Daniel led Artyom straight ahead, down a passage that ran at an angle to another corridor that was narrower and full of new doors. The Brahmin did not move so quickly down this corridor, and stopped often to listen. The floor here was of inlaid parquet, and forbidding signs reading ‘Observe silence!’ hung on the walls, which were painted yellow as were the walls throughout the Library. Rooms and trashed offices could be seen behind doors that were wide open. Rustling could sometimes be heard from behind closed doors, and once, Artyom thought he heard steps. Judging from his partner’s face, this spoke of nothing good, and both hurried to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Then, as Daniel had expected, a doorway to another stairwell appeared on their right. It was lighter here compared to the murk of the halls, as there were windows at each flight of stairs. From the fifth floor, you could see the courtyard, some outbuildings, and the burned-out skeletons of some technical equipment. But Artyom was not able to examine the courtyard for long, as two grey humped figures emerged from behind the corner of the building he and Daniel were in. They made their way slowly across the courtyard, as if they were searching for something. Suddenly, one of the creatures stopped and raised its head, and Artyom felt as if it was looking directly at the window at which he was standing. Recoiling, Artyom squatted on his heels. He didn’t have to explain what had happened to his partner, who grasped everything.
‘Librarians?’ he whispered with alarm, also squatting so as not to be visible from the street.
Artyom nodded silently. Daniel then wiped the plexiglass of his gas mask, as if this would help him dry his forehead, which was perspiring from worry. He then collected his thoughts and hurried up the stairs, dragging Artyom behind him. One flight up, and then another set of winding corridors… Finally, the Brahmin stopped uncertainly in front of several doors.
‘I don’t remember anything about this place,’ he said, perplexed. ‘There’s supposed to be an entrance to the duplicate card catalogue. But nobody told us there’d be several doorways.’
He pondered, then half-heartedly jerked the handle of one of the doors. It was locked. The other doors were locked, too. Uncomprehendingly, as if he refused to believe it, Daniel shook his head and pulled the handles once more. Then Artyom tried as well, also without result.
‘They’re locked,’ he said. There was despair in his voice.
Suddenly Daniel gave a little shudder, and Artyom, looking at him in alarm, took a step away from his partner, just in case. But Daniel only laughed.
‘Why don’t you knock?’ he suggested to Artyom and added, with a sobbing laugh: ‘Sorry, it’s probably a fit of hysterics.’
Artyom felt the incongruous laughter filling him, too. The tension that had been building over the past hour was starting to show and, try as they might to control themselves, their silly giggling broke through to the outside. For a minute, both stood with their backs to the wall and laughed.
‘Knock!’ repeated Artyom, holding his belly and regretting not being able to take off his gas mask to wipe away his tears.
He stepped up to the closest door and knocked on it three times with his knuckles. After a second, three resounding knocks came in response from the other side of the door. Artyom’s throat dried immediately and his heart started pounding frantically in his chest. Someone was standing behind the door, listening to their laughter and biding their time. What the…? Daniel threw him a look that was mad with fear and backed away from the door. And from the other side, someone knocked again, louder and more demandingly.
And then Artyom did what Sukhoi had once taught him. Pushing off from the wall he kicked the lock of the next door over. He hadn’t counted on it working, but the door opened with a crash. The lock’s steel mechanism had torn out of the rotten door, together with some wood.
The room behind this door was unlike any of the other rooms or corridors of the Library through which they had passed. For some reason it was very humid and oppressive here, and by the light from their flashlights, they could see a small hall that was densely overgrown with strange plants. Thick stalks, heavy oily leaves, a mixture of scents so intense it even penetrated their gas mask filters, a floor covered with tangled roots and trunks, thorns, flowers… The roots of some of them disappeared into preserved or shattered flowerpots or tubs. The now-familiar vines entwined and supported rows of wooden cabinets that were identical in appearance to those in the big vestibule, but rotted through entirely owing to the high humidity. This became clear as soon as Daniel tried to open one of the drawers.
‘It’s the duplicate card catalogue,’ he told Artyom, with a sigh of relief. ‘We’re not far, now.’
They heard another knock on the door behind them, and then someone carefully tried the doorknob, as if testing it. Moving the vines aside with their rifles and trying not to trip over the roots that ran along the floor, they hurried to pass through the ominous secret garden hidden in the depths of the Library. There was another door at the other end of the hall, and this one was not locked. They passed down the last corridor and finally stopped.
They were in the stack archive. They felt it immediately. There was book dust in the air. The library was breathing calmly, and the murmur of billions of pages could be heard ever so slightly. Artyom looked around, and it seemed to him he could smell the odour of old books, a favourite of his childhood. He looked at Daniel inquiringly.
‘That’s it, we’re here,’ confirmed Daniel then added, in a hopeful tone: ‘Well?’
‘Well… it’s spooky,’ admitted Artyom, not understanding immediately what his partner was expecting.
‘Do you hear the book?’ clarified the Brahmin. ‘From here, its voice should be more distinct.’
Artyom closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. The inside of his head was empty and reverberated, as if inside an abandoned tunnel. Standing like that for a while, he again began to hear the little noises that filled the Library building, but he wasn’t able to hear anything resembling a voice or a call. Worse, he felt nothing, and even if one assumed that the voice Daniel and the other Brahmins spoke of was some completely different type of sensation, that changed nothing.
‘No, I don’t hear anything.’ He spread his hands.
‘Never mind,’ sighed Daniel after a silence. ‘Let’s go to another level. There’re nineteen of them here. We’ll keep looking until we find it. We better not go back with empty hands.’
Going out onto the service staircase, they went up several floors of concrete steps before stopping to again try their luck. At this level, everything looked like the place they came to initially: a medium-sized room with glazed windows, several office tables, the now-familiar growth on the ceiling and in the corners, and two corridors, going off in different directions, filled with endless rows of bookshelves along both sides of a narrow passageway. The ceiling in both the room and the corridors was low, just over two metres in height, and after the incredible vastness of the vestibule and the Main Reading Room, it seemed that not only would it be difficult to squeeze between the floor and ceiling here, but to breathe as well. The stacks were densely packed with thousands of various books, and many of them appeared to be completely untouched and marvellously preserved, evidence that the Library was built so that even when people abandoned it, a special microclimate was preserved inside. Seeing such fabulous wealth even made Artyom forget, for a minute, why he was there, and he dived into one of the rows, looking at the spines and running his hand over them reverently. Concluding that his partner had heard what he had been sent here for, Daniel initially didn’t interfere, but then finally realized what was going on. He grabbed Artyom rather roughly and pulled him further on.