The Library Machine (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  “I am prepared for you!” the fairy snapped. “Go back to your cold eastern hell, and take your clanking minions with you! My allies and I will not surrender!”

  “Please,” the Landgrave of Hesse said. His young face was deeply lined with care. “You are all my guests here, as you are all strangers. We are all strangers. Rabbi Rosenbaum has spoken words of real wisdom. We can learn from each other, and to do that we should begin by forgetting these hostile words. Let us allow the threats to fall to the ground and disappear, blow away in the breeze. Let us find our common ground and the place where we can share a peace that we can all honorably choose. You. Us. France. The Syndikat. The undergraviate.”

  “You are not with us.” Gaston St. Jacques laughed. “War it is.”

  Thomas gasped.

  Charlie looked to his brother just in time to see Thomas slip in astonishment and fall off the ledge.

  Charlie jumped down after him.

  Charlie opened the door to the Rosenbaums’ house and nearly bumped into Bob. Ollie stood at her shoulder, Lloyd behind them, and Gnat fluttered a few feet away to one side.

  “Good,” Charlie said. “I could use your help.”

  “Mate, you can always ’ave my ’elp.”

  “Our help,” Ollie added.

  “Only, Charlie, we’d be able to ’elp you more if we knew where you was.”

  Charlie was about to object, but he realized his friends were worried. It was a good thing he had friends who would worry about him, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea to make them worry unnecessarily.

  “Sorry, Bob. Sorry, Ollie…Gnat…Lloyd.” Charlie shrugged. “I just didn’t think it through, I guess. We didn’t think it through. I was excited to be with my brother.”

  “Also, you don’t like feeling bossed around, do you?” Ollie grinned. “You’re a big lad—you can take care of yourself.”

  Charlie grinned back. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You’re a hero, Charlie. We know you can take care of yourself.” Ollie tipped his hat to his friend.

  “Aye, Ollie’s right.” Gnat’s wings fluttered faster. “Only remember, Charlie, we’re not worried about bullies in a Whitechapel alley. We’re worried about Bismarck’s Prussian soldiers and their war machines.”

  “ ’E’s the kaiser’s monster,” Bob said. “Runs the government, ’as started a few wars.”

  “Minister,” Lloyd Shankin said. “Otto von Bismarck is the kaiser’s chief minister.”

  Bob crossed her arms over her chest. “When ’e came in, Prussia was a little place, didn’t own other parts of Germany, an’ now it does, lots of ’em, because it took ’em. ’E picked a fight with France, too. Plenty of people ’ave died so Bismarck could ’ave what ’e wants. Sounds like a monster to me, but if you want to use a different word, I ain’t fussed.”

  Ollie grunted. “Those gents with the skulls and crossbones? They’re his. And it turns out we’re not so far from France or Switzerland or the Low Countries here. So Rabbi Rosenbaum is worried Bismarck’s got another war in the offing, and maybe his boys are here to bully the landgrave into going along, or put the lads of Marburg into uniform and send them off to fight.”

  “Bismarck does have another war in the offing. I think he declared war on the landgrave just now.” Charlie told his friends about hearing Levi Rosenbaum make a plea for peace, and his plea’s failure. To explain what he and Thomas had been doing on the window ledge, he then had to go back and explain the landgrave’s collection in the castle’s annex, the unicorn’s horn (which he produced from inside his coat) and the three nails, and the attack by the shape-changer Red Cloak. While he was narrating this last part, Ollie looked down at his feet. As Charlie finished, Thomas limped forward, clutching his injured arm. The chimney sweeps both gasped at the frightful wound.

  Bob shook her head. “It’s just too strange, mate.”

  “I want to go into the library,” Charlie said. “Thomas has told me what we’re looking for, and I want to try to find it. Also, I want to figure out more about this shape-changer. What is it? How do I stop it?”

  “Could it be a shaitan?” Lloyd Shankin asked.

  Charlie shook his head slowly. “Don’t those take a person’s shape after they’ve eaten him? And no one’s eaten Thomas yet. Or me. Also, I don’t think a shaitan would want to eat me or Thomas.”

  “We’ll go with you, mate,” Ollie volunteered. “I ain’t never been in a library, but Bob here has. And I know a thing or two about shape-changers, so maybe I can help.” Ollie moved his arms vaguely in circles, a gesture suggesting to Charlie that Ollie had no real idea how he could be of use in a library.

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “Ollie can tell us the names to look up. Plus, I keep ’earing about a Library Machine. I’ve got to say, that ’as peached my curiosity.”

  “Piqued, Bob,” Lloyd said.

  “Peach means to rat someone out,” Ollie added. “You know that, Bob.”

  Bob shrugged. “I admit it seemed a peculiar turn of phrase.”

  “Jan Wijmoor can get you into the library,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “And he can fix Thomas’s arm, too.”

  * * *

  Their request prompted a shower of tears from the kobold, which started unexpectedly and ended just as abruptly. After he finished crying, the engineer was quiet for a minute and seemed to be thinking.

  “You won’t take anything?” he asked. “I have a duty of Loyalty.”

  “It’s a library,” Bob said. “It’s for borrowing only, innit?”

  Jan Wijmoor nodded slowly.

  “Of course, I cannot condone your entry into the library. The library is the property of the landgrave and the university, and the Marburger Syndikat only maintains it. But fortunately, my forbidding you is totally pointless, since you will be utterly unable to get into the library without a card such as this one.” The kobold waved a thin brass card with dozens of rectangular holes punched into it.

  The little metal sheet reminded Charlie of the Babel Card, only larger and thicker. After Charlie got a good look, Wijmoor conspicuously dropped the card into the pocket of his white coat, then removed the coat.

  Rachel, Thomas, Charlie, Lloyd, and the sweeps stood in the kobold’s office. Gnat fluttered in the air. The office was a windowless room on a long hall in the university building. Rachel had brought the others there directly, knocking on the small door facing her garden to get admittance.

  “I need a card to get in?” Charlie now asked the kobold.

  “That don’t seem right. ’Oo exactly are you trying to keep locked out an’ ignorant?”

  “The purpose of a library is to preserve and protect the knowledge stored within it in the form of books. Letting everyone in to do everything they wanted inside the library would be just as foolish as if you removed the roof of the building.” Wijmoor hung his coat on a peg on the wall. “The card safeguards the library for all future users, and therefore I cannot give it to you.”

  “Nondisclosure and Compliance,” Charlie said. “And I guess Loyalty.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ollie grumbled. “There’s always an explanation, ain’t there? And still someone’s always getting locked out.”

  Jan Wijmoor laughed as he snapped and pointed at the ceiling. Then he turned his back and busied himself with a row of metal valves on a shelf. “Lie down on the table, Thomas. We’ll get right to work on your arm.”

  “I’ll stay with Thomas,” Lloyd Shankin offered, one eye diving left as he said it.

  “Aye, and so will I. And we’ll take care of that horn for you—you’ll need a bigger pocket, to be carrying that thing around.”

  Thomas climbed onto the table. Rachel stood beside him and held his good hand.

  Charlie put his hand in his pocket and gripped the broken halves of Bap’s pipe.

  Th
en he took the card from the kobold’s coat. “It would be good to know which doors enter into the library. You know, so we don’t accidentally open them.”

  * * *

  Charlie, Ollie, and Bob followed Jan Wijmoor’s directions, which were simple. In short order, they stood before a brass door, polished to a dull orange gleam, with no window and a slot in its exact center, a little below Charlie’s eye level.

  Charlie pulled on the brass handle of the door with no effect.

  “Well, I guess it must work like the ticket-vendor automatons at the Sky Trestle.” Charlie inserted Wijmoor’s card into the slot.

  “Welcome, Meneer Professor Doktor Ingenieur Wijmoor,” said a soft female voice.

  Chunk. The door popped open.

  “I think I can just about handle a talking door,” Ollie said. “But if the toilets around here use that same voice, I believe I’m going to feel uncomfortable.”

  The library was built around a single shaft. A colored glow filtered down from tall stained-glass windows several stories over Charlie’s head. More light came from a column that hung down the center of the shaft, extending a third of the way down from the ceiling, glowing brightly. A single long ramp wound around the inside of that shaft, like the threads on a gigantic inverted screw. The inside of the ramp was bounded with a brass banister running along the top of a low, white-plastered wall.

  The outer wall was lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, all along the ramp. The shelves were mostly full, and along the bottom of each shelf was printed a neat reference number. Jutting out from the wall were additional bookcases, each shelf labeled and filled with books. These additional shelves were built around long stone ribs that ran up the side of the chamber like supporting columns. The perpendicular shelves occupied six feet of the ten-foot-wide ramp, leaving a four-foot curving aisle between the ends of the shelves and the banister.

  Here and there, the bookshelves were punctuated with doorways.

  The floor was covered with a dark blue carpet, thin and tough, with gold numbers woven into it every few feet. To Charlie’s left the number appeared to be 1, while to the right the number was 4. Spaced one quarter turn apart on each level were reading areas, created by replacing a pair of perpendicular shelves with two armchairs and a small sofa. The door by which they’d entered came into the library through just such a reading nook.

  Charlie stood and stared.

  “I ain’t exactly disappointed it’s just books,” Bob said, “but where d’you reckon the machine is?”

  Ollie held the banister and stretched his neck out for a look. “What is this, twelve levels? How many books do you think it holds?”

  Charlie joined Ollie at the rail and looked down. “Maybe the machine’s down there.” At the bottom of the shaft he saw a series of boxy shapes. They glowed brass under a ring of six gaslights on poles, so maybe they were machines.

  Bob looked too. “We could just roll down, but maybe there’s a better way.”

  They started down the ramp. After half a turn, they came to a reading nook behind which was a sliding glass door marked AUFZUG, which Charlie soon saw as LIFT. Bob eagerly pressed a button labeled BERUFEN even before Charlie could see the word meant SUMMON, and cables behind the door brought up a carriage. Inside, a row of buttons corresponded to floors, their current floor being 4 and the lowest being 12.

  The pressing of another button brought them down to the bottom of the pit.

  As Charlie had seen from above, six gaslights on poles illuminated the shaft’s floor. Three long brass boxes stood among the poles, and each box had a series of control panels, with each panel consisting of ten toothed brass wheels. Each control panel had a single word stamped in the brass above it: the words on one box all read SCHREIBER, and on the second THEMA, and on the third TITEL. Thanks to the Babel Card, Charlie’s eyes quickly resaw those words as AUTHOR, SUBJECT, and TITLE.

  A bull-like male hulder, a female kobold, a long-bearded dwarf, and three women stood at control panels, all wearing student robes. A student would move the toothed wheels and pull a lever to the right, and then a slot beneath the wheels printed out a long strip of paper. Having collected enough such strips, the student would take them and depart by taking the lift or by trudging up the ramp.

  “Reminds me of a thing I used in a library once,” Bob said. “A card—”

  The nearest library patron, a robed kobold, spun to shush her.

  “Yes, Bob?” Ollie whispered.

  Bob stroked her chin and lowered her voice. “I was going to say caterpillar, only I ’ave the distinct sensation that ain’t right.”

  “Catalog,” Charlie said. He’d read about card catalogs, though he’d never seen one. “It does look like a card catalog. Except there are no drawers to hold the little cards. Let’s take a closer look.”

  “Shhhh!” hissed a glaring dwarf student.

  “Library people are so sensitive,” Bob mumbled. “Discourages the asking of ’elp, it does.”

  “What’ll it be?” Ollie squinted at the machine. “A scriber? A tittle?”

  “Subject.” Charlie stepped up to a THEMA control panel.

  Each tooth of each wheel had a character stamped in it. Spinning the first wheel experimentally, he saw that he had a complete alphabet and the numerals zero through nine. A little further investigation showed him that the other wheels were identical. A groove ran through the brass at the center position of all ten wheels, and again by trial and error he found that by putting the wheels into the position he wanted and reading along the groove, he could form a word.

  “Shape-changers, that’s what I’m looking for.” Spinning the wheels, Charlie spelled out SHAPECHANG. He had to stop after the G because he had run out of wheels, but maybe the device would have enough information to know what he was seeking.

  Should he try to research the three nails and their possible locations first? He didn’t feel like he knew enough to ask the right questions about that subject yet. He’d learn how to use the library first, and then come back with Thomas later.

  “Is this the Library Machine, then?” Bob asked.

  Charlie pulled his control panel’s lever.

  The machine made a soft whirrrr.

  A short strip of paper emerged from the slot. Charlie tore the strip free and looked: the paper was blank.

  If it was the Library Machine, Charlie was failing to use it properly. He ground his teeth and considered the possibilities. His spelling looked right. Maybe the machine used a different word? He tried SHAPESHIFT.

  Same result.

  “Charlie.” Ollie leaned gently against the brass box beside Charlie’s control panel. “I know you well, don’t I, mate?”

  “I think so.”

  “So I know you don’t take kindly to bossing. So this ain’t bossing.”

  Charlie waited.

  “And I know it’s ironic that I should be the one to have this idea. But I’m the one who’s had it, and I think I have a responsibility to share the idea with you.”

  “Ollie,” Charlie said, “this is a lot of words. I promise I won’t be angry with whatever it is you’re going to say.”

  “Good.” Ollie nodded. “In that case, how about you try entering the word in German?”

  Charlie laughed out loud. With quick fingers he set the dials to spell METAMORPHO, the first ten letters of Metamorphose, which seemed to him to be a German word for shape-changing. Then he pulled the lever.

  This time, following the whir, the machine spat out a strip of paper as long as Charlie was tall.

  SHAPE-CHANGING

  Generally: MTPH730000

  In classical literature: MTPH730010

  How-to manuals: MTPH730001

  As illness or curse: MTPH730307

  Shape-changing species: MTPH730030
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  —Loups-garou: MTPH730032

  —Shaitans: MTPH730033

  —Yokai: MTPH730031

  In folklore, generally: MTPH730070

  —in American folklore: MTPH730071

  —in British folklore: MTPH730072

  —in Chinese folklore: MTPH730073

  “I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,’ ” Ollie said.

  “Okay,” Charlie said.

  “Never mind, I lied. I told you so.”

  “Yeah, Ollie, you did indeed.” Bob leaned in close to the machine, examining the alphanumeric wheels and the lever.

  Charlie inspected the strip with a sinking heart and a growing sense of confusion. Even though the Babel Card had sorted it into neatly comprehensible English, he still had trouble following what he was reading. Two columns marched down the strip. The column on the left listed different kinds of shape-changing, or different aspects of shape-changing. The column on the right seemed to be in code.

  It was too much.

  No, it wasn’t too much. Charlie forced himself to focus. He scanned the entire left-hand column, looking for anything that said shape-changers, dangerous or with black eyes and rubber skin and saw nothing. To be certain, he did it a second time and got the same result.

  “Here, give me that.” Ollie took the paper and read it carefully, chewing his lower lip. “I think I’ve got it.”

  “I am prepared to be impressed,” Bob said. “Indeed, I am prepared to bestow upon you a certificate of librariology if you ’ave got it right.”

  Charlie looked at Bob. “You’ve become quite eloquent.”

  Bob shrugged. “I am a chap as is prepared to admit ’is limitations an’ strive to do better.”