The Book (39 page)

“Holden Clifford. The son I never had. When you didn’t come back with Moby the day you branded the bean and another day passed without seeing your face…how broken my heart was. Inside, I knew you were alright and something told me you would come back with such a story. At our first meeting, when I asked you to install the sprinkler system to protect my books, somewhere, in my heart of hearts, I knew you would protect my books in a much different way, if given the opportunity. I saw it in you. And while I know you do not believe yourself to be what we see…
know
that you are. Your fortitude is unparalleled by any man I have ever known. Parallels of your courage could only be witnessed through other people’s written words. From books of fiction that were but imagination and hope. Verisimilitude and valiance that has changed my life. You, Holden, have changed my life. And I believe we will be able to witness how you will have changed so many others. What I would like to leave you with is a statement I hope you will carry with you until the day you die. I believe in you, Holden. And while I know you believe you have done nothing to warrant such a comment, know that I am so proud to call you my friend. And when you walk past me as my leader, these weary legs want to stand. I want to hold my head high. For you are a triumph among men in this time of such destitution.”

The finality of those words placed a weighty hope in their hearts. It felt magnificent to know how much that man had loved them.

When they split up, Moby left early to get himself in place and contact his men before Marion and Holden left Winston in the room without saying goodbye. There were no goodbyes that day. Marion needed to be near the Library of Congress because she had to call Winston and alert him when one of the trucks was away, so together they walked, Marion and Holden, toward the looming dome of the only library left standing after The Great (and terrible) Recycling. The rain was light and they walked without an umbrella. When they neared the steps and were prepared to depart, Holden continued walking and Marion grasped for his hand. He had a look on his face that told her to let it happen and not say what she wanted to say. But he couldn’t stop her.

“Holden, something doesn’t feel right about this,” she began, her eyes darting as if someone were waiting to leap out from any nearby corner and vanish them away.

“No, Marion. This is going to work. It’s wonderful. I knew we could change things. I knew we could do something this quickly. It’s going to work.”

She reached out for him and brought him close. They were kissing. Their lips entwined in an emotion neither of them knew they could have with one another, before they released and faced each other with eyes close and warming. Holden could see that Marion was frightened and knew exactly what she had been thinking. Holden had really only met one person at the Publishing House. The director, Martin Trust. How could he be sure that there weren’t more people involved? They had gone to such lengths to remove every book on the planet. How much harder would they fight to remove the remaining few? What they were going up against was so much greater than any of them had realized.

But he wouldn’t allow her to say it.

Holden knew the truth. Even if they got a truck load of books, it wouldn’t change things. Yes, they will have saved great works of literature and perhaps altered a few laws and extended the life of the books that weren’t burned or stolen. None of them were stupid enough to think that the Publishing House wouldn’t lose some in the process. But, at least (what they told themselves, at least), they would save a few.

Marion threw out one final, desperate attempt to keep them together and safe. She latched onto his arm and said, “Holden, we could leave. We can leave. We could…go together…somewhere. We can stop. We don’t have to be part of this. We could just live our lives and let it go. I’ve thought about this so many times and pictured it when you were gone and I wished I would have told you. But then you came back and it…it made me think we could keep going, ya’ know? What if this is too big? Don’t you want to just have a normal life?”

He turned to Marion and imagined it himself. In that moment of mere seconds, entire decades of dreams unfolded. How wonderful it would be. Start a new life with her and Jane and just live. Work. Maybe have children one day. Little
Us
’s running around. But it was a lie. Holden knew that dream was from a time he wasn’t born into. Those privileges were for the privileged. For people born into a world where those freedoms existed, unthreatened.

Holden kissed her once more before saying, “We can’t just let them take away our ability to think what we want. We may be the only ones who can stop them. We are literally walking into the fire they have built to burnish the glimmer of our minds. And if I cannot escape the fire, at least I can douse the flames.”

“I know you do.” He let go of her hand and walked around to the side of the building where he knew Rosemary had left the door open for him, knowing that if he stayed with Marion a minute longer, he would run away with her and leave all that they believed behind.

Up close, Holden was astonished by the pure white of the building. Its finials. Its detailing. Its molding and perfected architecture. How beautiful it seemed to so many people. And yet, it was a prison. A prison for thoughts and freedom. Its bars were wooden shelves and its punishment was to be barred for the rest of life from so many hungry minds. Holden made his way past the dumpsters and toward the side entrance. The handle turned easily and he entered. No alarm. No problems. No one waiting on the other side to knock him in the head. As the saying goes,
so far so good
.

From his pocket, Holden removed the smart phone they had bought during their drive. It was a one-time-use phone that they loaded with blueprints to the library. He immediately scanned to the correct page and enlarged it to the width of the screen before progressing down the hall toward the staircase that would bring him where he needed to be. According to their plans, Rosemary had told Holden to find the main level and then an alcove where they archived the old card catalog. Although the space was dormant, a fixture of something that once was utilized daily, it was now the least protected corner of the building. The card catalog could burn. It wasn’t as damaging to the rest of the collection, which meant it was less protected. But first, he had a job to do.

After reaching the lower level and navigating a few corners, keeping an eye out for people who could identify him, Holden eventually came to the mechanical closet which had also been left open for him. He checked the hallway again before entering and closed the door swiftly, bolting it in place. He had come this far without being detected and, at the very least, he needed to finish this portion without being bothered.

It was a good thing that Shane had gotten the mainframe from General Fire so Holden could practice on a prototype, because most of the switches and dials had been labeled with odd symbols and a numbering system that didn’t match the blueprints. Still, there was an order to all things mechanical and he knew which switches to switch and which to delay. Time was against them right now and they were all waiting for him, the architect of the overthrow, to get the party started. But they would have to keep waiting while he lost two pounds, sweating out his anxieties and triple checking his calculations before moving on. If he was correct, according to the structural overview Shane had included in the floorplans, the foam system and the oxygen depletion system would be offline. Next he had to deal with the water supply.

Leaving the room, Holden trailed back the way he had come before taking another series of staircases to the lowest floor and into the boiler room which housed an enormous tank that was painted bright red and stored a vast amount of water that was waiting, at any moment, to be shot to the higher levels to douse the library in old, stagnant, black rain before it ran out and the main water supply from the city kicked in. Although the tank was colossal, it was typically empty in eight minutes. General Fire normally shopped this portion of the job out to a separate company, but Holden knew his way around. He found the correct valve. It was two feet in diameter and it didn’t want to move. But with enough pressure, it turned. Three and a half cranks was the right amount to keep the water from pumping steadily enough to beat the fire.

Holden closed the smart phone, put it in his pocket and felt the lighter and the cold can of fluid he knew he was about to use. The metal sparked against his skin in static excitement, as if letting him know that it was ready to play its part. To eat away the words they had so passionately cared for. Words the world may never read again. Holden took a moment to breath. He put his back against the tank. It was cool and refreshing. He ran a hand through his short mop of hair and closed his eyes.
This was it. There really was no turning back now.
He knew it. Holden pinched the skin of his forehead, pulling out the ache that was beginning to eat his mind, and opened his eyes.

With unadulterated determination, he whispered, “Here we go.”

Before the fire began, the activities of the library were as standard as usual. Not many guests beyond the typical group of school students and a few random gentleman and groups of women that often seemed to speckle the halls of books like worms with insatiable hunger. They had a security staff, who were generally bored and spent many of their hours drifting off lazily, imagining the shows they would be watching later on television or the homework they needed to finish for night school so they wouldn’t be a guard for the rest of their life. The few people that worked the counters, gift area and coat check were often used to seeing so many different types. Life was generally so safe that few of them even noticed Holden. None of the ones that did bothered to wonder why he had spent so much time near the card catalog. The guards hadn’t recognized the features that had been plastered on so many billboards and news station bulletins. He was just another scholar that faded into the background. One of those who didn’t have to work, like they did (until they finished night school). The ones who had enough money in their bank accounts to take the day off and enjoy a walk through the stale, musty shelves and stare at bindings that no one could open without thick, green rubber gloves.

But the alarm changed a lot of that.

The smoke brought havoc and the flames brought fear and the water brought wetness. Eventually every one of the staff realized that they should have noticed him.
Of course
he would have come to the library. Some of them would even lie and say they had seen him, in order to save their reputation and get another job.

But that was after.

Holden felt wrong when he opened the drawers of the catalogs to see the old writing and the many, many paper cards that listed a multitude of books that were housed in the last library. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t in a safe place. That the building he was in wore a mask of truth. That it pretended to be an asylum for knowledge, when it was actually a bastille, fortified to keep thoughts from escaping and changing things. He had to keep telling himself that he was in the den of the enemy. Because who could ever believe that setting it all on fire was the right thing to do?

As he pulled out the small, rectangular can of lighter fluid and raised the crimson tab, he began to squirt the tart smelling liquid onto the yellowing cards, channeling the self-loathing actions of the fireman, Guy Montag, from a story that no librarian would find. Holden kept replaying the looks he had gotten at the chapel after announcing his mission and how they had simply not believed him. How people were certain there was no way this could work. But it would.

It would, Holden
, he thought as he squirted the last dribbles from the can, dropped it to the ground and reached for his lighter.
Another day. Another dollar.

The hollow clatter from the fallen, empty container of lighter fluid echoed in the frighteningly corrupted silence of the domed building. People would be coming around soon to see where the noise had come from. He had no choice now. Holden felt the gear crack under his thumb, as white sparks of flint ignited a flame from the lighter before he dropped it to the card catalog and spun slowly away.

* * * * *

033-94886

By the time all those employed by the government to protect the Library of Congress got over their confusion enough to recognize that they had failed in their job and that something horrible was about to happen, they accepted that speed was a necessity. And of course, for some reason, Rosemary, the director of Library Preservation, couldn’t be found.

There was a scattering of fright because none of them knew precisely what to do in that situation. The patrons of the library were shuffling toward the large double doors, staring back as the smoke collected into the coffered recesses of the dome, but they were delighted to be a part of whatever was happening. In fact, they would have stayed to watch the books burn, these articles of such great interest, smolder and decay to dust. But when the water came on and doused their clothes with filthy wetness, the escape into the clean rain was swift.

The rest of them, the ones who still seemed unable to recall the correct response methods from their training, scrambled behind the courtesy desk for the emergency manual, because the one thing they did remember was that soon, if the fire wouldn’t go out (which it should have been going out), the doors would shut and seal themselves closed and all the oxygen would be drawn out of the building.

Within two minutes, their hair and clothes were soaked and they quickly retreated to one of the back rooms where the special acquisitions vault should have been funneling books through an automatic emergency system. But the system wasn’t running.
It should have been running!
The women looked at one another and realized that only Rosemary had the pass codes. Somewhere, a truck should be filling and preparing to drive away from the flames.
But they didn’t have the pass codes and Rosemary was nowhere to be found.
So the women sat in the control center of the Library, their hair and bodies dripping from the smattering of moisture as they flipped frantically through the digital pages of the emergency manual, searching for some clue to a code they would never find.