'How's your neck?'

Bobby Prescott felt a flash of irritation. He'd forgotten about the wound. It was only a small cut, but now that the little man had reminded him about it, it began to sting like a b.i.t.c.h. He licked his fingers and rubbed saliva into the wound. 'It'll heal clean,' said Bobby Prescott. 'Why did they take off like that? The kids. The Crows. They just up and left when you asked them to.'

'That's because I'm paying them,' said the Doctor.

'Paying them?' Bobby Prescott looked at the blood on his fingers. He wiped it off on his leather jacket.

'To find you and pursue you. To bring you here. You see, I wanted to talk with you,' said the Doctor.

The Doctor?

Bobby Prescott felt a cold feeling beginning low down on his spine and moving up.

'They weren't supposed to hurt you,' the Doctor was saying.

Bobby Prescott recognized the symptoms of fear starting. He fought back immediately and brutally. He blocked the fear before it started. It was easy. It was nothing compared to the knife going into his throat on the steps. Feeling the fear wither away like that gave Bobby Prescott his confidence back. His mind was clear and strong. The little man was just a little man. He wasn't called the Doctor. That was just a random thought that had pa.s.sed through Bobby Prescott's mind. But Bobby Prescott had firm control over his own mind. He banished the random thought.

'I'm sorry they went that far with the knife,' said the Doctor. Not the Doctor. The little man. He was shrugging. 'That's the problem with plans. They tend to take on a life of their own. People tend to get hurt.'

But Bobby Prescott wasn't listening. They were in the main hall of the library now. This was where the shelves of fiction had once stood. The smell was strongest here. The rich, spicy mustiness. The smell of books, old books, library books. Books that had gone through a thousand hands. Their pages stained and dirty.

But the stains and the dirt didn't obscure the words. All those words on all those pages. Pages you could turn on a rooftop, on a bench by a road, waiting at night under a streetlight. Words that carried you into a new world, away from the cold on a rooftop, waiting there by the satellite dishes while Uncle Max finished up downstairs in the bedrooms. And every different book was a different world. You could have a stack of them in your room, piled in the corner out of Uncle Max's way. Books with red or green covers, some with pictures on them, 'dust jackets' the ladies in the library the librarians librarians called them, protected by library plastic until some moron tore them off to decorate a wall, or just out of malice, the idiot need to destroy. called them, protected by library plastic until some moron tore them off to decorate a wall, or just out of malice, the idiot need to destroy.

A stack of different books, all waiting to be read, each one with its own world you could escape into. Escape from Uncle Max and the floors you had to clean for him and the funny colour of the water you had to pour away afterwards, every time.

Each book an escape route. You'd sit on your mattress in your bedroom and take a book off the pile, and open it, and the magic would begin, the escape would begin. And it always began with that smell, coming up at you from the book, that comforting musty smell.

The smell that was all around Bobby Prescott now. But deeper and stronger and different.

Stronger because there were thousands of books all around him now, lying open where they fell, the dampness making the smell stronger. It was a friendly smell. But the dampness that swelled the pages was obliterating the words. Wiping them out the way the stains of a million hands never could.

Different because Bobby Prescott still believed he could smell the charred smell, the choking smell. The book burning smell.

'You want to talk to me?' said Bobby Prescott softly, looking at the small man. They stood in one of the avenues formed when the tall bookshelves were overturned, smashing into each other with the anvil noise of the colliding metal shelfframes. Bobby Prescott remembered the thunder as the books tumbled and spilled. Raining down bruisingly hard on his head and chest as he ran through the collapsing aisles. It was like being in a city of book buildings while it was toppling in an earthquake. Now they stood in the dark quiet aftermath, soaked with years of rain drainage from the torn roof. There were low hills of books all around them, the tilted empty skeletons of the shelves leaning against the high library windows, the colourless moonlight and the candycoloured mall neon coming through behind them.

The small man had walked deeper into the maze of tilted shelves and piled books. He was a small figure already, moving away in the streaks of neon and moonlight in the big dim s.p.a.ce of the library. 'Let's talk,' said Bobby Prescott, following him, moving fast, catching up.

He was about an arm's length away from the Doctor when the Doctor the small man turned and said, 'Destruction of the temples. Time for a new G.o.d. They always do this. The killing and the violence. It seems to be a necessary part of the process for them. Tell me '

The little man swung around and stared up at Bobby Prescott. You couldn't see the man's eyes in the darkness, just the pale shape of his face and dark shadows under the brows. 'Don't you sense any of that?' said the little man. 'Don't you feel it around you in places like this?' He moved impatiently away from where Bobby Prescott was standing, further into the dark aisles. They were in the centre of the library floor now. The centre of the building had been designed like a broad well shaft. You could look down from a circular railing to the bas.e.m.e.nt level, or up at circular balconies diminishing with distance on each of the floors above. A bright oblong of moonlight came through the burst skylight at the top of the shaft, lighting up a section of wall. On the chalk white surface you could see a bold dark scrawl of spraypainted graffiti, stretching for metres above the wreckage of the library: What's the point? We can't read anyway.

'That was sprayed up there during the riots,' said Bobby Prescott. 'When this place finally got it. Like the library at Alexandria. You heard of that?'

'Yes,' said the man.

'They burned that one, too. But look up there. Notice anything?'

The little man stood waiting, silently staring up above the dark well of the library bas.e.m.e.nt. Bobby Prescott couldn't tell if he was listening or not.

'Whoever sprayed that up there got the punctuation absolutely right,' said Bobby Prescott. 'They put the apostrophes where they're supposed to go. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d could write. And that means they could read. They understood what all this meant.'

Bobby Prescott turned to one of the piles that peaked halfway to the ceiling and sloped down into scattered volumes, individual books, one almost touching his foot. He picked it up.

'They knew what it meant. And they still helped destroy it.' Bobby Prescott's voice was thick with emotion. He could hear himself getting louder. 'So of course I know what you mean.' He was shouting now and at last the little man was turning around, looking at him, paying attention to him. 'You mean this place is like a church,' said Bobby Prescott, letting his voice go quiet again. 'And now the church is dead because the religion is dead.' He let the book drop out of his hand. He'd checked. It was quite unsalvageable. 'It was killed by people who didn't believe in G.o.d.'

'Do you believe in G.o.ds, Bobby?'

'My G.o.d was books.' Bobby closed in on the little man. 'Books I could escape into. Books that were doorways into other worlds for me. You know about those kind of doorways?'

'Yes.'

'Like going through that wardrobe into Narnia, right? I started reading those books when I was four. I learned fast. They said I was something special. The librarians. They taught me in their own time. In their lunch hours. That was one of the first books. I went through that wardrobe. I found the lion and the witch.'

Bobby Prescott leaned in close to the Doctor, his breath warm on the Doctor's face.

'I rode on the quest for the rings of power. I went out into the desert with Kit and Tunner and Port. I've stayed in a house in England called Howard's End. It had a roof that kept the rain off my head. Even when there wasn't a real roof and the real rain was soaking me to the skin. Do you understand?'

The Doctor nodded.

'I've been down every corridor in Gormenghast. I've been on the road with Dean Moriarty. I waited for a quiet American called Pyle in the rue Catinat in Saigon. I was with Dillon and the kid when they killed Eddie Coyle after the hockey game. I went up to the castle with K. There was snow coming down on us.'

Bobby Prescott looked up at the ruined library rising around him, beyond the balconies of the dark building well. A million books, burned, torn, destroyed. The survivors dying now. Books died just like people. They died when they finally lost a critical amount of information. Pages torn out or obliterated by the dirty rainwater. When a book ceased to be legible, when it lost so much information that its ideas could no longer be transmitted, the book died. Bobby Prescott felt like a child again, sad and alone, standing in the silent heart of a ma.s.s graveyard.

He looked at the ruined books all around him. He'd rescued as many as he could, carrying bags of books home right under the noses of the librarians. They'd known. They'd switched off the alarm system when he went through. They knew the trouble was coming. Everybody did.

Bobby Prescott had been there the day the balloon went up, the day the rioting began.

One of the pitifully few. A thin line standing against the hordes. Illiterate and literacyhating, streaming in through the gates. Shouting in their eagerness to kill. And it wasn't even people they wanted to kill. It was the books and the ideas in them. Ideas that could live almost forever if the books were cherished.

The front wave of rioters had hit them and Bobby Prescott had begun to swing his baseball bat. He had felt a wild joy matched at no other time in his young life. He had always dreamed of smashing these ignorant computerblunted faces. Now they were being offered to him.

When he stopped swinging, it was only because the bat had been reduced to a useless stump of soggy wood.

They'd beaten the first wave of attackers as far back as the library gates. If they'd been able to shut the gates at that point things might have turned out differently. But the kids from the high school had brought steel rods with them and jammed the gate mechanism forever, just as the crash barrier began to grind shut. Bobby Prescott had almost lost a hand trying to pull one of those bars out.

Sometimes he could still feel the wound, healed but still there, deep in his hand, down among the bones. He felt it now. Bobby Prescott stood in the graveyard silence and felt that ache. It was the ache of an old defeat. There was hot air at the base of his throat. His anger made it hard to breathe. The little man had moved again. He stood looking over the circular balcony, down towards the bas.e.m.e.nt well of the library. He was holding something Bobby Prescott couldn't see.

'I tried to stop them,' said Bobby Prescott. He was moving towards the little man, moving quietly. 'I tried to stop them but I didn't manage it.' The little man turned and Bobby Prescott could see what he was holding now a pad of paper, the top sheet blank and white in the moonlight. Out of his pocket he took a pencil and he began writing on the pad. Bobby Prescott hesitated, watching him. No, he wasn't writing. The motions of his hand were too fast and sweeping. He was drawing something.

'Bobby Prescott, why were you here?' asked the little man.

'When the riots were on?' said Bobby Prescott. 'I was here because I wanted to save the books.'

'How did you intend to do that?'

'Stopping the kids.'

'Have you stopped a lot of kids?'

'They're little animals. The only time they read a word is when it's on some computer screen. That's the way I imagine them. In their safe little homes. In their warm little bedrooms with the computers their mom and dad bought for them. They've got the light from the screen on their faces and their little lips are moving, as they struggle to get through a few words and on to the next game.' Bobby Prescott sighed. 'But that's not really a realistic image. Most of them can't even read that much. They have to have pictures on their screens.'

'Why do you kill them, do you suppose, Bobby Prescott?'

'Who cares?'

'Could it just be because they're different?'

Bobby Prescott was tired of listening to the man. He began to look around for something suitably long and heavy. Or maybe he'd just use his hands. He didn't hurry as he followed the little man around the circular balcony, the man concentrating on his sketch.

'You want to know who's different?' said Bobby Prescott. 'I'm different. Out on the steps with those kids? They were fixing to kill me.'

'I know. I'm sorry about that. They got a little carried away.'

'They had the knife already going into my throat. I should have lost it right about then. You ever seen anybody die?'

The small man frowned. 'Yes.'

'I don't mean die in bed when they're sixty. I mean die in the street when they're young and think they're going to live forever. Kids always think they're going to live forever.' Bobby Prescott smiled. 'I've seen quite a few like that. And they always beg or scream or just go out of their minds. They all totally lose it in some way. But not me. Not on those steps. I felt it coming. Fear. And I stopped it. You're d.a.m.ned right I'm different. I'm strong. I am the iron that has been strengthened in the fire. That was my childhood, man.'

Now the little man looked up from his sketching. He looked into Bobby Prescott's face.

'My childhood,' said Bobby Prescott softly. 'That was the fire, all right. You wouldn't want to know about my childhood.'

'No,' agreed the little man. It was too dark to see any expression on his face.

'But that was the fire. And I was forged in the fire. It only made me stronger. I am privileged because I am strong. I am special because I am strong. You are d.a.m.ned right I'm different.' He was close to the little man now. Right on top of him. 'I can control my fear. It's just an enemy and I overcome it.' The little man seemed to have stopped sketching. He was still concentrating on the pad of paper, the drawing he'd just made. He wasn't looking up, but Bobby Prescott didn't mind. He'd do it to him anyway. 'I am not afraid,' said Bobby Prescott, closing in. 'If you're afraid you're an animal. And it's okay to kill animals.'

'Bobby Prescott, do I look afraid?' said the Doctor. He looked up. And then he showed Bobby Prescott his drawing.

And then the fear hit Bobby Prescott like a freight train.

'That's all.'

Bobby Prescott wasn't sure that the Doctor had Heard him. He cleared his throat and said it again. 'That's all.'

The moon was gone now, only the streetlight and the mall neon coming through the library windows. They were by the front desk of the library again, near the main entrance. Bobby Prescott was sitting crosslegged on the floor, keeping some distance away from the Doctor. As far away as he could, and still make himself heard. 'Is that all you wanted to know? Can I go now, man?'

The little man was silhouetted in the window light, sitting perched on the ruined Xerox machine in the centre of the big foyer. The librarians had tried to drag it across the floor of the entrance hall and barricade the main doorway with it. They'd got about halfway.

Bobby Prescott stood up and moved around stretching his legs. He had almost stopped shaking now. Talking to the little man had allowed Bobby Prescott to calm down a bit, get himself back together a bit. He walked to ease the cramp in his legs and to feel some sense of control over himself again. He didn't walk towards the small man, though. He looked out the front window, up at the sky. He was trying to see the moon, trying to work out what the time was.

How long had they been talking? His voice was hoa.r.s.e. He cleared his throat and stared through the window, looking down from the clouds. Then he saw McCray's drugstore across the street and the sight of it started him shaking again.

He had trouble walking back to the long library desk and trouble sitting down in front of it again. He looked away from the windows.

The little man was still sitting on the Xerox machine, still saying nothing, but making notes.

'Come on, let me go, man,' said Bobby Prescott, and now his voice was shaking, too. 'That's all I know. They took it away a month ago. Out of the country. I last heard that they had it on this island in Turkey. They're guarding it. They've got a lot of weaponry.'

'I see,' said the Doctor, and stopped writing. He had been making notes all the time Bobby Prescott had been talking. Occasionally he'd asked a question, but not often.

'But that's not the thing to worry about. It's what they got, what they're protecting. That's what you should be worrying about.'

'But that's exactly what I'm after, Bobby.'

'What do you mean, after?' Bobby Prescott didn't like the sound of his own voice. It was so hoa.r.s.e it was getting a kind of whiny sound to it.

'I want it.'

'What would anyone want with that?' said Bobby Prescott. He couldn't help it. The whiny note in his voice was getting worse. It was a familiar kind of sound. He'd heard it from enough kids, the gameboys and the bicycle gangers. After they were cornered and while they were still trying to sound tough.

'Maybe I'd like it for my toybox,' said the Doctor. He put his pen away and carefully tore the pages off his notepad and put them in the black envelope he was carrying. He was off the Xerox machine, jumping down and striding across the floor. The movement was so fast and unexpected that Bobby Prescott flinched, jerking back. The Doctor was right on top of him. Standing over him now. Bobby Prescott scooted back, dragging his a.s.s back across the cold library floor. He crashed into the library checkout desks, snapping his head back on to a steel hand rail. He blinked with pain. When he opened his eyes the Doctor was bent down over him, leaning close. He was holding the black envelope, He licked it and sealed it. Then he smiled at Bobby through thin uneven teeth.

Then he moved away, deeper into the library shadows.

When the little man was out of sight Bobby Prescott climbed to his feet. The muscles in his arms and legs trembled. He had to do something. He was shaking himself to pieces. He'd lost control. For years he'd confronted his fear, faced it and defeated it and sent it away.

But now he knew it hadn't gone far.

Bobby Prescott was moving towards the front windows of the library. Every step was an effort of will. Through those windows he would be able to see the mall on the other side of the street.

He'd be able to see McCray's.

If he could just get to the window and force himself to look at it, look his fear in the face, that would be a starting point. If he looked at McCray's drugstore the memories would come back. He would have to remember how Sally and Eliot and Lyndon had died. But he would be inviting the memory. Confronting the fear on his own terms.

It would be a first act of will. Like the first small stone as you began to build a wall.

But he would build that wall. And the wall would keep the fear out. Then he would walk out of this library.

The muscles in his legs began to steady. The light from the window was on his face now. Bobby Prescott wasn't defeated yet.

He looked out the window, but he didn't see McCray's drugstore.

Instead he saw the bicycles moving back and forth outside the library.

Bicycles with kids on them. Maybe twenty or thirty kids. Bobby Prescott licked his lips. There were more coming in through the library gates, in groups of twos and threes. More arriving all the time. The ones nearest the building were parking their bikes and climbing off. Moving towards the front steps. Bobby Prescott turned back in to the main hall of the library and shouted into the shadows.

'You hired them, right?' His voice echoed through the dark building. 'You hired them,' yelled Bobby Prescott. 'So you can send them away again, can't you?' He stood by the windows, legs shaking again, worse than ever, facing back into the heart of the library. He strained his ears, listening for the little man.

Silence. Silence in the deep shadows of the aisles, silence at the main desk and on the balconies and around the tumbled magazine racks.

Then a small sound.

Not coming from inside. Coming from outside.

Feet. Walking. A lot of feet.