The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

People who wanted to stay here. Personally, I want a glass coffin like Sleeping Beauty.”

“That’s even creepier.”

“Different strokes for different folks!” Alva lowered her flashlight and trotted on.

After a few yards, wooden built-in bookshelves began appearing along the lower walls, crammed with leather-bound books and rolled-up scrolls, most of them looking much the worse for wear. “Skulls and books,” Nick said. “Nice.”

“Clear eyes, full hearts.”

“You’re sick.”

“Probably.” Alva stopped and shone the flashlight on another door. It was massive and perfectly round. It looked as if it were a cross-section of a single, enormous tree, and indeed, now Nick could see the hundreds of diminishing rings. In the very center was a big, black door knocker, its black patina rubbed to shiny brass where generations of hands had grasped it.

Alva banged the knocker against the wood three times, but nothing happened.

“Damn it.” She banged it again, more loudly. Nothing.

“Peter is supposed to be on duty,” she said. “But I’m sure she’s off somewhere, bumming cigarettes or boring someone with her latest obsession.”

“Peter is a woman?”

“Hopefully someday,” Alva said. “She’s fifteen, going on nine.” She lifted the knocker a third time and set up a continuous banging for at least thirty seconds.

Finally they heard the sound of a heavy piece of wood being lifted away from the door on the other side, and a series of muffled curses, then the door began to swing inward silently.

An older, South Asian woman in jeans and a ratty Aran sweater stood there, one fist firmly planted on a hip, the other lifting a hurricane lamp.

“Hello, Archana,” Alva said. “Sorry to trouble you. It’s just me.”

Archana turned without a word and marched away, her light disappearing as she turned left.

“She’s mad at Peter, not at us,” Alva said blithely. “Will you help me get this thing closed again?”

Nick lifted the heavy wooden board and slotted it into place. “Not very advanced technology,” he said, remembering the gleaming metal door of Bertrand Penture’s inner sanctum. “The Guild has a much fancier system for keeping out intruders.”

“Yes, well, they like to feel important. Now then. Follow me.”

The corridor now ran at a slant, deeper under the earth, and it was fully lined with shelves to about chest level, and then with glass-fronted cabinets, topped with the ubiquitous bones. The shelves and cabinets bulged with books and papers, interspersed with musical instruments, rusty clockworks, toys, piles of empty picture frames, dusty bottles, swords, a kettle, and here and there a misplaced femur. A corridor branched off to the left, which Alva ignored, then quickly another went to the right. Alva flicked a switch and, down the length of the corridor, eight or ten dim electric lightbulbs flickered to life.

“Electricity? How is that possible?”

“Generator,” Alva said, switching off her flashlight. “It’s only strong enough to light a few bulbs at a time, so hopefully no one will turn a switch on elsewhere.” This corridor was like the others, arched, with messy shelves and cabinets, but these were interspersed with low wooden doorways, five on each side. “These are our offices,” Alva said. “Everyone who is located primarily in this time gets one. Mine is the third on the right. But I barely use it. In fact, it’s full of Peter’s spillover right now and I might just let her keep it.”

“There are only ten of you?”

“Yes, give or take. Others travel through. We can’t really support more than ten right now in this location. But we’re hoping to expand. We have our eyes on a couple of properties. . . .” She reached to turn the light off, but they went out with a pop before her fingers touched the switch. “Crap.” She turned her flashlight back on. “I’m not even in favor of the generator. It’s Archana’s pet project. But it’s funny how you’ll use things if they’re there.”

Nick’s head was reeling. “What is this place? What are you all doing here?”

Alva held the flashlight under her chin, turning her face into a ghoulish parody of her beautiful features. “Destroying the future,” she said in sepulchral tones. “Ruining it for everyone!”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “So they told me.”

“I bet they did. Come along.” Alva sped away like the White Rabbit, trotting past the ubiquitous shelving. “These all lead into libraries,” she said, flinging a hand toward a series of low, wooden doors on the right.

“Libraries? So what are all the books along the corridors?”

“Overflow. None of it’s really well organized, to be honest—even in the libraries. We haven’t had an archivist in a generation or two. Ah.” She pointed to a door with a thread of electric light spilling out from underneath. “That’s Archana’s lab,” she said. “If she was in a better mood I’d introduce you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea just now.”

“How can she bear to work in a hole in the ground?”

“Don’t assume that because this is a hole, it is damp and cold like a grave! Archana’s lab is warm and full of light.”

“Okay, but . . . this is a graveyard. I’m just saying.”

“Technicalities!”

They passed by.

“All right, here we are. The transporter.” Alva touched the handle of a square door. “Someone dubbed it the transporter because this is where we enter and leave from other times. It’s like in Star Wars, you know. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’”

“That’s Star Trek, not Star Wars.”

“Oh, they’re different? Someone watched a lot of TV in Chile.”

“It was practically all they had us do.”

Alva sighed. “Lucky. I adore TV. But I jumped to 1790. I was illiterate, I only spoke Swedish, and all I knew how to do was tote water and grow beets and pray. The Guild locked me up in the most dreary castle in Scotland with a redheaded stepchild from Azerbaijan and a sex fiend from Alsace-Lorraine. I learned to read with the New England Primer, which is enough to drive anyone mad, and then advanced to an endless course of David Hume. . . . But, enough of that.” She threw open the door to the transporter. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Nick stepped inside.