Mountain of Black Glass (32 page)

The last landing still left them well below the nearest window, and Renie was about to content herself with just the glimpse of true daylight—she could see clouds drifting past, and the sky was a reassuringly normal blue—when !Xabbu said, “Over here!” He had found a ladder balanced against the back of the topmost apartment, a way to get up onto the roof, someone's refuge from the rest of the crowded shantytown. As she followed him up the rungs sagged alarmingly beneath her weight, but she was hungry now to see the world . . . or at least whatever world they had been given.

!Xabbu reached the top of the ladder and turned to the window, then frowned in puzzlement. Renie joined him, a couple of rungs below, eager to see the rest of the house and its grounds, or at least the part which lay below them.

Her first disconcerting realization was that they were not above much of the house at all, but only partway up one of the lower structures. The sky was real, but it was visible only between two other wings of the building, both of which rose far above their vantage point—higher even than the distance Renie and her companions had descended since leaving Zekiel and Sidri. The other disturbing thing was that there were no grounds to be seen whatsoever, except for a few glimpses lit by angling sunlight of roof gardens nestled between cupolas, or even one tucked into the wreckage of an ancient, broken dome. Instead, the house continued as far beyond the window as she could see, a stunning conglomeration of halls and towers and other structures for which she had no names, all connected in a labyrinthine whole, rooftops and chimneys spreading away and growing smaller and smaller with distance, an undifferentiated, choppy sea of gray and brown shapes that at last grew dim in the fading golden light.

“Jesus Mercy,” Renie murmured. She could think of nothing else to say, so she said it again.

 

She was reluctant to share her discovery with the others, although her better sense told her that whether the house had an ending or not made little difference to either their hunt or their chances for escaping the simulation; it was only after Florimel had asked a series of increasingly irritated questions that she told them exactly what she had seen.

“. . . And it looked like we could walk for months without reaching the outside,” she finished. “Like a city, but all one building.”

Florimel shrugged. “It makes little difference.”

T4b, his sangfroid restored by a long time on level ground, said, “These
sayee lo
Grail-hoppers got too much time, too much money. I had something like this network, be making something bold tasty, me—no dupping.”

Florimel rolled her eyes. “Let me guess . . . half-naked Gogglegirls with gigantic breasts, and plenty of loud music and guns and cars and charge, yes?”

T4b nodded vigorously, impressed by her perceptiveness and taste.

The byways along the river were beginning to fill with people abroad on errands both personal and commercial. Renie was relieved to see that she and her friends were not quite so unusual as she had feared: some of the locals were as pale as Zekiel and Sidri had been, but overall there was a fairly wide range of colors and sizes, although she had seen none yet she would call black. Of course, she remembered, her own current sim was not all that dark-skinned either. Even !Xabbu's current form did not seem to stretch convention too far, since Renie saw animals being driven to market, and even a few riding on their owners' shoulders, pigeons and a rat or two, that were clearly pets. In fact, as they followed the river shore which had widened out now into a boardwalk lined with makeshift peddlers' shops selling caps and rope and dried fish, Renie and her companions were quickly becoming just part of the crowd.

They stopped and asked an old man repairing a fishing net for directions to the Library Market, and although he seemed amused at the idea of someone not knowing where that was, he cheerfully instructed them. Wide hallways perpendicular to the boardwalk now opened into the main corridor at regular intervals, like the intersections of major streets, and when Renie and the others reached a particularly wide boulevard marked at the corner by a round-eyed bird carved on a wooden sign, they turned and headed away from the river, struggling through the thick crowd.

Black Owl Street was roofed with timbers, apparently a late addition, but was even broader than the boardwalk and more upscale as well, lined with shops and taverns and even restaurants. Some of the busy crowd wore clothes as antiquely idiosyncratic as those of Renie and her friends, but others, particularly men, were garbed in what to Renie seemed a nineteenth century style, black frock coats and trousers, or the same clothes in only slightly more imaginative hues of dark blue or dark brown, like counting-house employees in a Dickens novel. She half-expected to see Ebenezer Scrooge fingering his watch chain and cursing the rabble.

Lost in people-watching, Renie was brought up short by Martine's hand on her arm.

“Just a moment . . .” The blind woman cocked her head, then shook it. “No, nothing.”

“What did you think you heard? Or felt?”

“Something familiar, but I cannot be sure—it was fleeting. There are so many people here that I am finding it hard to process the information.”

Renie lowered her voice, leaning toward Martine's ear. “Do you think it was . . . you know who?”

Martine shrugged.

The company was beginning to spread a little in response to the Brownian movement of the wide, crowded corridor. Just to be on the safe side, Renie and Florimel pulled the companions back together. The crush was abetted by people entering from side channels, some pulling wagons piled high with goods, many the apparent product of extensive poaching: Renie doubted that people in this squatter society would be building ornate candelabra from scratch, and even if they were, she somehow doubted it would be someone as shifty-eyed and dirty-fingered as the man she was currently watching.

Almost without realizing it, they reached their destination. The corridor widened so abruptly that the walls simply seemed to have disappeared, and the ceiling retreated to a point that must have been far higher than the top rung of the ladder Renie had climbed earlier. The space they found themselves in was as large as four of the huge upstairs ballrooms put together, and as crowded with people as any of the hallway-streets outside. But it was the bookshelves that were truly impressive.

Shelves lined the Library from floor level all the way to the ceiling, dozens and dozens of shelves mounting upward until, like an art-class perspective exercise, they seemed to have no space left between them. Every single one was jammed from one side to another with books, so that the walls of the vast room had become abstract mosaics tiled in multicolored leather book spines. Enormously long ladders stood in some places, stretching many meters from the floor up the vertical facing of the book-cliffs; other, smaller versions dangled between one row of higher shelves and another, perhaps simplifying the journeys of scholars or clerks who had to move back and forth between the same spots many times. But in some spots along the immense shelves the only way to get to certain locations appeared to be along frighteningly crude rope bridges, one strand for the feet, the other chest high, the long, sagging cables rooted on platforms built in the room's corners. It was not the only use of rope: from the floor to a height of perhaps two stories the shelves were protected from theft and depredation by nets of knotted silk, so that the books could be seen but not touched or removed. The steep vertical shelves were acrawl with people in gray robes—the Library-tending monks Zekiel had mentioned. Quietly purposeful as bees on a honeycomb, these dark-robed figures repaired the book net where a cord had frayed or a knot had been cut, or moved carefully along the upper walkways. At least two dozen leaned out from ladders at various points along the shelves, wielding long-handled dusters. Both the monks and the Market-going throng appeared largely oblivious to each other.

“It is amazing,” Florimel said. “I cannot guess how many books are here.”

“I believe seven million, three hundred four thousand and ninety-three is the most recent total,” said an unfamiliar voice. “But most of those are stored in the lower catacombs. I doubt there are a fifth that many in this room.”

The smiling man who stood beside them was young, plump, and bald. As he turned to gaze fondly at the shelves, Renie saw that all his hair except a single broad tuft on the back of his skull had been shaved. His gray robe and odd coiffure left little doubt of his profession.

“You're one of the monks?” Renie asked.

“Brother Epistulus Tertius,” he replied. “This is your first time at the Market?”

“It is.”

He nodded, looking them over, but she could see neither calculation nor suspicion in his open, pinkish face. “May I tell you something of its history, our Library? I am afraid I am very proud of it—I still cannot get over the idea that a boy like me from the Stovewood Scavengers should have come to such a wonderful place.” He spotted !Xabbu and suddenly looked worried. “Or am I keeping you from your marketing?”

Renie wondered if he thought they were looking for a buyer for the baboon. She examined the monk carefully, trying to see whether the face of the thing that had pretended to be Quan Li might be hiding behind the benevolent exterior, but she could think of no reason why their enemy should bother to change his appearance if he had remained, nor could she find any evidence that this man was more than he seemed. Certainly, a friendly insider was the best thing to find in any unfamiliar place. “That's very kind,” she said aloud. “We would love to learn more.”

 

“. . . And here are the greatest treasures of all.” Brother Epistulus Tertius gestured reverently. “These are the books which our Order has translated. The wisdom of the ancients!”

In the context of the hundreds upon thousands of books ranged above them, tended by scores of gray-robed brothers, it seemed like the punchline to a joke. The crystal reliquary on the table before them contained scarcely two dozen volumes. One had been opened, as if for display. In beautifully-drawn letters, almost lost among the profusion of illuminations around capitals and in the margins, she could read the words,
“. . . particular Care must be taken not to perforate the Liver during cleaning, or the flavours of the Bird will be spoyled. Seasonings, such as Shrew-Wort and autumn Carpet Buttons, may be Employed, but must be Added with a Cautious Hand . . .”

“It's a recipe,” Renie said. The Market crowd jostled past, kept from bumping the holy relics themselves only by a low wooden fence set directly in the carpeted floor. Engaged in haggling and gossip, none of them seemed particularly intent on leaping over the barrier to snag the holy cookbook.

“Perhaps, perhaps!” Their guide was cheerful. “There is so much we have left to discover. Now that we have learned the alphabet of the Solarium People, there are surely two or even three more volumes that will yield up their secrets.”

“Do you mean that all of these books,” Florimel waved her hand at the looming shelves, “are in unknown languages?”

“Certainly.” The monk's smile did not lessen. “Oh, they were clever, the ancients! And so many of the languages are completely forgotten. And then there are codes—so many codes, some of them uniquely clever, some quite senseless and mad. And even though many of the codes are doubtless quite comprehensible, they are tied to other books which are somewhere in the Library—but of course we cannot know which books, because we do not understand the code in the first place.” He shrugged, happy possessor of a job for life.

Florimel said, “That is very interesting, Brother Epistulus, but . . .”

“Please, I am only Epistulus Tertius—my master, God willing, will live many years more, and then there is yet another before me in line to shoulder his great burden.”

“. . . But can you tell us anything about the house itself? What is beyond it?”

“Ah, you will want to talk to one of my brethren with a greater specialty in matters philosophical,” he said. “But first, I would like to show you my own specialty . . .”

“Op this!” called T4b, an unfamiliar tone in his voice. Renie turned to see him crouching on the floor a short distance away, surrounded by children. One of them had tugged back the sleeve of T4b's robe and discovered his gleaming hand; the teenager was cheerfully pretending to grab them, keeping the children squealing in excitement and mock fear. He looked so happy that although Renie did not like him attracting attention, she was reluctant to say anything. Emily stood behind him, watching the game, her narrow face lost in thought. Martine was closer to Renie than to Emily, T4b, and the children, but seemed even less connected to the group, head bowed, her mouth working silently, her eyes staring down at nothing. Renie wanted to go to her and see if she was all right—the blind woman seemed to be having a reaction like that which had first gripped her on their entry into the Otherland network—but !Xabbu was touching Renie's arm, silently asking for attention, and the monk was trying to get them all to follow him toward other treasures.

“. . . And of course we are no farther in dealing with these missives than we are with the books themselves,” Epistulus Tertius was saying to Florimel, “but we have had a breakthrough lately on the datal notations on some of the Far Eastern Porch Civilization lists. . . .”

A movement above her drew Renie's gaze. Several of the dusting monks were leaning out from the shelves above, eavesdropping on their brother's words and examining the newcomers. Like Epistulus Tertius they all had shaven heads, but in all other ways seemed a different species altogether, a younger, smaller, and livelier group, doubtless due to the demands of their task. They clung to the treacherous ropes seemingly without fear, and moved with the certainty of squirrels. Several of them wore the cowled necks of their robes over their mouths and noses as protection against dust, leaving only their eyes and the dome of their heads visible. One young man near the end was observing the newcomers particularly intently, and for a moment Renie almost felt she recognized him, but even as she watched he seemed to grow bored, and shinnied back up onto a higher shelf and out of sight.