“We can communicate with Courier’s Lenses,” Grandpa said. “This is if you need to call Kaz or the rebel force here.” He took another phone, Draulin’s, and tossed it to Himalaya.
“And if you need to talk to them?” I demanded.
“I’ll call you,” Grandpa said lightly.
“Give me a report when you know how things are going,” Himalaya said, pocketing the phone. “And I’ll give you warning if my people have to retreat.” She strode out to continue leading her force.
“Off with us, then!” Grandpa said.
“You go right, I’ll go left?” I said to him.
“Sure,” he said, then took me by the forearm and met my eyes, nodding once. “Good luck, lad.”
I talk a lot about my grandpa in these volumes. I explain how impulsive, even reckless, he was. I discuss his force of personality and his sometimes bizarre actions.
But do not mistake my grandfather for a fool. His wisdom may not have been apparent, but I’ve never known a man as great as he was. As he bade me good luck, and as I looked into his eyes, I realized something.
“You’re scared,” I said to him.
“Terrified,” he said. “The Librarians won’t let the defeat at Mokia stand; the warmongers among them will push harder for a full-scale invasion of the Free Kingdoms, and your announcement will give them the fuel they need.”
“So we screwed up?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Grandpa said. “We fought, we struggled, and we did what we had to. But, well…”
“What?”
“Let’s just say that there’s a reason I was so keen to go along with an all-or-nothing infiltration of the Highbrary. We’re in dangerous waters, lad. Dangerous waters indeed. And no Talents to keep us alive.” He took a deep breath. “But keep your head up. We can get out of this yet. You find your father and stop him.”
I frowned. “That makes it sound like you’re not going to search for him.”
“Oh, I’ll keep my eyes open,” Grandpa said. “But my path might lead another direction. We’re in the Highbrary! Bleating Bears! I’ll never have a better chance to sabotage the Librarian infrastructure. I’m going to destroy this place, if I can. So let’s go give ’em hell!”
“Grandpa! This is a family story.”
“Well, when you write this part down, simply tell everyone I said ‘give them’ with proper grammar.” Eyes twinkling, he squeezed my arm.
With that, we parted.
Chapter
Melissa
Well, that last chapter was kind of self-important, wasn’t it? I blame the relative lack of footnotes.* As a reward for being a good girl/boy/robot and reading all of that gobbledygook, I’m going to explain the chapter names to you. Never say I don’t give you anything.*
You see, the chapters in this book are identified like they are to call attention to a growing problem in fiction, that of disrespect for chapters and their own individual desires. How would you like it if you didn’t get to have a name, but were instead assigned a number based on your order of creation? Instead of Samantha, Didgeridoo, or whatever silly name Hushlanders are using nowadays, what if you’d been named “Human Spawn Number One Hundred Eight Billion, Fourteen Million, Four Hundred Eighty Thousand and Two”?
I suspect you wouldn’t like that. Well, chapters don’t like it either. They never get to be themselves, you know? It’s always “Chapter One” or “Chapter Twenty-Seven” or “Oh, When Is This Stupid Book Going to End?”
To bring attention to this, I’ve allowed the chapters to name themselves whatever they want. (All except Chapter Four; I put my foot down when he insisted he be allowed to have an extra o in the middle of his name.)
I dashed out into the firefight, Dif and Shasta right behind me. The good Librarian force had pulled back almost to the building we’d used for our impromptu conference. They’d taken casualties; this fight was real. I won’t go into the gory details, but it wasn’t pretty.
Angry, I pulled out the Shamefiller’s Lens and pointed it at a group of oncoming Alivened monsters. I started glowing, and the Lens spurted out a ray of power.
My aim was off, and my beam hit the stone ground of the cavern.
“Oh, blast! I’m the worst section of floor ever! That person just stubbed his toe on a bit of my uneven rock. And I wasn’t washed properly! Their feet are going to totally get dirty walking upon me and—”
BOOOM.
Good enough, I thought as bits of burning paper fluttered down, bearing descriptions of bodices. A piece of me was amazed. Bastille had had trouble fighting one of these things, and I’d just taken out a group of them. Something was seriously wrong with my Oculator powers. I mean, it was awesomely wrong, yes, but the Lens I stuffed into my pocket was so hot to the touch it could have fired an egg.*
The explosion I caused made enough of a mess that my team was able to duck away from the main battlefield through a small alley between two archive buildings.
“So, Cousin!” Dif said. “What sort of zany, bombastic shenanigans do you have planned for us?”
“Find my dad,” I said, looking to Shasta. “How do we get an index for this place?”
“Only the most important of Librarians will have that kind of information,” Shasta said. “If this is like other high-level libraries, they’ll carry something called an authenticator. It will let them into important rooms, and probably will include a map and copies of the local indexes.”
“So we need to steal one of those,” I said, rubbing my chin. “Or convince a Librarian to lead us where we want to go.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Dif said. “And along the way, we’ll do something really unexpected and silly, right? Then, as we go farther, it will suddenly make perfect sense!”
Why had I put him in my team again?
“Wouldn’t the lesser Librarians need the index?” I asked as we continued down the alleyway. “How else would they know where to go?”
“Lesser Librarians,” my mother said, “get assigned to one of these small buildings and spend their entire lives working inside it—adding new items when brought, designing new sorting methods when they have nothing to do. They’ll never know the entire Highbrary’s index; that’s a holy thing beyond them. And they’re unlikely to have authenticators that will get us past locked doors.”
I shivered, thinking of a life trapped in a little room far from the sun, doing menial, repetitive work. It would be like … well, like any other job, I
guess.* But those robes sure did look hot.
Robes …
As we left the alleyway, I led the others around the corner and into another of the archive rooms. This one was filled with shelves and shelves of those little rules inserts you get with a deck of playing cards. Not the playing cards themselves, mind you. Just the rules.
This place was odder than a river-dwelling species of mammal from the mustelidae family.*
Inside were a handful of the robe-wearing cultist Librarians. These, instead of cowering, were calmly moving stacks of cards and holding each one up to a candle’s flame to inspect it.
“Indexing the cards by minor variations in translucence,” my mother explained. “Hopscotch Vindaloo scale.”
I stepped up to the Librarians and put on my Oculator’s Lenses, trying my best to look threatening. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to need everyone in this room to remove their clothing.”
The Librarians kept right on working, though Cousin Dif shrugged and began to unbutton his shirt.
“Not you,” I said.
“Technically, you did say—”
“Ahem,” I said more loudly, getting out my Shamefiller’s Lens, then stepping toward the working Librarians. “Don’t make me use this!”
They barely glanced at me.
“These are archivists, Alcatraz,” my mother said, brushing past me. “You’re making the wrong kind of threats; personal safety is of little concern to these types.” She snatched a rules card off a table and held it toward a candle.
“No!” one of the Librarians cried. “Only one million seven hundred thousand and sixty-three of those were printed! It’s irreplaceable!”
“Plus,” another added, “that one has a smudge on the left side. It’s a misprint!”
“Robes,” my mother said, “on the floor. Now.”
They hurried to obey. Under the dark robes they wore surprisingly normal clothing. Slacks, blouses or polo shirts. Business-casual dress. I suddenly imagined how life must be for these Librarians, who were otherwise ordinary people from the Hushlands. In the mornings they’d kiss their spouses, then drive off to work in a secret underground bunker where they sorted playing cards all day for a sect of evil Librarians.