Work Text:
There’s a slight, gentle ringing noise, metallic and pleasing to the ear. It starts crescendoing, building up to its sudden stop. Like a held breath about to exhale, or a punchline about to deliver. Like a decision about to be made.
There was almost total silence, the walls and the ceiling and the carpet designed to dampen as much noise as they could muster. But they could only muffle, not completely smother, the tapping of book covers against metal shelves, and the footsteps of the occasional passing student, and the rustling pages of the more old-fashioned of the textbooks.
Through the stifled library, a living sound escaped: the humming, self-satisfied laughter of someone who wasn’t really bothering to keep his voice down. Not content with this, the someone made little comments to himself as well, in what was more of a stage whisper than anything else.
The shelf attendant almost huffed as she made for the disturber of the peace. The mechanical aspects of her body did not squeak or whir as they helped her to walk, due to meticulously applied oils. The hydraulics powering them did not at all hiss, due to special modifications carefully installed. The wings on her torso did not buzz and the mandibles at her mouth did not chitter, due to months of regimented practice. She’d only started this job to help her through a course at the university, but the employment had outlived the class, and the shelf attendant now felt a strong sense of pride in the silence she could maintain during her duties.
So she almost huffed as she made for the disturber of the peace. But she very deliberately did not.
The disturber himself was an old man in scholarly robes. He was sitting at a desk with small walls of books protecting its surface, and another in his hands. He flicked through digital pages at an unlikely rate, occasionally pausing in his pace just to let out a “Dear dear” or a “Did they really!” The shelf attendant was reminded of how her hive-aunt would act when browsing a sensational gossip magazine.
She made her first sound, a delicate cough, and didn’t let any satisfaction show when her prey started.
“Good heavens!” the old man said, “What do you mean sneaking up on someone like that. And me deep in my studies! You’re interrupting everyone’s reading!”
Ignoring the fact that he had made rather more noise than her, the old man was also the only reader being interrupted. In the vast forest of shelves, no one else was seated at the cluster of desks in this particular clearing. True it was nearing the end of the day, and true the library had many such desk clearings to use, but the shelf attendant did wonder if the old man had driven away his peers with his running commentary. However she was far too professional to let this thought infect her manner.
With a suffocatingly apologetic air, the shelf attendant said “Please excuse me, Master…?”
Her fishing for a name earned her only a half-interested “hmm? yes?” as the old man had already turned back to his book.
“Excuse me Master, but I have a message for you.” It was for this reason that she had found him; as much as she wouldn’t mind having a word in the ear of every noise-maker she came across, it would take up an impractical amount of her workday.
“Of course. Listen, would you happen to know where I can find more on the history of a particular civilisation? They’re mentioned in only one chapter of this volume , but it’s fascinating, fascinating!”
Academics. But as a good attendant, she surrendered to the flow of the conversation. She could see this student was the occupant of his own private world, and her best course of action was to wait and watch for the perfect moment to redirect his attention.
“What civilisation is that, Master?”
“The um,” he flicked back a page, then another, looking for the name. “The Terooliam Era, in the S’s’th’s System.”
“The S’s’th’s System should be sorted in the stacklanes under S’s’, so that’d be about twenty minutes west.” She pointed the right direction. She would have said ten minutes, but she had seen the rate the old man had walked that morning. And how easily he’d been distracted by something on every shelf he passed.
“Goodness, quite the invigorating work-out, this library of yours.”
“Indeed, Master.”
“Hmm, yes. Imagine, just imagine being on the beach,” said the old man. “Just imagine being on the beach and seeing that the holiday house was missing.”
Predicting the flow of this conversation was not going quite as well as the shelf attendant hoped. It was less like holding on while white-water rafting, and more like turning around and finding yourself in the middle of the ocean. Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to give up now, so she very slightly nodded her head to communicate that she was indeed imagining being on the beach and seeing that the holiday house was missing.
“They must have realised then, in that moment, that if they had booked the negotiations for the beach house, the whole delegate would have been swallowed up by the earthquake!” The old man had a twinkle in his eye, and was thrusting his finger upward in front of him as if making a point that he’d been building up to for some time. In the other hand he fiercely held the textbook, like a preacher holding a holy scripture.
“This is the negotiations in the Terooliam Era, Master?”
“Obviously, my girl, obviously! The Grand President would have been entirely in their rights to host the negotiations in the beach house, but instead, for the comfort of the rival delegation, they relocated to the moon. Historians all agree that if they hadn’t, they would’ve likely perished in the earthquake- and certainly brought about the war they were hoping to prevent!”
“A fascinating turning point.”
“A turning point, quite so! Such mundane decisions as where to host a party are made every single day. But we can never know which ones will determine the fate of a civilisation. Yes! The whims of the Fates cannot be predicted, but are not to be underestimated.” The old man hummed and giggled, satisfied with his philosophy.
“Now,” he continued just before the shelf attendant was about grab the conversation’s rudder, “What was that message you had for me? Come come, we don’t have all day!”
“No, Master.” She fought not to make an exasperated click with her mandibles, and held up the telegramme that had grown cold in her hand. But first, the old man wasn’t automatically matching with the enrollment database that was being fed into her system. “I just need your visitor’s card.”
“My what?”
“Your-”
“Yes yes, my visitor’s card.”
He started pulling the card from his pocket, only to find that it was actually a business card for some law firm several spacelanes away. He moved a book on the desk to place the card down. The tuning fork he then pulled out of his pocket joined it. The monocle also wasn’t his visitor’s card. The same could be said for the pipe, the matches, the small bag of money, the magnifying glass, the vial of unknown liquid, and the three separate pocketbooks.
“Good heavens,” he grumbled. “I didn’t realise most of this was still in there! One day I shall clean out my pockets, get rid of all this gubbins.”
Finally he pulled out his visitor’s card, and the shelf attendant nodded as he showed it to her with his usual fuss. It was a unique name- Birving Draxiatel- and perhaps that was why he’d been reluctant to give it earlier. It unlocked the telegramme, then he placed it in the fortress of books he had created for his belongings.
“Very good,” the shelf attendant said. “Your message reads: Grandfather, I’m halfway through a fascinating lecture series on Pre-Breakout humanity, they’re-”
“What was that?!” the old man snapped at her. “Humanity! I told that girl that she should be brushing up on her anti-N-verse physics! How dare she!”
“Good for her,” the shelf attendant did not say.
“Humanity, humanity. What in Prydon’s name is that?”
“She does go on to say, Master.”
“Hm!”
Taking that as an invitation to continue: “They’re carbon-based lifeforms from a corner of the Mutter’s Spiral. They’re fascinating.” There was an exclamation mark after fascinating, but the shelf attendant weighed it against her professionalism.
“Spirals don’t have corners,” the old man murmured rather sulkily.
“Could you please borrow some books on them from the library. I think you’ll like them too.”
“Oh you do, do you?” The shelf attendant didn’t know if he expected her to respond. “That girl could do with learning to do as she’s told! Maybe I should look for an educational institution that values discipline.”
For just a moment, the attendant’s pride in her workplace made her forget who she was talking to. “Here we believe that greater freedom in our learning environment can lead to greater-”
“Are you presuming to tell me how to raise my own granddaughter, madam? Hm!?”
“Of course not Master, I meant nothing by it.”
“Hm, yes. Good.” But the old man mellowed a bit, perhaps even looked a little sheepish about how he’d spoken. “Now, what were those creatures Susan mentioned?”
“Humans.”
“Humans, yes, the uh… something-based lifeforms.”
“Carbon-based.”
“Quite, quite. Carbonic creatures. Well just as long as they aren’t carbonated, hm? Now where, my dear, where would I find books on these people?”
“About thirty minutes’ walk east.”
“I see I see… and remind me, the books on the fine Terooliam Era?”
“Twenty minutes west.”
“Oh dear…” the old man said, “and with my old legs, and the end of the day bearing down on us, time enough to visit only one! A dilemma.”
The twinkle in the old man’s eye had come back, and now he was talking to the attendant like a confidant. She almost hoped to burst his bubble by offering an easy solution. “You could always come back tomorrow.”
“Ah yes, well I rather have plans to move on before tomorrow. As much as I enjoy reveling in the unique perspectives of these learning halls, I’d rather spend more time out there, you see? In the thick of things. There’s nothing quite as invigorating as first-hand knowledge.”
“You would, of course, need to be here tomorrow in order to return any books you might borrow today.”
“Obviously, obviously,” the old man waved the concern away. “I meant that I would leave after that, of course. But regardless, my choice is between the civilisation that my granddaughter recommends, and the civilisation that piques my own, dare I say more refined interests.” He tapped a spindly, wrinkled finger on his lips. “I dare say I should be punishing my granddaughter for not listening to me. And yet…”
Then he started touching the assortment of knick-knacks that hid between his walls of books. The shelf attendant thought for a moment that he’d finally remembered to put it all back into his pockets, but instead he dug through the small cloth bag of money until he picked out a coin.
“Here,” he said, and squinted at what he’d found. “A doubloon from The Wintertime Republic of Gastropodic Plains, minted 3926. An elegant solution.” He showed off one side of the coin. “Sleds, humanity.” He turned it round. “Snails, Terooliam.”
“So,” said the shelf attendant, feeling not only that she could finally feel the flow of the conversation, but that it was coming to a (not altogether unwelcome) abrupt conclusion, “leave it to the whim of the Fates?”
He gave a good-natured scoff. “This decision is hardly a turning point in history, my dear. I dare it will be of no consequence to anyone outside of an old man in a library.”
With a ping he launched the coin upward. There was a slight, gentle ringing noise, metallic and pleasing to the ear. It started crescendoing, building up to its sudden stop.