Grantville Gazette 24 by Eric Flint

Author:Eric Flint [Flint, Eric]
Format: epub
Published: 2009-09-30T03:00:00+00:00

He moved through the stacks, looking back to the reading area from time to time, to check the sight lines. Finally, he chose a strategic location. With his body hiding his actions as best as possible, he opened the book, and ever so slowly, to minimize the noise, started to make the tear . . . .

"May I help you?"

Kurt reacted as calmly as a cat whose tail has been stepped on. "Acch!" he cried. Once his pulse had slowed, he responded, still with his back turned to his tormentor. "No, I am fine."

But he sensed that he was still being watched. Finally, reluctantly, he turned. It was a middle-aged man; almost certainly, judging from his bad teeth, a down-timer.

"Do you need help? Perhaps in finding where to shelve that book? Its proper place is given by the Dewey decimal call—"

"No, no. See, I do it myself." Kurt shoved the book into a gap in the volumes. "Happy? Leave me alone." Kurt stalked off, thinking he would deal with the book another day.

* * *

Thomas Hobbes watched him go. Then he studied the bookcase, reached for the volume in question, paged through it carefully, and found the telltale rip. He closed the book abruptly, like a crocodile snapping its jaws on its prey.

* * *

Kurt was angry, with the damned interloper, and with himself. Finally, he calmed down. It wasn't as though the fool knew which book Kurt had shelved, Kurt was sure of that. Kurt would deal with the book tomorrow. And if he ever came upon the damn busybody alone, at night, well, he'd help him into a ditch somewhere.

For now, it seemed a good time to celebrate his find, with a little bit of drinking.

* * *

Kurt was a bit woozy when he reached his own street, and fumbled for the keys. It was a moment before he realized that he was in the center of a rough circle formed by six men.

Kurt was shocked. Grantville was a safe town, even at night, at least in this quiet neighborhood. He relaxed fractionally when he recognized the men, they were researchers from the library. Young scholars, not muggers.

"So, Kurt, did you have a good day at the library?" said a blond man with a small scar above his left eyebrow.

"Good enough. I will need to go back tomorrow."

"No need," said Scarface. "You're leaving town tomorrow. At the crack of dawn, I predict."

Kurt started to reach for his cudgel. The six produced theirs, faster, and Kurt thought better of initiating violence.

"That wasn't my plan."

The shortest of the six chuckled. "You know, Kurt, the SOTF Library is the greatest repository of knowledge in the history of the world. Greater even than the Library of Alexandria."

"And it is the making of our livelihood," added a third.

"It is more than that," said a fourth. "Its very presence is a miracle."

"So we take its desecration very seriously," said Scarface.

"The Library at Alexandria was lost in a day, to fire, but a library can be lost little by little," said Shortie.

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