by Oliver Atlas
And then I catch a man’s voice from behind a row of books.
“I just want to know where I can find your Late Victorian horror, got me?”
Something about the voice grabs me. I don’t know why, but it does. Catching Jon’s arm, I hustle around the row only to find a desk attendant dealing with a line of customers. Jon asks what’s the matter but I don’t know what to tell him. Just a tickle of memory . . . but it won’t come, so I let the matter go.
We wander up through the bookstore’s levels until we arrive at the top, the Pearl Room, where Jon approaches the information desk attendant. The woman looks just like . . . Clara. Her hair is dark now and her face is pierced wherever possible. She’s also wearing oversized glasses, but there’s no doubt it’s her. Ignoring my excited expression, she asks us to wait, and, after making a note in a logbook, she shows us through a door labeled Rare Book Room, into a small windowless space, lined with tall glass cases. She and Jon share a look before she steps clear of the room and shuts the door behind us.
The door clicks. It then clicks again, as if a second lock is activating.
The lights flick off. And then—
For a long instant, my tongue feels as though it’s coming out of my bellybutton and my ears as though they’re attached to my toes. My body feels flipped inside out. My mind feels like it’s thinking backwards in time.
Fine feel I and on back flick lights the then and—
And then the lights flick back on and I feel fine.
Pastor Jon studies me and smiles wryly. “’For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions.’ Not too bad for a first Jump.”
I’m bewildered. “Do you mean Abe’s kind of jump?”
In reply, Pastor Jon opens the door. It gives another click, swings wide, and I feel thrown inside-out again.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Muses & Polls
The world I find beyond the little Rare Book Room is not the one I left behind.
Not by a long shot.
Jon and I step from the modest wooden door onto the earthen-tiled lip of an epically proportioned pit. Before us, a humungous cylindrical chamber dives for thousands of feet. Above us looms a massive dome riddled with light. Sun rays burst through twelve circles ringing the dome’s edge, and one greater circle at its apex. The lights cut through the shadowy chamber in crisscrossing vectors, each beam a vastly different strength and hue. They lance off across the pit, until landing on terraces built onto the sides of the chamber. The great apex light plummets straight down to an end beyond sight.
“There,” says Pastor Jon, pointing to a spot not far below to our right.
“’There’?” I breathe, addled and bemused. “Where is ‘there’? Where are we?”
The pastor claps me on the back. “The Library.”
I growl under my breath, signaling that he’d better give me more explanation than that.
“Most people would know it as the Library of Alexandria.”
“But—”
My good-humored guide cuts me off with a sprightly laugh that rings out across the vast, sunburst-carved darkness. As it does, I notice for the first time figures standing below in the light. Dozens of them, depending on the terrace. They are all still too far away to see with any detail, but I can tell they’ve all paused their business to stare.
“Oops,” says Jon, clapping a hand over his grinning mouth for a moment. “I forgot. Sound really travels from up here.” He leans toward me, lowering his voice. “I’m sorry, Blake. Your wait for answers is almost over. And I only laugh because I know that when I came here for the first time, I literally fainted and nearly nosedived into nowhere. You, however, are taking it all really well. As a fellow lover of books, you must be wondering if you’ve died.”
“Actually, as a lover of life, I’m wondering if I’ve died.”
Jon laughs. “Definitely not. Although, now that you’re here, you owe the Library some rather solemn vows. The ancients take their secret society pretty seriously, after all.”
Still feeling slightly dizzy from the so-called Jump, I inhale carefully through my nose and out through my mouth. The twelve illuminated terraces hang below us like precarious steppingstones, circling down a titan’s well. Between them, other terraces glow under the faint light of lamps. And I’m not sure, but I think I can spot more figures moving through the lamplight.
“The Muses,” declares Jon, also catching their movement. “They prefer if we don’t loiter. Come on,” he says, taking my arm. “We’ll find our friends below.”
He pulls me to the unguarded edge of the well, paying far too much attention to the various beams of light instead of the precarious whereabouts of his feet. And I’m distracted too. By the pit, by the distant figures, by the sudden, bracing reminder that the horrors of the world really are outmatched by its wonders.
“I think I’ve got it,” says Pastor Jon.
“Got what?”
“Our flightpath.”
“Our what?”
He glances over impishly. “You heard me. Sometimes the beams can change the updrafts. It all depends on where they’re coming from, how hot they are, all that.”
Veteran adventurer that I am, I’m still caught flatfooted: before I can react, Jon grabs my arm, heaves me forward, and we’re falling. Yes. Definitely falling. And I’m hollering. If the Muses frown on noise, I’d hate to see their faces now. I squeeze my eyes shut, expecting my life’s highlight reel to start rolling. When it doesn’t, I open them again and realize that although we’re falling, we’re falling with purpose. A headlong, hopeful little part of me even wants to insist we’re gliding.
“Fun, huh?” laughs Jon.
Ha ha. I have an instant’s debate on whether or not to use my free hand and punch him. In my hesitation, though, I realize . . . we are gliding. And it is fun. Or at least almost fun. We’re soaring down through the brilliant grid of beams, through an otherworldly blend of swirling airs, both chilly and searing, fragrant and mossy. I’ve stopped yelling. I’ve stopped doubting. Even if we fall short of the platform we’re headed for, there’s no point in wasting the moment’s surreal glory with dumb panic. “It’s amazing,” I whisper, reaching toward a thick gray beam of light I could swear should only be able to come from above a stormy sea.
“The Calendar of Suns,” replies Pastor Jon, grabbing my arm tighter, his voice, too, full of awe. “Each oculus pours light from places related in time—aqueducts of illumination from east and west, the past and the future. Depending upon the angle of the sun or moon, the beams shine upon the parts of the library containing the knowledge most applicable to the concerns of those times and places from which the light comes, as well as the needs of the eternal now. Look,” he says, breaking through my dizziness, his gaze pointing to the radiant landing ahead of us. “Zoe.”
In the light, I see the edges of shelves running back into space behind an archway. I see mysterious robed figures standing alongside people dressed in familiar modern clothes. I even see a child. It must be Zoe. She’s lying atop a table, surround by machines and white-clad attendants. But somehow I know Pastor Jon wasn’t referring to the girl just now. He was referring to the light. No. Not quite. He was referring to the branch of knowledge the light marks:
Zoe—spiritual life.
When our feet at last hit the white stone at a run, I’m barely able to gather myself before being tackled by a redheaded shadow.
“Blake!”
Milly’s arms are stronger than ever, wrenching me close. Her breath is hot on the side of my face and I can hear joy and sorrow in her voice. She holds me, long and close, refusing to let me pull away. “I’m sorry, Blake. I’m sorry for all I said at Sumpter Dredge. I was . . . sick. I was jealous. I despised Skiss for connecting with you so easily. I was angry, Blake. I’m sorry.”
As I stand there, united with Milly in the copper-noon sunlight of an unknown sometime, I can’t help wondering what the light means. I have no clue abou
t the Calendar of Suns or the Library of Alexandria. I have no clue if I’m really still alive, or if maybe I was killed somewhere along the way to Portland and this is my feverish, dying dream. Or maybe I’m still out in the wilderness. Maybe I was bitten by a zombie. Maybe I’m roaming the plains, chasing hunters and cattle, while the human part of my brain has retreated to mysteries deep enough in my mind to keep hope alive. Either way, to stand in a light that somehow is spiritual life . . . all I know is that even the thought is enlivening.
“Milly,” I say, full of affection, finally pushing her back so I can see her teary, freckled face. “I forgive you. And I’ve been angry too. Angry at life for all the pitfalls and illusions that have kept us missing each other. I know you see my intensity as a pitfall and I see one in your passion. But what matters isn’t the lens we’re holding so much as how we hold it. That’s where we have to start, at least. We need love, Milly. We need humility. So, in a way, there’s nothing to forgive. I only know to be thankful that you’re here—to be thankful that I’m here. Right here, right now.” All of this pours out of me without a thought. I embrace her again, and this time I’m the one squeezing with ferocity.
“Hi, Blake.”
Over Milly’s shoulder, another familiar face steps into the light.
Skiss. Abigail.
Her eyes show no sign of tears or grief, only their native calm, dark luminescence. The slightest smile plays over her lips. There isn’t a trace of jealousy or confusion in her expression, only gladness. Milly ends our embrace and smiles too, pushing me gently toward Skiss.
When she’s in my arms, light and gentle, I’m surprised to find myself tearing up. “I knew you’d be okay.”
Skiss kisses my cheek. “And I am okay. I almost died, but Dr. Schlozfield worked a miracle. Now I have today to spare those I love from a little more sorrow.”
A little more sorrow.
Without warning, I break. The words chisel into a crack in my heart and, with their gracious tone, tap it suddenly into pieces. Shamelessly—even joyfully with relief—I weep in the safety of Skiss’s slender neck. I weep for minutes. I weep for hours. For days. I don’t know. A thousand tears come for my sister. A thousand for Zoe. A thousand for all the people who once were people, but now know only helpless hunger, whose god is their stomach. And a thousand tears come for knowing there exists a place such as the library, full of corridors of light, where, as a poet might say, ‘the hours are suns, endless and singing.’
“Feel better?” asks Skiss, when I am finally quiet, swaying in her arms, as though we’re children at a dance.
“Yes,” I say. “I feel amazing.”
“Nothing like a good cry,” agrees Milly, hugging us both. “Especially in the light of honest life.”
I laugh in golden agreement. “I can’t believe this place is hidden in a bookstore!”
“Well, Blake,” says Pastor Jon, sounding far too eager, “if you think about it, the secret is right in the name. Powell’s. Pow and El.”
“Go on,” I say, laughing again at the absurdity of Jon’s earnest attempt to normalize an impossibility.
“Pow derives from poll, or pull, as in pulling a hair from one’s head to register a position. And El, of course, refers to the semitic word for the divine. So Powell’s poses as a simple, American-sounding name. But really it refers to the Divine Poll.”
I shake my head, grinning. “I don’t get it. What does divinity have to do with polls?”
Jon wags a finger at me. “You’ve got to think more like an ancient, my friend. We’re in a library, a place of books. Books provide a record of our best thoughts. They are the spiritual hair on our head. They reflect the self-reflexive thoughts of the cosmos, and, therein, constitute a divine poll of our best ideas and hopes. They are our race’s prayers for being and becoming and wondering.”
I laugh, gripped by incredulous delight. “You’re saying the ancients were cryptic punsters who cared about etymology? Well,” I say, about to start leaping and whooping at the wonder and absurdity of it all. “Of course they were!”
“Come on,” says Pastor Jon, taking my arm with a chuckle. “It’s easy to get carried away the first time you’re in the light. So before you suddenly decide to go flying again, let’s introduce you to Malcolm.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The Man & the Myth
“Good day, Mr. Prose,” says a tall, white-haired man in a voice I recognize from Sylvan’s chapel.
Malcolm Schlozfield.
He has a long nose that has been broken too often, sharp black eyes, and pale skin. He doffs white gloves to shake my hand before turning back to his surgical table. Zoe lies there, eyes closed, hooked to IV’s full of clear and crimson liquids. Three surgical aides stand around the table, one at the foot, at the head, and at the opposite side of us. When I start for Zoe’s side, the aide at the table’s foot steps forward, blocking my way.
Schlozfield glances back at me over his shoulder. “My apologies, Mr. Prose. I am afraid no one may have contact with the source right now. We are conducting a delicate set of experiments.”
Since arriving in Oregon, I’ve become rather good at managing my adrenaline. Desperadoes, zombies, even towns full of vampires. After a while, threat becomes a normative feeling. But something in the good doctor’s wording sets me on edge. I can feel my face turn hot. “Her name is Zoe.”
The doctor’s shoulders shake lightly. He’s chuckling.
“And,” I say, my voice rising. “I thought you knew how to use her blood to create the Cure. I thought the experiments on her were over.”
We’re beyond the fullness of the platform’s sunbeam, standing in the shadowy edges of the shelf-lined tunnel. A collection of halogen spotlights surround us, baking everything in a sterile white. Although some of the sunlight still splashes onto us, I can feel our distance from it in Schlozfield’s tone, and mine. I can feel it in the way his surgical aide takes another step forward, conveying that I had better step back. The man is my height but twice as broad. His eyes are cold and unreadable. He clearly doesn’t feel the joviality I was feeling a minute ago.
“Why don’t we roll her bed out into the sunlight?” I ask.
“The zoe rays, Mr. Prose, offer uncanny creative clarity to the human mind, and if we are to undo the work of the Faction—and I’m assuming someone has given you the backstory—then we must reach a higher level of creativity than that which they did. Hence, we need the light, in part. In the direct light, however, creativity begins to outstrip rationality, and to surpass the work of the Faction, my work must be guided by reason.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I object. “How do you know your so-called reason will lead to a higher level of thinking than free-flowing creativity? Aren’t you confusing reason with the desire for control?”
Schlozfield’s shoulders shake with silent mirth again as he takes a large syringe with a larger needle and sticks it casually in Zoe’s belly. “Mr. Prose,” he says, as though displaying infinite patience. “I understand that over the last several weeks you’ve given much of yourself to the cause. Please keep in mind that some of us have given all of ourselves to the cause over the last several years. If you are mindful of that fact, you should be able to understand why I respect your concern but ask you to defer to my expertise.”
Right. The expertise that is referring to a little girl as an it. The expertise that trusts individual skills and insight over a wild, ancient, mysterious light with obviously beneficent powers.
But I don’t say any of that. Sometimes I know how to pick my battles, so instead I ask what these experiments are meant to accomplish.
The doctor turns to me with a suspicious eye. “Mr. Prose, have you read any of my papers?”
I admit that I haven’t.
“Did you know that before the Infection, zombies were wildly popular in every form of entertainment?” When I nod in the affirmative, he continues. “The parts of our brains responsible for high-level social fu
nctioning get tired. When they do, the base, animal parts of our brains begin to demand release. Those parts want to crush our enemies, to seize a lover, to eat and devour and never stop. Without coordination within the higher parts of our brains, hunger is gluttony, desire is lust, justice is rage. We have always managed the breakdown in the governing parts of our brain with things like war, serial sex, drugs, or with humor, sport, or symbolic outlets like myth and religion. Zombies were a hyperbolic way of turning the neighbor you wanted to destroy into the Other—an alien, a barbarian, a destroyable thing—a creature beyond sympathy.” The doctor pauses to offer me a sympathetic smirk. “If you ever do read my work, I put all this in more technical terms, which is where mirror neurons become so important. Regardless of the technicalities, however, what I’m saying is that zombies were—and are—a way for us to rationalize killing one another without qualms or afterthoughts.”
“Okay,” I say. “I get it. So what?”
“The reason we are not in the zoe light, Mr. Prose, is because by virtue of our common mission to find a Cure, we all have an ample supply of mirror neurons. By our respective, random cocktails of genetics and social conditioning, we are sympathetic, empathetic people. If we were in the light, I would not experiment on the source, because in the light the source would be a little girl with a name and a story, a person whose story I would conflate with my own. Here on the outskirts of the light, however, I can choose to see the source as a symbol and a means—a symbol of all those who need help, while simultaneously a means for helping them.”
I shoot Milly a pleading look. What does she think of all this? But her eyes are on the floor. “What are you saying, doctor? What does dehumanizing Zoe have to do with anything?”
“Please refrain from giving it a name, Mr. Prose. You’re emotionalism is hurting team morale.”
