We agreed to meet in Shabitat in an hour as they were having a closing-down sale, and I walked out of the Brunel Centre. I looped up and around Commercial Road and then, once I was halfway up, remembered that I was supposed to be visiting the tattooist. I was closer to the library by now, so I elected to visit her on my way back and arrived outside the library ten minutes later, my leg feeling sore and tired. It was just over a mile, and this was the first time I’d done a walk that long. Before the accident I could have run it in a couple of minutes.
The Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library was a large, glassy and very angular building sixteen stories high, at the corner of Emlyn and Commercial. Libraries had always been a priority for the Commonsense Party along with training, educational standards, national exercise programs and preschool assistance for mothers, and the sleek and brightly colored building was only two years old.
I announced myself to the receptionist, who went into a frantic lather, dialed a number with shaky hands and announced “She’s here!” breathlessly down the line. While we waited, she simply stared at me, transfixed.
“Nice building,” I said by way of conversation.
“Yes it is isn’t it? Gosh we love it here and we’re so glad it’s you finally we might be
able to get something done around here especially sorting out the budget ha-ha-ha you’ll speak to the council won’t you I have a daughter I need to pay through school she has only one leg and can’t—”
And she fainted clean away, having failed to take a breath.
“She does that a lot,” said a voice behind me. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
I turned to see a slightly built man who had the upright manner of someone in the military and was perfectly presented in a neat pinstripe suit.
“Welcome to the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso’s Drinks Not Included Library Service,” he said, “I’m John Duffy, your personal assistant. Everyone calls me Duffy.”
I knew him by sight and reputation, although we’d never met. He was a decorated ex–Special Library Services operative, invalided out after a riot gun had exploded in the Guildford Wicks Aircraft Supplies Try Us First Library. It was during a demonstration by Shakespeare followers, incensed that the town council had downgraded Will from “Poet Saint” to “Eternal Bard.” The explosion sent a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera slamming into Duffy’s face with such force that it blinded him in one eye and transferred the text of the book permanently into his cheek and forehead. It made him look a bit severe but at least gave him something to read while shaving.
“Your reputation precedes you,” I said. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”
He nodded politely. “May I show you around?”
“Thank you,” I replied, gazing about at the magnificently bizarre building, an odd mix of randomly shaped modernism with large voids, oddly shaped glass panels, bright colors and soaring internal verticals. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”
“Designed by Will Alsop just before he went sane,” replied Duffy. “We were very lucky. I understand you know Colonel Wexler, who heads up the SLS?”
A lean woman with a face pinched by hard workout walked forward to greet me. She was in her mid-fifties, did not look well disposed to joy in any form and was wearing the standard SLS combat fatigues, replete with the distinctive camouflage pattern of book spines for blending into library spaces.
When I was at SpecOps, she was at the Search/Destroy division of SO-5, and you didn’t get to join them until you’d killed eight people with a gun, four with a blunt instrument or two with your hands—it was a sliding-scale sort of thing. Wexler’s appointment to the SLS was enough to precipitate a 32 percent drop in late returns.
“Welcome to Wessex Library Service,” she said in a voice that sounded like a twelve-mile run washed down with two raw eggs, “and good to see you again.”
We shook hands.
“You too, Mel. Husband well?”
“Dead.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “I killed the man who did it with my thumbs,”
she said. “I’ve not washed this one since.” She showed me a grubbylooking thumb.
Duffy quickly intervened with an embarrassed cough. “Colonel Wexler offers her full support, don’t you, Colonel?”
“Of course,” she said in a hollow tone. “What sort of leadership can we expect from you? Decisive and bold or faltering and ambivalent?”
“The first, I hope.”
“Good,” said Colonel Wexler, visibly pleased. “The previous chief librarian refused to sanction dawn raids to retrieve overdue books. But that will change under you, yes?”
“I’ll be giving it all due consideration,” I said, meaning that I’d do no such thing.
“That’s a start,” she said. “I’d also like you to review the rules regarding spine bending and turning over the corners of pages. If we let simple things like that slide without punishment, we could open the floodgates to poor reading etiquette and a downward spiral to the collapse of civilization.”