Babylon Sisters

by Paul Di Filippo

  The ladies sought to preserve their dignity and decorum. “Of course,” Taffy said. “We recognize your devotion to learning, and we’re so grateful that you wish to purchase the library as a whole. It surely would have pleased our dear Vincent to know his collection would end up in such fine hands.”

  “That’s why we favored your tender over all the others,” piped Marlys.

  Stallkamp denied the tactics of the sisters. “Don’t pretend. I know through my contacts that you have had no other propositions, save from the knackers offering you pennies on the dollar. None of my peers wanted a library without a Catalogue, a record of all the permutations and stud lines. Too much work by half getting the whole affair sorted. You can’t rely on the books themseves for the information, of course. Except in text mode, they’re stubborn prevaricators, every one of them.”

  “Oh, true.”

  “So true. Nasty things, books.”

  “But I’m different. Once I get them home, I intend to overwrite them all anyway, and to hell with their current contents. Your foolish brother’s holdings never supplemented mine in any case. He wasted his time on all sorts of nonsense. Gravitokarmic mechanics, indeed! No, I’m paying you as if the books were all blank, straight from the publishers—with a sizable discount for heavy usage, of course—and that’s the best deal you’ll get. There’s no point in jollying me up to try to extort a few more dollars out of me. So you might as well conduct me to the library right now.”

  The sisters stood up resignedly. Taffy pointed to a large door set in one wall beside the large stasis cube that served as icebox for comestibles. “The bookbarn is right through there, MB Stallkamp. Vincent never wanted to be more than a few steps from his precious books. Do you need us to accompany you?”

  “Not at all. The books will be jittery enough without the presence of two non-librarians. Let me just check my equipment one last time, though.”

  Stallkamp deposited his flat case on the tabletop and cracked it open. Racked inside were several perfusion hypos—prefilled with varicolored semiotic liquids in their graduated cartridges—and a wicked-looking pronged device like a tuning fork fused to a pistol grip.

  Marlys pointed to the weaponish thing. “What is that? I don’t believe Vincent ever had one.”

  “It’s a librarian’s fine-assessor.” Stallkamp took up the bifurcate gun and closed his case. “The bookbarn door is locked, I assume.”

  Taffy removed a key from her décolletage. “Here’s all you need.”

  Stallkamp strode impatiently to the door, but was brought up short by a shrill invocation of his name from Marlys. He turned around. “Yes?”

  “There’s a way you could gain Vincent’s library without expending any money, sir. Each of us in the market for a new husband. Surely one or even both of us might appeal to a learned gentleman such as yourself.”

  From between his overarching shoulder blades, Stallkamp favored each of the women with a long piercing look before saying, “Sorry, but no. You two are of an exquisitely high-toned breed incompatible with my humble station.”

  Inserting the still-warm key into the lock of the bookbarn door, Stallkamp quickly let himself in, leaving the Holbrook sisters simpering from the flattery whose irony had escaped them.

  * * * *

  Canto had not asked to be born a book, any more than he had chosen the ratios of his mixed genotype and his consequent motley appearance. But having received such an assignment from fate (in the case of the subservient Canto and his fellow books, of course, fate wore an all-too-human guise), he generally tried to make the best of things. Being a book—at least in this collection—did not hold the terrors associated with many other chimerical employments: toxin tester, vacuum worker, seabed miner. Boredom, lack of freedom, the rigors of new textual creation and mixing—these were the worst things a book generally faced.

  Some days were easier than others, naturally—days when the majority of books were left uncalled-upon and could conduct their own well-ordered social life. But since the death of their beloved librarian, MB Holbrook, these good days had been few and far between. True, not a single requisition had obtruded on their private time, but this accidental vacation was not without attendant drawbacks. First had come the diminished heat and light in the bookbarn, leaving the books to shiver and huddle in the unchanged hay of their darkened carrels. Next they had felt the sting of hunger, as their meals began to arrive from the automated synthesizers with increasing infrequency and diminished quality. (The books were not privy to the many arguments among Holbrook’s heirs about how best to minimize estate expenditures during the breakup of the property, nor were their votes solicited.) Finally, the books suffered from the black, bleak uncertainty concerning their future.

  The bookbarn bulked four stories high, with over a hundred carrels per floor. Central to each level was a reading room forbidden to the books save when called there by the librarian. Serving as their social focus instead was the unallocated floorspace around the meal synthesizers, and to a lesser extent, the toilets. Often, the older books, leaders of the community, would call meetings in front of the food dispensers. With some squeezing—not at all disagreeable to the small, hairy books, especially given the chilly conditions obtaining lately in the barn—all the books could accomodate themselves in the open space.

  On this day just such a meeting had been called—by old Incunabula, leader of the first-floor.

  Eager to see his beloved Vellum once more, Canto was among the first to arrive.

  Generally, aside from eating and toilet errands, the books were supposed to remain permanently in their carrels until called by the librarian, and that routine still held to a large degree. But in any library of longstanding agglomeration, the books invariably became familiar with the usage patterns of their owner, and felt safe in circumspectly venturing out among themselves, especially when the librarian was asleep. Under the current circumstances, of course, with their owner dead, no one was likely to call for any volume whatsoever, and the books felt safe in assembling during the day. Perhaps too they were lulled by the fact that MB Holbrook had never assessed any penalties for going misshelved.

  Beneath the louring dusty rafters of the first-floor ceiling and in front of the food chutes now assembled scores of books, pouring in from the various convergent corridors. Soon Canto was surrounded by his fellow volumes, and he had to strain onto tiptoe in search of Vellum.

  All roughly three feet tall, the books evidenced their heterogenous genetic composition in every line of their furry bodies. Part squirrel, part babboon, part hare, part whistlepig, with a certain admixture of human qualities, the books sat upright on big hindquarters and lagomorphic clawed feet, carrying their upper limbs close to their chests. Their disproportionately large heads seemed set almost directly onto their shoulders. Wide hazel eyes glimmered, ears twitched, and blunt chisel teeth flashed as the books greeted each other. They spoke, of course, in the pure human tongue.

  Canto spotted Vellum’s attractive dappled pelt across the convocation and hustled through the musky crowd to join her.

  “Hello, Vellum. Have you missed me?”

  Vellum smiled prettily. “Of course I have, Canto. I won’t ask you the same, because I can see right away that you have.”

  Canto sighed. That was romantic Vellum all over, perceptive and sensitive to a fault. A surge of melancholy passed through Canto as he wished for the hundredth time that he and Vellum embodied the same type of text. But they didn’t, and without that prerequisite, chances were they would never be allowed to mate.

  The books had no diurnal libidos. Chemically suppressed, their sexual instincts were allowed to come afire only when the librarians wished to mate two books and produce a new text. And the chances that books from different fields would be brought together were minimal. What, after all, would be the point of breeding a work on neutrino construction with a volume of chaoticist poetry? Chances were that the offspring would be useless—although sometimes such wild hybrid
s did give rise to completely new areas of fruitful study—and in that case, the book-knackers would be summoned to dispose of the useless whelp.

  Canto shuddered at that thought. Better never to know the bliss of conjugal union with Vellum than to bring such a hapless creature into the world.

  Just as Canto was about to exchange more pleasantries with Vellum, the herd of books began to fall silent, focusing their attention toward the food dispensers. Canto took Vellum’s paw and they both directed their gaze forward.

  Onto a tabletop clambered with some hesitancy a grizzled, plumpish book: Incunabula. Able now to command the whole herd, supported by two assistants, Trivium and Quadrivium, Incunabula began to speak.

  “Ahem, my fellow books. Thank you all for leaving your carrels to attend to my humble speech. I shan’t keep you long. I only wish to say that I fully realize that since the untimely mortal passage of our dear librarian, all of us have been anxious about what the future might hold for us. Some of us might even have thought of following the Catalogue into the outer world, where only dangers and hardships await—bibliovores such as the gnoles and gnurrs and zipper-nut squirrels. I caution anyone entertaining such a desperate scheme to be patient. Surely we shall all find a new home very soon. After all, our utility and value are unquestionable. Are not we books the fount of all new conjectures and theorems? Unlike the static databases, the ever-shifting texts we embody, cleverly manipulated by our librarians, are the prime source of new concepts and fresh perspectives. Even in a culture such as the current human one, which prizes stability and feels that many limits of knowledge have already been reached, new thoughts are still welcomed by many scholars and—”

  “What’s going on here!”

  The shouted query from the rear of the herd caused every book to squeak loudly and nearly bolt for their carrels. The herd swayed, but held. Summoning all his courage, clutching Vellum’s paw tighter than ever, Canto turned around to look for the source of the angry shout.

  A human stood on the fringes of the herd, and he held an object Canto had never actually seen before, but only heard horror stories about.

  A librarian’s fine-assessor.

  * * * *

  MB Stallkamp’s library back home at his manse Brundisium consisted of a mere ninety books, housed in a smallish barn recently much extended in preparation for his anticipated acquisition. He consulted his tomes by ones and twos—perhaps by threes, at most. Dealt with in such small numbers, the books had always struck him as feeble and impotent creatures, susceptible to easy command and prone to cower under his astringent tone.

  Now, faced with scores of self-motivated books, Stallkamp was forced to revise his long-held estimate of the books’ tractability. This unexpected show of initiative went counter to his expectations. His gut rebelled against the massed smell of the volumes, and their ranked stares unnerved him. But realizing that he should not let any of his fear or uncertainty show, lest he lose any trace of the upper hand, he followed his first instinctive question with a bellowed demand, directed at the one book who stood out from the herd.

  “You on the table! What’s your UDC?”

  Only among themselves did the books indulge in proper names, names which were meaningless to their librarians. To those masters, they were known by their Universal Decimal Classification, as displayed above their carrels.

  The portly book stuttered out its code. “Theta gamma dot zero nine seven two slash five blue one—master.”

  Nerving himself up to a desperate pitch, Stallkamp crane-strutted his way through the books as they fell desperately away from him, squeaking, their hairy flanks brushing his calves. Coming within firing range of the book upon the table, Stallkamp halted.

  “You look to be the leader of this rabble, and as such will have to be fined.”

  Raising his assessor and pointing it at the book, Stallkamp squeezed the trigger. The assessor emitted no visible ray or projectile. Nonetheless, the book grunted as if struck, short arms scrabbling at its chest, then collapsed. The two assistants jumped back in fright.

  Stallkamp approached the fallen book, hefting one limp limb. Dead. He must have had the assessor set too high, or perhaps this book suffered from some organic defect which the assessor had magnified. Whatever the answer, the deed was done. Now to make it serve.

  “Back to your carrels,” shouted Stallkamp, “or you’ll all get the same!”

  The herd dispersed in seconds, all save the slower of the two aides, whom Stallkamp had grabbed by the loose skin at the back of its head.

  “You’re to come with me to the reading room.”

  Dragging the book by its scruff, Stallkamp attained the reading room. Here he found the lectern—a book-proportioned couch with sturdy straps—a chair for the librarian, and various oddments of the biobiblioplexist’s trade: blank paper, syringes, a small semiotic distillery and the like.

  Stallkamp motioned the book onto the lectern and secured it in place. Then he uttered two readout commands: “Open your covers. Title and table of contents.”

  A look of disassociative withdrawal slid over the book’s countenance as the commands triggered automatic retrieval and verbal output. “Advanced Principles of Planckian Geometry. Chapter one, methods of charting. Chapter two—”

  “Stop.” Stallkamp opened his handleless case and removed a perfusive hypo. He applied its snout to the neck of the book and shot the device’s measure of sophisticated erasure molecules into its veins.

  Stallkamp sat down and consulted his watch. On the couch, the face of the book twitched in small spillover reactions incidental to the ongoing erasure, as dendritic delinkers did their brutal work. After approximately ten minutes, Stallkamp addressed the book again.

  “Title and table of contents.”

  The book opened its mouth, but seemed unable to offer anything. Stallkamp radiated pleasure. These hundreds of blank books—further modified according to his special scheme—would certainly go all the way toward bringing his pet project to its long-sought conclusion. Then wouldn’t the smugly ridiculous MB Sauvage get a nasty shock!

  Stallkamp left behind his visions of triumph, and took the book offline. “Close your covers.”

  The command brought the book back to self-awareness and nervous apprehension of its surroundings. Stallkamp released it from the restraints, and ordered it back to its carrel. The book departed, somewhat shakily. Likewise, Stallkamp swiftly made his way through the deserted corridors of the bookbarn and back into the kitchen of Rueulroald. There he found the Holbrook sisters awaiting him.

  “Was everything satisfactory?” inquired Marlys eagerly.

  “Absolutely. I performed a random wipe without a hitch. The books will serve my purposes well. I’ll have the trundels come round in the morning. Factota will stasis-box the library and take the whole collection away. Upon receipt, I’ll deliver your payment. Oh yes, there’ll be a small deduction though.”

  Taffy asked, “What for?”

  “The library has just been diminished by a single book. It seems one of the volumes became foxed beyond repair when I handled it.”

  * * * *

  A complacent satisfaction and discurious inertia reigned over Earth. Mankind had, for the most part, simply lost the desire or perhaps even the capability for old-fashioned creative ventures. Millennia of scientific and esthetic discoveries—held safely in instant-access databases and inexhaustibly compiled and cross-referenced by cybernetic intelligences—answered all common questions and practical inquiries, served the majority of entertainment requests, and insured that the weight of knowledge would generally crush all initiative. Yet a few eccentric scholars still sought to explore those tattered pockets of art and science that might yet bear a few linty grains of undiscovered knowledge in their seams.

  The living books were their instruments for searching, engines of knowledge creation.

  Into the capacious neurons of a blank book could be loaded an entire text, many, many units of semiotic import. But simpl
e holding of a text meant nothing, was a task better left to other, more stable media. The innate talent of the books lay in the ingenious ways their unpredictable, parallel-processing wetware could permute the initial semiotic units. Under the influence of various old-fashioned agents (chemicals, enyzmes, herbs, hormones, proteins, nutrients and drugs, administered by the librarians through a combination of recipe and guesswork), as well as through the instrument of dendritic relinkers (impossibly tiny units operating in the bloodstream according to onboard algorithms), the brains of the books would shuffle and mutuate selected portions of their contents in a wild manner no artificial intelligence could duplicate. Outputting the new semiotic units resulted, nine-hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, in sheer gibberish. But the aleatory point-one percent of worthwhile new information led down strange and curious paths.

  A final procedure, undertaken when the librarian desired to rely on the evolutionary wisdom of sexual recombination, consisted of breeding two books. Neural changes were reverse-transcribed into the sperm or egg cells of a book, and the brain of the offspring consequently encoded the random reshuffling between parents, offering a new launching point into uncharted information-space. (Although juvenile books took about two years to come fully online neurally.)

  The books had no conscious access to the texts they held. No corpus callosum connected their isolated twin hemispheres. Their individual, private mental life took place all on one competent side of their severed brains (protected from the various text-modifying reagents by arterial filters), while the textual work went on unmonitored in the other half. A small inviolate interpretive nucleus in the textual half (several hundred thousand neurons) hooked into the book’s hearing and speech circuits, responding to verbal librarian commands and handling basic operating systems functions.

  But having no direct access to the contents of one half of their skulls did not mean that the books could not sense in a subliminal manner whether things were going well or not in the hidden arena. After all, the textual side of their brains lived off the shared bookish metabolism as much as did the conscious half, and various feedback loops such as the enteric system remained as grounds where the two halves could exchange wordless data.