nearby planets are their potential customers. It is just that we can pick up the signal…….900 years later!
‘The people, or beings, or whatever, that made the website are not alive any more, are they?’
‘There’s a good chance they still are. Beings on Sonam live to be well over a thousand years old. There is not one that dies before his or her old age, because there is no disease. Can you image life without disease, Bill?
‘No! It is hard to imagine. So the people living on the nearby planets take their holidays on Sonam.’
‘So would you, if you could reach there. It is apparently one of the most beautiful places within ten thousand light years from here. But it is hard to describe in words what it is like. Let’s see the website.’
Michu went into what I can only describe as a trance. With eyes closed, she became very still. Her face froze. Suddenly the beam of light shone onto the wall and it came alive, colour, movement and sound. I immediately understood what Michu had just said about it being hard to describe. There before my eyes was a view taken from a few hundred metres from the ground, looking down a beautiful valley towards the deep blue sea. The whole area was a mass of flowering plants and trees and I swear I could smell them. The air was thronged with birds of all shapes, sizes and colours, wheeling and swooping, singing and whistling. I could see animals too, most of them looking like nothing we have on Earth, but elegant and colourful. A being appeared on the screen and started to talk in a language that I could not understand but it sounded sweet, like a bubbling stream. The being wore no clothes but I could not decide whether it was male or female. It had arms and legs and a head, with two eyes and a mouth but other than that it didn’t resemble a human being. What struck me most about it was the soft colour of its skin and the way it shone with a special kind of lustre. I turned to Michu. She smiled a faint smile without moving.
‘Would you like to go there for your holiday? She asked me.
‘Where’s the nearest travel agency. How can I book?’ I grinned.
‘Unfortunately, until we have discovered how to travel faster than the speed of light we are doomed,’ she replied.
‘Do you think we will ever manage to do that?’
‘Nothing is impossible, but with a body to carry along with you, it is better to forget your holiday on Sonam for the time being.’
‘It looks idyllic,’ I said. ‘Look at the wildlife!’
‘You know, Bill. Let me tell you something. Sonam people are pretty advanced. They have understood better than anyone the importance of preserving their environment. All beings on the planet live in harmony with all others. The balance is maintained perfectly. And they have a very stable society, little changed for the last hundred thousand years. You will learn a lot from this website. Another day we shall spend more time. Oh, and another thing, Sonam people are hermaphrodites, as are all the life forms in their solar system. They reproduce independently.’
‘Without male and female? I cried.
‘Yes, they have both male and female organs inside their bodies. There are even some life forms on your planet that are like that.
‘I have heard of that,’ I said. ‘But people!’
‘It’s hard for you to understand, I know.’
‘I know I must be dreaming,’ I said.
Michu tossed back her head and laughed and I laughed with her. The screen went blank.
‘Now,’ she said more seriously. ‘I know you are wondering why we call it a library.’
‘That’s exactly wh
at I was thinking.’
‘Well, it’s not exactly a library in the strict sense of the word. But every book that has ever been printed on Earth is stored on the Uninet, and we can show it on our screen. Three times every surama we have reading sessions here and most members of our Similaria clan meet here to read a few of the latest books that have made an impact on your society.’
‘You say a few, Michu.’
‘Yes. In one evening we normally read five or six books. We have learnt to read quickly. It is the only way we can keep up to date with what is going on your planet.’
‘That’s really cool! But, Michu, what is a surama?’
‘A surama is an arbitrary period of time, Bill. It takes nearly seven hundred Martian days for our planet to make its journey round the sun, one complete circuit making one Martian year, so we divide our year into eighteen suramas for convenience. Each surama is 38 Martian days, except for one suramas containing three more days. You will understand this because on Earth some months are shorter than others, because your year is not an exact number of days.’
‘Yes, February has 28 days and 29 in each leap year. But I’ll have to think a bit more about that one,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit complicated for me to understand. But I will remember that one surama is 38 days.’
‘Never mind. I know it is confusing. Our two moons are small and close by and therefore they don’t take long to go round Mars. Phobos goes round three times in a day, so we don’t have a lunar month like you do on Earth. Like your Earth week, our surama is an artificial division.’
‘How is our Earth week artificial?’ I asked.
‘Well, a year is the time it takes for the Earth to go round the sun; a lunar month is the period between one full moon and the next; a day is the time it takes for the Earth to spin once on its axis. A week is made up of seven days, but it has no real meaning.’
‘We Christians say that God made the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh,’ I pointed out.
‘All civilisations have their legends, Bill.’
I must have looked puzzled because Michu laughed and then said, ‘let us get back to what we were talking about, books, I think.’
I nodded. Martian years and suramas left my head and I switched back to the subject of libraries.
‘We ourselves have never printed a book. We keep a lot of knowledge in our heads and what is not there, well, the Uninet provides.’
‘So you don’t need printers or any kind of machinery.’
‘None whatsoever!’
‘And weapons?’ I asked. ‘What about security?’
‘We have never had the need for it. We have no police force because we have no crime.’
‘And no enemies?’
At that moment, Michu’s face clouded over and she did not immediately reply. I could see that something was distressing her. But what? Did they have enemies? Was there a threat of invasion from another planet?
‘I am not supposed to talk about it, you see,’ said Michu, thoughtfully. Her face brightened up suddenly and her eyes shone. ‘Don’t lets be morbid, Bill. We want you to enjoy your holiday on Mars.’
‘I don’t see how it is possible not to,’ I said.
As we left the library and started the descent along the pathway back to the dining area, I couldn’t help feeling something was troubling Michu, something she was obviously not supposed to tell me. These people were so wonderful and I found it hard to imagine that others could want to do them harm. Throughout the rest of the day I had the unpleasant feeling something was dreadfully wrong in Similaria, or maybe the whole of Mars.