The Prisoner's Dilemma (14 page)

The woman pointed up the street with her wobbling cane. “Here it is now, dear.” Sure enough, a bus had rounded the corner and was rumbling down the block toward them. “Are you riding by yourself? How old are you?”

Constance was unsure how to answer this. She did not know how old she was. She knew she was much too young to be out alone, though, and so at last she said simply that she was very small for her age.

The woman cackled. “So am I! We don’t let that slow us down, do we?”

Holding her breath, expecting Myrtle and the men to appear any moment, Constance followed the woman slowly—so very, very slowly—up the bus steps. She sat next to the woman, and no one questioned her. The doors closed. The bus hissed, jerked, and then, grumbling and groaning, pulled away from the corner.

She had escaped.

For some time Constance thought of nothing else. Then, because it was itching her, she remembered the folder. She took it from under her shirt; it was creased and crumpled now. The first document was her birth certificate. She studied the information carefully. Her parents’ names and occupations were meaningless to her, for she had no memory of them. After a while she turned to the old woman, who was squinting at a newspaper clipping with her owlish eyes, and asked her for the date.

“Why, it’s leap year day, didn’t you know?” The woman showed Constance the clipping, an advertisement for a one-day-only sale. At the top was the phrase “Leap Into Savings” followed by numerous exclamation points, and at the bottom was the date. “I’ve always loved this day,” the woman said with a smile, “the way it comes out of nowhere then disappears again. Like magic, isn’t it? And here it’s snowing, too. Oh yes, magical day, magical day.”

Constance nodded. It did feel like magic, she thought. She felt rather like leap year day herself. Again she looked at the birth certificate. She had been born on January first, which made her just barely two years old. Constance was impressed. She had thought she was at least three.

Thinking back, she remembered Myrtle giving her a cupcake that day. There had been no mention of birthdays, however. Constance had assumed the treat was part of the holiday festivities. Evidently Myrtle hadn’t meant to be unkind, but neither had she wanted Constance to grow attached. Already she’d been planning to hand Constance over.

For a minute or so Constance wondered how it would feel to be wanted, and her eyes welled with tears. But then she got angry, and that was better. Gritting her teeth, she wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her raincoat.

The old woman was speaking to her again. She wanted to know where Constance was getting off the bus.

Constance frowned. She had not planned this far ahead. She had escaped, but where does a person escape
to
?

The woman repeated her question, and feeling pressed to answer Constance said the first thing that occurred to her. She was going to the library, she said—and having said it she realized it was exactly the right thing. Books had been her means of escape; now they would be her refuge.

“Which do you mean, honey, the main library or one of the branches?”

Constance almost said the main library, which was the only one she’d ever been to, but then realized she might be looked for there. So instead she said a branch library—the one that was farthest away.

“What, you don’t mean the Brookville branch?” asked the woman, surprised, and Constance said yes, that was the one. She was to meet her family there.

The woman clucked her tongue and explained that Constance had caught the wrong bus. “Now you’ll have to make—let’s see—two transfers, dear. No,
three.
Do you have enough money?” said the woman, already opening her change purse.

By late afternoon Constance stood on the steps of the Brookville library, snowflakes ticking softly on her raincoat, eating a hot dog she had purchased with money the kind old woman had given her. Exhausted and anxious, she stood for some time staring at the front doors. Then she went inside and began searching for a good place to hide.

Eventually Constance found an unlocked storage room, in the back of which was a stack of boxes labeled “To be processed when funding is approved.” The boxes were coated with dust; they appeared not to have been touched in years. Constance squeezed behind them into a narrow space just big enough for her to lie down. She folded up her raincoat to serve as a pillow. Hours later, long after the library had closed, she awoke.

Thus began Constance’s life in the library. She made few appearances by day, and then only when the library was busy, so that people might reasonably assume she was with someone (the young woman over in nonfiction might be her mother, for instance, or perhaps the stooped old fellow browsing magazines was her grandfather). She was careful never to be seen emerging from the storage room, and only occasionally was she obliged to explain to concerned librarians or patrons that she was very small for her age. She made sure always to appear confident and happy so as not to seem lost or in need of help. And generally she kept out of sight.

Her meals were not especially healthful, but Constance found them satisfactory. By the end of her first night she had learned where the librarians kept their snacks (and whose were best), and when after some weeks of nightly raiding she discovered that mousetraps had been set out, she triggered them with pencils and ate the cheese. She also found the key to the vending machine in the staff breakroom. But she was careful not to overuse it, and to spread out her thefts as best she could, so that no one would suspect the truth. And at any rate, it only seemed fair.

Constance spent her waking hours reading newspapers and rhyming picture books. She did not much enjoy the newspapers, which were dreary and dull and filled with nonsense about something called the Emergency. She only read them to see if there was anything about a missing little girl. There never was. A few articles appeared about a young quiz champion who had run away, but these she gave the merest glance—they weren’t about her, and that was all that mattered.

After the first week, Constance began to believe no one was looking for her. The few men in suits who visited the library were not the ones she’d run from, and nothing about them gave her goose bumps. Myrtle never appeared. Constance was free.

In reality, though, Constance was tormented, for every time she slept she dreamed of those men at Myrtle’s house—and the dreams terrified her. Often she woke with a cry, her heart pounding in her ears. When this happened at night, and she found herself alone in the dark library, she would lie there a long time petrified with fear, trying to muster the courage to stand up and turn on the light. And when the dreams came during the day (“napmares,” she called them), her relief upon waking was instantly replaced by the fear that she’d been heard crying out, and she would hold her breath and squeeze her eyes shut, dreading discovery.

This went on for weeks and weeks.

And then finally one night, waking in a fit of despair, Constance angrily commanded herself to feel better. Her face turned beet-red, her fists bunched into tight balls, and with all the fierceness she could muster (it happened to be no small amount) she said, “
Forget
it, Constance! Forget those men! Forget everything that’s happened! Forget it, forget it,
forget
it!”

And so she had, until this very moment.

I
‘m an orphan!” Constance declared joyfully, and an observer might have been shocked to see the enthusiasm with which her announcement was received. Everyone in the chamber leaped up, greeting Constance’s news with warm, happy smiles and heartfelt expressions of congratulation.

Constance was very excited and not a little out of sorts. She rattled away about her narrow escape, walking up and down as she did so, but from time to time she stopped, confused, to look around. In these moments she seemed unsure where she was. Then Mr. Benedict would gently speak her name, and Constance would look at him in surprise, then laugh and return to her narrative, often starting at the beginning.

“And then I just made myself forget!” she said, when at last she came to that part of the story. “I went back to sleep and never thought about that stuff again. How in the world did
that
happen?”

“A form of self-hypnosis,” said Mr. Benedict. “It is not unheard of, especially when motivation is sufficient. And of course your mind is most unusual—”

“I remember everything that happened after that, though,” Constance was saying, not having heard a word he said, “like reading the newspapers—I just kept reading them every day with the feeling that I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what I was looking for anymore! Bizarre! And then one day I read your advertisement, Mr. Benedict, and I thought, ‘Oh! That’s what I’m looking for! Special opportunities!’”

At this, Constance turned and walked straight toward the chamber door.

“Where are you going?” Kate asked as Rhonda made a subtle move to stand in the way.

Constance stopped and stared at Kate. “What? Oh!” She blushed and turned to Mr. Benedict with an expression of mild distress. “I thought I was leaving the library!”

Mr. Benedict smiled. “Some confusion between one’s recovered memory and one’s present reality is common. It will soon pass. In fact already you show signs of an unusually rapid—”

But Constance had moved on. “My parents were just ordinary people!” she cried. “I’d like to find out more about them—”

“We’ll help you,” said Number Two and Mr. Benedict at the same time.

“—but for now I’m just happy to know where I came from. Other than the public library, I mean. That nasty Mr. Pressius—I can’t wait to rub his nose in it! Wait till we show him the
real
papers! Oh please, Mr. Benedict, you have to let me be there when he sees them!”

Reynie noticed a troubled look flicker across Mr. Benedict’s face, but Constance noticed nothing of the sort, and she went on about the papers at some length—how they would make everything right again, and Mr. Benedict could finally adopt her, and it would be perfectly legal and real and official—until Sticky interrupted her.

“You left that part out before,” Sticky said. “Are you saying you know where those records are? The ones in the folder?”

“Of course, silly!” Constance laughed. “I hid the folder in a book!”

“Well, that’s terrific!” Sticky replied. “So where is the book? I mean, did you bring it with you or—”

“Sticky,” said Mr. Benedict quickly.

But already Constance was saying, “It’s at the library, where else?” and Sticky’s expression changed from excitement to horror.

“But that library
burned
! It was in the newspapers! I thought you knew! I thought you must have… must have…” Sticky fell silent, realizing what he’d done. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to wish back his words.

“But… but without those papers…” Constance said, her voice trembling.

“Constance,” said Mr. Benedict, “I promise you—”

But Constance did not stay to hear Mr. Benedict’s promise. With a despairing wail she turned and ran to the door. Rhonda would have stopped her if Mr. Benedict had not tried to do so himself. Unfortunately, at the sight of Constance’s anguished face Mr. Benedict had fallen asleep in mid-stride, and it was all Rhonda could do to catch him. In fact she and Number Two—who leaped in from the other direction—suffered cruel blows as their heads collided, and Kate found herself struggling to support the dazed young women as they in turn supported Mr. Benedict.

Sticky, his eyes still tightly closed, saw none of this. But hearing a sound rather like two coconuts knocking together, followed by moans from Rhonda and Number Two, he opened his eyes to find everyone toppling slowly to the floor. Everyone but Constance, who had unlocked the door and fled the room, and Reynie, who had gone after her.

“I’m so sorry!” Sticky cried. “It was an accident!”

Kate groaned. She had managed to prevent the adults from falling quite so hard as they might have, but even so they were all tangled and jumbled, and lying with her back arched across her bucket she was in considerable discomfort.

“You’re not to blame,” said Rhonda through gritted teeth. A bump was rising on her forehead. “We should have warned you to keep quiet about that.”

“Rhonda’s right,” said Number Two. “But who could have guessed Constance had those records with her at the library?” She struggled to her knees and began patting Mr. Benedict’s arm, trying to wake him. “We knew the Ten Men had burned it down, of course, but—”

“What?” said Sticky and Kate together.

“Oh yes,” said Rhonda. “You didn’t think it was a coincidence, did you?”

Sticky frowned. “The newspapers said the cause was unknown.”

“To most people it
was
unknown,” said Number Two. “Not to us.” She was still absently patting Mr. Benedict’s arm although he had opened his eyes now and was blinking up at her. “Somehow those Ten Men—at that time they were called Recruiters, of course—discovered that Constance had been at the library. Most likely one of their informants saw her come out, because it was on that very day that the brutes showed up and threatened the librarians. Who told them nothing, incidentally.”

“The same thing happened in Holland,” Kate reflected. “You’d think these guys would learn their lesson—librarians know how to keep quiet.”

“It helps to ask politely,” said Mr. Benedict (startling Number Two in mid-pat). He sat up, his expression melancholy but his voice determinedly even. “And in this case the librarians had little to tell. They had seen Constance on occasion but had no idea she was living in the building.”

“The Recruiters ransacked the library,” said Rhonda, “then set it on fire to cover their tracks. And I’m sure you know what happened to the librarians.”

“The Recruiters kidnapped them,” said Sticky grimly.

“And Mr. Curtain brainswept them,” said Kate, equally grim.

“A common fate,” said Mr. Benedict, “of anyone my brother found inconvenient. I’m pleased to say they’re better now, though; their memories were restored in this very room. At the time, of course, the librarians were not even thought to be missing—that being one of the Whisperer’s pernicious effects—but we always followed such matters closely. By nightfall Milligan was on Constance’s trail.”