The Library at Mount Char Part 45

"Thanks, it's good."

They munched for a little while.

"Have you thought any more about what we talked about?" Steve affected a casual tone when he said this, but he wasn't fooling anyone.

Mentally, Carolyn rolled her eyes. Steve refused to let go of the idea that David's light might be made yellow somehow. He brought it up every time they were together, at least once. "Steve, even if I wanted to, I couldn't." At this point, she almost did want to. Forsake a revenge that was fifteen years in the making? Sure! Anything to shut him up. "It's just not technically possible. Why is that so hard for you to accept?"

He gave a knowing smirk, like she was hiding something but he was too clever for her. She felt like throttling him.

"Well, Carolyn, the last sun we had was yellow, and the sky seems to be full of stars that are-"

"The circ.u.mstances were different, Steve. David's spirit is crushed, and half his head is missing. Forging a connection to any plane besides anguish is going to be a problem."

"But what if you-"

"Enough, Steve." Then, calmer, "It's not going to happen."

They sat silently for a while, munching popcorn and not looking at each other.

It was Naga who broke the silence: "My Lord Hunter? Have you given my question to the dark one?"

"Not yet, sweetie. I'm getting to it. Give me a minute, OK? Remember what we said."

Naga bared her teeth. "Very well."

Carolyn gaped at them.

"What?"

"Did you hear what she called you?"

Steve shook his head. "Er...no? I mean, I heard it, but I still have a lot of gaps in-"

"She called you 'My Lord Hunter.'"

"Awww," Steve said, skritching Naga's ears. "Thanks, sweetie. That's nice." Then, seeing the look on Carolyn's face, "What?"

"You really don't understand."

He shrugged. "How is this surprising?"

"'My Lord Hunter' is...it's like an honorific. More than an honorific. It's a term of extreme respect. Lions only dust it off for special occasions."

"Oh." He frowned. "So, it's a big deal?"

"Yeah, Steve. It's a big deal. It's the lion equivalent of getting your face carved on Mount Rushmore. And calling a person that...wow. I've never heard of such a thing. Never. What did you do?"

Steve s.h.i.+fted. "Er. Nothing. Not really." Then, in a small voice, "We just talked."

"About what?"

"Stuff."

"Naga, what did he do?"

The lion looked at her. "My Lord Hunter will be the one to save us all. It has been foreseen. He will-"

"Naga!" Steve spoke sharply, cutting her off. "We said I was going to handle this, remember?"

Naga swished her tail, faded back into the shadows.

"Handle what, exactly?" Carolyn's tone was artificially bright.

Steve put down the popcorn bowl. "Have you been watching the news?"

Inwardly, she groaned. The last time they talked she had promised that she would, and she had meant it. But she'd gotten distracted running down a rumor about the Duke, and..."I'm sorry. It must have slipped my mind."

Steve's jaw muscles jumped. But all he said was, "It's OK. I know you're busy. Would you mind if we took a look now? I want to show you something."

She forced a small smile. "Sure."

He pressed a b.u.t.ton and the screen lit up. "Do you like the television? It's big!" It was, in fact, huge. She had hoped that this would please him-Americans liked garish things, right?-but he didn't seem to care at all.

"Yeah, it's great." He flipped through channels. "Here, this is a good one. Watch this."

The writing at the bottom of the screen said FOOD RIOTS IN OREGON. There was handheld video of the inside of a supermarket. The shelves were bare, and there was blood on the floor. Out in the parking lot, blue lights flashed.

"Had you heard about that?"

"No."

"There was supposed to be a train full of wheat coming in from Kansas, but it never showed up. Hijacked, maybe? No one seems to know how you can lose a whole train."

"I could go look for it if-"

"That's nice of you, but that wasn't really my point."

Carolyn felt Naga's eyes on her, watching from the shadows. "No? What then?"

"It was more about the riot. Those used to be fairly rare, once every ten years or so. Now there are at least a couple every day. And it's getting worse."

"Oh? That's interesting." Long pause. He was looking at her expectantly. "Um, why is that, do you think?"

"Well...people are a little on edge. What with everything that's been going on lately-the White House burning down, and the president being missing, and...the other stuff."

He didn't mention David, but she knew what he was getting at. She tensed up another notch.

"People are scared," Steve said. "Down in South Carolina there's a preacher who keeps going on about how these are the End Times. They call him Brother Elgin. He reminds me of a rabid possum, but there are a lot of people who take him seriously. He says he's the governor now. Supposedly he's seceded from the union."

"Is that a big deal?"

"Bigish, yeah. The other day there was a firefight between him and the Army. Some tanks sh.e.l.led the State House. Brother Elgin had a bunch of college kids chained up out front as human s.h.i.+elds. A couple hundred people died. They'll probably get it sorted out eventually. But just a few weeks ago everything was...y'know. Quiet. Normal."

A few weeks ago? "Oh-ho! So you're blaming me for this?"

"Should I?"

"Of course not! People are just overreacting."

"Overre-" Steve cut himself off, then drummed his fingers on the end table. "OK. Maybe from your point of view that's true. I know you didn't intend for any of this stuff to happen. I'm guessing you probably didn't even notice. Am I right?"

Carolyn felt a flicker of irritation and squelched it. At least he's making an effort to be civil. She sighed. Plus, it's not like he's wrong. "Yeah. OK. Some of this is new information. But I've been really busy!"

"Yeah, I know. I get that, I really do. Your Father dying really shook things up. All his old enemies have their knives out for the new kid, right?"

"Exactly. But I have the advantage."

"How so?"

"They will underestimate me," she said, smiling. Seeing this, Steve actually s.h.i.+vered. He tried to hide it, but of course she saw. He really is afraid of me, she thought and, oh, knowing that this was true hurt. She wouldn't cry; she never cried.

But it hurt so much.

Hoping for escape, she looked at the television. The writing on one corner of the screen said CNN. Beside that, the words NEUTRONIUM HULL? in larger letters. Above it all, the Library. It tumbled in place like a thrown die, a dark pyramid bigger than anything made by men. It was black outside, of course, but the camera crew had some sort of light-gathering lens that made everything an eerie green. Helicopters danced around the pyramid like fireflies around a beach ball.

"Is that us?" Steve gestured at the TV with a handful of popcorn. "That's the thing that was whoos.h.i.+ng by in the sky, the night Erwin shot David? The 'project and defend' thing?"

"Yeah."

"Is it the Library? Like, we're inside?"

She hesitated. "Sort of. It's a four-dimensional projection of a seventeen-dimensional universe. Kind of like a shadow, or the place where the circles overlap in a Venn diagram."

On the television, the camera panned down from the Library to a pretty woman in an overcoat. She stood in front of a roadblock on Highway 78. Carolyn recognized the spot. The sound was off, but Carolyn read her lips. She was saying things like "day thirty-two" and "unusual activity," and "military has not responded." Her teeth were very white. Then, from behind her, stern-faced soldiers came around the tank, waving their arms in "shoo" gestures.

"What's going on?" Steve looked around for the remote.

"The Army is evacuating all the reporter people."

"What? Why?"

"They're going to start bombing us in a few minutes."

Steve stared at her. "You know about that?"

"Sure."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to, like, flee?"

"I thought it would be fun to watch. David used to bomb things sometimes. The lights are kind of pretty." She smiled and held up the bowl. "Plus, popcorn!"

Steve just stared at her.

A moment later she got it. "Oh. They can't hurt us. I promise."

"Umm. Have you heard of something called atomic bombs?"

"I'm familiar with them. They won't try that. Well...they talked about it, but I think they decided not to. Erwin and the Chinese guy wanted to, but the president kept saying 'not on American soil.' I'm pretty sure, anyway. I got bored and tuned out."

He boggled at her. "How the h.e.l.l do you know these things?"

"I stole it from David's catalog. When someone is planning to harm me, I can tell." She glanced at Naga. "It feels sort of like an itch, here." She tapped the base of her skull. "When I got the itch, I listened in on them. It should start any minute."

Steve rubbed his temples. "Carolyn...even if they don't use nukes, they have these things called bunker busters. And something else, I think it's called a 'daisy cutter'? Something like that. They're huge bombs, almost as big as nukes." He searched her face. "Are you sure that won't-"

"Relax," she said, misunderstanding. "There's nothing to worry about. I promise." She looked out at the wall behind the television. "Actually, it's already started. The stuff on television must have been recorded, or something. Look." She made a gesture and the wall became transparent.

Steve squinted against the glare. "Has the sun come back?"

"No, it's just the explosions. Hang on." She gestured again and the glare dimmed a bit. "That's better."

For as far back as the eye could see, the air was filled with warplanes. Seeing them she thought of flocks of birds, migrating for the winter. A flight of cruise missiles streaked in through the night sky and blossomed against the wall of the Library, orange flowers in the night. "See? Told you it was pretty." She ate a piece of popcorn. "Don't you think?"

"Uh...I guess."

Next in the line were three big bombers. The bomb-bay doors were open in their bellies. As they approached they disgorged their cargo. Now she could see them on the television as well as through the wall. Fireb.a.l.l.s marched up the side of the pyramid in surprisingly tidy rows. One of them was a direct hit. Carolyn adjusted the brightness again.

Steve walked over and put his hand on the wall. "I can't even feel it. Nothing."

"Of course not." She gestured at the pyramid on the TV. "Like I said, it's a projection. The bombs can't reach where we actually are. Think of it this way-if someone shot your shadow, that wouldn't hurt, right?"

"Hmm." Steve sat back down-farther away from her than he had been-and took a handful of popcorn. "I have a confession to make."

"What's that?"

"I knew they were going to bomb you. Well...I knew they were thinking about it."

"Oh? Did you?"

"Yeah. I've been talking to Erwin. And the president-the new one, I mean. Not the head. Plus a couple of others." He held up Mrs. McGillicutty's cell phone.

She waved her hand in the air. "I appreciate you saying something, but it's not a problem."

"You knew, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Have you been eavesdropping on me?"