The Archivist (2 page)

I relax and bide my time among the shadows at a small table in the back of the tavern while Danae closes up for the night. Long ago, I learned that my occupation requires the patience of a monk. Some of the stragglers whine and complain when she shoos them out, but the complaints are good-natured and the banter as familiar as rehearsed lines.

Danae hugs a couple of the older farmers as she ushers them out the door, and they give her fatherly admonishments to take care of herself, glancing my way. I have noticed that since the Crash, people seem to have much more genuine relationships. If there is a silver lining to what Intellinet did to us, that would be it.

I try not to be obvious as I drink in her exquisite movements, which are fluid and effortless even when she stands still. Her shoulders and arms flow with an unrestrained rhythm; if she had lived before the Demon Days, she could have been a world-class dancer. That time is long gone.

While Danae cleans up, she throws back a couple shots of the local moonshine. As she finishes, I go ahead and down one with her for the road. The amber drink would not have won any awards a couple of generations ago, but these days, the sharp, smooth liquor would place against anything I have sampled in a long time. I am half-tempted to bring a jug or two back with me to the Archives.

“Wait here,” I tell her when she is ready to lock up. Danae gives me an annoyed roll of her eyes while she crosses her arms, which I ignore as I slip out the door.

The chilly, moonless night is unmoving, and dampness hangs in the air on the edge of precipitation. It takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the star-filled night, but the bright combination of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn provides enough illumination to see that other than a stray dog sniffing through some garbage, the unpaved town street is empty. Still, the hairs on my arms prickle as I get the sense of being watched.

I am probably being paranoid, but that sense has been right often enough that I listen to it. Better paranoid than dead. Unfortunately, my pistol crossbow is inside my pack, because I have been on a ship for the past couple of months. I cannot get it out without broadcasting my concern, but my walking stick serves nicely as a staff. Gesturing for Danae to come out, I lightly grasp her arm after she turns the lock. She gives me a startled glance.

“Which way is your home? Just nod,” I whisper.

A frown creases her brows while she points with her eyes to the left. I guide her to turn to the right, and we set off down the street. The sound of our steps echoes as we stroll along a line of single-story buildings that serve as shops in the front and residences in the back.

After we round the corner, I turn down the first side alley, and point Danae to a doorway. Then I position myself against the wall near the corner and feel the adrenaline start to kick in. I am not sure how many men there will be, but I want to get this over with before they can raise any kind of alarm.

The thugs do not keep me waiting long; moments later, the first one turns into the alley, light glinting off a knife in his hand. The stocky, rather short man is one of the goons from the tavern.

When he sees me, he dashes forward to close the gap between us. My staff is far shorter than the traditional Wing Chun pole form I learned while on retrieval in eastern Asia, but it will do. Just before he reaches me, I plant the end of my staff deep into his midriff and the air whooshes out of his lungs while the man folds over. His dropping chin meets the sharp upward thrust of the staff, and with a soft grunt, he flips and lands on his back at the feet of his friend, who is coming around the corner.

Well, maybe not such a good friend. The taller, thinner, second man takes one glance down at his motionless companion, stares at me for a moment, then turns to run. He is too far away for me to reach, so hopefully reinforcements are not close at hand. Then I hear a soft whistle and something flashes past my ear to strike the man in the back of his head. He drops like a sack of flour. The whole encounter takes maybe three seconds.

The only sound is a dog barking a block or two away, in response to the commotion.

I turn back to Danae; she stands facing sideways like a baseball pitcher, a sling dangling behind her from her right hand. She quickly slips it off her finger and ties the weapon around her waist, settling the leather pouch back in place. Her suddenly fierce eyes lock onto mine, heading off any question that might consider crossing my lips.

“Are they dead?” she asks, pointing with her chin toward the fallen men. Her tone is neutral, so I can’t tell whether she’s hopeful, concerned or just curious, but she clearly has no compassion for these guys.

“No,” I reply after I quickly check them. When I pick up the knife, it turns out to be just a slender metal flask—probably something to keep him warm during a stakeout. Why the hell would the idiot charge me with a container of booze?

“They’ll live, but I suspect they’ll keep their distance next time. Now, where do we meet your father?”

* * *

The house that Danae brings me to a few minutes later does not look impressive, at least in the dark. A small stone path leads from the street past a short rail fence up to a narrow porch sheltered by a small overhang, weather-beaten enough that I can see stars through the cover. But Danae’s home will certainly beat five days in the back of an open fishing vessel and six weeks in a hammock on that cramped sailing cargo ship.

We enter, and Danae uses the single candle left burning to light several more, illuminating a large common room. To one side, a physician’s workbench stands against the wall, covered with implements, bottles and jars of cryptic substances. Next to it is a long dining table which obviously doubles as an examination platform, based on the small steps at one end.

Like the tavern, the woodwork is rough but sturdy. On the other side of the room, several chairs are positioned around a fireplace that has a sizable bed of glowing embers inside it. Little else adorns the Spartan dwelling, but everything is clean and orderly.

A door swings open on the other side of the room, revealing a gaunt man a little shorter than me, with a scraggly beard that is much more salt than pepper. He peers at me with quick, shiny eyes that are buried in a craggy face, and he cinches a rough-woven robe around his waist as he examines me from the doorway. Danae looks up from the lamp as it catches, and hurries over to him.

“Papa! You should be resting.” She embraces him quickly, and then gestures toward me. “Here is the Archivist you told me to watch for.”

He nods and steps forward, hand extended. “I’m Doc Kaufstetter, but everyone just calls me Doc. So you are the one Walecki said would come, bearing gifts.” His voice is rough, and the deep tone is worn from a hard life. But his grip conveys a strength that belies the frailty of his build, and he looks me square in the eye.

I immediately feel respect for Doc, and my instincts are usually right. Then again, a Retrieval Archivist with bad instincts does not last long. “First, your daughter said Walecki is dead. I’m sure you understand that I need to know what happened.”

The old man sighs and looks down. “We went to see the Intellinet tech that I am offering to trade, which is hidden deep in the hills. On our way back he stepped away for a few minutes, and that was when he got hurt. I’m sorry, but by the time I got to him there was nothing I could do.”

He looks back up at me with genuine regret in his eyes; only a true psychopath could feign the anguish distorting the man’s face. I start to inquire further, but Doc shakes his head ever so slightly while his eyes dart toward Danae. Whatever happened, he does not want to discuss it in front of his daughter. No matter; I already know what probably happened, and it could not have been pretty.

I release a deep sigh. “Wally always knew there was some risk, but he felt what he did for the Archives was worth it. Yes, I bear gifts, but they have strings which reach across half a world.” Even if I only crossed a river to get here, the Archives would still be ‘half a world away,’ because the only thing a non-Archivist can know about our location is that it is on an island somewhere. In this case, the distance I say I have travelled happens to be true.

“We are not so different, you and I.” The old man smiles. “We both seek what fools despise: knowledge and wisdom. So, did the Archives have the knowledge I seek?”

“Wrong question. It’s not whether we have the knowledge. Rather, it’s whether we can find it and you can understand it. You can read, right? Wally said that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Of course I can,” he responds impatiently, glancing at my backpack.

Doc is ready to get right down to business, and I know what he wants. Unslinging my pack, I remove the small package that I carried all this way, place the bundle on the small dining table and reverently unfold the carefully wrapped items to reveal a palm-sized e-reader, a power cell and a solar charger.

These things are old, painstakingly preserved, and exceptionally precious. I am not sure how many functional ones are left in the world, but it is going to be a long time before anyone makes something like this again. I slip the power cell into the device and power the reader up.

“Wally told us you needed to treat your people for toxin and environmental poisoning. So what we have for you is Casarett & Doull’s Toxicology, as well as a complete library of other medical texts. We’ve made no promises to teach you anything, just to provide the knowledge.”

Doc darts forward to examine my offering, his hands shaking with anticipation. He is old enough to remember how to use the reader; he scrolls through page after page and punctuates his reading with “ohhs”, “ahhs” and an occasional “of course!”

“You didn’t ask for anything else,” I add, “but since the reader had plenty of storage, we also included the complete works of Shakespeare, the Mahabharata and the final version of Wikipedia before the net got wiped out.”

Disseminating classic literature is an Archives mission, second only to recovering knowledge. If we are lucky, some of it will survive the coming Dark Age.

Eventually, Doc sets the reader down gingerly and, after giving his daughter a knowing glance, nods his head.

“I’ll never comprehend all of this, but I can understand enough to see that what I need is here.” He slowly, somewhat reluctantly re-wraps the reader and hands it back to me. “The object you want in exchange is hidden in the hills, half a day’s journey away. We’ll leave at dawn.”

Doc reaches under the workbench and pulls out a cloth-slung folding cot. As he sets it up in a side room that appears to be used for storage, he tells me that he sometimes uses it for patients who need close supervision.

The space is cramped, but next to the chimney, and a cast iron fireback provides some radiant heat, so the small room is warm and more comfortable than the wooden floor. Doc and Danae bid me a good night’s sleep and retire to their rooms, leaving me alone in the main room, with the single candle lamp silently flickering.

* * *

I am exhausted from the long journey, but Wally’s death weighs on my mind and I feel the need to unwind. Stepping into my quarters, I dig into my pack to find a compact pipe and some tobacco that I picked up a couple of retrievals ago. I am not sure when I will find more, but it will be before I find another partner like Wally.

Stepping outside into the crisp night air I light the pipe with a match—a brief spark in the darkness. I remember when the visible stars were so few that you could actually count them in the night sky, but the skies everywhere are dark these days, and myriad brilliant stars twinkle in the clear sky above.

I look for the constellation of Aquarius and there, close to setting in the West is the brilliant glowing red dot that is Mars. It is nearing opposition; according to the Archives, in just a week—on September 1st—it will be less than thirty-four million miles away. The bright disk calls me home, but this is as close as I have been in the past thirty-two years, and I do not expect to ever get any closer than this.

Next to Mars, Saturn is almost as dazzling. Higher up in the sky is Jupiter. Together they cast almost enough light to create shadows; I long for the nice twenty-four-inch telescope I built at the Archives, with an equatorial mount using parts I had retrieved.

I never tire of observing these three planets, and my colleagues no doubt used my telescope to observe the corona of the total solar eclipse that swept over the Archives this morning. If I were a superstitious man, I would think the heavens were portending something, though I cannot imagine what that would be.

My eyes track a satellite moving across the sky, like a faint star racing toward the north. There are not many left. Some just stopped working, but most burned up as their orbits decayed. It is just luck that the Archives still has three we can use for communications, but those will not last much longer without an orbital boost.

We never figured out why Intellinet wiped out virtually all the rest of humanity’s tech but left the communication satellites alone. My personal theory is that just like on the nuclear subs out at sea, the tech on the satellites was so antiquated that the machines could not flash them remotely.

The faint dot of light glides out of view. As far as I know, there is nothing else up there.

Slowly, I take a draw on the pipe as my thoughts turn to someone I have not seen in a very long time. Did Sarah ever finish composing that symphony? It has been three decades since I last heard them, but I can still replay the notes of her first movement in my mind. My eyes are closed and I am in the opening chords when I hear a soft rustle from behind me.

Danae glides up next to me. “Do you mind some company for a few minutes?” she murmurs as she reaches from under the light blanket draped over her shoulders. Her warm arm twines around my forearm while she joins me in looking up at the stars.

I feel a flash of annoyance as Danae’s presence intrudes on my memories, but it quickly fades into an emptiness that I normally avoid facing. My answer is to cover her hand with mine and gently tug her to lean in, so that she settles against me and lets out a soft sigh—the kind that only the truly lonely can make. I should know.