"Oh, don't worry. I'm not a snitch for the Pubs. Here's the Golden Archway into Indexing. The Land of Subtle Conceptual Connections."
Through the arch, it was as though they had passed into a completely different building. The style and trim were the same as before, with deeply lustrous fabrics on the walls and ceiling and floor made of the same smooth sound-absorbing plastic, glowing faintly with white light. But now-- all pretense at symmetry was gone. The ceiling was at different heights, almost at random; on the left and right there might be doors or archways, stairs or ramps, an alcove or a huge hall filled with columns, shelves of books and works of art surrounding tables where indexers worked with a half-dozen scriptors and lectors at once.
"The form fits the function," said Zay.
"I'm afraid I'm rubbernecking like a first-time visitor to Trantor."
"It's a strange place. But the architect was the daughter of an indexer, so she knew that standard, orderly, symmetrical interior maps are the enemy of freely connective thought. The finest touch-- and the most expensive too, I'm afraid-- is the fact that from day to day the layout is rearranged."
"Rearranged! The rooms move?"
"A series of random routines in the master calculator. There are rules, but the program isn't afraid to waste space, either. Some days only one room is changed, moved off to some completely different place in the Indexing area. Other days, everything is changed. The only constant is the archway leading in. I really wasn't joking when I said you should come here and bellow."
"But-- the indexers must spend the whole moming just finding their stations."
"Not at all. Any indexer can work from any station."
"Ah. So they just call up the job they were working on the day before."
"No. They merely pick up on the job that is already in progress on the station they happen to choose that day."
"Chaos!" said Leyel.
"Exactly. How do you think a good hyperindex is made? If one person alone
indexes a book, then the only connections that book will make are the ones that person knows about. Instead, each indexer is forced to skim through what his predecessor did the day before. Inevitably he'll add some new connections that the other indexer didn't think of. The environment, the work pattern, everything is designed to break down habits of thought, to make everything surprising, everything new."
"To keep everybody off balance."
"Exactly. Your mind works quickly when you're running along the edge of the precipice."
"By that reckoning, acrobats should all be geniuses."
"Nonsense. The whole labor of acrobats is to learn their routines so perfectly they never lose balance. An acrobat who improvises is soon dead. But indexers, when they lose their balance, they fall into wonderful discoveries. That's why the indexes of the Imperial Library are the only ones worth having. They startle and challenge as you read. All the others are just-- clerical lists."
"Deet never mentioned this."
"Indexers rarely discuss what they're doing. You can't really explain it anyway."
"How long has Deet been an indexer?"
"Not long really. She's still a novice. But I hear she's very, very good."
"Where is she?"
Zay grinned. Then she tipped her head back and bellowed. "Deet!" The sound seemed to be swallowed up at once in the labyrinth. There was no answer.
"Not nearby, I guess," said Zay. "We'll have to probe a little deeper."
"Couldn't we just ask somebody where she is?"
"Who would know?"
It took two more floors and three more shouts before they heard a faint answering cry. "Over here!"
They followed the sound. Deet kept calling out, so they could find her.
"I got the flower room today, Zay! Violets!"
The indexers they passed along the way all looked up-- some smiled, some frowned.
"Doesn't it interfere with things? " asked Leyel. "All this shouting?"
"Indexers need interruption. It breaks up the chain of thought. When they look back down, they have to rethink what they were doing." Deet, not so far away now, called again. "The smell is so intoxicating. Imagine-- the same room twice in a month!"
"Are indexers often hospitalized?" Leyel asked quietly.
"For what?"
"Stress."
"There's no stress on this job," said Zay. "Just play. We come up here as a reward for working in other parts of the library."
"I see. This is the time when librarians actually get to read the books in the library."
"We all chose this career because we love books for their own sake. Even the old inefficient corruptible paper ones. Indexing is like-- writing in the margins."
The notion was startling. "Writing in someone else's book?"
"It used to be done all the time, Leyel. How can you possibly engage in dialogue with the author without writing your answers and arguments in the margins? Here she is." Zay preceded him under a low arch and down a few steps.
"I heard a man's voice with you, Zay," said Deet. "Mine," said Leyel. He turned a comer and saw her there. After such a long journey to reach her, he thought for a dizzying moment that he didn't recognize her. That the library had randomized the librarians as well as the rooms, and he had happened upon a woman who merely resembled his long-familiar wife; he would have to reacquaint himself with her from the beginning.
"I thought so, " said Deet. She got up from her station and embraced him. Even this startled him, though she usually embraced him upon meeting. It's only the setting that's different, he told himself. I'm only surprised because usually she greets me like this at home, in familiar surroundings. And usually it's Deet arriving, not me.
Or was there, after all, a greater warmth in her greeting here? As if she loved him more in this place than at home? Or, perhaps, as if the new Deet were simply a warmer, more comfortable person?
I thought that she was comfortable with me.
Leyel felt uneasy, shy with her. "If I'd known my coming would cause so much trouble," he began. Why did he need so badly to apologize?
"What trouble?" asked Zay.
"Shouting. Interrupting."
"Listen to him, Deet. He thinks the world has stopped because of a couple of shouts."
In the distance they could hear a man bellowing someone's name.
"Happens all the time," said Zay. "I'd better get back. Some lordling from Mahagonny is probably fuming because I haven't granted his request for access to the Imperial account books."
"Nice to meet you," said Leyel.
"Good luck finding your way back," said Deet.
"Easy this time," said Zay. She paused only once on her way through the door, not to speak, but to slide a metallic wafer along an almost unnoticeable slot in the doorframe, above eye level. She turned back and winked at Deet. Then she was gone.
Leyel didn't ask what she had done-- if it were his business, something would have been said. But he suspected that Zay had either turned on or turned off a recording system. Unsure of whether they had privacy here from the library staff, Leyel merely stood for a moment, looking around. Deet's room really was filled with violets, real ones, growing out of cracks and apertures in the floor and walls. The smell was clear but not overpowering. "What is this room for?"
"For me. Today, anyway. I'm so glad you came."
"You never told me about this place."
"I didn't know about it until I was assigned to this section. Nobody talks about Indexing. We never tell outsiders. The architect died three thousand years ago. Only our own machinists understand how it works. It's like--"
"Fairyland."
"Exactly."
"A place where all the rules of the universe are suspended."
"Not all. We still stick with good old gravity. Inertia. That sort of thing."
"This place is right for you, Deet. This room."
"Most people go years without getting the flower room. It isn't always violets, you know. Sometimes climbing roses. Sometimes periwinkle. They say there's really a dozen flower rooms, but never more than one at a time is accessible. It's been violets for me both times, though."