The yellow of Konstance’s worksuit is even more vibrant than it was in Compartment 17. The spot of syrup is gone.
Mrs. Flowers marches toward her from a long way off, a little white dog trotting at her heels. She’s a cleaner, younger, brighter Mrs. Flowers, with clear hazel eyes and mahogany hair cut in a professorial bob, and she wears a skirt and blazer that are the deep green of living spinach, and on one breast golden stitching reads, Head Librarian.
Konstance bends over the little dog: its whiskers twitch; its black eyes shine; its fur, when she puts her fingers in it, feels like fur. She almost laughs from the joy of it.
“Welcome,” says Mrs. Flowers, “to the Library.”
* * *
She and Konstance start down the length of the atrium. Various crew members glance up from tables and smile as they pass; a few conjure balloons that say IT’S YOUR LIBRARY DAY and Konstance watches them sail up through the aperture into the sky.
The spines of the books closest to them are teal and maroon and imperial purple and some look slender and delicate and others resemble great legless tabletops stacked on shelves. “Go on,” says Mrs. Flowers, “you can’t damage them,” and Konstance touches the spine of a little one and it rises and opens in front of her. From its onionskin pages, three daisies grow, and in the center of each glow the same three letters, M C V.
“Some are quite bewildering,” says Mrs. Flowers. She taps it and it closes and flits back to its place. Konstance gazes down the line of bookshelves to where the atrium fades into the distance.
“Does it go on—？”
Mrs. Flowers smiles. “Only Sybil could say for sure.”
Three teenaged boys, the Lee brothers and Ramón—only it’s a leaner, tidier version of Ramón—sprint and leap onto a ladder, and Mrs. Flowers calls, “Slowly, please,” and Konstance tries to remind herself that she is still inside Compartment 17, wearing her new worksuit and a hand-me-down Vizer, walking on a Perambulator wedged beside Father’s bunk and Mother’s sewing table—that Mrs. Flowers and the Lee brothers and Ramón are in their own family compartments, walking on their own Perambulators, wearing their own Vizers, that they are all packed inside a disk hurtling through interstellar space, that the Library is just a swarm of data inside the flickering chandelier that is Sybil.
“History’s on our right,” Mrs. Flowers is saying, “to the left is Modern Art, then Languages; those boys are headed to the Games Section, very popular, of course.” She stops at an unoccupied table with a chair on either side and gestures for Konstance to sit. Two little boxes rest on top: one of pencils, the other of rectangles of paper. Between them is a small brass slot and engraved onto its rim are the words Questions Answered Here.
“For a child’s Library Day,” says Mrs. Flowers, “when there is so much to absorb, I try to keep things simple. Four questions, a little scavenger hunt. Question number one. How far from Earth is our destination?”
Konstance blinks, unsure, and Mrs. Flowers’s expression softens. “You needn’t have it memorized, dear. That’s what the Library is for.” She points to the boxes.
Konstance picks up a pencil: it seems so real that she wants to sink her teeth into it. And the paper! It’s so clean, so crisp: outside the Library, there is not a piece of paper this clean on the entire Argos. She writes How far from Earth to Beta Oph2? and looks at Mrs. Flowers and Mrs. Flowers nods and Konstance drops the slip through the slot.
The paper vanishes. Mrs. Flowers clears her throat and points, and behind Konstance, high on the third tier, a thick brown book slips off a shelf. It soars across the atrium, dodges a few other airborne books, hovers, then floats down and opens.
Across a double-fold inside spreads a chart titled Confirmed List of Exoplanets in the Optimistic Habitable Zone, B-C. In the first column, little worlds of every color rotate: some rocky, some swirling with gases, some ringed, some dragging tails of ice behind their atmospheres. Konstance runs a fingertip down the rows until she finds Beta Oph2.
“4.2399 light-years.”
“Good. Question number two. How fast are we traveling?”
Konstance writes the question, drops it into the slot, and as the first volume rises away, a bundle of rolled charts arrives and unrolls across the tabletop. From its center a bright blue integer rises into the air.
“7,734,958 kilometers per hour.”
“Right.” Now three of Mrs. Flowers’s fingers go up. “What is the lifespan of a genetically optimal human under mission conditions?” The question goes into the slot; a half-dozen documents of various sizes fly off shelves and flutter over.