CHAPTER TEN

Simon’s Sabotage

Going back to plain old normal life after spending an hour in a projectivized tangent space full of starships and time machines was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I wanted to run back to the basement and look at every single one of the objects. I wanted to sit down with the time machine and figure out how to fix it. But Ms. Minnian had said, “Go home now. That’s quite enough for today.” And I couldn’t get into the Wells Bequest Oversize Annex on my own anyway.

So here I was, losing badly to Jake at Gravity Force III.

“What’s wrong with you today?” he asked. I’d just crashed my ship three times before getting wiped by a space raider.

I threw down my game controller. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m preoccupied.”

“Obviously. What are you thinking about?”

I shrugged. “My science project.”

“Are you still doing robots?”

“I guess,” I said.

“How’s it going?”

I shrugged again. “Okay . . . Hey, Jake. What would you do if you found out . . .” I stopped. I shouldn’t talk about this. They would kick me out of the repository.

“If I found out what? That my best friend suddenly sucked at Gravity Force III?”

It’s okay, I told myself. He would just think I was speculating about silly stuff, the way I always do. “If you found out the things in science-fiction books really existed,” I said.

It was his turn to shrug. “They do,” he said.

My stomach clenched. Did he know? “What do you mean?”

“We have rockets. We sent men to the moon. We sent rovers to Mars. We have submarines and videophones and artificial eyes.”

“Oh, that. That’s not science fiction. It’s just science,” I said.

“Well, before it was science, it was science fiction.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What are you talking about, then? You mean things like aliens and artificial intelligence and pork chops that grow on trees?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “What if you found out they really existed?”

“They probably do. It’s a big universe. A few zillion light-years past Pluto there are probably aliens planting pork-chop trees with their pet artificial intelligences, talking about whether we exist. And you know what? Every single one of them could beat you at Gravity Force III. Come on, pick up your controller. And this time, concentrate.”

• • •

For my next shift at the repository, Ms. Callender put me on Stack 5 again. Abigail and Simon were there when I arrived.

The door opened and Jaya came in. Her hair looked a storm cloud—dark and wild, with strands shooting out like lightning. My heart did its usual thumpy thing.

Simon jumped up. “Jaya,” he said. “Have you heard from the Burton yet? Aren’t you supposed to find out this week?”

“I haven’t heard anything yet. Has it been busy down here today?”

“Totally dead,” said Abigail. “We only got two slips for the whole shift. Do you know where I’m supposed to go next?”

“Ms. Callender wants both of you up in Preservation,” said Jaya.

Simon put away his notebook. “Right,” he said. “Do let me know if you hear from London.”

“Of course,” said Jaya.

“What’s the Burton?” I asked after they left.

“The Burton Memorial Material Repository, in London,” said Jaya. “I’m applying for their summer guest page program.”

I remembered the conversation she’d had with Simon back when I first met her. “Would you be gone all summer? I would really miss you!”

“Thanks. I’d miss you too. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I mean, Simon really wanted me to apply, and it would be fun to work at another repository. I’d love staying with my aunt in London. But Francis is applying too and he really wants it.”

I wanted to say I hoped she wouldn’t get the job, but that seemed mean. Besides, it wasn’t really true. I did want her to get it, if it would make her happy. But I’d much rather have her being happy on the same continent as me.

After a pause, I cleared my throat. “So,” I said. “About last week. Did that . . . did all that really happen?”

“What, you mean the Wells Bequest?” said Jaya. “Yes. It did.”

“There really are spaceships and time machines in a crazy room down in the basement?”

“Yes. There really are.”

“Who else knows about it?”

“The librarians and most of the pages. And some of the patrons too.”

“Simon? Abigail?”

“Yes, and Francis and Alan and Mariela. Most people don’t find out as quickly as you did. You’re pretty special.”

I blushed. “When did you find out?”

“Oh, I’ve known for years and years. But that’s different. I kind of grew up in the repository. There was some trouble with the Grimm Collection back when I was ten—my sister, Anjali, got turned into a doll, and I had to rescue her.”

“What?!”

Jaya laughed. “Yeah, I know, crazy, right? I was a pretty resourceful ten-year-old. I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

“Tell me now!”

“I can’t. It’s way too long a story, and Dr. Rust doesn’t like me talking about it.”

“All right, but what’s the Grimm Collection? At least tell me that.”

“The *GCs. It’s another Special Collection down in the basement—objects from fairy tales.”

“From fairy tales?” I couldn’t believe it.

She nodded. “Magic mirrors, seven-league boots, flying carpets, things like that.”

“No way! That’s impossible!”

“Why? You saw the science-fiction objects in the Wells Bequest. How’s the Grimm Collection any more impossible?”

“But science fiction is based on science! Science is real. Like my friend Jake says, a lot of those things ended up getting invented later on, and the ones that didn’t, they might soon. But magic—that’s just nonsense! There’s no such thing. There can’t be. By definition—otherwise it wouldn’t be magic.”

“Well, what can I say? There is,” said Jaya. “Right down there in the basement.”

I hated the idea. Not as much Sofia and Dmitri would hate it, but a lot. “That’s just wrong,” I said. I guess I was a real Novikov after all.

“Not nearly as wrong as the Lovecraft Corpus,” said Jaya. She was clearly enjoying watching me get so upset.

“What’s the Lovecraft Corpus?”

“Stuff from gothic stories and horror,” said Jaya.

“Like what? Ghosts? Vampires? Severed heads?” What a horrible thought!

“You don’t want to know. I went in there once—it was really, really creepy. That’s the one Special Collection I’d rather not explore.”

I shuddered. “What else do they have here?”

“What other Special Collections, you mean?” She counted them off on her fingers. “There’s the Grimm Collection, the Wells Bequest, the Lovecraft Corpus, and the Gibson Chrestomathy.”

“The Gibson what?”

“The Chresto, for short. It’s is a collection of cyber stuff—artificial intelligences, computer viruses, bionic body parts, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, okay.” That didn’t sound so bad. More like the science-fiction collection—stuff that theoretically could exist. I thought of something else. “Are all the Special Collections all objects from fiction?” I asked.

“That’s one of those philosophical questions Ms. Minnian was talking about,” said Jaya. “What is fiction? If the objects exist, don’t the stories have to be true, not fiction?”

“Unless somehow the fiction comes true and produces the objects,” I said.

“That’s one theory,” said Jaya.

“It’s easy enough to test,” I said. I took a handful of scrap paper and a stumpy little pencil from the cabinet next to the card file and started scribbling. I covered four little squares of paper. “There,” I said, handing them to Jaya.

She read out loud. “‘Once upon a time there was an . . .’ Wow, you have messy handwriting. What’s this word?”

“‘Awesome.’”

“‘ . . . awesome boy named Leo Novikov. One day he wrote a story on some pieces of paper about an awesome boy named Leo Novikov. The awesome boy in the story invented an awesome machine. When you pressed a button, the awesome machine would fix everything that was broken that you put on the platform.’ What platform?” asked Jaya.

“The platform on the machine, of course.”

“You didn’t say there was a platform on the machine.”

“Obviously there is, or where would you put whatever you wanted fixed?”

Jaya rolled her eyes and went on reading: “‘It would also make your teeth straight and make you get A’s in all your classes. When the awesome boy Leo Novikov NOT in the story finished writing about the awesome boy Leo Novikov IN the story, he looked around and what did he see? He saw the machine that the awesome boy Leo Novikov in the story had invented! It was right there in front of him! And it worked perfectly! The end, by Leo Novikov.’” Jaya handed me back the slips of paper. “Well? What did that prove?”

“Well?” I said. “Where’s the awesome machine? If writing a story makes science-fiction objects exist, it should be right here in front of me.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jaya. “Maybe it only works with good stories.”

“Hey! You’re talking to the next Jules Verne here,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “Or maybe it doesn’t work until after seventeen years have passed.”

“Why seventeen?”

“Why not seventeen? Or maybe the story needs to be published for it to work. Or maybe it needs to be popular. Who knows how it might work? All you’ve proved is that you writing that particular story didn’t do anything. Except make me laugh my head off, deep down inside.” She grinned. Her one crooked tooth looked like it was laughing at me too.

I crumpled up the pieces of paper and threw them at her. One of them stuck in her hair. “So if this is a circulating library, do all those objects in the Special Collections—you know—circulate? Can people borrow them?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Jaya. “But you need to leave a serious deposit. And some objects are so dangerous they don’t really let you take them out. Technically you can do it, but you would have to leave your life behind as a deposit, and there’s not much you can do without your life.” She picked up the pieces of paper, including the one in her hair. She uncrumpled them and handed them back to me. “Here’s your masterpiece,” she said.

“Thanks.” I put it in the recycling basket. I thought about how cool it would be to borrow a spaceship or a very powerful telescope. I wondered if I could afford the deposit.

• • •

When our shift was over, Jaya and I clocked out and walked downstairs with Francis. The three of us paused on the steps outside the repository to say good-bye.

Simon burst through the doors. “Jaya? Jaya! There you are! This came for you,” he said. He handed her a blue envelope with a foreign stamp.

“What is this? Where did you get it?”

“Ms. Callender had it on her desk. It’s from the Burton—it must be,” said Simon. “Open it!”

Jaya slid her finger under the flap and tore the envelope open.

“Well? What does it say?”

“Hang on. I can’t tell you till I read it.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope and unfolded it. Then she gasped. “I can’t believe it! I got it! I got the guest page position!”

“Yes! I knew you would!” said Simon. He threw his arms around her. She looked a little uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as I wished she looked.

“Congratulations, Jaya. I’m very happy for you,” said Francis. He smiled, but his voice sounded flat.

Jaya wiggled out of Simon’s embrace. “I’m so sorry,” she said, hugging Francis’s arm.

He shrugged slightly. “They made an excellent choice. You deserve it—you’ll be a great guest page,” he said. “Well, I’d better go. I’ll see you guys next week.” He freed himself from Jaya and walked quickly down the stairs. Jaya frowned after him.

“Aren’t you happy, Jaya?” said Simon. “This means we’ll be together all summer. It’s very good news.”

“Sure, I guess,” said Jaya. “But I feel bad for Francis. He really wanted the job. And it involves the music collection, so he’s more qualified than me.”

“Well, they must have liked your application,” I said. “They chose you, didn’t they?” I didn’t want her to go away. But I couldn’t imagine anyone not choosing her for anything, no matter who else applied.

“I guess so. And I love London. It’s just—I hope they didn’t think they had to take me because Auntie Shanti’s on the board of directors! I would feel terrible about that.”

“Oh, it wasn’t your aunt. If you really want to know,” said Simon confidentially, “there was a . . . an irregularity with Francis’s application.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . .” He leaned closer to her and spoke so softly that I almost couldn’t hear him. “I happen to know that his letters of recommendation went to the Burton on the slow boat with the oversize inter-repository loans. The Burton wouldn’t have had his complete file by the deadline. And Dr. Pemberley-Potts is very particular about that sort of thing.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because I was the one who . . . Well, let’s just say, I know it firsthand.”

Jaya took a step back and stared at him in horror. “What are you saying? You mean you sabotaged Francis’s application?”

“Well, no, I didn’t say that. I just helped yours a little, that’s all.”

“By ruining Francis’s chances? That’s horrible! I can’t believe you would do that!”

Now Simon looked angry. “I thought you would be pleased, Jaya,” he said. “You wanted that position! You told me you were sad I was leaving New York! You said you would enjoy working with me again. I was just helping make that happen! I didn’t do anything actually wrong. I made sure the recommendations got sent—just not by courier.”

“You call that helping me—sabotaging my friend?” Jaya’s eyes flashed. I hoped she would never aim those weapons at me. “Come on!” she said, grabbing Simon by the elbow and pulling him toward the repository door.

“Where are we going?”

“Upstairs to Dr. Rust’s office. You’re going to explain what you did and you’re going to ask Dr. Rust to call Dr. Pemberley-Potts and fix things for Francis. And after that I never want to speak to you again!”