Lenora gaped at the Chief Answerer. “How did you get here? Did you take another tube?”
“I have not used the Tubes in centuries,” said Malachi. “I walked.” She pushed open the door and they went inside.
The section, whatever it was, was about the size of Calenders, but unlike that section, it was a complete wreck. There were thousands and thousands of books strewn everywhere, tables and chairs upended, pens, paper, everything, in catastrophic disarray. Even heavy wooden desks had been overturned, their drawers open and the contents spilling out.
“What happened?” asked Lenora. It looked like a tornado had touched down here.
“A tornado touched down here,” said Malachi. “We need to get it reorganized. But no one remembers what it was for. Your job is to reorganize this section and determine its purpose. We can’t have unknown sections of the library; it’s simply embarrassing.”
“Of course,” said Lenora, though she felt quite intimidated. However would she organize all this? It looked as though it would take an army of librarians weeks just to put the books back on the shelves! But she had sworn to work hard, and work hard she would.
She turned to Malachi to ask how she had managed to walk many miles in only a few moments. But the Chief Answerer was gone.
Lenora sighed. Time to get started. Perhaps if she knew the subject matter for this section, she would be able to decide how to organize it. She went toward a pile of books and picked up a thick one from the top:
Orbital Mechanics for Total Morons
She didn’t know what Orbital Mechanics was, but orbit sounded like it might have to do with outer space. She flipped through the pages and saw, as she’d guessed, loads of complicated math equations and pictures of spacecraft going around planets. Perhaps this section was for Space Travel? She picked up another book:
T is for Tardigrades
She couldn’t even begin to guess what tardigrades were. She was about to open the book and find out when her attention was caught by a large box upon which had been stamped:
MOOSE
A moose in a box? That she had to see. She laid the tardigrades book back on the pile and opened the box.
She was rather disappointed to find not a moose but a battered suitcase on which had been stamped:
MOOSE: MANNED ORBITAL OPERATIONS SAFETY EQUIPMENT
And below this, in smaller red letters, was written:
Warning: Historical artifact for library exhibition purposes only! Do not attempt to leap from outer space in this MOOSE!
Well, thought Lenora, I certainly won’t be doing THAT.
Curious to see what the MOOSE looked like, Lenora hefted the suitcase onto the Help Desk, which was of course just as messy as everything else in the section. Someone had left some powdered doughnuts here. They had spilled across the desk and there was powdered sugar everywhere.
Then Lenora noticed, standing just at the edge of the powder, a red ant.
Lenora looked down at the ant.
The ant looked up at Lenora.
“Hello,” said Lenora. “How may I help you?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lenora Dodges Danger
The ant on the Help Desk began carefully plowing a path through the powdered sugar. Minutes later she had made what Lenora could see was the letter H. The ant stepped to the right and started anew. Eventually the H was followed by E, L, L, and O.
The ant looked at her expectantly.
“Oh,” said Lenora. She took a tissue from an overturned box and carefully smoothed out the powder and the word HELLO. She also shook some powder from a doughnut to give the ant more space to write.
The ant began anew. AN ACQUAINTANCE OF MINE NEEDS YOUR HELP QUITE URGENTLY.
“Why can’t your friend ask me themself?” said Lenora, and smoothed out the powder.
SHE IS VERY SMALL, the ant wrote. AND SHE DOESN’T HAVE MUCH TIME.
“If you think she’s small,” said Lenora, “then I imagine I would hardly be able to see her at all. Very clever of her to ask you for help. So what does she need?” She smoothed the powder.
THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER TO EXPLAIN, wrote the ant.
“Right,” said Lenora. She thought about writing in her notebook that communication via powdered sugar was slow and laborious, but the point seemed rather obvious. “I think I’d better just ask your friend directly.”
HOWEVER WILL YOU DO THAT? the ant wrote.
“We librarians have our ways,” said Lenora, extending her finger to the ant. “Hop on.”
The ant climbed on obligingly, and Lenora went to the tube. She scanned the tags until she found SHRINKING ROOM. After a short, high-pressure journey, they arrived.
“Wait here,” said Lenora to the ant. “It’s no good if you get shrunk, too.” She walked in. Instantly the walls and ceilings seemed to vanish and she was standing on a perfectly flat plain that went on endlessly in all directions. Above her seemed to be nothing but open sky.
I’ve shrunk! thought Lenora, for even though she had expected this, it is still startling the first time one is shrunk to the size of an ant. She turned around and saw what appeared to be an enormous wall going straight up into the air. That is the edge of the doorway, she realized. It seemed miles away now. Nearby, she noticed a smooth bump in the floor. She walked over to it. It was a miniature tube. Of course, she thought. Tiny librarians have to get around somehow.
She got in and used her key to take the mini-tube back to the entrance, where she found the ant waiting patiently. Lenora was not at all startled to see that the ant was now at shoulder level. Close up, she was far hairier than Lenora would have expected, with jagged pincers and black, dead-looking eyes that reminded her of the Other Mother from one of her favorite books. She was glad that she and the ant had already established a friendship, for the sight of a human-size ant was, quite frankly, terrifying.
“I don’t suppose that, like beluga whales, ants can mimic human speech?” said Lenora hopefully.
The ant shook her head, then turned and dashed away. Lenora raced to keep up, but the ant was fast, its six legs clattering along like perfect clockwork. Then the insect came to an instant halt. Just ahead of them, something enormous was descending from far above. It slammed down and the floor shook under Lenora’s feet. She looked up and up and saw that it was a shoe the size of a battleship. Above the shoe, a leg stretched up like a skyscraper. The shoe lifted up and away, and Lenora’s gaze followed it.
The shoe was black leather, and above it was a dark pant cuff. Lenora felt instant dread, and she knew what she would see even before she looked higher—a black overcoat, and far above, what seemed like miles and miles and miles above, the brim of a black bowler hat.
Lenora realized with horror that, not having six legs with pinpoint maneuvering, she was certain to get squashed. Somewhere up there was the shoe, eager to slam back down on top of her. “Hey!” she panted, catching up to the ant. “You’ve got to give me a ride or something!”
The ant pondered, then lowered her head and clamped her pincers together. Feeling very brave, Lenora leapt onto the pincers, which made a rather more comfortable seat than you would think from looking at them.
The ant seemed to sense the danger, and she raced off in a zigzag pattern. The floor trembled as the shoe hit somewhere behind them. This mini-earthquake was no trouble for the nimble ant, however, and Lenora could see she was making a beeline (more of an antline, she thought) for an ant-size archway at the foot of an enormous wall.
In seconds, Lenora was ducking her head as they passed beneath the words ANT CITY, emblazoned above the arch. She slumped in relief, giving the ant a pat on her pincers. “Nice work!” she said. Looking back, she could see the tip of a shoe outside the entrance, and she grinned. “Foiled again,” she whispered, because “foiled again” seemed like exactly the sort of thing she would expect one of the bowler hat people to say.
Just inside the entrance Lenora spotted a locker. On it was a label: ANT CITY COMMUN
ICATION KIT—LIBRARIANS ONLY!
Intrigued, she hopped from the ant’s jaws. Entirely unsure of what she would find, she opened the locker by inserting her Tube key. Inside were several sets of what looked like earplugs. But from instructions printed on the inside of the door Lenora could see that they were meant to be inserted in the nostrils and were called Pheromone Interpreters. Lenora, naturally, slipped a pair into her nose.
Instantly, she was nearly overwhelmed by a blast of powerful scents coming from all directions. “Wow,” said Lenora, looking at the ant, “is this how you talk to one another?” The ant did not move, but through the interpreters came a strong smell of something like honey, which seemed to indicate Yes.
Ant language—pheromones! Lenora scribbled in her notebook.
“Now then,” Lenora said, hopping back onto the ant’s waiting jaws. “What should I call you? I mean, what is your name?”
The reply came, not in words of course, but in a complex odor that smelled a little like lavender, a bit like fresh asphalt before it hardens, and a lot like cinnamon. “Cinnamon, I think I’ll call you,” said Lenora, “if that’s all right with you.”
Cinnamon produced a strawberry jam–ish scent that suggested to Lenora that she found this absolutely delightful, and off they went.
The sign advertising ANT CITY had not lied. She and Cinnamon were now hustling down the sunlit streets of a metropolis of ants, millions of them, in a maze of vast corridors, broad avenues, and ant superhighways arching through the air. Towering structures that seemed taller to Lenora than any skyscraper reached for the skies. Atop most of them, turbines spun busily. Wind power, thought Lenora. Brilliant. She also noticed that as ants passed one another, they touched their antennae together. Ant handshakes? she wrote in her notebook, to look up later.
They went over an arched bridge spanning a river, down which floated a structure that was composed of nothing but ants clinging to one another to form an island. Lenora was putting so many things in her notebook, she wished she had brought a spare. As she wrote, she pondered what it must be like to have millions of sisters (for Lenora knew that worker ants were all female) instead of being an only child.
At last they came into a round room with a domed ceiling that had a hole at the top open to the blue sky. It made Lenora think of a class field trip to an observatory. In the middle of the room squatted the strangest animal Lenora had ever seen. It was about a quarter of the size of the ant and looked a little like a furless bear and a little like a caterpillar with eight legs. Each of its legs had a claw that the animal was working busily—one claw in a toolbox, one claw making markings on a chalkboard, two others playing chess (apparently with each other), another making a sandwich, and the final three making adjustments to a rickety, pointy vessel standing on three legs, its sharp tip aimed directly at the opening in the ceiling.
It was, undoubtedly, a spaceship.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lenora Gets It
The spaceship was nothing like the sleek, solid vessels Lenora had seen before. The hull had been patched together out of various metals of all shapes and sizes. Windows bulged randomly in odd locations and, even more curiously for a spaceship, some of them were open. It looked like a house that had been put together in a hurry. A door on one side was just the size of the bearish, caterpillarish animal building the ship. Above the door were the words TARDIGRADE TRANSPORT.
The animal, which Lenora strongly suspected was a tardigrade, spotted her and promptly plunged a claw into the toolbox. After a bit of rummaging, she held out a headset to Lenora. “Let me guess,” said Lenora. “It’s a Tardigrade Translator 3000.” She fitted it expertly onto her head.
“4000, actually,” said the tardigrade. “Tardigrade speech is much more complex than that of, say, penguins. All they ever talk about is sliding around on the ice on their bellies, whereas we tardigrades have sophisticated conversations about interesting topics such as cryptobiosis and space travel.”
“Space travel?” said Lenora. “I guess that explains the spaceship.”
The tardigrade nodded. As she spoke she continued to move her claws about, simultaneously working on the spaceship, doing calculations, and playing chess with herself. Lenora felt certain that tardigrades would make excellent librarians. “You see,” the tardigrade said, “yesterday my brother decided to voyage to the multiple-star system of Alpha Centauri, just over four light-years away, to start a new life. He invited me to go along, but I declined. I regretted the decision the moment I watched his spaceship take off. Thus I have built my own spaceship so I can join him.”
“You built an entire spaceship in one day?” asked Lenora, amazed. But that would explain its appearance. Cinnamon, for her part, was scrambling all over the rickety vessel, emitting a fishy scent that suggested great curiosity.
“Oh yes,” the tardigrade said. “I know it’s not much to look at, but as it’s made by experienced space travelers, tardigrade technology can be trusted utterly. I’ve even installed an artificial gravity generator, a technology humans have yet to discover. My only trouble is that my brother took all our books on how to get to Alpha Centauri. My first thought, of course, was to ask a librarian. I miss my brother terribly, and I fear I will never catch him if I don’t leave soon.”
Lenora’s heart went out to what was clearly a very sad tardigrade. “Never fear. I can help you. I think. There was a book on orbital mechanics in my section. It seems to be the sort of thing you could use.”
“Oh yes!” The tardigrade brightened. “Most certainly.” She plunged a paw into her toolbox and handed Lenora a library card. “But not just that. I also need anything you can find about stops along the way, like the Oort cloud, and the Kuiper Belt, and the planets of Jupiter and Pluto—”
“They say Pluto’s not a planet anymore,” Lenora interrupted.
The tardigrade snarled. “As far as we tardigrades are concerned, Pluto is and always will be a planet. End of discussion.”
Cinnamon, from the top of the spaceship, emitted a potent leather scent that indicated her complete agreement.
Lenora saw no reason to argue. She had always thought that Pluto seemed like a perfectly fine planet, whatever the adults might tell her. She took out her notebook. Pluto is, always will be, a planet. This she underlined firmly.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she told the tardigrade. “But first—aren’t you worried about such a long trip through space all by yourself? What if you forget you are in space and open a window?”
“Whyever would I worry about that?” sniffed the tardigrade. “We tardigrades are the hardiest survivors in all the animal kingdom! We are, in fact, the first animals ever to survive the open vacuum of outer space. We can survive one thousand times the radiation level of any other animal—”
Lenora began scribbling wildly in her notebook.
“—not to mention surviving being frozen to absolute zero! We can go decades without food or water. A mere trip to Alpha Centauri is nothing to a tardigrade. We are the ultimate survivors.”
“Marvelous!” said Lenora. She wished she could do any of those things. One of the tardigrade’s many talents might have helped her fix the horrific mess back in her unknown department. But the tardigrade needed her, and so she simply had to think of something.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said to the tardigrade, trying to sound determined and confident. Cinnamon came racing down from the spaceship. Lenora patted the ant on her head. “Take me back to the Unshrinking Room, please.” Cinnamon lowered her jaws obligingly.
As they wheeled away, Lenora’s worries mounted. Her department was a complete wreck from the tornado. However would she find the books the tardigrade needed, assuming they were even in her department to begin with? It would take years of work for only one librarian.
They were back in the streets of Ant City now, surrounded by thousands of other ants streaming in all directions, carrying bits of food, or fleshy-looking things she supposed were eggs, and
chunks of construction material … Thousands if not millions of ants, all in perfect order, feeding, building, their countless pheromone trails keeping them in constant coordination, acting as one to maintain their vast and lovely metropolis …
Lenora’s gaze went up, up, up the tall towers that reached for the heavens, to the enormous wind turbines atop them, which she realized now could not only provide power, but maybe, maybe …
Lenora leapt to the ground and whirled to face Cinnamon. “I’ve got it!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lenora Leaps
Lenora paced back and forth along the street in Ant City, thinking out loud. “I’m going to need ants. Lots of ants. As many as we can get. Do you think some of the others would be willing to help?”
A scent like salty air came from Cinnamon in a way that suggested the ants would do anything to help a librarian.
“Thank you! Now, we don’t have much time,” said Lenora, “and we’ve got to get the message out as fast as possible.” She pointed to one of the spinning turbines far above them. “I was thinking, maybe…”
Cinnamon understood immediately. Clasping Lenora ever so gently between her pincers, she raced straight up the side of the nearest tower. Up and up they went, Lenora thinking to herself that she shouldn’t look down, then looking down anyway. Thousands of ants far below now looked like … well, ants. The wind up here was getting stronger, and now she could see more of Ant City, which stretched on to what seemed like infinity, a never-ending megalopolis, and she wondered if the world of ants dwarfed anything that humans had ever built or ever would build.
And now they had reached the turbine. Lenora managed not to think too hard about what would happen if Cinnamon lost her grip (which Lenora knew she wouldn’t). The turbine’s powerful blades cut through the air, the constant breeze up here keeping them in constant motion, a breeze which Lenora planned to employ to her own ends.
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