They were held within the all-consuming wall of wind. A sharp, metallic crack broke through the noise. A moment later, a steel wall, suspended from nowhere, snapped loudly into place. Another sharp metallic snap, and a second, then a third wall was summoned. A few seconds later six walls defined their space within the newly-formed cube. Contained within these walls, they were still spinning within the relentless wind of the Vortex. Gradually the Vortex loosened its grip. They found themselves standing, a little dizzy but remaining still, in a grand, 1920s style maroon elevator. They stood for what felt like quite some time.
Danny steadied himself against the mahogany wood-panels that formed the lift walls. The dimly lit elevator had room for twenty or thirty people comfortably. In one corner stood a fold-down velvet-lined chair. It was stowed in upright position awaiting the absentee lift attendant. The electric lights, two on each side wall, were of the pretty, curving 'Art-Deco' style. However, what was most puzzling was the entire absence of push-buttons.
There was no floor indicator, no doors, and no controls at all. Beyond the pull across, old-fashioned metal trellis was just dark-grey steel nothingness. There wasn’t a view, not even a trap door in the ceiling, no discernible exit. More minutes crawled past. Danny spoke out-loud to the elevator. Ben spoke to it telepathically. No response, no change, nothing. Claustrophobia and panic began to edge its way into the friend's minds.
The Orb, who was relieved to have her old non-feline form back, tried to float through the metal walls. She bounced right off. She put out a pod, for want of an arm, but it seemed to float a millimetre from the surface of the material. She wasn't happy at all.
‘I kick wall,’ said Golden Frog, confident he would quickly find a way out. He tried to kick the walls but found he couldn't contact the material either. He did succeed in looking foolish. His last kick slid upwards over his head and he bounced backwards.
Jodie was tired and didn't want to sit on the floor. She wandered over to the elevator attendant’s chair, pulled the maroon velvet seat out and sat down. The lights flickered. Then they flickered again. There was a sound like a very elderly engine clearing its throat.
‘I thought you'd never ask,’ said the elevator disinterestedly.
‘Hi,’ intoned Danny, who like the others was nearly lost for words.
‘We're pleased to meet you,’ added Danny.
‘Really? I'm just a machine you know. I've been in this form for nearly 500 years now and they have no intention of dismantling me. You couldn't vandalise me beyond all repair could you?’
‘It’s not really our scene. I hope you don't mind.’
‘I'm protected by all sorts of special fields anyway. It’s a killer. By the way. I can only follow the instructions of whosoever sticks their talented behind on that attendant’s chair,' said the elevator to Jodie. 'The human librarians probably think that’s funny. I don't like them much.’
‘I like being the lift attendant,’ smiled Jodie.
‘My waking time doesn't last long these days. So if you don't mind, can we just get on with it? I want to go back to this lovely dream I was having. Makes a change mind. I had a nightmare for 100 years once. No one even cared. I'm called Albert by the way. Anyhow, let’s get going.’
‘I don't know how. Sorry. You tell me please,’ Jodie hesitated, ‘Albert.’
‘It's not hard. You just use your psychokinetic powers to move the control orb down - that's the small blue glowing sphere that should now be hovering just below my ceiling. One sticks one's hand in it. I read your energy field patterns. Then off we go to the floor where your life-book is stored. Easy.’
‘I don't think I have any psychokinetic powers I'm afraid. Can Danny help me?’
‘Please. Be my guest.’
‘Albert, I think I've brought the control orb down now,’ said Danny.
‘Oh. Right-ho then,’ intoned Albert in his deep gravelly voice. He sounded a touch disappointed.
‘Well, when you’re ready just stick a body part into the control orb. You go ahead then.’
With some fear Jodie reached toward the small, slightly pulsating yellow orb. It hovered in front of her invitingly. Her fingers reached a hair's width from its surface and then she hesitated. Finally, she shut her eyes and plunged her hand right in. Nothing happened immediately. Slowly, a cool fluid sensation, not unpleasant, took over her hand. The fluid chill began to make its way toward her elbow. At the same time a light blue force field could be seen around Jodie’s arm.
‘Mhhm yes, I had my suspicions I must admit,’ Albert said thoughtfully. ‘Definitely a floor 11,212 kind of a girl. I guess that’s where you all belong.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Jodie.
‘Yes, floor 11,212. Quite a trip. A good let's see, 799.9 miles. Estimated journey time, going nice and slow, 11 seconds. Hang on to your hats, ladies, entities and gentlemen.’
Obviously a show-biz elevator thought Ben as he crouched down and braced himself for the worst.
The walls started spinning. Slowly at first, then blurring and patterning into a barely comprehensible speed. The hazy spinning walls seemed to be singing a soothing Latin samba. Yellow strobe-like colours accompanied the rhythmic humming. As the colours changed toward blue the temperature dropped. A still, ornately styled pointer cream-coloured hand appeared above the elevator door as if by magic. The pointer crawled sedately from left to right. Everything else around them was in a state of chaos.
Danny felt himself expand and contract. It was almost as if the whole elevator were one huge creature, crouching, ready to pounce.
‘Right then. Prepare for the leap folks,’ said Albert's deep gravel voice.
It was more a change in consciousness than an actual physical sensation. Albert kindly had opened a window, where previously there had been nothing but wall, for them to view the floors as they flashed by. The pointer hand began to move faster now. Danny felt as though he was as swift as light. As though he could move anywhere effortlessly. He was a gold-plated, super-smooth piece of lightning. The pointer hand above moved faster still. Then it jumped to the right. No sooner had they adjusted to the sensation of movement than they were there and all was calm again.
The pointer above the elevator doors now indicated the right hand side of its sweep. Ivory coloured flip-cards above the pointer had appeared faintly - as though they had been there all along. They read 11,212. The viewing window which had appeared from nowhere became wall once more. The colours returned to their previous muted mahogany hues. The walls had stopped spinning and the elevator was so still it was hard to imagine it ever moving. The only thing telling them their journey had been real was the reverberations of the speed in their muscles. The trellis folded in upon itself and the smooth doors opened.
Outside, in tall holographic letters, a display said, ‘Welcome to the Akashi Library, Humanoid Section, Floor 11,212. Sorry but no human-librarians are available to take your query right now but please feel free to have a wander around.’
‘They probably think that's funny too,’ said Albert. ‘Anyway, here you are. Have a nice day.’
Albert disappeared leaving only wooden veined wall behind. The travellers stood in awe of their new surroundings. The highly polished wooden floor stretched onwards far into the distance. The dark brown parké tiles formed moving patterns of spirals and sine waves. The movement was subtle. When looking at the floor directly the constant changes could not easily be seen.
The atmosphere was deliciously crisp, the feeling studious. Thousands of 30-foot high marble bookshelves stood, dotted here and there in an understated, yet definite pattern. The ceiling was at the height of a four-storey building. It seemed to be formed from a canopy of very large dark green leaves.
Superbly polished and oiled wooden stairs on castor wheels stood all around. Danny discovered that they were so well made that the merest touch would move them. The slightest pressure on the stairs themselves caused the wheels to retract into their housings. The stairs looked like they could support a tonne or two. They were made of a deep red and aged mahogany wood. The stairs were in a spiral form.
There were no windows and the walls were too far away to be seen in the subdued light. The elevator shaft had come up in what appeared to be the exact centre of the library. The part of the elevator shaft visible above the floor stood like a wooden artery veined with threads of a yellow liquid light. Much of the grand floor itself was shrouded in darkness. The floor was more or less flat but every hundred yards or so a supporting column went from ground to the high ceiling. The columns looked like the trunks of old oak trees. They had occasional small stubby branches and small dark green leaves.
Orb first noticed that what little light there was in the library was provided by the occasional electric glows that passed like water through the thread-like veins on the ceiling leaves. There was certainly some pattern to the lights but it was not immediately obvious.
Danny looked down at the floor and then headed off toward one of the marble bookcases. Each one was as tall as a house. The others, not knowing where to start followed happily. They looked quietly left and right. Danny neared the bookcase. As he approached, light blue holographic letters appeared suspended in the cool mid-air. The letter shapes appeared to morph between languages and symbols until they settled on English and read the following:
‘Reference; General, Planet Earth, 20-21st Century, Current Era.'
Danny proceeded toward the case. The books looked ordinary. Some had bright covers whilst others were cloth or leather-bound. The writing appeared to be a mixture of Chinese and English characters yet to neither language did they belong exactly. It was entirely foreign, yet he understood it. A part of him could comprehend this strange language easier than his own. It almost translated itself.
He ventured toward one of the moveable wooden spiral steps. He pushed the grand structure effortlessly, positioned it and then climbed to the top of the ancient staircase. Each step had a slight spring to it. The wood of the staircase seemed to Danny to have absorbed the wisdom of centuries. He reached for a book. It had an interesting cover and the title caught his eye, 'The Meaning of Evil: A Collection of Thoughts on the Current Crisis facing Planet Earth'. Danny was entranced in the book for some time. Finally he put it down and moved to another part of the bookcase.
Danny saw a book that looked different to the rest. It didn't seem to be made of paper at all. It was some sort of liquid light. The title didn't seem particularly amazing, 'Night Buses of England - My Journeys and Experiences'. The liquid light pages turned over like ordinary paper. The words, despite the strange language, seemed understandable. He looked at the edition date. It said 2099 CE. A voice inside Danny's mind softly said, 'It's from the future Danny, it's future light'.
‘Yes that’s right, future light. It'll turn into paper when its time comes.’
Danny turned round suddenly to face this new voice as fast as he could. The voice continued, ‘Your inner voice guessed correctly friend. Books of the present and the past are made of paper or leather. Which slowly turns to dust. Even the universe forgets - eventually. The future is still pliable. The books from the future are made of heavy light.’
‘I see,’ said Danny.
‘I should introduce myself. I am one of the human librarians, a guardian of the human zone of the great Arkstone tree. I am 10,000 years old and I've had this job since I was a thousand years young. We've got every reference book, every novel. We have a personal life-book for every human-type mind, carbon or silicon, in the entire galaxy. Incredible, I know. It really is a great job. If you'd like to follow me I'll show you a little more of what we do.’
‘We'd follow you even easier if you had a body,’ Danny added quietly.
‘Why yes. What sort of body would you like me to have? I guess I'm just kind of everywhere in this old library all at once.’
The permanent night-time cool of the library seemed almost to caress the friends. There was a natural silence as the librarian slowly became more discernible. At first he was simply a ghost-like, vaguely human-shaped blob. Then arms, legs, a body could be seen. For a while he was naked. Then gradually brown leather clothes were grown from out the skin. Eventually a man, some 8-foot tall, in Native American head attire walked at the front of the group. He paused to address the friends.
‘How's this body for the Chief Librarian? I was once chief of a tribe that lived upon the West Coast of what you now call the U.S.A. That was many aeons ago now. It was the height of the first great enlightened epoch of life-planet Earth. I was known as Chief Mountain-Spirit. Now I am the Chief Human Librarian of the Akashi Arkstone. My real name is still Mountain-Spirit. We really are honoured to have you here.’
A jet of light shot past. It could be vaguely discerned that the light held a number of books. The jet curved and arched its way swiftly between the many bookcases. It paused for a split second near the group. A face within it smiled and then the jet shot off depositing its wares at various points.
‘That jet of light was Valentina, working hard as usual. I'll introduce you to her later - if there’s time,’ explained the librarian.
'Now firstly I shall take you to the Pool of Minds from whence come the books.’
Mountain-Spirit explained that they would have to walk to the place he wanted to show them. It was at least a two-hour trek to the pool of minds, which was at the very edge of the great floor.
He handed each of them a leather pouch. It had a strap for hanging from the shoulder. It was filled with the most fragrant and refreshing water they had ever tasted. Just a drop seemed to go a long way. A mouthful satisfied all thirst. It could even quench the heart it seemed. The liquid was called Amrita Water.
They walked past the endless high marble shelves. Some of the books were made of liquid light other books were paper or leather. The light from the leaf veins in the ceiling moved about here and there above them but the illumination seemed to follow them intelligently and discretely. Spotted about were large oak desks with green leather tops. There were deep sumptuous red leather high-backed chairs by the desks. Surrounding the desks were old-fashioned card-file indexing systems. The card-files sat in dark mahogany cases as tall as a man. Each case must have had several thousand tiny drawers. Each drawer had an old-fashioned brass label holder that held a tiny hand-written card with a single pictographic symbol inscribed upon it.
As they walked Danny listened to his feet echoing upon the deeply polished parké tiles. The tiles continued to play their constantly shifting patterns. Orb and Golf hovered slightly above the floor. The group continued in self-absorbed silence. The hours passed quietly by.
Eventually they reached a surprisingly small pond with a wooden, root-lined embankment that reached to about waist height. It would have been just about big enough to be home to a family of ducks – had the surface not been so furiously choppy - it bubbled continuously in great angry belches. The water looked black and cold in the half-light of the library. Danny knew that the waters within would be exceedingly deep - and dangerous. Danny and Ben stood around the pool. Jodie, Orb and Golf observed from a few foot back.
The gnarled, dark-brown and uneven outer wall of the grand floor was nearby. Broken roots and branches poked out from the wall as it stretched upwards toward the high green-leaved ceiling above. They had walked a long way to be here.
‘I wonder if each of the floors of the human section has its own pool just like this one,’ thought Danny, forgetting the subtle telepathy of this realm.
‘That’s right Danny. Each of the 13,000 humanoid-type floors has its own entrance to the Pool of Minds,’ Mountain Spirit replied.
After some time it could be seen that there was movement. Silver letters, shapes and images appeared and disappeared. Symbols were swirling in the water. Mountain-Spirit took a test-tube from his pocket. He scooped out some of the liquid. It looked crystal clear in the glass. Words started to form in the tube. Mountain-Spirit raised his eyebrows. He murmured thoughtfully and returned the water to the pool.
‘The time approaches my friends. One of you will have to go into the Pool of Minds. The powerful treasure of the Sapient Ones awaits you. Their gift lies deep within the Arkstone and this is the only way to retrieve it. Wait, there is something else,’ breathed Mountain-Spirit. Once again he put the test tube into the pool and examined the water.
‘Danny, you must go. And while you are gone, Ben can show us his life-book and share a little of his story.’
Mountain Spirit had a dignified upright posture. His brown tunic moved slightly in the cool night-time breeze that swept across the library floor. His bright green eyes were piercing and intense, though kindly. Danny watched the white feathers move in Mountain Spirit's head-dress. He noticed a feint glowing aura around them.
In a flash that barely registered to the eye, Mountain-Spirit leapt round to Danny's side. He grabbed him hard by his scruff and the back of his trousers and slung him like a sack of rocks into the dark festering pool. Danny let out a breathless gasp of shock. The icy cold waters penetrated deep into his flesh. He shot Mountain-Spirit a bewildered, desperate look. Something very sharp and powerful had a hold of his feet. The waters swirled around him, a dark bubbling vortex. The twisting wild waters swallowed him under in one swift, unforgiving movement.
Ben was numb, his hands clenched. What was he to do? He gasped in horror as Danny dropped like lead shot down through the dark, mysterious waters. He felt helpless and lost, a sick queasy feeling growled uncontrollably in his belly. Ben couldn't move, his world felt like it was collapsing. He tensed every muscle, ready to leap after Danny but he was frozen to the spot.