(Syd, the Director’s having a total fit. What are you doing?)
The librarian had broken into a run before he even exited the lobby of the relay station, his lungs straining against the thin air as he dashed past the confused-looking sentries down towards his library. He could spot the Imperial seal on the front door half a mile away, as well as a very forlorn-looking kid standing around as he always did at this time of the day. As Syd drew nearer, he could see the tears in the boy’s eyes.
CLOSED, BY DECREE OF THE IMPERIAL LIBRARY CORPS.
That weasel of a Director called the meeting to draw him away from the building so they could slap the seal on it before Syd could protest. Not only did the magnetic seal lock down the door mechanism so that his biometrics could no longer open it—a fact that he quickly verified—but circumventing such a seal was deemed a capital crime. How could he have been so stupid?
(Penny, they’re shutting down the libraries while we’re in the meeting! Tell everyone before it’s too late)
(None of my branches are responding. THAT BITCH!)
(Penny?)
(The meeting is total bedlam now. The Director just shut down the Telepresence feed. I don’t think she knows about this channel though. As long as they don’t cut the power to any of our buildings…)
“Sir?” Zachariah approached the librarian, his eyes swollen and red. The boy had never dared speak to him outside of the library before.
Syd bent down so that he was at eye level with the boy. “I’m afraid I don’t have any new books for you today, Zachariah. Nor will I for the foreseeable future.”
The boy sniffled. “It’s not your fault, sir.”
Syd took a deep breath. Deep down in his heart he knew this as well, but that realization didn’t seem to make the reality any more palatable. As always, events were moving faster than the librarian could account for them. He had to think, and fast.
“Zachariah, did you happen to see who placed the seal on the library door?”
The boy nodded. “It was the Deputy Archon.”
Syd ran his fingers through his hair, deep in thought. The Deputy Archon was an Imperial posting, but an office held by not by an alien but one of the high-ranking Settler Councilors. If properly approached, he just might be convinced to let him into the library one last time. But what good would that do? What could he possibly hope to accomplish? Modest as it was, he couldn't very well carry out the entire collection to safety himself, and if he tried to barricade himself in the library in some doomed romantic attempt at civil disobedience Syd was certain that given the crisis at hand the Imperial garrison would not hesitate to shoot him.
The librarian was on the verge of despair when suddenly he had an idea—a ridiculous, preposterous, wonderful idea.
“Can I talk to him on your repeater?”
The boy nodded again and handed over his communicator.
“Deputy Silas? This is Syd, the librarian. I’m sorry I missed your visit earlier this morning but I was running off a whole set of replacement parts for Larce Noel. If you don’t know him, I’m sure you know his tractor, as when it’s on the blink that’s the only thing you can hear between here and Twokay City! Yes, well, I know this is highly unusual but if you could let him into the library to retrieve those I’m sure he and all of his neighbors would be much obliged. I understand, sir. Just the replacement parts. I wouldn’t dream of trying to remove anything else. Thank you, Deputy! Larce will stop by later this afternoon, after siesta.”
When Syd returned the communicator, the boy’s mouth was agape.
“You gave Mister Noel those parts yesterday, sir!”
The librarian winked. “So I did, son. So I did.”
“So what’s in the printer?”
“Nothing yet,” Syd admitted with a sly smile. “But I have a feeling that by siesta that’ll change.”
That morning was a blur. While continuing to receive status updates from Penny about the morning meeting coup d’etat, Syd spent a good hour or so swearing at the wireless command line interface for the holo-printer. He had set the remote connection up on a lark, thinking that instead of coming to the library the Larce Noels of the planet could simply radio their needs to the library as soon as something broke down, not realizing that most of the larger ranches had their own mechanical pools with state of the art fabricators and not a cheap printer that Syd had picked up on auction during yet another working vacation, when he spent all but a few scant days shopping for library supplies that would have been dearly expensive to buy over tachyon relay.
Syd knew he should have simply counted his blessings that the transponder hadn’t shorted over the years, but he was dangerously short on time.
(Everyone came back to a sealed library) Penny dutifully reported. (Except for Hamilton. You know Hamilton, right, from the Scimitar Worlds?)
Syd nodded, so intent on making the printer work remotely that he forgot that Penny couldn’t see him. Penny continued nevertheless:
(Well, you wouldn’t know it from his avatar but the guy is huge—we’re talking 200 kilos or more. He doesn’t get around much, not even for staff meetings, so they set up a special relay for him right in his library.
(As soon as you go running out he starts shouting at a couple of Imperial goons who show up with the seal. They're all up in his face shouting, so all of a sudden we can see them as well. What happens next, I swear I’m not making up. Hamilton grabs a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica and WHACK! Smacks one of the goons right across the chops. The guy totally didn’t see it coming, so he just drops like a sack of iron ore.
(Now the other one, he tries to use his stun baton on Hamilton, but get this—it doesn’t work! He’s so big, there’s not enough juice to make him stutter, let alone incapacitate him. Hamilton puts this guy in some kind of headlock and that’s when the Director pulled the feed.
(Is that crazy or what?)
Syd nodded again, causing Penny to message him in an ugly blinking red typeface. (Hey, this is quality dirt I’m dishing here! The least you could do is pay attention.)
(Sorry, Penn. This stupid operating system won’t let me… wait, I think I’ve got it!)
The remote connection finally shook hands with his dorm computer, allowing him access to the printer’s control panel as if he were operating it manually. Thank goodness that Larce had been running off all of those parts, as Sys probably wouldn’t have thought to refill the substrate tank otherwise. A quick diagnostic confirmed that the printer was not jammed and ready to receive a form template.
Syd keyed in one of the numbers he’d memorized from the wagon he had found in the brush. The printer registered a match in its database. Of course it would. If you had enough substrate, you could print an entire wagon from the basic template library. That was a key point of Settler wagon design: universal, standardized parts that could be easily refabricated on-site. Even the fusion core could be printed up if need be, although Syd wouldn’t necessarily entrust such a delicate bit of machinery to his rickety second-hand holoprinter. The librarian started the print job, then added the second number from memory, then the third, and so on, hoping that he hadn’t misread the panel in the dim redlit gloom of the wagon’s cab.
(Syd, there’s something I need to talk to you about.)
That got his attention. The librarian paused before keying in the last part number and took a deep breath.
(It’s okay, Penny. I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened on Cygnus, and—)
(This is not Penny, Syd.)
The librarian’s blood ran cold. (Who are you?)