Salty air flowed in through the window, stirring up dust and dirt. Something hummed from one of the other rooms, sounding like it was coming nearer. Luc used his elbow to knock out a couple of shards of broken glass still sticking out of the frame, then scrambled over the window ledge, dropping down to land in the walled garden.
The landing knocked the wind out of him. Shots echoed over the rooftops, followed by the hum of another kind of weapon; light flashed in the air above a rooftop, and a thin trail of greasy dark smoke rose up, only to be rapidly dispersed by the wind. He pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the patio doors leading into Vasili’s library.
Vasili’s body was long gone, as was the carpet his body had lain on, but the floor where he had fallen was still charred. Luc stared around the towering bookcases receding into the library’s dim recesses with a feeling of hopelessness. The bookcases were arranged in orderly ranks, a dozen or so on each side of the library, with couches and low tables arranged in the empty space between.
There must have been thousands of books there – even more than Luc remembered from his previous visit. It hit him how little time he really had to try and find the book Maxwell had given to Vasili, assuming it hadn’t simply been thrown out by the mechants charged with removing his corpse.
He heard the hum of an AG field through the closed door, beyond which lay the hall where he’d first met Zelia. Something then bumped against the door, and Luc instinctively ducked between two bookcases, making his way to a corner of the library that was hidden in deep shadow. His fingers itched for lack of a weapon of some kind.
The door swung open, and one of the house mechants drifted into the library. It came to a halt after a few metres, rotating on its axis until it faced Luc’s hiding place.
Something silvery slid out of a recess in its belly.
Luc grabbed the nearest, heaviest volume he could get his hands on and threw it towards the mechant. He scored a direct hit, and the machine wobbled slightly in the air. Before the machine could recover, he ran past it, diving into the shadowy recesses of the bookcases on the opposite side of the library.
The mechant corrected itself and turned to follow. It fired as Luc dived into the narrow space between one end of a bookcase and the wall of the library, feeling heat sear the back of his neck.
He kept moving, running back towards the light streaming in through the patio doors, the wall to his left and ranks of bookcases to his right. Glancing behind himself, he saw through gaps in the open shelves that the mechant had passed between two of the tall bookcases. It had come to a halt, as if suffering a moment of indecision.
Luc dashed in between two bookcases, turning until he could see the mechant through more gaps between books. It didn’t appear to have spotted him yet. Pressing his shoulders up against the bookcase behind him, he then kicked at the one before him, feeling it rock slightly on its base.
The bookcases were heavy, and therefore given to considerable inertia, but the one he’d just kicked was top-heavy, its lower shelves almost entirely empty.
Kicking at it again, he lifted both feet up, pressing them against the top-heavy bookcase, pushing hard, and then tried again, grunting with the effort.
The bookcase rocked away from him once more and tipped back towards him, before finally settling back into place with a thump. A few volumes slid noisily to the floor.
The mechant hummed and ticked as it swivelled this way and that, apparently waiting to see whether he might come out of hiding. He guessed Vasili had programmed it to protect the books, placing the machine at an impasse.
Luc drew on whatever reserves of energy he still had left and again kicked and pushed at the bookcase, yelling and cursing. It rocked away from him, and then back, yet more volumes crashing to the floor.
He kept pushing. This time, the bookcase kept going the other way, finally overbalancing and sending a torrent of books falling to the floor as it toppled against its nearest neighbour. That one, in turn, crashed into the next, and so on, until the mechant was caught in an avalanche of paper and wood.
Clouds of dust rose into the air. Luc pulled himself up from where he’d slid to the floor and heard the mechant buzzing as it tried to fight its way out. It was, however, clearly trapped.
He turned towards the patio doors in time to see another mechant come crashing through them, sending splinters of glass flying everywhere. It aimed its weapons at him and Luc froze, expecting to die at any moment.
There was a sound like a muffled grunt and the mechant spun, apparently out of control. A second grunt slammed the mechant against the ceiling. It fired wildly, a beam of energy cutting a burning swathe across one wall, nearly blinding Luc with its intensity. He dropped to the floor, heard a third grunt, and when he looked back up, bright spots obscured his vision.
By the time he could see again, he found that the mechant had fallen to the floor, smoke trailing from several holes in its shell. One of Zelia’s monstrosities stood at the entrance to the hall, the weapon it had used to down the mechant gripped in both hands.
The creature looked over at him, its head twitching from side to side as if it had difficulty focusing on him. A brief burst of static issued from its mouth-grille, and it returned its attention to the fallen mechant.
Luc staggered to his feet, only slightly less afraid of Zelia’s machine-man than he had been of the mechant. He could hear the asthmatic rattle of its breath.
The library was a wreck, half of its bookcases collapsed and innumerable volumes scattered everywhere. Luc stared around himself, again feeling a fool for thinking he stood any chance of finding Maxwell’s missing book. Surely the house mechants would have alerted someone that Vasili’s home had been invaded?
But he still had to try.
Think. Heading for the couches close by the patio doors, he tried hard to picture Vasili’s body just as it had been when he had first encountered it. The scorch marks on the floor of the library made that act of visualization a great deal easier than it might otherwise have been.
He squatted down where Vasili’s body had been, staring around himself until his gaze alighted on a still-upright bookcase within easy reach. When he had suffered the seizure that had seen him spirited away by Zelia, he had leaned against it for support. He noticed for the first time that the bookcase, like all the rest of them, stood on legs, meaning a narrow gap of a few centimetres separated the lowest of its shelves from the floor.
It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?
Dropping down until his cheek was pressed against the cold flagstones, Luc peered into the darkened space beneath the bookcase.
He could see something, wedged underneath. A book.
His fingers soon worked their way into the gap beneath the bookcase, seeking out the nearest edge of the trapped volume, but in his desperation to get hold of it, he wound up pushing it slightly further out of reach.
Pausing, he took a deep breath and tried again, working much more carefully this time. Teasing the book around until he could just about grasp the edge of the book’s cover between two fingers, it took him another minute or so to gradually slide it back out from where it had become wedged.
Clutching the book to his chest, he was almost giddy with joy. Despite the scorch marks blackening the spine, he could still read the title: A History of the Tian Di, by Javier Maxwell. It must have slid out of sight, or been accidentally pushed beneath the bookcase when Vasili’s mechants had removed his body.
A shadow loomed over Luc; he rolled onto his back in a panic, thinking he was about to come under attack from another mechant. But instead he saw Zelia’s creature standing over him, its rifle gripped in both hands like a club and held high over its head.