Hogfather - Terry Pratchett [76]
Book on book, shelf on shelf…and in every one, at the page of the ever-moving now, a scribble of handwriting following the narrative of every life…
The squeaking came round the corner.
It was issuing from what looked like a very rickety edifice, several stories high. It looked rather like a siege tower, open at the sides. At the base, between the wheels, was a pair of geared treadles which moved the whole thing.
Susan clung to the railing of the topmost platform.
“Can’t you hurry up?” she said. “We’re only at the Bi’s at the moment.”
“I’ve been pedaling for ages!” panted the oh god.
“Well, A is a very popular letter.”
Susan stared up at the shelves. A was for Anon, among other things. All those people who, for one reason or another, never officially got a name.
They tended to be short books.
“Ah…Bo…Bod…Bog…turn left…”
The library tower squeaked ponderously around the next corner.
“Ah, Bo…blast, the Bots are at least twenty shelves up.”
“Oh, how nice,” said the oh god grimly.
He heaved on the lever that moved the drive chain from one sprocket to another, and started to pedal again.
Very ponderously, the creaking tower began to telescope upward.
“Right, we’re there,” Susan shouted down, after a few minutes of slow rise. “Here’s…let’s see…Aabana Bottler…”
“I expect Violet will be a lot further,” said the oh god, trying out irony.
“Onward!”
Swaying a little, the tower headed down the Bs until:
“Stop!”
It rocked as the oh god kicked the brake block against a wheel.
“I think this is her,” said a voice from above. “Okay, you can lower away.”
A big wheel with ponderous lead weights on it spun slowly as the tower concertina’d back, creaking and grinding. Susan climbed down the last few feet.
“Everyone’s in here?” said the oh god, as Susan thumbed through the pages.
“Yes.”
“Even gods?”
“Anything that’s alive and self-aware,” said Susan, not looking up. “This is…odd. It looks as though she’s in some sort of…prison. Who’d want to lock up a tooth fairy?”
“Someone with very sensitive teeth?”
Susan flicked back a few pages. “It’s all…hoods over her head and people carrying her and so on. But…” she turned a page, “…it says the last job she did was on Banjo and…yes, she got the tooth…and then she felt as though someone was behind her and…there’s a ride on a cart…and the hood’s come off…and there’s a causeway…and…”
“All that’s in a book?”
“The autobiography. Everyone has one. It writes down your life as you go along.”
“I’ve got one?”
“I expect so.”
“Oh, dear. ‘Got up, was sick, wanted to die.’ Not a gripping read, really.”
Susan turned the page.
“A tower,” she said. “She’s in a tower. From what she saw, it was tall and white inside…but not outside? It didn’t look real. There were apple trees around it, but the trees, the trees didn’t look right. And a river, but that wasn’t right either. There were goldfish in it…but they were on top of the water.”
“Ah. Pollution,” said the oh god.
“I don’t think so. It says here she saw them swimming.”
“Swimming on top of the water?”
“That’s how she thinks she saw it.”
“Really? You don’t think she’d been eating any of that moldy cheese, do you?”
“And there was blue sky but…she must have got this wrong…it says here there was only blue sky above…”
“Yep. Best place for the sky,” said the oh god. “Sky underneath you, that probably means trouble.”
Susan flicked a page back and forth. “She means…sky overhead but not around the edges, I think. No sky on the horizon.”
“Excuse me,” said the oh god. “I’m not long in this world, I appreciate that, but I think you have to have sky on the horizon. That’s how you can tell it’s the horizon.”
A sense of familiarity was creeping up on Susan, but surreptitiously, dodging behind things whenever she tried to concentrate on it.
“I’ve seen this place,” she said, tapping the page. “If only she’d looked harder at the trees…She says they’ve got brown trunks and green leaves and it says here she thought they were odd. And…” She concentrated on the next paragraph. “Flowers. Growing in the grass. With big round petals.”
She stared