‘Ah,’ Thomas said, but he didn’t seem particularly illuminated. Not up on his current wars, Jess thought. Or didn’t seem to understand that the Southern Conflict had been going on for more than fifty years, with bloody losses on both the Welsh and English sides. Of late, the Welsh had been handily winning the day.
Glain looked like one of those unpleasant firebrands who couldn’t just leave it at the border. Jess didn’t mind, really. At least that was one fellow student he wouldn’t mind cutting out in competition for a spot.
The miles clacked on, towards their uncertain future.
The Alexandrian border crossing meant that anyone without commissions into Library territory had to disembark, which meant the departure of Khalila’s uncle. He clearly didn’t like leaving his girl to the unwashed masses – and to be fair, they were all fairly unwashed, at the moment, on this train – but he went with good grace.
Jess nodded a polite goodbye, then turned and winked at Khalila. She ignored him. She’d fallen into a hushed, intense conversation with the Welsh girl, Glain, though whatever they had in common he couldn’t imagine. Glain was as plain as Khalila was pretty, and her manners seemed rude where the Arab girl had grace and charm to spare. No accounting for taste, he supposed. He and Thomas played cards, and drew in a few more players as the hours clicked by; even one of the Library’s silver bands sat in, and though his English was dodgy and spiced with Chinese accents, he was a right madman for a bet, and Jess lost half his cash before he bowed out and slept.
When he woke up, Thomas had won back most of the money, had a contented, cherubic look on his face, and they were pulling into Alexandria, in Egypt.
Jess wasn’t the only one gawking out the windows; most of those in the car were doing it, even adults with their bands of service on their wrists. Because this city … it was worth seeing.
They were arriving at Misr Station, all gleaming white marble and buff-coloured stones; it was blinding in the noonday glare. The station itself rose three graceful stories of fluted columns, with ancient Egyptian statues of the old gods reaching to the same height. When the carriage stopped, they were facing hawk-faced Horus’s massive feet, and Jess craned his head to look up. The beaked head blocked out the sun, and the gold leaf and blue enamel gleamed brighter than anything Jess had ever seen.
‘Amazing,’ Thomas breathed. ‘Do you think it’s an automaton? At that size?’
Jess shuddered. ‘Perish the thought.’
Thomas scrambled up, grabbed his bag (twice the size of Jess’s, but then, he was twice Jess’s size) and rushed for the train car door. He was onto the platform before Jess could pull his own case from beneath his seat, but he caught up with the German quickly, and against his will, his steps slowed and stopped. The two of them stood together, just drinking it in. The sun felt different here: relentlessly hot, but strangely welcoming just the same. Humid ocean air blew in and ruffled Jess’s hair, drying the sweat that was already beading on his face. And the silent, majestic rows of gods stretched on in a cleanly ordered march that seemed to go on for miles, each one of them different. They’ve all got stories, Jess thought. I need to know them. Best of all, he could know them. He could learn anything here.
It felt like limitless possibilities.
Khalila had joined them, he realised, and was gaping just as openly. Even Glain seemed stunned as she climbed down off the train steps and landed in this new, alien, intimidating land.
It seemed so clean.
Soon enough, they’d drawn a real cluster around them, as new postulants disembarked. Maybe it was just because Thomas was so tall and made a good centre pole, but when Jess looked around there must have been thirty of them together, and they were all milling about, uncertain of their next steps … until a man strode out from the shadow of Horus’s feet towards them.
He drew everyone’s attention: black Scholar’s robes that billowed around a plain black day suit. A gleaming gold band on his wrist, chased with elegant hieroglyphs and the Library seal. Dark shoulder-length hair swept back in a mane from a fiercely intelligent face. Narrow, dark eyes, and nut-brown skin. The students fell silent as he approached, and pulled closer together. Gazelles facing a lion, Jess thought.
The Scholar looked them over with unforgiving assessment. The silence stretched until Jess thought it might shatter poor old Horus’s legs, and then the man said, ‘My name is Scholar Christopher Wolfe, and I take it you are incoming postulants. Let me be clear; most of you might as well turn around and board the train now for home. I have six slots to fill, if I decide to fill them at all, which at first glance is unlikely. Does anyone want to book a return now and save themselves the time and pain?’
No one stirred, though several made twitchy moves, as though they were considering it. Not Jess. Nor Thomas, nor Khalila, nor Glain. Rock solid. For now, Jess thought.
This had just got very interesting.
EPHEMERA
Text of a letter by Thomas Paine of the Territory of America, written in 1795. Consigned to the Black Archives; not available to the Codex. Access strictly controlled. Marked as SEDITIOUS CONTENT.
There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge, and wisdom. A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.
The Library holds itself to be the keeper of both knowledge and wisdom, but it is not true. So much should never be held in the hands of so few, for it is a natural, venal habit of men to hold to power. And knowledge is the purest form of power.
The Curators mete out knowledge and progress in drips and drops, and see their duty to the people as that of a parent to an infant. As a parent will keep danger from his child, so then does the Library seek to protect us from what it deems dangerous knowledge.
But there is no wisdom without knowledge, no progress without danger, and I am not the Library’s child! I must acquire my own information, build my own knowledge and, through experience, transform it to the treasured gold of wisdom.
To this end, I say that the greatest good that can be done for mankind is to shatter the doors of the Great Library and make off with its storehouse of knowledge, spread it far and wide, for though the Library’s history is vast and deep, even the greatest invention can turn upon its creators. And so the very institution we thought would bring the most light to the world has instead drowned it in shadows, and claimed that shadow as full sun. And we, poor blind creatures, have believed the lie.
It is a fine thing to preserve knowledge, but to set the Great Library above men, above nations, above life? This is not wisdom.
I will not believe that life is worth less than ink on a page. Let that be our rallying cry. Let us shout it where we can. Let us raise our hands against the false idols of the Serapeums wherever they rise.
Let us burn our life’s work before they seize upon it and lock it in the darkness.
Let us burn it down and bring new light into the world.
A handwritten annotation to the tract, in the hand of Archivist Magister Alessandro Volta, 1795:
The American Territory has become a fetid jungle in which grows a dangerous heresy. See that it is rooted out by whatever means are necessary.
The Burner philosophy must, for our continued survival, be destroyed.