The Last Book in the Universe

by Rodman Philbrick

  The oldest Master rises from her transparent throne and thumps the platform with a long black stick.

  “Future Master Lanaya, to the charge of bringing normals into Eden, what say you?”

  Lanaya faces the hillside, as if she wants to respond to the people there, and not just to the Masters.

  “What say you?” repeats the old Master.

  Lanaya takes a deep breath and speaks in a voice that somehow carries to the far ends of Stadium. “I say if saving lives is against the rules, then the rules must be changed!”

  The oldest Master thumps her stick impatiently. “Explain,” she demands.

  “They saved my life, so I helped save one of theirs.”

  “Tell your entire story, child,” the old Master urges. “Don’t make us drag it out of you piecemeal.”

  Lanaya bows to the old woman. “My thanks to you, Master Ryla. I’m aware that you’ve taken a special interest in me, since I will one day sit where you sit, and listen as you have listened. I only hope I can do as good a job as you have done.”

  “Don’t bother trying to charm me, child,” snaps the ancient proov. “I’m too old to be charmed, even by one so charming and persuasive as yourself. So get on with it.”

  Lanaya grins and bows again. “My apologies. Let me begin by telling you — all of you” — she says, raising her hand to the gathered proovs — “that many times I have crossed the Zone and journeyed into the Urb. Sometimes to trade, as some of you have also done, but more often to study the people who live there. The unimproved. The human beings we so contemptuously refer to as ‘normals.’”

  From the crowd come murmurs of comment and exclamation. I can see many of them shaking their heads, frowning in disapproval.

  “Such journeys are, as all of us know, discouraged, and for good reason,” Lanaya admits. “There are many dangers in the Urb. Violence, disease, toxic smog. But the greatest danger is ignorance. I speak not only of the ignorance of the normals, but of our own ignorance. We despise the very idea of being ‘normal,’ and yet those who are normal do not despise us for our apparent ‘perfection.’”

  She pauses, as if she wants to let that sink in, but I don’t see many of the proovs nodding in agreement.

  “Lately there are new dangers in the Urb,” she continues, pacing about the stage. “In some of the latches the leaders have stopped leading. Anarchy reigns. Mobs run wild, burning and looting. And why have the leaders failed? Because we have supplied them with brain probes!”

  Master Ryla bangs her stick. “Do you have proof of this treachery?” she demands, her ancient eyes flashing.

  “I do,” Lanaya says. “Mindprobes have long been forbidden in Eden, because we know the dangers. And yet there are those who encourage the spread of probing in the Urb. At first I didn’t know why this should be. And then the truth of it was explained to me by one of the normals you see before you.”

  She points to Ryter. He bows his head slightly.

  “That old man may not have benefited from genetic improvement, but he knows what he knows. He knows there are those in Eden who wish to see the normals destroyed. And what better way than to encourage them to destroy themselves with brain-rotting mindprobes?”

  Many of those on the hillside rise to their feet. Some of them are shouting, although I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

  Again, Ryla thumps her black stick. All fall silent.

  “We will investigate,” she says, in a voice as clear as an old, true bell. “If what you say is true, we will take appropriate action. But what has this to do with bringing normals into Eden? What has this to do with saving your life, and you saving one of theirs?”

  Lanaya explains about her takvee getting surrounded when she was trying to pass out edibles to the starving mob. She tells how Ryter risked his own life to distract the mob while she got away. Then she points to me. “And this normal, a boy with no parents, a boy shunned even by the lowest of the low, this boy risked his life not only to save me, but to save his sister, who was dying. How could I refuse to help when I knew she might be saved if only I could bring her here?”

  There are a few murmurs of agreement from the assembled proovs, but not many.

  “As you can see, she was easily cured by our technology. We have the means to cure almost all of the diseases that plague the Urb, and yet we don’t bother trying! We let them sicken and die. We let them starve; we let their latches burn. Is that right? Is that proper? I say no! I say we must remember that the people we call ‘normal’ are not so different from ourselves!”

  Heckling comes from the crowd on the hill. Lanaya has gone too far. “Look at them!” someone cries. “They’re ugly! They’re hideous! They’re stupid! They’re normal!”

  Lanaya waits until the shouting dies down and then raises her hand, pointing to her own beautiful face. “Is this how we judge ourselves? By our pretty faces? By perfect noses? Delicate ears? Lustrous hair? Is that why the First Engineers risked their lives to improve our chances of survival?”

  More shouting from the crowd. “Don’t forget brains, Lanaya! We’re smarter, too!”

  Lanaya smiles to herself, as if that’s exactly the comment she hoped to inspire. “Smarter? Is that what makes us proovs?”

  “YES!” they shout. “YES!”

  Ryla thumps her black stick. “Let her speak!” she roars.

  Lanaya makes a bow of thanks to the old Master. “We come to the subject of intelligence,” she says, “because all of us believe we’re smarter than any normal. That makes it easier for us to pretend they’re not really human, like us. But what if I told you that a normal, a girl of twelve, learned the game of chess in less than an hour, and then beat one of the top-rated players in Eden?”

  The sounds coming from Stadium mean that no one believes her. They think it impossible that a girl from the Urb could be smarter than a man born in Eden.

  “Think about it, people!” Lanaya shouts, making herself heard above the roar of disbelief. “Where do we come from? Our genetic coding is the same! We’re all human beings! We all start from the same place, the children of the Urb! And some of the Urb children don’t need any improvement! They’re already smart! Already intelligent! Already gifted! If nothing else, they have the gift of courage!”

  “NO!” the crowd roars. “NO!”

  “Yes!” Lanaya shouts, raising her fists. Then she points at me and Bean. “Yes! Let these young normals be raised in Eden, with all of our advantages, and they’ll do more than beat us at chess! They’ll teach us what it truly is to be human! Because they have already experienced something none of you have: They risked everything simply to go on living!”

  “NO!” the crowd roars. “NO!”

  “Yes! Yes!” Lanaya shouts. She points at Ryter. “See this old man? He’s lived but half as long as some of you, and yet he has more courage, more imagination than any of you! He must have, simply to survive! Let him teach us! Let him tell us his stories! Let him write that the children of Eden have opened the gates to paradise!”

  The crowd roars back, drowning her out. The old Master thumps her black stick. A hush of silence finally descends upon Stadium. “Stay if you agree!” Ryla commands. “Leave if you don’t.”

  Proovs by the thousands stream off of the hillside, leaving it green and empty.

  Lanaya stares at the vanishing crowds as if she can’t believe her own eyes. “Masters,” she finally calls out in a much smaller voice. “What say you?”

  The Masters quietly confer among themselves for many minutes. Once or twice they look over at the three of us, but their perfect faces give nothing away.

  When they are done, Ryla thumps her stick three times and then slowly walks to the front of the platform. “Lanaya, you spoke well,” she says. “When you are a Master, things may change. But for now the rule must stand. Eden shall be Eden. The Masters have spoken.”

  Then she turns her back and walks away.

  FIVE HOURS LATER, me and Ryter are back in the s
tacks, and the idea of Eden is already like a dream that starts fading the instant you wake up.

  The way it went down, we never even had a chance to thank Lanaya for all she did, for helping to save Bean and everything. Because as soon as the old Master finished thumping her stick, the enforcers shoved us into a takvee and, before you could say “proovs always win,” we were rolling through the Zone.

  First stop was Bean’s latch, and they never even let me out to say good-bye. All Bean had time for was a quick kiss on my cheek and a whispered promise: “I’ll see you again even if I have to walk the Pipe myself.” Then she was gone and the takvee was already accelerating, heading back into the Zone. From there we crossed into Billy Bizmo’s latch, and the fancy proov-built takvee delivered us right to the stackbox where it all started.

  “Home sweet home!” Ryter exclaims when he sees the rotten little cubicle where I ripped him off the first time. The weird thing is, he’s not kidding; he really is happy to be back in his old stackbox.

  “Mind you, I could have lived my final days in Eden, living the life of luxury, and the smile never would have left my face. But who would finish my book?” he says. “Huh? What’s to write about if life is perfect? If you spend all of your time lazing about and dangling your old feet in cool streams of clean water? Writers need a challenge. They need to struggle. They need to fight.”

  He’s looking over at where I’m crouched, back against the wall, chin on my knees. The little stackbox is almost empty, everything gone but the old crate he used for a desk and the thick pile of loose paper he calls a “book.” The place smells old, and I hate it. The whole Urb smells old and used up, and I hate that, too.

  Ryter sees what I’m thinking, and sinks creakily down beside me. He strokes his scraggly white beard thoughtfully and then goes, “Don’t let the darkness eat you up, son. Think what you accomplished. You wanted to save your sister, and you did. Everything else was extra. Think of it as an experience you’ll never forget. Why, you’ve seen blue sky and green grass. And that blue sky is inside your mind, boy! It’s there forever! Can’t be erased!”

  I groan and bury my face in my heads. “Yeah?” I mutter. “What if I want to forget everything? And what does it matter if I remember?”

  “What does it matter?” he asks, sounding astonished. “Are you zoomed, boy?”

  “It just seems so unfair.”

  “Let me remind you. Bean is alive. Little Face is saved. Is that unfair?” he demands. “Is it?”

  “No.”

  “Then get used to it. You must remember the past because it brings you here, to the right now, today, this moment, and from here you can look to the future. A possible future I never even imagined until we went on our great adventure. I won’t get a chance to see that future, but you will.”

  “You’re not that old,” I say. “So shut up about dying, okay?”

  Ryter puts his withered hand on my shoulder and says, very quietly, “It’s not old age that’s going to kill me, son.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sighs, and you can tell he’s been thinking about this for a while. “Look,” he says, trying to explain, “when things go wrong, outsiders get blamed, and writers tend to be outsiders. That was true in the backtimes and it’s true now, when I’m the only writer left in the world.”

  I look over at him. For some reason there’s a lump in my throat. “But why? Why should anybody care about an old pile of papers? If nobody reads, why should they care what you write?”

  He shrugs. “I guess it’s better than not caring,” he says. “I don’t have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense out of why people do what they do.”

  “Yeah? Well, I wish I’d never been born.”

  “Really?” he asks, like he wants to know. “Why is that?”

  “’Cause Billy Bizmo is going to make me wish I’d never been born, that’s why. Because I broke his stupid rules.”

  “Ah,” Ryter says. He leans in closer and his voice is old and soft and full of the things he knows. “You’ve nothing to fear from Billy Bizmo, son. You never did.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

  He looks at me curiously. “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

  “Figured out what?”

  “Why he’s taken a special interest in you.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. It doesn’t make any sense. Billy doesn’t care any more about me than he does about any of the other things he owns. Luxury items, mindprobes, weapons, warriors, Spaz boy, we’re all the same. We just belong to him, like everything else in his latch.

  “Rest easy,” Ryter suggests. “Things will look better in the morning.”

  Yeah, right. Kay, my former foster mom, she used to say the same thing. It was stupid then and it’s stupid now. Things never look better in the morning. How could they, when nothing ever changes? But I’m tired of thinking, tired of trying not to remember, and pretty soon I drift off, and then I’m falling asleep, kind of drifting down into the darkness.

  “Easy,” an old voice whispers. “Easy.”

  When I wake up hours later, there’s a roaring inside the dark.

  Jetbike engines, coming this way. And I know in my heart they’re coming for us.

  THE LATCH IS BURNING. From high atop the stackboxes we can see the fireglow lighting up clouds of smoke along the dark horizon. The clouds look like angry mouths biting holes in the night.

  The jetbikes roar like an acid-rain storm, coming closer and closer. There’s another sound, too, a kind of high-pitched moaning that follows the jetbikes. Ooohhh … oooohhh … like an evil wind. A furious wind.

  Standing beside me, Ryter says, “‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’” Then he grunts to himself, as if remembering something important. “That’s from a poem,” he explains. “Yeats. The poet himself is long forgotten, but some of his lines live on. Thought I knew what it meant, all these years, but I had it wrong. Now I know.”

  “We’d better run,” I tell him urgently. “They’re coming this way.”

  “Of course they’re coming this way,” he says, as if speaking to himself.

  The night blazes in his sky-gray eyes. I tug at his sleeve. “Come on!”

  Gently he frees himself from my grasp. “Ssssh,” he says. “There’s nothing to fear.”

  “What are you talking about?” I plead.

  “‘Nothing to fear but fear itself,’” he says. “That’s from another poem, I think. Or was it a speech? Can’t recall.”

  “Ryter, we’ve got to get out of here right now!”

  When he turns to me, his face looks peaceful and oddly young. “Listen to me, son. My running days are over. And if I did run away, others would be hurt.”

  “You’re zoomed!” I cry. “Come on, you stupid old geez! We can run for the Pipe! They’ll never find us. Let ’em burn the whole latch, what do we care! We’ll just keep running and running! We’ll have lots more adventures and you can write them down in your book!”

  “Ssshh,” Ryter says. “Hush.”

  Suddenly the jetbikes swarm into the stackboxes, splitting the air with their furious roaring. Headlights scorch the sky like laser beams, and somewhere close by a baby starts to cry.

  This is the end, I’m thinking, the end the end.

  Must be a hundred jetbikes swarming fast and deadly. The jetbikers howl, firing splat guns in the air as the mob follows them into the stackboxes. A mob like we saw in Mongo’s latch. More animal than human. Shrieking and howling, ripping apart anything they can get their hands on.

  They see Ryter standing high on the stackboxes, and they shriek his name. “WHEEL HIM! WHEEL HIM!”

  No, I’m thinking, no. But there’s nothing I can do, no way to stop the furious, mindless wave that breaks over the stackboxes. A wave of fists and snapping teeth and empty eyes.

  “Save my pages!” Ryter
yells to me as the hands grab hold and suck him down into the mob.

  I try to save them, I do. In the light-exploded darkness I crawl into his stackbox on my knees and gather up the pages of his book. Trying to stuff them under my shirt, close to my heart. But there are so many pages that some get loose and drift away like the falling leaves of Eden.

  Empty faces glitter with glee, finding my fear. Snatching pages out of the air. Tearing the pages to pieces. Stuffing the pieces in their bloody mouths as they scream, “WHEEL! WHEEL! WHEEL!” and then hands rip open my shirt and seize the rest of Ryter’s book, feeding pages to the fire that follows them everywhere.

  The pages burn and burn and burn.

  “No!” I’m screaming. “Don’t!” but they’re not listening. They can’t listen. They don’t know how.

  Hands grab me and carry me away and throw me to the ground. I’m spitting out dirt and trying to get my breath when someone speaks my name.

  “Spaz boy! Is that you?”

  When I roll over on my back, I’m looking up at Billy Bizmo. He’s got a chetty blade in one hand and a splat gun in the other, and his eyes are alive with the fire.

  “Stop them!” I beg him. “He’s just an old man!”

  Billy uses his chetty to clear a space. The mob backs off a few feet and he’s able to get to me. At first I think he’s going to cut me with the chetty, but that’s not it. He wants to tell me something.

  “Nothing I can do, Spaz boy. Those proov enforcers that brought you back? They deactivated all the probes.”

  “What?” I gasp.

  “Ruined the whole deal. Mindprobes don’t work anymore. You can still stick the needle in your brain, but nothing happens.”

  Now I get it, why the latch is burning, why the jetbikes have come. Because the probes have been destroyed and somebody has to take the blame. We were with the proovs, so it must be our fault.

  “WHEEL!” the mob shrieks. “WHEEL!”

  They’ve tied a rope around the old man’s waist. He’s not struggling or anything, his eyes look like he’s already a long ways from here. Someplace clean and peaceful and quiet. Someplace where the sky is blue.