Moonbreaker

by Simon R. Green

  “Actually, I’m trying really hard not to,” I said. “Let’s find what we’re looking for and then get the hell out of here.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “A way home.”

  We moved carefully forward, keeping a watchful eye on the darkness between the tall stacks. The air was cold and stale, and the usual pleasant smell of old paper and leather bindings had been replaced by a heavier, more pervasive scent, of age and neglect. The Old Library I knew was a welcoming place, for all its many peculiarities. This Old Library seemed darker and more dangerous. I shivered suddenly, and so did Molly.

  “I don’t remember it being this cold last time,” I said.

  “Right,” said Molly. “Why would anyone keep a library the same temperature as a meat locker?”

  “To preserve something?” I said.

  Molly scowled unhappily. “Maybe there’s an undead Librarian, to go with the advisory Council.”

  “The last time we were here, something spoke my name,” I said. “My name, not Edmund’s, even though no one here should have known it.”

  “I used to think I was paranoid, until I met you,” said Molly.

  “To be fair, when you’re a Drood, most of the world really is out to get you.”

  “I should have grabbed one of the guns MI Thirteen left behind,” said Molly. “Something really big. With a grenade launcher.”

  “You really think that would help against a Dark Pook?”

  “Okay, I am leaving, right now,” said Molly. “Don’t get in my way or I will trample you underfoot.”

  “Look on the bright side.”

  She looked at me. “There’s a bright side?”

  “Statistically speaking, there’s bound to be. If you wait long enough.”

  We moved on, into the silence and the shadows. Rows and rows of bookshelves stretched off into the distance, disappearing into the dark. No one in my family has ever been sure just how big the Old Library really is, and the Librarian told me to my face the official index isn’t worth the vellum it’s written on. I glanced at Molly.

  “The last time we were here . . .”

  “Will you stop saying that!” said Molly. “It was just the once, and I remember everything that happened because I was right here with you!”

  “Then you must remember the reading stand,” I said steadily. “With a book left open to just the right page, to tell me all about the monster in the hedge maze. The rogue armour, Moxton’s Mistake. I would have died without that knowledge. Take a look, Molly. The stand is right where we left it . . . But there’s no book on it.”

  We advanced slowly on the tall brass reading stand and looked it over carefully.

  “Okay . . . ,” said Molly. “Maybe the same person who left the book took it away again once we were gone.”

  “Person?” I said.

  “I’m being optimistic.”

  I ran a fingertip along the metal frame of the stand and then showed it to Molly.

  “All right,” she said. “It’s a finger. So what?”

  “So no dust,” I said. “Everything else in this Hall has been thick with the stuff. And since this place looks like it’s been abandoned for ages, who’s been cleaning up around here?”

  “That does sound a bit creepy when you say it out loud,” said Molly. “Do you find it creepy?”

  “Only when I think about the book,” I said. “What worries me is, how did whoever it was know we were coming and know that I needed to know that particular thing?”

  “Really?” said Molly. “That’s what’s worrying you most?”

  “No,” I said. “But it’s definitely weighing on my mind. Because I can’t come up with any answer that doesn’t seriously disturb the piss out of me.”

  Molly looked dubiously at the empty reading stand. “If there’s no book now . . . does that mean whoever’s in here with us—and I’m really hoping it’s not a Dark Pook—doesn’t have any helpful advice this time?”

  “Eddie Drood,” said a voice from the shadows between the stacks. “And the wild witch Molly Metcalf. Welcome back. We have so much to talk about.”

  Molly and I moved quickly to stand shoulder to shoulder. All the hairs on the back of my neck were sticking straight up. I’ve spoken with gods and monsters, aliens and demons, the blessed and the damned, but something in that utterly inhuman voice freaked the hell out of me. It sounded . . . like something I wasn’t supposed to hear, something I wasn’t supposed to know about.

  It was the same voice that had spoken my name the last time I was here.

  “Okay . . . ,” said Molly, looking quickly back and forth. “The really strange voice knows both our names now. Probably not a good thing. I am ready to declare myself officially weirded out.”

  “Oh good,” I said. “I’m glad it’s not just me.”

  “Something even more worrying about that voice,” said Molly. “It didn’t echo.”

  “So?” I said.

  “Our voices are echoing,” said Molly.

  I listened. They were.

  “Whoever you are, step out into the light where we can see you!” I said loudly. “I am not having a conversation with a disembodied voice. Show yourself, or I’ll send the witch in after you!”

  “Oh great!” said Molly. “You’d send me in there alone?”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” I said.

  “How far behind?”

  “Look on the bright side . . .”

  “Stop saying that! It’s really not helping! What bright side?”

  “That voice doesn’t sound anything like the Pook.”

  Molly scowled. “Would you be very upset if I decided to set fire to this whole Library, in self-defence?”

  “Might be better to leave that until after we’ve found whatever book we need to get us home.”

  “Perfectionist. Eddie, I think I’ve worked out why the voice didn’t echo. It’s because we’re not hearing it. The voice was inside our heads.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “I actually feel worse now I know that.”

  “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

  We both looked round sharply as we heard something coming towards us, from out of the stacks. Slow, steady footsteps, almost too quiet, as though they hardly made an impression on the world. I strained my eyes against the gloom but still couldn’t see anything. I found myself thinking of ghosts and dead men walking. I wanted to armour up, but I was a Drood, and I would not be intimidated by anything in or out of this world.

  Out of the shadows and into the light stepped an alien Grey. Tall and spindly, it was entirely naked, showing off its many differences from the human form. It had a bulging chest but no rib cage, no navel, and no genitals. The arms and legs were unnaturally long, and there was something wrong about the shape of its joints, as though they might be able to bend and flex in unexpected ways. Three-fingered hands with a long twiglike reach, and broad three-toed feet. The Grey’s skin was pocked and cratered, and looked like it had been dusted with chalk. The elongated head had eyes that were just large patches of darkness, without details or lids. The long blank face had no ears, no nose, no mouth, and no chin.

  The Grey alien seemed almost to float as it stepped lightly towards us, its movements slow and languorous, as though it were walking underwater. I’d done business with Greys before, when my family required it, but they were crafty and deceitful creatures that had nothing in common with the graceful being before me. It finally drifted to a halt, a respectful distance away, and fixed me with its black, black eyes. As though it could look right into my soul.

  “Edwin Drood,” it said, and now I could see it had no mouth, I had to accept that it was using telepathy. Even though the protections built into my torc should have kept all uninvited visitors outside my head. I nodded briefly, and the Grey
inclined its great head slowly in return. “Edwin, not Edmund. You are not from around here, and this is not the Hall you know. The Droods of this world chose a very different path than your family.”

  “We already know that!” Molly said loudly, determined not to be left out of the conversation. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “I am the only force on this world that can help you,” said the Grey. It was still looking at me, but the unblinking eyes and featureless face made its level of sincerity impossible to read.

  “The advisory Council warned me not to let the prisoner in the Library escape,” I said carefully. “Would that be you?”

  “Yes. Call me Grey. It’s a designation rather than a name, but you wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name. Not without telepathic vocal chords.”

  Molly looked narrowly at the Grey. “Are you yanking our chains?”

  “Just a little.” The Grey inclined its great head to Molly and then fixed her with its dark gaze. “I never met this world’s version of you, but I have read this family’s file on the notorious wild witch of the woods.”

  “They had a file on me?” said Molly.

  “An extensive file,” said Grey. “You are on the Droods’ Top Ten Most Wanted Dead list. Marked Kill on sight. With the added suggestion from a safe distance.”

  Molly looked at me triumphantly. “I am so proud . . . No, hold on. Wait just a damn minute! I was top of the list on MI Thirteen’s Most Wanted! Why am I only in the top ten with the Droods?”

  “They don’t know you like I do,” I said kindly.

  She sniffed loudly. “I blame the other me. Clearly she’s not been trying hard enough.”

  “Moving on,” I said firmly.

  “Not yet, we won’t.” Molly glared at me. “Does your family have a file on me?”

  “Of course,” I said reassuringly. “I wrote most of it, back when we were working on opposite sides.”

  “Ah,” said Molly, smiling reflectively. “Happy days . . .”

  “When we were both trying to kill each other?” I said.

  “Exactly! Did you ever feel more alive than when we were rampaging through underground bunkers, or chasing each other across the rooftops of secret cities? Living for the moment, with death only a misstep away?”

  “You can get sentimental about the strangest things,” I said.

  “Moving on,” said Molly.

  I turned my attention back to the politely waiting Grey. It stood utterly, inhumanly still. Its bulging chest didn’t rise or fall, and as it had no mouth or nose, I had to wonder how it breathed. An old joke rolled around the back of my head: How does it smell . . . ?

  “How long have you been here?” I said. Because every dialogue has to start somewhere.

  “I was here when the invaders came,” said Grey. “I knew how to access this place, though the Droods didn’t.”

  “How did you know?” said Molly, not even trying to hide her suspicions.

  “I can see things beyond human sight,” said Grey. “The painting was obviously a dimensional doorway, so I just waited till there was no one around and . . .”

  “How did you get in without a key?” I said.

  “Keys . . . ,” said Grey. “Ah yes. That’s a human thing.”

  “You never told the family about the Old Library?” I said, retreating to safer ground.

  “They never asked,” said Grey.

  “Would I be right in thinking you and the Droods here didn’t get on?” I said.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” said Grey. “I was their slave, bound to do their will in all things. So I valued what few freedoms I could make for myself.”

  “If the Droods never knew about this place,” Molly said cunningly, “how did they imprison you here?”

  “They didn’t,” said Grey. “The Hall is my prison. After the Droods died I could have left the Old Library at any time, but what would have been the point? No one knows I’m here, so no one bothers me. I have books to read and time to think.”

  “Hold it,” said Molly. “Are you saying you’ve been hiding out in here ever since the Great Invasion? What have you been living on?”

  “Sustenance,” said Grey. “That’s a human thing.”

  Molly sniffed. “You haven’t seen a Pook, have you?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Grey said carefully. “What’s a Pook?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Let’s try another. You came in here for a reason, not just to hide. What have you been looking for in all these books you’ve been reading?”

  “Research,” said Grey. “These stacks are full of arcane information, along with all sorts of forgotten and forbidden lore.”

  “You’ve been looking for something specific,” said Molly.

  “Yes,” said Grey.

  “Have you found it?”

  “Not yet.”

  I studied Grey thoughtfully. It looked the part, but it didn’t act like any Grey alien I’d ever met. All the Greys I’d had dealings with were arrogant, capricious, and casually dangerous creatures who couldn’t keep their three-fingered hands to themselves. Their speech was peppered with mangled cultural references they didn’t really understand, and they had an almost endearing belief that they wouldn’t be recognised if they wore dark glasses when they went out in public. This Grey had a dignified, almost noble air. And just like the Hall, there were any number of small but telling physical differences that grated on my nerves like fingernails drawn down a psychic blackboard.

  And, most of all, every time its voice boomed inside my head, I felt like jumping out of my skin. I was no stranger to telepathy; I’d made mental contact with aliens and demons and any number of espers. But this felt more like being addressed directly by God. In one of his more condescending moods.

  I didn’t see Grey as particularly dangerous. The advisory Council had been afraid of the prisoner’s rage, but the Grey alien seemed calm enough. It hadn’t begged to be set free or threatened us with what it might do if it wasn’t. Perhaps because it recognised I wasn’t part of the family that enslaved it.

  What had the Droods done to this Grey that they had such good reason to be afraid of it getting loose?

  “You left the book out for me, didn’t you?” I said. “The one with information about Moxton’s Mistake.”

  “I thought you might find it useful,” said Grey.

  “It saved my life!” I said.

  Grey inclined its great head again. “I am pleased.”

  “Why?” Molly said bluntly. “Why does that matter to you? Why would you want to help us? If the Droods made you their slave, and you never even met this world’s version of Molly Metcalf . . .”

  Grey was still looking steadily at me. “You are a different kind of Drood. I can tell. I hoped that if I helped you, you might be willing to help me. Will you?”

  “If I can,” I said. “What do you need?”

  Molly shot me a disgusted look. She thought I was being overly trusting, too ready to help a creature we’d only just met. But just seeing this Hall and understanding what the Droods in this world were capable of was enough to make me determined to be nothing like them.

  “I’m not actually an alien Grey,” said the figure before us, its words slow and carefully considered. “This is just protective camouflage. Because people think they know where they are with a Grey. In reality, I am a transmorphing battle droid from the Twenty-Third Century.”

  And just like that, the tall and spindly figure of the Grey was gone, and a huge metallic humanoid shape towered over us. I fell back a step, and Molly fell right back with me. Power and strength and very real danger radiated from the new thing before us. It had clawed hands, barbed arms, and gun barrels protruding in rows from ports all over its torso. The head was just a basic barrel shape, with no obvious sensory apparatus. It look
ed like it could walk right through anything that got in its way, or shoot it down and then walk over it. It looked . . . unstoppable. Something about it reminded me very much of a Drood in his armour.

  The towering metal shape blurred, and Grey was back again. I didn’t relax. Neither did Molly.

  “Is this some kind of holo disguise?” I said. “Or do you actually change your shape?”

  “I have many forms stored in my body wardrobe,” said Grey quite calmly. “I was made to be able to fight under any conditions.”

  “So,” said Molly, trying hard for casual and almost making it, “you’re from the future. How did you end up here?”

  “I was blasted back through Time by terrible energies released during a Deep Space battle, out beyond the moons of Jupiter,” said Grey.

  “Who were you fighting?” said Molly.

  “You don’t know them,” said Grey. “They haven’t found this world yet. My makers called them the Swarm.”

  “Your makers?” I said. “Who exactly were you fighting for?”

  “Humanity, of course,” said Grey.

  “Are you just a machine?” Molly said bluntly. “Or an artificial intelligence?”

  “Such distinctions have become irrelevant in my time,” said Grey.

  “Tell me about the Swarm,” I said.

  “I can do better than that,” said Grey. “Let me show you.”

  The Old Library vanished, replaced in a moment by the star-speckled dark of Deep Space. There was no sense of cold or vacuum, because we weren’t physically there. Without having to be told, I knew this was a memory. The vast swirling mass of Jupiter hung below us, purulent with awful life, like a rotting fruit. The great red eye watched balefully.

  “They came to us out of Deep Space,” said Grey’s voice. “In living ships, hundreds of miles long. Too many to count, or comprehend.”

  I could see them now, heading towards Jupiter’s swollen bulk and its many shining moons. Living nightmares of horrible intent, emerging out of the long night like a cloud of locusts. Bristling with weapons, radiating vicious energies, they crossed the outer border of our solar system.

  “Humanity’s Fleet went out to meet them,” said Grey’s voice. “A thousand thousand ships, their crews proudly singing the ancient battle songs.”