It was doubtless their excited condition that caused them to move so rapidly that we had to quicken to a run to keep within sound of their footsteps.
They led us back to the end of the passage, and then along the curving way, till we came to the next of the dark openings—the one that led directly opposite to that by which we had entered beneath the temple. We followed them along it for about a quarter of a mile, finding it was in all respects alike to the other, being entirely dark, but having similar scenes developing within its walls continually. Had I been alone, I think that I could hardly have controlled my curiosity concerning some of them—for I kept sufficiently close to the wall to observe them as we hurried past—but I was too conscious of the useless folly of lingering to make such a suggestion to my companion.
I had short glimpses of a score of scenes which I had no time to consider, and which left no clear impression, but of a bewildering variety of landscapes, and once of a tossing windswept sea, beneath a clouded moon. I caught no sight of human life, except once only, when I thought there was a distant string of horsemen trailing wearily along a muddy trampled road, but the scene was obscured by a storm of hail, and before I could be sure of what I had seen, it had been left behind.
Following in the wake of the two youths, we moved without difficulty, and kept so nearly behind them that it became necessary to stop very abruptly when they halted in the darkness.
We heard them turn to the left-hand wall and then a vertical line of fuchsia-coloured light showed and widened, as a double door slid backward on either hand.
They went in through this door, and we followed to the entrance, secure in the fact that no light fell outward. It rose up like a wall of purple transparency where the door had opened, but it did not penetrate the darkness in which we stood.
Looking inward we saw, on either hand, high and low, long tiers of racks on which such living books as that which we had already seen were ranged in close and orderly rows. They were of somewhat different sizes, usually about twice that of a man’s head, but more like a large marble in the hands of those who owned them.
The space between the shelves was wide enough for the two Dwellers to move side by side, and was more than proportionately lofty; yet, by reason of its length, it had an effect of narrowness.
Down this alley the bearer of the living history strode for a few paces, to put it in its place on the rack to which it belonged, his friend moving beside him. My companion’s mind called me, “Come quickly” and together we crossed the threshold.
As in our own libraries, the lowest tier of books was close to the ground. There was just room beneath the rack for us to stand in comfort. We were under it in a moment.
As we reached this shelter, they turned back. They went out, and the sliding doors closed behind them.
I disliked the closing of those doors. It reminded me of one that had closed three nights ago in the darkness. My companion read my mind with some amusement. “It was your proposal,” she suggested.
“But I don’t like being shut in.”
“How can it matter, till we want to get out?” she answered. “Why will you always worry over troubles you haven’t got? We wanted to find the place, and here it is. We wanted to get into it, and here we are. Even though we should worry later, when we may want to get out, we ought to be glad now. Let us be glad that we are undisturbed, and see what knowledge we can acquire which may aid us.”
Her coolness made my fears seem foolish, (as, indeed, they were), and it was in a recovered serenity that I joined her mind to my own in exploring the storehouse of knowledge which we had penetrated so strangely.
We emerged from our cover, and walked along the lofty aisle between the racks—pygmies whose hands would scarcely reach to the second shelf, and whose heads did not reach to the first one.
It was a strange sensation. Even in a library of dead books there is an atmosphere of knowledge, and of the presence of many forgotten, ghostly minds. Each room has its own aroma. You may wander with closed eyes into the divinity section, but you will know at once that you are not in that of fiction or biography. The atmosphere in a room devoted to sporting books is different from that of one which is occupied with medical subjects. That is so with dead books; but these were living. Living books on either side, clamouring to be read, and we could not read them. Their desire met ours, but we had no key to their treasures. They would each answer to the right question, but having no knowledge of what they contained, we asked of each in turn for that which it could not give, and an unwilling silence rebuffed us.
Faced by this dilemma, we decided to seek the one book which we knew, and gain the information which it had received since last we probed it.
We found it without difficulty, about forty yards along on the seventh tier on the left hand. We both recognised it, high above us though it was, for these books were not alike. They were all of the same colour, lobster-red, but the shades varied with each. They all had the little swaying
