The Library at Mount Char (41 page)

Carolyn felt a flicker of irritation and squelched it.
At least he's making an effort to be civil
. She sighed.
Plus, it's not like he's wrong
. “Yeah. OK. Some of this is new information. But I've been really busy!”

“Yeah, I know. I get that, I really do. Your Father dying really shook things up. All his old enemies have their knives out for the new kid, right?”

“Exactly. But I have the advantage.”

“How so?”

“They will underestimate me,” she said, smiling. Seeing this, Steve actually shivered. He tried to hide it, but of course she saw.
He really is afraid of me
, she thought and, oh, knowing that this was true hurt. She wouldn't cry; she never cried.

But it hurt so much.

Hoping for escape, she looked at the television. The writing on one corner of the screen said
CNN
. Beside that, the words
NEUTRONIUM HULL?
in larger letters. Above it all, the Library. It tumbled in place like a thrown die, a dark pyramid bigger than anything made by men. It was black outside, of course, but the camera crew had some sort of light-gathering lens that made everything an eerie green. Helicopters danced around the pyramid like fireflies around a beach ball.

“Is that us?” Steve gestured at the TV with a handful of popcorn. “That's the thing that was whooshing by in the sky, the night Erwin shot David? The ‘project and defend' thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it the Library? Like, we're inside?”

She hesitated. “Sort of. It's a four-dimensional projection of a seventeen-dimensional universe. Kind of like a shadow, or the place where the circles overlap in a Venn diagram.”

On the television, the camera panned down from the Library to a pretty woman in an overcoat. She stood in front of a roadblock on Highway 78. Carolyn recognized the spot. The sound was off, but Carolyn read her lips. She was saying things like “day thirty-two” and “unusual activity,” and “military has not responded.” Her teeth were very white. Then, from behind her, stern-faced soldiers came around the tank, waving their arms in “shoo” gestures.

“What's going on?” Steve looked around for the remote.

“The Army is evacuating all the reporter people.”

“What? Why?”

“They're going to start bombing us in a few minutes.”

Steve stared at her. “You know about that?”

“Sure.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don't want to, like, flee?”

“I thought it would be fun to watch. David used to bomb things sometimes. The lights are kind of pretty.” She smiled and held up the bowl. “Plus, popcorn!”

Steve just stared at her.

A moment later she got it. “Oh. They can't hurt us. I promise.”

“Umm. Have you heard of something called atomic bombs?”

“I'm familiar with them. They won't try that. Well…they talked about it, but I think they decided not to. Erwin and the Chinese guy wanted to, but the president kept saying ‘not on American soil.' I'm pretty sure, anyway. I got bored and tuned out.”

He boggled at her. “How the
hell
do you know these things?”

“I stole it from David's catalog. When someone is planning to harm me, I can tell.” She glanced at Naga. “It feels sort of like an itch, here.” She tapped the base of her skull. “When I got the itch, I listened in on them. It should start any minute.”

Steve rubbed his temples. “Carolyn…even if they don't use nukes, they have these things called bunker busters. And something else, I think it's called a ‘daisy cutter'? Something like that. They're huge
bombs, almost as big as nukes.” He searched her face. “Are you sure that won't—”

“Relax,” she said, misunderstanding. “There's nothing to worry about. I promise.” She looked out at the wall behind the television. “Actually, it's already started. The stuff on television must have been recorded, or something. Look.” She made a gesture and the wall became transparent.

Steve squinted against the glare. “Has the sun come back?”

“No, it's just the explosions. Hang on.” She gestured again and the glare dimmed a bit. “That's better.”

For as far back as the eye could see, the air was filled with warplanes. Seeing them she thought of flocks of birds, migrating for the winter. A flight of cruise missiles streaked in through the night sky and blossomed against the wall of the Library, orange flowers in the night. “See? Told you it was pretty.” She ate a piece of popcorn. “Don't you think?”

“Uh…I guess.”

Next in the line were three big bombers. The bomb-bay doors were open in their bellies. As they approached they disgorged their cargo. Now she could see them on the television as well as through the wall. Fireballs marched up the side of the pyramid in surprisingly tidy rows. One of them was a direct hit. Carolyn adjusted the brightness again.

Steve walked over and put his hand on the wall. “I can't even feel it. Nothing.”

“Of course not.” She gestured at the pyramid on the TV. “Like I said, it's a projection. The bombs can't reach where we actually are. Think of it this way—if someone shot your shadow, that wouldn't hurt, right?”

“Hmm.” Steve sat back down—farther away from her than he had been—and took a handful of popcorn. “I have a confession to make.”

“What's that?”

“I knew they were going to bomb you. Well…I knew they were thinking about it.”

“Oh? Did you?”

“Yeah. I've been talking to Erwin. And the president—the new one, I mean. Not the head. Plus a couple of others.” He held up Mrs. McGillicutty's cell phone.

She waved her hand in the air. “I appreciate you saying something, but it's not a problem.”

“You knew, didn't you?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been eavesdropping on me?”

“I'd never do that. Not to you.”

“Then how?”

“Different universe, remember? I had to set up a relay before your cell phone would work. Remember how the first couple of times you tried to make a call, nothing happened?”

“Oh.” He paused. “You're not mad?”

“Nothing to be mad about.”

“I sort of conspired to murder you. That's nothing?”

She shook her head. “Nope. On some level you knew it couldn't work.”

“How do you mean?”

She tapped the base of her skull. “No itch.”

“Ah.” Steve thought to himself for a few seconds. He and Naga exchanged a look. Finally he nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “OK.” Then, to her, “Can I get you a drink? There's something I want to talk to you about.”

“Sure.”
A drink sounds really good
. “What's on your mind?”

“Well, the first thing is, I wanted to talk to you about that wish.”

“You know what you want?” She tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
Maybe he's coming around after all!

“Yeah. I thought of something. You remember me talking about my dog? The cocker spaniel?”

“Er…”

“That first night, back at the bar.”

“Oh,” she lied. “Of course.”

“Can you find him? Make sure he's OK? His name is Petey.”

“Yeah, sure. I can do that. But Steve, that's nothing. If you have—”

He gave her a very earnest look. “You promise?”

“Sure. I promise. I'm not much good with dogs, but I'll figure something out.”

Steve sat back, nodded. “Thank you, Carolyn. I really appreciate that.”

He fell silent. After a long pause she pulled at the air, a get-on-with-it gesture. “Steve?”

“Mmm. Sorry. How do I put this?” He pursed his lips. “Look, first, I want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you told me the other night. What happened to you. How you got to be…whatever you are.”

“I told you, I'm just a libr—”

He held up his hand. “Whatever. Just know, I'm making a real effort to put myself in your place. To understand why you do the things you do. Like, that's all I've really done since then.”

There was something in his tone that she didn't like. “Oh? And now you have…opinions?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “In terms of what you did? To David and Margaret? No. I personally try to stay away from stuff like that, the kicking of ass and so forth. On the other hand, no one's ever nailed me to a desk. So, really, who am I to judge?”

Ice cubes clinked in a glass. In her heart, something unclenched. “Thank you.”

“But I do have an opinion about something else.”

“What's that?”

“About what it did to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…for instance, most people I know wouldn't get bored and tune out of a conversation where someone was deciding whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on them. Even if they were pretty sure they'd live through it, they'd be curious to hear how the conversation turned out.” He shook his head. “Not you, though. It did not rise to your threshold of interest.”

“I'm not sure what you're getting at.”

“At first I thought you were fucking crazy. Maybe you are, by whatever standard the doctors have, but now I don't think crazy is the right word.”

“What, then?” Her lips felt numb, as if she'd been given some sort of toxin.

“I can't think of a word for it. It's like you're living at a different scale than the rest of us. Normal things—fear, hope, compassion—just don't register with you.”

“That's…OK. Maybe. There might be something to that.” Her tone was guarded. He didn't mean her any harm, she'd know if he did, but there was something there, something…

“It has to be that way,” he said. “I mean, really. How else could you have survived? But, the thing is, it cuts both ways.”

“Steve, you're going to have to spell it out for me.”

“Yeah, OK. I'm trying to.” He poured half an inch of Everclear into her glass, then filled the rest with orange juice. He emptied the rest of the bottle into a steel stock pot. “Letting it breathe,” he said. He walked over and handed her the glass.

She sipped her drink, made a face.

“Don't like it?”

“It's pretty strong.” She drank it anyway.

“Yeah.” He touched his cup to his lips, then set it aside. “Like I said, I've been watching the news a lot lately. Are you aware that there have been some agricultural problems? With this new sun you put up?”

“What sort of problems?”

“Well…most of the plants are dying. Almost all of them, really. Trees, grass, wheat, rice, the Amazon Basin…pretty much everything. That has some people a little concerned.”

“About plants?” She was honestly confused. Americans were constantly killing one another. Every time you turned around there was another war. “Why would they care about
plants
?”

“The thing is, pretty soon there isn't going to be any food left.”

“Oh! Right. Well, that's easy. There are plenty of molds and fungi and whatnot that will grow under the black sun. I've got books. When I get around to it I'll make a translation, and—”

“That's really nice, and I know people will appreciate it. But the problem is getting to be kind of urgent.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I'll see if I can block out some time next week.”

“CNN is running a series of special reports on how to get nutritional
value from stuff you wouldn't normally think of as food,” Steve said. “Making stew out of shoe leather. Recipes for your house pets. Things like that.”

“Hmm. Come to think of it, the store
was
out of guacamole.”

“Did you notice the price on the Everclear?”

“Not really.”

“Seven thousand dollars a bottle is a little higher than usual,” he said. “Probably the only reason you could find it at all is that it's as much an industrial chemical as a food product. I don't think anyone except high school kids actually drinks the stuff. They only do it because they don't know any better.”

“Now that you mention it, the shelves
did
seem kind of bare.”

“I bet.” He made a concentrating face. “The other day I saw something on the news that made me think of your deer. Isha and…”

“Asha.”

“Right. The other week this kid, sixteen or so, got caught poaching deer on a rich guy's estate. That's a capital crime now. They caught him red-handed. Literally. He was sucking the marrow out of a doe's femur bone. His defense was that the deer were going to starve to death anyway, so why shouldn't someone get some nutrition out of them? I kind of saw his point.”

Carolyn flashed on a morning she had spent nibbling dew-drenched clover with Asha, watching the spring dawn. This brought a flicker of…something…but she pushed it down.

Steve was watching her intently.

“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was perfectly normal.

Steve was silent a long moment before he answered, softly. “They hanged the kid anyway. Afterwards there were more riots. Like I said, it's kind of an everyday thing now.”

“Oh.” She drained her glass.

“Another drink?” His voice was stronger.

“Sure.”

He walked back into the kitchen and opened the second bottle. He fixed her drink—a full inch of liquor this time—then poured the rest of that bottle into the stock pot with the first.

“Anyway. There's some other problems besides the famine. Earthquakes are the biggie. There's a new one almost every day. There's not much left of San Francisco. Tokyo is gone. Mexico City isn't far behind. And apparently there's some kind of volcano under Yellowstone that's rumbling. Nothing has really happened with it yet, but the geologists seem worried.” He met her eyes. “They say it's got to do with this place.”