Chthon itself lost its novelty within these passages. Ever did the works of nature, he thought, bow before the works of man.
But how to start? Every volume looked the size of LOE—forty million words of print. Every shelf was tightly packed, with only occasional blanks: three books to the foot, six shelves to the wall, two walls to the hall. A ten-foot section of one hall would contain 360 books—more than fourteen billion words.
Aton was not a rapid reader in either Galactic or English. A solid day of intensive effort would get him through no more than a tiny fraction of a single volume. He would be here for decades, merely finishing what was in sight, no matter how he rushed. If he skimmed, he would run the risk of missing a vital clue.
He began to understand why these files were not restricted. Only by the wildest of blunders could a person come across dangerous information—if he recognized it when he saw it. Only through the computer could the library be used effectively.
Partner, always at his elbow, had been studying him. “You’ve never see a library before?”
“I thought I had.” But there had been librarians who listened to the problem and flounced off to generate a collection of books in some undefined manner. Never—this.
“Accept some advice, then. You do not visit the stacks to read, any more than you go to space to look at a vacuum. You research. You set up coordinates and adjust your course (I’m talking about space at the moment) and ignore what doesn’t concern you. You can’t locate your planet by blind reading here any more than you could do it by looking out the port at sublight to find it in space.
“First you need an index, a library index. You need to locate the specific section of the library you want, then the specific book. Right now you don’t even know where you are, although I thought for a while your wanderings had purpose. Take out a book. Look at it.”
Dumbly, Aton obeyed. “This is an analysis of the Oedipus complex,” he said. “A collection of essays on it.” He paused. “Why, the entire book is filled with alternate interpretations. Forty million—”
“And probably not one of those people really understands it,” Partner said, too sharply. “We certainly don’t. You let your wandering feet lead you to a section and a book that has no possible relevance to the riddle you have to solve. What did you think you were doing?”
“I suppose it was futile,” Aton said absently. He put the book back, his hand seeming somehow reluctant to let it go.
A melodious chord sounded, surprising him, A colored bulb set between shelves began to flash intermittently. “Pay attention to what you’re doing!” Partner snapped. “That’s the wrong place.”
Aton quickly withdrew the book and found the correct slot. The alarms subsided, but already footsteps beat their heavy tread nearby. Labored breathing paced that sound.
“What’s the matter with you now?”
Aton brought himself under control. “Something—something terrible, just then. A memory.” His face regained its color. “I don’t… seem to be myself, right now.” His whole body was shaking.
A fat, bearded man turned the corner. He wore the emblematic cap of the Sector Library, numbered 14. “Having a little trouble, gentlemen?” There was a curious quality about his accent. Then Aton realized what it was: native Earth English spoken by a man born to it.
“A mistake,” Partner replied. “Sorry to bother you.”
The attendant stayed, obviously not intending to trust any more books to their unsupervised carelessness. He was old, the wrinkles showing through the corpulent mounds of his cheeks, and the backs of his pallid hands were landscapes. “I may help you?”
“Yes,” Aton said. “I’m looking for a planet.”
“In a library?”
Aton smiled dutifully. “Its name is Minion.” Would the man react?
Caretaker 14 lifted his smooth beard thoughtfully. “Mignon. That would be one of the flower planets.”
“I don’t think so,” Aton said, but he looked upon the man with a certain dawning respect. There was a planet of Mignon; he had seen it in the ephemerides when he searched for the other. All the planets of that system had been named for flowers.
“Ah—I knew the term was familiar. Did you know that our standard typeface is Minion? Seven point print, about ten lines to the inch—”
Aton shook his head in negation. “This is a planet. An inhabited one. But I don’t know the name of its primary.”
“We’ll find it. The index, the Cyclopaedia, the ephemerides—oh, never fear, we’ll find it!” Number 14 spoke with subdued excitement and confidence, as though he had forgotten the origin of the request. It had become his own problem, and he would not be satisfied until he ran it down. Aton smiled at the man’s simplicity. “Proscribed, of course?” Aton frowned at the man’s insight.
“It may be. Frankly, I had heard about it, but didn’t seem to find it in the regular lists—”
“Yes. And you could not afford to use the computer, because it records all dubious requests. We get a number of similar cases. But don’t be concerned. Stack personnel are harmless and confidential. Generally.”
Was the man requesting a bribe for silence? Or trying to pry additional information to sate his curiosity? What were his terms? They followed him down interminable passages, ill at ease.
They arrived at somewhat wider halls. Lining one wall was a series of booths, each with a central table and bench. Number 14 settled them in one and began rounding up references.
Aton looked at Partner. “Can we trust him?” his glance inquired. “We have to,” Partner’s expression replied.
Number 14 returned with an armful of books and a small box. He piled them all on the table. “You have to approach a proscribed planet—don’t be alarmed, these booths are sealed private—deviously,” he said cheerfully. The primary has to be listed, of course, since you can hardly hide a star by ignoring it, but there may not be much evidence to link it to the planet you want. Now here we have the index of all the stars in the Earth Sector. If the sun we want is in it—and we’ll have to assume that it is, because there are a hundred thousand sectors in the galaxy, most of them impossibly alien—we can be certain that it is listed here. This reference does not indicate whether there are habitable planets, but they are not hard to spot: the early explorers named the habitables and let numbers do for the others. Unless they had a special interest in the system, in which case they named them all. But the point is that all inhabited planets are named, even though not all named planets are habitable. Are you with me so far?”
Aton and Partner nodded. Had this man ever appeared ignorant or naïve?
“Comes from a lifetime of spot researching,” 14 said in answer to the unspoken comment. “A good library assistant can locate things even the computer balks at.” He smiled, to show that this was a slight exaggeration, and fiddled with the box. It glowed, and the end wall lighted. “I’m going to project a sector map,” he said. “You are familiar with the type, of course—white for the front stars, red shift for the distant ones? And you’ve heard the joke about the color-blind navigator? Too bad. And you understand that only the established navigational beacons can be shown in such a comprehensive illustration. We’ll get on to the detail maps in a moment.” He touched a plate, and intricate networks appeared, linking the stars in curious patterns. Aton was reminded painfully of the Xest painting. Perhaps that was the origin of Xest art.