by Molly Flatt
Iain had left their escort outside the fossil-encrusted door and marched her through. They’d passed into an antechamber, where the startled secretary was rising to her feet, then through a second door and finally into the room at the core of the dome. This turned out to contain ranks of empty bookshelves, faded squares of plaster where paintings must once have hung, stacks of unpacked boxes, teetering piles of paper – and MacBrian. The Director had been alone, poring over a ledger on a vast circular stone table. Her expression, when she looked up, had said car crash, wild animal, and more. Still clamped between Iain’s hands, Alex had started to shiver – a cartoon-like, core-trembling, teeth-clattering shake. She hated that she’d shivered. She hated more than anything that Iain had felt it. Now, she tried to cover the wobble that kept creeping into her words with brisk counter-attack.
‘Hey!’ she bellowed again. Everyone turned. ‘You’d better tell me what is going on here, right now,’ she demanded, looking MacBrian squarely in the eye. ‘You people are harbouring a violent criminal.’
MacBrian snapped something to the group behind her and strode across the room to Alex’s chair. ‘I have been trying to protect you, Miss Moore,’ she said, her face thunderous. ‘Unfortunately, when you trespassed into—’
‘Trespassed?’ Alex choked. ‘I went for a bloody walk. It’s not my fault that you’ve got some sort of top-secret steam-punk project going on. And I like your idea of protection! Employing some insane addict to stalk me through London? Luring me out to your fucked-up family island, so that he could abduct me when I nipped out for a breath of fresh air? What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just let him cut me to pieces back down in Wildfell Hall.’
‘A – what?’ MacBrian looked over at Iain in, Alex thought, a piss-poor show of confusion. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Alex spread her palms. ‘You really expect me to believe that you didn’t send Not John – I mean whoever that fucked-up kid really is – to ask me the exact same questions you asked me yesterday? What was that: some sort of twisted audition? Did his crack habit ever so slightly hamper his data-gathering abilities?’
The group, which Alex could only assume to be the rest of the leadership board, exploded into a fresh bout of bickering. MacBrian, ignoring them, exchanged a rapid back-and-forth with Iain. She turned back to Alex. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘You’re saying that someone from Iskeull visited you in London?’
‘Right, as if you didn’t already know.’
‘Miss Moore. We know nothing about this. Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure! It didn’t click at first, which, okay, was pretty stupid. But once I saw him back there amongst his bloody brethren, I realized.’ She paused. ‘Who else do you think I was running away from?’
‘You were running away?’
Alex threw up her hands. ‘What the hell do you think I was doing? No, I did not spot your Neolithic Tardis plantation and decide to go play Doctor Who. That guy was about to kill me, or at least inflict some pretty grievous bodily harm. And all because I wouldn’t tell him why I killed his father, because, um, I HAVE NOT KILLED ANYONE AT ALL.’
Silence, punctuated by the hiss and patter of rain. In a tight voice MacBrian asked Taran a question. Taran replied, holding his hands up now too, in a gesture of helplessness. Everyone looked at Iain, who shook his head, then Iain and Taran started arguing, with a lot of head-shaking and hand gestures, until Iain turned abruptly and left the room.
‘Hey!’ Alex called again. ‘Hello? Can someone talk to me in English?’
‘This is—’ MacBrian swung round. She looked pained. ‘I . . . We had no idea.’
Taran walked over to stand beside MacBrian. ‘Alex,’ he said. ‘Can you describe the man who came to see you?’
Alex sniffed. ‘Well, he’s one of you, basically. Pale, dark hair, grey eyes. Skinny but muscly. About twenty, maybe. And he has a tattoo – a tattoo just like the one I saw on that woman doing whatever the fuck she was doing in that tower. Anyway, he’ll be pretty easy to spot. He’s got a Lego USB stick rammed into his neck.’ She paused. ‘Did you seriously not send him to get me?’
‘No,’ MacBrian said. She looked around her colleagues. ‘I expressly forbade anyone from making contact Outside.’
‘Outside what?’
A white-haired man talked over MacBrian in Iskeullian, loud and angry.
‘No,’ MacBrian replied wearily in English, shaking her head. ‘It’s too late. She’s seen the Library. And the way the situation has been progressing, or rather not progressing, we probably would have had to tell her soon anyway.’
‘So I’ve seen your bloody library, so what?’ Alex flung up her hands. ‘My Kindle comes with more free downloads than all the books you have in there. Even if you’re hoarding the Da Vinci Code or something, I promise you I don’t care.’
‘This,’ MacBrian said, turning back, ‘isn’t the Library. This is just the index room for the archives, which are stored in the buildings to either side. It’s those towers you saw outside that—’
Several professors bellowed something that even Alex could tell meant NOOOO.
MacBrian briefly closed her eyes – presumably sending a prayer to some Pictish god – then opened them and turned back to Taran. ‘Taran?’
Taran spread his palms, twitched his shoulders. ‘I – well, really, this is your decision, Sorcha . . .’
The door banged open and Iain re-entered the room. Beside him, being dragged by the upper arm, was Not John Hanley. There was a small clot of crusted black blood at the base of his throat. His eyes wheeled around the room and found Alex, and Alex was gripped by an aftershock at what could have – had almost – happened. She gripped the arms of her chair. As the others broke into dark mutters, Taran walked over, placed his hand on Not John Hanley’s arm and spoke quietly to him in Iskeullian. Not John Hanley ignored him.
‘Miss Moore,’ MacBrian said. ‘Is this the person who came to see you in London?’
Alex nodded, holding eye contact with him, forcing her voice to stay firm. ‘That’s the fuckbag.’
‘Can you explain to me exactly the circumstances of your meeting?’
The others fell quiet again as Alex described Not John Hanley’s visit to her office. Then, in vicious detail, she gave them a run-down of his latest assault. Throughout her speech the young man’s face remained hard, his stare unwavering.
‘But that’s not all,’ Alex added, once she’d arrived at her escape into the . . . the thing. ‘I was attacked twice before, in London. I was mugged on the street near my home, the night before this guy lied his way into Eudo. And a few hours after that, another man was arrested outside a restaurant where I was having dinner. A violent nutter wearing those exact same boots.’
Everyone looked at Not John Hanley’s boots.
Alex wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘I didn’t want to believe it at the time. I hoped I was being paranoid. But, you know, when he came to the office he had this bag with him, this holdall, and I reckon he must have had the shotgun inside the whole time. And . . . God, yes, the paper said the man outside the restaurant was shouting something about wanting more, as in more drugs or whatever, but of course he must have meant Moore. Me, Moore. All in all, it seems that this guy has tried to attack me no fewer than four times over the past four days.’
‘No,’ Not John Hanley said in English, shaking his head. ‘No, no—’ He fired an urgent stream of Iskeullian at Taran.
‘Don’t tell me he’s trying to deny it?’ Alex said incredulously. ‘Who is this kid, anyway?’
‘It’s . . . complicated,’ MacBrian said.
‘No shit.’
‘He’s – his name is Finn MacEgan. He’s not in his right mind. He should never have made it off the island. I assure you, he will be contained. Iain, take him away.’
But when Iain tried to turn his prisoner towards the door, Not John – Finn MacEgan – resisted, twisting in
his grip to glare at MacBrian. ‘You’re behind this, aren’t you?’ he hissed. ‘You always resented my father. You hardly waited for his ashes to cool before you took his place.’ The others’ heads whipped between him and MacBrian with a mixture of alarm and delight. Finn MacEgan turned his glare on them. ‘You all know it,’ he spat. ‘You know she’s a snake. You only elected her because you were desperate.’ He turned back to MacBrian. ‘They’ll never love you like they loved him, Director, however many henchmen you surround . . . UH!’
He grunted as Iain wrenched him round. The bigger man pulled him across the room, but at the last moment he managed to brace himself in the doorway. He turned to Taran, to whom he said something low and fast and pleading, then twisted to look back at Alex.
‘You,’ he said. His eyes darted over her again, as they had the first time they’d met in the office, although this time they were more confused than hostile. ‘You, whoever you are – if you’re not . . . if you really don’t . . . Please, just don’t trust her.’
At that, Iain pressed his thumb into the crust of blood on Not John Hanley’s throat. As Finn MacEgan yelped, Iain was finally able to pull him over the threshold and out of the room, kicking the door shut in his wake.
The room burst into uproar. MacBrian stood staring at the door, the spots on her cheeks burning like coals. Taran began to talk at her, rapidly.
‘Hey. HEY!’ Alex slammed her hand down on the arm of the chair. It bounced off the wicker with a faint creak. ‘Talk to me! I have a right to know. Who the fuck are you people? Why the hell does that guy want me dead?’ The action-movie words sounded ridiculous, even as they came out.
MacBrian turned her back on the shouting islanders and, looking only at Alex, raised her hand. One by one, the others reluctantly lapsed into silence. ‘I believe her,’ MacBrian said shortly. ‘But whether you agree with me or not, we don’t have any more time for games. The simple fact is that our finest have tried and they have failed. We need her help.’
After a moment, the white-haired man started to speak again, half-heartedly.
‘No, Sim,’ MacBrian cut across him. ‘The Covenant is meaningless if there’s no Library left to protect. If Dorothy – Alex – knows what she’s doing, then our secret is already out. If she doesn’t, we need her to understand what’s at stake, and find a way to stop doing it.’ She turned to Iain. ‘Tell your men on North Ronaldsay to send word to the other Chapters. We’re going to have to take her into one of the Stacks.’
Close up, in the drizzly early-morning light, the towers looked less sinister but more strange. Each one appeared to have been made from a single piece of rock, without the need for bricks or mortar, creating the disconcerting illusion that they had grown straight from the ground. Their rough, lichen-stippled walls tapered towards conical roofs, and they covered the cliff in concentric circles, forming a honeycomb pattern against the sandy paths. The overall effect was of a colony of colossal beehives.
Taran, walking beside Alex, pushed back his hood. ‘How do you feel?’ he said.
Alex stared back at him as Iain and his bevy of black-clad heavies led the way along one of the paths. ‘I’m thinking—’ she began numbly, then stopped. ‘There is no research project, is there?’ she said. ‘I’m such an idiot. I knew it was too good to be true. Is there even such a thing as GCAS?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘GCAS exists. Just not in the form you think. Our cover has changed several times over the centuries, but the GCAS front has served the Library very well for the past few decades.’
‘And you’re telling me that this,’ Alex gestured limply at the soaring walls around them, ‘is some sort of library?’
‘The Library,’ Taran corrected. ‘Your Library. Mine. Ours. Everyone’s. Or at least one of the seven sites across the world where it shows itself above ground. You’ll see, Alex. But while we have a chance to talk, I’d like to ask you how you’ve been fee—’
‘Here we are,’ MacBrian interrupted, indicating a figure doing a deep side-bend beside one of the towers up ahead. As they approached, Alex saw that it was a woman of about her own age, lean and muscular, with her dark hair pulled back in a fishtail plait. She was wearing a grey outfit identical to Finn MacEgan’s, and she appeared to be going through some kind of callisthenic warm-up routine.
‘This is the Stack I’ve managed to temporarily requisition for our use,’ MacBrian said. ‘And this is Curstag MacRob, one of our most gifted full-time Readers. She’ll be showing you how it works.’
‘I know how to read,’ Alex said weakly.
‘How to Read,’ MacBrian corrected, coming to a halt in front of the woman. The heavies arranged themselves in a loose semicircle behind them while Iain stalked on, scanning the paths.
Dad? Alex thought helplessly. Mum? Harry? What the hell have I got myself into? A religious cult, driven mad by inbreeding? A Scientology-style indoctrination camp? Alex gazed around her, wondering if she could, at a push, run. But she was already weak with delayed shock and exhaustion, and Iain’s heavies looked very heavy indeed. And there was something else. Something she didn’t really want to admit to. Something she couldn’t rationalize or explain.
Despite the seriously crazy turn that her rural adventure had just taken, despite the bruises on her arms, despite the nonsensical bullshit the pretend professors were all suddenly spouting, the only thing Alex knew for sure was that she wanted more. She had to have another taste of whatever it was she had felt inside that tower a few hours before. She knew she should be trying to figure out the real agenda these crackpots were peddling, making a plan for how to get safely out of this mess. But the craving for another shot of that delicious calm was stronger than her impulse to escape.
The MacRob woman dropped onto her belly and disappeared head-first into the gap at the base of the tower. ‘You next, Miss Moore,’ MacBrian said.
Alex got down on her hands and knees and stared into the half-moon of darkness before her face. She glanced back over her shoulder. MacBrian, Taran and four heavies stared back. She thought for a moment that she might cry. But then it reached out for her, the pull – twining itself around the roots of her hair, reaching into the marrow of her bones.
She became hyper-aware of the chill of the sandy earth, the rhythm of the drizzle pattering on her back, the roar of the wind. The pull wrapped itself around her heart like a memory, an ancient memory; a memory made of nostalgia and hope and the promise of finally being back where she belonged. Before she had made a conscious decision, Alex found herself plunging into the chute head first.
It took only a few seconds to slither under and up, with the walls angled to give her weight momentum, and the stone polished smooth under her chest and ribs and thighs. Before she knew it, she felt two hands grab hers, then her arms jerked in their sockets and she flew over the lip of the chute and out the other side. Curstag MacRob met Alex’s startled gaze for the briefest of moments, then turned and walked away while Alex scrambled to her feet.
Back in MacBrian’s office, she had tried to label what she had seen. A planetarium, a control panel, a circuit board. This time, as she stood and stared, her veins once again flooding with that strong, sweet calm, Alex simply accepted it as beautiful.
The whole of the inside of the tower was made of some kind of glass. Thick, gnarled, ancient-looking glass. Its surface was covered with thousands of spherical indentations, as if someone had attacked it with an ice-cream scoop. And behind the glass ran a river of blackness. Rich, muscular blackness, stewed out of the darkest shades of all the colours in the universe. Blackness that looked unfathomably deep, despite being trapped inside a wall that Alex knew to be no more than ten feet wide. Blackness that never stopped moving, and that carried within its distant currents what looked like a million tiny pearls.
All across the tower, the pearls were somehow pushing their way out of the blackness and into the walls. Approaching from the depths, they somehow passed through the surface of the glass, then grew in size until
they fitted snugly inside the spherical nooks. They nestled there, thousands of spheres the size of oranges, their translucent skins pulsing with silvery light. Waiting. Alex could feel them waiting. Then, as if disappointed, they slid back beneath the surface, returning to the blackness. Within seconds, another set of pearls had thrust their way through. And so the cycle went on: spheres emerging and retreating in a ceaseless, seemingly random pattern, as if they were dancing to the rhythm of some secret choreography.
Alex let out a breath that she felt she had been holding for thirty years.
‘Welcome to the Library. Iskeullian Chapter. Stack I-10, to be precise.’
She looked round to see Taran untangling himself out of the chute. She had no idea how to reply, but it seemed that her expression said it all, because he suddenly smiled, a flash of white in the soft light. A moment later, MacBrian thrust herself efficiently up after him.
‘You feel the radiation very strongly, the first time,’ she said, straightening her tunic. ‘It won’t be good for you to stay inside for long. Follow me, and don’t touch anything until I say.’
She led the way over to the wall. The air was several degrees warmer than it was outside and had an indefinable taste of copper, salt and overheating hard drive. Up close, Alex could see through the oversized pearls’ lustrous skin to the source of their glow. Each one of them contained countless tiny, dazzling silver-white sparks.
