The Library of Ever

by Zeno Alexander

  The woman glanced again at Lenora. For a moment, their gazes locked, and something behind her eyes flickered. Twice. And across her shoulders, something slithered beneath the overcoat. Lenora, to her shame, froze on the spot. The woman spoke to Bendigeidfran for a moment longer, then patted him on the back and trotted down a narrow corridor and out of sight.

  Gathering herself, and furious that the woman had frightened her even for a moment, Lenora went to Bendigeidfran. “Who was that?”

  “I must say, your boss there is an extremely curious librarian,” said the robot.

  “What?” asked Lenora, outraged. That woman was not her boss. Or was she? Lenora didn’t really know much about how the library worked yet. But she was certain that Malachi would have told her about this woman. And Lenora really, really, really did not believe she was a librarian, whatever her badge might say.

  Thinking these things, she wasn’t really listening as Bendigeidfran told her the woman said there was an emergency in Lenora’s section, and she should return immediately.

  By the time the robot’s words sank in for Lenora, he was already reaching for the time machine on his wrist. “When was it that I got you? Ah yes, she instructed me very specifically—October 5, 1582!” He touched the device.

  “NO!” shouted Lenora. She grabbed for the time machine. But it was too late.

  She found herself tumbling through a dark void, Bendigeidfran spinning beside her. All around them was nothingness, stretching on forever, and somewhere in the far distance was a faint but growing rumbling.

  “What happened!?” cried the robot.

  “There was no October 5, 1582,” said Lenora. The woman in the bowler hat had done this on purpose, it was clear, and Lenora was sure she would soon find out why. There were still goose bumps on her arm, and a fluttering sense in her stomach that peril was near. And that rumbling was turning into a roar.

  “But how can that be?” said Bendigeidfran.

  “Because the ancient Romans got the length of the year wrong,” said Lenora, her eyes darting about for the danger she was sure would crop up at any moment. “They were eleven minutes off. By 1582, things had gotten so messed up that the pope had to start a new calendar entirely and skip ten days while he was at it. You know, I really think we should get out of here.”

  “Agreed,” said the robot. He touched the device. But nothing happened, and his eyes began to blink in crimson alarm.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lenora with dread.

  “The void seems to be draining power from my time machine,” Bendigeidfran said. “I’ve got almost nothing left.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Lenora. “How do we get out without your time machine?”

  The robot shook his head. “We don’t. I’m afraid we’re lost in time and space forever, Lenora. Well, not forever. That roar you hear”—which the robot was now having to shout over—“is the void reacting to the presence of matter, by which I mean us! Eventually it will rip us up into nothing, too.”

  Lenora didn’t like the sound of that. The roar was now a howling. Her skin tingled. She looked down at her arm and saw it was fading into nothing. She looked at Bendigeidfran. He was fading into nothing, too.

  “I’m sorry,” shouted Bendigeidfran over the deafening howl. “This is all my fault!”

  “No time for that,” yelled Lenora. The howl was making her skull rattle, and Lenora could barely see Bendigeidfran, or herself. She thought quickly. “You said your time machine had almost nothing left. Does that mean it has a little left?”

  “Yes!” cried the robot. “But almost nothing! We’d never get back to your real time.”

  “We don’t have to!” screamed Lenora over the din. Her arm was only a dim outline now, and she could barely see Bendigeidfran. “There was an October 4! Is there enough power to move just one day?”

  The robot’s eyes flashed faintly, and he grasped desperately at his wrist.

  Suddenly, they were standing in a dark forest, the ground covered with an early snow. In front of them stood a girl in a yellow cloak, her arms full of firewood. Her jaw dropped and so did the wood.

  “Power restored!” said Bendigeidfran happily.

  “Pardon us,” said Lenora to the girl. “But we must be leaving. Here,” she said to the robot, who was reaching for his wrist. “You’d better let me do that.” She entered the date herself, and in moments they were back at the Help Desk in the Calendars section. Lenora collapsed onto her padded stool in weary relief.

  “My apologies, Lenora,” said the robot, his eyes now blinking a sad blue. “I should not have listened to that strange woman.”

  Lenora stroked his hand reassuringly. “All is well. I made it home. And you could not have known she was lying.”

  “Still,” said Bendigeidfran, “you should be careful, Lenora. It seems you have an enemy.”

  “I will,” replied Lenora, wondering who the woman in the bowler hat was, and if she would be seeing her or the other man again. She rather suspected she would.

  “As for me,” said Bendigeidfran, bowing deeply, “you have saved the kingdom and both our lives. I am truly impressed and grateful. Tell me, would you consider voyaging through time with me, running errands for the king? It’s rather interesting work. My next assignment is to see whether the Battle of Pelusium was really fought with cats.”

  For a moment, Lenora was tempted, imagining all the wonderful times she could visit alongside her new friend. Then she looked around at the Calendars section, and her heart fluttered to think of all that lay ahead of her in the library. “Maybe later,” she said. “I can’t just abandon my job like that. I have a lot of responsibilities. And I love the work.” Even if it did strand her in time and space now and then.

  “I understand,” said the robot. “Perhaps we shall meet again. Now I must return home as well.”

  “Wait,” said Lenora. “Don’t you think you should go find your missing chip first? I have a feeling you’ll get in all sorts of trouble if you don’t.”

  “Of course!” said the robot. “Where was it again?”

  “Ancient Egypt. The Sphinx. You bashed your head…”

  “Right!” exclaimed the robot, reaching for his wrist. In a flash he was gone.

  And in his place stood Malachi.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lenora Takes to the Skies

  Malachi read aloud from Lenora’s badge. “Third Assistant Apprentice already, I see. You have done well, Lenora.” The corner of the Chief Answerer’s mouth almost twitched into a smile. “But you mustn’t be content to rest on your laurels. We have a problem, and I think you might be just the one to solve it. The librarian in our Cartography section has quit in a huff, and on the worst day possible. We just got a brand-new globe delivered, and huge crowds have come to see it.”

  “It must be some globe!” Lenora said, impressed.

  “Indeed,” said Malachi. “And there is no one there to answer their questions. The Help Desk is swamped. This will be a challenging assignment. Do you think you can manage it?”

  “Yes,” replied Lenora instantly, though in her heart she was not quite sure.

  “Excellent,” said Malachi. “Follow me.” They left Calendars and went into the hallway. They soon came to a platform from which stairs wound off in all directions, up and down. They hurried down some steps, up some steps (Lenora had completely lost her way at this point—she thought the maze of stairways could use a few signs), and tiptoed through a vast reading room in which hundreds of people were studiously bent over books in perfect silence. Lenora looked at all the people reading and learning, and thought about the words Knowledge Is a Light and what they might mean. She remembered Starpoint Seventeen’s giant glowing calendar in the sky and wondered if the phrase meant that knowledge is like the sun in the sky, shining down on everything. But no, that didn’t seem quite right somehow …

  She continued to ponder this as they left the reading room and found themselves in another large hallway lined
with bookshelves. They passed two rooms that appeared to be completely empty. Above the first was a sign: SHRINKING ROOM. Librarians were going into it but none were coming out. The other was the UNSHRINKING ROOM, and it was just the opposite.

  “What are those for?” asked Lenora.

  “Some of our patrons are very small,” replied Malachi. She came to a halt at the end of the hallway, where it formed a T with another hallway, equally large, along which an enormous stream of library patrons was hurrying. “You can find your way from here. Simply follow the crowd.” With that, she whirled away and was gone.

  Cartography was not difficult to find. Everyone was flowing in the same direction, talking excitedly about the new globe. Children were pulling their parents along by the hand. Soon they were rushing down a set of wide, sweeping steps and then across a bridge that arched over a brook of babbling water.

  Lenora paused (briefly, because she knew Cartography needed her) for a look. At the other end of the bridge, where the hallway resumed, was a set of steps going down to a dock with several empty canoes. The brook had the most inviting grassy banks (Lenora assumed they somehow got enough sun from the skylights above), and it curved under the bridge before going around a bend. Down the brook, patrons were paddling canoes. A sign on the dock said HYDROLOGY, with an arrow pointing downstream. Lenora was tempted to grab a paddle and voyage off. But she had a job to do. The scientific study of the movement of water on Earth and other planets would have to wait for another time.

  She reached Cartography and gasped.

  The room was far bigger than any room Lenora had ever seen. All along the walls, going up and up, were thousands of maps of every possible description. Patrons were walking about on walkways, stairs, and ramps, studying the maps. Far, far above what must have been miles of maps and walkways was the hint of a ceiling hung with twinkling lights. A journey across this room would be no small undertaking. But even this space was nearly filled by its simply magnificent globe, which could really be described as a small world, floating with great dignity in the center of the room and rotating slowly.

  There was a huge sign beneath it: WORLD’S LARGEST GLOBE.

  Underneath, in smaller letters, it said RAISED RELIEF.

  Lenora hardly had time to admire any of this. She spotted the Help Desk right away, with a long line of desperate-looking questioners waving library cards and shuffling impatiently. She hurried over, having no doubt the line might move a little faster if only the globe were a little smaller. How could she be expected to make use of such a globe when she couldn’t even reach it?

  She soon found the answer. Behind the Help Desk bobbed a gas balloon, with a basket beneath it into which one librarian could nicely fit. It drifted back and forth, tugging at a rope that anchored it to the floor. A small set of steps led up to the basket. Next to the steps was a sign: LIBRARIANS ONLY.

  She felt a tug at her arm. It was a forlorn-looking young man with a tricorne hat in his hand. Sadness and regret came off him in waves.

  “Hello,” said Lenora. “How may I help you?” And she did really want to help this poor, sad man.

  “P-P-Please, librarian,” stammered the patron, turning the hat in his hands. “There was a girl I loved, and I never told her. Now she has moved far away, and I want to tell her, but I don’t know where to send the letter. All I know is that she moved to the place with the longest name in the world. And I don’t know where that is.”

  Lenora pondered this. She didn’t know, either. But it was her job to find out. She looked around, but none of the maps in her vicinity looked like they would help with this question.

  She turned toward the gas balloon with great trepidation. She had absolutely no idea how to work a gas balloon, particularly not this one, which had attachments like sails and wings connected to ropes connected to dozens of levers on a control board in the basket. It looked unimaginably complicated. She searched for instructions but couldn’t find a thing. No wonder the previous librarian quit in a huff! thought Lenora. But there was nothing for it. She certainly wasn’t quitting the best job she’d ever had. She had to figure it out.

  She climbed aboard. Terms connected to balloons, like ballast and envelope, went through her head, but she had no idea what they meant. She tried to sort through the levers, none of which bothered with helpful things like labels or directions. She found one that was connected to the rope anchoring the balloon to the floor. She gave it a hopeful pull, and in an instant the balloon shot up into the air and the Help Desk dwindled away below.

  A strange thing happened as Lenora got closer to the orb. Gravity simply switched from the Earth to the globe. The balloon rotated until the globe was no longer above her, but below. Now she was soaring over a blue ocean, and then along a coastline, with the floor and walls of the Cartography section forming the sky. She was astonished to see, below her, a school of fish swimming by, ignoring her completely.

  The balloon was going faster and faster. The ocean rocketed by. The coastline blurred past. Lenora pulled desperately at the levers as wings flapped and sails unfurled. She was thrown back and forth in the basket as the balloon jerked about wildly, completely out of control. This will never work, thought Lenora. She wasn’t sure that whoever built this balloon was really the right person for the job. But she would simply have to make the best of it. The balloon was proving useless, but she had to get an answer for that sad young man. She searched and searched until she found one lever that lifted flaps that briefly brought the balloon to a lurching halt.

  And then she clambered onto the edge of the basket, swayed for a moment, and jumped.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lenora Sails the Seas

  Lenora landed firmly on her feet along the rocky coastline of the world’s largest globe. The out-of-control balloon careened away into the distance. Good riddance, she thought. She had grown to hate that balloon. Beyond it, in what was now the sky, she could see the Cartography section’s wall of maps curving off to the horizon, its walkways with railings far out of reach.

  Now, how to find the place with the longest name in the world? Unlike her experience in the Calendars section, Lenora had not had time to read a book on cartography. She was going to have to improvise and think on her feet and rely on her wits and valor. She remembered something Bendigeidfran had said. Some things in Wales have quite long names. Lenora supposed that was as good a place to start as any. But how could she find Wales?

  As she stared out at the sea, thinking, she saw letters, large and black, floating on the waves. ATLANTIC OCEAN, they said. If everything on the globe was labeled, she ought to be able to track down Wales eventually. She just wished she had some idea where to start.

  She hurried along the coast as ATLANTIC OCEAN floated off toward the equator. She looked and looked, searching … and then, not far from where the letters GULF OF SAINT LAWRENCE floated, she saw something in the water. A thrill went up her spine.

  “Wow!” she shouted. “A group of whales!”

  One of the whales turned and surfaced, huge waves leaping up around it. It blew a huge spout of water into the air as it swam toward Lenora.

  “Excuse me,” the whale said huffily. “But we are not a group. We are a pod. It’s not the same thing at all.” The other whales, all of them perfectly white, swam up beside the first and made a cacophony of high-pitched whistles and squeaks.

  Lenora could tell she had offended the whales. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  The first whale puffed itself up rather happily and seemed to brighten all over. “Why,” said the whale proudly, “a librarian wants to ask me a question? I am quite honored.”

  Lenora was glad she was forgiven. “I would like to know,” she said, “how to find Wales.”

  “You’ve found them,” said the whale. “We are, in fact, beluga whales.”

  “Oh,” said Lenora. “I mean Wales, the place, not whales, the mammal.”

  “Hmph,” replied the whale,
and it blew another spout of water. “And I suppose you think that just because I am a whale, the mammal, that I automatically know the location of Wales, the place?”

  Lenora reddened. Beluga whales seemed easily offended. “I’m sorry,” she said. She began to turn away.

  “Wait,” said the whale. It sniffed, via blowhole. “As it happens, I have a cousin who once went on vacation off the coast of Wales. This is purely a coincidence, however.”

  “I understand,” said Lenora.

  “Since you are a librarian,” the whale continued, “I can only assume your question is of the utmost importance. So, although my pod normally never leaves this estuary, I will make an exception and take you there straightaway. Hop on.” The whale beckoned with one fin.

  Lenora climbed aboard and the pod headed off straightaway. With strong swipes of their flukes, the whales cut through the ocean. Lenora staggered a bit until she got her sea legs, then planted herself forward in a comfortable spot behind the whale’s adorably bulbous head, her gaze fixed on the horizon as waves parted around her and strong salty scents filled her nostrils. This is so much better than a limousine, she thought. “You speak excellent English,” she remarked to the whale. “I didn’t know whales could do that.”

  “Oh yes,” said the whale airily. “Beluga whales have been known to mimic your speech. Unlike regular whales, we belugas have exceptional vocal mechanics. Generally we use them to play pranks.”

  Interesting, thought Lenora. She added this to her notebook: Beluga whales mimic human speech. Jokes abound.

  Shortly afterward a pair of islands came into view. Waves crashed against rocky cliffs covered in green. Letters floated over the islands: IRELAND and ENGLAND. The pod plunged directly between the pair. And then Lenora saw it straight ahead: WALES.