Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 431
the warm honeyed air, felt it drift over her limbs finer than any
cloth as she passed through room after room of her parents’
apartment. Her family were here, she knew, in other rooms she
had yet to reach. Then, in the back of her own bedroom, she
found a door she had never seen before.
She waved the door open, and gasped to find herself in a
giant library. She recognized paper books, had held a few in
her hand as a student, feeling then the tremendous age and
dignity of pre-space knowledge. It was this sense of ancient
dignity that had driven her to anthropology.
Here were thousand upon thousand of bound books,
arrayed in shelves that towered to an invisibly distant ceiling.
Marya walked reverently among them.
She stumbled, knocking over a side-table. The echoes of
its fall went on and on, almost visibly reaching into every
distant crevice between the volumes. When it finally died, she
heard a growing rustle, as if the books were rousing from
slumber.
A voice spoke. "You’ve done it now."
"What have I done?" she asked, tremulously.
"You’ve got to make a choice," said the voice. "You
woke us. Now you have to choose whether you want us to
become a part of you, as memory; or whether you want us to
become people, with whom you can speak."
She looked up at the towering wisdom, and felt a sudden
love for it--as if these books were family. "Oh, please become
people," she said.
But even as Marya spoke she remembered she wasn’t on
Covenant any more. She was on Ventus. As grim men with
swords stepped out of the walls, she screamed, for she had
chosen wrongly.