Simon Green - For Heaven's Eyes Only

“Like I care,” said Ammonia. “I have enough secrets. I am stuffed full of secrets. I crap secrets and piss mysteries. And as for your blessed books . . .”

She ran her fingertips roughly along the spines of the books nearest her, and I swear they winced back from her. Ioreth almost jumped out of his habit.

“Don’t touch the books! Don’t touch anything in here! We have a large number of really dangerous books here in the Old Library, and by dangerous I mean violent, possessive and occasionally homicidal. This is not a petting zoo! I use special gloves to take some of these books off the shelves, and they’re knitted personally for me by cloistered nuns from the Salvation Army sisterhood. Gloves that are actually holier than I will ever be. And even then I cross my fingers for luck.”

“You’re babbling, Ioreth,” I said.

“I know! I’m fine, very fine; I’m really very nervous. I really don’t think this is a good idea, Eddie, and I especially don’t like the way that woman is looking at me; why is she looking at me like that? Eddie, make her stop looking at me like that! William . . . is not in a good mood. And yes, I know, he rarely is, but I would have to say that today he is even more not in a good mood than usual. He doesn’t like visitors, he doesn’t like telepaths, and he very definitely doesn’t like Ammonia Vom Acht, though of course who does—sorry, I said that out loud, didn’t I? Perhaps you could bring her back some other day, Eddie, when William’s feeling more . . . receptive.”

“Neither of us is going to live that long,” I said. “It has to be now. It’s for his own good, Ioreth.”

He sniffed. “That’s what they told Joan of Arc, poor girl. All right, follow me; I’ll take you to him. But try not to make any loud noises or sudden moves. I don’t want to have to get him down from the high stacks with the boat hook again.”

He scurried off down the nearest aisle, and Ammonia and I went after him. William wasn’t far. We found him standing straight backed and stiff necked, with his back to a display of Very Restricted Books. ALL PASSES MUST BE SHOWN, said a polite sign. AND A LIST OF YOUR NEXT OF KIN. William had clearly made an effort to improve his appearance, or perhaps Ioreth had, on his behalf. His grey hair and beard had been neatly trimmed, and he was wearing a brand-new and very clean dressing gown. He was still wearing his favourite white bunny slippers, which still disturbed me, for no good reason I could put my finger on. He looked a lot older than his years, and spiritually as well as physically tired. But he held himself well, and his face was calm, if a little distracted. He looked at Ammonia with his lost eyes, as though expecting the worst but holding up bravely nonetheless.

“I’m not sure I want to be healed,” he said, speaking directly to Ammonia. “I think I prefer this me to the me I used to be. I’m not sure the old me was a very nice person.”

“Lot of my patients say that,” Ammonia said briskly. “It’s avoidance and displacement at work. Like when your toothache disappears on the way to the dentist.”

“But if I was a bad person . . .”

“Of course you were!” said Ammonia. “You were a Drood!”

“Ammonia,” I murmured. “Not really helping . . .”

“William,” said Ioreth, standing protectively close to the Librarian, “if she can help, you might not be so frightened all the time. . . .”

Ammonia moved forward to stand before William, and to his credit he didn’t flinch. She looked into his eyes.

“Interesting. I’m getting . . . absolutely nothing from him. As though he were a psychic null, like my Peter. And it’s not only his torc protecting him. Someone has placed very powerful blocks inside this man’s mind.”

“Can you break through them without damaging him?” I said.

“Can you stop talking about him as though he wasn’t here!” said William.

“No problem,” said Ammonia. “Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. That’s why you hired me.” She looked back at William and gave him what she probably thought of as a reassuring smile. “I need you calm and relaxed. Sitting in your favourite chair, perhaps. Do you have a favourite chair?”

“Of course,” said Ioreth. “I’ll go and get it, shall I? Yes. Don’t talk about me while I’m gone. I’m really very nervous.”

He hurried off and quickly came back with a sagging overstuffed armchair so heavy he couldn’t pick it up, but had to push it along in front of him as fast as the squealing and protesting castors would allow. He pushed it into place, and then leaned on the back breathing heavily, to show how much effort he was making on our behalf. William sank into the chair and arranged himself until he was as comfortable as he was going to get. Ammonia was surprisingly patient with him, until it became clear he was never going to stop wriggling about.

“Will you bloody well relax!” said Ammonia. “I am not the bloody dentist!”

“Don’t like him either,” said William. “Is this going to hurt?”

“Probably not physically,” said Ammonia.

William started to get back up out of his chair, and Ioreth and I had to step forward and push him back into it. William subsided and scowled at Ammonia.

“I demand a second opinion!”

“All right,” said Ammonia. “You’re a Drood and I despise everything you stand for. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

I was expecting her to go into some kind of trance, or wave her hands about, or at least have her eyes light up; but there was nothing of the dramatic about what she did. She stood there before the Librarian, frowning thoughtfully, holding his gaze with hers. He stared back at her blankly, as though waiting for the real scanning to begin. Suddenly, I realised that the temperature in the Old Library was dropping. It’s mostly maintained at a little more than comfortably warm, for the sake of the books; but now it was growing distinctly chilly. As though something were sucking all the heat out of the Library. Even the light seemed dimmer than before. Shadows slowly filled the stacks around us, until we were all standing in the only real pool of light left. Everything was still and silent, the whole Library’s attention focused in one place. William’s face was entirely blank now, his gaze unblinking and far away.

“I’m past the shields,” said Ammonia. Her voice was quite calm and matter-of-fact. She might have been talking about her shopping. “A lot of really nasty protections here . . . Nothing I couldn’t handle. I’m inside his head now. His thoughts are a mess. His memories have been heavily interfered with; whole chunks are missing, destroyed. Quite deliberately. There are things he discovered, truths he was never meant to know, that someone didn’t want him to ever be able to think about again. But there’s more to it than that. Whole sections of his mind have been placed off-limits; he doesn’t even know they’re there. More shields, more protections . . . high walls with barbed wire on the top . . . What are you trying to hide from me, William? Or what has someone been hiding from you all these years? What’s hiding inside your head?”

William’s face suddenly exploded with emotion, contorting with rage and hatred and a vicious malevolence. He didn’t look like William anymore. It was as though someone else were using his face for a mask, looking out through his eyes and hating everyone it saw. It glared threateningly at Ammonia, who stared calmly back at him.

“Well, well, what have I woken up? Who are you?”

“Get out! You don’t belong here! You have no business being here! Get out or I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you!”

But for all the evil in that face, and the venom in the voice, William didn’t move a muscle in his chair.