Bott shook his head and set one hand on a soft orange chair. The Free Imperial State demanded three different licenses for permission to read, five to carry a book aboard your ship, and another, plus a series of tests, to own a book. The licenses for what he was seeing right now would probably require a computer filing system larger than the Drover.
“And you have more?” he demanded.
“This is just the reading room,” said the Captain of the Dragonshelf, waving one hand toward a distant door. “The real collection is in the stacks.”
“All these books!” Bitt exclaimed, reaching for some slim ones on the glass table.
“We actually call those magazines,” she informed him. “They’re like books, but more quickly printed and distributed on a more regular basis. They’re more fragile, too, so they’re harder to find.”
Bott had never heard the word “magazine” applied to a book. Did this mean there was a wepon inside? He flipped up a plain cardboard cover to find only a few words and a lot of pictures. And such pictures.
Encouraged by this sudden interest, she stepped over to stand next to him. “These are all recent acquisitions: they haven’t been properly accessioned yet. What is it? Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Harpsichord Harlots and Ballet Sluts on Point. Yes, these magazines are really rare, aren’t they? Yes, they are!”
He turned his head up toward her. “Do you have many books like this?”
She backed away four steps. “Well, those we can find. The only way to save anything of a culture is to save everything; since you don’t know what will be important to a researcher. Except when Principal Hiatt was in charge. She would never let us keep a book if you couldn’t read the spine.” She shook her head.
Bott considered the spines of the oddly-positioned nudes in the pictures. He had seen this sort of thing in bars, of course, but was a little shocked to find them in a book…a magazine.
“You really go through the galaxy trying to find things like this?”
The sides of her face were tinged with red. “I am a librarian, sir. I preserve yesterdays for tomorrow, whatever today thinks of them.”
Bott hands trembled on the magazine cover. There was a lot more to this librarying business than he had thought. His eyes went to clear plastic shelves filled with books, or magazines, that the Dragonshelf had picked up in remote places. Being a pirate had brought him plenty of dangers. He considered himself brave. But he could think of no pirate in history who had so sedately risked an imperial sentence of rearranged bones and inflated organs the way this librarian had.
The Free Imperial State had realized early on that the printed word was the greatest threat to control of information. Technological communications were easy: the government merely made sure that adjacent planetary groups used processes which were all but totally incompatible, meaning that revolutionary texts infecting Group A were unable to reach Group B. Sensors and censors built in everywhere along the line made sure that none but the Imperial officials with the highest classification had access to everything within the system. Lower orders received only what was rationed to them.
Books, however, could not have their texts homogenized, being fixed in place and requiring only two machines to process: an organ to take in the information and an organ to process it. Thus, the suppression of what existed in every civilization’s tradition of libraries was essential to control.
The first move in controlling libraries was positive support from the Free Imperial State. Imperial officials would gradually promote the principle that for an Imperial library to contain a text implied approval of the text. So public monies were spent on books deemed conducive to the public welfare, and books found wanting were made unavailable.
This economic protection of the masses, however, affected only the text which came to the hands, paws, or flippers of those who could not afford to buy them. An attempt to control bookstores the same way, arguing that since bookstores paid taxes and enjoyed the benefits of taxation, they were also Imperial institutions lasted only until bookstore proprietors offered to pay a higher tax for being allowed to sell unapproved books. It had to be demonstrated to these misguided souls that simply selling a book unapproved by the Free Imperial State argued approval of it, which might, in some (most) cases, be evidence of the capital crime of treason.
But even killing the librarians and booksellers who protested was no satisfactory. The process was piecework: every book, every bookseller, every library assistant, had to be tracked down individually. Something broader and more inclusive was needed. Destruction of printing plants and book warehouses gladdened the heart, but not really any more effective. A licensing system, which meant anyone dispensing books had to pass an exhaustive test of psychiatric, emotional, and political responsibility, had shown promise but, again, was simply too diverse. Too many different civilizations with completely different ways had to be taken into account.
Until one emperor, considering the latest license proposal, had a brainstorm. Instead of applying the test to people who dispensed books: simply provide a much simpler (and far more restrictive) exam to everyone in space and decree that anyone who failed was forbidden to read. Anyone without a license would be put to death in the most shameful, painful way the local civilization could imagine. After a transitional generation or two, literacy would be restricted to those who could be trusted to think properly and read proper texts. The bad books would turn to dust from disuse, and a non-literate population could communicate through their local technological systems, which were simpler to edit and restrict.
The transitional period had taken longer than expected but, as a whole, success was ridiculously easy. There were now only about three thousand licensed literates in all the Free Imperial State. Even they had to take recurring tests to make sure they conformed to current approved thinking. All of these were members of the ruling system of the Free Imperial State; everyone else was a part of the laboring class. Some jobs involved skilled labor, and there was room for advancement. But almost no one rose from the skilled labor level to any level of official office.
This made running a government much simpler. But there were always ingrates. Resistance forces—no one was sure how many—had organized bootleg universities, mainly as fleets of small quick ships that could get out of the way of Imperial Truant Forces. Nubry was the last survivor of one of these fleets.
Bott shut the book…magazine. “You must have a real variety of books. Why didn’t you join one of the other university fleets?”
She had her back to him. I’ve been followed…and it’s been years! You’d think they’d give up when they couldn’t catch me the first dozen times.”
“If you got away, and kept away this long, you must be a good pilot.”
She turned a little in his direction, noticed he had closed the b…magazine, and shrugged. “That’s the training. I was going to be Library Pilot. Wasn’t I? Yes, I was! I was much better than Chedler was.” She bit her lip and turned away. The ball of hair on the back of her head bounced as she marched toward a door at the far end of the Reading Room. “But the ship hasn’t been responding properly. Maybe you can fix it. The engine room is this way.”
Bott knew where the engine room was on a BBB-44, but it was more polite, he supposed, to let her show him. When they reached the place, he released a mighty sigh. Finally, he was somewhere familiar. The first thing he noticed was a rotor housing that wobbled as they passed. If only he had his toolkit from his old ship, a couple of RK stabilizers and a brace and….
“It’s been shaking a lot when I get to change direction,” she said, stopping at the central aisle. “Hasn’t it? Yes, it has!”
“Is that all?” Bott replied. “That’s not so serious, You need….”
“I know,” she told him, with a sharp nod. “I need a new prospondor flangy.”
Bott frowned. She seemed all business about it. “A what?”
Wrinkles of uncertainty rose above dark eyes. “A prospondor flangy?”
The rebels might have modified their engine, he supposed. He spread out one hand. “I’d say your prospondor needs a new flange.”
“Is that how you say it?” Her head came toward him.
Bott retreated. “Say what?”
“Flangy.”
Bott had never heard this word before.” Flange?”
“Soft g, silent e,”she murmured. “Flange. Flange. See, I had to learn so many words from just reading the service manual. I hadn’t taken the Engineering for Pilots course yet.”
Bott understood none of this, so he decided it couldn’t be very important. He raised a hand to point. “Isn’t that the storeroom there?”
“It is,” she told him. “But I’m not sure we have any more fl…flanges?” She tipped her head, looking to see if he approved of the plural.
But he was already moving down the little metal stairs to the door he’d spotted. ”Let’s see!” Oh, it was amazing to be in a ship where you knew where you were going! No slave pens to stumble onto, not on a BBB-44. He flipped on a light and gasped at the beauty of the storeroom, with all the cartons in tidy rows and tools lined up in stained buckets. Well, the first rows of boxes weren’t so immaculate: someone had been scribbling all over them.
“Let’s see,” he said again, moving among the stacks. “Here!” He took down a reassuringly heavy box and, sure enough, found two prospondor flanges inside, still wrapped.
“Well!” Nubry was still standing in the doorway. “Amazing!” She waved a hand at the boxes with strange designs in black marker scribbled on them. “I looked through all these and didn’t find a thing I needed. But you walk in and go right to the box!”
Bott never minded a little applause, but he couldn’t feel this was his most amazing achievement. “Prospondor components are always sixth row down, with the flanges on the second shelf.”
She almost absent nose wrinkled, and she tapped one foot. “Well, why don’t they write that down?”
Bott raised one eyebrow. The literate certainly were different.
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