Flojian selected a cabinet, deliberately averted his eyes from the identifying plate and, while the others watched, opened the top drawer and removed the book. Its title was written across the cover in silver script:
<&ai(teia
by
ls)erner Soeyer Volume 9
He opened the cover gently, almost tenderly. Title and author appeared again. And a date: 1939.
Turn a page. Lines of script in shining black ink filled the vast Whiteness Of the paper.
Gtiuca/mna/Jlejuvcessfyai&cAacommu-nt’y jwserues am/nuuau/s //r pjfyjrca/ and’ai/efiec/uaJc/farac/er. S%ir £r nmo/m/afpasses taoay, oa//ne fype remains.
“Voices from another world,” Chaka whispered.
They embraced in the flickering light. For a few moments the shadows drew back. All the tension amd frustration of the preceding months drained away. Claver, pumping Quait’s hand, gave way to tears. “I’m glad I came,” he said again and again. “I’m glad I came.”
These were substantial volumes, not books as another age might have understood the term. They were written by hand, thousands of lines of carefully produced script on large sheets of paper, the whole bound into gilt-edged leather covers. They were of the same family as Connecticut Yankee.
It must have been the history section. They found works they’d heard of, like Gibbon’s The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire (in numerous volumes), and books they hadn’t, like The Anabasis. They paged through McMurtrie’s The American Presidency in Crisis and Ingel Kyatawa’s Japan in the Modern Age and Thomas More’s The History of King Richard III. There was Voltaire’s The Age of King Louis XIV and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Josephus’s The Jewish War. There were copies of The American Century, Kissinger’s Diplomacy, and America and the Pacific, 1914-2011.
“These are relatively recent transcriptions,” said Quait. “Look at the condition of the paper. They can’t be more than a couple of centuries old.”
The gallery was also filled with volumes. Chaka went up the staircase and plunged into the upper level treasures.
They almost forgot where they were. Like children, they gamboled among the ancient texts, calling one another over to look at this or that, carrying their lamps from place to place, opening everything.
Chaka was paging through a copy of Manchester’s The Last Lion. Suddenly her eyes brightened and she shook Quait. “I think we’ve found Winston,” she laughed.
Coming on the day after her wedding, discovery of the golden chamber seemed almost a culmination to that sacred event. She was standing in the uncertain light, looking lovingly at Quait and at The Last Lion, when the illusion exploded. Flojian, down on the lower floor, announced there was water in the corridor. Rising fast.
30
They tried to dose the door, but water poured through the bent frame. One of the lamps crashed to the floor and went out. “Not going to work,” said Chaka. She looked around wildly. “How high will it go?”
“It’s going to fill up,” said Claver.
“You sure?”
“What do you think happens every day in the other rooms?”
They were snarling at each other now, the joy of a few moments before turned to rage and frustration. They opened the door and, two inside and two outside, tried to lift it higher in its frame and shut it again. The water kept coming in.
Books and cabinets looked polished in the dim light.
Chaka was dose to panic.
“It’s the lake,” said Flojian. “It’s open to the sea, and the tide’s rising.”
“No way to stop it?” asked Quait.
Claver laughed. “Are you serious?”
Quait tore off his jacket and tried to jam it between the door and the frame. “Damn!” he said. “One of us should have thought—”
Chaka watched the water spreading across the floor. “What do we do? There must be something—”
“We can save a few.” Flojian splashed over to the nearest cabinet, opened it, and removed the top book. It was The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.
Quait looked around wildly. “We’ll save, what, twenty or thirty, and lose everything else?”
“Wait.” Claver was holding his lamp high, looking at a
shadowy ceiling. “There might be something we can do, at that.”
“What?” said Quait.
“Give me a minute.” He hurried up the stairway into the gallery. They watched his lamp move swiftly along the upper level, watched it hesitate, watched it eventually circle the room. His face was pale in its spectral glow.
“We’re wasting time,” said Flojian. He lifted out a second book. It was Chronicles of the Crusades, Being Contemporary Narratives of Richard of Devizes and Geoffrey de Vinsauf. Quait helped him load both volumes into his arms. Then Flojian turned and stumbled toward the door. “Open up, Chaka,” he said.
She couldn’t help laughing at him. “How are you going to climb up to the landing with that load?” The water was running over the tops of her shoes. “It’s coming in fast,” she said. “If we’re going to do something, we better get to it.”
“What’s to do?” asked Flojian. “Except to get out whatever we can.”
Claver’s light was still floating along the upper rail. He seemed to be holding a conversation with himself. “Yes,” he was saying, “no reason why not.” And, “I believe we can do it.” Abruptly, he hurried to the top of the stairs, grasped the handrail, and leaned out. “Start bringing the books up here,” he said. “And hurry.” Incredibly, he had taken off his shirt and was beginning on his trousers.
“Why?” demanded Quait. “The room’s going to fill up.”
“I don’t have time to explain things,” said Claver. “Just do it. Trust me.”
“We need to get out of here while we can,” said Flojian. “Or we’ll get caught.”
“There’s still time,” said Claver. His voice had risen, and it echoed through the room. “If you want to give it up, just say so and we’ll do it. But we might be able to save most of this stuff if you’re willing to try.”
They started by clearing bottom drawers, getting the books most immediately threatened by the rising water and piling them on top of cabinets, tables, benches, whatever offered itself.
The volumes were, of course, all hand-printed. They were heavy and awkward, some of them so large that Chaka would ordinarily have had to struggle to lift one. But her adrenalin was flowing and she performed feats in that hour that no one who knew her would have believed.
Claver hurried back downstairs. In the uncertain light, Chaka thought her eyes were playing tricks. He was naked. ‘Take off your clothes,” he said. “I need everybody’s clothes.” He retrieved Quait’s jacket from the door and dashed back among them. “Quick,” he said.
“I think it’s over,” said Quait, whose expression left no doubt he believed Claver had come apart.
“Just do as I say. And hurry.”
Chaka was already out of her jacket. “It’s going to get cold in here,” she said.
“What’s he doing?” asked Flojian.
“I’m blocking ducts, damn it.”
“I don’t get it,” said Quait. Nevertheless, he began to strip off his shirt.
“Oh,” said Flojian. “If we can make the room airtight, when the tide rises past the top of the door the air’ll begin to compress.”
“Very good,” said Claver, gesturing for Chaka’s blouse.
“So what?” demanded Quait.