Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (19 page)

The meeting was held in the late afternoon, after all the staff had gone except the head librarian. The usual shadowy figures which Marianne equated with porters or janitors were nowhere to be seen. She herself had considered hiding in the washroom or the tea room, in some empty room of a sub-basement, perhaps in a hidey hole hollowed out among the broken furniture, but the thought of being hidden while this strange, new activity went on was outweighed by her need to see and know what would occur. The juxtaposition of this meeting and the destruction of the book which she, Marianne, had put out the coal chute was significant to her. A book had been burned; a meeting had been called—both notable events and perhaps not unconnected. At last she decided to cache herself in a far front corner of the third mezzanine, a pocket of shadow above the light of the shaded chandelier which hung one level below this to wet the lobby floor with its weak, watery light. From this vantage point she could see the members as they arrived, see them obsequiously, even cravenly greeted by the head librarian. The chairman arrived last of all, and Marianne heard the head librarian say, "Good evening, Madame Delubovoska..."

The drawling voice which answered filled the lobby, as-cended to the green skylight far above, moved inexorably outward from the place of utterance to the balcony edges, thrust through the banisters to flow into the aisles of books, soaking each volume in turn so that the very bindings became redolent with that sound, not echoing but vibrating nonetheless in a reverberating hum larger than the building itself, a seeking pressure which left no corner unexplored. The words did not matter, could not be heard. The voice mattered, for it took possession of all it touched, penetrated and amalgamated into itself all that it reached.

Marianne saw the voice, saw the shudder of it go forth through the structure, a tremorous wave as in a sheet shaken by the wind, the returning vibration trembling through the coiled railings. She felt the shudder in the same instant she felt Mr.

Grassi's card begin to burn upon her shoulder with a pervasive heat which covered her and radiated from her. Her hand lay upon the railing; she felt the lash as the brazen circlets uncoiled to reveal flat, triangular serpents' heads, mouths gaping with fangs extended, striking from among the knots of bronze acan-thus to shed venom like rain upon the stacks below. One serpent struck a hands width from her hand, and on the lobby floor beneath she could see the serpents gliding in their tangled thousands.

The warmth which came from the card at her shoulder surrounded her, close as the blanket she had found, so that she looked out upon madness from the security of her own impen-etrable shell, as marvelous as it was unexpected. In all that lofty, ramified building there was only this one flaw in the fabric of the place, this one error in calculation of resonances, this one gap in the fatal architecture of the building to allow a small sphere of warm protection where the voice did not reach.

She saw the serpents strike and strike again while the woman walked with the head librarian through the doors of the Board Room, saw them coil again into those baroque tangles from which they had emerged, and knew that she had been reprieved, saved, by some intent she had known nothing of. Had that voice fallen on unprotected ears she would have been bitten, poisoned, dead.

When the members of the board had shut the great doors behind them, Marianne stayed where she was, not daring to move so much as an inch to the right or left, as sure of her safety in that one place as she had ever been sure of anything and as sure of her jeopardy if she moved as she was sure she had heard nemesis in the voice of Madame Delubovoska.

The meeting was not long, barely long enough to offer an excuse for the assembly to have met at all. When they had gone, truly gone, she came down from her perch at last, slowly, sniffing the air as for fire or some odorous beast. All was as usual to the eyes, to the nose, to the ears, but she knew that something had sought to smoke her out, and she knew that every previous threat had been multiplied a hundredfold; every previous shadow folded upon itself to a deeper opacity; every mystery stirred into menace and jelled. Only the remaining tingle of Mr. Grassi's card against her skin, only the sound of whisperers at the windows demanding books, books she had promised, brought her to full determination again.

From that time on, whenever books were mentioned, Marianne would say, "You said the New Storage Area, didn't you, Librarian?" Whenever she was within hearing range of any

'figure, she would say, "Those books should be taken to the New Storage Area." So it went, day by day by day. She had become so accustomed to failure that success almost eluded her. Almost she missed the assistant librarian's gesture toward the pile of books on her desk. Almost she missed the figure's quiet voice saying in the usual indirect manner, "These books belong in the New Storage Area."

Marianne gathered them up. There were six or seven, not a heavy load. She had kept the two books Mr. Grassi had asked for on her desk for days, for it was her intention to take these as well. If they were useful inside the library, they would be doubly useful outside, or so she reasoned. She added them to the pile and started for the door, sure someone would stop her.

The doorman ignored her. She leaned against the glassy slab, feeling it move reluctantly before her slight weight, stepped through onto the portico. She trembled as she went down the steps and around the comer to the garden, to the sign. The shrubbery was full of shadows and eyes. Those who had danced, cheered, whispered through high windows were there, just out of sight, watching her through the foliage with greedy intensity.

She dropped all the books but her two and fled back to the sidewalk, hearing them scrambling behind her. One of them came after her, not threatening, merely following; she could hear the scrape of shoes.

Against her skin was the card Mr. Grassi had given her.

Behind her in the library was only an enormous quiet. Behind her on the sidewalk the muffled steps came on, hesitant but determined, giving notice they would go wherever she chose to go.

SHE HAD BEEN so intent upon leaving the library that she had spent little time planning what to do once she had escaped.

She would, of course, find her way to Number Eight Manticore Street. She assumed that she would be able to ask directions, that conditions outside the library would be somehow different from conditions inside it. However, there was no one to ask.

The footsteps behind her, persistent though they were, did not indicate a visible person to whom a question could be directed.

She found herself walking through a neighborhood of narrow-fronted houses which stared nearsightedly at her over high stoops and scraps of entryway relieved only by tattered yews and spectral cypresses. An iron-fenced square centered this area, a stretch of weedy grass around a dilapidated bandstand where shreds of paint flickered like pennants in the light wind.

She went on walking. The houses gave way to massive, win-dowless warehouses, every wall plastered with colored posters, layer on layer, variously tattered, all showing human figures, the irregular tearing and layering offering odd, sometimes obscene juxtapositions of hands, breasts, groins, and mouths.

Occasionally a figure was untorn, almost whole, and all of these seemed to be fleeing from her as though she saw them from the back, though faces were sometimes turned over shoulders in expressions of terror. Soon the warehouses gave way to smaller buildings, dirt-fronted and surrounded by bits of rusty machinery, and then came open country stretching in a featureless plain to a distant wall which ran endlessly upon the horizon.

In all this way there had been no person, no living thing, no sound except for the hesitant steps far behind her. Sighing, she turned to her left for a few blocks before returning on a course parallel to her original one. She began to see shops on the side streets, some of them overhanging the street in the archaic manner of fairy tale illustrations. The buildings here were plastered with the same type of paper posters she had seen on the warehouses. A little farther on the shops invaded the street she walked upon; a news kiosk, papers arrayed on the counter, caught her eye. The headline displayed on the paper said LIBRARY BOARD DISCUSSES THEFT, VAN-DALISM. The story beneath told of a minor clerical employee who had taken and wantonly destroyed some books. Desecra-tion, said the paper. Citizens were alerted to apprehend, observe, notify.

Her panic could have been observable a block away, she knew. How had there been time to print anything about her escape? It had only just happened. They must have known her plans before she herself was aware of their fruition. Or—it was someone else, not herself that they sought. And how could they seek her? They had never seen her. The story named the person: Mildred Cobb.

Nonsense, thought Marianne. I am not Mildred Cobb. I am Marianne... Marianne... someone. Fear spoke within, self speaking to self. "How do you know? Could you prove this?

Would they believe you? You are carrying stolen books. You are wearing the library uniform."

There was no one around her, no one to see her, and yet she felt eyes running upon her skin like insect feet. A bookstore stood behind the kiosk, its interior a well of dusky emptiness.

When she entered it the bell gave a strangled jingle rapidly drowned in the oing, oing, oing of the spring on which it hung, a tinny whine. She crept to the rear of the store, pulled ancient books from shelves undisturbed for years, sneezing in the miasmic cloud which rose as she thrust the books and her collar into hiding. There. She could find them again, but no one else would. She started to leave, freezing hi place as heavy footsteps crossed the floor above her and a deep voice called.

"Somebody? You want something?"

She gasped, managed to choke out, "A map of the city?

You have a city map?"

"Behind the counter. You want it, leave the money." The footsteps crossed over her once more; the creak of springs capitalized the silence which followed, a statement of condition.

There was no Manticore Street on the map. When she returned to the street, she went on as she had been, noting the signpost at the corner so that she could find the place again, chanting it to herself as she went, "Billings and Twelfth. Billings and Twelfth." She had gone a dozen blocks more before she saw the first person. Then there were several, a woman with a dog, two men talking, then tens of them.

There was a grocery store, cartons of fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk, jicama and artichokes, thrilps and fresh fennel.

Here a pharmacy, an alchemist's, a coffee shop with a sign in the window, "Dishwasher wanted." Here a church from which solemn music oozed like rendered fat. Here an augurer's post, a dealer in leather goods, a feticheur. She moved among these places as though dreaming, surrounded by life and smells and sound, acutely aware of weariness and hunger. When this busy center ended hi vacant streets once more, she turned to walk through it again, stopping at the coffee shop. She had no money.

She needed food.

"Dishwasher?" she asked the stout woman with her sleeves rolled to her shoulders. "The job as dishwasher?"

"Last dishwasher I had the Inquisitors took two days ago.

The one before that drank. You drink?"

Marianne shook her head, confused. "Not—not what you mean, no. I'd drink something now, though. I haven't had anything all day."

"Ah. On Manticore Street, are you? Well, I've been there more than once. You got a place to stay? No. Well, bunk on the cot in the storeroom until you find a place. Get yourself some food in the kitchen, then you can start in on those pans."

The bowl of soup was half gone before the woman's words made sense to Marianne. "Manticore Street, are you?" Well, then, it was a known place. She thought of it as she ate, as she scrubbed pots, smelling the fatty soap smell of the sink, the good meat smell of the kitchen. When darkness came, the woman, Helen, shut the door and got ready to leave. Marianne asked, "Why do you say, 'on Manticore Street'? Is it a real street?"

"When you haven't got any money, that's being on Manticore Street," Helen said. "Because that's where the poorhouse and the debtor's prison are, on Twelfth Street, where the Manticore is. You're a stranger here, aren't you? No, don't tell me anything. I don't want to know. Just remember, don't ask questions of strangers, and don't stay on the streets any time on shut-down day. Do that, and you might last. God knows there's enough time to last in." She left the place with a bitter little laugh which sounded spare and edgy from so large a woman.

"On Twelfth Street, where the Manticore is," said Marianne to herself. She would find it soon, perhaps tomorrow. Her hands were sore from the hot water, her feet and back ached from bending over the sink. Still, she felt closer to freedom than she had ever felt in the library. There was even a blanket on the cot to hug her with the same scratchy protection the blue one had provided.

It was several days before she could look for Manticore Street. She did not want to go out in the library uniform, and it took a little time to earn the coins necessary to buy a bright scarf from the pushcart man, an old, warm cape from the used clothes woman, a pair of stockings to replace the ragged ones she had worn in the library. She watched the women in the place as they walked past. They were dressed as though in motley, bits and pieces of this and that, some carelessly, others with a touch of defiant flair. Still, it was apparent that any old thing would do well enough.