Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

I’d been here before. Years earlier, when I’d thought that teaching would support me until I was able to earn a living as a novelist, I’d picked up some extra money by tutoring Potter’s boys. But that was a long time ago.

I’d brought a flashlight with me. I turned it on, and pushed through into the kitchen. It was warmer in there, but that was to be expected. Potter’s heirs were still trying to sell the place, and it gets too cold in North Dakota to simply shut off the heat altogether.

Cabinets were open and bare; the range had been disconnected from its gas mooring and dragged into the center of the room. A church calendar hung behind a door. It displayed March 1986: the month of Potter’s death.

In the dining room, a battered table and three wooden chairs were pushed against one wall. A couple of boxes lay in a corner.

With a bang, the heater came on.

I was startled. A fan cut in, and warm air rushed across my ankles.

I took a deep breath and played the beam toward the living room. I was thinking how different a house looks without its furnishings, how utterly strange and unfamiliar, when I realized I wasn’t alone. Whether it was a movement outside the circle of light, or a sudden indrawn breath, or the creak of a board, I couldn’t have said. But I knew . “Who’s there?” I asked. The words hung in the dark.

“Mr. Wickham?” It was a woman.

“Hello,” I said. “I, uh, I saw lights and thought—”

“Of course.” She was standing back near the kitchen, silhouetted against outside light. I wondered how she could have got there. “You were correct to be concerned. But it’s quite all right.” She was somewhat on the gray side of middle age, attractive, well-pressed, the sort you would expect to encounter at a bridge party. Her eyes, which were on a level with mine, watched me with good humor. “My name is Coela.” She extended her right hand. Gold bracelets clinked.

“I’m happy to meet you,” I tried to look as though nothing unusual had occurred. “How did you know my name?”

She touched my hand, the one holding the flashlight, and pushed it gently aside so she could pass. “Please follow me,” she said. “Be careful. Don’t fall over anything.”

We climbed the stairs to the second floor, and went into the rear bedroom. “Through here,” she said, opening a door that should have revealed a closet. Instead, I was looking into a brightly illuminated space that couldn’t possibly be there. It was filled with books, paintings, and tapestries, leather furniture, and polished tables. A fireplace crackled cheerfully beneath a portrait of a monk. A piano played softly. Chopin, I thought.

“This room won’t fit,“ I said, stupidly. The thick quality of my voice startled me.

“No,” she agreed. “We’re attached to the property, but we’re quite independent.” We stepped inside. Carpets were thick underfoot. Where the floors were exposed, they were lustrous parquet. Vaulted windows looked out over Potter’s backyard, and Em Pyle’s house next door. Coela watched me thoughtfully. “Welcome, Mr. Wickham,” she said. Her eyes glittered with pride. “Welcome to the Fort Moxie branch of the John of Singletary Memorial Library.”

I looked around for a chair and, finding one near a window, lowered myself into it. The falling snow was dark, as though no illumination from within the glass touched it. “I don’t think I understand this,” I said.

“I suppose it is something of a shock.”

Her amusement was obvious, and sufficiently infectious that I loosened up somewhat. “Are you the librarian?”

She nodded.

“Nobody in Fort Moxie knows you’re here. What good is a library no one knows about?”

“That’s a valid question,” she admitted. “We have a limited membership.”

I glanced around. All the books looked liked Bibles. They were different sizes and shapes, but all were bound in leather. Furthermore, titles and authors were printed in identical silver script. But I saw nothing in English. The shelves near me were packed with books whose lettering appeared to be Russian. A volume lay open on a table at my right hand. It was in Latin. I picked it up and held it so I could read the title: Historiae, V-XII . Tacitus. “Okay,” I said. “It must be limited. Hardly anybody in Fort Moxie reads Latin or Russian.” I held up the Tacitus. “I doubt even Father Cramer could handle this.”

Em Pyle, the next door neighbor, had come out onto his front steps. He called his dog, Preach, as he did most nights at this time. There was no response, and he looked up and down Nineteenth Street, into his own backyard, and right through me . I couldn’t believe he didn’t react.

“Coela, who are you exactly? What’s going on here?”

She nodded, in the way that people do when they agree that you have a problem. “Perhaps,” she said, “you should look around, Mr. Wickham. Then it might be easier to talk.”

She retired to a desk, and immersed herself in a sheaf of papers, leaving me to fend for myself.

Beyond the Russian shelves, I found Japanese or Chinese titles. I couldn’t tell which. And Arabic. And German. French. Greek. More Oriental.

English titles were in the rear. They were divided into American and British sections. Dickens, Cowper, and Shakespeare on one side; Holmes, Dreiser, and Steinbeck on the other.

And almost immediately, the sense of apprehension that had hung over me from the beginning of this business sharpened. I didn’t know why. Certainly, the familiar names in a familiar setting should have eased my disquiet.

I picked up Melville’s Agatha and flipped through the pages. They had the texture of fine rice paper, and the leather binding lent a sense of timelessness to the book. I thought about the cheap cardboard that Crossbow had provided for Independence Square . My God, this was the way to get published.

Immediately beside it was The Complete Works of James McCorbin . Who the hell was James McCorbin? There were two novels and eight short stories. None of the titles was familiar, and the book contained no biographical information.

In fact, most of the writers were people I’d never heard of. Kemerie Baxter. Wynn Gomez. Michael Kaspar. There was nothing unusual about that, of course. Library shelves are always filled with obscure authors. But the lush binding, and the obvious care expended on these books, changed the rules.

I took down Hemingway’s Watch by Night . I stared a long time at the title. The prose was vintage Hemingway. The crisp, clear bullet sentences and the factual, journalistic style were unmistakable. Even the setting: Italy, 1944.

Henry James was represented by Brandenberg . There was no sign of The Ambassadors , or The Portrait of a Lady , or Washington Square . In fact, there was neither Moby Dick , nor Billy Budd . Nor The Sun Also Rises nor A Farewell to Arms . Thoreau wasn’t represented at all. I saw no sign of Fenimore Cooper or Mark Twain. (What kind of library had no copy of Huck Finn ?)

I carried Watch by Night back to the desk where Coela was working. “This is not a Hemingway book,” I said, lobbing it onto the pile of papers in front of her. She winced. “The rest of them are bogus too. What the hell’s going on?”

“I can understand that you might be a little confused, Mr. Wickham,” she said, a trifle nervously. “I’m never sure quite how to explain.”

“Please try your best,” I said.

She frowned. “I’m part of a cultural salvage group. We try to ensure that things of permanent value don’t, ah, get lost.”