A Borrowed Man (2 page)

“Most books have plastic bindings, like this one.” She got a book out of her shaping bag and held it up.

“Of course, but almost anything is still possible. Is it information? Basically?”

“I think so.”

“Then it might be encoded in a microchip, which is a tiny physical object that can hold, well, a lot. A chip like that can be inserted in a mouse's ear and used to locate and identify the mouse. If you really want me to help you, you're going to have to tell me a great deal more than you have so far.”

“Not here,” she said.

“Where, in that case?” Here I was afraid she was going to suggest someplace in the library; I would have to counter that somehow.

She shook her head. “I doubt that we're being bugged here, but it's possible. If we are—let's just say that anything we say may put us in danger.”

That sounded paranoid; I decided to play up to it for the time being. “They would bug the place you named before we got there.”

“Something like that. Yes. Come with me.” She had decided, and she jumped up fast. “I'm going to check you out.”

That was exactly what I had been hoping for, but I managed to hide my grin before we got to the front desk. Colette showed her library card to the 'bot we called Electric Bill, and it got us a fully human librarian who told her, “I'm afraid your card hasn't been approved for reclones.”

Colette nodded. “I want to get it approved so I can check out this one.”

“We need a deposit. It's quite substantial.” The librarian's tone said Colette could not possibly have enough money.

Colette nodded again. “I suppose it must be. I'll return him.”

“It will be refunded when you bring him back, assuming he's not damaged. How long?”

Colette pursed her lips. “Let's say I'll keep him for ten days.”

The librarian looked skeptical. “For a period in excess of a week, I may be able to get you a special rate; but it will still be a great deal of money.”

Electric Bill asked, “Will we give her the long-term discount, ma'am?”

“With undemand.”

Electric Bill hummed. “My figure is forty-seven hundred for ten days, ma'am.”

Colette took it calmly enough, but to me it came as a pretty stiff shock; I had hoped the library valued me more highly. The librarian merely pulled out another card and waved it at Bill, who promptly coughed up a couple more. The librarian took them and passed one to me, saying, “July thirtieth.”

I said, “I'll remember.”

“Not that we wouldn't like to hang on to your money, Ms. Coldbrook.” Smiling, the librarian handed Colette the other card.

Maybe I should stop right here and explain that up until then I had not known Colette's name. As we were going out of the library I said, “It will be quite a treat to be in your company for so long, Ms. Coldbrook,” and she told me to say Colette.

A hovercab came at her signal. I had seen hovercabs before, but I had never ridden in one. There is nothing scary about them—or anyway I was not scared when it seemed pretty clear that Colette had ridden in them a lot. The whole thing should have been a lot scarier than it was; of course Colette's not being scared helped. “Taos Towers, please,” she told the sim who'd showed up in the hovercab's screen.

It touched its cap, and the hovercab, which had been floating up like a bubble in still water, picked up speed enough to push us back in our seats.

“It's quite a run,” the sim remarked. “Takes a load of energy, ma'am.”

“Which will be covered by your charge.”

It nodded thoughtfully. “I'll have to deadhead back, though.”

“Unless you pick up another fare there. Which you probably will.”

“These exclusive places…”

I believe she ignored him. I was looking down at New America, something I had seen before only on maps. We flew from twilight into day while I watched. The mountains were much nearer now.

Colette leaned forward, whispering to the hovercab, and I felt it make a change of course. “Another thirty-four thou and I can buy out,” the sim told us.

Colette did not speak; so I said, “I suppose you'll go humanoid?”

“'Course I will. That what you are, sir?”

Colette laughed.

I shook my head. “I'm flesh and blood. Almost the real thing.”

“Sorry, sir. I didn't mean nothing by it.”

I was looking up, mostly. Also down and around.

“You have a wonderful face,” Colette told me.

My eyes left the sky; when I looked at her, I had to catch my breath. As soon as I could, I said, “No one else has ever thought so.”

“Of course they have! You mean they haven't said so. You can't possibly know their thoughts.”

“There must be machines for that.”

“There are. When I was still a student they took us to Long Lawn. They have one there to help them treat the patients. One of the other students volunteered, and they let us look into his thoughts. Imagine an anthill, but instead of just seven kinds every ant is different. Then they let us listen to them. It was like listening to the whole city talking, everybody talking at once.”

“You have an enchanting face,” I said to her. “Any number of men must have told you that. Please don't be insulted.”

She laughed. “Half a dozen men and three or four women. The women were trying to sell me clothes and the men were trying to get me to take them off.”

“I'm not. Believe me, I know what I am.”

“A less-than human who contemplates the sky.” Said with that tender smile, it did not sting.

“How can anyone not? This is a lovely world, and until a few minutes ago I didn't know how lovely it is. People are wonderfully fortunate to be born now. I remember a world whose sky was gray with smoke or black with dust.”

“That's right, you have his memories. I'd forgotten that.”

I nodded. “Wonderful memories. Back in the library, on my shelf, that was what I did most of the time. For day after day I read and remembered.”

“We're down to about one billion now. I'd halve that, if I could.” Colette paused, thinking. “It must have been lonely there in the library. Did you tell yourself your own stories?”

“Sometimes. Stories help, sometimes. When I tire of stories, I daydream about Arabella—Arabella Lee. Perhaps you know her work?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“She was a poet, and a fine one. Her poetry was lovely, although not half so lovely as she. We were married.…”

“Yes?” Colette pronounced the word in a way that made it seem she might really be interested.

“Only for two years; then she divorced me. I mean the original me, back in my own time. The me who wrote all my books.”

“How old are you? Not him, but the living, breathing reclone sitting beside me.”

When I did not answer, she changed it to, “How long has it been since you were published?”

I shrugged. “They told me, but I've forgotten.”

“You're lying!”

“Yes. Am I that transparent?”

“Certainly. All men are. Women lie and lie—do you know that?”

I said, “I suppose I do now.”

“It's one of the things men tell each other, and it's true. We women lie and lie, because we're good at it. Men generally tell the truth because they're not.”

“I have nearly half a century of memories. Doesn't that make me old?”

“Certainly not. I'm a good judge of age. Shall I tell you how old you are?”

I nodded and tried to smile, although no smile came. “I wish you would.”

“You're twenty-one or twenty-two, but you could easily pass for thirty or more. Most people wouldn't believe that you're only twenty-two.”

Although Colette would and did. And it was not quite true, I decided, that I had an old man's memories and a young man's mind. That was what they had taught me to believe, but it was not really that simple. How old was my judgment? I think your judgment depends on both those things, but it depends more on something else, something I cannot put my finger on. On insight and this other thing. Only I am a lot younger than Colette thought.

I could study the mountains in the middle distance when we landed in what looked like the ruined garden of some abandoned estate. There were trees like towers of bells, and patches of golden-green sunlight. A waterfall roared about a hundred paces away. “This grass is fresh and very soft,” I said when our hovercab had lifted off, “but I wouldn't think you'd want to sit on the ground in that skirt.”

Colette nodded and waved her hand, leading me to a couple of stones about a hundred steps away. I dusted off both with my handkerchief, which got me a really great smile, and I sat on mine after she had sat down.

Opening her shaping bag, she took out the plastic-bound book she had shown me before. “Books like this are almost obsolete now. Did you know it?”

“The librarians have told me so. I would hate to believe it.”

“You must, because it's true.”

I wanted to walk. That was a new feeling for me, or maybe only an old buried one coming back, one so old I had forgotten it. I got up and walked up and down, not fast but not slow. Books—real books printed on paper—were the heart and soul of a whole culture that had been mine. Cultures are like people, it seems. Sure, they get old and die; but sometimes they die even when they are not very old at all.

“I can see you're trying to keep this age straight.” Colette herself was trying hard not to laugh.

Still dizzy with thought, I nodded.

“That's good. Do it. I'll stop talking until you sit again.”

Without paying much attention to what I did, I had gone to the edge of the waterfall. I guess it was pretty small, no higher than some of the belltower trees, but really pretty. I must have watched it for ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe more.

At last I went back to her. “You told me that books are almost obsolete, yet you carry that one in your shaping bag. That must mean that this secret you're looking for is in there, or you think it is. You were afraid of our being overheard—afraid there were hidden listening devices in the library.”

She nodded, looking grim.

“Why would the police be snooping our conversation?”

“They wouldn't be interested—not as far as I know, or at least not seriously.” She shut up for a long look at the book. “You may be right. I…”

“Yes?”

“I'll certainly consider it. Probably for quite a while.”

I sat down again. “Are you yourself a scientist?”

She laughed and shook her head. “What makes you think I might be?”

“Our earlier conversation. I didn't ask about a map that might give the location of buried treasure. I talked about formulas and diagrams, none of which you challenged. So it's a scientific secret, or at least you think that it might be.”

“Yes, it might.”

“But you yourself are no sort of scientist. What are you, then?”

“What do I look like?”

I shrugged. “A wealthy, well-educated young lady.”

“Close enough! Let's leave it at that.” She had been reading the book. “You mustn't ask me how I know the secret's in here.”

“In that case, you'd certainly lie if I did.” I smiled, remembering something she had said.

She nodded.

“So I won't. Tell me this, please, and don't lie. Is it in all copies of that book, or only in that one?”

“You…” She hesitated. “I don't really know. What difference does it make?”

“A great deal, or so I think. If it is in this one alone, we need only look for a difference between this copy and the rest; but if it's in all the copies, that approach would be quite useless.”

“If it's in all the copies, it must be in the text.”

“Correct,” I said.

“While if it's only in this one, there could be some difference in text. Or else something physical, like the chemical ink you talked about, or the errata sheet.”

“Exactly. Are you good with modern screens? I knew next to nothing about the wonderful computers of my own time, and I know less than nothing about the screens you use now.”

“No, not at all.” She paused. “Some people are fascinated by them.”

“You aren't, I take it.”

“No.” She opened the book and closed it again. “I'm not. Those people are mostly boys, and they get into the mathematics—all sorts of things that machines can handle much better than we can.”

“We may have to enlist one of those boys, in that case. Millions of books are available in digital form, or so I've heard.”

“Several digital forms, really.” She smiled. “I see I've let the helium out. I'm sorry. Really, I am.”

“Not necessarily. Why several forms?”

“Sometimes people want to see the author's original text, prior to editing. In other cases there are several forms. Suppose a Chinese book has been translated into English. There could be three or four translations, and arguments about which translation is best.”

“Is that a translation?”

She shook her head. “I've researched it, and it was written in late English—in the language we're speaking, in other words.”

“Is that the only language in use now?”

She shook her head again. “There are dozens of others.”

“In time—”

She nodded again. “Yes. I know what you're going to say, and I agree: there may be a planetary language. But it hasn't happened yet and perhaps it never will.”

“Since we don't have to worry about translations, what do we have to worry about? The author's original text?”

She smiled. “You should know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You wrote it.” She handed me the book.

I glanced at the title page and shook my head. “I see I did, but this one must have been written after my death. I don't remember it at all.”