by C. A. Pack
A colleague berated him. “How can you ask such a ridiculous question? You know very well it’s 1943.”
Johanna locked eyes with Oppenheimer and imperceptibly shook her head. “This is the twenty-first century,” she said quietly.
Oppenheimer nodded. “Then there is nothing we can do for you.” He paused. “There must be so much to observe outside these walls. I don’t suppose you would take us on a tour?”
“What a wonderful idea,” one of the scientists exclaimed. “And I would love the opportunity to explore this library.” He swung his arms in a wide arc to illustrate the breadth of what he wished to take in. As he twirled around, his foot got tangled in the carpet and he fell into the blue orb. He immediately disappeared.
“Where did he go?” The missing man’s colleagues looked around.
“This device is obviously much more dangerous than it appears!” the mathematician claimed.
“We must commence an immediate search,” Oppenheimer demanded.
“That’s out of the question,” Johanna replied, still holding the book that had produced him and his colleagues. She closed it, and the group disappeared.
Jackson tugged on the book. “Why did you do that? We need their help to find out what happened to that guy.”
Johanna refused to let go. “Hopefully, he’s now back in his own time period, and has been reunited with the others.”
“What if he isn’t there? What if his disappearance changes history?”
Johanna pulled the book away from Jackson and returned it to the upper level. She brought down a later book about the Manhattan Project and began searching through pictures of the team members. She found the missing scientist in a picture taken after the gadget—a code name for the A-bomb—had been tested near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
“Look. That’s him.” She pointed at the picture. “I don’t know what happened to him, but his disappearance could not have been permanent. If it were, all these books would have changed automatically, and he wouldn’t be in this picture.”
Jackson ran his hands through his hair, pushing it straight back off his forehead. “So now what?” He picked up a pencil and shook it rapidly between his thumb and his index finger, watching the movement. He lost his grasp and the pencil flew into the orb, but instead of disappearing like the scientist, it ricocheted off the force field at an accelerated rate of speed. The mustard-yellow Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil pierced the spine of a 1773 Samuel Johnson English Dictionary, embedding itself between the signatures.
Johanna walked over and inspected the damage as she struggled to control her anger over her protégé’s careless behavior.
Jackson sensed he was in trouble. His thoughts all tumbled out at once. “Johanna, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what I was doing. Is the book badly damaged? Do you want to dock my pay so you can buy the materials to fix it? You can, you know.” His tone sounded earnest.
Johanna inhaled sharply. “Do you realize how lucky we are that this pencil only pierced a book? What if it had careened in a different direction, and embedded itself in my eye? Or your heart?”
The sixteen-year-old paled. “I didn’t know that might happen. How could I? I didn’t expect to lose my grip on the pencil.”
“Whatever that thing is”—she tilted her head toward the orb—“it’s very dynamic.” Her shoulders slumped and her voice quieted. “I think we have to call in the authorities.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Jackson grabbed the phone off the information desk.
She snatched it away from him. “But first, we have to move as many of these books as possible into storage.” She placed the phone back on the desk. “I think we need to buy a couple hundred regular books for the shelves down here, so if someone happens to open one, nothing will pop out.”
“Isn’t that going to take a lot of time and money?”
“I cashed in the last doubloon from your impromptu party with the pirates of Treasure Island and put the money into the library account. I can use that to pay for the books. Maybe we can find a used-book store that will sell us their contents at a good price.”
“What if we can’t?”
She sighed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Jackson’s childhood came straight out of a fairy tale, not the sanitized retelling of a children’s story with a happily-ever-after ending, but an older, medieval fairy tale with dark tendencies and, usually, an unhappy conclusion. The source of Jackson’s misery was his father.
Sean Roth should never have married—he wasn’t faithful, he drank too much, and he hated little children. It didn’t take him long to tire of Naimh Fitzpatrick, a girl he had impregnated at the age of sixteen. His lack of interest, however, hadn’t stopped him from getting her pregnant again and again.
Somewhere along the way, he actually put a ring on Naimh’s finger, but you would never know it by the way Sean lived his life. The more his babies cried, the less time he spent at home. The less time he spent at home, the more money he gambled away. Needless to say, the family lived in squalor. After years of an empty marriage, Sean abandoned his wife and three kids, leaving them with a pile of bills, no income or insurance, and a house that was falling apart.
His eldest son, Jackson, fully expected Sean to return, but after a year had gone by without one word from his father, the teen’s hope was replaced by anger. He found himself yelling at his mother and brother as if it were their fault, and then punching holes in the wall to release some of his rage, because he knew they weren’t to blame. Only his little sister escaped his wrath. His fury soon gave way to depression, and Jackson couldn’t help crying whenever he was alone. Eventually, he accepted the fact that his father was never coming back. Somehow, he managed to pull himself together and get a part-time job at the Library of Illumination, so he could contribute a little money to the family coffers.
Even though he worked at the library, Jackson knew he could never borrow its enchanted books. He loved reading science-fiction and fantasy novels, but could not afford to buy new ones. That forced him to find used-book stores so he could feed his habit for spaceships and zombies. In his estimation, Bebe’s Bibliothèque on High Street was the best place to get a lot of books for a little money, and he shared his insight with Johanna. “I promise you, we can get a good deal there.”
“Okay. I’ll call them,” she replied. “In the meantime, could you lock the Gutenberg Bible in the display case? We don’t need another appearance by Adam and Eve.”
“Did they look a little like space aliens to you?”
Johanna didn’t answer. She just shook her head and walked away. She had enough on her mind without having to think about the human race being the spawn of E.T.
The owners of Bebe’s Bibliothèque agreed to sell the library a thousand used books for $1,000 and arranged to deliver them the following morning. Johanna knew they would send her their shabbiest hardcovers, but that would be fine for her purposes. She had also ordered several cases of new books about the Gutenberg Bible for the shelves immediately surrounding the display case. They would be the first things anyone walking into the library would see, and since they were there to complement a special exhibit, no one would question why all the central stacks were filled with similar titles. If Johanna and Jackson stocked the remaining shelves only half to three-quarters full, the used books would go a long way.
She refused to contact the authorities until they had everything in place, and whether that call would be made to the police or the FBI, she did not yet know.
The pair spent the rest of the day and most of the evening moving books from the main level into the storage room in the basement.
“What do you call this thing again?” Jackson slid a pile of books into a square cupboard on a pulley system.
“A dumbwaiter.”
“I love that.”
“You would.”
“Why didn’t they just call it a mini-elevator?”
“Because it was created to
move food from basement kitchens to upper-level dining rooms like a waiter would do, but a dumbwaiter never complains because it can’t speak. I’m hoping you’ll follow its example.”
He made a face. “Right.”
The sun had nearly set by the time Jackson got home. He still had a lot of pent-up energy, so he invited his brother, Chris, to shoot hoops.
Chris was a year younger than Jackson, but almost as tall, and just as athletic. He sensed that something bothered his older brother by the way Jackson slam-dunked the ball. “Hey, Jax, what are you trying to do, bust the rim?”
Jackson dribbled the ball for a moment, and then tossed it across the driveway.
Chris lunged for it. “Giving up so soon? I guess my game’s too much for you.”
The older teen walked to the far side of the garage and sank down on the grass.
“It’s Johanna, isn’t it?” Chris guessed. “She’s not responding to your wit and charm, is she?”
Jackson smirked at his brother but shook his head. “I wish it were only that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Ohhh ... the secret world of the library,” Chris mocked him. “What happened? Did her boyfriend show up?”
Jackson sighed. “I can’t tell you.”
“Okay. Hold it in till you explode.”
Jackson leapt to his feet and shoulder-rammed his brother, knocking him off balance.
“What—is—your—problem?” Chris demanded.
“You’ve got to promise not to tell anybody.”
“I promise.”
“No, Chris, really, really promise—cross your heart and hope to die promise.”
“What have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Do you promise?”
“I already said I promise.”
Jackson took a deep breath before blurting, “There’s some kind of thing in the library, and nobody knows what it is.”
“You mean like a giant prehistoric turd?”
“You’re not being serious.”
“Or like a dumpster that’s really a doomsday device?”
Jackson froze.
“Wait. You mean I’m right?”
Jackson pushed his brother down onto the grass. “Keep your voice down. We don’t want to start a panic.”
“A panic. If there’s a bomb in the library, don’t you think people should, you know, get out of town?”
“Shut up!” Jackson whispered fiercely. “It’s not that easy. We don’t really know what it is, or where it came from. Johanna is going to call someone tomorrow to come take a look.”
“And what if it explodes tonight?” Chris demanded.
“Then I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I want to see it.”
“No.”
“I have a right to see what’s going to bring my short, precious life to an end before I ever get a chance to squeeze Brittany Chelvie’s boobs.”
“Forget it. If that’s all that’s bothering you, go to Brittany’s house right now and ask her to come out and play.”
“You think that would work?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the bomb?”
“Forget I even mentioned it.”
“No way. How am I supposed to forget something like that?”
“Go call Brittany and invite her over to study.”
“That might work, if I don’t die first.”
They heard the screen door on their house scrape open and their sister Ava call out, “Jackson, Chris, Mom says it’s time to come inside.”
“Remember,” Jackson warned Chris, “you can’t tell anybody.”
Jackson arrived at the library the following morning at the same time as the shipment of used books. He directed the truck to the back alley and helped the driver carry in piles of old hardcovers.
The temperature had already risen to the upper eighties, and the humidity was just as high. Sweat dripped from the driver’s face, which had turned bright red after a few trips down the alley. Jackson looked only slightly better. Johanna had asked them to stack all the boxes just inside the back door—not to lighten their load in the heat but to prevent the driver from seeing the pulsating blue orb. She had extended the pull-up screens for the Gutenberg Bible exhibit to block any view of the mysterious sphere, but off in the corners, telltale flashes of blue light reflected off the polished wood.
When he finally brought in the last book, the driver handed Johanna an invoice. She handed him a check and a tip and pushed him out the door.
Jackson walked the driver back to his truck. After the pawnbroker incident, a new lock had been installed on the back gate to prevent people from entering through the alley, and it was Jackson’s responsibility to make sure it remained secured at all times. Johanna had given him a key to the gate so he could leave his bike behind the building, but she wouldn’t give him a key to the back door, citing security issues.
He kicked a piece of trash lying in the alley. If she trusted him enough to make sure the back gate was locked, why didn’t she trust him enough to give him a key to the back door? It meant he always had to borrow her key, or bang on the door for her to let him in.
Not that it mattered. A few weeks ago he had forgotten to return the key to her, and when he realized he had it in his possession, he had a copy made—in case of an emergency. He needed to tell Johanna he had it, but now, with the orb pulsating in the library, he was afraid to. Still, he knew he had to come clean soon if he wanted her to trust him.
—LOI—
3
Johanna untied a bundle of used books. They were worn and dog-eared, but the titles encompassed a good selection of politics, travel, and art, as well as several hundred novels and anthologies covering different genres. She and Jackson spent the rest of the day shelving them all.
“What’s this? Jackson asked, picking up a book that sat by itself on a bottom shelf. A thick layer of dust obscured the cover. “Did you leave this book down here?”
“What book?”
He opened the book about a third of the way through to see what it was about. Dracula suddenly loomed over him, blood dripping from his mouth. “Uhhh ...!” Jackson’s scream did not get past his throat.
Dracula moved in for the kill. The teen managed to slam the book shut just as the vampire’s teeth made contact with his skin.
“What are you doing?” Johanna poked her head around the corner of the shelf and spotted the blood on Jackson’s neck. She looked down and recognized the volume of Dracula by Bram Stoker and winced. “We must have missed that one. Are you all right?”
Jackson swiped at his neck.
“Come with me.” Johanna led him to the information desk. She took out a first-aid kit and cleaned away the blood with an antiseptic wipe.
“Am I ...?”
“It’s just a surface wound.” She wrapped the bloody wipe in a tissue and threw it in the wastebasket. “You’re going to live ... but not forever.”
Jackson sighed with relief. “You know, when my mother used to patch me up, she would kiss it to make it better.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned at her.
“If you got hurt working for Larry at Once A-Pawn A Time, would you ask him to kiss it to make it better?”
“You really know how to hurt me.”
Johanna laughed. She leaned in and lightly kissed Jackson’s neck.
He could feel the hairs along his nape tingle.
“All better?” she asked.
He merely nodded, too stunned to answer.
They ran out of books before reaching the rear stacks, so Johanna taped signs across the shelves that read, “Maintenance Required,” hoping the signs would be enough to keep authorities from questioning why shelves were empty.
The evening shadows lengthened, making the pulsating light from the orb appear more pronounced. Johanna said a silent prayer that the object’s purpose would remain a mystery for at least a few more days, to give th
em time to deal with it.
The next morning, she waited for Jackson to arrive before calling the authorities. She wanted to make sure they had their stories straight, and instructed Jackson to say, “I don’t really remember, you’d better ask Johanna,” if questioned about anything they hadn’t gone over. Finally, she took a deep breath and called police.
The teens propped open the library’s front door and waited for cops to arrive. Johanna sighed in relief when she realized the responding officers were not the same ones who had handled the previous call from the library. She showed them the device, and they stood and stared at it for several minutes, before asking the inevitable, “What is it?”
Before Johanna could say a word, Jackson jumped in. “It’s pulsating, you know, which made us think it might be a bomb. That’s why we called you.”
“It’s a bomb?”
Johanna took control of the conversation. “We don’t know that it’s a bomb, but since we have no other ideas about what it could be, we thought it best to let you handle it.”
“Where did you get it?”
“We were in a meeting in the back. It wasn’t here before the meeting. It just—kind of appeared.”
“This morning?”
“Uh ... Tuesday morning.”
“You waited more than twenty-four hours to call us?”
“Because we were busy trying to figure out a logical explanation for it being here. We didn’t want to bother you needlessly,” she said, to placate them. “But after we exhausted all possibilities, we called you.”
One of the officers tried touching the sphere, to ill effect. “It’s got something weird going on with it. Like one of those old novelty handshake buzzers that kids used to buy to zap their friends.”
The other officer reached for the orb, with the same result. “I’d better call the precinct.”
While he spoke on the phone, his partner started inspecting the books nearest him. “I’m surprised places like this exist. Isn’t everyone reading e-books nowadays?”
