Liam Hamilton ought to be in church right now. In fact, as far as everyone is concerned, he's. Hollis agreed to vouch for his presence. Well, Liam now owes Hollis a favor . . . besides fetching him books.
Liam is prowling through the stacks. In an earlier time, he knows, he'd have to keep an eye open for patrons. Except the library isn't even open yet . . . and you cannot get in without an authorized pass. So Liam prowls quite fearlessly about the stacks.
Liam is about fifty. He's not tall, nor fat. He's getting a little stout as he ages, he thinks, and shrinking every year. If Liam knew that half the women (and a scant handful of the men) think him boyishly handsome, why, he'd blush a brilliant red. This is one of Liam's flaws -- his blush. It's terribly cute, though.
He has brown hair, which he wears in a ponytail that makes him look even more like a schoolboy, and plain brown eyes. They're not deep black, nor are they almost tannish -- they are plain and brown. Earthy -- if eyes can be likened to dirt. Liam does not believe they can.
He wears affected plaid suits which date him as someone very comfortable with history -- for they're two hundred years out of style. They are modestly colored -- the most daring are red check on brown, which he wore on his first day here -- and fit him well.
Liam once wanted to be a historian -- in fact, he still does. He's become the master of reference, the dean of history, the yogi of . . . despair, because when he cracks his involved jokes borrowed from period books, no one understands. Except for Leslie, who worries him, being that she's very young and choosing to spend her life here.
Liam does not want to work here. He wants to write papers like his idols from the Age of Oil. He wants to gallivant about the countryside lecturing on the 1940s -- his favorite time period -- and write books about the World Wars. He confuses these infrequently -- or, well, he did. He has since cleared up his misunderstandings, with the assistance of the other reference librarian and some period books.
Liam is not just a reference librarian. He's also a runner of books, and he specializes in delivering "orders" of reference books to the scientists who work just a block away. He favors roller skates for these short runs, because he thinks it gives him the air of a drive - through worker. In fact, it makes him seem pleasingly eccentric -- which was half the point, anyway.
It is dark in the library, because he has not bothered to light any candles and the ridiculous steam lights never work for long. He would use a torch, like his secret hero Indiana Jones, but he despises smoke and refuses to. Instead he prowls about with a lantern in hand, lifting the cover to see the shelves. The windows are neatly shuttered, for though natural light would greatly assist the scholars, there are almost none of late. It is only Liam, and sometimes Leslie or the other reference librarian.
Today he's thinking. Liam once considered becoming a writer of historical fiction, before he realized that very few read historical fiction more complicated than dreams of the Age of Oil or the Space Age. He intended to write realistic adventures set in the Age of Oil. It is one of his dreams to ride in a motorcar, instead of the rattly horsedrawn carriages or the clattering, wheezing clockwork omnibuses or even the comparatively smooth - running steam trains. When he has to train somewhere -- which he has done to acquire rare books from collectors -- he imagines that he's in the Age of Oil, in a motorcar, speeding along their smooth roads on rubber tires.
Liam is thinking about an idea he had once. About the soldiers in the Second World War -- he refers to it, even mentally, with initial capitals.
He drops in on Late Twentieth Century to quickly read the shelf. It is terribly out of order -- was Leslie in here? No, he remembers the other reference librarian coming down here for something. He must have muddled everything up.
Liam begins with the top shelf and works his way down, slowly. He has to hold his lantern in one hand as he reads, because if he sets it on the shelf behind him his shadow covers the books he's trying to order. This is awkward, but he doesn't mind. He has done it this way for years now, and he's well used to this inconvenient setup.
Liam finishes the penultimate shelf and, mentally preparing himself, kneels. He flicks through the books rather desultorily, absently thinking of that novel he planned to write.
What's this? The gleam of his lantern catches a reflection off something that's fallen down the back of the shelf and got caught between it and the next shelf.
Liam sets the lantern down and feels around behind the shelf for the book. It's dusty and slick - feeling.
He pulls it out and gasps.
It's covered carefully in a plastic cover, which is rare enough. And it has a barcode on the front, which, he knows, were discontinued from use at the end of the Age of Oil.
Which means that even if it weren't the remarkable creature it is, it's over two hundred years old.
He holds it reverentially for a moment, and inhales the smell of decomposing book glue from its spine -- it's a smell he loves, which his friend Hollis tells him might be damaging his brain. What a pair they'd be then -- blind chemist and mad librarian. He rather likes that, actually -- mad librarian. Has a ring to it.
He blinks and stares down at this remarkable book. If it is what it claims to be, then at the least he should read it before getting it cleaned -- and he will clean it himself, because he feels a frisson of danger as he looks at it. Possession of a book that claims what this one would seem to claim is a dangerous crime. He could be sent away to the Outlands if Hollis calls in some favors for him. Or he could be stripped of his freedom and sent Up North, away from the life he loves down here. What is it, a month's ride on a steamer? And in chains, no doubt.
He glances around -- not a soul, God bless them, everyone's in church except for the girl in Fiction, Modern who says she's Jewish. Liam is pretty sure she actually is. He just has a feeling about it.
He cradles the book in his right hand, balancing the lantern in his left, and walks over to one of their study tables. He knows there's a proper word for those -- carrels, he thinks, kind of like the children's author -- but he still calls them study tables.
He sets the lantern down and fetches out his spare handkerchief, too much darned but well capable of serving as a makeshift sanitary surface. He would hate to hurt this book.
Liam opens the shade on the lantern, then sets the book down on the spread handkerchief. He sighs and seats himself on the provided chair, which creaks under what he thinks of as his ample weight. Leslie thinks he should "eat a goddamn sandwich" -- Leslie, whose adoration is the culture at the end of the Age of Oil, when there was a wild kingdom which held dominion over the very air. Or so she recalls. She loves to imitate the jargon of the time, though.
He opens the book, cradling the front cover with his hand as he does so. Liam wants to be back in his comfortable office, with this book in the special device he once helped Hollis make, after he started his current work and had his first sightless day. Hollis had had an idea to make a device to gently cradle test tubes while he poured into them . . .
Liam remembers it vividly.
"Hold this," says a somewhat - younger Hollis to a roughly - the - same Liam -- Liam has never seemed to age. He's looked "about fifty" since his twenties.
Liam holds it.
"Now . . . " Hollis feels the location of Liam's hands with light, delicate hands. He ought to have been a musician, Liam sometimes thinks. Hollis moves Liam's left hand a little. "Screw it in. As tight as it goes. Tighter, if you can manage."
Hollis winks, and it's an eerie sight. Normally there's someone looking out of the wink. Not this one. It's empty.
. . . and Liam built two. One for his own use, and one for Hollis's chemicals. Hollis patented the device, and by this gets a little money every year -- other chemists use them sometimes.
"Other chemists?" says Hollis's voice in Liam's head. Sometimes Liam's memories are only auditory. Like someone stole the actual movie for a movie, and left only the sound. Or better, like a radio play, but more bare - bones.
"Other chemists?" Hollis says laughingly. It's light laughter with a bitter edge. Like an iceberg or a cake of ice floating in water -- so smooth on top, but so sharp and jagged underneath. "I work alone, my dear Liam." This is a pretense he affects -- Liam had read him some Sherlock Holmes stories once, and Hollis had jokingly suggested that Liam become an actor. He has a nice voice, very steady and sure, with just the right amount of emotion. Liam denied Hollis's joking suggestion -- he's never been able to sing. And all the popular actors sing. " 'Other chemists' . . . well, you know what happened in my past with 'other chemists'. I prefer solitude to their company."
Liam had known exactly what Hollis meant, and so it went unsaid. And Hollis had always been a solitary type, anyway -- even before.
Liam shakes aside the memory with a sharp jerk of his head to the left, and looks to the book.
Liam begins to read, and although he's a fast reader, it is perhaps only his fast reflexes that save him. It takes him about two hours to read the book, and he's left gasping with its implications.
The book seems to be a slightly fictionalized account (the years are imprecise, something he hates as a historian -- he loves to have things in place, events clearly dated) of the youth of the King and Queen. He wants to dismiss it as mere fantasy, but this book is old. The copyright page in the front says it: "Copyright 2007."
And it has so much right, and so he has no choice but to consider his mind blown, his worldview totally shattered, as if someone had thrown a stick of dynamite into the neat stacks of what he considers rational and true, scattering some things, singeing others, and outright blasting some to bits. Smithereens, as he likes to say.
He's mulling this all over when he hears footsteps. He leaps up and replaces the book on the shelf. He'll have to dust this shelf, he noticed earlier -- seems no one is interested in how the late twentieth century (and early twenty - first) expressed itself through fiction. Shame.
He snatches his handkerchief off the table -- and that is when he has to sneeze.
"AHCHOO!" sneezes Liam Hamilton, and the footsteps laughs. It's only Leslie, after all.
"God bless you," she says. "I didn't see you at church."
This is almost an accusation, but he blows it off.
"I went to early service," he says.
She nods.
"So I had a bit to myself and -- you know how I am. I thought I'd do a little pleasure reading. Thought you were the other reff man, and dove to put my novel away."
Leslie smiles. "Which was it?"
Liam fetches out a book from the shelf -- Catch - 22. He hands it carefully to Leslie, who cradles it in her hands much as he did the treasure he just found.
"Ooh," she says, turning it over to admire it and read the jacket summary. "Is it good?"
"Oh yes," says Liam, taking the book back. "I enjoyed it, and you know how I am with its time period." He winks at her. "You want to read it, though, you'll have to check it out."
"Of course," she says politely, and one of her ears twitches impatiently. "Listen, though, what did you think of the sermon today?"
Leslie chatters on, and Liam listens amiably enough.
He's composing what he's going to say when he next runs some books to his friends down the block. He's planning what he's going to say to the man almost everyone knows as Doktor X -- new, but one of Hollis's close friends, and so also one of Liam's.
"Doctor!" he'll say, handing him that book he requested -- some work talking about early genetics -- and being as politely thrilled as he can. "You'll never dream what I've found!"
The Doktor, as people like to call him -- always with that Germanic "k" sound in the middle; well, mock - Germanic really, Liam speaks German haltingly enough to know -- is almost obsessed with the end of the Age of Oil. He knows a great deal (and, he told Liam once, is planning to write a book) about the subject, and is always eager for more information. He's also fascinated by the monarchy -- in fact, does relation charts for fun sometimes.
So Liam thinks that this will thrill him. And he thinks, also, that the Doktor will know what to do, surely.
Liam listens to Leslie, occasionally interjecting some platitude -- if that word means what he recalls it meaning -- about how the sermonizer spoke at his early service, which he, of course, did not, in fact, attend.
Yes, Liam definitely owes Hollis a favor. Dinner will do, he thinks. Dinner may just serve. He knows just the restaurant, actually.