Tension eased immediately and the electrified atmosphere returned to normal. Artyom sensed this even before Melnik gave the all clear.

‘Stalkers,’ explained the guide. ‘Remember, for next time: three circles with a flashlight is our recognition signal. If you get the same response, you can go forward without fear. You won’t come to harm. If you get no response, or some other response, then run. Don’t wait.’

‘But if they have a flashlight, it means they’re human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,’ objected Artyom.

‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ said Melnik, cutting off Artyom. Without further explanation, he moved up the stairs to the Library entrance.

The heavy oak door, almost as tall as two people, gave slowly, almost unwillingly. The door’s rusted hinges shrieked hysterically. Melnik slipped inside, put his night-vision unit to his eyes while holding his rifle level with one arm. After a second, he signalled the others to follow.

They could see a long corridor before them, with the twisted framework of iron coat racks along the sides. This was once a cloakroom. In the distance, in the fading day’s light coming weakly in from the street, were the white marble steps of a wide, rising staircase. The ceiling was about fifteen metres high, and the wrought railing of the second floor gallery could be distinguished about halfway up the wall. There was a brittle silence in the hall, responding to their every step.

The walls of the vestibule were covered by moss that stirred slightly, as if it were breathing, and strange, vine-like plants as thick as one’s arm hung from the ceiling almost to the floor. Their stalks shimmered with a greasy lustre in the flashlight beams and were covered with large, malformed flowers that exuded a suffocating odour that made one’s head spin. They also swayed ever so slightly, and Artyom didn’t feel like venturing to find out if the wind blowing through the broken second-floor windows caused them to move, or whether they moved on their own.

‘What’s this?’ asked Artyom, addressing Ten and touching the vine with his hand.

‘Greenery,’ came the filtered reply. ‘House plants after being irradiated, that’s what. Morning glories. Did a proper job of growing ’em, those botanists…’

Following Melnik, they reached the stairs and started to ascend, keeping to the left wall while Ten covered them. The lead stalker did not take his eyes off the black square of the entrance to other rooms that could be seen ahead of them. The others ran their flashlight beams over the marble walls and the rusty moss-pitted ceiling.

The wide marble stairs on which they stood led to the second floor of the vestibule. There was no ceiling above it, and thus both vestibule floors combined into a single huge space. The vestibule’s second level formed three sides of a rectangle. In the centre, there was a space through which the stairs ascended, and there were areas along the edges with wooden cabinets. Most of them had either burned or rotted, but some looked as if people had used them just the day before. There were hundreds of small drawers in each section.

‘The card catalogue,’ said Daniel quietly, looking around with reverence. ‘The future can be foretold using these drawers. The initiated know how. After a ritual, you blindly pick one of the cabinets, then randomly pull out a drawer and take any card. If the ritual is properly performed, then the name of the book will foretell your future, provide a warning, or predict success.’

For a second, Artyom wanted to go up to the nearest cabinet and find out what section of the card catalogue the fates had brought him to. But his attention was distracted by a giant cobweb which stretched several metres across a broken window in a far corner. A bird of considerable size was caught in thin filaments of apparently extraordinary strength. It was still alive, twitching weakly. To his relief, Artyom did not see whatever it was that had managed to spin this unnatural web. Besides them, there wasn’t a soul in the vast vestibule.

Melnik signalled them all to stop.

‘Now listen,’ he said to Artyom. ‘Don’t listen to what’s outside… Try to hear the sounds from inside you, in your head. The book is supposed to call you. The Brahmin elders think that it is most likely on one of the levels of the Main Stack Archives. But the folio can be any place at all, in one of the reading rooms, in a forgotten library cart, in a hall, in one of the matron’s tables… So before we try to find a way into the archives, try to sense its voice here. Close your eyes. Relax.’

Artyom squeezed his eyes shut and started to listen intently. In the complete darkness, the silence fell apart into dozens of tiny noises: the creaking of wooden shelves, the noise of draughts passing down corridors, vague murmurs, howls that carried from the street, and a noise like a geriatric cough that carried from the reading rooms… But Artyom was unable to hear anything that resembled a call or a voice. He stood like that, motionless, for five minutes, and then five more, ineffectively holding his breath, which might have obstructed his efforts to differentiate the voice of the living book from the farrago of dead book sounds.

‘No,’ he said, guiltily shaking his head and finally opening his eyes. ‘There’s nothing.’

Melnik said nothing, nor did Daniel, but Artyom caught his disappointed look, which was self-explanatory.

‘Maybe it’s really not here. So, we’ll go to the stack archives. Or more precisely, we’ll try to get there.’ After a minute, the stalker made up his mind and signalled the others to follow him.

He stepped forward through the wide doorway where only one of the two original door panels remained on its hinges. It was charred along its edges and covered with strange characters. There was a small, round room on the other side, with a six-metre-high ceiling and four entrances. Ten followed Melnik and Daniel, taking advantage of the fact that they could not see him, took a step to the nearest surviving cabinet, pulled out one of the drawers, and took a card out of it. Running his eyes over the card, his face took on a puzzled look, and he shoved the card into his breast pocket. Understanding that Artyom had seen everything, he pressed a finger to his lips in a conspiratorial manner and hurried after the stalkers.

The walls of the round room were also covered with drawings and signs, and a sofa, with broken springs and upholstered in cut-up imitation leather, stood in a corner. In one of the four passages, an overturned book stand lay near some spilled pamphlets.

‘Don’t touch anything!’ warned Melnik.

Ten sat down on the sofa, causing the springs to squeak. Daniel followed his example. Artyom, as if under a spell, stared hard at the scattered books on the floor.

‘They’re untouched…’ he mumbled. ‘We have to put out rat poison at our station’s library, or the rats would eat everything… So, what? There’re no rats here?’ he asked, again recalling what Bourbon had said, about how the time to worry wasn’t when a place was crawling with rats, but when there weren’t any rats around at all.

‘What rats? Are you kidding?’ Melnik made a discontented face. ‘Where are you going to find rats around here? They ate them all a long time ago…’

‘Who?’ asked a puzzled Artyom.

‘What do you mean “who”? The librarians, of course,’ explained Ten.

‘So are they animals or people?’ asked Artyom.

‘Not animals, that’s for sure,’ said the stalker, shaking his head pensively, and said nothing else.

A massive wooden door located far down one of the passages gave a long creak. Both stalkers immediately darted in different directions, taking cover behind the embedded columns at both ends of the arch. Daniel slipped from the sofa to the floor and rolled to the side. Artyom followed his example.

‘Up further is the Main Reading Room,’ whispered the Brahmin to Artyom. ‘They show up there once in a while…’