by Molly Flatt
Alex turned the tumbler in her hands, watching the whisky slosh.
Hadn’t she known? Honestly, hadn’t she known all along just how deeply wrong the episodes were, whatever Chloe said about cognitive dissonance?
‘Whenever I try to remember,’ she murmured. ‘They happen whenever I try to recall anything that happened before that night, I mean before the Director was . . . I mean, before the seventeenth. I can pull up the basics – images, sights and sounds – but if I try to remember how I actually felt . . .’ She took another sip of the whisky, felt it start to sedate the snakes.
‘You see?’ Taran said to MacBrian, slapping his diagram. ‘You can’t deny it any longer, Sorcha. This really is the beginning of a new era for the Library. For humanity. Everything fits.’
Alex looked up. ‘You think this is part of it, isn’t it? It’s all part of that . . . Story-surging thing.’ She lifted the glass to her lips, then downed the remaining whisky in a single gulp and gasped, ‘Am I going to die?’
MacBrian sat back in her chair with a heavy sigh. ‘Quite honestly, we don’t know. Taran believes that these episodes are a self-protective mechanism that your Story has activated. He thinks it might be restricting your access to your own Memories, in order to stop you identifying the one that has mutated, and thereby gaining control over its ability to surge.’ She sighed again. ‘Precisely what impact it’s having on the rest of you, however, we can’t say.’
Five, Alex thought, glancing up through the glass dome at the coal-coloured clouds overhead. It couldn’t be much more than five hours until her ferry left from Kirkwall. ‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘please. I’ve tried to help you. I’ve told you all I know. Just let me go home.’
‘Trust me, I wish we could. But you have to unstick your Story, Miss Moore. For your sake, as well as ours.’ MacBrian reached for the decanter beside her elbow, hesitated, then poured herself a measure and knocked it back in one efficient shot. ‘Fortunately, we do have three clues as to the nature of this crucial Storyline. The first two come from your Reading history. We know that the job opportunity your godfather offered you in 2005, and the promotion you were offered by your employer this February, both challenged this Storyline enough to make your Story surface. And there are obvious themes linking these two incidents, as you say – themes around fear of commitment, reluctance to change, lack of belief in your abilities, and so forth. Those help us understand what it’s about.’ She flipped back through the pages of her notebook. ‘But we also have a third clue – a hint about when the root Memory that originated this particular narrative might have formed.’
Alex looked longingly at the decanter. ‘We do?’
‘You mentioned in our interview yesterday that a major change in your self-belief occurred around the age of eleven, when you changed schools and also changed your name. You said, and I quote, “I started to build up this narrative that everything I did was doomed to fail.”’ MacBrian looked up from her notes. ‘That’s a powerful description of the genesis of a new Storyline. And, by your own admission, it’s exactly the narrative that exploded when Egan Read you on the night of the seventeenth.’
Oh God. What was it her mother had said at lunch? It reminds me of that summer you were eleven, when you moved to St J’s. All of a sudden my happy little girl seemed to turn into this miserable shadow overnight.
‘Okay.’ Alex said slowly. ‘So this thing was hiding inside my fear of failure? And you think it had been there since I was eleven years old?’
‘Yes, fear of failure, or something similar. Unfortunately, without full access to the relevant Memories, it will be impossible for you either to identify the exact nature of this Storyline, or connect with its root Memory in any meaningful way.’ She closed the notebook. ‘I think the time has come for us to consider our back-up plan.’
‘Sorcha,’ Taran began. ‘Sorcha, she can’t—’
‘No, I’m sorry, Taran. Nobody’s going to like it, but considering we’ve already gone this far, I can’t see what we have to lose.’
‘But she’s tired, she’s already weak, I’m not sure—’
‘I get it,’ Alex interrupted bleakly. ‘I’m not stupid. If a Story’s essentially my consciousness, then it dies when I die, right? So if I can’t get it out of the wall of that tower, you will have to kill me.’
‘Kill you?’ MacBrian stared at her. ‘What on earth gave you that idea?’
‘Come on.’ There was a high, thin ringing in her ears. ‘One small mutant sacrificed, one fucking massive planetary problem solved.’
‘Miss Moore,’ MacBrian said.
Alex fought the urge to laugh.
‘Miss Moore.’
Molars grinding, Alex met MacBrian’s level gaze.
‘We do not kill people, Miss Moore. The International Library Covenant of 1122 states that every Story is of equal and inestimable value. It is our job to protect them. That’s one reason we go to such lengths to ensure the Outside world remains ignorant about the Library. You have to understand that we are the servants, not the dictators, of mankind.’
Another airless silence.
‘So if you’re not going to get out the shotgun,’ Alex finally croaked, ‘what exactly is the back-up plan?’
The rain finally dribbled to a stop. Alex pushed back her hood and paused at the top of the cliff path to see a double rainbow blossoming in the bruised sky. Freed from its battering, the air filled with the scent of herbs and seaweed and salt, and seconds later a gull-like bird with white-tipped wings dive-bombed her hair.
Taran stopped his descent and glanced back. Behind her, she heard Iain’s tread fall silent. Beyond that, she could hear the distant clink and rustle as their horses grazed heather beside Taran’s house, a dilapidated-looking hulk of stone on the promontory above.
For a moment she could almost pretend she was alone, with the early-evening breeze swelling her lungs and the babble of nature filling her ears. Hundreds of miles away, in the garden in Fring, her mother’s dahlias would be bobbing their blowsy heads. The sweet chestnut would be ripening its conkers over her father’s bench. The wood pigeons would be cooing their throaty lullaby. All unaware that the child that had grown up beneath their impassive gaze was a . . . a what? A mutant? A killer? The villain, as it turned out, in the sort of mindfuck fantasy that would merit its author a place on the Novus Young Novelists to Watch list?
Oh, Daddy, Alex thought, as the breeze shivered the hairs on the back of her neck: real neck, real hairs, real breeze. Not even your brilliant brain or your big arms can save me from this.
Had Egan MacCalum known, as soon as her Storyline had locked around his wrists, that he was going to die? She kept seeing him, lying on the cold floor of the Stack while the pulsing lights around him went out. Had he stared up at the Story that had killed him, wedged in the wall like a tumour, while his heart struggled to process its fatal blast? Had he heard Taran drag himself across the stone, and summoned the last shreds of his strength? Had he been determined to hold out until his friend could reach him, hoarding the name of the woman who had killed him inside his mouth like a coin?
According to these people, she was a unicorn. A mermaid. An impossible creature that existed only in books. Although they were the ones who should be a myth. But then she had felt for herself the ancient truth of the Library. She had seen that thing stuck in the wall. She had unquestioningly known it to be hers. And she couldn’t deny that, six months ago, something unnatural had happened inside her. Hadn’t she always known, deep down – despite Chloe’s spiel about turning points and latent potential, despite all her own patter about talent and karma – that change simply didn’t work like that?
Alex pictured her Story, lonely and damaged in the dark. She pressed one hand over her heart and another across her forehead, and tried to feel her way in from outside.
LET GO, she thought. PLEASE. LET GO.
But her heartbeat was just her heartbeat, and the words were just words, after all.
&n
bsp; You’re a couple of cows, her mother said, you and your father. Always chewing your own cud. Get out into the world, darling. Muddy boots, clear mind.
Alex lowered her hands. The rainbow, which had started to blur, came back into focus. Fixing her eyes on it, she set off again down the path and, after a moment, Taran moved off ahead. Both Iain and MacBrian had tried to insist that a walk was too risky, considering the general anti-Alex sentiment on the island. But then Taran had suggested the isolated cove below his house, on the other side of the causeway, and Alex had refused to back down. Now, however, she wondered whether she secretly wanted to be spotted, abducted, lynched. Wasn’t it only what she deserved?
The path was rough, twisting steeply between banks of willow scrub and lime grass. For a while Alex had to focus all her attention on navigating the pits and humps. Then they rounded a sharp turn and the cove appeared: a deep white horseshoe stamped into the foot of the cliff, ridged like bark and riddled with worm casts. It was as deserted as Taran had promised, bracketed by jagged spines of rock, the water riddled with oily patches suggestive of deceptive cross-currents below.
When she stepped down onto the beach, however, she found that the atmosphere was surprisingly calm. To the north a high russet escarpment, layered with sediment and guano like a giant red velvet cake, blocked the worst of the wind. The cliff behind, tangled with pink and yellow flowers, created a fragrant cradle for the air. Alex shrugged off her cape and, without asking either man for permission, began to run.
Her trainers were sodden within seconds, but she continued right down the length of the beach and back again, pumping her arms, savouring the crunch and the spray. Only when her brain was as numb as her toes and her side was burning with stitch did she slow, panting, and come to a halt in the threadbare lace where the breakers met the shore.
Above her head, puffins growled in their nests. In front of her, waves flung diamonds into the sky. Off to one side, on a jut of black rock, a shining jumble of seals jostled and argued. It seemed unbelievable that a few minutes’ flight to the south would take her back to Kirkwall, with its tourists and cars. That an hour north would deposit her in Scandilands, full of gaming start-ups and next-gen smartphones. Gradually her exhilaration faded and her breath steadied, and the sound of the surf was again drowned out by the desperate patter of her mind. As the gunmetal sun dropped into the gunmetal sea, Alex felt, inch by inch, the cold, hard forever of Egan MacCalum’s death lodge itself inside her bones.
‘How do you feel?’ Taran asked from behind her.
HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I FUCKING FEEL?
‘I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do, tomorrow,’ she said. ‘How I’m supposed to get inside my Story – physically.’
Taran came round to face her and started, excitedly, to say something about micro- and macro-manifestations, but when he finally logged her expression, he stuttered to a stop. ‘Honestly?’ he said. ‘We can’t explain it. We never have been able to, not fully. But that’s the beauty of the Library, Alex. There are so many mysteries, as you yourself are proof. We’re only just starting to scratch the surface after all this time.’
‘So you’re asking me to go into something – or is it a somewhere – you can’t explain?’
Taran gave several hiccupy laugh-gasps. ‘Forgive me, but you haven’t been able to explain the workings of consciousness for the past thirty-one years, and I doubt that bothered you for one minute. What matters . . .’ He trailed off. Alex turned to follow his gaze.
A distant figure, hunched against the wind, was peeling away from the escarpment and striking out along the shore: a small black comma, curled against the ashen page of the sea. There was a crunch and Alex turned to see Iain, coming up on her other side. As the shape drew nearer, Alex realized it was a woman. She looked lost in thought, her eyes fixed on the ground and her bowed head haloed by a dark corona of hair.
Taran swore under his breath. He said something to Iain and jogged gracelessly off.
‘Stay here,’ Iain murmured, moving round to Alex’s side.
As Taran got close, the woman’s head shot up and she came to an abrupt halt. She half-raised one hand, although when she noticed Alex and Iain, she slowly let it drop. Taran approached her with his arms spread, as if he was trying to herd a wary dog. As soon as he reached the woman, he took hold of both of her shoulders and tried to turn her back towards the escarpment. She shook him off, pointing at Alex and Iain. Taran shook his head and tried to turn her again. She began to shout, her voice drifting across the bay.
‘Who is that?’ Alex asked.
‘Just stay where you are,’ Iain said.
Taran grabbed the woman, and for a moment Alex couldn’t work out whether he was trying to hug her or wrestle her to the ground. Then he stood back and she saw that he was now holding a palm-sized rectangular object. The woman stamped one foot like an angry child and pushed at Taran’s chest. He held his palms up, still clutching the object, apparently trying to appease her. But then she ducked under his arm and started to run towards them.
Iain wrenched Alex behind him and pulled a nasty-looking leather truncheon from the back of his waistband.
‘Iain!’ Taran pounded up, pink-faced and tousle-haired. He seized the arm of the woman, who had already stopped several feet in front of them and was staring at Alex. Taran said something low and fast to Iain. Iain, not taking his eyes off the woman, growled back.
The woman looked exactly like Taran; or rather a beautiful female version of Taran. Set against that storm-coloured cloud of hair, the long face, strong nose and wide mouth were compelling rather than ungainly. What was lanky in him had become statuesque in her. But she also looked haggard beyond her years and, now she was close, Alex caught the unmistakable whiff of alcohol, steaming from her skin and her clothes.
The woman licked her lips and said something slow and hoarse. Taran turned away from Iain, keeping hold of the woman’s arm. They exchanged a subdued back-and-forth. Alex realized that the object in Taran’s hand was a leather-bound flask.
‘Um,’ Alex said, ‘what the hell is going on?
‘You’re the one, then,’ the woman said in English, turning back round. Her words were ever so slightly slurred. ‘You’re Dorothy Moore.’
‘Al – oh, never mind,’ Alex said. ‘Yes. Whatever. I’m the evil Dorothy Moore.’
‘Evil?’ The woman’s big grey eyes tried to focus. ‘They said you didn’t mean it, in the gathering down in town, at lunchtime. They said you didn’t know. They said you were giving your full cooperation.’ She smirked at Taran. ‘Or so I heard. I wasn’t allowed to go.’
‘Where’s Cait?’ Taran asked, his hand still on her arm.
‘She had to leave. Beitris came and told her that Finn had been taken to the guardhouse.’ She looked back at Alex. ‘They say he tried to kill you.’ She shook off Taran’s hand. She leaned forward. ‘What is it like?’ she whispered, her breath sweet and stale. ‘In London? What’s it like, living Outside?’
‘Freya.’ Taran retook her arm.
She ignored him. ‘Did you come here on an aeroplane?’ She seemed to be trying to drink in Alex’s face. ‘How many aeroplanes have you been on? Have you been to America? Have you seen the desert? Tokyo?’
‘Freya!’ Taran hissed, then added a pleading tumble of Iskeullian.
‘Is there someone you love in London, Dorothy Moore? Is there a man waiting for you, ready to show you the world?’
Iain said something and stepped forward. Taran replied, shaking his head, and managed to yank his twin around. Eventually she gave a shout, threw off his arm and began to tramp away across the beach towards the path. Every few paces, she turned back to look.
‘I’m sorry,’ Taran said, once her hunched back had disappeared round the turn up the cliff. He was bright pink. ‘I had no idea she would be here.’
‘She’s your sister.’
‘Yes.’
‘Your twin.’
Suddenly seeming to realiz
e that he was still holding the flask, Taran slipped it into the pocket of his cape. ‘Yes. She shouldn’t have been out here alone. Freya is . . . not well.’
Alex studied the professor’s flushed face. As he gave her a reflexive smile that didn’t reach his eyes, she realized how easily he could be one of the data wonks she met in London on a daily basis. He had that same combination of unnerving intensity and evangelical obsessiveness, leavened with the endearing vulnerability of the lifelong underdog-nerd. ‘Can I be honest?’ she asked. ‘She seems to be the first sane person I’ve met. I mean, if I was born here, I think I’d probably spend most of my time blind drunk. How the hell do the rest of you cope?’
Taran shrugged. He waved towards the sea. ‘Everyone gets to visit Kirkwall every three months, for a couple of days. We get monthly shipments of Outside books and magazines, English translations from all over the world. We import medicine, of course. We bulk-buy stationery. We correspond with our international counterparts. We try to remain as self-sufficient as possible, for security’s sake, but we’re not entirely cut off.’ He looked down, kicked a pebble. ‘Some struggle. Most find it’s better not to think too much about Outside at all. Others, like Egan, go the opposite way: hoard Outside stuff, write about the people they’ve Read. Egan used to order things for Freya. He thought he was helping her, but really it only made her worse. If I can be honest, Alex’ – he looked back up, his eyes silver-bright – ‘Outsiders are the ones I feel sorry for. What’s the point in being able to travel the world if you never get a glimpse inside the control centre of the human mind?’
Everything, Alex thought, desperately. The taste of a place when you first get off a plane. The embrace of an unfamiliar climate. The freedom of walking through streets surrounded by thousands of people you don’t know. The stink of New York. The heat of the desert. The noise of Tokyo. But it seemed, suddenly, too cruel to say out loud. And it was taking her dangerously close to tears.
Behind them, Iain growled something.