We enter a tunnel. It smells damp and musty, the walls sprouting petrified fungi and lank mosses. True darkness never falls before light intrudes from above. It is cool this deep in the rock, and the air seems to possess something more of the climate I am used to: moisture. I breathe in deeply, relishing the coolness on my lungs, hearing String laugh quietly to himself in front of me.
The floors are uneven and the ceiling low enough in places to make me stoop. String is short, so he can walk through normally. A smell reaches us from further in, a waft of something familiar yet long lost carried on warmer currents of air like dragon’s breath. I cannot quite place the scent, but I do not feel inclined to ask String. He is going to show me, anyway, and I am almost enjoying the adventurous mystery.
Looking up, I can make out where the light is coming from — natural vent-holes that reach high up to the top of the cliff — and in doing so I miss the abrupt change from tunnel to cave. I stop, stunned by the sheer size of what lays before me.
The cave is massive. I can see that it has been hacked from the rock by crude tools, their marks still peppering the wall and ceiling like the timeless signatures of those who did the deed. It could be recent or ten thousand years old, there is no real way of telling. There are no vents in the ceiling here, but the walls are inlaid with a strange glowing material which gives out a muted light. It looks like glass, feels like metal, and it’s warm to the touch as if heated from within. String stands in the centre of the space, smiling and staring around as if wallowing in the grandeur of whatever has been achieved here. And just what is that? What is the smell that tickles my memory once more, encourages me to silence, comforts me, conjures a million facts from a million minds other than mine?
“Books,” String says. He holds out his arms, indicating the hundreds of boxes stacked around the edges of the cavern. “About two hundred thousand in all. Mainly factual, though some fiction. We want out descendants to know our dreams, don’t you think?”
I cannot talk. It is not simply the sight of so many boxes, but the effort that had obviously gone in to bringing them here. And not only that, but the thought and experience and life that has been poured into making every book here. Billions of hours of struggle, work, strife, pained effort in creating, writing, producing and then dragging these books through a dying world to build a library for the future. It is staggering. It is so huge that I can barely comprehend it.
String has a proud glint in his eyes, the look of a father for his adoring children. “Philosophy, biology, psychology, botany; maps, travels books, cultural works, histories; stories, poems, novels, plays; even some religious works — much against my better judgement, but who am I to chose what people will believe in the future?”
“You’ve got it all here, in your hands,” I manage to say at last. The enormity of what is here makes me slur. “You can shape the future from this place.” For the first time I am truly frightened of String, this man who Della only vaguely heard of and who now holds my soul, as well as my fate, in the palm of his hand, to do with as he will.
“Not only this place,” he says. “And it’s not me who will shape it. There will be people in the future — two years, fifty years, who knows — who will feel the time is right. Now … to tell the truth, it’s still all in decline. I’ve merely brought these things together, protected them from the random destruction that’s sweeping the globe. It’s happened before, you know? The Dark Ages were darker than many people imagine.”
“So we’re heading for a new Dark Age?”
String sits on one of the boxes, lifts a flap and brings out a book. It is a gardening guide, splashes of forgotten blossoms decorating the cover and catching the strange light from the walls. “Maybe we’re already there. But when it’s over, I hope it won’t take long to get light again. I hope all this will help.”
“Who are you?” I ask. The question seems to take him by surprise, and I feel a brief moment of satisfaction that I have tackled him at his own game.
“I’m String. I’m just a lucky man who found something wonderful. I’m doing what I can with it, because … well, just because.”
“You found all this?” I say, aghast. “You must have. No man could do all this.”
He shakes his head, a wry smile playing across his lips. “Faith can move mountains,” he says, and for once I see that the saying can be literal. “I dragged all this here. Some I had with me when I arrived, most of it I went out and recovered. Before it was destroyed.”
“I saw them burning books in the streets in England,” I say quietly, the memory of the voracious flames eating at my heart. I remember thinking that the fire had always been there, waiting for its chance to pounce on our knowledge and reduce it to so much dust, restrained only by whatever quaint notion of civilisation we entertained. In the end, all it took was a little help from us. Wilful self-destruction.
I come to my senses. “So what else is it you want to show me?”
He nods to the far end of the cavern, where another dark tunnel entrance stand inviting us enter. “I found it soon after the crash,” he says. “I crawled in here to die. Then I realised I was in a very special place — had the power of life in my hands, quite literally — and the rest just happened.”
“Crash?” Disparate shreds of his story seem to be flowing together, images from the last few hours intrude, as if they mean to tell me something before he speaks.
“I was a Lord,” he says. “I flew a Lord Ship. As far as I know, I’m the last one left alive.” He stands and heads towards the dark mouth. I follow.