The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  Instead, the floor disappeared underneath him.

  He fell – screamed.

  He fell down the hole. Air rushed at his face. It was warm, and somewhat dank.

  He fell – and fell – and hit a curve. His body didn't stop. He was in some sort of half-pipe, a sort of slide, and accelerating fast, going down – down – down.

  His journey was abruptly ended, and his fall was broken (rather painfully) by a heap of some sort: soft, and yet with many painful edges.

  He lay there for a moment, and moaned quietly to himself. This is absolutely the last time! he thought.

  He stirred, carefully. Stood up. Nothing broken. Where was he?

  Though it was dark, when he blinked light seemed to rush to his eyes, as if his new senses collated what minute sources of illumination they could find and greatly magnified them. It made his eyes tear up, but only momentarily. He blinked and looked at where he had fallen.

  He had landed in a massive heap of books.

  It was, he thought, more than a heap. It was a mound, a hill, a veritable mountain of books. He tried to move and lost his balance and, giving in, simply slid down the hill, surfing over leather- and morocco- and buckrambound boards, until at last he reached the bottom.

  He looked around him in awe. He had come here seeking a dangerous enemy, and yet… This place might have been paradise, a treasure trove far greater than any to be found in a pirate yarn.

  Everywhere he looked there were books.

  They rose into the air in majestic columns, stacks and stacks of them forming a maze that seemed to stretch to forever; the stacks rose high into the air and disappeared towards the unseen ceiling. The air had the overwhelming smell of old books, of polished leather and yellowing leaves, like the smell of a bookshop or a public library magnified a thousand-fold.

  Orphan stared about him; he forgot the Bookman, forgot the pain of the fall, forgot everything. He wanted to run through the stacks, pick at the books, sample them one after the other, climb the stacks to their highest reaches and see what treasures were hidden there.

  This place can't exist, he thought. Am I hallucinating?

  He approached the nearest stack of books. It towered over him, disappeared above his head. This isn't right, he thought.

  And then he saw it.

  There was a small, official-looking note attached to the side of the stack in the green metal of the lizards. It said: BODLEIAN LIBRARY. UNDERGROUND STACK 228. AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  He stared at it. Of course, he had heard the rumours… It was said nearly every book in the English language was held at the Bodleian, and books in many other languages besides. It was said that each year, the collection grew by more than one hundred thousand books and an equal number of periodicals, and that these volumes expanded the shelving requirements by about two miles annually. Two miles a year! How big was the place?

  What had Coleridge written of the Bodleian? "Through caverns measureless to man…" Orphan said quietly, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. This was the Bookman's hideaway?

  Underneath the notice, in smaller letters, something else was written. Orphan peered at it and read it aloud. It was an oath:

  I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; nor to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library;

  and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

  He thought of the books he had crashed into and froze. I should go back, he thought frantically. Tidy them. Make sure they're fine. Fire. I don't have any matches. Good.

  He turned away at last, reluctantly. He had to find the Bookman.

  He walked through the stacks. Everywhere he looked books towered into the air, the volumes seeming to whisper to him as he walked.

  No. The whispering was real, he thought. And worse: things moved in the corners of his eyes, shadows leaping away from his sight. The egg seemed to grow hot against his chest and he reached for it and took it out. Once he held it in his hand the phenomenon grew worse: the whispers seemed to resolve themselves into words, almost comprehensible, the murmur of a crowd of people each carrying on an individual conversation.

  There!

  Something moved, too fast for him to notice details, only a vague shape skulking behind a stack of books. For the first time he felt fear. Things lived down here. For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers. Then the egg glowed brightly in his hand and he felt it awakening, a sort of reaching out, a hesitant seeking, and in a part of his mind a direction took shape.

  He followed it.

  In the eerie half-light he could see the stacks spreading away from him until they disappeared in immeasurable distance, forming a pattern too complex for him to understand, shapes of stars and pentagrams, mapped islands in a vast ocean. He navigated through this landscape of old paper, the direction in his head growing stronger as he followed it. The whispering grew. He didn't know if it were real, or only in his head. The shadows leaped and bounced and skulked around him, following him, always at the edge of sight. He felt a nervousness overcome him, weakening his hands. For a moment he almost dropped the egg.

  A real, a definitely real sound filled the air, and he froze.

  It was a very human scream.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Soul of the New Machine

  In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee,

  He had softly and suddenly vanished away – For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

  – Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark"

  He came running into a clearing in the book-fields. There was real light here, and for a moment it hurt his eyes. It came from those globes which he had last seen in the caverns of Caliban's Island, and before – in the Bookman's lair under Charing Cross Road.

  Standing frozen in a pool of light, one hand reaching before him, the rictus of a scream on his face, was his other.

  Before him stood the Bookman.

  The shape he had only seen through shadow before was now entirely visible to him, and he shuddered as he looked on it, and took a step back, though he didn't know it.

  A monster stood there, alien and incomprehensible: its body was made of the multiple segments of a giant invertebrate, a caterpillar-like creature with multifaceted eyes that stared all around them on long stalks that emerged from its head. But that wasn't what scared him: for, watching the Bookman under the lights, Orphan realised something that had never occurred to him before.

  The Bookman was old. And time had not been kind to it.

  The segments of the body were the colours of earth and rotting vegetation: at places, a green pus oozed out of open sores. There were scars on that body, gashes made as if by some giant mechanical lizard, and the Bookman's small, many legs seemed barely able to hold his massive girth.

  "Where is it?" the Bookman roared. "Where–"

  The eye-stalks turned. The eyes fastened on Orphan and the wide, horizontal mouth opened.

  The Bookman screamed.

  The ground shook. In the distance, there was the sound of an avalanche, as of thousands of books tumbling down. The Bookman screamed anger, and the world around him cowered, the shadows hiding, their murmuring ceasing abruptly.

  "You!"

  Orphan held the Binder's Translation before him. He felt like a child on the beach, trying to protect himself from a monster with only a sea-star in his hand. The eye-stalks wavered, bent towards him. The Bookman moved sinuously, a cross between a worm and a snake.

  "Give it to me!"

  A new realisation came to Orphan then, the shock of it cold in his mind.

  The Bookman was dying.

  Orphan stared at him. The Translation shone, sicklygreen, in his hand.

 
The Bookman stopped.

  "Orphan."

  And now he could see the shadows gathering. They were not shadows, he realised, but men and women, a multitude of them, gathering silently around the ring of light. He looked at their faces.

  Wan and sickly, they wore no expression but for a haunting sadness that collected in their eyes. They were the faces of the dead.

  "You failed," the Bookman said. His voice was soft now, the sound of a leaf being turned in a book. "You failed. I thought it was him – tricked! Tricked!" Orphan took another step back. The Bookman didn't move. He spoke softly still, but somehow it was more frightening than his shout. "They will come now. Because of you. They will come, and they will destroy this world."

  Orphan inched his head in reply. He felt lightheaded. "Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps. Do you hate them for being your masters?"

  The Bookman's eyes, as large as fists, blinked on their stalks. "They are not my masters."

  "But they were," Orphan said, surprising himself with his own even tone. "And I think, through your hatred of them, your fear, they still are."

  "Enough!" the Bookman said, and the shades fled again, disappeared into the dark corners. "Give me this… this thing."

  "You killed my mother."

  The Bookman's head shook, but no words came.

  "You used me. You planned my course even before I was born. For what? For revenge? You have brought the world to the edge of chaos all by yourself. It didn't take a threat from outer space for that. Only you."

  "Only you," the Bookman said, and he chuckled. He was, Orphan thought, quite insane.

  "I want Lucy," he said. He tried to avoid looking at himself, his other's frozen face.

  "I should simply kill you," the Bookman said.

  Orphan looked at the egg in his hand. The Translation. The Bookman didn't move.

  It was a fragile thing, Orphan thought. He tightened his fingers around the egg and felt its material give. I could break it, he thought. I don't even know what it really does. What it really is. "Go ahead," he said.

  The Bookman didn't move. His eyes seemed transfixed on the egg. Behind him, his automatons appeared, facing Orphan. At first two, then four, then eight; sixteen; a wave of them, blank-faced, a tide that grew and grew yet stopped, hovering on the edge of breaking, behind the Bookman.

  "What did you do to…" He stared at his frozen self. "To him?"

  "The Binder should have never given his gift to humanity," the Bookman said, ignoring him. "It belongs to me."

  "Release him," Orphan said.

  The Bookman's mouth smiled. His eyes were as cold as interstellar space. "A gesture of goodwill," he said.

  Before him, the other Orphan started to life, the last vestiges of a scream emerging. He turned, saw Orphan.

  A wave of panic and bewilderment hit Orphan's mind. Images of bugs, a threat, the black-clad men, the darkness of a coffin. Above all fear.

  The egg, Orphan thought, fighting it. A hub, it was tuned to his other. His mind was coming through, directly into Orphan's brain.

  "Lucy," he said. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him. His voice was feeble in the enormous cavern, absorbed by the multitude of silent books.

  Give it to me. Whatever you do, give it to me!

  Orphan stared at his own image. Crazed eyes stared back at him in silent command, or plea. The nausea made him gag.

  "Lucy…" he said, and fell to his knees. He retched, tasting ashes.

  "Give it to me!" the Bookman said.

  Give it to me… the mind-voice of the other said.

  And then, out of the darkness, the sound of light footsteps, and a voice, calling his name.

  "Orphan!"

  He raised his head. The automatons were advancing on him and he lifted the egg, threatening to smash it to the ground. They stopped. He turned his head. The other mimicked his gesture.

  The shades were parting like a dark sea; and, coming towards him, walking amongst the dead, was Lucy.

  She hesitated, seeing them both. Then she ran to them.

  It all happened very fast.

  The Bookman snaked forward, its mouth opening–

  The automatons rushed at Orphan–

  Lucy, running–

  "Give it to me, boy!"

  The ground shook. In the distance, books avalanched.

  The other looked at Orphan. His voice in Orphan's head was deafening, overwhelming thought. Now! it said.

  Orphan stood, raised his arm. And he threw the Translation.

  It arced through the air. The other ran, dodged an automaton, jumped–

  The Bookman roared, turned, swatting away both shades and automatons–

  Lucy reached Orphan and held him. She was real! He hugged her, forgetting everything else, held her close to him, inhaled her smell, buried his head in the curve of her neck. For a moment, everything was forgotten.

  Then he looked up.

  The other Orphan had caught the Translation in mid-air… and as he did, the Bookman crashed into him, segmented body enfolding both human and egg in a bone-crushing hug.

  There was a faint noise. It sounded a little like pop.

  Orphan felt it in his mind.

  He took Lucy's hand in his and said, "Run."

  The explosion came as they were running; it slammed against their backs and threw them against one of the stacks, unbalancing it, and they fell winded to the ground.

  For a long time afterwards the only sound was of books, falling like rain to the ground.

  "What is it?" Lucy said in awe. Orphan peered over the edge of the small crater. "I don't know," he said.

  It was some time later. They had crawled their way out of the mountain of books that had fallen on them. Lucy seemed unharmed. Orphan had a painful bump on his head where a thick volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had fallen on it. Otherwise he was fine.

  They had made their way back to the source of the explosion. It was quiet in the cavern now. Orphan could no longer hear or see the shadows of the dead. He didn't think they had perished. Most likely they were hiding now, somewhere in this landscape of books.

  The Bookman's army was still there. Their bodies were inert, frozen in the act of running, all of them facing this one point, one place, all of them suspended: they were shaped now like a vast arrow, aimed and pointing at this single spot.

  "It is alive?" Lucy said. She seemed fascinated. Almost, she seemed ready to climb down into the crater.

  "I don't know," Orphan said. He looked at the thing in the crater.

  Of the Bookman, of his other self, nothing remained. Or not quite nothing. At the centre of the explosion, at the bottom of the small crater formed, there was…

  Something.

  It looked like a small plant. But no – when he peered at it closer, Orphan could see how it was made of some strange material, part-organic, part-metal: a thin branch rose from the earth and sprouted crystalline flowers, and leaves that were a silvery grey caught the light as they turned in an invisible breeze.

  "It's beautiful," he said, and Lucy smiled at him, and nodded. He put his arm around her.

  Already, the plant was growing. Thin shoots were emerging, spreading out from the centre; silk-thin strands of spun silver, reaching cautiously out, setting root.

  It was a melding, he thought: a union. He could almost feel it reaching to him, as an old friend might do in greeting. The leaves chimed as they moved: they looked like concave dishes, and he had the sense of listening ears.

  "I think it's a baby," Lucy said, and it was Orphan's turn to smile. He felt whole again. Completed.

  Branches moved like antennae. They seemed to be greeting him. On an impulse, he waved back, and Lucy laughed.

  He looked at her. She was beautiful, whole, just the way he remembered her. He held her close to him. She was real.

  "Let's go," Lucy said. She looked into his eyes, ran her hand over his face. She too, he realised, had to reassure herself that he was real.

  "I think it wants
to be left alone."

  He thought about the other. Another tool, fashioned the way Orphan had been fashioned. And yet… he had sacrificed himself for them. So one of them, at least, could still win through. Could be with Lucy again. He wondered if he would have done the same.

  He held Lucy's hand in his and they walked away. Behind them leaves chimed, a soft musical sound, a complex rhythm hanging just on the edge of understanding.