I hardly dared to breathe on them as I opened the first one and looked at the document on the top of the pile, a shoddily cyclostyled, rusty-stapled bundle of pages with the odd title
“Why haven’t I seen these before?” I asked.
Gantry shuffled uncomfortably. He glanced at Menial, rubbed his chin and said, “Am I right in thinking you’re a tinker?”
“You’re right, I am that,” Merrial said, without hesitation.
Gantry smiled, looking relieved. “Urn, well. Between ourselves and all that. Scholars and tinkers both know, I’m sure, that we have to be… discreet, about the Deliverer’s… more discreditable deeds and, ah, youthful follies. So, although previous biographers have seen these documents, we don’t tend to show them to undergraduates. What I hope, Clovis, is that you’ll see a way to go beyond the, um, shall we say hagiographic treatments of the past, without…” He paused, sucking at his lower lip. “Ah, well, no need to spell it out.”
“Of course not,” I said.
I looked at the master scholar with what I’m sure must have been an expression of gratifying respect. “Shall we have a look through them now?”
Gantry stepped back and threw up his hands in mock horror. “No, no! Can’t have me looking over your shoulder at the raw material, Clovis. Unaided original work, and all that. This is yours, and there’s a thesis in there if ever I saw one. No, it’s time I was off and left you to it.” He hesitated. “Ah, I shouldn’t need to tell you, colha Gree, but not a word about this, or a single page of it, outside, all right?”
I had a brief, intense tussle with my conscience, which neatly tripped me up and jumped on me. “Nothing for the vulgar, of course,” I said carefully. “But in principle I could, well, show it to or discuss it with other scholars?”
“Goes without saying,” Gantry confirmed jovially. He tapped the side of his nose. “If you can find anyone you’d trust not to claim it as their own.” He winked at Menial. “Untrustworthy bunch, these scholars, I think you’ll find.” He punched me, playfully as he thought, in the ribs. “Confidence, man, confidence! I’m sure you have the wit to understand and explicate this lot yourself, and it’ll make your name, you mark my words!”
“Thank you,” I said, after a painful intake of breath. “Well… I think I’ll make a start right now.”
“Yes, indeed. Splendid idea. Don’t stay up too late.” His complicitous grin made it obvious that he thought it unlikely that we’d stay up too late. “Best be off then,” he said, as though to himself, then backed to the door and turned away.
“Good night to you, sir!” Menial called out after him.
“Good night,” came faintly back from the stairwell.
Menial let out a long breath.
“What a strange little man,” she said, in the manner of someone who has just encountered one of the Wee Folk.
“He’s not entirely typical of scholars,” I said.
“I should hope not,” Menial said. “Wouldn’t want you turning into something like that.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, adding loyally, “but he’s a fine man for all his funny ways.” I looked down at the stack of folders. “Maybe it would be a good idea,” I said slowly, “if you were to do your thing with the computer, and I could stay here, just in case he comes back.”
“Oh, and leave me to face the deils all on my own?” Merrial mocked, then laughed, relenting. “Aye, that is not a bad idea. If he or anyone else comes in, keep them busy. I’ll not be long, and I’ll be fine.”
“What about this security barrier?”
She waved a hand and made a rude noise. Taugh! This wee gadget here has routines that can roast security barriers over a firewall and eat them for breakfast.”
Considering how she’d had to program something a lot simpler than that to sort out the dates, I doubted her, but supposed that was the black logic for you.
She smiled and slipped away; after an anxious minute of listening, I heard the sound of the inner door being opened and the scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor and propped against it. I relaxed a little and turned again to the files—to the paper files, I mentally corrected myself, for the first time making the connection between “files” in Merrial’s and, I presumed, tinkers’ usage, and my own.
I was eager to get into the early decades, but I knew that would be somewhat self-indulgent, and that I would have plenty of time for that It was the later years, closer to the time of the Deliverance, that were hidden from history. I picked up the folder for the final decade, the 2050s, and was about to open it when I heard Merrial scream.
I don’t remember getting to the door of the dark archive. I only remember standing there, my forward momentum arrested by a shock of dread that stopped me like a sparrow hitting a window. The file folder, absurdly enough, was still in my hands, and I held up that heavy mass of flimsy paper and fragile cardboard like a weapon— or a shield.
Merrial too was holding a weapon—the chair she’d been sitting on, and had evidently just sprung out of. In front of her, and above the computer, in a lattice of ruby light, stood the figure of a man. He was a tall man, and stout with it, his antique garb of cream-coloured jacket and trousers flapping and his shock of white hair streaming in the same invisible gale that had blown his hat away down some long corridor whose diminishing perspective carried it far beyond the walls of the room. His face was red and wrathful, his fist shaking, his mouth shouting something we couldn’t hear.
Holding the chair above her head, her forearm in front of her eyes, chanting some arcane abracadabra, Merrial advanced like one facing into a fire, and seized her seer-stone and machinery from the table. Its wire, yanked from its inconveniently placed socket, lashed back like a snapped fishing-line. The litde peg at the end, now bent like a fishhook, flew towards me and rapped against the file-folder. Merrial whirled around at the same moment, and saw me. She gave me a look worth dying for, and then a calm smile.
“Time to go,” she said. She let the chair clatter down, and turned again to face the silently screaming entity she’d aroused. As she backed away from the thing, it vanished. A mechanism somewhere in the computer whirred, then stopped. A light on its face flickered, briefly, then went out.
All the lights went out. From downstairs we faindy heard an indignant yell. I could hear Merrial stuffing her apparatus back in its sack. She bumped into me, still walking backwards.
Holding hands as though on a precipice, we made our way through the library’s suffocating dark. I could smell the dry ancient papers, the friable glue and frayed thread and leather of the bindings. From those fibres the ancients could have resurrected lost species of trees and breeds of cattle, I thought madly. Pity they hadn’t.
After a long minute our eyes began to adjust to the faint light that filtered in past window-blinds, and from other parts of the building. We walked with more confidence through the maze towards the door. On the ground floor of the building we could hear Gantry blundering and banging about.
Then, behind us, I heard a stealthy step. Menial heard it too and froze, her hand in mine suddenly damp. Another step, and the sound of something
“It’s all right,” Menial said, her voice startlingly loud. “It’s a sound-projection—just another thing to scare us off.”
Behind us, a low, deep laugh.
“Steady,” said Menial.
My thigh hit the edge of the table by the door. “Just a second,” I said. I let go of her hand, grabbed one more file-folder, put it in my other hand and then caught Menial’s hand again.
We reached the library door, slammed it behind us and descended the stairs as fast as we safely could, or faster. Then we lost all caution and simply fled, rushing headlong past Gantry’s angry and puzzled face, lurid in the small flame of the pipe-lighter he held above his head, and out into the night.
Night it was—for hundreds of metres around, all the power was off. We stopped running when we reached the first functioning street-lamps, on Great Western Road.
I looked at Menial’s face, shiny with sweat, yellow in the sodium puddle.
“What in the name of Reason was that?”
Merrial shook her head. “My mouth’s dry,” she croaked. “I need a drink.”
My feet led me unerringly to the nearest bar, the Claimant. It was quiet that evening, and Merrial was able to
