Bibliophile

Tom Bruno BIBLIOPHILE

Every morning Syd arrived for work, the boy was already waiting patiently at the door. It had been this way ever since he had first taken the job, such that to Syd the boy’s presence had become a kind of constant. The boy would not say a word when he approached the door, but would respectfully step back from the weathered stoop so as to permit Syd to place his right palm on the sensor plate, unlock the door, and step into the small concrete building. Only after Syd had entered himself would the boy follow at a respectful distance, shuffling idly and staring at his feet in the cramped atrium while Syd made the necessary opening rounds—turning on the lights, powering up the computers, and making sure the holo-printer was not jammed, as Larce Noel had been running the infernal machine well past closing last night and he was less than diligent about making sure the print heads were clean when he was done. Once Syd was convinced that he would not have to scrape dried substrate out of the machine he returned to the front desk, smiled at the boy, who was still standing silently, and flipped the antique sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

“May I help you?” Syd asked the boy, although he knew exactly what he wanted. The boy would ask him the same question every morning, as if he didn’t remember who Syd was, or as if Syd saw so many people in the course of the day that he couldn’t possibly recall the boy. Although neither of these things was true, Syd and the boy insisted upon this formality like some kind of ancient ritual, with neither of them willing to presume on the other’s behalf.

“Do you have any new books, sir?” the boy asked, smiling self-consciously as he did so. The boy’s teeth were jagged and chipped. Syd remembered that he had been surprised when he first learned that settlers on the Outer Worlds didn’t infect their children with shark genes so that their adult teeth replaced themselves constantly as they wore out, but by now he’d been on the periphery long enough that this no longer repulsed him. Indeed, he was coming to rather like the broken smiles of this planet’s inhabitants.

“You’re in luck today,” Syd replied, reaching under his desk for a rectangular parcel, which he set in front of the boy. “We downloaded the eighth book in the Robar Trilogy last night. I had a copy printed up and bound just for you.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t think Hesprus was going to finish this one until 4014!”

Syd winked at the boy as he unwrapped the book for him. “Consider it an early Harvest Day present. I took a peek at the first chapter—I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

“I’m sure I won’t!”

“Just promise me you won’t try to read it while you’re driving the thresher. Your father threatened to burn the library down when you plowed through your neighbor's rhinocattle fence last month.”

The boy beamed. “That’s what he gets for teaching me to read!”

Syd could only laugh at this. Of all the planet’s fifty thousand inhabitants, how many could read or write without the assistance of a computer? Indeed, it was the prospect of literacy outreach that made this posting so attractive to him at first, but the sad reality was that the settlers here were by and large too busy to learn how to read. Try as he might to lure people in, Syd could count the number of regular library users on one hand.

Sure, there was Larce Noel, but he only came in to print out spare parts for his tractor, which seemed to be in a perpetual state of broken-downness—other than him there was Rose Harrington, who volunteered to lead the weekly book discussion group, bless her heart, even when it was just she and Syd most of the time who attended; as well as Daved Ohi, the old Mormon who lived in the hills and had an insatiable craving for vampire-themed romance novels (“They’re for the wife,” he’d always say sheepishly when he picked them up, but whenever Syd asked him which wife he’d only mumble something inarticulate, his nose already buried into yet another tale of young undead love); then there was Dio Marmaluk, who was constantly ordering books about Imperial Law and using them to threaten his neighbors and the Settler government alike with one half-baked lawsuit after another.

There was also the boy, of course. Although the boy was partial to serial fantasies, he in fact read everything he could get his hands on. When Syd had taken over as librarian, the boy had already read his way through the library, which at the time consisted chiefly of vinyl-bound Imperial Digest editions of Old Earth classics and bestsellers from the Inner Worlds. Syd had never in fact met his predecessor, who had died suddenly in a grav car accident, but he’d heard that the former librarian took little interest in cultivating a collection and spent the majority of his time up in Twokay City drinking and gambling with the cattlemen. The Imperial Digests were standard issue for any branch library, books which were as indestructible as they were boring, whereas the other offerings came straight from Rose’s purchase suggestions, which were themselves informed by media critics here in the periphery who followed what precious few data feeds that made it out this far. Rose had come from a well-to-do Inner World family, the Harringtons of Proxima Centauri, and even after marrying a local rancher she took great pains to maintain a sophisticated air about her.

In retrospect Syd found it a miracle that the boy had read anything in the library at all, but apparently his father, who styled himself a farmer-philosopher of sorts in the Neotranscendantal tradition, had instilled in him an almost reverential respect for the written word. It had become a singular pleasure for Syd to satiate the boy’s appetite for books by opening his young horizons to the vastness of galactic literature. Plays by Abbo Ariens (i.e., “Shakespeare Reborn”), the war poets of Sirius, the love poets of Old Mars, treatises on quantum physics and hypermathematics, even the classic Neo Noir crime novels by Sylvie Balasubramanian set on the mean streets of New Bollywood in the 31^st century—the boy devoured them all and demanded more.

After the boy had read his way through Syd’s bookshelves, which he’d added to the library’s paltry collection, the newly-hired librarian spent his nights on borrowed bandwidth searching the data feeds for new books that might tickle his youngest patron’s fancy. Syd had been particularly pleased with himself for discovering Hesprus, a fantasy writer from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud whose works had developed a small but cult following. His Robar Trilogy detailed the epic struggle of good versus evil on a planet where humanity had awoken from millennia of cryogenic slumber to find that their dreams had manifested themselves into reality while they’d slept. Writing in an elegiac style that pushed Imperial Standard to its very limits, Hesprus elevated genre fiction to its own form of art.

Syd had been entranced with his writing from the very first volume, and was glad to see that the boy agreed—as he took the parcel from the librarian, however, he made a face. “Isn’t it about time they stopped calling the series a trilogy?”

“It’s an Old Earth convention,” Syd explained. “You’re absolutely right, though. Maybe we can send the author an egram asking him to correct it. But that would mean he’d have to decide how many Robar books he was going to write.”

“Are you kidding? I hope he never stops! Only…”

“What is it?”

The boy clutched the book against his chest tightly. “Do you really think we could send Hesprus an egram? I’d love to tell him how much his writing means to me.”

Syd smiled. “How about this—you write the letter and I’ll figure out how to send it. I don’t know if the LMC is wired for egrams but I’m sure Hesprus’ publishers are. “

“Do you really mean it?” The boy looked beside himself at the prospect of communicating with his favorite offer.

“Of course!”

“Then I’ll start writing as soon as I get home…” The boy stopped himself in mid-stride. “After I’m done running the harvester, of course.”

“Good boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re most welcome. Enjoy the book.”

The rest of the day was unusually quiet, even for this library. Rose Harrington was hosting a benefit for orphans of the Spiral Arm War up in Twokay City so book club had been postponed for the week, and by some minor miracle Larce Noel’s tractor made it through a full rotation without losing any of its vital engine parts. Syd decided to close up early and see if he could wheedle some extra feed time at the Relay Station, which was just down the boulevard from the library. Back when the planet had first been settled it made sense to situate the official buildings—including the library—as close to the tachyon relay as possible, as it represented the official lines of communications between the Empire and its periphery; after several generations, however, the ranchers had developed their own communications infrastructure which satisfied their own market needs, which meant that the Imperial Relay was often idle for long stretches of time, affording Syd myriad opportunities to browse the data feeds, upload correspondence with other librarians, and of course download promising new books.

As the librarian trudged up the gravel road towards the massive spire this evening, however, he noticed that there was an unusual amount of activity at the Relay. Three official-looking grav cars were hovering just outside the entrance, and although there was usually some kind of casual sentry on duty at the door Syd could see that the regular guard had been replaced by two Imperial soldiers clad in plastisteel armor with their particle rifles at the ready. Something was clearly amiss, but Syd continued up the driveway, albeit a little more slowly.

“Hello there, friends.” The librarian recognized neither of the armed men. “Does either of you gentlemen know what all the hubbub is about?”

“Identification,” one of the soldiers said as the other kept his firearm leveled. Syd had never served in the military, but he had seen holovids of what these weapons could do to unprotected human flesh, so he reached for his ID as gingerly as he could.

The soldier who spoke before looked at the bars and grunted, as if he were almost disappointed. “He’s clear. Imperial Grade 7 Access.”

The other guard shrugged and let Syd pass inside the relay station—no sooner had he done so, however, than a woman was rushing to intercept him in the marble lobby. “Syd! This is not a good time…”

“You don’t say, Tess! I couldn’t tell, what with the goon squad at the front door.”

Tessamyn Osterbur winced. She was as old as Syd, but whereas the librarian had allowed himself to grow increasingly rumpled over the years Tess seemed only to become more poised and proper. Tonight even she looked a little out of sorts, though—her long red hair, normally pulled tightly into a bun, was down and a bit unruly, and Syd couldn’t help but notice that Tess also had dark circles under her normally sparkling emerald eyes.

“Sorry about that,” she sighed. “It’s just a precaution.”

“Precaution?” Syd didn’t mean to raise his voice, but it echoed throughout the atrium nonetheless as if he’d been shouting. “Against what—rabid zombie rhinocattle!”

Tess didn’t even chuckle. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Syd felt a lump in his throat.

“It’s Jon Devlin. He’s invaded the Garden Cluster.”

Of all the names in the Outer Worlds, it was that of Jon Devlin that provoked the most fear. A disaffected captain in the Imperial Navy turned pirate, Devlin had successfully carved an empire of his own out of the galactic periphery, outwitting his former colleagues at every naval engagement so far. The Outer Worlds had never seen this much chaos in centuries as time-honored trade and communication routes broke down, with Devlin’s pirate armada sweeping through star systems like a plague of insects in a field. Some worlds attempted to fight, only to find their cities bombarded with nuclear fire; those who did surrender were only slightly better off as the armada took everything that they could cram into the holds of their ships—wealth, wine, and women.

If Devlin’s armada had reached the Garden Cluster, not only did that put them less than ten parsecs from their current location, but it gave Jon Devlin possession of the Imperial relay stations in that sector as well as whatever other resources had been left unprotected.

“But I heard that Jon Devlin was light years away from here. How did he end up in the Garden all of a sudden?”

Tess couldn’t help but smile despite the grim situation. “That’s the thing. No one knows how he did it. One day the fleet wasn’t there and the next moment it was. People are saying it’s magic, or that Devlin discovered some alien technology or found an uncharted wormhole.”

Syd snorted. “Or maybe he made a deal with You Know Who…”

“Cute. Try that joke on him when he gets here, I’m sure he hasn’t heard that one a million times before.”

“What do you mean, when he gets here? Surely the Empire isn’t going to let him take the Garden without a fight!”

“You don’t understand, Syd.” Tess looked around, then drew the librarian closer. “I picked up some of the communiqués before the soldiers showed up and classified everything. Devlin didn’t take the Garden—it invited him in!”

“What?” Syd’s ears were ringing. “That’s preposterous! Why would they do such a thing? His armada will just rape and plunder there like they’re done everywhere else.”

“I heard what I heard,” Tess said, her voice still a whisper but defiant nonetheless. “Anyway, they’ve shot the pulse network to hell. If Devlin hasn’t destroyed the relay stations, he sure isn’t allowing them to carry Imperial traffic.”

Syd considered this. “That’s why I was having so much trouble trying to download that Hesprus book last night.”

“Yep,” Tess said. “You probably got the last gasp of bandwidth from the Garden before Jon Devlin shut it down.”

The librarian suddenly felt faint. “Does this mean we’re cut off?”

Tess shook her head. “No. There are ancillary nodes that we can tap into, but because they’re further away the signal will degrade inversely proportionate—“

“Inversely proportionate to distance,” Syd finished her science lecture, worried that she was forestalling the inevitable. “Yes, I know my basic electromagnetism. But what does that mean for the Relay? What does that mean for the library?”

“Syd, I’m so sorry.” Tess put her hand on the librarian’s shoulder. “As long as the Imperial Navy is in the area they’ll be in charge of the relay system, not me. And they’re likely not to want to waste any of the bandwidth we have left on books.”

Syd shrugged off Tess’s hand, agitated all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘waste’?”

“From their perspective, of course!”

“Of course.” Syd had always wondered what Tess made of his long hours in the Relay station, often spending as much time combing the data feeds for new acquisitions than he did behind the desk of his own library. Although he considered it time well-spent, he couldn’t help but notice that Tess would often regard his late-night information binges with equal parts amusement and pity.

Tess pushed back a stray lock of fiery hair and sighed. “Look, Syd. I haven’t had a moment’s peace and quiet since these guys rolled up the drive. Cut me some slack, will you?”

Syd let his shoulders drop. “Fine. So no feeds for the time being. Maybe the ranchers will let me use their repeater network instead. Rose… er, Mrs. Harrington… said they used to rely on the repeaters for local borrowing and lending when they had the branch up in Twokay City.”

“Again, Syd. I am sorry.”

“Not as sorry as Jon Devlin will be if I can’t get new books for my best patron!”

Next morning the boy was waiting outside of the library as he always was, clutching the novel by Hesprus in his gloved hands. Although cold mornings were the norm for this part of the planet, where the atmosphere was thin and the slopes ideal for ranching, it was an unusually chill day, as if Nature had gotten the memo that Jon Devlin was at the world’s doorstep. The boy, however, seem unperturbed by the comings and goings of space pirates in the general vicinity—he allowed Syd to open the library in peace before asking him the same question as he always did.

“Do you have any new books, sir?” the boy said, placing the eighth volume of the Robar Trilogy onto the desk.

Syd dodged the question with one of his own. “Finished already then? I should have liked to think that you would have savored this one!”

“But I did, sir.” The boy almost looked crestfallen. “I still couldn’t put it down until I’d finished reading it.”

The librarian smiled. “Very well, then. It may take a few days for some of us mere mortals to read something as dense as Hesprus.”

“Oh, but he’s not that hard!”

“No?”

The boy paused, uncertain if he was being mocked. “Not compared to Plato, for example.”

“You’ve read Plato?”

“Yes, sir. In the original Greek.”

Syd laughed. “Now where did you learn Ancient Greek?”

“My father taught me,” the boy answered with a blush. “He used to be a professor before he became a farmer.”

The librarian suddenly had an idea. “Do you think I could speak with your father this evening?”

The boy mumbled something into his personal repeater, then nodded enthusiastically a moment later. “He says you should come over for dinner!”

“Tell him I accept the invitation.”

“I will,” the boy answered. “Does this mean you don’t have any new books for me, sir?”

Syd shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I heard about Jon Devlin.”

There was a long and uncomfortable silence. When the boy spoke again, his voice was tiny: “Do you think the library will close?”

“Not if I can help it,” Syd said. “In fact, that’s why I want to talk to your father.”

Although the day turned out to be surprisingly busy, Syd felt like it was dragging on forever nevertheless, his mind already preoccupied with tonight’s conversation. He knew that he would only get this one chance to lay out his proposal, so he thought long and hard about what he was going to say, outlining the benefits as best he could when the library patrons weren’t busy asking him for help. Larce’s tractor had made up for its full day of performance with a series of breakdowns, each requiring a series of specialized parts. Syd was just thankful for the fact that he had taken the liberty of downloading the entire maintenance catalog a few months ago, or else the Noel farms would be in real danger of losing their harvest without access to the relay station.

Helping the hapless farmer find the right parts in the database and keeping the holoprinter supplied with substrate as he ran off job after job would have been more than enough work for one day, but as luck would have it Rose Harrington had returned from Twokay City that morning as well, and couldn’t stop talking the librarian's ear off about how the benefit went and what fabulous ideas she had for next week’s book club. Syd tried to get some new information about Devlin and his pirate armada out of Mrs. Harrington, but it seemed that the planet’s socialites (for what they were) were blithely unconcerned about the looming threat. So much for that.

No sooner had Rose finally excused herself for the day than one of the local grammar school teachers brought her class for an unexpected library visit to learn more about the exotic flora and fauna that was indigenous to the planet and still flourished at sea level, where the atmospheric pressures were too strong to support human settlement and agribusiness. Normally Syd delighted in showing kids the library’s impressive collection of three-dimensional diorama books that the first scouts and exobiologists had made centuries ago, but today he felt leaden and relied instead on the teacher’s enthusiasm to get him through the rest of the afternoon.

As if the day couldn’t get any more draining, about fifteen minutes before closing there was an incoming message from the Imperial Library Corps. There would be a mandatory staff meeting for all librarians in the sector first thing tomorrow morning—the Librarian General had secured the necessary bandwidth on the tachyon pulse, so Syd would be expected to attend as well. Though given recent events such a meeting was not entirely unexpected, he couldn’t help but have a feeling of dread, as he always did whenever the Corps required his official presence. No small part of the allure of the periphery was the thought that he was his own librarian, in charge of his own little library at the edge of the galaxy, when in fact it was Empire calling the shots just as surely as if he were back in the Inner Worlds.

Syd sighed as he closed up the library for the evening. There was some extra tidying to be done, as Mrs. Jen-Lee’s kids had made a mockery of the Dewey Decimal System in just a few hours of running amok, but the librarian decided to come in early the next morning and reshelve the mess. Tomorrow’s staff meeting already meant an ungodly wake-up call, so he might as well take advantage of being up and about at such an early hour. He did one last sweep of the building to make sure that everyone had gone home, extinguished the lights, then locked the front door with his palm. Syd was so accustomed to exiting his library to an empty boulevard that he almost blundered into the track of a grav tank that was powering its way up the street.

“GET OUT OF THE ROAD, MORON!” a voice blared, causing Syd to whirl about and lose his footing, sprawling headfirst to the pavement. He propped himself up on skinned palms as the tank passed, its operating laughing at him over the loudspeaker.

Syd considered hefting a rock at the tank, but thought twice about giving the soldiers an excuse to shoot someone, as they were probably already eager to do. He wondered if the tank wouldn’t be the first of many reinforcements. While it pleased him that the Empire was finally taking a stand against the seemingly unstoppable Jon Devlin and his armada, Syd was less than thrilled at the prospect of his library being caught in the crossfire. He had just gathered his wits enough to note that the grav tank which had just passed him wasn’t bearing the Imperial standard, but that of the local militia. Uncertain of what to make of this, Syd almost had half a mind to follow the vehicle and see what was going on, but his personal communicator was beeping to remind him that he was expected somewhere for dinner.

Ezekiel Manda was known for two things—his work ethic and his lamb, both of which were the stuff of legend. While most of the Settlers here had opted to raise rhinocattle, a genetically-engineered safe bet on virtually any planet, Manda had decided to take a chance on mutton and profited handsomely from the gamble, or so he explained to Syd over the evening meal. The librarian had arrived at the ranch just in time for the breaking of the bread, and from the relieved look on the boy’s face when he finally showed up Syd intuited that he had narrowly avoided causing grave insult. Ezekiel nodded and ripped a huge boule of peasant bread into chunks with his calloused hands, which the boy then dispensed to the other diners in order of importance: first the guest, then the matron of the house, Mrs. Manda, followed by the boy’s elder siblings (five in total—three boys and two girls), himself, then lastly his father, who closed his eyes and spoke some words in what Syd recognized as a snippet of Old English—Emerson, he was sure of it. Only then did the family set themselves upon dinner, which consisted of various courses set on the table simultaneously, each on its own platter.

The librarian, accustomed to dining alone, more often than not making do with some rice and beans or a hastily reheated turnover he’d picked up from a vendor on the way home from work, was astonished at the sumptuousness of the offerings, and hoped that such extravagance hadn’t been solely on his account. Here were piles of lamb chops straight from the coals, tripe soup with barley and fresh local herbs, a plate of farm cheeses and lamb sausage, roasted tubers slathered in home-churned butter, and a bowl of something that looked like oversized prawns if not for their emerald green hue. When Syd learned that these were kuaa, he almost had to laugh, as he’d just been showing the grammar school children how these creatures would swim on the heavy air currents in search of the local megafauna, which it then attached themselves to feed on their blood. The holovid book had even remarked that kuaa were in fact quite tasty and considered a local delicacy, provoking cries of “Ewwwww!” and mock retching from the kids. He took an experimental bite from one and smiled as the Manda patriarch watched him intently—the grey hair and deep lines on his weathered face suggested that he was an old man, but everything else about him suggested a man still in the prime of his life.

“I’ve got a customer who supplies the zoology stations down below,” he explained. “She runs them up fresh and I pay her in lamb. Aren’t they good?”

Syd remembered to swallow before answering. “They’re almost minty.”

Ezekiel nodded. “That’s the blood of their prey—the big herbivores of the South Sea.”

“Pseudobrontosaurus?”

Ekeziel smiled. “Zachariah told me that you were smart.”

Syd looked at the boy, who was trying not to blush. “If you don’t mind my saying so, your son is far smarter than I am.”

“And yet you encourage him to be a writer.”

Syd almost dropped his fork. “I beg your pardon?”

“All of this nonsense you feed him,” the old man explained his accusation, while the rest of the table had not only fallen silent but even refrained from eating. “Romances and fantasies. Like this Robar rubbish. No sooner did my son finish that trash that you printed out for him yesterday than he declared that he would like to be a writer just like Hesprus!”

The librarian opened his mouth to respond, but then reconsidered, as he imagined that talking back to the Manda patriarch at his own dinner table would be tantamount to throwing a rock at a tank. Instead, he pushed a couple of tubers around on his plate and waited for Ezekiel to continue his harangue:

“I may no longer teach at the Academy, but I still know the difference between art and trash. You, sir, do your library a grave disservice by confusing the two for young and impressionable minds.”

At this point Syd could no longer hold his tongue: “’The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.’”

Ezekiel smiled. “You know Plato?”

“Not as well as your boy does. Or you, I would imagine. Zachariah had never told me that you were a professor of philosophy.”

“Harrumph,” the Manda patriarch waved as if to ward off any more respect than he thought was due. “I’m sure he neglected my long and distinguished service in the Imperial Marines as well. But if you knew anything about Plato, you’d also be familiar with his views on epic poetry.”

“This may be true, but surely he understood the usefulness of allegory.”

“Are you saying that the Robar ‘Trilogy’ serves some kind of redeeming didactic purpose?”

“That Mankind is the source of both the greatest good and the greatest evil seems like a fair moral lesson for a Neotranscendantlist family.”

“Oho! So now you are a preacher as well?” The Manda patriarch was clearly agitated, but unless Syd was mistaken his tone was more bemused than angry. “I like this librarian, Zachariah. He actually seems to believe in something. “

Having polished off his fifth lamb chop, Ezekiel pushed his chair back from the table and made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the fat from his bristly grey mustache. “Now tell me, good sir, why did you wish to speak to me tonight?”

“Surely you know about Jon Devlin’s recent incursion,” Syd said.

Ezekiel sighed. “Yes. It’s a sad day indeed when the Empire can no longer handle one traitor with delusions of grandeur. My son informs me that you have lost access to the tachyon relay for your work.”

Syd had not expected the boy to have advocated on his behalf, but he was grateful nonetheless. “That is correct, sir. It was my hope that I could borrow some time on the local repeater network in order to access the more critical data feeds.”

The old man seemed to hesitate before giving his answer. “I could speak to my fellow ranchers to see if this could be arranged. Only…”

“No more works by Hepsrus?” the librarian quipped. “I can assure you it will be at least another year or two before he writes his next installment.”

Ezekiel had a good laugh at this, despite his pained expression. “No, it’s not that. You seem like an honest man, so I feel that I should warn you that the Settlers are considering joining the Garden Cluster.”

“Join the Garden—?” Syd began to ask the question, until he realized that he did not need further elaboration. “Oh.”

“Believe you me, I do not condone casting our lot with pirate scum like Devlin,” the Manda patriarch said with a grimace. “But I am but one voice on the Settlers’ Council, and I’m afraid I am in the minority on this one. After the Garden willingly surrendered, Jon Devlin transmitted the same terms to every adjacent system. My fellow ranchers believe they have more to lose by standing firm and hoping the Imperial Navy will save them.

“But then you will be cut off,” Syd protested.

“You’d be surprised at how robust the livestock market is for independent traders,” Ezekiel said. “Many of my colleagues already sell heavily on the black market to avoid Imperial tariffs. At least this way they’ll no longer have to worry about the tax collectors.”

“No, just pirates!”

The old man frowned. “Devlin has also pledged to protect trade within those systems that surrender to him peacefully. I don’t know what that will mean for access to data feeds, but I will inquire on your behalf when the Council meets again.”

“Thank you.”

Although the dessert had course was no less sumptuous than dinner itself, the librarian spent the rest of his time at Manda residence in a kind of mental fog. Syd did not want to seem ungrateful, but the news of planet’s possible secession had thrown him completely. Surely the Imperial Library Corps would recall him if such a thing actually came to pass—a prospect which made him literally sick to his stomach. There had to be a way out of this impasse, but Syd felt trapped by forces much larger than him.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a ride home?" Ezekiel asked his guest. "It's the least I can do after fattening you up to the point of bursting!"

"No thanks," Syd said. "I could use the walk after such a feast."

"Very well," the Manda patriarch said. "May I suggest taking Old Tarsus Road back? The hills along that path are quite lovely in the sunset."

The librarian had considered going back to the relay station and talking to Tess, but it was late and Syd didn’t want to walk into a potential crossfire between Imperial troops and local militia when no one could even see him coming up the road. Ezekiel's suggestion sounded like a fine compromise, and would give him some time to gather his thoughts. He meandered through the long twilight back towards his dormitory, enjoying the route, which was indeed as scenic as the farmer had promised. Here the first Settlers had erected stone walls from the abundant slate they found here, fitting the oddly regular slabs into fences that did not require any form of mortar to keep them held together—in fact, they looked as if they had been set up only yesterday.

Syd was so engrossed in the painstakingly joined slate that he almost missed a low hump just to the right, where one of the walls zigzagged suddenly, then veered off towards the brush in a line as straight as a laser beam. How odd that the builder did not run the fence over the mound, but clearly went out of his way not to touch it. His curiosity piqued, the librarian stepped gingerly over the slate row and examined the hump more closely as dogs barked and rhinocattle lowed in the distance. Nightfall took its time on this planet to arrive, but it would not wait forever; even in the failing light, however, Syd could tell that this mound was not a naturally-occurring feature. An old forgotten bunker, perhaps, long since grown over with bramble and wild strawberry? He pulled a few vines aside in an exploratory fashion and realized with a start that he had not discovered a building, but a vehicle.

Judging from the size of the hulk, it was one of the old Settler wagons—glorified tractors, really, but these trucks had trundled across the face of the planet, depositing here and there their precious cargo of pioneers and thousands of different species of flora and fauna either as seeds or in vitro. A colonization ship had brought ten thousand of these wagons, of which only a dozen survived to this day in various museums and private collections. That one would just be sitting here, forgotten in a field, less than a few kilometers from the original landing site was nearly impossible to believe. Surely the ancient rancher who had laid down the wall here knew of it. Maybe it belonged to his family? For it to have been overgrown suggested that the property had changed hands at least once over the intervening generations, if not many times over. Syd wondered exactly how long it had taken for this priceless artifact to have been forgotten. If Jon Devlin had his way and the planet turned its back on the Empire, would his library suffer a similar fate?

Against his better judgment Syd kept investigating the ruined wagon, removing more and more of the overgrowth until he could make out its characteristic features that he remembered from the holovids and his visits to the Settlers’ Museum when he first arrived planetside. The front of the vehicle had big tracked wheels that rose taller than a mature adult rhinocattle, and the trailer it pulled was easily half the size of the main room of the library. He tried the door to the trailer and found that it was not locked, merely jammed with a thick root that he was able to slice away with his pocket knife. Forcing the door all the way open, he practically fell into its dark innards, just righting himself before his head connected with the hard metal of the trailer’s interior shell. Who knows how long he would lay here undiscovered, should he become incapacitated? Syd shuddered at the thought of moldering dead in this cramped space for years or even decades until he found the light fob on his knife and illuminated the room.

Whether by neglect or design, the trailer was surprisingly neat on the inside, its specimen shelves empty but showing no sign of having been ransacked or vandalized over the years. It was actually more roomy than Syd had thought it would be from the outside, so he had no difficult whatsoever in stepping forward to see if he could access the operator’s cabin. That door, too, was unlocked. No sooner had the librarian opened it, however, than the red emergency lights turned on, almost causing him to drop his own lamp. The wagon still had power! It must be keeping the main battery charged with a solar cell. Syd pushed into the cabin to find a lone diagnostic panel glowing up at him, indicating a fatal error in the machinery and listing the parts needed to fix it. Although this was backlit by solar power, he remembered reading that these so-called “crash panels” were displayed in electronic ink so that they could be read even if all power was lost.

What a find, Syd thought to himself. He wondered if he should share his discovery with the rancher who currently owned the property, or contact the Settler authorities in Twokay City first. Then he remembered the situation he was in along with the rest of the sector, and despaired if anyone would even care with Jon Devlin and his pirate armada out there in space. Surely someone would still recognize the find for what it was! Maybe Rose Harrington, or even Ezekiel Manda. He did his best to replace the bramble so as not to attract undue attention to the site until he could return, then stumbled back to his dormitory in the twilight.

Syd did not sleep well that night. At first he was too wired to fall asleep, his head buzzing with the events of the day, his dinner with the Manda family, and the artifact he’d found in the fields; then when sleep finally did take him it did so in wild staccato dreams that woke him several times in panic, his heart racing and his bedsheets soaked with sweat. Although he could not remember any of his dreams that night, he could not forget the anxiety which had run through them like a primal theme, such that by sunrise he was more exhausted than when he had first gone to bed.

His communicator was buzzing. So early? It was only then that Syd remembered the staff meeting. Damn it, he had been so preoccupied when he got home that he neglected to set his alarm. Damn damn damn! The librarian sprung out of bed, pulled on a shirt and pants, and dashed out the door, down the dormitory stairs, and up the gravel road to the Relay. At this point he almost hoped the sentries would mistake him for a hostile and shoot him, but neither the local tank nor the Imperial guards seemed nonplussed by his panting arrival.

“The director said you’d be coming,” the talkative one of the two guards deadpanned. “You’re late.”

“Tell me something I don’t know!” Syd gasped, running a hand through his sleep-matted hair in vain as he entered the station and went straight into Telepresence Alcove 3, where he saw two dozen ghostly forms flickering. As soon as he crossed the virtual threshold the ghosts registered his sudden arrival, some of them instinctively taking a step or two back although their avatars were not enabled for physical feedback.

A couple of librarians snickered while Rossi, one of the Sector Chiefs, finished his update as if Syd’s interruption had not occurred. He probably had uploaded his report in advance and wandered away from his office, unaware of the fact that his colleague’s dramatic last-minute pratfall would give him away. The Director hated it when his staff didn’t give their undivided attention, so Syd had a chance to compose himself while the aquiline matron gave Rossi a thorough dressing down once he’d taken his avatar off autopilot.

(Nice entrance!) One of his colleagues messaged him on a private channel. It was Penny. Syd looked over his shoulder to see her avatar smiling back at him. Penny ran a series of branch libraries in the Cruickshank Belt, an asteroid field so prosperous that it was home to several Imperial mining colonies and even a couple of hydroponic farms on the larger rocks.

(Thanks, Pen.) Syd wrote back. (I think I really stuck the landing there.)

Penny’s avatar was stunning, as always. Whereas the other librarians either appeared as chunky bits or overly scripted avatars that lagged against the tight data limits, hers was a fractal composition chosen to complement the bandwidth available. As a result, aside from Syd himself Penny was the only person who seemed real within the confines of the Telepresence Alcove. He could only wonder what his avatar looked like, given the local strictures and the fact that he still hadn’t modified his virtual appearance from its stock settings. Other librarians had virtual social obligations as part of their assignments and therefore had to worry about such things, but Syd only donned his avatar for staff meetings.

Real or not, however, the Director’s wrath at him was clearly undiminished by Rossi’s virtual shenanigans. “Nice of you to join us at last.”

(Busted!)

“Sorry, ma’am.” (Shut UP!)

“Surely you understand the reason for this meeting, Syd. I would have expected a little more interest on your part.”

(Ouch.)

(Pen, knock it off!) “I know. I am sorry. It’s been a little crazy planetside since the news broke.”

The Director was unmoved. “Crazy or not, you are a member of the Imperial Library Corps. The next time I call a mandatory staff meeting, I want you here on time. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

(What were you doing last night, anyway? )

Syd did not answer Penny, lest he find him even more distracted than he already was. Everyone took advantage of these staff meetings to socialize or make use of the extra bandwidth—Syd recalled fondly an old cataloger from Blake’s World who would play virtual pai gow with mandarins on the casino moon of Titan and somehow trick the Director into thinking that he was paying attention, even when he suddenly cursed a losing round—but Penny was the queen of multitasking, keeping an eye on a dozen branch libraries while chatting with Syd and her other colleagues while she shopped online.

(What do you think of these shoes?) she’d ask him in the middle of his own briefing, throwing a holovid into his workspace that would obscure his crib notes. Half the time Syd didn’t know whether she was shopping for real things or their virtual equivalents, though on the occasions when they had met in person he couldn’t help but notice that she took the same pride in her own appearance as she did her avatar’s.

He still remembered the last holiday party on Cygnus, where emboldened by more than his share of rum punch he told her as much, which had lead to a furtive make-out session under one of the eaves. Mortified by his behavior, Syd kept on wanting to clear the air with Penny, but didn’t know how or where to begin; for her part, she seemed quite content to revel in the poor librarian’s torment until he summoned the courage to bring it up first. In fact, what had transpired between them only served to make her more of a flirt when they shared the same virtual space, hence the added distraction, to which Syd finally succumbed.

(I had a hot date.)

(Oh?)

(With an ancient colonization wagon left by the Settlers.)

(And you volunteered for this post again why?)

(Hush, the Eagle is looking at us!)

(I bet she knows…)

(Knows what?) Syd wanted so desperately to use Penny’s taunt as a segue into a deeper conversation about the holiday party and what it meant, but the Director was having none of it. Fixing Syd with a stiff albeit flickering glare, she cleared her throat and began to speak in a manner that suggested that she’d put some effort into crafting exactly what she was going to say this morning. Syd felt a lump in his throat and the night’s anxiety twist his innards. This was not likely to be good news.

“No doubt by now you are all aware of the fact that Jon Devlin has accepted the unconditional surrender of the Garden Cluster, which is why we are short a few librarians this morning.”

Syd smacked himself in the forehead. He’d been so wrapped up in his own personal dramas that he’d forgotten about the libraries that now lay in the pirate king’s hands. How many librarians had there been—six? Jenneth, Sapor, Eun Lee, Daveson, Orry, and Xavier. Had he arrived on time, he surely would have noted their absence. Syd felt like even more of a dolt than he had before.

“We have not heard anything from our comrades caught behind the lines,” the Director continued. “But I hope and pray that they have not been ill-treated by Devlin’s men or the local authorities. As the Garden Cluster’s wholesale defection was a complete surprise to everyone, it is believed that the Imperial Tachyon Relays were taken intact, which is why many of you have noticed an armed presence near your own stations. The relays are the lifeblood of Imperial communication lines—I have been warned that the Empire will not allow any additional stations to fall without Jon Devlin paying the cost.”

“Hang on,” Penny interrupted the Director before she could begin her next sentence. Exasperated, she allowed her to speak nevertheless. “What does ‘paying the cost’ mean exactly?”

Syd nodded, as did several of his cohort. The Director sighed.

“It means the Imperial Navy is prepared to scuttle the stations if they deem them in danger of falling into Devlin’s hands.”

Penny snorted. “Scuttle? Ma’am, I work in a mining colony, not on a starship. Galactic, please!”

“They’ll blow them up from orbit,” the Director said, her jaw clenched. Even over the varying bandwidths and connection rates, there was a collective gasp in the Telepresence Alcove.

Syd felt as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “But ma’am,” he managed to croak. “My library is right down the street…”

“Don’t you get it, Syd!” The Director snapped all of a sudden, provoking even more audible shock from the assembled librarians. “The Empire is hanging the Periphery out to dry…”

“But I heard that the Imperial Navy was massing in Orion’s Belt,” Penny protested, her demeanor deadly serious now.

The Director paused, uncertain as to whether or not to answer the implied question. At last she spoke, her voice dropping almost so low as to whisper, “It’s a feint. The fleet hopes to draw Devlin’s attention away from the Outer Worlds long enough to facilitate a full withdrawal.”

The room fell silent as the full import of the Director’s words became clear.

“Please be assured that the Imperial Library Corps intends to reassign each and every one of you to a posting or at least equal grade within the Inner Worlds. While we cannot necessarily guarantee…”

(So this is it?) Penny messaged Syd as their Director descended into the details of drawing down the libraries in the Sector, post by post. (We just pick up and leave? This is outrageous. I’ve got a dozen libraries I need to shut down. I wonder—is Director Pinhead going to help me do that over a tachyon relay? Why do I get the feeling the answer is no.)

(I can’t believe the Empire is just giving up) Syd answered. (All this work out here… for what? Just so we can pack it all up and pretend it never happened? Why even bother having this meeting, if they're just going to…)

(Hey, you all right?) Penny asked as Syd failed to complete his sentence.

Oh, no…

Syd didn’t answer; instead, he stood up and walked out of the Telepresence Alcove. His departure was so abrupt that the Director didn’t even have time to challenge him, although his communicator began rumbling angrily as soon as it was clear that he wasn’t simply taking a bathroom break.

(Syd?)

Penny had messaged him again, this time via a private channel that they had set up ages ago and promptly forgotten about. Synchronous communication was a luxury for anyone living on the Periphery, and unlike their counterparts back in the Inner Worlds there was no Galactic standard for timekeeping, which meant that even if you did want to keep in touch with a friend in the Outer Worlds you were never sure exactly when to catch them awake unless you planned ahead of time. The messenger program, which Penny had an Imperial Library Tech write for her, was actually meant for real-time library circulation across the sector, but hacking around one day she had discovered that it could be used to send short text messages through the System Alert function. That feed piggybacked from the circ machine in Syd’s library to his personal communicator, which in turn showed up as a glowing trail of letters and words on his glasses.

(Syd, the Director’s having a total fit. What are you doing?)

The librarian had broken into a run before he even exited the lobby of the relay station, his lungs straining against the thin air as he dashed past the confused-looking sentries down towards his library. He could spot the Imperial seal on the front door half a mile away, as well as a very forlorn-looking kid standing around as he always did at this time of the day. As Syd drew nearer, he could see the tears in the boy’s eyes.

That weasel of a Director called the meeting to draw him away from the building so they could slap the seal on it before Syd could protest. Not only did the magnetic seal lock down the door mechanism so that his biometrics could no longer open it—a fact that he quickly verified—but circumventing such a seal was deemed a capital crime. How could he have been so stupid?

(Penny, they’re shutting down the libraries while we’re in the meeting! Tell everyone before it’s too late)

(None of my branches are responding. THAT BITCH!)

(Penny?)

(The meeting is total bedlam now. The Director just shut down the Telepresence feed. I don’t think she knows about this channel though. As long as they don’t cut the power to any of our buildings…)

“Sir?” Zachariah approached the librarian, his eyes swollen and red. The boy had never dared speak to him outside of the library before.

Syd bent down so that he was at eye level with the boy. “I’m afraid I don’t have any new books for you today, Zachariah. Nor will I for the foreseeable future.”

The boy sniffled. “It’s not your fault, sir.”

Syd took a deep breath. Deep down in his heart he knew this as well, but that realization didn’t seem to make the reality any more palatable. As always, events were moving faster than the librarian could account for them. He had to think, and fast.

“Zachariah, did you happen to see who placed the seal on the library door?”

The boy nodded. “It was the Deputy Archon.”

Syd ran his fingers through his hair, deep in thought. The Deputy Archon was an Imperial posting, but an office held by not by an alien but one of the high-ranking Settler Councilors. If properly approached, he just might be convinced to let him into the library one last time. But what good would that do? What could he possibly hope to accomplish? Modest as it was, he couldn't very well carry out the entire collection to safety himself, and if he tried to barricade himself in the library in some doomed romantic attempt at civil disobedience Syd was certain that given the crisis at hand the Imperial garrison would not hesitate to shoot him.

The librarian was on the verge of despair when suddenly he had an idea—a ridiculous, preposterous, wonderful idea.

“Can I talk to him on your repeater?”

The boy nodded again and handed over his communicator.

“Deputy Silas? This is Syd, the librarian. I’m sorry I missed your visit earlier this morning but I was running off a whole set of replacement parts for Larce Noel. If you don’t know him, I’m sure you know his tractor, as when it’s on the blink that’s the only thing you can hear between here and Twokay City! Yes, well, I know this is highly unusual but if you could let him into the library to retrieve those I’m sure he and all of his neighbors would be much obliged. I understand, sir. Just the replacement parts. I wouldn’t dream of trying to remove anything else. Thank you, Deputy! Larce will stop by later this afternoon, after siesta.”

When Syd returned the communicator, the boy’s mouth was agape.

“You gave Mister Noel those parts yesterday, sir!”

The librarian winked. “So I did, son. So I did.”

“So what’s in the printer?”

“Nothing yet,” Syd admitted with a sly smile. “But I have a feeling that by siesta that’ll change.”

That morning was a blur. While continuing to receive status updates from Penny about the morning meeting coup d’etat, Syd spent a good hour or so swearing at the wireless command line interface for the holo-printer. He had set the remote connection up on a lark, thinking that instead of coming to the library the Larce Noels of the planet could simply radio their needs to the library as soon as something broke down, not realizing that most of the larger ranches had their own mechanical pools with state of the art fabricators and not a cheap printer that Syd had picked up on auction during yet another working vacation, when he spent all but a few scant days shopping for library supplies that would have been dearly expensive to buy over tachyon relay.

Syd knew he should have simply counted his blessings that the transponder hadn’t shorted over the years, but he was dangerously short on time.

(Everyone came back to a sealed library) Penny dutifully reported. (Except for Hamilton. You know Hamilton, right, from the Scimitar Worlds?)

Syd nodded, so intent on making the printer work remotely that he forgot that Penny couldn’t see him. Penny continued nevertheless:

(Well, you wouldn’t know it from his avatar but the guy is huge—we’re talking 200 kilos or more. He doesn’t get around much, not even for staff meetings, so they set up a special relay for him right in his library.

(As soon as you go running out he starts shouting at a couple of Imperial goons who show up with the seal. They're all up in his face shouting, so all of a sudden we can see them as well. What happens next, I swear I’m not making up. Hamilton grabs a copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica and WHACK! Smacks one of the goons right across the chops. The guy totally didn’t see it coming, so he just drops like a sack of iron ore.

(Now the other one, he tries to use his stun baton on Hamilton, but get this—it doesn’t work! He’s so big, there’s not enough juice to make him stutter, let alone incapacitate him. Hamilton puts this guy in some kind of headlock and that’s when the Director pulled the feed.

(Is that crazy or what?)

Syd nodded again, causing Penny to message him in an ugly blinking red typeface. (Hey, this is quality dirt I’m dishing here! The least you could do is pay attention.)

(Sorry, Penn. This stupid operating system won’t let me… wait, I think I’ve got it!)

The remote connection finally shook hands with his dorm computer, allowing him access to the printer’s control panel as if he were operating it manually. Thank goodness that Larce had been running off all of those parts, as Sys probably wouldn’t have thought to refill the substrate tank otherwise. A quick diagnostic confirmed that the printer was not jammed and ready to receive a form template.

Syd keyed in one of the numbers he’d memorized from the wagon he had found in the brush. The printer registered a match in its database. Of course it would. If you had enough substrate, you could print an entire wagon from the basic template library. That was a key point of Settler wagon design: universal, standardized parts that could be easily refabricated on-site. Even the fusion core could be printed up if need be, although Syd wouldn’t necessarily entrust such a delicate bit of machinery to his rickety second-hand holoprinter. The librarian started the print job, then added the second number from memory, then the third, and so on, hoping that he hadn’t misread the panel in the dim redlit gloom of the wagon’s cab.

(Syd, there’s something I need to talk to you about.)

That got his attention. The librarian paused before keying in the last part number and took a deep breath.

(It’s okay, Penny. I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened on Cygnus, and—)

(This is not Penny, Syd.)

The librarian’s blood ran cold. (Who are you?)

(This is your Director speaking. Penny’s back-door communication system has been discovered and neutralized. Before I sever this link for good, however, I wanted to give you one last chance.)

(One last chance at what?)

(Don’t be stupid, boy. I am familiar with your career. I know what happened on Earth.)

Syd opened his mouth and shut it, a gesture that was of course completely lost on his interlocutor. He’d been assured that his personnel record was sealed, off-limits to anyone save for the Librarian General himself, but it appears that he had been misinformed. He was just fresh out the Academy back then, ready for his first tour of duty as a real librarian, and as luck would have it he’d drawn a plum position at one of the ancient universities on Earth, where he got to work not with nanoprinted simulacra but actual books that had been printed from dead trees or pulped cotton rags. A couple of the items in his charge had actually been made from papyrus that had been pounded thin and carefully layered by some nameless artisan who’d lived and died several thousand years ago. Syd was in heaven, until everything went to hell.

(You have problems with authority.)

(I have problems with authority when the people in charge have their heads up their asses!)

(Is that what happened at the University? Your file suggests otherwise.)

(Don’t you dare presume to understand what happened there!)

Syd had caught a high-ranking University library administrator stealing rare manuscripts and reselling them on the black market, but absent any hard evidence his accusations fell on deaf ears, with the result that not only did the official remain in power, but he spent every moment harassing Syd until he could no longer bear it. After receiving a scathing independent performance review ordered by the thieving administrator, he marched straight into the man’s office and punched him in the face. If not for the fact that evidence of the official’s wrongdoing was discovered during his suspension, Syd most assuredly would have been drummed out of the Library Corps altogether; however, because the record of the administrator’s criminal dealings implicated several other powerful University figures, the library dared not pursue the matter beyond demanding the official’s resignation. Syd’s personnel record was never cleaned up to reflect the reality of the situation, but simply sealed along with the files of anyone else even tangentially involved in the affair.

(Very well. The fact of the matter is that sordid little episode will pale in comparison to your actions now. Do you understand, Syd? This isn’t just the end of your career. If you fail to report to Sector headquarters for reassignment you will be accused of treason.)

(What about the patrons out here? Don’t their needs mean anything?)

(If they choose to turn their backs on the Empire, let them find their own librarians.)

(Surely the Library Corps could work something out with Jon Devlin.)

(That’s not my decision to make, Syd. And you know it. Instead of walking out on staff meetings maybe you could be sending ideas like this up the chain of command to the Librarian General.)

(Fat lot of good that would do.)

(See? You can make yourself out to be as much of a hero as you’d like to be, but unless you learn to show some respect for your superiors you are only deluding yourself.)

(I’m not a hero, Madame Director. I’m just a librarian.)

(Not if you fail to show up at Sector headquarters in 72 hours, you’re not. This is your final warning, Syd. I hope you know what’s good for you and do the right thing.)

Syd cut the connection before the Director could issue any additional threats. Although he bore her no personal ill-will, he found himself growing increasingly angry, and anger wasn’t going to help him at this point. The Director and Library Corps may have had a point that Syd demonstrated little time or patience for authority. When his suspension had been lifted, the librarian had been given his choice of any assignment in the Galaxy as an attempt to make up for the miscarriage of justice which had happened back on Earth, and what did he end up choosing? This planet, of all places, so far out on the Periphery that even most of the other Outer Worlds considered it remote. The previous librarian having died, the Library Corps had allowed the position to stay vacant, and was contemplating shutting the library down altogether before Syd chose it for his own.

Did he take this position out of love for his vocation or spite for his profession? Syd wasn’t sure, but now that events had forced his hand he understood that there was more on the line here than his own petty personal conflicts. As soon as the printer interface informed him that his last part was loaded into the buffer and queued for printing he crammed as many books as he could into a rucksack and left his dormitory for what he assumed would be the last time.

Fortunately he spotted the plainclothes Imperial agent as he passed through the lobby, his Inner Worlds fashion sense sticking out like a sore thumb here, so instead of exiting through the front door he doubled back through the cafeteria and took the emergency exit in the back of the laundry room. The door alarm had been broken for as long as he’d lived here, a fact the dorm residents took advantage of to get in and out of the building after curfew. After hastily verifying that he had not been followed, Syd ran down the alley and hailed the first grav cab in sight.

He hoped Larce Noel wouldn’t be too confused when he stopped by his ranch. “I figured they must have been for you, because I know all the parts to my tractor by heart.” The farmer offered his librarian friend a glass of ice cold limeade, but Syd begged off, promising to return at a later date. Taking the freshly-printed spare parts with him, he got back into the cab and directed the driver to a nameless intersection in the countryside.

The wagon was still there, exactly as he had left it. Or so he had thought. After paying the cabbie and sending him on his way Syd poked his head into the cabin to find a fresh set of fusion cells and a box full of books.

Astonished, the librarian also discovered a handwritten note tucked into the top book in the pile—a rare Old Earth edition of Plato’s Republic—written in a neat Imperial script:

“When the boy told me you were printing up parts, I figured you found this old bucket of bolts as I'd hoped. Consider these books the start of your new collection. Yours, Ezekiel.”

Syd smiled. He had made the right choice, after all.

Every month the Bookmobile arrived in town, the boy was already awaiting patiently at the stoop where the old library had once stood. Both it and the Tachyon Relay tower just a little further up the hill were long gone now, early casualties in the Settlers’ bid for independence from Imperial rule. Lead by the Manda patriarch, who still had some fight in him after all of these years, the Settler militia had overwhelmed the Imperial garrison and managed to pull down the relay station before the Empire could obliterate it from space. The library sadly had been lost by accident, when a stray grav tank shell hit the building and leveled it where it stood. Once the battle had been settled the Settlers came back and tried to salvage something from the wreckage, but alas, all of the books had been destroyed.

The wagon already contained twice as many titles than its fixed counterpart, however, and added more books with each pass it made around the cities of the planet. Syd had proven to be not just a competent librarian but a halfway decent spokesperson as well, so that whenever he drove his giant bookmobile into town he managed to wrangle a few dozen books out of the locals for the permanent traveling collection. Rose of course helped with an annual fundraiser in Twokay City for fuel, parts, and maintenance, and Ezekiel Manda treated the librarian to a hero’s welcome whenever he returned to this part of the planet. No sooner did Syd open the hatch of the bookmobile than he could smell the lambs already roasting on the spit, in preparation for what would no doubt be an epic feast later that evening.

“May I help you?” he asked as he spied the boy. Zachariah was getting older now, a young man who was rapidly coming into his own. Next year his father said he’d be able to tag along for Syd’s bibliographic odyssey. Perhaps the boy would decide to become his apprentice librarian, so that he would have someone to hand the controls of the wagon to when he decided he was ready for retirement. He knew of course that this would depend entirely on how Zachariah fared as a writer. The boy had already won the laurel two times in the Outer Worlds Literary Festival sponsored by Jon Devlin, who had turned out to be quite the bibliophile.

Not only did Devlin not harm any of the librarians who’d been trapped in the Garden Cluster when those worlds had surrendered, but the rogue admiral, inspired by Syd’s example, had encouraged them to stay. Half of them opted to remain in the Free Periphery, or so he’d heard. Although he hadn’t spoken to Penny since that fateful day when everything changed, Syd learned that she had also decided to stay in the Cruickshank Belt and that she was advocating for stronger cooperation among the libraries of the Free and Independent Outer Worlds. It was probably only a matter of time before she had her own library corps up and running. The idea of Penny lording over staff meetings and maintaining discipline was just absurd enough for Syd to like to see it happen someday. He wondered what she’d do with the likes of him, anarchist librarian circling the world in his homemade bookmobile.

Zachariah helped the librarian extend the gangway to the wagon’s door and lock it into place. “Got any new books, sir?” he asked with his wry, broken smile.

“Do I ever!” Syd answered. “Come on in, son, and see for yourself.”