Ayahuasca

The Antikythera

"And you shall know me by many names."

"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"

Table VI, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Man With Many Names

He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands.
I will teach about him who experienced all things,
... alike,
Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.
He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden,
he brought information of before the Flood.
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion,
but then was brought to peace.
He carved on a stone stela all of his toils,
and built the wall of Uruk-Haven,
the wall of the sacred Eanna Temple, the holy sanctuary.
Look at its wall which gleams like copper(?),
inspect its inner wall, the likes of which no one can equal!
Take hold of the threshold stone--it dates from ancient times!
Go close to the Eanna Temple, the residence of Ishtar,
such as no later king or man ever equaled!

The Colonial's Timepiece

The following is based on a true story of the murder of English Army Sergeant Arthur Davies on the Braes O’ Mar, Scotland in 1749.

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,

farewell, farewell to thee

McPherson's life will nae be lang

on yonder gallows tree

Sae rantin'ly, sae wantonly

Sae dauntin’ly, gaed he;

He played a tune and he danced it roon’

About the gallows tree.

-MacPherson’s Farewell, Traditional Song

The hill was silent when he approached. He had seen the Sergeant months before: his eyes had lain unchanged for many months, white and unblinking against the sun. Often he sat by the spot where he was hidden on the Hill of Cristie, looking out over Glen Ey. He would count the spots in the distance that had resembled people and gazed upon the brushstrokes of white at the far end he knew to be sheep.

The first night MacPherson had come to the hill to see the Sergeant’s body; he remembered he had thought that it was coincidence that Shona, Terig’s love, had been carrying the golden rings. Sergeant Davies could be seen at all hours around the Glen. Fingers rattling the gun barrel like a drum as he scanned for deer: gallus in front of the local women, thumbs around his silver buckle, with their hands in their long grain hair.

He had known that Terig and Bain McDonald, the simple from the bottom of Dubrach, had plotted to do something. McDonald would stride to his neighbour’s house in the grey tartan with the red stripe: he was either too proud to gie it up or just trying to goad the soldiers from the barracks into fixing for him.

After it had happened, he understood. There was a sergeant missing which nobody in the entire Braes o’ Mar was happy about. Many of the elder folk would stand and shake their heads as the young passed, assuming it was anyone of their original suspicions that had committed it. The soldiers overseeing the work on the bridge at White River would gaze at anyone passing, MacPherson would pretend to look beyond the treetops beyond so not to catch their stare.

When he passed Jock’s house, near to the Punchbowl by the river, he would stop in and see him. Auld Jock felt the soldier’s anger more than anyone: he lived near to the build on the edge of the densest part of the trees. If they took their wrath of any of the locals, he would certainly be first.

Auld Jock was a broad man: he had been a cateran for many years before ’45. He’d lifted cattle and had stood at ’45 as the flag was raised and the fear was felt. And he was there at the demise and fall of the rebellion and he was now the witness to everything new in the Glen. He would stand at the fence at the edge of the road, a tall, pale statue against the greying sky behind him, simply watching the men build.

“I like to listen to the accents” he would say, “to try and work out where they’re from.”

Auld Jock didn’t say anything to him as he passed a few days after Sergeant Davies had disappeared. For some reason, Macpherson felt the need to speak to him.

“Jock.”

“A guid day to you too, ma boy. I see that cloud’s fair drawing in.”

“Have you heard of the sergeant, auld Jock?”

“That I have, young MacPherson.”

“What do you think’s happened to him?”

Auld Jock murmured something in Gaelic and then shook his head.

“Aye, that cloud’s fair drawing in.”

“Jock, I seen Shona this morning. She’s goat a new ring, d’ye think that Duncan Terig gave that to her?”

Auld Jock’s back rose up, his old shoulders craning under the strain of the bone. He drew young MacPherson into the house.

“What sort of a ring was this you saw on young Shona’s fingers?”

“Two gold ones. Bright. I thought Duncan Terig might have seen to marry his sweetheart.”

Auld Jock took his face away from MacPherson and looked into the hearth and all it’s whispering.

“That he might have, MacPherson.”

Jock looked on, scratching at his grey head, once red.

“You know anyone from over at Auchendryne anymore, MacPherson?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither do I.”

The older he got, the more he came to realise what Jock had meant. He had been tanning a rug for his mother one day, striking the sheepskin till the echo could be heard down-Glen. It was then that two soldiers passed by, on patrol away from the tedium and humdrum of the barracks. The bridge was built and now there were less of them.

One of the soldier’s gave him a spare piece of bread and asked him how old he was. Twenty, MacPherson had replied, lying. He was invited to join them at the barracks the following day-they had some work needed doing and he looked strong enough to do it.

Some time later, MacPherson went up the hill to see his grandmother who still refused to leave her home. He found her, crouched over a steel pot, winding a hand around the spoon. She stood up and he made the table.

The broth was good but she hardly spoke as she looked over to the door.

“I sometimes ask, little yin. I sometimes ask if yer faither will come through that door again.”

He didn’t know what to say, so tried to keep on as before.

“I’ve been asked for work at the barracks.”

“That was only a matter of time. They’ll ask you and they’ll be your friends. They’ll give you work and they’ll seem like everything to you. And they’ll never say to your face what they say behind it.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll be little Jock to them. Wee Jock. And they never found that Sergeant, They ken too well what this place is like fur them.”

She talked for several hours in Gaelic: he would just listen to her stories of the old times, before ’45 and before any soldiers had thought of clapping their eyes on the Braes.

The following day at the barracks was good. He would chop wood, beat rugs and after a while, he made clothes for them or mended the brass buttons on their coats when they wore out. The blue of their tunics was the same as Sergeant Davies’ although his was now a faded milk blue, the colour of the heather on a brighter day.

He would still go up and sit by Sergeant Davies. He was one of the few who had not assumed for a very long time that the good Sergeant had fallen in somewhere and had sadly been unable to find his way back. The others were several at the barracks who still held toward the locals and would make the children flinch with every sudden move.

Soon, many of the local men worked at the barracks. Those that could, would repair the bridge and road for the traffic to pass safely. They laughed and joked with the soldiers: never did either side consider entrusting the other with an invitation to an event.

One night, he was sewing by candle in the barracks: he always did this at night, lest he be branded a man doing woman’s work. MacPherson could hear words outside in a tongue like his ain-but there were words in there that he never knew.

MacPherson decided one day to go with a few of the soldier lads to Tomintoul for a drink. MacPherson had taken a dram before on a special occasion: his mother’s birthday, say. Certainly never his father’s birthday, who had simply sat and look at the fire in petulant silence.

Returning along the road in the dark, many of the lad’s began to try and teach him some of the words from their own places. They began to tell him that soon the Glen would be changing: that south of there they were beginning to move things out. The people were all leaving and sheep were coming in.

Several times they made this trip, till one night, MacPherson came over the hill and saw the vast dark, swallowing him up like a flood of ink over the valley. Within the dark, he could see flecks of brilliant light all over, darting flickers of shadow crossing over behind the church as if from some memory forgotten. There was a distant sound of shouting and a spill of pipe music that had not fallen over this glen in many years. And it was he who had forgotten: it was Samhainn.

When he went to see his grandmother, she was quiet as usual.

“They’re shipping out. I saw them-all the Darroch family, going down the hill with everything on their backs. Not a penny to their name.”

“The church will help them.”

“That they will not. No. Fur too long, that church has not been a friend of ours. But they think it is what binds us. Too wrong they are. There is nothing to bind us now.”

MacPherson couldn’t believe her words against the church she had long attended. She sipped tea from a cup and look across to where the trees used to be. After a while, MacPherson followed her gaze to where there was now no green until the horizon, as if the sky had pushed them to the edge out of shame. He couldn’t help think of Sergeant Davies.

The snow had fallen around where he once looked out over the glen, tucked into his cave. He huddled next to the twilight blue of the Sergeant’s tunic against the whip of the cold. Where Sergeant Davies looked out over, there had once been trees and now there was crofts, rising black fingers of smoke to touch the mountains.

On the day that he saw Duncan Terig again, he also saw John. Old John was looking more tired by the day. He was as big as he ever was but in a different way now: his hands were as big as shovels, creased by the dirt and earth black like the feet of the sheep.

“Old John, how are ye?”

“Tired, young MacPherson. The rain’s been fair falling this year.”

“I see the White River’s swollen tae break.”

“That was never my name fur it, young MacPherson” sighed Old John.

“D’ye ken that the Darroch’s have left?”

“Naw, I dinnae ken that. Leaving is when ye get up by yer own accord and leave. Enough folk no able to grow any tatties or nothing these days anyway. They might as well be gaun.”

Old John pushed his hair back, once a proud black, now a saddened grey.

“Are you working these days, young MacPherson?”

“I’m joining the British Army.”

John smiled for the first time in what MacPherson thought was years.

“Black Watch I suppose? Well, they brought them in, suppose you’d best go out with them. They’ll get no trouble round these parts anymore. What tartan will ye wear?”

“I didnae ken you could wear a tartan in the British Army, Old John.”

“That’s what worries me. They insist oan it.”

When he was patrolling the edge of the glen, he saw Duncan Terig walking. And he approached him.

“Duncan, how are ye?”

Terig stopped pacing up the side of the hill and stood off his front foot, as if ready to run. He looked over the blue tunic and saw a face he recognised.

“Aye. I’m fine.”

“Good. Ye asked that Shona tae marry?”

“I’ve thought of it, thanks.”

“Just gied her a few gold rings did ye?”

Terig’s eyes lit: the green burned at MacPherson as he charged him. He threw MacPherson by the tunic edges before he could react or defend himself. MacPherson had him within a whisper of being battered senseless.

“Give me his purse and I wilnae tell.”

“Whit did you say tae me?”

“I know he carried hauf guineas. In his pocket.”
“You know nothing of that MacPherson. You know nothing of where that money came from or what it is. You never will.”

MacPherson made the decision to let the authorities know of Duncan Terig or Clerk as they knew him. He decided to tell them of McDonald too. But to do so he would have to be careful. If he were not to be suspected in the plot, he would need a solid alibi to tell.

He sat one night, up near to Sergeant Davies. The sun was setting onto the hills in soft patches like a silent candle when he heard a sound. A bird was singing a shrill pitch: it was impersonating a telephone. MacPherson had never heard a telephone ring and wondered where the bird had learned such a sound in Glen Ey.

Over by the ruins of the chapel his grandmother attended, MacPherson sat on an old school desk that had been left after the closure. It was here that he came upon the plan that he told to the General the following day. He spoke of a ghostly visitation by Sergeant Davies, during the night, informing him of his resting place, begging him for decent burial. Sergeant Davies could conveniently tell that he was murdered by Duncan Clerk and Alexander Bain McDonald.

The General had drawn up in his motorcar over the bridge. Upon hearing the story, he gazed out toward the shining car, acting as a net for all the sun’s rays.

“I see” he gruffled through a pursed lip.

“And it is the Highland tradition sir, to follow the instructions of any ghost.”

“I see. You understand that the local Sergeant followed up on your story this morning and found the body of Sergeant Davies. He also tells me at the time there was a farmhand by the name of Angus Cameron-“

“-from Rannoch, sir. He’s a cateran.”

The General stared him down for such impertinence.

“My apologies, sir.”

“Now, this Cameron is a bit of a jock. Very incoherent. You will need to be the main witness, which means you are excused from duties in France you were scheduled to go to.”

“A jock, sir?”

“A little too Scotch to be coherent in a court.”

“But I’m Scottish, sir.”

The General looked over the blue tunic to MacPherson’s face.

“Of course. My apologies to you, Private.”

MacPherson had said farewell to many of his friends who were leaving to rest amongst the red and black flowers of France. When he walked through the village, he saw Terig and McDonald being arrested. McDonald cried as he left: Terig simply looked over to the barracks, where his Shona stood with empty hands.

Over the radio, MacPherson had heard of something on the radio, of the boats in Dunkirk pulling people from the water, of the heroics of retreat. He walked the hill to see his grandmother.

She sat by the radio, her reading glasses sliding down over her face in the ashen hue of the sun, speaking in The Gaelic.

“I see they’re having a big pairty for the VE, down in Inverey, by the street where you were born. I’ll no be going.”

“Everyone’s going.”

“I ken that. I ken everyone has the same tongue and the same tastes: I dinnae ken what it’s in the name o’.”

“But it was for the likes o’ me. We were going to be heroes.”

“I’ll tell you who’s a hero-that Sergeant Davies. Always that friendly tae everyone and met a sare end. What will you be telling them at the trial in Edinburgh?”

“The truth. My ghostly visitation and how it’s Highland tradition to follow the ghost’s will.”

“Then ye’ll pick the tradition that makes us aw look saft in the heid. Ye’ll no pick up the hammer till they put the Royal name on the Highland games, but ye’ll go tae a high court and tell them a ghost story. Away wi’ ye.”

The trial was nearer now; he went down to the Invercauld Arms for a drink with a few of his squaddie mates.

“What did this used to be? Before the pub?”

One of his friends was from Doncaster and was inquisitive about all local history.

“This was the site of the ’15. The 1715 uprising, where they raised the flag, just before I was born.”

“Why build a pub over it?”

“Time’s change, I suppose” replied MacPherson. “Not really a site of anything good, just a bunch of bigots running about.”

“You wouldn’t get that where I’m from” said one of his regiment’s sergeants from London.

“Well, it’s different up here. Things have changed a lot and they needed to. My grandmother still tells me stories in the Deeside Gaelic, but I can’t understand anything she’s saying. Never spoke a word of it in my life.”

They laughed and later, they smiled and joked as they waved MacPherson to the trial. He got into the car and pressed his uniform’s cuffs with the back of his hand.

The court was full. The air remained cool and the haze of dust shone through the pillar of sun from the window. The two men sat in the dock, cuffed. McDonald quietly wept and Terig sat with bitter eyes on MacPherson.

The lawyer stood, his bone-white wig drawing his face, clicking his lips as he spoke.

“Private MacPherson. I understand you are a well-respected young man within the local area?”

“I would like to think so.”

MacPherson spotted Jonathon from the White Bridge cottage in the dock. The two had been friendly for a while since Jonathon had bought the cottage as a holiday home. MacPherson had given him his tartan, as he didn’t have a clan name. He was looking older these days, but very relaxed, his blond hair edging to grey. MacPherson, while expecting to be calmed by his friend’s appearance, was suitably unsettled by his sight.

“And Mr MacPherson, these two men before you in the dock are less reputable in the Royal Deeside?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“Now, the testimony of a Mr Angus Cameron places the defendants at the scene. But I believe you have a less…conventional story.”

The courtroom nudged forward to hear the sensationalism.

“That’s correct. I had a ghostly visitation from the murdered Sergeant Arthur Davies. And in my vision, Sergeant Davies identified the two defendants as the culprits and told me his body was buried on the Hill of Cristie in Glen Ey. He asked for decent burial and in accordance with Highland tradition, we followed the ghost’s wishes. He was given full military honours and I was asked to take the British flag that was draped over his coffin.”

“I see. And you still possess this flag? Do you believe Sergeant Davies would have wanted you to have this flag?”

“I do. I believe it would have been a wish of his General and therefore of his.”

“And what language did Sergeant Davies speak to you in this vision?”

“In good Lochaber Gaelic, of that I am sure.”

The rattle of the hammer did not subdue the uproar in the court. The case was adjourned for a half hour.

MacPherson spent the time pacing the hallway: drawn, black shoes tapping the marble floor. There was a hum over the television of a war somewhere, with the distant mark of the Black Watch crossing over the camera lens before their time was over.

The lawyer appeared. The case was to be abandoned. There was not enough evidence to continue: the notion that Sergeant Davies, a British officer, spoke The Gaelic was too contentious.

Standing outside the Edinburgh high court in the rain, the cameras snapped in his face as he tried in vain to hail a taxi. It was then he spied Angus Cameron; the farmhand from Ranoch was stood over in a doorway, smoking a cigarette.

MacPherson ran over to shelter with him.

“It wasn’t my fault, Angus.”

“I’m not angry that you lied, MacPherson. I’m angry that a man died here and you let them walk away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“As am I. As am I. Listen, MacPherson, you’re no daft. You’ve seen enough to know.”

He stopped and stared at the puddle on the fading yellow ground.

“Do you remember the auld clans, MacPherson? The auld games we’d go to as kids, the champions at the games?”

“Aye, I do.”

“That’s funny because I don’t. And if I do, I don’t want to remember. But I like you MacPherson. That uniform, it wears you very well.”

MacPherson stood out into the rain.

“Thank you.”

Angus threw his cigarette into the wind of a passing taxi.

“That winds getting up, Angus. Let’s share a taxi. We’ll get a dram.”

Angus did not reply and walked off into the downpour. At the same moment, MacPherson realised that in facing into the storm, his back to the pulse of the wind, that every breath he made could whip Angus from a distance, if he allowed him to be. If he was asked, he would say he felt older than he could imagine.

Spirals & Newton's Parabola

The Florentine Part One

It’s unclear how this begins. There was a phonecall, which she stood up to collect, finding a rasping voice at the other end of the phone.

“Dr Gellas?”

“Speaking.”

“I believe my assistant spoke to you on the phone earlier, I’m phoning from Oighrig(SeeNoteOne).”

“What’s the book?”

“It’s not just one book. There’s a lot of them. It’s an archeological site.”

“I can evaluate two or three for you. Any more is going to take some time and I’m almost fully booked till Christmas.”

“Well, you’ll need to see anyway, if just for the sake of…well, just seeing this.”

The voice had a name, Dr Hartman, he gave her the contact and they arranged that she would fly out to the site the following week. Her interest was certainly tugged by his descriptions of what was out there.

The plans were completed and John signed off with a little more information on where she could stay and a decent place to eat.

“And, Dr Gellas, I don’t have to say this but, please…don’t mention this to anyone. You know how these stories can get out of control if they fall into the wrong hands.”


Cramped on the plane seat, ears buzzing from the engines a few feet away in the propplane gloom, she was tired and listless as the island loomed ahead. Its image juddered in the wind like some desert mirage, hidden by night.

The sand was soft as she stepped from the plane. Tents were billowing around the cracked hillside, white waves rolling up and over into the still. A man was waving from across the tall grass behind the shore.

Standing inside, she rubbed her nose of the salt spray over coffee.

“I can think of better places to be at this time of year.”

“Oh, I fully second that Dr Gellas. The British(SeeNoteTwo) winters are never a good thing. Particularly here. But once you see what we have, then I’m sure you’ll realise this was worth the trip.”

“I’m starting to hope it’s a hot shower and the Algonquin hotel you’ve discovered.”

Hartman smirked a little. He had met her at a conference some years ago, a fascinating weekend in Vienna, finishing with a grand series of lectures on bookmarks and reading utensils from the early modern period onward. They had got on well, but he could not ajust to Gisine Gellas’ dry, acerbic wit, often misplaced, mistimed and misunderstood. He liked her; he knew she could be counted on to be quiet about this; he knew she would give a fair evaluation of this find. Above all, he wanted to impress her, he wanted to see her jaw come unstuck at the site of the library.

“So, what have you called me out here for? And made my bank account so happy about?”

“I think it’s best if we go have a look in the morning, mind you, the site is one of the only places that is safe when the winds get up like this.”

“Or you like keeping me in suspense for whatever reason.”

“That too.”


The morning was settled down by the grey light of a dawning somewhere hundreds of miles away in the east. She was one of the first up: the wind had slapped her tent throughout the night, providing a percussive howl. Gellas became aware of the large pitch around the base of the hill, hiding the dig. The scale of it became apparent in daylight, it was a truly remarkable structure, whatever lay underneath the morturary sheet that swamped it.

By noon, they were ready to go in. Hartman lifted the sheet and a few of his grad students made their way in, a collection of ragged and worn spectacles and unkempt hair. He gestured for her to follow.

A trench of twenty feet or so descended into the darkness. They followed it down, her hands flaking clay from the edges of the walls, banking a sharp turn into the further black of the left. They paused in the black while the lights came on, a scuffing sound in the silence.

The generator hocked and spat into life, revealing the site.

Before them stood a fronting for a grand building, much like those she had seen on classical temples or palaces, scarred out of the stone. It was paling grey and soft orange in flecks, impossibly tall, swept by pillars and the lapping lights of candles long since burned out. By a crouched doorway stood two giant figures: their two hands reaching into the eternal gloom.

“This is the library.”

She approached the figures by the door, gently, as if so not to wake them.

“Draugrs(SeeNoteThree) ” said Hartman.

Dr Gellas glanced up into their eyes, pained and vicious, flesh sloping from the tips of their fingers like waxen dribbles of grease.

“A Viking library?”

Hartman looked over at her. She did not break her fix on the statues.

“Should be, only the initial carbon dating told us otherwise. I had a machine flown in from London(SeeNoteFour) and the sample from the door told us it was older, much older in fact. I believe it’s an error: the cold seems to ruin everything electrical out here.”

“The door?”

“We had to break it down to get in. Couldn’t budge it any other way.”

Gisine raised an eyebrow. She was used to Hartman’s impatient badgering on the telephone every few weeks: she was a little surprised at his cavalier attitude to such an important site.

“Then how old did the test say it was?”

“Well, the wood was at least one hundred and twenty thousand years old. But that has to be an error ” his peeling English accent croaked.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well, the door can’t be that old! It’s impossible(SeeNoteFive)! ”

“And the notion of a Viking library buried under a hill somewhere in Scotland is plausible?(SeeNoteSix)”

She smirked. He shuddered.

“Can I go in?”

“Just prepare. Marcus, cap the lights inside. Just prepare, a few of us had agoraphobia(SeeNoteSeven)attacks when we set foot inside.

The lights spanned out before her in the darkened passage in a funereal procession.

“Be careful.”

They followed the lights down another forty feet or so, before reaching a spiral staircase. They traced its edge down in the dark, pushing against the walls for balance.

When they stepped through the doorway, she was surprised by the lack of light, yet all the while her eyes were blinded by the enormous spotlights propping up around the floor. As her eyes adjusted, she began to feel fear, for she could not see the ceiling.

The library was infinetly huge. The spot where she stood was a raised platform of slate: giving her a view of the thousands of bookshelves stacked on the floor, an unlikely number of shades, hues and bindings just within reach from the platform stairs. The whole room was a patchwork of colour, watched over by a vast circular stainglass window that must have be forty foot in diameter. While it was not light outside yet, it was clear that the room simply swallowed light into its vast heights, beams of sunlight could not have possibly swam amongst the rafters of the great room.

“It’s…beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?”

She stood in a quiet repose for several minutes, drifting across the endless titles from a great distance.

“Where is the window?”

“That’s one of many mysteries. Come down here.”

The students were setting up a complicated series of monitors and tripods over the ground below. She slinked down the stairs toward them.

“One of many mysteries about this place.”

Hartman was glowing now, his pride at his discovery overtaken by his delight at her bafflement: some sort of strange schadenfreud.

“There is a forty eight foot circular window that allows natural light in here, yet we cannot find a single trace of it from the outside.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s about as possible as the door. It’s about as possible as what we’re going to show you here.”

The monitor infront of the students bleeted: a tripod descended of its own accord into the ground.

“When we were in here for the first exploration, we found no stairs or doors other than the one we came through. We tried a sonic reading, but with all the stone bouncing things around, we got nothing, no estimate of how big this place actually is.

We tried to walk end to end in this room, but we realized after a while of walking that it was going to be larger than we thought. It must be the size of the whole hill we realized. So David here, began firing this device across the way, try and get a width of this room at least. We get different readings each time, which suggests there’s room behind the walls. That was before we found the stairs.”

“The stairs?”

While the students busied themselves, Hartman led Gellas by the arm over toward a dark corner behind the far shelves. His touch felt like a pincer in the crook of her arm.

“There. You might not see it: it’s some kind of optical illusion(SeeNoteEight). Means you can’t see it, unless you literally fall into it.”

He led them through.

“Look down there.”

She peered over the edge of a stone spiral staircase, similar to the one they had climbed down initially. There was infinite quiet.

“How far does it go down?”

“We’ve been down about 165 floors and there’s probably more.”

“How can that be?”

The students had completed the readings, Hartman peered at the screeds of data looking for something.

“The stone bounces everything around in here: you can never get any kind of reading.”

“165 floors?”

“Yes, probably more.”

“How tall are these floors?”

“They vary. Some are maybe twenty feet high, others are only about 10.”

“But right off, that makes this library bigger than…anywhere in the world.”

“It actually makes it deeper than the shelf the island sits on. It’s impossibly huge.”

“Every floor has books?”

“Yes.”

“Then how many books can there be?”

“Millions. Perhaps billions.”

She stood back while the team pushed buttons and prodded at the machinery. She looked around the library, floor to ceiling, door to window where the light began to creep through.

“Hartman?”

“Yes. Have you had a look at the books yet?”

“No, I don’t plan to just yet. This place is airtight?”

“I would doubt it. There wasn’t much of a problem with the air or smell when we came in. It’s rock, there’s bound to be cracks here and there.”

“And all these books are paper?”

“Yes. From what we’ve checked.”

“Then where’s the dust?”

The group looked up initially across the floor toward Gellas.

“I mean, if these books have been in here as long as we think and there’s light, fresh air, maybe a little moisture, why aren’t they decaying? And if there’s that many books, why aren’t we up to our necks in dust?”

She looked over at the group.

“Why is the place spotless?”

Hartman gazed across her from over his spectacles.

“Trust you.”

“What?”

“No, she had a point.”

The scruffy one with the long blond hair had spoken up.

“She’s right. Why is the place perfect? I mean, there’s no way it can be airtight and with the degredation of the books even if it was…”