Although Emily and Jane were not sufficiently skilled even at recognizing instantly all the different letter shapes, they stayed close to Michael and Ernest scanning the piles of books in the hope that, somehow, something would be revealed to them.
It was quite a time before the next discovery was made. The darkness in the sky, seen through the library’s grimy windows, was no longer the darkness of storm clouds but of approaching evening.
Appropriately, it was Ernest who saw the book first and instantly recognized a word that seemed to leap out at him. The word was Rutherford, and it was the title of the book.
“Rutherford!” Ernest spoke the word as if he was using it for the first time. He opened the book and looked at the first printed page. Under the title he read: “Being an account of the life and work of Ernest Rutherford, Baron Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., scientist and genius.”
“Rutherford,” echoed Michael. “Scientist and genius…. First Emily Bronte, now Ernest Rutherford…. Do all our names also belong to other fragiles?” He sighed. “There are so many books to look at. We shall have to come back here again and again. I was so eager to get hold of some books, but now that we have found them I’m almost terrified.”
Jane had a curious thought. “I wonder if these other fragiles could be related to Ernest and Emily?” She hesitated. “The drybones are supposed to be our parents, but they are not at all like us…. It is a silly thought, but could these other fragiles belong in some way to Emily and Ernest?”
There was a silence. Eventually, Michael spoke. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the people who made these books—all of them—are our true parents. I think the drybones want to keep us from learning the truth about ourselves because the truth is to their disadvantage.”
Everyone had forgotten about Horatio. They heard his voice. It sounded far away.
“Bring the torch,” he called. “I have lost my sense of direction in the darkness.”
“Where are you?”
“There is a door at the far end of the library, with steps leading down. I went down them. Now I can’t see which way to get back up.”
Michael led the way. The torch battery was losing power. The light given out was now a pale orange instead of bright yellow. Besides the entrance, there were three other doors in the library. Only one of them was open, and it was obviously the door Horatio had used.
The flight of steps was steep and long. Michael was surprised that Horatio had not fallen down in the darkness and hurt himself. Even with the light, he and the others had to move carefully. They found Horatio in one of two passageways leading from the foot of the steps. The walls of each were bare, and no provision had been made for electric lighting. But the really surprising thing was that these subterranean corridors seemed to reach far beyond the confines of the library, perhaps even beyond Apollo Twelve Square.
Michael and the others tried to explore the corridor in which Horatio was and find out where it ended. They walked along it for some time; and Ernest estimated that, in terms of distance, they must be halfway back to Piccadilly Circus. But by then the torch was getting very low indeed, and Michael would not risk stranding the Family in darkness.
Without discovering any end to the passages or any evidence of the purpose or purposes for which they had been built, the Family made its way back to the library. It was almost as dark in the large room as in the underground passages.
Emily slipped her hand into Michael’s. “I don’t think I ought to stay any longer. I promised Mother I would be home early. We are supposed to be going to the pictures.”
“There isn’t much point in any of us staying without light,” said Michael. “We shall have to come again, properly equipped.”
Horatio was excited. “The passages have to go somewhere. I think it might be somewhere important. They can’t just go round in circles.”
“They could,” said Ernest “But I have a feeling they don’t. We may have found something besides the books that the drybones don’t want us to find yet.” Michael regarded the pale glow of his torch sadly. “It will keep. Let us get one or two books while we can still see something. Then we’ll all go together.”
They had to shine the torch very close to the spines of the books to read the titles.
Michael already had A Short History of the World. He was lucky enough to find another relevant book, A History of England, in the same pile. Ernest took Rutherford, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, which he had literally tumbled over, and Utopia. Emily kept Wuthering Heights. Jane found The Jungle Book. Horatio took nothing. He could not read. He did not want to learn to read. If there was anything important in books, Michael or Ernest would be sure to tell him.
The light from the torch was now so weak that they had to hold hands and feel their way out of the library. The rain had stopped. The wind had died down. The night air was cool and clean.
Michael and Ernest were filled with great excitement. At last they had found something to read.
17
Michael hid his books in the bathroom. It seemed the best and safest place. The bath had paneled sides, and the small end panel was only held in position by two recessed screws. They were very loose and could be unscrewed by a nail file.
It was much better to keep the books behind the bath panel because there was no comparable hiding place in his bedroom—except, perhaps, behind the ventilator grille, and that was too conspicuous. So the books were hidden in the bathroom, and Michael’s evening baths now took longer than usual.
Of course, it would have been possible to keep the books openly in his room. He tried to analyze why he didn’t. It was more than the fear of losing them. It was fear of having the drybones discover that he now had a source of information other than radio, television or Father’s evasive explanations.
A Short History of the World was a formidable book. It contained a large number of words he could not pronounce or knew he was pronouncing wrongly and a large number of words whose meaning he could only guess. He did not attempt to read the book page by page. The Contents list gave him an idea of the chapters that would be of most interest. Indeed, the Contents list itself was a kind of distilled history, ranging from fascinating headings such as “The Beginnings of Life” and “The First True Men” to “The Industrial Revolution” and “The Second World War.”
Each session that Michael spent with his books was an exhausting session of revelation. He would lock himself in the bathroom, run the bath water and, while it was running noisily, unscrew the panel with his nail file. As the room filled with steam, he would make shattering discoveries, which sometimes brought such mental confusion that his head ached and he longed desperately to ask questions of someone who knew.
But there was no one to answer the questions. He must answer his own or seek answers in the daunting pages of the book. Michael had no doubt that the truth—or as much of it as could be ascertained—was contained in the pages of his two books. Sometimes he was able to check information contained in one against information contained in the other. He was not surprised when the books agreed. He was only surprised when they appeared to disagree.
In neither of the books did he find any reference to drybones and fragiles as two distinct races. He found only references to people—people who lived and died in strange and sometimes appalling circumstances. But he made discoveries that exploded like bombs in his mind.