The Infinite Library (40 page)

“No, you mean
you
have to solve the mystery. It was your damn curiousity that caused all of this, I'm sure of it! Everything went tits up in our lives the moment you got involved.”

“I'm sure it's just a coincidence,” I defended.

“You were getting too close to
somebody's
secrets, poking your beak in places it didn't belong. This is the shit that happens when dippy academics try to play Sherlock Holmes.”

“Angelo, it's not going to serve us to point fingers at this point. It's too late for that, and this is the hand we've been dealt. I think it's a smart idea for us to work together. You have your own mystery to solve: the apparent sickness of the Library, the sudden surge of slipped books. We have to check the bus schedule and leave tonight.”

Just as I said that, I could see Angelo's hands frantically searching himself. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck!”

“What?” I asked, partially exhausted by the endless parade of panic.

“My PDA! I left it at your place! Fuck! You have no idea what I have on that thing... and all my USB keys, too! Shit... Just great! They're probably going through it right now, have all my info, contacts, the works. I'm absolutely fucked.”

“Are you sure? And is it that vital, given our current situation?”

“Yes, I'm fucking sure,” he snapped in irritation. “And, yes, it's fucking vital. I could be expelled from the Order for this, for being so goddamn careless! All that sensitive information in the hands of those not in the Order-”

“Given the way the Library has been behaving as of late, there might not
be
an Order if we don't take action. Your standing with the Order isn't really my concern, and I know so little about the Library that I don't know if I should be assisting in any way. What I do know is that we are on the run, and obviously we are both targets.”

I was trying to calm Angelo down since the rather animated conversation risked drawing further attention to us. Angelo was obviously still lamenting over his forgotten PDA, and he most likely felt emasculated without it. For my part, as fortune would have it, I did well to plan ahead by taking the two books with me. We eventually made our way to the bus station and, since we had fallen out of a talking mood, I was able to soothe my nerves by dipping further into the awfully written tale.

18

Excerpts 18-22 from the
Backstory

T
he sky was black, macabre. A cruel wind blew on my face, and everything had changed. Gimaldi and I feared the worst without really knowing why. Castellemare joined us with a mocking grin on his face.

“I'm sorry, but you lose,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “We conquered your labyrinth. What further tests must you subject us to?”

“Where are we?” Gimaldi asked sternly.

“Why, here, my good friend,” Castellemare said as if the question were facile. “Does it matter?”

“Castellemare, I am through with your antics,” charged Gimaldi. “You've pranced about like some smug villain, playing your little paradoxical games. The boy is not yours to mould. He will not be one of your devotees. He is a creature of Reason, not your charlatanism.”

“Then by all means, weave your wild and illusory metaphysics if their intricate arabesques give you pleasure,” Castellemare said with a laugh. “Besides, this is a rather silly discussion.

“Then why have you dragged us into it, and into this labyrinth of yours? What are you trying to prove?” I challenged him.

“Nothing at all,” he said, a bit confused by my question. “Really, I do things for amusement.”

I must here confess that I did read
Codex Infinitum
to its conclusion. However, knowing that he – the other Gimaldi – was reading this, I could not in good conscience, and for what I now know, report anything further that would aid him. I do not do this to be cruel, but actually out of mercy for a man I would never come to know beyond the confines of text. What I report now will be of little value to that other Gimaldi, but it is my hope that the scant clues I offer will better guide him... hopefully away from these beguiling mysteries and atrocious consequences.

19

An end to theological mischief.
Just one more trial for Gimaldi. Press the all-one cipher of the immanent and infinite Library into a man and that man will become the Librarian.

“Am I to believe that all of what I have endured, and the labyrinths I have traveled, was nothing more than a training exercise for a job I had not applied for?” asked Gimaldi.

“Gimaldi, your weakness is in not recognizing what is metaphorical and what is literal. You will no doubt take the pressing of the one-all cipher as metaphorical, and the imminent synthesis as literal. You know nothing about information.”

20

Beware:

“Exactly,” he smiled. “The impossibility of existence is marked by the absence of all formalities. It is simply enough to be a sufficient being in order to be all beings. Is not infinity simply a matter of sufficient reason, hm?”

21

(What you have to understand is that which will come to pass can only do so if you read it)... As for Castellemare, he would disappear without a trace, along with his villa. Leave it all alone, Gimaldi. Stop reading. Run.

FIN

19

Setzer's Labyrinth

Ts'ui Pen must have said once:
I am withdrawing to write a book.
And another time:
I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth.
Every one imagined two works; to none did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing.

-
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of the Forking Paths”

T
here would be no time for rest, for we had no idea if we were still being tailed. Nor did we know for certain who was tailing us. Although I had fairly reasoned that it probably was the Devorants – the same Order I had assumed murdered Setzer – I could not know for certain. I was also not entirely certain I could trust Angelo, for although he seemed to be as genuinely frightened and confused as I was, it could have been yet another of his elaborate acts, the kind he is more than capable of putting on to re-acquire books and make his social way seamlessly throughout the world at every one of its levels. Now was not the time for severe doubt to cripple me, but rather a time to take action and inch that much closer to the resolution of this mystery. To that end, I led Angelo to Setzer's apartment.

“Maybe this isn't such a hot idea,” complained Angelo. “The man has been murdered, and I would think there would be some kind of ongoing investigation. That means cops, and that also means they'd probably be digging for some clues at his home.”

But, as it turned out, there was no police presence. More surprising, his front door was unlocked, so I let myself in. The interior was steeped in gloom, and nothing seemed disturbed outside of normal everyday use. Some unfinished dates were wrinkling at the bottom of a glass bowl, a third of a bottle of wine was left but conscientiously re-corked, and everything looked as it should. However, it was not my intention to play the curator of Setzer's knack for tastefully moneyed minimalist décor. I prompted Angelo to follow me a bit further, down that corridor I had walked down just the once, on that first meeting with Setzer, to the rooms marked A, B, and C. In the shoddy workshop-esque central room that connected all three other rooms, there was a small pile of messy notes that I examined.

“This is glamourous,” said Angelo. “I'd have expected a tidier space for the head of a so-called Order.”

I hushed him and added, “This is hardly the time to get in your professional digs. The man is dead, and I aim to find out why so that we can find out who is after us.”

Angelo grunted and I began reading the pile of notes I could only assume were written in Setzer's hand:

Joel Barlow,
The Vision of Columbus

That Hartford swine with his gaudy paean, that wretched little token-piece and parlour-antic philosophical pretension he called his book. Oh, widely read, hailed as a high act of literature... .But then he had the nerve to extend it to a full epic, the failed Columbiad. This, of course, furnished from the Library as a possible book. But not all books in the Library have merit.

“
One centered system, one all-ruling soul,

Live thro' the parts, and regulate the whole.”

Such maundering claptrap! Nine books of it!

(what is behind the boards?)

Pollard(?) An Essay on Colophons, The Gentleman's Book of Polite Literature (1788), Maghur Empire (15??), Check Sothebys auction catalogue, A manual on physiognomy and the five divisions of countenance, A History of the Martyrs, Senecae Tragoedie (1679?)

-Some minor damage on the headband, a few wormholes and foxing. 8vo. Obv. early rebound, attempt to remove ex-libris stamp. Fair to poor condition.

-Retrieved from estate sale F.R.N, 27 vo.s, Only 4 of moderate value.

And so on. Setzer seemed to be making notes on recent acquisitions, but nothing particularly occult. These were just the rather disappointing notes of a book collector and little more. His criticism of the Barlow text was also none too shocking either – in fact, I agreed with his opinion. His interest for what was behind the boards of the cover is little more than a book-collector's trick where we uncover the error pages stuffed by publishers in the hopes that one of the leaves will prove to be of more value than the book itself.

“Gimaldi, come take a look at this,” Angelo beckoned from another bench. I replaced the notes and went to him. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he had encountered something awry. “Here,” he said, giving me a loose sheaf of handwritten pages, directing me to the last page.

-Castellemare goes into hiding.

-Once the murder takes place, Gimaldi and Angelo preyed upon by mysterious visitors. They'll come to the apartment and enter the labyrinth. At that point -

And that was where it tantalizingly left off, just like that, plopped into an eerie present time. I gave a cursory glance at the preceding pages, and written upon them were all the events that had taken place since I met Castellemare. More off-putting still were some of the descriptions of my private actions when I was certain I was alone, including a list of my thoughts and feelings at the time, phrased a bit more eloquently than I was capable.

“What does this mean?” I asked, but somehow knew that Angelo had as much of an idea as I did - which is to say, none.

“The whole fucking thing, written down, like a goddamn stage play! Where are the other pages? If I'm being strung along some kind of chintzy drama, I want to know what happens next,” he said, now turning his attention to searching everywhere in that sparse space.

I thought on this for a time before stating, “Setzer was an artificer. I am beginning to think that he scripted everything, but I have a hard time understanding how he got this much detail, and why everything proceeded so seamlessly according to script. And why we would he write in his own murder without trying to prevent it?”

Angelo had given up when he turned up nothing. I turned the last page and read something very faintly written on the bottom margin:
and then they came and took the rest of the pages. Angelo kicks over bench in anger.

Just then, Angelo did just that. The pine bench clattered on the floor and was split in one of its distressed cross-slats.

“Angelo, calm down. Look at this,” I said, and I pointed to the writing. He immediately went pale. I took the pages with me and had an inkling to check the now upended bench. As fortune would have it, there were a few more pages stapled to its inner planks. Just like in the movies, it was some sort of code.

“What's that?”

“I think it's a code,” I replied. Angelo gruffly snatched it from my hands but did not fare any better than I could in decoding it. “I'm not sure what it means,” I offered.