Thank you,” she said. “And I’ve got one other question for you.”
Silas picked up the book and cradled it. “Yes?”
“Where do you suppose he got it?”
3
Silas should have been delighted with the find. He kept the book in his bedroom that night, leafing through it and reading passages aloud until the first gray streaks appeared in the sky. But he could not shake a sense of foreboding. Karik’s footprints had made it clear he’d walked into the river. Drowned himself.
Now there was this strange business of the book.
Why had he kept such a secret?
In the morning Silas reluctantly turned the book over to the library. In a society that lacks the printing press, a library is necessarily a facility whose primary concern is security. Users are permitted access to books only under close supervision, and nobody ever takes one home.
The custodians thanked him effusively, gushed and burbled as he must have to Chaka Milana the previous evening. The Director came out and assured Silas that the board would not forget his services, and they were all still poring over the volume when he left.
His morning was free and he was still too excited to sleep, so he paid a second visit to Flojian, finding him at his waterfront shipping dock. He was supervising a half-dozen workmen who were constructing a new ferry. He wore a yellow cotton shirt and gray workpants. “They don’t get anything right unless you watch them every minute,” he told Silas. “When we started this business, you could trust people to do an honest day’s work for a day’s pay.” He squinted, shook his head, and sighed. “What can I do for you?”
The ferry was going to be a large double-deck barge. When finished, it would use sail, poles, and a bank of oarsmen to cross the river to Westlok. After unloading, it would be hauled upstream by a team of horses to a dock almost two miles north of its east bank point of departure. There it would reload and begin its return voyage cross-river.
Silas expressed his admiration for the vessel, and switched quickly to the subject at hand. “Flojian, I can’t imagine why your father never told anyone about the Mark Twain.”
“Let’s go inside,” said Flojian. He led the way into a battered cubicle piled high with ledgers, and pointed Silas to a chair. “When he showed it to me, I pleaded with him to make it public. For one thing, it would have gone a long way to restoring his reputation.”
“What did he say?”
“He said no. Then he said the only reason he was showing it to me was to make sure I understood the bequest: that the book was to be given to the woman, no questions asked.”
“Which means that he wanted it out, but he didn’t want to do it himself.”
“Didn’t want it done during his lifetime, I’d say.”
“But why?”
Flojian shrugged. “Wish I knew.” There was pain in his eyes. “It hurts to have been locked out like that. I was his son, Silas. I never did anything to cause him grief. Or to give him reason not to trust me.” He looked tired. “Look, I thought I’d find out what was going on in due time. Just be patient and wait for him to tell me. It never occurred to me he was getting ready to take his life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe I could have helped if he’d said something.” They were seated in worn but comfortable fabric chairs. looking at each other across a table. Silas pressed his fingers against his temples. “Was there anything unusual in the anuma?” he asked.
“No. Just personal items. Clothes, his pen, his hourglass, Things like that.”
“No map?”
“No.”
“No journal? Notebooks? Diary? Records of any kind?”
“No. Just mundane stuff.”
“You’re sure?”
Flojian hesitated. His eyes glanced momentarily away. “I’m sure. I packed it myself.”
Silas looked at him.
Flojian squirmed. “Okay. There was a copy of something purporting to be The Notebooks of Showron Voyager. But it was a fake.”
Silas felt a rush of despair. “And you burned it?” Showron was the Baranji scholar who, according to tradition, had been the last known person to visit Haven. He had spoken with its guardians, had examined some of the manuscripts, had even left sketches. “How do you know it was a fake?” he demanded.
“Because my father tried to use it to find the place. And he never got there, did he?” He looked at Silas, challenging him to deny the truth of the statement. “Look, don’t you think I know what my father’s reputation is? People think he was a coward because he was the only person to come back. He had to live with that. I had to live with it.” He got up, walked to the window, and stared out at the dock. “It’s no secret I didn’t like him very much. He was tyrannical, self-centered, secretive. He had a short temper, and he didn’t worry unduly about other people’s feelings. You know that.”
Silas nodded.
Flojian’s gaze turned inward. “When he came back, he withdrew from me as well as from the world. He sat in his wing of the house and almost never came out. That was his territory. Okay. I learned to live with it. But I’d be less than honest, Silas, if I didn’t admit that his death has lifted a lot of weight from my shoulders.” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad he’s gone. But I don’t care what anybody says: He wouldn’t have abandoned anyone.”
A long silence drew itself around them. “I agree,” said Silas at last. “But that doesn’t explain where the Connecticut Yankee came from. Have you noticed anything unusual around the house?”
“Unusual in what way?”
Damn the man. Was he, after all, naturally obtuse? Or was he hiding something? “Anything that might tell us where he got it. For all we know, there might even be other stuff hidden somewhere.”
Flojian’s mouth hardened. “There are no other unaccounted-for books.”
Silas wanted to point out that the Mark Twain was a major find, that there was a serious enigma here, and that a hundred years from now people would still be trying to understand what happened. We’re close to it, so we ought to get some answers. But he knew it would sound ridiculous in Flojian’s ears.
“I tell you what,” Flojian said. “I’m leaving this afternoon for Masandik. I’ll be back in a couple of days. When I return, I’ll look through my father’s things. If there’s anything there, I’ll let you know.”
Quait Esterhok was a senator’s son. Years ago, he had been one of Silas’s prime students. He’d been blessed with a good intellect and an enthusiasm for scholarship that suggested great potential as a researcher. Silas had hoped he would stay with the Imperium, and had even persuaded the board to offer a position. But Quait, pressured by his father, had declined and instead accepted a military commission.
That was six years ago. Quait had returned from time to time, had sat in on a few seminars, and had even treated his old master to dinner occasionally. It was consequently no surprise when Silas found a note from him in his mail, and the man himself waiting in a nearby pub favored by the faculty.
The boyish features had hardened somewhat, and Silas saw at once that he’d acquired a new level of self-assurance. Quait rose from a corner stall as he entered, smiled broadly, and embraced him. “Master Silas,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.”
They wandered over to the cookery and collected slices of roast chicken and corn, called for a bottle of wine, and fell to reminiscing. Quait talked about the changes in the military
that had come with the foundation of the League. “Everyone does not profit from peace,” he laughed. The wine flowed freely, and Silas was feeling quite ebullient when his companion surprised him by putting down the chicken leg he’d been chewing and asking what he knew about the Mark Twain.