The Library at Mount Char Part 49

Now she was moving almost at a jog, heedless of the burning agony. Her s.h.i.+rt was smoking. She could smell burning hair, but she wasn't sure whether it was her own or Steve's. But the top of the hill was close. I'm going to make it!

Then she tripped.

A loose rock slid away beneath her foot. She put her hands out to break her fall and the rock cut her palm. Worse, she lost ground, slipping a few precious inches back down the hill.

Steve had reached the summit. He was safe. He turned, almost smiling, but the smile faded when he saw her. His mouth moved, but she couldn't make out the words. He waved for her to come on. She read his lips saying, Get up.

But she couldn't. She had sc.r.a.ped up her hands, her knees. She wanted her mother. She was afraid. Her chin trembled. She remembered thinking, It's too hard, remembered thinking, I give up.

Seeing this, Steve jumped back down the hill. His face was impossibly bright, lit by the approaching fireball now only five yards or so behind her. He reached where she had fallen with two giant, bouncing steps, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her to her feet. As she stood she saw that his hair and s.h.i.+rt had both caught fire, tiny tongues of flame beginning to grow.

Burning, he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her. The fireball was only a few scant feet behind them now. Her shoulder socket stung with the jolt, but she didn't feel the fire; Steve was holding her in his wake. The burn was all on him. The left side of his s.h.i.+rt burned off his skin in a puff...but now they were at the top of the hill.

They rushed into the crowd of children a few precious inches ahead of the fireball. They were the faces of her future-David and Margaret, Michael, Lisa, Peter, Richard, others she didn't know then. They milled around behind Father, mouths wide O's of terror, screaming too fast for sound.

When the ball of energy reached the crest of the hill, Father held out his hand. When the light touched him he winced...but he did not burn. David later told her that there were thirty of the "kilotons" in that explosion. He seemed to think this was an impressive number. Probably it was. But when the four-hundred-kiloton blast reached the finger of Adam Black it stopped...quivered for a moment...then began to shrink.

The receding fireball left a perfectly round crater where the park and most of the houses had been. The edges of the crater glowed red. She traced the arc with her eyes until it came to something she recognized; a mailbox with "305" and "Lafayette" stenciled in gold. The Lafayettes had been her next-door neighbors. Half their house was still standing, snipped neatly open by the explosion. She could see into the bedroom of Diane Lafayette, who had a Barbie Dream House that Carolyn coveted. Her own house, where she and her mother had made potato salad, had been located a few yards inside the crater.

Only then did she think to look where her parents had been.

When she last saw them they were standing in the park. Now that spot was a hole one hundred feet deep. Molten sand glowed like lava in its depths. Mom and Dad would have been among the first to be swallowed by the fireball. Carolyn understood that she was now an orphan.

Farther out, where the volleyball game had been, other adults lay dead as well, their flesh blasted away, their chromosomes in shreds. She recognized them as well. The dead ones.

Father did something and the alshaq fell away. Time returned to normal. The children were speaking, it seemed. Their voices rose as if someone had turned up the volume on a silent radio. But she heard only Steve.

"-n't know what you were thinking," Steve said. "You can't ever give up, Carolyn. You can't quit. Not ever."

She looked at him, wide-eyed.

Then, kicking down the first stone of an avalanche, Steve said, "You have to be strong."

IV.

Adam Black turned to the children and regarded them with eyes that were calm and dark.

"Your parents are dead," he said. Some of them wept. Others looked up at him, dazed and uncomprehending. "Most of you had no other family. In America, this means you would be taken away. You would live in an orphanage. You are too old. You are too ugly. You could not find new homes. No one would love you. No one would want you.

"But this is not America," Adam Black said. "Things are here as they were in the old age. I will take you into my home. I will raise you as I was raised. You will be Pelapi."

"We'll be what?" Carolyn remembered asking.

"Pelapi. It is an old word. There is no single word like it in English. It means 'librarian,' but also 'apprentice,' or perhaps 'student.'"

"Pelapi." She tested the sound of it for the first time. At the time they had thought he was speaking to all of them. Now Carolyn understood he meant only her. Alone in the Library at the other end of her life, she mouthed the words again. "What do you want us to study?"

"We will start with the language. It is called Pelapi as well. All of you will learn that first."

"Why?"

"It is the language that your lessons are written in, for the most part. You can hardly do without it."

"What kind of lessons?" Carolyn asked.

"For you, I think it will be the other languages."

"Like what? French and stuff?"

"Yes. Those and others."

"How many?"

"All of them."

She made a face. "What if I don't want to?"

"It won't matter. I'll make you do it anyway."

She said nothing to that-she was starting to realize that Adam Black frightened her-but she remembered how his words kindled the first, faint flicker of rebellion in her gut. Now, today, that same flame burned high and black over all the mountains and valleys of the Earth.

"And what about me?" David asked.

"You? Hmm." Father squatted down in front of David and felt his forearm. "You seem like a strong little fellow. You remind me of myself at your age. Would you like to learn how to fight?"

David grinned. "Yeah! That'd be cool."

Father spoke again, very quickly, not in English. At the time she could make no sense of what he said. It was only gibberish, quickly forgotten. Today, though, remembering it, she recognized the Pelapi for what it was. It will be as if you are there again in the flesh, the instructions on the elixir said, experiencing it with fresh eyes.

"You shall be the thing she fears above all others, and conquers," Father said in Pelapi. He touched David gently, with real love. "Your way shall be very hard, very cruel. I must do terrible things to you, that you may become a monster. I am sorry, my son. I had thought you might be my heir, but the strength is not in you. It must be her."

At the time, they all thought David was the biological son of the Craigs, who had been chatting with Carolyn's own parents when the fireball hit. Now, today, Carolyn was thinking, His son? He did that to his actual son? Then, on the heels of that but worse, He did it for me?

"And me?" Margaret asked.

Father turned to her. "h.e.l.lo, Margaret."

"How did you know my name?"

"I know lots of things about you. I've been watching you for a long time. Tell me, do you like exploring?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"Good. There's a very special place I know of. Almost no one knows about it but me. I could send you there. You could learn your way around."

"Is it a fun place to go?"

Father pursed his lips. "More of an adventure, I should say. Would you like that? It would make you very special." Then, at Carolyn, in rapid-fire Pelapi. "When the time comes, Margaret will serve as your final warning."

Carolyn remembered Margaret calling her "Mistress," remembered her saying, You're like me now and We are sisters. How had those words pa.s.sed by her so easily? Now the chill of them cut bone-deep.

Father went down the line, speaking to each of the children in turn until he came, finally, to Steve. "What about me?"

"I saw what you did back there," Father said. "You're a very brave boy."

Steve's chest swelled with pride. But when the skin of his chest stretched, he winced. His torso was red, blistered from the fire, even black in spots. He did not cry out.

Father knelt and examined the burns. "Does it hurt?"

"A little." His voice sounded strangled.

Father took a Ziploc bag from the pocket of his jeans. He squeezed a pale green ointment from it and, working very gently, applied it to Steve's chest. Steve flinched at first, drew back from Father's touch-then his eyes went wide and he leaned into it.

When it was done, Father stood and dusted his jeans off. "Is that better?"

"Yeah," Steve said with obvious grat.i.tude. "A lot better. Thanks!"

Father smiled a little. He even patted Steve on the shoulder. Steve didn't wince. "You're welcome. You should heal up OK." Then Father's smile faded. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you away. I can't use you."

"What?" Carolyn and Steve spoke simultaneously.

Father shook his head. "There are only twelve catalogs, and each of them already has an apprentice. I'm sorry."

Steve looked at him, not sure whether he was serious or not. Father fluttered his hands in a "shoo" gesture. "Go on. Your aunt Mary will take you in, I think. We'll make it so that your mother died in the car alongside your father. You were badly hurt. You've been in the hospital all this time. You don't remember anything...do you?"

"What?" Steve looked confused. "I..."

"Just go." Then, in Pelapi: "I must send you into exile, that you may be the coal of her heart. No real thing can be so perfect as memory, and she will need a perfect thing if she is to survive. She will warm herself on the memory of you when there is nothing else, and be sustained."

Rubbing his neck, Steve walked down the road to the entrance to Garrison Oaks. He stopped there, looked back over his shoulder, and waved at Carolyn. She saw real longing in his face.

She waved back.

Then, without saying anything, Steve stepped out of Garrison Oaks and back into America. Carolyn, eight years old, looked up at Father and said, "Couldn't he stay? He's my best friend."

"I'm sorry," Father said. "I truly am so very sorry. It must be exactly this way, and no other." Then, lighting the coal of her heart, "But perhaps you'll see him again someday."

Carolyn, tears streaming down her cheeks, gave a fierce little nod.

When Steve was gone, Father dried her tears. He let those of them who still had houses go back to them, to get toys, or clothes, whatever they liked-but only as much as they could carry in a single trip. The twins returned with a partially burned gym bag full of G.I. Joe dolls. Michael piled his clothes into a red wagon and dragged it down the street.

Carolyn's house had been vaporized, so for her there was nothing to pack. All she had left in the world were the clothes on her back and the copy of Black Beauty that Steve had given her. She walked with Father to the back patio.

"I do wish they would hurry," Father said, scanning the street for returning children. "I haven't got all the time in the world. It will be suppertime soon, and I still have to punish President LeMay."

"Punish the president? Why?"

"Well, he's the one who sent the bomb. Don't you think he deserves to be punished for that?"

"Oh. Yes." She thought of her mom and dad. Her lip trembled. "Punish him how?"

"Well, for starters, he's not going to be president anymore."

"You can really do that?"

"Oh, yes. I really can."

"How?"

"Well...I'll tell you later. For now let's just say that the past kneels before me."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Father shrugged. "Maybe not. But it's true. Tell me, who do you think I should replace him with? Carter? Morris Udall? Jerry Brown?"

"Which one is nicest? My dad says President LeMay is a mean man."

Father considered this. "Carter, I should think."

"Make him president, then."

"Carter it is. Would you like to watch me change the past?"

Carolyn said that she would. She was about to ask if that was all, if LeMay's only punishment for killing her mom and dad was that he wasn't president anymore, but she never got the chance. Knowing Father, though, I doubt that was all there was to it. As she was opening her mouth to ask, David returned, lugging a suitcase almost as big as he was. Father said that he was a strong little fellow. David grinned.

When they were all back, Father led them around to the front porch and opened the door into the Library. The house seemed normal enough from the lawn, but with the door ajar the s.p.a.ce inside seemed to loom. It was very dark. "Come in," Father said. "What are you waiting for? It's time to begin your studies."

One by one they filed in-David first, then Margaret, Peter and Richard, Jacob, Emily, Jennifer and Lisa, Michael, Alicia, and Rachel. Carolyn waited until last. Even then she hesitated at the threshold.

"Don't be afraid. It will all be OK, in the end. Come. We'll go in together, shall we?" Father reached down to her, smiling.

Still she hesitated.

"Come along," he said, wagging his hand, a don't-leave-me-hanging gesture. "Come along now."

After a long moment, Carolyn took hold of his fingers, thick and rough. She did so reluctantly, but in the end it was of her own free will. They crossed the threshold together.

"Step down into the darkness with me, child." Just that once, Father looked at her with real love. "I will make of you a G.o.d."