Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 601
The Serling nodded. "I can let you examine them, but I
don’t know what good it will do. All this material is available
in inscape."
Marya had already had this very conversation with the
Government. Had she not come directly from Ventus itself,
she doubted the giant AI that ran the Archipelago would have
let her in here. These papers were ancient and priceless, after
all.
"I want to see it for myself." She had pored over it all on
the trip here, but all Marya had come up with was more
puzzles. The word thalience, spoken by both Axel and the
Desert Voice, had convinced her that some unguessed clue
remained here at the source of it all. She had gleaned nothing
from inscape; this was her last chance to crack the mystery.
"Let me see the originals," she commanded. The serling
scratched his balding head, shrugged, and gestured her to
follow him.
The archive consisted of thousands of climate-controlled
safety-deposit boxes. Many had tiny windows showing frozen
contents; others were surrounded by thick-walled radiation
screens, because they preserved ancient compact disks and
other fragile data storage media. Supposedly, all the
information here had been scanned into inscape long ago.
Marya was skeptical; she knew from her own experience
scanning Ventusian artifacts just how sloppy technicians could
be.
The serling brought her into a room whose far wall was
made of glass. Low lights came up revealing several deep
chairs, and glove boxes built into the glass wall. "The papers
are delicate, so we store them in an atmosphere of argon gas,"
said the serling. "The gloves in the glovebox have forcefeedback
built in; if you try to crush or tear anything they’ll