Lenora was nearly out of breath, wondering if this hallway would go on forever, when she finally saw the door marked DO NOT ENTER at the end. And when she pushed through she knew she was back in the real Library at last.
She was on a high balcony overlooking a long room that went farther into the distance than she could see. Its floor was divided into lanes of water, sort of like a swimming pool for racing, but the lanes were divided by solid floors in which massive metal gears were set. The gears churned slowly, for what purpose Lenora could not say. The lanes of water had gondolas moving along them. Most were empty, but a few were steered by librarians holding long paddles, and had books piled in them.
To her left, she heard the familiar whooshing sounds coming from what could only be a Tube station. She turned and noticed something even stranger than this room. Where before there had been bookshelves, now all along the walls were computer monitors, dozens upon dozens of them. And all of them were showing the same thing—a pasty-faced yet handsome man in an expensive-looking suit and tie, a man with perfect salt-and-pepper hair who looked as though he might have stepped off a movie screen. He seemed to be giving a speech. Lenora listened.
“… as you can see from the changes around you, I’ve been keeping my promises as Director. The Library is making money for the first time…”
Making money? thought Lenora. Libraries didn’t exist to make money. And then a tremor went through her. The man’s voice …
“… and patron fees for Library use have been lowered under my leadership…”
Lenora recoiled. Patron fees? Patrons had never paid fees. Libraries were free! And she was beginning to remember where she had heard this voice before, talking about the Library making money …
“… as we continue to trim down our excessive and expensive book collection…”
And Lenora remembered.
His voice.
She’d heard him through a listening tube before, talking over Malachi and interrupting the Chief Answerer whenever she tried to speak:
… The Library simply isn’t making money … (Lenora remembered well Malachi’s reply, that the value of libraries could not be counted in money) … run it like a business … get rid of the unprofitable books …
Now Lenora knew who Malachi must have been speaking to. The Director. The man on the monitors.
She shook herself, realizing that she had no time for this mystery quite yet. She had to get to the Philosophy section as quickly as possible. So off she flew in the direction of the whooshing Tube station.
As she ran, she heard snatches of conversation from various patrons, to her dismay:
“The Library is changing, but he says he’s making it better…”
“Making money is good, isn’t it? But I do wonder how people will pay their fees…”
“He seems to know what he’s doing, though it is a bit harder to find books these days…”
But then she reached the Tube station, and her heart leapt at the sight of the old familiar tubes, wonderful as could be—giant, rugged glass cylinders, bound in rings of sturdy copper, capsules within them shooting past, whisking librarians to their destinations all through the vast Library.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something was wrong. Lenora looked around. There was one other librarian waiting for a tube. A tall, tall man in a heavy black overcoat that went down over his shoes, whose head was slowing turning toward Lenora. In one hand he held a basketful of books and in the other a box of matches.
This was not a librarian. She could somehow simply sense it, the prickly feeling no accident. The man was now staring straight at her, and something slithered up the side of his leg, under his coat. Lenora headed straight for a tube on the other side of the station, head high and chin up, ignoring him completely. When a capsule arrived, she hopped up the steps and began to climb in. Just then, the man called out to her.
“We’ve won, you know. It’s over.”
A chill went through Lenora, but she neither paused nor responded. Relief washed over her as she settled into the usual single, reclining seat, with its lovely cracked leather upholstery, and the door to the capsule closed firmly. Lenora considered the capsule’s interior. There were thousands of slots all around her, each labeled with the name of a destination in the Library. She scanned them for the one that said Philosophy. She was disturbed to see that a large number of the slots, which normally all had brightly lit labels, had gone dark, and she resolved to look into that mystery as well, as soon as she could. At last she located Philosophy, thankful to see it was still lit, and plunged her key in straightaway.
The capsule shooshed off, the force pushing Lenora back into her seat.
The trip seemed to take longer than normal. Lenora wondered if something was Terribly Wrong with the tubes, too. And the entire journey took place in darkness. Normally Lenora was able to see new bits of the Library as she sped along (she still meant to visit that ice cave from last time whenever she could), but this time she couldn’t see anything outside the glass besides pitch darkness.
However, the tube eventually slowed, her chair swiveling around in the other direction as she was again pushed back in her seat. The capsule came into the station, and light returned. The door slid open and Lenora exited to find, with much relief, that it had delivered her to the correct place: a massive stone arch with the word PHILOSOPHY carved above. In she went.
As soon as she entered, an elderly woman hobbled rapidly over, moving with surprising speed for someone who used a cane. “Oh my, at last!” she said. “A librarian! I’ve been searching and searching for one. Can you help me, please?”
Lenora was torn. On the one hand, she had to find that girl. On the other, she had vowed to help all those with questions. Hoping this was an easy one, she replied, “Yes, of course. How may I help you?”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said with a tremendous sigh of relief. “You see, several of my friends and I have pooled our money and bought an island. We plan to set up our own society there, but we don’t quite know how to go about it. I’m looking for a copy of Plato’s Republic.”
“For ideas on how to set up a just, happy society,” said Lenora. “Of course.” With confidence (for this was an easy one), she led the woman down the correct row (she’d spent enough time in one library or another at this point that she could find most books with ease). But there was something strange about the shelves. Instead of books by and about people like Socrates, Rousseau, Al-Farabi, Confucius, Arendt, Leibniz, and Hildegard of Bingen, there were books by only one person.
The Director.
His face glowed out from every cover, with a smile that seemed just a bit too huge. There were dozens of different titles, so many that Lenora had serious doubts he had really written all of them. They had titles that had nothing to do with philosophy, like How to Get Incredibly Rich and How to Make Unbelievable Amounts of Money (Lenora wondered what was missing from the first book if he still had to write the second). She and the elderly lady walked past How to Be the Best at Everything and How to Be Smarter than Everyone Except Me and Why I Am the Greatest.
Plato’s Republic was nowhere to be found.
Crestfallen, Lenora turned to the woman. “I’m sorry,” she said, her heart breaking. “We don’t seem to have a copy.” She could not describe how very awful she felt at that moment.
The woman’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “Well, thank you for trying, dear. I suppose we’ll just have to make do.” And with that, she hobbled off.
Lenora nearly burst into tears. But she managed to hold them in, because she had to find that girl. And, turning around, she did.
A pasty-faced girl who appeared to be ten years of age was walking along the stacks farther down. She was dressed in the oddest way, with a multicolored scarf around her neck, a pink shirt covered in sparkles, and green pants that had been stitched with flowers. On her feet she wore enormous velvet platform shoes that made her, annoyingly, almost as tall as Lenora. Lenora hurried toward her. As she did, she could see the girl had a smile on her face as she looked at one book after the next.
Catching up at last, Lenora said, rather breathlessly, “Hello. How may I help you?”
The girl turned to her, beaming. “Oh, I don’t need any help.”
“You don’t?” said Lenora in surprise. Did she have the wrong girl?
“No,” said the girl. “I’m just admiring the books.”
“Admiring them? Why?”
“Because,” said the girl brightly, “my daddy wrote them all!”