Mara could recite the first page of any of eight million books. She could not tell the driver where she had put crate seventeen.
The driver, who had a schedule and a bad knee, leaned on his handcart. “Is it a large crate?”
“The same size as all the others.”
“That narrows it to sixteen.”
“Seventeen, if I find it.”
Behind him, the library smelled of dust and fresh tape. Tomorrow the roofers would strip the old wing. Its books had to leave today. The regional storehouse had allocated the library forty crate spaces until January; all the neighboring branches were sending their leaking roofs’ contents there too. The truck could return for another load, but it could not enlarge the bay.
The small room beside the entrance would stay open through the work. Mara had already filled its shelves with the books people had requested. Her desk was in the old magazine cupboard. She had tried sitting at it yesterday and found that she could open the drawer or cross her legs.
Most of the packing list had been easy. Her memory implant held scans of everything the old national network had collected before the years of outages. Its AI index could put a line of text on the inside of her vision faster than she could speak it. It did not record her day or tell her where she had left a crate. People had called her the Ascended Librarian when the implant was new. She had liked it for six months, then spent eleven years asking them to use her name.
Crate seventeen was supposed to hold the local shelf: thin books printed in town, handmade magazines, stapled stories, a cookbook compiled by the night market. The network had never scanned them. Mara had marked the entry local shelf, inspect by hand, allowed it one crate and gone on to things she could count. She remembered writing the number as though she had watched somebody pack the books. Now sixteen numbered crates stood in the loading room and the strip of yellow cloth meant for the seventeenth was nowhere.
“Can I take the first load?” the driver asked.
“Please.”
Her assistant Jae arrived with two mugs of tea and a roll of tape stuck to his elbow. He had worked at the library since he was twelve, first as a volunteer who hid in the comics corner, then as the person who knew which shelves would sag before they did it.
“The local stuff wasn’t sealed last night,” he said. “Pell was waiting for you to check it.”
“I told him it all went.”
“I know. Where?”
She showed him the list. His finger stopped at the single crate number.
“There were books behind the books, Mara. I put that on the packing slip.”
“Then the slip will tell us where they are.”
“It was on top of them.”
They checked the reading room, the stairwell and the cupboards beneath the local shelf. Mara opened one she had not opened in years. A jar of buttons fell out; she caught it against her chest, scattering three buttons across the floor. Jae picked them up. In the empty cupboard he found the corner of a packing label, torn through the word SORTING.
Mr. Pell had been hired for the move. He was new to the library and excellent at carrying heavy things. By the time Mara and Jae reached the sorting room, he had put the local books on a pallet marked DUPLICATES—RETURN FOR PULP. The yellow cloth lay beneath it, dragged loose by a wheel.
“No offence,” he said when Mara objected, “but you have four copies of one book. I counted.”
He held up a green pamphlet called The Night Market Sings. Its cover had been printed on a machine that ran out of green ink halfway through the job.
“Four copies,” Mara said. “Four different years. The children wrote new verses each time.”
“I didn’t open them. The title was the same.”
“Neither did I, when I made the list.”
They cut the pallet wrap. Behind the pamphlets were nine bundles of handmade magazines and two flat boxes of loose work that had been stored beneath the shelf. Jae’s slip lay on top. It said three crates if kept flat. Below that was a box marked Not in storage allocation—surplus. Mara had initialed it while going through a stack of slips last night.
Pell showed her where he had tried to fit the first box into crate seventeen. One of the long pages was bent. He hadn’t forced it farther.
“Thank you,” she said. He looked surprised.
The driver returned for his second load. With the local work properly packed, they had forty-two crates.
“Two won’t go into storage,” he said. “If you want them on the book dealer’s load, put them by that door. He comes at noon.”
The dealer was taking the library’s agreed discards. Mara had signed the sale two weeks ago. He bought by the box and sent what he couldn’t sell for pulp. Once he took a book, it was no longer theirs to call back.
She looked at the two travel-novel crates beside his door. She had put them there to keep them out of the driver’s way. There were three reading-group sets of the same novel, six large-print copies in each set: one set in the temporary room, two packed for storage. The bindings were ordinary. Every word was in her implant.
“Those can stay out,” she said.
Jae didn’t move. “For the dealer?”
“No. We could lend them.”
“To the groups?”
She had arranged the sets herself, finding matching editions over seven years. The two groups whose books were boxed would pause during the roof work and begin again in January. Mara had already made a sign with the date. She liked those meetings: six people following the same page, somebody always objecting to the hero’s conduct.
“I could ask Rosa to take a set,” she said. “She was disappointed about the break.”
“Ask her. Don’t put her down yet.”
Rosa answered on the third attempt. A machine clattered behind her. Mara explained the missing storage spaces and asked whether the group could keep its books until January.
“Each at our own house?”
“If that works.”
“It doesn’t work for two of us. I can keep those copies. But if we’re carrying on, we need somewhere to meet. You said the room would be closed.”
“The small room will be open.”
“Can we have it?”
Mara looked at the calendar. She had assigned herself that afternoon for catalogue work. It was the only long stretch without visitors.
“You can have Thursdays.”
“And who lets us in?”
“I will.”
Rosa told her to mark the two extra books in Rosa’s name. She would collect the set before noon. The other organizer could be called for the remaining six. “She won’t answer until her break,” Rosa said. “At eleven. Don’t leave her six messages.”
Mara wrote down what she had agreed to, including the Thursday hours. The January sign would have to wait until she knew what both groups wanted to do.
Jae looked back toward the sorting room. “There’s something I want you to see.”
He brought her one of the flat boxes. On top was an eight-page story by Estelle Quill. A fishing boat argued with a lighthouse about who got to call themselves useful. The boat’s words grew smaller whenever it moved farther offshore. Two pages unfolded sideways.
“My aunt,” Jae said. “She wrote it when the ferry stopped running.”
“Did she write anything else?”
“A letter to the ferry company. Much funnier. They didn’t reply.”
Mara had met his aunt. She made curtains and refused to give measurements in anything but inches. The implant showed nothing when Mara thought Estelle Quill.
“Is this the only copy?”
“No. There are three. The endings are different. She used to ask people which one they wanted.”
“Which did you choose?”
“The one where the boat goes somewhere else.” He unfolded the last page carefully. “This isn’t it.”
Mara set the story on her desk. She could photograph the pages for her catalogue, but she could not make the implant absorb a new book; its old collection had been loaded at the clinic. The camera might preserve the words. It would not keep the folds from tearing while nobody decided what to do with them.
“Help me list all three,” she said.
“The second group might say no,” Jae said.
“Then the books stay on my desk until we find somewhere.”
He was holding the bent page flat beneath his palm.
“I can work at the return counter,” she said. “I made the list.”
They had until noon. Mara took the pamphlets; Jae took the handmade magazines and loose work. Pell found clean packing board. When Mara wrote one known copy, Jae corrected her, and when he called two bundles identical, she found a different date inside the second cover.
At eleven Mara called the second organizer. Her group wanted to keep the books too, but she couldn’t leave work to collect them. She would hold two copies for readers who were away. Mara wrote down their names and promised to deliver the set after closing. She had meant to finish the catalogue then. It could wait one more day.
By noon the local list was messy but legible. The driver counted forty crates. Rosa arrived with a shopping trolley and checked six books out. When Mara mentioned January, she shook her head.
“We’ll decide what to read next when we finish this one.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t have to wait for the roof.”
After the trucks left, Mara and Jae moved the last chairs into the temporary room. The other group’s six novels filled her desk. She put her papers on the return counter, where she would have to clear them each time somebody brought a book back.
“Does your aunt still have the other ending?” she asked.
“Probably. She keeps everything.”
“Would she read it here sometime?”
“I can ask.”
He went to fetch the kettle. Mara took down the January notice. Before she had finished writing the new Thursday hours, somebody knocked at the glass. She put the pen down and went to open the door.
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