Although not blessed with Regenschein’s great expertise, I did have some knowledge of Zamonian literature, and it required no stroke of genius to determine a book’s age from its condition, author, contents and imprint. It was really quite simple: the older the books around me, the deeper in the catacombs I must be. The more recent they became, the closer I would be to an exit. Not invariably, of course, but often enough. Why? Because most libraries reflected the time in which their owners lived. Equipped with this simple compass, I would be able to get my bearings and find my way back to the surface and freedom - if I could summon up the courage to examine the books.
What did I have to lose? If a Hazardous Book ripped off my head or drilled me between the eyes with a poisoned arrow I would at least meet a quick and merciful end instead of dying a slow, agonising death from starvation or being eaten alive by insects.
Better to die on my feet than crawling along like a jellyfish! All I had to do now was to overcome my fear and open a book. I came to a halt.
Went over to a shelf.
Took out a book at random.
Weighed it in my hand.
Was it unusually heavy? Could I hear something rattle inside it?
No.
Or was it too light because it contained a cavity filled with lethal gas?
No, it wasn’t too light either.
I shut my eyes and averted my head.
And opened it.
Nothing happened.
No explosion.
No poisoned arrow.
No cloud of splintered glass.
Gingerly, I touched the pages.
No cold sensation in my fingers.
Could I detect any signs of incipient madness?
Hard to say.
I glunked my teeth. No, they didn’t fall out either. Everything seemed firm enough.
Vertigo? Nausea? Fever?
Nothing of the kind.
I opened my eyes again.
Phew! It was a perfectly normal, harmless book. No explosive device, no cylinder of lethal gas or hypo filled with acid. It was just a book like most other books: paper covered with print and bound in hoggskin. Pah! What else had I been expecting, paranoid simpleton that I was? The odds against encountering a Toxicotome out of all the works down here were probably ten thousand to one.
I looked at the title. Hey, I actually knew this book, though only superficially! It was Nothing of Importance by Nemo de Zilch, the founder of Grailsundian Equalitism, a school of philosophy dedicated to total indifference.
‘It is wholly immaterial whether or not you read this book.’ Zilch’s opening sentence had always deterred me from reading on, just as it did this time. I replaced the book on the shelf unread - a reaction that would have delighted the Equalitists because it precisely complied with the aim of their sect, which was to be utterly ineffectual.
Nevertheless, the book had supplied me with some important information. It could only have hailed from the Zamonian Early Middle Ages because the Equalitists were active at that period and it was a first impression of the first edition.
I walked on past innumerable bookcases without bestowing any attention on their contents, leaving passage after passage behind me. Then I paused, took out a book at random and opened it.
‘“Life, alas, is all too short,” Prince Summerbird remarked, heaving a big sigh.
“Well,” his friend Navello Fluff rejoined with a smile as he poured himself a glass of wine, “if by that you mean to espouse the view that our span of existence is depressingly limited, I won’t take issue with you.”
Madame Fonsecca looked amused. “Ah,” she interposed, “I see you gentlemen are once more discussing the regrettable fact that our sojourn on earth is subject to shocking constraints from the temporal aspect.” ’
No doubt about it: this was a Plethoric novel, one of Zamonian literature’s more grotesque aberrations, in which variations on a single basic theme were repeated ad nauseam. And when had the Plethorists been active? In the Late Middle Ages! I was heading in the right direction, therefore, having progressed from the Early to the Late Middle Ages.
Quick! Go on! Again I passed countless shelves and bookcases without heeding their contents. I saw two variegated jellyfish clinging to each other in their death throes, but the sight no longer dismayed me. I was filled with hope once more. Then I paused.
‘Water cuts no bread’ were the first words I read on opening a book of verse. What was that called? Of course, it was an adynation, a natural impossibility. And what school of poetry had traditionally begun its poems with natural impossibilities? The Adynationists, of course! And when was the heyday of the Adynationists? Before or after that of the Plethorists? After, after! I had left the Middle Ages behind and come to Zamonian High Baroque!
From now on I checked at ever shorter intervals, allowed myself more time, examined several books in many bookcases and deployed all the literary knowledge Dancelot Wordwright had instilled in me. Had Horatio Senneker been writing before or after Pistolarius Grenk? When had Platoto de Nedici introduced Adaptionism into Zamonian literature? Had Glorian Cucurbit belonged to the Grailsundian Pastellists or the Tralamander Circle? Did Fredda the Hirsute’s oxymoronic verses hail from her Blue or her Yellow Period?
I thanked my authorial godfather in retrospect for the relentless way in which he had drummed all these facts into my head. How I had cursed him for it, yet now they might possibly save my life! I felt I was sailing across a dark sea in which countless lighthouses stood on little islands. The lighthouses were writers beaming their lonely messages across the centuries - I was sailing from island to island, guided by those literary beacons. They were the thread that would lead me out of the labyrinth. Hunger and thirst forgotten, I snatched book after book off the shelves, deduced my progress from them and hurried on, then paused once more and took out another.
‘The Universe imploded’ were its opening words. Definitely an Anticlimacticist novel, a genre whose exponents began their books at the most exciting and spectacular juncture. Thereafter they allowed the storyline to relapse, becoming steadily duller and more inconsequential until it petered out halfway through a casual remark. The Anticlimacticists were assigned to the Zamonian Romantic era, so I had come a stage further.
‘He desquelched his lips from hers and creakled down in a decrepit old armchair. Holding up the crustling sheet of paper, he examined it peeringly. “Is this really his will?” he surprasked.
She groansighed.
“You mean he hasn’t left us Dunkelstein Manor after all, just an old milking stool?” He cursehurled the document into the fireplace, where it cruspitated to ashes. With a scornlaugh, he gobbocked on the floor.
She sobwept snufflingly.’
Good heavens, Onomatopoeic Dynaprose! The authors of the period had presumably lost faith in their readers’ powers of imagination and felt they had to beef up their writing with gimmicky neologisms of this kind - which ruined its dramatic impact by modern standards. People like Rolli Fantono and Montanios Trumper had written such stuff in the belief that it was terribly modern, whereas all a modern eye could discern in such fatuities was that their authors were terribly old hat. For all that, these were the beginnings of the Zamonian nouveau roman, the first experimental essays in a new form of literature. I was heading briskly for the modern era.
‘Count Elfensenf? May I introduce Professor Phlogisto La Fitti, the inventor of anoxygenic air? Perhaps the three of us could play a hand of rumo together?’
Ah yes, I had definitely reached modern times, that little snatch of dialogue was proof enough for me. It came from a Count Elfensenf novel, the precursor of all Zamonian detective stories, of which Minolo Hack had written dozens just two centuries ago. Although hardly great literature, his books were almost as popular as the Prince Sangfroid novels, especially with younger readers. This one was Count Elfensenf and the Breathless Professor, which I had read probably half a dozen times in my boyhood. The same shelf held all the other nov
els in the series from Count Elfensenf and the Iron Potato to Count Elfensenf and the Piratical Zombie. I wouldn’t have minded reading them all again, but this wasn’t an appropriate time.
Instead, I took a book from the shelf beside them. It was small, untitled and bound in black leather. Opening it, I read:THE WAY OF THE BOOKHUNTER
by
RONGKONG KOMA
Bingo! This was a really recent publication. Rongkong Koma . . . Wasn’t he the one who had hunted Regenschein so relentlessly? A contemporary, no less! I dipped into the book as I walked on.
RULE NO. 1
The Bookhunter is as lonely in the labyrinth as a Spinxxxx.
His home is darkness. His hope is death.
Sombre stuff. Still, it was by a Bookhunter and they couldn’t all be as brilliant as Colophonius Regenschein.
RULE NO. 2
All Bookhunters are equal.
Equally worthless.
Hm, a really likeable individual, this Rongkong Koma. Not exactly the type of person one wanted to bump into down here in the dark.
RULE NO. 3
Anything alive can be killed.
Anything dead can be eaten.
This, it seemed, was the intellectually limited philosophy of a professional murderer. Hardly my favourite kind of reading but a contemporary work, that was what mattered. I tossed it over my shoulder and pulled out another volume, a particularly striking specimen bound in glittering steel and sumptuously adorned with silver, gold and copper fittings. Imagine my astonishment, dear readers, when I opened it to reveal a complicated mechanism in place of printed pages! At the same time I felt relieved because, had it been a Hazardous Book, I would have been standing there headless or transfixed by an arrow between the eyes. But what was it?
I saw cogwheels revolving, springs tensing, miniature pistons sliding back and forth. And then, at the top of the book’s interior, which resembled a peep-show or puppet theatre, a copper curtain rose and some little metal figures appeared on the tiny stage. Although as two-dimensional as the puppets in a shadow theatre, they were impressively lifelike and clearly represented Bookhunters whose martial accoutrements had been reproduced with great skill and accuracy. They proceeded to duel with axes and fire arrows at each other until all sank lifeless to the ground. Despite the bloodthirsty nature of the performance, it had been staged with loving care and considerable artistry. Then the copper curtain fell and, to my great disappointment, the little theatre’s show was over.
It was an amazing invention - an intelligent toy for adults! For the first time, in spite of my perilous predicament, I felt the desire to own a book from the catacombs. I had only to take it with me, after all. As things now stood I would be bound to find an exit soon and a rare item like this would surely be worth a fortune up in Bookholm.
But wait! Something was moving in the lower part of the mechanical book! A dozen tiny windows had appeared, a whole row of them with letters of the Zamonian alphabet rotating inside them like the cylinders in a one-armed bandit. Then, with a click-click-click, the letters came to a halt and, when read in succession, formed a sentence. It ran:
‘Eh?’ I said foolishly, as if the book had spoken to me, and in reply I heard a musical box in its mechanical innards strike up a tune. It was the traditional Zamonian funeral march we had played at Dancelot’s cremation. I looked again.
A disappointingly meaningless message after that brilliant puppet show. Or was it a riddle?
One moment: Goldenbeard the Hairsplitter - wasn’t that the Bookhunter claimed by Regenschein to have made a habit of eliminating his competitors with book traps of exceptional subtlety? Yes, Goldenbeard was a former watchmaker who used his knowledge of precision engineering to . . .
It was only then that I noticed a fine silver wire running from the spine of the book to the shelf. It had gone taut and was vibrating violently. I dropped the book in a hurry. It clattered to the floor, still playing the funeral march, but I was far too late. I heard more wires twanging, heard them go taut all along the passage like the strings of a gigantic harp being tuned, followed by a rumble like distant thunder. I glanced over my shoulder in dismay.
At the upper end of the passage the massive wooden bookcases were toppling over one by one. By disturbing this cunning book trap I’d activated a hidden mechanism. The bookcases were felling each other in turn like dominoes. Hundreds and thousands of volumes cascaded on to the steeply inclined floor, and the bookcases came crashing down after them. Wood, paper and leather piled up into a huge wave that bore swiftly down on me like an avalanche of mud speeding along a dried-up river bed.
I sprinted down the passage in the opposite direction, but I didn’t get far. The avalanche overtook me and swept me along in a churning mass of books that battered my head and body and eventually robbed me of sight. I was tossed around, yelling at the top of my voice. Then, all at once, I was falling. As if in the grip of a waterfall, I plummeted into an abyss with the avalanche of books. All I could hear was the air rushing past. I finally came to rest with a sudden, frightful jolt and a hailstorm of books descended on my back. Thousands of them must have piled up on top of me. Total silence and utter darkness engulfed me. I couldn’t move, I could scarcely breathe. I had been buried alive in books.
Unholm
If you still harboured any doubts that books can be dangerous, dear readers, they must surely have been dispelled by now. Those books had hurled themselves on top of me in a concerted attempt to squeeze the life out of me. I couldn’t see a thing, was unable to move my arms or legs and could breathe only with the utmost difficulty. It was a book that had landed me in this predicament. A Hazardous Book.
Now I understood: it was an example of Bookhunter’s humour. I had fallen into a trap that wasn’t even meant for me. Goldenbeard had laid it for one of his competitors and I, in my new-found faith in printed matter, had blindly stumbled into it. Regenschein had stated that Bookhunters were capable of transforming whole passages and sectors of the catacombs into lethal traps. It seemed that I always remembered the most important things when it was too late.
I was lying spreadeagled beneath a mountain of paper like a botanical specimen pressed between the pages of a book. I tried to move my arms, flex my legs and turn my head, but I could scarcely budge a claw. I was inhaling more book dust than air, so I found it harder and harder to breathe. It would be only a matter of time before I suffocated.
Suffocated by books . . . The songs Dancelot had crooned over my cradle never predicted that I would meet such an end. If destiny really did possess the gift of irony, this was a generous sample of it.
I didn’t even know whether I was merely wedged or completely paralysed. Perhaps that headlong fall had broken every bone in my body - it might have, judging by the pain I was in. But that was immaterial now. I was on the verge of bidding this cruel world farewell, and believe me, dear readers, that struck me as a merciful dispensation under the circumstances. Anything would have been preferable to this torment, even death. I prayed that the Grim Reaper would hurry, but my life continued to ebb away agonisingly slowly.
Then something stirred beneath me. I could feel I was being lifted, once, twice, three times, together with the entire mountain of paper on top of me. This hurt even more because it intensified the pressure to which my body was being subjected. Whatever was moving beneath me, it must have been the size of a gigantic whale. It effortlessly lifted me and my burden, my ribcage creaked, and I could hear the mass of books above me start to shift. There was a rumbling sound and the downward pressure lessened perceptibly. Many of the books must have slid off, because I could move at last. It seemed that I hadn’t broken every bone in my body after all. The pain was terrible, but I could now move my arms and legs, shovel books sideways and kick them away behind me. I continued to shovel and kick with wild abandon. As the rubble of books loosened, so I could at last breathe more easily. Then I saw light! Dim, multicoloured chinks of light were filtering through some narrow cracks quite near
me. I stretched out my paw to them. It went right through and into space! Shoving and kicking like a mad thing, I emerged from the ocean of books in which I’d almost drowned.
I burrowed my way out, panting and coughing, gasping and sneezing, hawking and spitting, vomiting up great gobbets of dust-laden mucus. I sucked in greedy gulps of air again and again. Then I tried to look around, but everything was still too shrouded in dust - all I could see were those multicoloured specks of light. It took me a considerable effort to extricate myself completely from the debris of torn and shredded paper, whole and dismembered books, hard covers and loose pages. I crawled along, then rose to my feet. You couldn’t really stand on such an unstable mound of debris - one foot or the other kept sinking into it - but with practice I soon managed to wipe the dirt from my eyes and look about me without falling headlong.
I was in a semicircular cave at least half a mile in diameter. The arching roof high above me was porous, perforated by countless holes of various sizes, and it must have been through one of these that I and the books had fallen. Adhering to the rock between these apertures was the source of the pulsating light: whole colonies of phosphorescent jellyfish of every conceivable size and colour. They must have belonged to a variety of the species in the jellyfish lamps - one that could survive when not immersed in nutrient fluid. Considerably larger and more luminous, they had probably evolved from the inmates of the lamps. I was reminded of the two jellyfish I’d seen clinging to each other in their death throes. Perhaps they’d been engaging in the sex act, not dying at all.
Flocks of snow-white bats flitted around just below the roof, circling endlessly and filling the cave with their shrill squeaks. With a sudden rumbling sound, one of the holes vomited a torrent of dust and paper that showered down on the sea of books, fortunately at a safe distance from me.