The hardcopy books were shelved in ranks which ran back to the dim reaches farther than Adele could follow without borrowing goggles from a spacer. The pedestals had been shaped from the wood of the Tree, but the shelves and their supports were of structural plastic tinted to match the natural ruddy gray.
The volumes were arranged by height and size; most had no spine title. Adele picked one at random, a Pre-Hiatus work on homiletics. It had been printed on Earth in the inconceivably distant past but at some point rebound in stiff, yellow-gray vellum. The book next to it was also very old, but it was printed—by letterpress!—in a script and language which she couldn’t identify without the help of her handheld.
She started to draw the little unit out of her pocket, then remembered her surroundings. She turned and found the eyes of everybody in the large room—except the acolyte at the console—focused on her.
Adele’s lips spread in a flat line that was as close to a smile as she could come when she was embarrassed. “Ah . . . ,” she said. “I’m very sorry to have wandered off like this—”
She hadn’t moved far physically, but her mind and soul had been in a different universe. It was a better universe, in her opinion, but she knew there were other viewpoints on the matter.
“—but, ah . . . this is a very interesting collection.”
The Prior smiled affectionately at her. “Would you care to stay in the monastery, mistress, while your vessel is on New Delphi?” he asked. “I understand that our life here wouldn’t be attractive to many of those living in the wider universe, but I think you’re an exception. You can eat with us and I’ll find you a cell. If you like, that is.”
“Yes,” said Adele. “I would like that very much. If . . . ?”
She looked at Daniel, now standing between the Prior and Margarida. His expression was momentarily grave, but he sounded affectionately cheerful as he said, “Yes, of course, Mundy. There hasn’t been a great deal to attract your interests on this voyage. I’m glad we’ve finally made a landfall with more to offer you than it does those of us with less intellectual tastes.”
Hogg snorted. “You can say that again,” he said; but as he did so, he eyed Margarida sidelong.
“Shall I bring some kit for the two of us from the vessel, mistress?” Tovera said. She didn’t speak loudly, but when she wanted to be heard—as now—everybody in the big room heard her.
Most of them probably understood the implications of what she was saying: Adele would be well protected. The Prior did, given the knowing smile he offered as he nodded first to Adele, then to Tovera.
“Yes, do that, Tovera,” Adele said crisply. Then she turned back to the stacks, in part to avoid the eyes of the others. She’d never found it hard to sink into that better personal world in a library, after all.
* * *
The note in Daniel’s pocket read:
Beloved Daniel—
I could withstand you, but I cannot withstand myself. There is an entrance two-thousand nine-hundred and twelve feet counterclockwise from the foot of your gangplank; it is known to no one living save myself and now you. If you come there at our midnight, I will be waiting.
Please, beloved, destroy this note and never mention its contents whether you decide to come or stay. If anyone were to learn what I am doing, I would be expelled from the Service at the cost of my very soul. Please, if you are a gentleman—preserve the honor of one who has loved you from her first glimpse of your face.
Margarida
“Attention!” snapped Norton, the Tech 1 commanding the guards in the main hatch, when Daniel appeared from the companionway. She and two of her contingent hopped to their feet quickly, but the fourth—a Purser’s clerk named Hilbride, dropped his sub-machine gun with a clatter more frightening than anything likely to come out of the darkness on this planet.
“Carry on, Norton,” Daniel said as Hilbride skidded the dropped gun twice across the deck plating without managing to get control of it.