Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“I can see you’re taking her seriously,” said the botanist.

“He’s young,” said the physicist—a woman, and probably the youngest of them all; Rigg put her age at about thirty. “Of course he’s intrigued.”

Rigg was more than intrigued. He was already thinking through what he had found when he gutted ebbecks and weebears. Were they similar to each other? And which scavengers did they find devouring the carcasses after Rigg had taken the skins? Were they all anomalies, too? He wanted to go back—with Umbo in tow—so he could look at the paths of anomalous creatures and see whether they fed selectively on anomalous plants, and whether the predators of odd sorts hunted only odd prey.

Surely if there were such a pattern, Father would have pointed it out.

Or maybe Father was hoping he’d notice it on his own.

He noticed it now. He hadn’t made a study of it, so he couldn’t be sure, but what he could remember at this moment didn’t contradict her idea.

The scholars dined together—except Bleht—and conversed with Rigg quite readily. It seemed to him that they would not have been so comfortable talking with him if they intended to give a negative report on his examination.

And so it turned out. The next morning four men in the uniform of the City Guard arrived to escort him from Flacommo’s house to the library.

Rigg had hoped to catch a glimpse of the city of Aressa Sessamo, but he was disappointed. He could hear the sounds of a large city, but from a distance. Flacommo’s house was surrounded on three sides by other huge houses of similar design—high walls surrounding a central garden, with no windows facing out. The streets had only local traffic—servants on errands, a few people of some wealth and standing walking or riding, a few mothers—or nannies?—with children.

And on the fourth side—directly across the wide tree-lined avenue from Flacommo’s house—were the gardens of the library.

Rigg knew already from studying the paths that moved through them that the library’s large buildings stood well apart from each other, each one making a stately impression of its own, showing the architectural style that was in favor at the time it was added. The library buildings stood on a built-up rise of ground—there were no natural hills in this delta country. The mansions were also on raised ground, though not so high; between them, just across the avenue, were the tiny apartments that were provided free for visiting scholars while conducting their library research. The librarians themselves lived in the attics above the stacks of books.

Rigg believed that Umbo and Loaf would try to reach Aressa Sessamo, as soon as Umbo had learned how to deliver messages to himself and Rigg in the past. Rigg had hoped that the library might be a place where they could meet, but now it was clear that he would have to find another way to get to them. It wasn’t likely they would be able to pass themselves off as scholars, and if they tried to walk around in this part of the city they would instantly be recognized as interlopers. They would never be able to come anywhere near him.

The first morning, they took him to the Library of Life, where he hoped to meet Bleht. Instead, he was given into the charge of a young assistant librarian who led him on a tour of the building, with the guards in tow. The assistant was a woman of no more than twenty, and she put on quite a show of being very bored and put upon, having to take a child on a tour. She even remarked to the guards about the irony that the Revolutionary Council still provided special services for the royals.

Rigg let her attitude roll off him. He did not try to chat with her—or the guards, for that matter, having learned some kind of lesson from his time with Shouter. But when he wanted more information, he asked her, and since she really did love the place, his questions led her to occasional displays of enthusiasm, though she soon caught herself and resumed her cold attitude. But it was a little less cold as the hours progressed.

On the outside, the building looked like a simple rectangle. Inside, though, it was a labyrinth, and Rigg reflected that if he did not have his ability to retrace his own path he might never find his way out again. The shelves of books he had expected, but there were also bins where old scrolls were kept, and catalogues that listed abstracts of books that existed only on thin sheets of metal, baked-clay tablets, tree bark, and animal skins.

“Aren’t these so ancient that their science has nothing to teach us?” asked Rigg.

“This isn’t just a library of contemporary biology,”

she answered coldly. “We also keep the entire history of the life sciences, so that we can see how we got to our present understanding.”

“Were there any civilizations of the past that surpassed us in understanding of some areas of biology?”

“I’m not a historical librarian,” she said. “I supervise the record-keeping in the laboratories, and since very few scholars are using the labs right now, they decided I was free to waste a morning.”

“But then you must be involved with the cutting edge of science all the time,” said Rigg.

She did not answer—but a little more of the hostility drained away from her. Still, she didn’t even bother to say good-bye when the noon bell rang and it was time for him to go.

On the way out of the building, the guards twice got lost enough that he had to correct them and lead them out himself. They went back to Flacommo’s house, which was only five minutes’ walk, to eat, and then returned, this time to the Library of Past Lives. This time his guide was not a librarian but a young scholar who was drafted into the service. He wasn’t hostile at all, and if it were not for the glowering guards, he might have spent the whole time quizzing Rigg on what the Empress Hagia Sessamin was like, and whether he had seen the mysterious Param.

At the end of the day, the guards were going to lead Rigg straight back to Flacommo’s house, but Rigg asked to see whoever was in charge.

“In charge of what?” asked the scholar. “Each library has its own dean or mayor or rector—they all have different titles—and nobody’s in charge of the whole thing.”

“I think I need to see whoever is in charge of me.”

“You?” asked the scholar. “Aren’t these men . . .”

“Somebody decided the order in which I should tour the libraries. Somebody drafted you to lead me through this one. Who is making those decisions?”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“This is a library,” said Rigg. “Could we look it up?”