Page 123 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira shuddered, a chill running through her. She realised that she was scared. Even so, she had her questions. If a sabber were to take her life before nightfall she’d rather die with answers than with questions.

“That day on the Allocation Hall steps,” she said. “Was that the first time you saw me?”

“Sit. Please.” Yute indicated the chair again, a fine piece covered with dark red leather, deeply buttoned. “You make me nervous with your pacing.”

Livira perched in the chair, too tense to settle. “Had you seen me before?”

Instead of answering, Yute removed the silver ring he always wore, his only piece of jewellery. He placed one white finger to the moonstone set into the metal. “Did you know that all the books in all the chambers of the library could be stored in something as small as this stone?”

“That’s not possible.” Livira had walked a thousand miles in the library. She had passed a weight of books that if sufficient scales could be found would outbalance all the stones in all the buildings in Crath City.

“It’s possible.” Yute moved his fingertip across the moonstone in a circle and it lit from within. Pages of text appeared across the walls and ceiling, projected there, written by light, one moving over the next as if the pages had been torn loose and scattered across the surface of a pond.

“If that were true then why... I don’t understand.” She hadn’t come to ask these questions, but she couldn’t help letting Yute distract her from her purpose. “Why have the library?”

“Everything.” Yute pressed his hand to his desk, hard. “Everything is a compromise. There are no absolutes in life. There is only one absolute, and it lies beyond us.” He frowned. “You’re familiar with the story of Irad?”

“The first librarian?” Livira had read the story in a book that she was not allowed to read. A book that had been hidden deliberately. “You’re not going to tell me that it’s true? I’d sooner believe your ring held all the library rather than just a few pages.”

Yute offered a wry smile. “Not true, no. Let’s say... representative. Useful. Irad the first librarian, son of Enoch the first builder of cities, son of Cain the first murderer, son of Adam the first man. None of Adam’s descendants were their parents’ only child, and all of them were in conflict. It’s a defining feature of mankind. Sibling against sibling.”

“Not just humans.” Livira thought of Clovis pounding her brother’s head into the ground in the sabber’s attempt to reach her.

“Not just humans.” Yute inclined his head. “Cain opposed his brother continuing to live. Enoch’s brother opposed his building a city. Irad’s brother fought the idea of a library. In that particular mythology the first man and first woman fell from grace by seeking knowledge. Ignorance was their bliss. A devil tempted them into knowledge.

“The first librarian, founder of the great library, had a younger brother, Jaspeth. Jaspeth felt that since their great-grandparents had lost the gods’ good graces by foolishly seeking knowledge, it was hardly a good idea that just three generations later Irad was building a great palace to knowledge where all could come and partake of it. Knowledge, he said, was not wisdom. Irad, he said, was continuing the work that the devil had started. They went to war over it. Though neither of them ended up killing their own brother like their grandfather had. Instead, they formed an uneasy peace. A compromise. The library is that compromise. The knowledge—all knowledge—is there for the taking, waiting on a shelf, ready to be picked up. But it must be found. It cannot be summoned effortlessly from a ring and projected onto a wall. Not unless someone puts in the necessary work and cleverness, and then only for as long as that cleverness is preserved. All that knowledge lies there, as agreed, locked behind the letters of ever-changing alphabets in the words of ever-changing languages. It sits there among the lies, mistakes, delusions, and untruths of the unwise. It is, to make a long story shorter, never easy.”

“But none of that’s true?” Livira’s eyes followed the fading traces of the ring’s projections.

“All of it is representative of a truth. Truths cast many shadows, some of which are very different when the light shines from one direction than from another. The library is a compromise—that’s truth. The library is a battleground. That’s also a kind of truth.

“The library is many things from many angles. Both blessing and curse. A razor blade given to a baby; a rope thrown to a drowning man.”

Livira raised her hand to stop him. “Enough. Enough with the library. Enough with all the mysteries.” Livira knew she was a plain speaker, blunt some might say, rude even, but she’d shocked herself talking to Yute like that. The words had just burst out of her. She’d seen too much. Done too much. Risked too much. Lost too much. “Why,” she ploughed on, “why does the head librarian look like you?”

“Like me?” Yute frowned.

“You know what I mean.”

Yute gave a slight shrug, a slight smile. “We share a common origin. We were born in the same place.”

“Was it far from here?”

“In a manner of speaking. It depends how you measure distance.” Yute’s pink eyes met Livira’s gaze. “Did she look well? I expected you to have news, but I don’t think anything else you might have to say could surprise me more than Yamala agreeing to see you.”

“I kissed a sabber.”

“I stand corrected.”

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This old truism becomes more interesting when one considers how it scales. Is a lot of knowledge a very, very dangerous thing? In Figure 46, knowledge is plotted along the X-axis, and danger along the Y-axis. It’s immediately obvious from the resulting curve that...

Charting the Ephemeral, by Dr.J. Evans Pilchard, PhD

CHAPTER 52

Evar

He kissed a sabber?”

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