The music jangled in Digger’s ears. It was all off-key. It banged and rattled and bonked, and he realized there was more to it than the instruments he’d seen. There was something like a cowbell in there somewhere, and noisemakers clanked and clattered.
Eventually, the female love interest gave in to temptation a second time, either with a different character, or with the same character wearing different clothes. Digger couldn’t make it out until the end, when three apparently happy lovers strode off arm in arm. Hardly anyone else was left standing. The audience pounded enthusiastically on any flat surface they could find.
“Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending,” said Kellie.
Romeo, Frank, and Juliet, Digger thought. Nevertheless, in his view, a distinct improvement. Digger liked happy endings.
The crowd drifted out. Some headed for cafés, others strolled into connecting streets. Everyone was on foot. No carriages rolled up, no horses.
It had gotten late. There was a sundial in front of the theater, but that obviously wouldn’t work at night. He wondered how the locals scheduled a show. When the moon touched the sea? Sunset plus time for dinner plus time to walk in from a half kilometer away?
Anyhow, he had gotten it all on the pickup. They returned to the lander and sent it off to the al-Jahani, wondering how it would be received there.
THEY STAYED IN the lander, in the harbor, overnight. It was hard to sleep, because it was the middle of the afternoon their time.
Despite everything, despite his culpability in Jack’s death and his sympathy for the Goompahs, he had never felt more alive. Kellie had fallen into his arms like ripe fruit, and he knew beyond any doubt that whatever happened out here he would take her home with him.
She lay dozing inside a blanket while he considered how well things were turning out and fought off attacks of guilt over the fact that he felt so good. It was possible his career might be over; he might be sued by Jack’s family and possibly barred from future missions by the Academy. But whatever happened, he was going to come out ahead.
After a while he gave up trying to sleep and opened a reader. He scanned some of the more recent issues of Archeology Today, then tossed it aside for a political thriller. Mad genius tries to orchestrate a coup to take over the NAU. But he couldn’t stay with it and eventually ran part of the show they’d watched that evening. The Goompahs seemed less childlike now.
“The audience loved it.” Kellie’s voice came out of nowhere.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“More or less.”
“It was all pretty matter-of-fact,” he said. “Nobody seemed shocked.”
She shrugged. “Different rules here.”
“I guess.”
She rearranged herself, trying to get comfortable. “But you know, if I was reading the story line right—it’s hard to be sure of anything—but I thought they reacted pretty much the same way we would have. You could pick out the villain, and they didn’t like him. They approved of the young lovers. Even if there were three of them. They were silent during the killings. Holding their breath, it seemed to me.”
Digger had had the same reaction.
“What did you think of the score?”
He laughed. “Not like anything I’ve heard before.”
THEY WENT TO the library next day. It was a battered L-shaped gray stone building set along two sides of one of the smaller parks just a block from the theater. They found a signboard posted inside the heavy front doors. Several pieces of parchment were displayed, on which someone had listed about two hundred items. “Maybe it’s an inventory of the holdings,” suggested Kellie.
They took a picture and drifted into a large room given over to reading. Nine or ten Goompahs sat at tables, poring over scrolls. A couple more were standing before boards to which notes were attached. (Looking for a ride home?) Another examined a map at the back of the room. A couple of the readers were making notes. To do that, it was necessary to go to the librarian, secure a pot of ink and a pen, and do it right there at his station, where he could watch, presumably to ensure you didn’t have any sloppy habits. You used your own parchment, which was sometimes attached to a piece of wood and resembled a clipboard, and sometimes rolled inside a cylinder.
Digger noticed that the windows were screened with metal crosspieces and supported heavy shutters. Unlike many of the public buildings he’d seen, this one could be locked and bolted at night.
There were two librarians, both male. Both wore black blouses and purple leggings. Otherwise, they were not at all alike. One was older, obviously in charge. He moved with deliberation, but clearly enjoyed his work. He was constantly engaged in whispered conversation with his patrons, helping them find things, consulting a wooden box in which he kept sheaves of notes. None of the material seemed to be in any kind of order, but he kept dipping into it, rummaging, and apparently coming up with the desired item, which he would wave in the air with satisfaction before showing it to those he was assisting.
His name, or perhaps his title, was Parsy.
His aide was equally energetic, eternally hustling around the room adjusting chairs, rearranging furniture, flattening the map, talking with clients. He had something to say to everyone who came or went.
Between them they kept a close watch on the readers. Their primary function, Digger suspected, was to make sure no one got away with a scroll.
Kellie wanted to look at the map. “Back in a minute,” she said. “Don’t go away.” He followed. The map was of the isthmus, and it looked reasonably accurate. The cities were marked and labeled, and he noted the symbols that represented Brackel. The map ended beyond the most northern and southern cities. Terra Incognita. A few islands were included. Digger remembered one, a big one to the west. Utopia, which they were using as a base for the lander, was not on the map, although it should have been. Beyond the big western island, he thought, lay the edge of the world.
He took more pictures, then resumed wandering through the room, looking over the rounded shoulders of the readers. The texts were, of course, hand-written.
The scrolls were not laid out on shelves, as printed books might have been. They were kept in a back room, secure from potential thieves. A visitor consulted the list at the front door, filled out a card, and submitted it to one of the two librarians, who then retreated into the sanctum sanctorum. Moments later, he emerged with the desired work. Judging by labels, many of the books required multiple scrolls, but it appeared only one scroll at a time could be had. And, of course, nobody checked one out and took it home.
The inner stack was closed off. It was a small room, located immediately behind Parsy’s desk, and sealed off by furniture so that no one could get near it without being seen by him. It had no windows and no other exit, save into a private washroom. Its walls were lined with cubicles, in which lay the scrolls. The cubicles were marked with a few characters. Biography, Digger thought. Northern Isthmus Travel. Literature. Mystery. There were altogether approximately two hundred labeled volumes, comprised of roughly three times as many scrolls.
Digger, maybe for the first time since he’d been a child, took a moment to reflect on the pure simple wonder of a collection of books. Throughout his life he had always had immediate access to whatever book he cared to look at, to whatever body of knowledge he wished to explore. Everything humans knew about the world they lived in was within fingertip reach.
Two hundred books.
Literacy appeared to be widespread. The readers did not seem, in any way he could determine, to belong to a higher class than the Goompahs strolling the streets. He recalled the school he and Jack had come across outside Brackel. Outside Athens.