He’d encountered countless prospects so far. Four-year-olds gathered in the hundreds before their habitation complexes—the edict restricting associations didn’t apply within the Librarium—gripping quantum tiles as big as their tunics. They were recent arrivals, judging by the glut of tutors accompanying them, learning the intricacies of their new tiles and the rules of their new environment.
Older prospects scurried from structure to structure in smaller groups, noses pressed to their tiles, eyes blinded to the world. Libraria strolled at a more dignified pace, alone and in pairs. A half-dozen had breezed past on personal levidecks, yellow lanshan flapping in the airstream. Seeing Libraria on levidecks represented a change from his time here as a child, one that struck him as comical.
Daoren plodded on for another fifteen minutes, his headache’s fiery tendrils spreading to his temples, before rounding a curve in the pathway. Thirty feet ahead, four Libraria occupied an open quad.
Three reclined on low benches, chucklebucking to themselves. The fourth strutted before them, flailing his arms while he talked. He was thickset for a Librarian—as hefty as the wealthier members of the ruling caste. A grizzled beard mottled his Slavvic features. The implants in his scalp revealed different facets of a fractal pentagram and sparkled like a five-pointed crown.
The hefty Librarian’s grating voice drifted over, scuffing his regal airs and graces. “No no no! I have a more elegant solution!”
“Do you?” one of the reclining Libraria asked. “Then tell us, Gustar. What’s this elegant solution of yours?”
The strutting Librarian—Gustar—waved his hands. “Pah! It’s far too elegant for a dense lot like you to assimilate. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Rasplaughter exploded from the others. “I knew it,” one of them said. “Your boasts are as empty as a mongrel’s stomach!”
“Are they? Are they?” Gustar spread his arms as if poised to reveal the secret to life everlasting. “The solution is quantum resonance.”
The statement snuffed the rasplaughter.
Gustar launched into his explanation. “Quantum resonance will—”
“Where can I find Laoshi al Euclidius?” Daoren asked, not tarrying for a break in the conversation.
Gustar scowled. “The Spires, boy. Where else?”
“Could you be more specific?”
“In the B Stacks if the last few years are any indication. Now march on so I can educate these fids.” He turned to his colleagues. “Quantum resonance holds the best potential for transmitting an encrypted signal in a crystalline matrix. But only if—”
“Only if the resonance is bounded,” Daoren interjected. “Unbounded resonance will cause harmonic oscillations at the covalent level and dampen the signal.”
Gustar’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that?”
Daoren shrugged and stepped around him. “Any fid knows that.”
Gustar seized his arm. “What’s your name, prospect?”
Daoren examined the Librarian’s swollen face, trying to decipher the emotional foundation beneath its scrim of sweat. Shock resided at its core, certainly, but it also exhibited a clasping hunger he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Anticipation? Appetite? Avarice?
“It isn’t a request, boy. Tell me your name!”
“Daoren.”
“Your family name!”
“Daoren al Lucien.”
Gustar’s puffy eyes reduced to impacted slits. “Have you applied to sit the S.A.T.?”
“Sha’s silica teeth, Gustar,” one of the other Libraria said. “Let the boy get on his way.”
“Why do you want to know?” Daoren asked.
Gustar tightened his grip. “What harm can come from it?” He smiled, exposing needlelike eyeteeth. “Tell me and I’ll let you go.”
“I sit the May S.A.T.” Daoren yanked his arm free. “And I’ll let myself go, thank you.”
He resumed his march along the pathway, cursing the clutching Librarian and his chucklebucking cronies.
* * *
DAOREN HEAVED A sigh of relief when he arrived at the Spires forty minutes later. He’d forgotten how vast the Librarium’s grounds were; no wonder the Libraria had starting using levidecks. He paused at the base of the steps to let his headache fade before ascending.
The steps led to a vaulted entrance finished in thousands of sunglow tiles, each no bigger than his hand. Cut at precise angles, the prismatic tiles absorbed every wavelength of light except the deepest oranges and yellows. As the name suggested, their brilliance rivaled the sun. The steps, in contrast, were formed from one hundred slabs of frosted glass. He’d counted them once when he was five. At this time of day they basked in shade, praise be to Sha.
The Spires was the tallest structure in the Librarium and the largest in Daqin Guojin in terms of internal volume. Its white-crystalline façade lofted five hundred feet above the grounds. Recessed trefoils, quatrefoils, and other aesthetic accents pockmarked the windowless face. Two conical towers climbed another two hundred feet higher along its major axis, their parapets supported by muscular corbels. The towers bracketed a central spire that soared two hundred feet higher still, not counting its crowning Imperial Regalia.
Less than a week after Daoren arrived here fifteen years ago, a tutor had told his intake group a cautionary tale. It featured a despondent prospect who, on the eve of his S.A.T., had thrown himself off the tallest spire rather than face certain failure in the Center.
From such a height, the tutor had gushed in a foreboding whisper, he took a full minute to hit the steps. His body shattered like whisperglass.
Daoren’s fellow prospects had blanched, mortified by the graphic description. He’d taken a few seconds to calculate the fall time according to the body’s estimated mass, acceleration due to gravity, and height of the spire. He knew at once the story wasn’t true; the data didn’t support it. The distrust it instilled hardened into outright disdain in four short years.
Daoren climbed the steps, counting them to verify his childhood memory. Sure enough, he hit one hundred when he reached the entrance’s double-doors.
Bas-relief figures decorated each door—the likenesses of famous Libraria dating back to Daqin Guojin’s founding in 98 A.C.E. He’d been forced to memorize their names as part of his indoctrination. In the years since they’d been overwritten by more useful information. He straight-armed a door and entered the nave.
He strode past the crystal columns buttressing the high glass ceiling, accompanied by the hollow echo of his footfalls. Two grand staircases wound upward to a mezzanine spanning the nave’s generous width. Colorful frescoes graced the mezzanine’s towering walls. They depicted Libraria and prospects engaged in a variety of pedagogical pursuits. Each fresco’s perspective elevated the Libraria to the most dominant position. Prospects were rendered with looks of adulation that smacked of worship.
The left-hand staircase led to the A Stacks and their five billion scrolls on technological subjects. The right-hand staircase led to the B Stacks and over three billion scrolls on cultural history. The divine dialectic, as it was known to the Libraria, encompassed the collective knowledge of the human species.
Daqin Guojin’s founders—the remnants of humanity that survived the displacements and deprivations of the Cycle of Extinctions—had done their best to collect and catalog the knowledge of the ancient societies. The city-state owed its advances in silica chemistry, glass production, nano-engineering, hydrogen infusion, quantum computing, and other technologies to those efforts, but most Libraria agreed it represented a fraction of the technological know-how that once existed.
The cultural records were even more fragmented. Little beyond the imperial habits of Mother China had been preserved. The few surviving political and social constructs of societies that dwelled beyond the empire’s control had undergone centuries of reevaluation and reinterpretation by the Libraria, molding them to suit the needs of the Cognos Populi.
How a repository of half-truths,
manifestos, and outright lies could be called divine, Daoren could never quite fathom. He climbed the staircase leading to the B stacks and its library of cultural fiction.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Daoren still threaded rows of stacks on the first level, one of ten levels in the Spires. At this rate, he might spend the rest of the day and most of the night finding Laoshi.
Fifty feet high and two hundred feet long, each stack held two hundred-thousand glass scrolls in individual nooks. Readouts below each nook identified the scroll’s repository number, the digits highlighted in blue or red. Blue indicated an unlocked scroll, free for prospects to remove and examine. Red meant the scroll was locked and forbidden to access. Red digits outnumbered blue by a factor of ten to one, the same depressing ratio he’d encountered during his four years of tutelage under the Libraria.
Despite the abject censorship and general disinterest in cultural history, the stacks teemed with prospects. They perched on slender huvvadisks, ascending and traversing the looming faces, plucking scrolls for closer study. Using their quantum tiles, prospects could air-query the Spires’ repositories by number, topic, historical period, and a host of other metrics. Huvvadisks would then take them to the desired scrolls, eliminating the need for aimless wandering in the city-state’s most voluminous structure.
Daoren emerged from the stacks and entered a yawning amphitheater. Hundreds of seated prospects gazed upon a stage finished in black lumenglass.
An Asianoid Librarian paced the stage amid a plasmonic map. A three-dimensional representation of continents and oceans lapped at her knees, the expanses labeled with the names assigned by the ancients. A red swath tinted Eurasia. It spanned the supercontinent from the East China Sea to the English Channel.
The Librarian halted. She motioned to the swath. “See the bounds of Mother China before the Cycle of Extinctions? It was the most powerful empire the world had ever known.”
An Africoid prospect stood, a ten-year-old girl with inquisitive eyes. “What’s its size today?”
The Librarian aimed her reply at the map. “Advance time.”
The red swath retreated westward upon the command, then shrank southward toward the Italian Peninsula. A sandy-brown stain advanced in its place. When the motion ceased, the red swath tinted no more than three-quarters of the peninsula.
“Our empire may be smaller,” the Librarian said, “but it’s still the most powerful. Mother China lives on in Daqin Guojin.”
“What caused the sands to grow?” the Africoid prospect asked.
“The death of all things living and millennia of erosion, child. Our best technological minds couldn’t stop its advance.”
“Is it true the closest mongrel colony lies two hundred miles to the north?” another prospect asked.
“One hundred and ninety miles, boy. Beyond the Great Northern Border.”
The plasmonic map complemented the Librarian’s reply by tracing a raised line that bisected the peninsula from west to east, three-quarters of the way up its length. A dagger-shaped outline resolved north of the border wall. Its southernmost tip pointed at the heart of Daqin Guojin. A single word appeared beside the outline.
Havoc.
“The mongrel colony Havoc will render our civilization extinct if we let down our guard,” the Librarian said. “We must be ever wary of its incursions.”
Daoren rolled his eyes. Her tone reminded him of the tutor who’d spun the fiction about the despondent, spire-diving prospect. He skirted the amphitheater’s perimeter, searching for Laoshi among the glass stalls surrounding it.
Prospects huddled in the stalls, unrolling scrolls and scanning the embedded data using their handheld tiles. Others debated with tutors. Their hushed voices created a sleepy layer of white noise.
Twenty feet away, one tutor stroked his wispy gray beard. He leaned over a female prospect whose twin hair braids streamed down the back of her tunic. The tutor glanced to the side. Silver-gray studs swept up and over his temple from his eyebrow.
Laoshi beamed. “Daoren! Welcome to the Spires!”
Daoren gave him a hesitant nod. The female prospect spun in her seat.
Heqet locked her eyes onto his.
Daoren spotted a flicker of joy in them—or was it confusion? Whatever it was, looking upon her radiance matched staring into the swollen sun. He averted his gaze, then cursed himself for showing weakness.
Laoshi must have mistaken the reaction for irritation. “You don’t object to Heqet accompanying us, do you?”
“Why should I? She’s free to choose how she spends her time.”
“How noble of you,” Heqet said under her breath, but loud enough for him to hear.
“Good, good.” Laoshi slung an opaque satchel over his shoulder. “Come then. We’ve much to do before you sit for your S.A.T.”
Heqet rose from her seat and paced away with her grandfather.
“We aren’t staying here?”
“No, boy,” Laoshi said without turning. “The tools needed for your education lie beyond these walls.”
Daoren sighed. Why couldn’t the Libraria ever give straightforward answers?
He trailed the pair past the amphitheater and back into the stacks. Apparently, the forces aligned against him would remain a mystery a while longer.
11
Into the Void
JID 736390-112489-ZC-SUP
PRIMAE JIREN’S EYES ONLY
SUBJECT: LAOSHI AL EUCLIDIUS
1. The subject has occupied the position of Primae Librarian for twelve years. He is renowned for his expertise in silica chemistry and is an ardent collector of ancient artifacts.
2. The subject gained denizenship in 655 A.C.E. and fought with distinction in the resource war of 656 A.C.E. Wounded during the Second Stand on the Great Northern Border, he spent two years convalescing before taking up the vocation of Librarian.
3. The subject’s wife bore him a son, Fengsei al Laoshi, in 659 A.C.E. (She died two years later while pregnant with their second child.) Indications of radicalized thought do not appear until after the death of the subject’s son in 695 A.C.E.
4. A secondary investigation into the levitran accident that claimed Fengsei al Laoshi and his wife, Danica alum Atum, has been opened. It may yield clues into the changes in the subject’s political and social views.
Survival Through Sapience.
Cang alum Aridian
District Commander, Zhongguo Cheng
* * *
DAOREN TRAILED HEQET and Laoshi on the ceramic-tile pathway. His headache had flared up again, sparked by the volatile sunlight and his abrasive unease. Wandering the grounds of the Librarium had upset his internal equilibrium.
Twenty paces ahead, Heqet gripped the crook of Laoshi’s elbow, lending support while they talked. What words passed between them, Daoren couldn’t say. If asked for an opinion, he’d have to admit he couldn’t muster enough concern to care. The longer he walked behind the pair, however, the more he realized that the physical environment wasn’t causing his imbalance.
It stemmed from being near Heqet again.
She possessed an attribute that Mako had failed to list. The unnameable quality made it impossible to concentrate whenever she was around. It made speaking to her an exercise in futility. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force the right words past his knotted tongue. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop the wrong words from spewing out of his mouth.
The maddening ailment frustrated him to no end. More often than not, his frustration spilled out onto her and fueled endless, unintended slights. Rather than risk another, he’d let her drift ahead with Laoshi, envying their easy banter.
They’d ambled well beyond the shadow of the Spires into an area bristling with habitation complexes. Cylindrical towers supported hexagonal levels, resembling stacks of locking nuts on threaded bolts. Circular windows dotted the six faces of every level. Each window represented a living chamber. Most were tinted black against the swollen sun.<
br />
Daoren had lived in a similar complex in the northern part of the grounds for three years. In those days, the youngest prospects resided ten per living chamber. Forgetting to tint the window before leaving for the day’s tutelage in the Spires meant coming back to a stifling chamber and an uncomfortable night’s sleep. Judging by the number of clear windows above him, hundreds of prospects would be tossing and turning tonight.
Oppressive heat.
Repressive tutors.
Flawed curriculum.
False knowledge.
Those were the clearest memories of his time here. Now he was back, plodding the pathways he swore he’d never touch again. If it wasn’t for Laoshi’s disturbing words in the funeral aerostat, he’d be—
“Does our pace trouble you, boy?”
Ahead, Laoshi and Heqet had stopped while his mind wandered. They stared at him like he was a lost child.
“Or is another problem weighing you?” Laoshi asked.
“In the funeral aerostat,” Daoren said, coming to a halt. “What did you mean by the forces aligned against me?”
“We’ll discuss that in good time,” Laoshi said, “and in a more private venue. Heqet tells me you’ve been writing your prep-tests every quarter.”
“I have.”
“But not here in the Librarium.”
“No. Via my quantum tile.”
“Odd that a prospect who opted for self-study should still write the prep-tests sanctioned by the Libraria.”
Daoren shrugged. “So it’s odd. What of it?”
“Why did you choose self-study over tutelage with the Libraria?” Heqet asked.
Survival Aptitude Test: Sound (The Extinction Odyssey Book 1) Page 12