“You can remember them just by looking?” said Urn.
“Yes.”
“The whole scroll?”
“Yes.”
“I don't believe you.”
“The word LIBRVM outside this building has a chip in the top of the first letter,' said Brutha. ”Xeno wrote Reflections, and old Aristocrates wrote Platitudes, and Didactylos thinks Ibid's Discourses are bloody stupid. There are six hundred paces from the Tyrant's throne room to the Library. There is a-
“He's got a good memory, you've got to grant him that,” said Didactylos. “Show him some more scrolls.”
“How will we know he's remembered them?” Urn demanded, unrolling a scroll of geometrical theorems. “He can't read! And even if he could read, he can't write! ”
“We shall have to teach him.”
Brutha looked at a scroll full of maps. He shut his eyes. For a moment the jagged outline glowed against the inside of his eyelids, and then he felt them settle into his mind. They were still there somewhere-he could bring them back at any time. Urn unrolled another scroll. Pictures of animals. This one, drawings of plants and lots of writing. This one, just writing. This one, triangles and things. They settled down in his memory. After a while, he wasn't even aware of the scroll unrolling. He just had to keep looking.
ened his eyes.
Simony was walking away. Everything looked lighter. It was still dark. But now he could see in the darkness. Everything was shades of gray. And the cobbles under his hand had somehow become a coarse black sand.
He looked up.
ON YOUR FEET, PRIVATE ICHLOS.
He stood up sheepishly. Now he was more than just a soldier, an anonymous figure to chase and be killed and be no more than a shadowy bit-player in other people's lives. Now he was Dervi Ichlos, aged thirtyeight, comparatively blameless in the general scheme of things, and dead.
He raised a hand to his lips uncertainly.
“You're the judge?” he said.
NOT ME.
Ichlos looked at the sands stretching away. He knew instinctively what he had to do. He was far less sophisticated than General Fri'it, and took more notice of songs he'd learned in his childhood. Besides, he had an advantage. He'd had even less religion than the general.
JUDGEMENT IS AT THE END OF THE DESERT.
Ichlos tried to smile.
“My mum told me about this,” he said. “When you're dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right.”
Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way.
“Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?” said the soldier.
POSSIBLY.
Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse.
Urn clambered across the shelves like a monkey, pulling books out of their racks and throwing them down to the floor.
“I can carry about twenty,” he said. “But which twenty?”
“Always wanted to do that,” murmured Didactylos happily. "Upholding truth in the face of tyranny and so on. Hah! One man, unafraid of the-
“What to take? What to take?” shouted Urn.