THEY WERE PLANNING to wait until the place closed, and then begin the recording session. It was late afternoon, they’d been away from the lander for ten hours, and Digger discovered a need to relieve himself. It would have been easy enough had it been dark. Just find a remote street corner, shut the systems off, and go. But it was still daylight. They’d not been using the sacks that allowed one to dispose of waste inside the suit because then it became necessary to haul it around, and neither of them cared to do that. Just organize things properly, Jack had always maintained, and you won’t need it.
Right.
Digger was thinking how he’d like to grab some of the scrolls and run. He entertained an image of a group of scrolls apparently leaping into the air and streaking for the exit on their own.
“You okay?” asked Kellie.
“Looking for a washroom.”
“Good luck.”
He found it at the rear of the building. There was only one for the general public, apparently intended for both sexes. He pushed through the door and entered a small room, equipped with a floor-level drain and some wide benches. No commode. You sat on a bench, if need be. The room was occupied, but only by one individual. Digger waited until it was empty, killed the e-suit, did the deed (listening anxiously for footsteps outside, trying to plan what he’d do if he got caught, knowing he couldn’t just reactivate the unit without making a mess of himself).
But he got through it okay. Just in time, though. The door was opening as he hit the switch. Flickinger field on. Lightbender on. Goompah in the room, standing uncertainly in the doorway, as if he had just seen something out of the corner of his eye.
All kinds of firsts were being set here. First person to watch an alien theatrical production. First to visit a library. First to use a washroom.
He smiled and walked out into the corridor, forgetting that, to an observer, the door opened of its own volition. He realized what he’d done just as he started to close it behind him. Two more Goompahs were coming, one of each sex. The door caught their attention and he moved away from it, leaving it ajar. They looked at it, looked at each other, did the Goompah equivalent of a pair of shrugs, and went in.
Digger returned to the reading room, found a chair toward the rear, and sat down to wait.
CLOSING TIME. THE last of the readers was waddling toward the door. When she was gone, the librarians took a quick look around, straightened chairs, picked up some loose pieces of the hard crackly material that passed for notepaper, and arranged their own stations. Parsy went into the back room, counted the scrolls, opened a logbook, and signed it. His colleague, whose name seemed to be Tupelo, put out the oil lamps, closed and bolted the shutters, and retrieved a wooden padlock from his desk.
Kellie was visibly impressed by it. “They’re not entirely without technology,” she said.
“No big deal,” said Digger. “The Egyptians had them four thousand years ago.”
Tupelo closed the stack room door and lowered a bar across it. Digger had feared they might padlock the room, and he was primed to try to lift the key. But it didn’t happen, and he was feeling that he was home free when someone knocked at the front door. The librarians opened up and a small, evil-looking beast was led in on a leash. The creature looked like an undersized pig, except that it had fangs, fur along its jaws and across its skull, and a line of quills down its back. It snorted and showed everyone a healthy double row of incisors. Its master, a brightly-ribboned female, moved in with it while the two librarians finished checking around to be sure everything was attended to.
“That what I think it is?” asked Kellie.
The animal’s red eyes came to rest directly on Digger, and it commenced to pull at its leash. Its master spoke to it and the thing looked away momentarily and growled. Then its head swung back.
“As soon as she turns it loose,” said Kellie, “things are going to get tense.”
The librarians filed out through the front door. The female looked around the darkened room, apparently puzzled by the beast’s behavior. Digger watched her kneel beside the animal and stroke its neck.
“Our chance,” he told Kellie. He edged toward the stack room, raised the bar, and signaled Kellie to get inside. When she’d gone through, he followed and pulled the door shut.
Simultaneously he heard a shout. Then, unmistakably, the beast was galloping across the reading room. They heard it slam into the stack room door, which Digger was holding shut.
More voices outside. Howling and scraping.
Then someone was tugging on the door. Digger backed away from it, looking around for a weapon, seeing nothing except the scrolls. The commotion outside continued until finally he heard the female’s voice. Kellie produced a pistol and was about to thumb it on when the door opened. But the animal was tethered again.
Parsy held up a lamp and stepped into the room. Tupelo was speaking, probably trying to explain how the bar happened to be in the raised position.
The animal, fortunately, was being held back.
They looked in all directions. Obviously, no one was hiding there. When the animal continued to growl and show its teeth, its master kicked it. The thing whined but quieted. They dragged it clear, the door swung shut and the bar banged down.
“I guess we’re in here for the duration,” said Digger.
“We can cut our way out if we have to,” said Kellie.
They listened to receding voices. Then came the familiar charge across the room by the little pig, and lots of snuffling outside their door. But the thing wasn’t trying to tear it down this time.
Digger heard the front door open and close.
“What was the plan again?” asked Kellie.
The animal whined.
“No problem,” he said. “When they come tomorrow to secure the doggie and open up, we’ll just stroll out.”
The lightbender field faded, and she was standing before him. “Have you considered the possibility,” she asked, “that tomorrow may be Sunday?”
THERE WERE, IN fact, 587 scrolls. They were tagged and divided into fourteen cubicles. Digger set up a lamp and worked one cubicle at a time, taking them out singly, logging the marking on the cubicle and on the tag for each scroll. When they were ready to start, one held the pickup, the other handled the scroll. And they began to record the Complete Available Works of the Goompahs.
Digger once again wished he had command of the language, and promised himself he would learn it, promised himself he’d read at least one of the texts in its original form before he went home.
They were surprised to discover some illustrations: animals and plants, buildings, Goompahs, maps. Other segments might have been mathematical, but since they didn’t know what the local numbering system looked like, or the mathematical signs, they couldn’t be sure (other than some sections devoted to geometry).
The paper used in the scrolls was of a textured quality, appealing to touch, but thick enough to limit the length of the work that could be placed on a single dowel.
The dowels were made of wood or copper. A few of the scrolls were contained within protective tubes that had to be removed before the parchment could be unrolled. The printing itself was simple and unadorned. Like the architecture, Digger observed.
They worked through the night. There was a brief rain storm around midnight. The creature at the door whined once in a while, scratched occasionally, but never went away.
They watched the time, and when they knew the sun had been up for a half hour or so, and could hear the unmistakable sounds of traffic outside, they decided they were pushing their luck, shut down the effort, and put everything back.