page53 (1/2)

“You’re not going to tell me there’s one of these for every person who ever lived,” Quentin said

“Only people who are alive have theoes on for miles in all directions, it must jut into soo when you die Remaindered, I suppose”

He tittered at his own joke

“What’s in them?”

“About what you’d expect The story of your life, start to finish Who you are and what you did and what you’re going to do Eliot’s is in two volumes Here’s yours”

Penny put his hand on a squat navy blue book, as chunky as an unabridged thesaurus, with Quentin’s naold

Quentin hesitated

“I know,” Penny said,as you’d think, is it? I’ve never opened mine There are those in the order who have looked, and I’ve seen their faces”

Plum slid her volume off the shelf and held it cradled in her hand like a baby The urge to read it was al Almost, but not quite

“You spend your whole life trying to understand yourself, what your story is about,” Penny said, “and then suddenly it’s all there All the answers, spelled out in black and white Some of them are indexed even Look at Quentin’s, it’s alphabetized” It was true: there were little half-es, labeled A–B, C–D and so on, in a diagonal ladder down the side

Slowly, reluctantly, Quentin handed his book back to Penny

“I guess I’ it”

Penny reshelved it—a little cavalierly, Pluht Plum replaced hers with appropriate care You can’t unread a book She was dying to look, but she supposed that if she lived her life properly then by the time it was over she’d knoas in it That was sort of the whole point, wasn’t it? To understand your own story? Reading the book noould just be cheating And what kind of jackass cheats at life?

“Hang on,” Eliot said, “this raises a lot of questions Does this mean we don’t have free will? And if you burn somebody’s book do they die?”

“Keep !” Penny shooed theht you were in a hurry”

He hustled the as far as a plain unmarked door, which he opened It was the first room they’d seen that was co on the walls, not even a picture It had no s either, only a desk with a leather chair behind it In fact it was rather gloomy

“Let uess,” Plum said “Invisible books Or no,them”

“This is my office”

Penny sat down at the desk, facing theers

“The system notified me as soon as you entered the Neitherlands There’s a reason I brought you here”

“You have literally threewith impatience

“You have so of mine,” Penny said “Quentin”

“I do?”

“A page From one of my books”

“Oh”

Everybody looked at Quentin Pluuessed it e fro kind of scoldy about it

“Fair enough” Quentin extracted it froood care of it for you, I promise”

The page, hat seemed to Plum like a certain lack of sentimentality, slipped out of Quentin’s hand of its own volition and through the air and onto Penny’s desk like a toddler rushing to embrace its parent

“Thank you”

Instantly a door opened and a robed wo directly at Penny’s ingerly as if it were a li Which Plum supposed in some sense it was

Penny leaned over and pulled up one of the floor tiles next to his chair, which turned out not to be a tile at all but the cover of a large book It was e on books, big, dusty, thickly bound toh the tissue-thin pages, which contained columns of minute numbers, nodded, and then let the cover fall closed with a thump

“Now,” he said, “there is the matter of the fine”

“A fine?” Quentin said “You mean like a late fee?”

“I do You will be detained here for one year to work in the stacks until your debt is repaid”

Oh my God, what an ass!

“Don’t be an ass,” Plum said

“You’re not going to detain ht be able to save it, but it can’t wait We have to go”

“There are thousands of worlds They live and they die But knowledge is power, Quentin, and wisdom is eternal” He actually talked like that “You took some of ours”

“I gave it back”

“But you had the use of it for a year A page froel scribe herself Think e could have done with it in that time”

“Al You have like a dillion books here, probably nobody would have even looked at it”

Penny stood up and walked around froers—hey, those were spellcasting positions!

“The books must be balanced, Quentin You always did have trouble accepting that We will also have to remove from your mind the memory of what you read—”

He was going into Quentin’s head now? No Plum took a step back and raised her hands too Everybody did; in one second they went fros about one another to a single defensive phalanx Quentinshaft of light shone out of his palht into Penny’s face