“Whatever,” I said. “Anyway, the department we’re going to isn’t there.”
“Just as well,” Merrial said.
It was actually in one of the small side streets off University Avenue, all of whose buildings date back at least to the twentieth century. The trees that line it are probably as old, gigantic towers of branch and leaf, taller than the buildings. Their bulk darkened the street, the leaves of their first fall formed a slippery litter underfoot.
“So we just walk up and knock on the door?” Merrial asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got a key.”
She glanced down at her leather bag. “And you’re sure we won’t be challenged?”
“Aye, I’m sure,” I said. We’d been over this before. As a prospective student, with my project already accepted even if as yet unfunded, I had every right to be here—in fact, I should have been here more often, through the summer. So no one should question us, or our presence in the old archive. We’d planned how we’d do the job, but its proximity seemed to be making Merrial more nervous than I was.
“All right,” she said.
The key turned smoothly in the oiled lock, and the tongue clicked back. I pushed the heavy door aside and we stepped in. I locked it behind us. The place was silent, and as far as I could tell it was empty. The hallway was dim and cool, its pale yellow paint darkened by generations of nicotine, and it divided after a few metres into a narrower corridor leading deeper into the Institute and a stairway leading to the upper floors. The place had a curious musty odour of old paper and dusty electric lightbulbs, and a faint whiff of pipe-smoke. I checked the piles of unopened mail on the long wooden table at the side. A few notes for me, which a quick check revealed were refusals of various applications for patronage. I stuffed them in my jacket pocket and led the way up two flights of stairs to the library, switching on the fizzing electric lamps as we went.
Menial wrinkled her nose as I opened the library door and switched on the lights.
“Old paper.” I said.
She smiled. “Dead flies.”
I made to close the door after we entered the room, but Menial touched my arm and shook her head.
“I couldn’t stand it,” she said.
“You’re right, me neither.” The still, dead air made me feel short of breath.
I held her hand, as much for my reassurance as for hers, as we threaded our way through the maze of ceiling-high book-cases. Menial, to my surprise, once or twice tugged to make me pause, while she scanned the titles and names on cracked and faded spines with a look of recognition and pleasure.
“The Trial of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites!” she breathed. “Amazing! Do you know anything about that?”
“It was some kind of public exorcism,” I said, hurrying her along. I’d once glanced into that grim grimoire myself, and the memory made me slightly nauseous. “People claimed they had turned into rabid dogs who would go out and wreck machinery. Horrible. What superstitious minds the communists had.”
Menial chuckled, but shot me an oddly pleased look.
At the far end of the library the ranks of bookcases stopped. Several tables and chairs were lined up there, apparently for study—but no one, to my knowledge, ever studied at them. The most anyone could do was to put down a pile of books or documents there for a quick inspection of their contents under the reading-lights, before rushing out of the library. I recalled Menial’s comment that people today are more claustrophobic than their ancestors.
Beside these tables was another door, of iron, with a handle but no lock. The mere thought of the possibility of that door’s having a lock was enough to give me a cold sweat.
“Here we are,” I said, and added, to make light of it, “the dark archive.”
“What’s inside it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been in it.”
She frowned. “Is it off limits, or what?”
“No, no.” I shook my head. “It’s not forbidden or anything. Hardly anybody wants to go in.”
“No point in hesitating,” said Merrial. “Let’s get it over with.”
I turned the handle and pulled the door back. To fit with my feelings, it should have given off an eldritch squeak, but its heavy hinges were well-lubricated. A couple of times I worked the handle from the inside. It appeared to be in good order, but I dragged one of the chairs over and used it to prop the door open, just in case it closed accidentally.
I switched on the overhead light and stepped with an assumed air of boldness across the threshold. The small back room appeared innocent enough. It had a desk, with a couple of chairs in front of it and on its top a cluster of boxy, bulky structures like models of ancient architecture. Aluminium shelves lined the walls on either side. The air held a different, subtler smell, almost like the smell of washed hair or polished horn, with a sharp note of acetones.
Menial sniffed. “Like a rotting honeycomb,” she remarked cheerfully. I fought down a heave.
“Would smoking get rid of the miasma?” I suggested.
“Yes, but it might damage the disks.”
While I was still looking around for anything that remotely resembled a disc, Menial began rummaging along the shelves. The boxes arrayed there were translucent, the colour of sheepskin, with dusty, close-fitting lids. They contained flat black plates about nine centimetres square and two millimetres thick. She picked out a few at random, held them up and shook them slightly. From every one, a sooty black dust drifted down. Oxidation crystals crusted the small metal plates at their edges. She shook her head. “Hopeless,” she said.
In other, smaller boxes there were smaller, shiny wafers. These, when she picked them out, simply crumbled to the touch.
“So much for them,” she said. “We’ll just have to see if there’s anything on the hard drive.” She pulled up a seat in front of the machines. The largest, before which she sat, had a sort of window-pane on the front of it. She opened her poke, rummaged out the clutter on top and carefully extracted her strange devices. She laid them on the table: the seer-stone glowing with random rainbow ripples, a small black box and the frame of lettered levers, all connected by the coils of insulated copper wire.
“Oh, look, that thing there has the same—”
“Don’t touch it!”
“All right.”
She glanced up at me. “Sorry to snap. I’m a bit jumpy.”
“Aye, well, me too.”
“Also I’m in tinker mode.” She smiled. “Courtesy doesn’t come into it. If you want to help, see if you can find a power source for this thing while I set up my system.” She waved a hand vaguely in the darkness under the table.
Suppressing a qualm, I stooped down into that darkness, and after a moment while my eyes adjusted I saw a dusty power-socket, with three holes. A centimetre-thick cable hung from the back of the table and ended in a three-pronged plug. Deducing how plug and socket fitted together was the work of a moment, as was inserting the one into the other.
The light around me brightened suddenly. Mer-rial’s boot hit my ribs, and she simultaneously uttered an odd imprecation.
“What?”
“Christ, don’t do that!”
Another strange prayer. I crawled backwards from under the table. Menial gave me a glare.
“I thought that was what you wanted me to do,” I protested.
“Oh.” She thought about it. “I suppose you could have taken it that way, yes. I forgive you. Now come here and sit down.” She patted the seat beside her.
As I got to my feet I noticed what had happened to the machine, and where the extra light was coming from. The window on the front of the box was glowing a pearly grey with darker and lighter flecks swirling through it, like the sky above a port on a snowy day. I took a step backwards. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped a few kelvins. Now I understood why she’d been making these invocations. At moments like that even the most rational person will utter whatever name of the deity springs to mind.