The Librarian Page 5

  The old women entangled the Gromov world in the web of their espionage networks. They easily intercepted hostile agents returning home, all unsuspecting, with their booty. They filled those agents with fatal amounts of drink in trains, ambushed them in the night at railway halts and in pitch-dark entrances on deserted streets. The books flowed to Mokhova.

  If the libraries had not taken countermeasures, Mokhova would certainly have acquired a complete set of works. They say that the list of Gromov’s works was stolen from the Lenin Library for Mokhova, but it never reached her—for which the credit must go to the now-defunct clan of Stepan Guryev, a former gold prospector.

  His library was located in the Altai Mountains, close to the Bagryany and Severny gold mines. The gold works had been abandoned for a long time and the “readers” began working them again, thereby earning the means to live and to search for the Books. These men were old hands who had been around: we know that migrant Chechen marauders took a passing interest in the mines, but the overconfident sons of the Caucasus were burned alive, after being lured into a trap in a barracks hut…

  Guryev’s men caught a female courier carrying material. Demonstrating exceptional self-sacrifice, the old woman ate the tablets of cheap cardboard. Hoping to reconstitute the books somehow, they dissected the old woman’s gastrointestinal tract. They extracted only thoroughly chewed, unreadable shreds, but from the number of cardboard scraps they could conclude that there had originally been seven Books.

  Searches required not only patience, but also money. Mokhova conveniently got one of her women hired as senior accountant in the social-security department. This adroit bookkeeper managed things so that the nursing home somehow dropped out of the authorities’ field of view, and yet continued to be financed with government money for many more years.

  The Home could hold as many as four hundred “mums”. The flow of pensioners was continuous: following established practice, the men were exterminated immediately and the women were put under armed guard.

  After two years Mokhova possessed the largest and most powerful army of all the clans. And in addition, the relative age profile of the “mums” gradually grew younger. From the example of the cook Ankudinova and the nursing assistant Basova, Mokhova realized that the army needed younger recruits. The decrepit old women had shown that they were outstanding warriors, but only when the Book transformed them. For the rest of the time most of the army had only a third of that strength. Literally a week after the Home was captured the recruitment of fresh forces began.

  The idea of eternal life in one’s own body had a lot in common with the ideology of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Perhaps that was why Mokhova often reinforced the ranks of her middle-aged warriors with members of the sect, who gladly made the switch to her, preferring the knife and the axe to handing out stupid leaflets.

  The old women involved their own elderly, but still sound, daughters. Semi-alcoholics, divorced or simply solitary, bitter and angry at the whole world, they stayed in the Home, opting to commit to the struggle for immortality.

  No one was taught to fight. Gorn wisely assumed that there was no point in disturbing old reflexes. The women were given items with which they had been familiar throughout their lives. The village women were equally skilful with an axe, a knife, a scythe or a flail. Those who had worked at transport depots, factories and construction sites or mended roads were issued with the familiar orange waistcoats, crowbars, sledgehammers, spades and picks.

  It should be said that to believe these women were weak was a serious error. In years and years of heavy labour their bodies had all accumulated immense muscular strength. They had simply become psychologically decrepit and forgotten that they once used to swing crowbars and axes untiringly at construction sites, lug sleepers and sections of rail on the railways or carry buckets and stretchers filled with immensely heavy cement.

  No one was surprised by the ability of some Chinese martial-arts master, a frail little man, to handle dozens of young opponents. The women, having worked all their lives, also possessed immense reserves of physical strength. The Book was necessary only to help them recall the blunted sensation of Strength.

  This infantry of female road labourers and collective-farm women, whose bodies seemed to consist of flesh that was moulded like lead, crushed the clans of Shulga’s former comrades in arms, Frolov and Lyashenko. In particular the fifty-year-old crane driver Olga Petrovna Dankevich distinguished herself in these bloody campaigns. She had grown so strong that her preferred weapon was the hook of a crane, which she carried on a three-metre-long pole. A blow from that mace would have flattened a rhinoceros. Dozens of readers, and even librarians, met their death from that monstrous hook.

  When Guryev’s clan was liquidated and Mokhova took cruel revenge for the courier’s dissected gastrointestinal tract, the imminent danger became clear. For a long time after that an old woman was a symbol of danger and a synonym for cruel cunning.

  In 1995 the libraries united against Mokhova’s tyranny. The coalition also had another highly important goal—to wrest from Mokhova the Book of Strength that she possessed. It was said that any copies of the extremely rare Book of Strength that showed up had been assiduously destroyed and perhaps there was now only one copy left in existence. Just how the libraries intended to divide it up among themselves afterwards was not clear.

  The opinion was expressed that the Book of Strength would have to be burned or become common property, but no one explained exactly how. The question was swept under the rug to avoid introducing confusion and disunity. In any case everyone was unanimous that Mokhova had to be disposed of.

  The coalition army included detachments from sixteen libraries— about two thousand men from various different cities: Saratov, Tomsk, Perm, Kostroma, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Lipetsk, Sverdlovsk, Penza, Belgorod, Vladimir, Ryazan, Vorkuta and Chelyabinsk. They were joined by a militia of six hundred people fielded by reading rooms.

  Mokhova flung almost three thousand mums into the battle. She herself wisely did not take part in the fighting. The army was commanded by Polina Gorn.

  LIBRARIES AND READING ROOMS

  A READING ROOM was the name given to a small group organized round some particular Book—of Joy, Memory or, more rarely, Endurance.

  The entire Gromov world had begun with small communities like this. When a solitary individual who had penetrated the mystery of a Book turned up, a reading room would form around him, including those comrades whom he had decided to take into his confidence. If someone with a family became a member of a reading room, then soon his nearest and dearest became members too, and that was tolerated indulgently. But every piece of string comes to an end, and at a certain stage the community stopped expanding.

  A reading room was the foundation or basis on which, in time, a library could spring up. The opposite also occurred. Following an armed clash a small clan might be reduced to a reading room.

  All kinds of people were taken in, from all age groups and all professions. Every reader was free, both morally and—more importantly—financially. This was an advantage that reading rooms had over libraries, where people donated part of their income, the so-called “membership fee”, to fund the search for Books and support the administrative structures.

  Just like a library, a reading room had a leader, who was known as the librarian. He or she was the owner of the Book or the person to whom the reading room had entrusted it. Reading rooms did not become involved in the search for Books; people were satisfied with what they had and honestly waited their turn to use it.

  At first there were no points of intersection between the libraries and the reading rooms, although they knew about each other. Later the libraries built up their strength and accumulated more Books. The existence of competitors was incompatible with their totalitarian plans.

  Reading rooms were blackmailed and intimidated. Suggestions were made that they should voluntarily give up their Book, and they were promised a place in a libra
ry if they did so. Sometimes Books were expropriated. There was an official explanation for this blatant banditry: the reading rooms were declared a hotbed of copyists and the leaders of large libraries called for copying to be halted at any price.

  From out of a black void the “torch-bearers” appeared—hellhounds spawned by the will of the large clans. The torch-bearers attacked reading rooms, stole their books and burned them. These losses had practically no impact on the libraries, which had numerous spare copies in their depositories, but the wretched readers who had been deprived of their only Book were left with nowhere to go except into a library.

  Against the background of this contradictory situation Mokhova’s star rose high in the Gromov firmament. Following several successful raids on the depositories of influential libraries it became clear that a major battle was inevitable. An appropriate field for it was found in the north of Russia, beside the abandoned village of Neverbino.

  And then the members of several clans, including Lagudov’s and Shulga’s, appealed to the reading rooms for help in the struggle against Mokhova, promising them absolute immunity from all financial levies in the future. That was why so many volunteers assembled near Neverbino. They came from every corner of the country to bear arms and stand up for their own reading rooms and Books.

  THE BATTLE OF NEVERBINO

  THE COALITION’S DETACHMENTS were organized in a primitive fashion, after the example of the Russian forces at the Battle of Kulikovo Field. The individuals in its staff headquarters were remote from modern military tactics, but nonetheless—as became clear later—quite practical in their approach.

  The avant-garde of the formation consisted of the patrol and advance regiments, made up of reading rooms. Located behind them was a large regiment made up of brigades from six libraries, with its flanks protected by right-flank and left-flank regiments, each consisting of four combined brigades. Sheltering behind the large regiment was Shulga’s clan, which called itself the reserve regiment, and the ambush regiment stationed in a small stretch of forest nearby was the detachment from Lagudov’s clan, which also had only moderate claims to excellence as a fighting force.

  Books of Endurance were extracted from secret depositories. Special readers, gathering groups of fifty people around them, read through the Books, straining their voices as they rendered the listeners’ bodies insensible to wounds.

  The allusion to Kulikovo Field was reflected in the challenge to a duel issued to all comers by the crane driver Dankevich as she whirled her terrible hook round her head. No duel took place, however— no Peresvet could be found among the ranks of the libraries.

  Battle commenced at about two o’clock in the morning. Pumped full of strength, the “mums” moved in to attack the patrol and advance regiments. After suffering heavy losses, the reading-room militias pulled back.

  Polina Gorn issued orders from a low hill where she was surrounded by her guard. Seeing that the frontal attack had run out of momentum and was threatening to turn into a pointless, drawn-out battle, Gorn created an advantage of numbers on the flank by throwing six units of a hundred women against the left-flank regiment, which fifteen minutes later no longer existed, having been crushed by the hammers of former railway workers.

  Shulga’s reserve regiment, which was responsible for preventing outflanking movements, abandoned the left-hand regiment to its fate, swung round the right-hand regiment and made straight for the high ground where Gorn’s headquarters was located.

  The detachments led by the mighty Dankevich emerged at the rear of the combined forces, creating a genuine threat of encirclement. Lagudov’s ambush regiment struck at the rear of the mums who had broken through. The sudden introduction of fresh forces did not change the situation significantly. What saved the coalition was the passage of time. The effect of the Book of Strength had partially worn off—it had been read to the old women in advance, to provide the strength required for the forced march from the railway line to Neverbino.

  Gorn’s bodyguards perished in the cruel skirmish. An old woman who looked very much like Gorn was cornered by Shulga’s soldiers. She fought desperately until she suddenly weakened and Shulga, goaded on by the Book of Fury, split his opponent’s head open.

  The death of their general was the signal for mass flight by Mokhova’s army. Weakening as they ran, the old women were pursued like Mamai as far as the railway station. No more than a few dozen survived.

  Rumours circulated that Gorn herself did survive, that it was her double who had been killed, that Gorn and two dozen of her closest comrades in arms who had retained their agility managed to hide and several days later reached their citadel, the nursing home. But it was preferred not to broadcast this information widely.

  Many clamoured that Mokhova should be polished off in her lair and the Home should be taken by storm, otherwise the hydra would sprout more grey-haired heads, but this suggestion was stifled with the argument that Mokhova was finished anyway and “her fangs had been drawn”: a scorched fragment of the Book of Strength was found at the site of Gorn’s headquarters—it was believed that Gorn, sensing defeat, had destroyed this unique copy, probably the only one still in existence.

  The price of victory was great. The combined forces had lost about a thousand men in the battle and hundreds had been wounded or maimed. Needless to say, the reading rooms had lost most of all.

  The bodies of the dead were carried to a deep ravine, covered with caustic fertilizer to accelerate decomposition, and earth was scattered over everything, so that no pit remained. Seeds of common burdock and other fast-growing weeds were also thrown into the earth. In spring, burdock of gigantic size sprouted across the ravine, concealing for ever the bodies of those who had fallen at Neverbino.

  On their way home, the reading-room militiamen and even the leaders of libraries that had taken a mauling spoke bitterly, in half whispers, saying the Neverbino bloodbath had been deliberately planned by Mokhova’s, Lagudov’s and Shulga’s analysts in order to cut back the exorbitantly swollen numbers of people who knew about Gromov. The battle had reduced that world by a quarter.

  At about the same time a new agency of power and administration was established—the Council of Libraries. Lagudov, having emerged from the battle with minimal losses for his clan, had more influence than ever, and he promoted the idea that only “natural librarians”—that is, those who had independently penetrated the essence of Gromov’s Books—should have the right to be the chairman of the council. And after the Battle of Neverbino, there were officially only two of those left—Lagudov and Shulga. The Krasnoyarsk librarian Smolich, Nilin from Ryazan and Avilov from Lipetsk had been killed.

  The council confirmed the official decision to grant the reading rooms financial immunity. A thorough census was carried out; reading rooms were normally named after the places where their members lived, or sometimes the name was derived from the surname of the librarian or founder.

  All the reading rooms, with the exception only of those who fought at Neverbino, undertook to pay the council a tax of ten per cent of members’ income. Naturally the proceeds were deliberately reduced by readers who concocted false documents. The council therefore toughened up the rules and replaced the moderate tithe with a unitary annual tax—a specific sum was set for every individual Book.

  At the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, it should be said that the council did not rest on its laurels at this stage and went on to repress the independent groups completely. The reading rooms were coerced into becoming branch lending libraries. Henceforth a Book only nominally belonged to a reading room—the true owner of the Book was the council, which rented it out.

  A table of fines was also drawn up. Any reading room that was heavily fined twice was disbanded in the name of the council and its Book was subject to confiscation. Non-compliance was punished with great severity.

  Offences included, for instance, the presence of a copyist among a reading room’s members, excessive garrulity on the part of any
reader, theft and concealment of a newly found Book—any action capable of posing a threat to the conspiratorial secrecy of the Gromov universe.

  Unfortunately the edict of immunity was systematically violated, if only because by no means every library accepted its legality—those who had not taken part in the Battle of Neverbino, for instance. These clans, who were not members of the council, acted crudely and cruelly, like all aggressors. Even if a reading room successfully defended its Book in battle, it lost so much blood in the process that it became easy prey for looters or other predatory clans.

  Artfully engineered provocations also took place. It was enough to discredit an undesirable reading room twice for the council to take an immediate decision to disband it. For situations like this several programmes of social rehabilitation were developed. It was considered a great stroke of luck if the readers were all registered with the nearest library, without being broken up—and the concept of —near” was distinctly relative: quite often people had to travel more than a hundred kilometres to a Book. Membership dues and the cost of travel together took a heavy toll on readers’ pockets

  More often a different, tragic scenario was played out. Local or regional libraries refused to take all the strangers at once, arguing that they were already overfull. Preference was given to applicants who earned at least a minimally acceptable wage, out of which membership dues were then deducted. The readers with low incomes were scattered to any libraries where there were vacancies. We can imagine what an assignment to Irkutsk or Krasnoyarsk meant for someone who lived in Omsk. Many refused to make the move and joined the queues of “victims”. As a rule these broken people went to seed, becoming vicious and violent. It was from their numbers that the council formed its brigades of torch-bearers. These mercenaries willingly carried out even the very vilest of missions since, after all, the reward for the job was a Book.