Analog SFF, March 2008 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-15T07:07:58.248000+00:00

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Short Story: THE BOOKSELLER OF BASTET

by John G. Hemry

Some heroes are not what people usually imagine, but face no less danger.

The bookshop of Aaron D'abu filled to overflowing a ground level store space in the oldest building in Fraternity, the oldest city on the continent of Libertus on the world of Bastet. The bookshop had been there as long as the building and the city, its narrow street frontage only hinting at the deep space within, lined on both sides with shelves packed with every kind of book and magazine. E-readers and e-books in a hundred formats ranging from obsolete to not-quite-new cluttered one side, stacks of printed books filled the other, and in the very back against a wall covered with handbills announcing author readings and book signings rested an ancient Print On Demand console.

“When they founded this city,” Aaron D'abu told me, “my grandfather, may his spirit be ever at peace, was told that the new land here needed hands to build and farm, not shops that sold words. He told them they were wrong, that it was words that had built all which humanity knew, and words which had brought us to this world far from the Earth our ancestors called home."

He waved toward the back of the store. “Look. Inside these walls we have the thoughts formed on Earth two or three thousand years ago and the latest imaginings of the newest generation here on Bastet. They rest side by side, for all books are companions to each other. So said my mother, may she also be at peace."

I'd come to Bastet on a diplomatic mission. Earth's children occupy many worlds now, but the mother feels responsibility for her offspring. There are still things the old mother can offer her children, perhaps the latest technology or new techniques for farming or even grants of devices that new worlds find prohibitively expensive to manufacture. It's all only a drop in the bucket, for even Earth can't do much measured against the needs of other worlds, but it grants the home world a bit of influence it might otherwise lack. Too little influence, it often seems, as we watch the new worlds make the same mistakes the old world once did.

How was business? I wondered, noticing that only a few locals were browsing among the many offerings in the bookstore.

“Not what it should be. Enough, but no more. Too many say they don't need these books,” Aaron told me. “I tell them everything they want to know, someone else has thought or dreamed of, and it's all here for them to see. Would it kill them to learn of such thoughts? But, no, they claim to honor the past but don't care to learn from it because they say the future will be different.” He waved a hand again, this time to encompass all around us. “Does this city look different? See here, the thoughts of the old religions, may all honor be to them. Next to them, the new beliefs.

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