Ad Astra (27 page)

I stumbled to a halt and stared at the devastation. Why?

I must have said the question out loud, because a woman beside me shook her head. “The building belonged to a man who now commands an anti-Anuban militia.” She was crying, tears cutting paths through the bomb-birthed dust which had powdered her face. “Not ten minutes ago I came past here and greeted my friend Aaron. Have you ever noticed his bookstore?” I nodded. “All gone,” the woman mourned. “Aaron and all he treasured. And for what? Aaron had been threatened by some Anubans. I knew of it. They didn’t like some of the books he sold, but Aaron wouldn’t take anything off the shelves. But look where they put the bomb! They didn’t even care the bookstore was there. They just wanted to destroy the building.”

And I truly didn’t know at that moment which was worse; that people might deliberately destroy the bookshop of Aaron D’abu because they hated the ideas inside, or that they might heedlessly destroy it because they didn’t care about the ideas it held.

“It’s a task of great honor, to sell books,” Aaron had once told me. “All of life, hope, death and love is within my walls. It’s a great responsibility, you know. We booksellers, we come and go. But the books, the ideas, those remain with us always for those who seek them.”

I left Bastet, wishing more people on that world had read the books which Aaron D’abu had once sold.