FSF, July 2008 Read online

  But I should ask a question; this is a Reader's Guide, after all. Have you ever read a book from the Library of Story? Was it a good story, dazzling, wonderful, a true story? Write this story down, and send it out into the world—and if it appears there, I or one of the other Shelvers will know it, we will see that it has changed when it comes back to us to shelve.

  18. I asked if the story you found here was a good one. Very few of them here are, I'm afraid. There are infinite ways of telling a tale, but only rarely do all the elements coalesce, only rarely is everything perfect, the characters engaging, the setting sharply drawn, the action compelling. Sometimes I think that the Library itself generates these books, stirring together an infinite number of people and places and events, and it is only chance that creates a good story. Or maybe the Library sleeps; maybe these are its dreams. Maybe there is another Library, reached somehow by this Library.... But no, my mind cannot compass it.

  I've read a lot of good books here, but I've also read a lot I disliked, and some I hated; I do nothing but read and work, after all. I can forget the mediocre ones, but a truly bad book makes me angry. If the stories here are infinite then the good stories are infinite as well (another thing impossible to imagine, but one of the Shelvers convinced me that it is true), and writers shouldn't be so lazy that they take down the first book they find.

  Winter Swan is one of those wretched stories—boring, poorly constructed, filled with easy choices and sloppy writing and false emotion. And yet with just a little more work, just a bit of reaching to a shelf above or to the left or right, Mary Bainbridge might have found some very fine stories indeed. Here's one, a tale about a woman who turns into a werewolf, and who comes to enjoy being part of a pack of wolves, the camaraderie and the closeness—and who begins, slowly and reluctantly, to fall in love with one of the wolves of the pack. Or this one, about a man who dials Information and finds himself enamored of the mechanical voice that gives out the phone numbers.

  A while ago I discovered a way to add my own writing to the books in the Library, and I began to insert these Reader's Guides whenever I found a book that I thought needed one. Doing this helps me get rid of my anger—at least for a while, until I come across another dreadful story.

  A Shelver I talked to once said that the Lord of Story wouldn't be pleased by my sarcasm, that our work here is holy, and should be treated with reverence. But of course I know that. No one feels that more than I do, as I walk through the sacred silence of these rooms. It is because I have been entrusted with this task that I hate these stories, which profane the art of storytelling more than anything I can do. Anyway, how could that Shelver possibly know the likes and dislikes of the Lord of Story? She has never seen him after her first time, any more than I have; I made sure to ask her.

  Sometimes, though, I worry that she might be right. Maybe the Lord of Story is unhappy with me, maybe that's why I never see him. On the other hand, by Gutenberg, he must have given me these powers for a reason. This is the only power I have found so far, though, this and one other—sometimes I can see the writers who come to the Library. They are barely more than outlines, wraiths, looking through the shelves, reaching out their transparent hands for a book.

  19. And here—look at this piece of writing: “Donny's heart leapt into his mouth, and he felt as though he had jumped out of his skin.” That's a lot of hopping around for just one sentence—first the heart, then Donny himself. Do they go off in separate directions, do you think? Or do they jump together, leaving the skin behind?

  Mary Bainbridge would say—in fact I can almost hear her saying it—that the first is a metaphor, and the second a simile. (Or would she? Does she know the difference?) Perhaps they are, Ms. B., but they are also clichés, phrases that have been used so often they have lost their meaning.

  There you are, Ms. B. I thought I sensed you. You're looking for another story, Caxton help us. What about this one, over here? A man and a woman crash their cars; they argue over whose fault it was and go to court and end up falling in love.

  Her hand is hovering over it—but no, she's shaking her head. Too simple, she says, too cute. Can it be that she's actually learned something from Winter Swan? It was her first novel, after all. She even seems to feel something of the nature of this place—look at her expression as she studies the shelves, a strange combination of awe and humility and excitement. And greed, too—she wants to be the one who tells these stories, and to be known for telling them. I've seen that greed before, on the faces of other writers.

  20. Was that other Shelver right, have I been too harsh with the writers who come here? Should I help her?

  But holy Manutius—"His heart leapt into his mouth"? How does he eat with—

  It's exaggeration, you idiot, she says. Hyperbole.

  Do you know what does it? It's that she pronounces “hyperbole” with three syllables instead of four. “Hyperbowl,” as though it's some relative of the Superbowl. She reads books about creative writing, obviously, but she doesn't seem to have anyone to talk to. She's never had any of those passionate arguments that are so important to the beginning writer, never stayed up until three o'clock in the morning talking about books that have changed her life. Maybe she lives in a small town, maybe all her conversations are about how much milk to buy, or what to get her great-aunt for her birthday. And yet she perseveres, almost blindly. She perseveres, and she tries to learn from her mistakes. That's no small thing. Just that one mispronunciation, and my heart is shaken with pity and admiration.

  All right then, Ms. B. Here's a story about werewolves, about a woman who—No, you're not interested in werewolves, I can see that. This shelf seems to be all love stories, though, of a sort—I'm sure we can find something here for you. There's one, way up at the top there—no, don't give up, you can reach it. It's about a woman who finds herself falling in love with a man who is almost completely superficial. Does he change? Does she? Does she leave him? Not as predictable as Donny and Mrs. Thompson, are they?

  21. Do you hear that? A voice, someone calling me. It sounds like ... it is, it's the Lord of Story. I leave Ms. B. and hurry through the rooms, books blurring past me on either side. The voice grows louder.

  Finally I reach the room where he's standing. He's a tall man, with a cloak that I thought at first was black but later realized is covered in writing—writing that changes constantly, that moves as he moves. A hood covers his face, mostly, but from what little I can see his skin is as dark as his cloak.

  You passed the first test, he says. I'm giving you new work now, advancing you from Shelving to Information.

  He turns. He opens a door that had not been there a minute ago—and as it closes behind him it fades once more into the wall.

  What does he mean? He explained my first job, how to read the codes on the spines, but what does someone who works in Information do? I barely know this place myself.

  Well, I help people, I suppose. People like Ms. B. I guide them to the books they're looking for. But that—wouldn't that make me a sort of Muse?

  I stand there, transfixed. A Muse, like the Lord of Story himself. Am I ready for a task that huge, that consequential? But he thought I was.

  22. Ms. B. is saying something, asking me a question. I force myself out of my trance—my job is to help her, after all. No, I'm afraid I can't say where I'll be when you finish the story, Ms. B. One of these rooms somewhere. Yes, of course you can come look for me. I hope you will.

  23. Do you think you'll read the story Ms. B. writes next? Why or why not?

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Roberts by Michael Blumlein

  Michael Blumlein's novels include The Movement of Mountains, X, Y, and most recently, The Healer. Some of his short fiction was collected in The Brains of Rats, but he's probably due for a new collection soon. Longtime readers of F&SF will no doubt remember his stories “Revenge” (April 1998), “Bestseller” (Feb. 1990), “Paul and Me” (Oct/Nov. 1997), and “Fidelity: A Primer” (
Sept. 2000). His “Know How, Can Do,” which first appeared in our Dec. 2001 issue, is currently reprinted on our Website. Mr. Blumlein says that his new Website, www.michaelblumlein .com, will be up and running by the time you read this. But don't go rushing now to check it out. First, settle in and enjoy this magnificent, edgy, and inventive new novella.

  —1—

  Long before Grace, before Claire and Felicity, before the two men who wrecked his life, there was him and him alone, Robert Fairchild, first and only child of June and Lawrence, warm and cozy in his mother's womb. He was two weeks overdue at birth, as though reluctant to leave that precious, corpuscular, sharply scented, deeply calming place—determined, as it were, to remain attached. When at last his mother, weary of a tenacity that at other, less pressing, times she would come to admire, served notice and forced him out, young Robert, shocked and indignant, cried a storm.

  His father was a physicist, an academic devoted to his work, highly respected by his colleagues and rarely at home. He was raised by his mother, who adored him, and he learned, as many sons do, that love bears the face and the stamp of a woman.

  He excelled in school and, following in the footsteps of his father, chose mathematics as a career. But midway through college he was bitten by another bug and abandoned math for art. First painting, which proved beyond his grasp, then sculpture, which tantalized him. Sadly, his work was never more than mediocre; some of it, by any standard, his own included, was outright ugly. And these were not the days when ugly was beautiful. These were the days when beautiful was beautiful, and beauty reigned supreme.

  His failure was discouraging, all the more because he expected to succeed, as he had all his life until then. He lost confidence in himself, a new experience, and on the heels of this his spirits spiraled down. Eventually, he decided to drop out of school. But on the way to deliver his letter of resignation, he ran into a fellow student—literally collided with her. She was standing at the edge of the sidewalk, a sketchpad open, a pencil in hand, utterly absorbed in the rendering of an old stone building for one of her classes.

  Her name was Claire. The class was architecture. Their collision marked the beginning of a love affair that lasted just a few short years, but of a career, for Robert, that lasted a lifetime. Everything that was unattainable and wrong in his work as a sculptor was uncannily right in his work, first as a student, then apprentice, architect, as if some slight, but fatal, flaw in his eye, or his compass, had been corrected. For this he credited Claire. She was his first great love. Through her he found his calling. Through her he learned, not incidentally, how sweet and vivifying love could be. She restored his confidence. She invigorated him and inspired his earliest work. In the brief time they were together she gave him everything, it seemed, a man could want, and when at length she left him, citing his self-centeredness and preference for work over her, she gave him something new, the devastating side of love, the heartache and the sorrow. For what she said was true, he had poured his love for her into his work, to a fault, neglecting the real live person. It was a terrible mistake, which he vowed never to repeat. He had a contempt for mistakes, rivaled only by—as an aspiring young architect—his contempt for repetition.

  After Claire left, he had an awful time. Guilt, anger, loneliness, self-recrimination, despair: the usual stuff. He couldn't work, and that was worst of all, because his career was just beginning, and he needed work to feel like a man, to feel worth anything. And then in a freak accident he lost an eye, and what had seemed bad suddenly got worse. An architect without an eye? How about a bird without a wing? A singer without a throat? He felt castrated.

  He couldn't see, or thought he couldn't see. Everything seemed flat and drab and lifeless. There were ways to adjust and compensate, but he wasn't into adjustment, not just yet, he was into bitterness and self-pity, which were new to him and gave him a kind of poisonous satisfaction. It was during this time that he met Julian Taborz, a bioengineer and fledgling entrepreneur, and they began a collaboration that was to culminate in the invention of Pakki-flex®, the so-called “living skin.” But that was years away, and at the time there was a real question just how long Robert would last. He was working for a firm, but his work was uninspired. He was getting stress-induced rashes, which itched and boiled and crawled along his skin like a plague. At length he was put on notice as a poor performer, but he couldn't seem to correct himself. With each passing month, the world of architecture, which he adored, seemed to slip further from his grasp. Then he met Felicity, who changed his life.

  Felicity was an oculist, which was a little like being a jeweler. She had long, expressive fingers, slate blue eyes, and a sweet ironic laugh. She gave Robert, not his first fake eye, but his first good one, that didn't announce itself from a mile off, bulging like a tumor from its socket, making him look bug-eyed and cartoonish, or half bug-eyed, which was worse. He had developed the habit of averting his face, or, alternatively, whipping off his omnipresent sunglasses and confronting strangers, forcing them to choose where to look and where not to look, willfully inviting their uneasiness, fascination, and disgust. These were angry, spiteful days, and Felicity put them to rest. It was a matter of craftsmanship, which she had in abundance, but equally, it was a matter of caring and empathy, of listening to a client, connecting with him, giving him the look, the picture of himself, he wanted. Felicity had that talent too, and Robert fell for her like a fish for water.

  The day she gave him his eye, in a little box, then helped him put it in, then stood beside him at the mirror, proud, almost protective, he was overcome with emotion. He asked if he could see her again. Gently, she refused. He asked if he could at least call her, and she gave him her business card and said, if he was having trouble with his eye, of course. He waited two weeks, then made an appointment. She made some minor adjustments, and a month later he was back. Eventually, against her better judgment, she agreed to go out on a date with him. He took her home and showed her the design of a building that, he professed, she had inspired, a frothy concoction of steel and glass, his first new design in many moons. She didn't know quite what to make of it, nor of his attention. He seemed so needy, starved for something she was not at all sure that she, or anyone, could provide. At the same time she was flattered. Several weeks later he showed her another building, also inspired by her, then another, and so it went, until at length he wore her down, overcoming her resistance. He was only a man after all, and if he insisted that she was heaven on earth, who was she to disagree? Putting wariness aside, burying suspicion, she stopped withholding herself, and from there the laws of chemistry, physics, and biology (which, in the absence of compelling forces to the contrary, favored attraction), kicked in. She was already in some ways attached to him, and now that attachment grew. She looked forward to his company. She cared how he felt. And eventually the day arrived when she could no longer deny, nor had any wish to deny, that as near as she could tell, she was in love.

  It was evident in every facet of her life. At work, on the street, in the car, the kitchen, the living room, in bed. Robert was as fine a lover as she had known, attentive, responsive, creative, energetic, kind. Unlike many men, he did not despise or fear women, but rather he exalted them, on the whole a more forgivable offense. Felicity was sun and moon to him, and when they were together, he couldn't get enough of her, which made up for his tendency to be with her rather less, now that she desired him, than she would have liked. Thanks to her, his career was on the upswing. The drought of ideas had ended (the rashes as well), and he was now working for himself, working feverishly, frequently missing meals and spending the night—and sometimes two or three nights on end—at the office. Six months after they moved in together he won his first major commission and in quick succession several more, each of which required that he travel. Not uncommonly, he was gone for a week at a time. As his business grew, his travel time increased, until he was away nearly as much as he was home. By this point the press had caught wind of him, “the one-eyed arch
itect,” in their thirst for copy suggesting that his missing eye conferred a singular and authentic vision, like an extra sense. Privately, Robert would never allow himself to submit to such nonsense; publicly, he was shrewdly dismissive. Celebrity agreed with him and was good for business. He gave interviews. Clients flocked to him. Taxis, airports, and his drafting table saw him more and more; Felicity, less and less.

  His love for her never wavered, but it was subsumed by a greater love, and she learned how it felt to be demoted. From sun and moon she went to being but a planet. Sometimes visible, sometimes not, like Venus or Mercury. And like Venus and Mercury, she had no moons to orbit her, and none on the way, because Robert didn't want any. And so, after many years together, she left him, and for the second time in his life he was alone.

  For a while he did all right. Professionally, he was thriving, and he had the occasional confectionary fling. In addition, the long collaboration with Julian Taborz had finally reached fruition. Pakki-flex was now on the market, and it was revolutionizing the construction of buildings. A bio-epidermic membrane applied to a matrix of polycarbon activating thread, the “living skin” took the place of traditional roofs and siding. It was responsive to the elements, thickening in winter cold and summer heat, thinning in milder weather. It also changed color, both inside and out: its exterior surface responded to ambient temperature and light; its interior, (if desired), to the prevailing moods of the building's inhabitants. Neither surface required a protective coating, be it shingle, tar, slate, tile, varnish or paint, which was a big money saver. It was flexible, it was durable, it was economical, but its biggest selling point was that it mended itself. The Domome, an award-winning, one-of-a-kind, trophy home topped by a soaring, onion-shaped, Pakki-flex dome, which Robert designed and built for a wealthy patron of the arts, was a consummate example of the product's strengths. It was also an example, hitherto unknown, of its fatal weakness.