Sharif’s shirt is not sitting right on his body, and it looks as though someone has thrown a bucket of ink on him, but Zeno has seen worse. Sharif shakes his head no; Zeno merely bends, touches him on the forehead, and steps over his friend and into the aisle between Nonfiction and Fiction.
The boy is so motionless he might be dead, a handgun resting on his knee. A green backpack sits on the carpet beside him, a mobile phone beside that. What looks like rifle-range ear defenders are cocked on his head, one muff on, one off.
Down through the centuries tumble the words of Diogenes: I had traveled so far, and it was all so magnificent, yet—
“So young,” says Zeno.
—still a needle of doubt pricked beneath my wing. A dark restlessness flickered—
The boy doesn’t move.
“What’s inside the bag?”
“Bombs.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“How are they triggered?”
“Tracfones, taped to the top.”
“How do the bombs go off?”
“If I call either of the phones. On the fifth ring.”
“But you’re not going to call them. Are you?”
The boy brings his left hand to his earmuffs as though hoping to blot out any further questions. Zeno remembers lying on the straw mat in Camp Five, knowing Rex was folding his body into one of the empty oil drums. Waiting to hear Zeno climb into the other drum. For Bristol and Fortier to lift them onto the truck.
He shuffles forward and lifts the backpack and pins it gently against his necktie as the boy steers the barrel of the pistol toward him. Zeno’s breath is strangely steady.
“Does anyone besides you have the numbers?”
The boy shakes his head. Then his forehead wrinkles, as though realizing something. “Yes. Someone does have them.”
“Who?”
He shrugs.
“What you mean is, someone besides you can detonate the bombs?”
The trace of a nod.
Sharif watches from the base of the stairs, every inch of him alert. Zeno wraps his arms through the backpack straps. “My friend there, the children’s librarian? His name is Sharif. He requires medical attention right away. I’m going to use the telephone to call an ambulance now. In all likelihood, there’s one right outside.”
The boy grimaces, as though someone has resumed playing loud, screeching music that only he can hear. “I’m waiting for help,” he says, but without conviction.
Zeno walks backward to the welcome desk and lifts the receiver of the telephone. No dial tone. “I’ll need to use your phone,” he says. “Just for the ambulance. That’s all I’ll do, I promise, and I’ll give it right back. And then we’ll wait for your help to arrive.”
The gun remains pointed at Zeno’s chest. The boy’s finger remains on the trigger. The cell phone stays on the floor. “We will live lives of clarity and meaning,” the boy says, and rubs his eyes. “We will exist entirely outside of the machine even as we work to destroy it.”
Zeno takes his left hand off the backpack. “I’m going to reach down with one hand and pick up your phone. Okay?”
Sharif is rigid at the base of the stairwell. The children remain silent upstairs. Zeno bends. The gun barrel is inches from his head. His hand has almost reached the phone when, inside the backpack in his arms, one of the Tracfones taped to one of the bombs rings.