I was eager to get into the early decades, but I knew that would be somewhat self-indulgent, and that I would have plenty of time for that It was the later years, closer to the time of the Deliverance, that were hidden from history. I picked up the folder for the final decade, the 2050s, and was about to open it when I heard Merrial scream.
I don’t remember getting to the door of the dark archive. I only remember standing there, my forward momentum arrested by a shock of dread that stopped me like a sparrow hitting a window. The file folder, absurdly enough, was still in my hands, and I held up that heavy mass of flimsy paper and fragile cardboard like a weapon—or a shield.
Merrial too was holding a weapon—the chair she’d been sitting on, and had evidently just sprung out of. In front of her, and above the computer, in a lattice of ruby light, stood the figure of a man. He was a tall man, and stout with it, his antique garb of cream-coloured jacket and trousers flapping and his shock of white hair streaming in the same invisible gale that had blown his hat away down some long corridor whose diminishing perspective carried it far beyond the walls of the room. His face was red and wrathful, his fist shaking, his mouth shouting something we couldn’t hear.
Holding the chair above her head, her forearm in front of her eyes, chanting some arcane abracadabra, Merrial advanced like one facing into a fire, and seized her seer-stone and machinery from the table. Its wire, yanked from its inconveniently placed socket, lashed back like a snapped fishing-line. The litde peg at the end, now bent like a fishhook, flew towards me and rapped against the file-folder. Merrial whirled around at the same moment, and saw me. She gave me a look worth dying for, and then a calm smile.
“Time to go,” she said. She let the chair clatter down, and turned again to face the silently screaming entity she’d aroused. As she backed away from the thing, it vanished. A mechanism somewhere in the computer whirred, then stopped. A light on its face flickered, briefly, then went out.
All the lights went out. From downstairs we faindy heard an indignant yell. I could hear Merrial stuffing her apparatus back in its sack. She bumped into me, still walking backwards.
Holding hands as though on a precipice, we made our way through the library’s suffocating dark. I could smell the dry ancient papers, the friable glue and frayed thread and leather of the bindings. From those fibres the ancients could have resurrected lost species of trees and breeds of cattle, I thought madly. Pity they hadn’t.
After a long minute our eyes began to adjust to the faint light that filtered in past window-blinds, and from other parts of the building. We walked with more confidence through the maze towards the door. On the ground floor of the building we could hear Gantry blundering and banging about.
Then, behind us, I heard a stealthy step. Menial heard it too and froze, her hand in mine suddenly damp. Another step, and the sound of something dragging. I almost broke into a screeching run.
“It’s all right,” Menial said, her voice startlingly loud. “It’s a sound-projection—just another thing to scare us off.”
Behind us, a low, deep laugh.
“Steady,” said Menial.
My thigh hit the edge of the table by the door. “Just a second,” I said. I let go of her hand, grabbed one more file-folder, put it in my other hand and then caught Menial’s hand again.
We reached the library door, slammed it behind us and descended the stairs as fast as we safely could, or faster. Then we lost all caution and simply fled, rushing headlong past Gantry’s angry and puzzled face, lurid in the small flame of the pipe-lighter he held above his head, and out into the night.
Night it was—for hundreds of metres around, all the power was off. We stopped running when we reached the first functioning street-lamps, on Great Western Road.
I looked at Menial’s face, shiny with sweat, yellow in the sodium puddle.
“What in the name of Reason was that?”
Merrial shook her head. “My mouth’s dry,” she croaked. “I need a drink.”
My feet led me unerringly to the nearest bar, the Claimant. It was quiet that evening, and Merrial was able to grab a corner seat while I bought a couple of pints and a brace of whiskies. By the empty fireplace a fiddler played and a woman sang, an aching Gaelic threnody of loss.
Merrial knocked back her whisky in one deft swallow, and summer returned to her face.
“Jesus!” she swore. “I needed that. Give me a cigarette.”
I complied, gazing at her while lighting it, glancing covertly around while I lit my own. The pub, which I’d patronised throughout my student years, was a friendly and comfortable place, though its wall decorations could chill you a bit if you pondered on them: framed reproductions of ancient posters and notices and regulations about “actively seeking employment” and “receiving benefit”. It was something to do with living on public assistance, which is what many quite hale and able folk, known as claimants, had had to resort to in the days of the Possession, when land was owned by lairds and capital by usurers.
The usual two old geezers were recalling their first couple of centuries in voices raised to cope with the slight hearing impairment that comes with age; a gang of lads around a big table were gambling for pennies, and several pairs of other lovers were intent only on each other; and the singer’s song floated high notes over them all.
“You were about to say?” I said. My own voice was shakier than Menial’s had been at any point in the whole incident. At the same time I felt giddy with relief at our escape, and a strange exciting mixture of dread and exaltation at the sure knowledge that my life was henceforth unpredictable.
“I wasn’t,” Menial said, “but I’ll tell you anyway. That thing we saw was the deil that guards the files. But,” she added brightly, “blowing fuses for several blocks around was the worst it could do.”
“Hey, that’s comforting.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, in a very definite tone. “Better that than an electric shock that burns your hands or a fire that brings down the whole building. Or—”
“What?”
“I’ve heard of worse. Ones that attack your mind through your eyes.”
“And there you were laughing at the very idea, back at the yard.”
“Aye, well,” she said. “It was just me that had to face them. No sense in getting you worried.”
“Oh, thanks.”
She took my hand. “No, you were brave in there.”
“Ach, not a bit of it,” I agreed.
“So, after all, we didn’t get much,” I said, returning to our table with refilled glasses about two minutes later. Outside, I could hear a growing commotion of militia rattles and whistles and fire-brigade bells. Somewhere across the street, a vehicle with a flashing light trundled slowly past.
Menial looked up from riffling through the folders.
“Well, you got the 2050s and the 1990s,” she said.
That’s something. What I got —” she patted her bag, grinning “—was a whole lot more. Maybe everything, I don’t know yet.”
I put the glasses down very carefully.
“The… um, barrier… didn’t work, then?”
“Up to a point. Like I said, my machine, and the logic on it, are stronger than the other one. It just couldn’t stop that thing from doing what it kept warning it would do. You can steal a bone from a dog if you ignore the barks and don’t mind the bites.” In a less smug tone, she added, “But it all depends on how much I pulled out before I had to…”
Tull out!”
“Yes.”
“So what do we do now?” I looked down at the folders. “I suppose I’ll have to try and square things with Dr. Gantry.” Confused thoughts fought in my mind, like those programs Menial talked about. One sequence of impulses made me think through a scheme of grovelling apology and covering up and smoothing over. Another made me realize that I was almost certainly in very deep trouble with the University authorities, and had quite possibly affronted Gantry in ways that he might find hard to forgive.