by Brandt Legg
Chapter 50
Runit fought agony from bitter and familiar places, along with new fronts in his personal war with pain. The room looked oddly like a forest fire raging beneath an orange sky as the Red-1953, shifting smoke, and flames turned everything a redish-orange hue.
The books he’d failed called at him, crying out in suffering, blaming him for every burning page. He felt the heat permeate his pores and, although the smoke was well away from him, the suffocating stench of Red-1953 and roasting book paper made him nauseous. He imagined the disintegrating stories, thoughts and ideas floating through the giant filter machine, tortured and mutilated.
Suddenly, he imagined he saw Harper’s face screaming in the flames. These past few days, he’d begun to realize that her death hadn’t been an accident. She’d died in a freak fire that spread from the chemistry lab below her classroom at the university where she taught. But there had been little damage then, and seeing the Red-1953 and knowing about her involvement with PAWN, it clicked.
The AOI had killed her. He’d always believed something hadn’t been right. Ever since her death an unsettled feeling had wrapped him like a cold, slimy creature from a nightmare, but he’d written it off as desperate grief. But now he knew, and nothing could convince him otherwise. Maybe even Chelle or Nelson could confirm it. If not them, then Blaise Cortez or Deuce Lipton could surely find out. He looked at her screaming image in the flames, as if she were really in there, and swallowed back tears. Anger took hold. I’m sorry, Harper, he said silently.
If it hadn’t been for Grandyn, he would have shoved Krucks into the flames or tried to lock the flame-suits out of the other areas of the library where books made of paper still breathed clean air and sat ready to enlighten and entertain. He might have even made a dash for the exit and . . . and . . . and done something, something radical and dangerous, but he didn’t know what.
Instead, he stood there next to Krucks and watched his wife burn along with the books, powerless to save either one.
But as they moved to the other side of the building and the process began all over again, Runit vowed that he would not lose to the AOI a third time. As the flame-suits sprayed more books, he watched in detached satisfaction.
He had the most important books. They were going to all this trouble to burn what some corrupt high official had determined was a threat to their utopian world, yet what they feared most was locked safely away in a barn more than four hundred fifty kilometers away.
And the only two people he really cared about were there, Grandyn and Chelle. If the AOI didn’t throw him into the flames or execute him at the end of the day, he would see them both tonight. All he had wanted to do had been done. He had saved the books and kept his son safe. He couldn’t wait to get back to them.
Nelson might be there too. His oldest friend, the oldest story: best friend sleeps with wife. Damn them! His anger pulsed with the flames. Fumes from the burning paper, glue, and that toxic PharmaForce chemical escaped the roving filter machines and started to make him nauseous. Or was that the stench of betrayal?
His martyred wife had been an adulteress. Part of him knew. He thought back and could almost pinpoint the day. She had so much passion, more than enough for both of them, he’d always thought. But there’d been something else in her eyes beyond the mystery and spark of rebellion. She needed adventure and creativity. Damn it, if only he’d written that book.
“Happerman?” Krucks called, alarmed.
Runit realized, while blaming himself, he’d wandered too close to the fire.
“Careful, man, we don’t want a fatality here. All that extra paperwork would delay my vacation.”
Runit nodded vaguely and his thoughts returned to Nelson. Why do I even like that cranky, drunk writer? Nelson once told him that certain scenes rewrote themselves in his head after a book was published and nearly drove him insane. He said that the characters could be even more difficult. They often kept talking to him long after a book was done, and often while writing, characters would change a scene by what they said, which caused him considerable stress and time, reworking the plot to suit their needs. Every book Runit hadn’t written haunted him, so he understood about the mental takeover from the craft of writing. Those unwritten books, locked inside a writer’s head, make an inescapable noise, like murmurs from conversation one can’t quite make out blended loudly with paper pages blowing in a disturbing wind.
“Writers must write, like painters must paint,” Nelson told him. “But it’s different for writers because until the story is down on paper, it will continue to expand in the writer’s crowded mind, where it can’t ever be contained.” Nelson had looked at Runit with almost a look of terror and added, “And minds don’t explode like you would think. They crack slowly, painfully, and with all kinds of distortion.”
That’s why he liked him. They shared the same pain. The question was, could he forgive him?
That answer was probably contained in the pages of one of the tens of thousands of books burning before him. Some author had no doubt written this plot, or something similar at least. What did they have the hero do? Am I the hero? Runit wondered. Am I really brave and true? He was there, wasn’t he? Risking his life for the books, the urgent objective of the protagonist against the advice of the heroine. Is Chelle really the heroine? Will I get the girl in the end?
The books screamed as something in one of them popped, unexpectedly sending a flare out almost across to another shelf. Reaching for a friend, trying to save a loved one, Runit thought. One of the flame-suits went back and gave it a quick look, then continued moving forward, spraying more Red-1953.
Runit just wanted it to be over. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to die. But he needed to save more than the books. He needed to honor his promise and keep Grandyn safe. He needed to get the girl, to see how the story ends. And maybe, most of all, Runit Happerman needed to save himself from the mediocrity his life had become.
As he watched so much creativity go up in red, chemical-induced flames, he found his fire. This was his story to tell. Runit was the last librarian. He had his book. He’d never been able to finish a novel because they didn’t contain enough truth. But this story, the burning books, the AOI, even Harper’s betrayal, connected it all. The pre-Banoff world that fascinated him, the power of books, and a man standing up to whatever comes, a man being brave and true.
Chapter 51
Deuce had watched via KEL as the books still in the library were incinerated. He’d seen it before, but this time two things were different.
This was the last library, and he’d managed to save the most important books.
He’d been meditating since watching the incineration, trying to control his urgently wandering mind. A chime interrupted his escape and a VM lit in his view. Deuce smiled at the image. Another victory.
Two minutes later, the cause of his celebration entered his private office: two of the people he loved most.
The old man looked around the dimly lit room as if he were on a space ship. “Why do you need all this gadgetry?”
“Thanks for coming, Uncle Cope,” Deuce said, hugging the old man and ignoring his question. At the same time he shot his son a look that said, I don’t know how you got him here, but you make me proud.
Twain gave his dad a slight bow, knowing he actually didn’t deserve much of the credit. His great uncle, the man he called “UC,” didn’t go anywhere he didn’t want to, nor do anything that didn’t have a purpose beyond what Twain might ever be able to understand.
“The promise of the Eysen was to do away with all of this,” Cope said.
“Perhaps,” Deuce replied. “I need to know more about the books. I need to know more about PAWN, about the revolution. Have you ever seen Munna?”
“You’re asking things above your frequency.”
“Am I?”
“I am not involved with the books, the revolution, or any of those things, so if you’re asking me about them, then you’re expecting a
nswers from another source.” Cope slowly rubbed his fingertips together. “I suspect you employ hundreds, maybe thousands of people who could gather information on such topics for you, but you need more, don’t you? More than the current status of these things. More than even the history of it. You want to know the future.”
“I need to know,” Deuce said.
“You do have much of my father in you,” he said, staring deeply into Deuce’s eyes. “There are things that can only be known if the questions are truer than the answers. If the seeker isn’t ready, all manner of chaos can ensue.”
“I’m ready,” Deuce said empathetically. “Cope, it’s happening. I’m ready, the world’s ready, and it wouldn’t matter even if we weren’t. The time is now.”
“Time is a funny thing.”
Deuce nodded.
“Forgetting,” Cope said quietly. “Forgetting. That’s where all this trouble began. People forgot where they came from. Took way more than they needed.”
“Uncle Cope, please.” Deuce had heard this talk before, many times, while walking in the redwoods. But with each breath he took he felt time running out. Even if this same old story, of humanity forgetting its true purpose and soul, was just a long introduction to the information he needed, he didn’t have the patience. “With all due respect.”
Cope nodded, then paused and took a deep breath. “There was a real Eysen once. The first one.” He looked at Deuce and Twain. “My father didn’t really invent it. He found it.”
“UC, are you kidding? Where? What do you mean Booker didn’t invent it?” Twain asked.
“Well he didn’t actually find it, a friend of his did. Ripley Gaines, an archaeologist. He dug the first Eysen out of a cliff in the forested mountains of Virginia.”
“What was it doing there? Where did it come from?” Twain asked.
Deuce remained silent.
“Someone had hidden it there, millions of years before.”
“No way!”
“Yes,” Cope said, smiling.
“How?” Twain asked.
“That conversation is for another day, but what you need to know is this: all of what has happened in these years since it was discovered was predicted. A man named Clastier wrote it down. His prophecies told of the Banoff.”
“Before it happened?”
“Nearly two centuries before.”
“UC, that means we had warning!” Twain said, agitated. “And they still couldn’t stop it?”
“Clastier’s work has always been suppressed by one group or another,” Cope said. “The Aylantik government is doing it again even as we speak.”
“Is that’s why they’re destroying the books?” Twain asked.
“Only in part,” Cope said. “Thousands of books concern them. They couldn’t possibly find the source of their fear, so they must destroy them all.”
“So what good is it if we hide all the books?” Twain asked. “We can’t show them to everyone. People won’t read thousands of books in order to glean some esoteric knowledge.”
“Material things are not important. This struggle has persisted for millennia. It often appears lost, but the wisdom is older than I am, older than time, and there will be a moment of return.”
“But it can be sooner, than later. We can influence it. We can,” Deuce said.
Twain was somewhat lost, but let his great-uncle and his father have an uninterrupted, silent, communicative stare.
Cope nodded. “There are eight important works which may still exist in that library. Clastier, and seven others.”
“Wow,” Twain said.
“That we can do something with. What are the titles?” Deuce asked.
“Long ago they would have been concealed in other books.”
“Wasn’t there a better way to hide them?” Twain asked.
“It’s difficult to understand, but this type of knowledge can’t just be taught and learned. It must be discovered and felt. There is also the matter of timing . . . one cannot understand something until they’re ready. Even an entire society is subject to this.”
“We must find those eight books.”
“It won’t be easy. Someone would have to be so familiar with books that they would notice even a slight variation in the text,” Cope said.
“Someone like a librarian?” Deuce asked rhetorically. The last librarian, he thought to himself.
“Booker was alive before the Banoff. Did he know it was going to happen?” Twain asked.
“Yes, my father knew,” Cope answered solemnly. “He did what he could. He got Clastier’s prophecies out, and even spoke about them, but history hasn’t done a good job of remembering what those times were really like. So much has been written about the Banoff period of plague and war, the final war, and the centuries that proceeded it, but that last decade, just prior to all that sadness and turmoil, has really been swept under the rug.”
“Why?” Twain asked.
Cope looked at Deuce.
“It was a lot like where we are now,” Deuce said. “We may have amazing technology and clean energy, disease under control, and so-called peace, but our paradise is on the edge of a great precipice. Much as theirs was then.”
“The vibration of the two times is very similar,” Cope added.
“History repeats itself,” Twain mused.
“How can we find those eight hidden books?” Deuce asked. “Please tell me all you know about them.”
Cope smiled and slipped a hand into his inside coat pocket, pulling out an old envelope, then handed it to Deuce. He looked at his uncle, confused, then looked at the address. In scrawled, faded black ink, it read, Spencer Lipton, II – February 2098
“Who is this from?” Deuce asked hopefully.
“My father,” Cope said. “Booker wrote that letter to you more than fifty years ago, and asked me to give it to you when this day came.”
Deuce tried to convince Cope to go to the island with Twain, but he said he’d been away from his trees long enough. A Flo-wing dropped him off on the edge of the redwoods and went on to take Twain to a boat, although calling one of Deuce’s many yachts simply a boat was something only the trillionaire did. He had watercrafts that might, one day, present real problems for the AOI if it ever came down to an all-out war.
Before he left, Cope tried to convince Deuce to take the peaceful path, but wouldn’t reveal what, if anything, he knew about the looming rebellion or its outcome. He’d only looked long and penetratingly at Deuce as he often did and said, “Time will tell you everything, and it won’t always be too late.”
Chapter 52
Chelle had told him where to meet them, but Runit hadn’t spoken to her since she left, since those hours on the stairs. Could that have been less than twenty-four hours ago? Does she know I’m alive? he wondered. He wasn’t so sure himself. When Krucks told him goodbye on the library steps, he expected bullets, a bomb, or something terrible. But nothing had come, only a couple of flashes on his INU. The first was from the county, reminding him the security codes would be changed Monday morning, and to be sure his personal property had been removed from the library. It had. And one from the Aylantik Office of Employment promising a new job for him within ten days. He found that one optimistic. Maybe they aren’t going to kill me.
He climbed into his LEV, a conservative, grey model that had just enough room to stretch out and sleep, which he planned to attempt during the long drive. He stated his desired destination, and the voice recognition system immediately announced the expected duration of his trip and the vehicle’s readiness, awaiting his command to begin.
He hesitated a moment, remembering novels he’d read. This is where the vehicle explodes. This is how they will kill me. He gave the command anyway, and nothing happened other than the LEV moving. Maybe this time is different.
Deuce listened to the BLAXER report, then quietly switched the VM off and let the INU project the far galaxies across the room. In seconds, the sensation of floating among the stars re
turned. He did his best thinking that way, fully reclined in a “creation chair,” controlled by touch to rotate, float, and incorporate full sensory perception adaption.
Chelle had bothered him from the start. Now he confirmed what his instincts had been telling him all along, and it left him disturbed.
She wasn’t just the connected widow of Bull Andreas, banker to the power-elite, and, Deuce believed, she sure wasn’t loyal to PAWN. Chelle Andreas had an agenda perhaps bigger than his own, and a tangled list of contacts that rivaled those of Blaise Cortez. There were many reasons to fear her involvement, the first being that much of this newly discovered information had come from the AOI data on her, and yet she had not been arrested.
Why? Someone with her past, her data, should have been watched twenty-four-seven, yet they didn’t seem to know her present location. How could that be? Why would the AOI allow such a radical revolutionary to live?
He’d have to have a talk with her, but not until Monday. It was risky to allow her to go unchecked until then, but even riskier to chance a meeting between the two of them before the library business was finished and the books were safe.
Chelle complicated things. Deuce had to get word to Runit about Booker’s letter. They needed to find the books that comprised the eight works, and to determine if they’d been among the 116,804 volumes smuggled out before the burn. But now, according to the plumber, Runit and Chelle were romantically involved. It made him even more suspicious of her, and it compromised the librarian. It also meant that Nelson could be a problem. Because he was her brother, his motives were now in question, but only the librarian could be expected to find the eight works in such a short time, and under such conditions.
Deuce’s zoom woke Runit as the librarian’s LEV was just south of Eugene.
“The books are gone,” Runit said, sitting up sleepily when he saw Deuce’s image, the windows still shading out the world.
