“I feel . . . a . . . bit . . .”
The Library of Ephebe was a furnace. The flames burned blue where the melted copper roof dripped on to the shelves.
All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong spacetime distortions found around any large collections of books.
Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems.
But if a library is on fire, and down in the history books as having been on fire . . .
There was a small pop, utterly unheard among the crackling of the bookshelves, and a figure dropped out of nowhere on to a small patch of unburned floor in the middle of the Library.
It looked ape-like, but it moved in a very purposeful way. Long simian arms beat out the flames, pulled scrolls off the shelves, and stuffed them into a sack. When the sack was full, it knuckled back into the middle of the room . . . and vanished, with another pop.
This has nothing to do with the story.
Nor does the fact that, some time later, scrolls thought to have been destroyed in the Great Ephebian Library Fire turned up in remarkably good condition in the Library of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.
But it's nice to know, even so.
Brutha awoke with the smell of the sea in his nostrils. At least it was what people think of as the smell of the sea, which is the stink of antique fish and rotten seaweed.
He was in some sort of shed. Such light as managed to come through its one unglazed window was red, and flickered. One end of the shed was open to the water. The ruddy light showed a few figures clustered around something there.
Brutha gently probed the contents of his memory. Everything seemed to be there, the Library scrolls neatly arranged. The words were as meaningless to him as any other written word, but the pictures were interesting. More interesting than most things in his memory, anyway.
He sat up, carefully.
“You're awake, then,” said the voice of Om, in his head. “Feel a bit full, do we? Feel a bit like a stack of shelves? Feel like we've got big notices saying ”SILENCIOS!“ all over the place inside our head? What did you go and do that for?”
“I . . . don't know. It seemed like . . . the next thing to do. Where are you?”
“Your soldier friend has got me in his pack. Thanks for looking after me so carefully, by the way.”
Brutha managed to get to his feet. The world revolved round him for a moment, adding a third astronomical theory to the two currently occupying the minds of local thinkers.
He peered out of the window. The red light was coming from fires all over Ephebe, but there was one huge glow over the Library.
“Guerrilla activity,” said Om. “Even the slaves are fighting. Can't understand why. You think they'd jump at the chance to be revenged on their masters, eh?”
“I suppose a slave in Ephebe has the chance to be free,” said Brutha.
There was a hiss from the other end of the shed, and a metallic, whirring noise. Brutha heard Urn say, “There! I told you. Just a block in the tubes. Lets get some more fuel in.”
Brutha tottered towards the group.
They were clustered round a boat. As boats went, it was of normal shape-a pointed end in front, a flat end at the back. But there was no mast. What there was, was a large, copper?colored ball, hanging in a wooden framework toward the back of the boat.
There was an iron basket underneath it, in which someone had already got a good fire going.
And the ball was spinning in its frame, in a cloud of steam.
“I've seen that,” he said. “In De Chelonian Mobile. There was a drawing.”
“Oh, it's the walking Library,” said Didactylos. “Yes. You're right. Illustrating the principle of reaction. I never asked Urn to build a big one. This is what comes of thinking with your hands.”
“I took it round the lighthouse one night last week,” said Urn. “No problems at all.”
“Ankh-Morpork is a lot further than that,” said Simony.