“May I help you?” he asked as he spied the boy. Zachariah was getting older now, a young man who was rapidly coming into his own. Next year his father said he’d be able to tag along for Syd’s bibliographic odyssey. Perhaps the boy would decide to become his apprentice librarian, so that he would have someone to hand the controls of the wagon to when he decided he was ready for retirement. He knew of course that this would depend entirely on how Zachariah fared as a writer. The boy had already won the laurel two times in the Outer Worlds Literary Festival sponsored by Jon Devlin, who had turned out to be quite the bibliophile.
Not only did Devlin not harm any of the librarians who’d been trapped in the Garden Cluster when those worlds had surrendered, but the rogue admiral, inspired by Syd’s example, had encouraged them to stay. Half of them opted to remain in the Free Periphery, or so he’d heard. Although he hadn’t spoken to Penny since that fateful day when everything changed, Syd learned that she had also decided to stay in the Cruickshank Belt and that she was advocating for stronger cooperation among the libraries of the Free and Independent Outer Worlds. It was probably only a matter of time before she had her own library corps up and running. The idea of Penny lording over staff meetings and maintaining discipline was just absurd enough for Syd to like to see it happen someday. He wondered what she’d do with the likes of him, anarchist librarian circling the world in his homemade bookmobile.
Zachariah helped the librarian extend the gangway to the wagon’s door and lock it into place. “Got any new books, sir?” he asked with his wry, broken smile.
“Do I ever!” Syd answered. “Come on in, son, and see for yourself.”
Copyright
Published by Tom Bruno at Amazon
Copyright 2012 Tom Bruno