CHAPTER 10
Ben took them forwards into time, back to the days where he played alive. And then through space to a crossroads at the edge of his village. Here the sign, rather hopefully, stood. It had eight pointing arms, each one labelled with the name of an important Commonwealth city and the distance in miles to reach it. None of the arms pointed to a road, but instead guided the traveler towards hedge, field or tree.
'That's the sign?' Albert asked Ben, who replied it was with. Albert continued, 'It's useless! Can we trust it?'
'Of course!' replied Ben, somewhat insulted. 'That sign, I will swear, is honest and true! This is England, you know!'
'Oh, well, England. Forgive me, how could I ever doubt. England, the only place a compass shows true north,' replied Albert sarcastically.
Ben, refusing to rise to Albert's sarcasm, turned to The Moof and said,
'I'll take Victoria back a few years. You and Albert go ahead.'
'Come,' Albert said to The Moof. 'We have our orders.'
'I won't take orders. But I's good for requests. Make me a sandwich!' replied The Moof.
'Then I request your company, away from here, and now!' demanded Albert.
'Right boss! Follow your lead, sir!'
Albert looked at Ben and spoke,
'We'll meet you in the round reading room. You have the power, you find us.'
He sped away, The Moof followed, over a hedge on to a field.
Ben turned to Victoria and caught sight of a pub, which was the only building visible from the crossroads. It was a large black and white, stone and timber building set-back from the road and nestled among a dozen oak trees.
'The pub!' he said, somewhat alarmed. 'It used to be called The King George!'
Victoria looked, a large sign over the pub's door read 'The King Mark.' She returned her stare to Ben. To help calm his shock and confusion, she offered an explanation,
'Things change,' she said.
'Not history! Come on. Time is running out!'
They travelled back a few years - King Mark still ruled the village - then raced away towards London.
They moved silently, as their frictionless bodies cast no wind; no rush of air roared in their ears, yet neither raised their voice to speak. They tunneled through silence on to which Ben clung, waiting, ready to respond to her first, and any, prompt but all she offered was a fleeting gaze, one caught by Ben, who had her fixed in his.
A great hill lunged before them. As they began to scale it, Victoria accelerated ahead of Ben. He tried to match her speed, but his weight held him back. At the summit, she launched herself up into the air. Ben stopped and watched her shrink away then vanish behind an island cloud. His stare was held, lost, searching. He knew her motive, but still he felt uncertain. How many dreams had he cast to the sky, how many smiles and visions? He now called on the sky to cast all three, as one, back. It did. Victoria came, returned. He tracked her to the ground. She pointed off into the distance.
'London?' Ben asked.
She nodded, yes. Then turned to continue the journey.
'The stars are silent, too. And beautiful, too,' he said, almost involuntary. She stopped and looked at him.
'Silent?' she asked.
'Yes.'
He knew he should not, but he grabbed her hand and took her back to a time before The Earth had been born. They hung suspended in the thick silence of space, captured by reams of unblinking stars, which shone so crisp and bright and yet still seemed impossibly far and unreachable, and no less of a wonder for it.
Victoria made no attempt to speak, to test the silence of space, but her eyes concealed no truth. Fear and awe came flooding out. She turned and twisted to grab every view, to check, to settle her mind. Ben began to doubt the wisdom of bringing her here. He reached to take her hand. She looked at him sharply and froze his stare. For want of a reply, to lighten the sudden weight she had shared, he spoke, slowly mouthing the words for her to read, 'You see, no one can hear you in space.'
Her mouth cracked open to a half smile. Hope rallied her eyes. She tilted her head back and scoured the view, then opened her mouth and released a savage cry of fear, of pain, of joy. A scream, a laugh, felt and heard by only herself - her own, her very own. Once finished, she took Ben's hand and calmly smiled.
'Thank you...We must continue,' she mouthed the words for Ben to read. He complied instantly, unable to resist her wish.
Back on the mountain, Victoria glanced up at the sky.
'How endless it seemed,' she said.
'It is. Or can be. We can make it so,' said Ben.
'But what can be endless? What would wish to be?'
'I've read that it started from nothing and now continues to expand, ever more vast.'
'The big bang.'
'Yes. But how do you know? That's after your time.'
'Books read, stolen over shoulders.'
'At the British Library?'
'Yes.'
'For all the years you've been a ghost? You must know nearly everything.'
'For no time at all. I know so little.'
'You know lots!'
'No more than when I was living. Less, I should say. What is there to know, to believe? What is certain?'
'The past,' but remembering The King Mark pub, 'once!'
'The past? It comes in many different ways, is written as fact in many different books. You will see how many when we reach the library.'
'Why did you start to visit it?'
'For help. For knowledge, to purge, to exorcise.'
Ben looked at her, he did not understand. She continued.
'How much knowledge can a brain hold? How much water can a bucket hold? If you pour water into a bucket that is already full, is it the new water that spills out, or is it the old? The same for a brain, when a brain is full, if indeed a brain can ever be full, if you add more knowledge does this new knowledge displace the old?'
'There are things that the brain can never forget. Things that a brain shares with every cell, every atom of the body. Certain memories and feelings, the big ones anyway, are fixed inside. It's why the body of a chicken will run away after its head has been chopped off.'
Victoria laughed.
'Yes...No, that is something else, more basic than feelings.'
They shared a smile.
'Did it work, going to the library?' Ben asked.
'There wasn't the time.'
'Before The...?'
'Yes.'
They shared a look of understanding.
'Can I ask, why didn't you have a proper grave, with a headstone, in the church yard?'
'For those like me, such burials are forbidden.'
'For those who,' he hesitated not wanting to be blunt, 'jumped?'
'I am a murderer. I murdered myself.'
'You were pushed. I mean you weren't, but you were. I know you were!'
'Pushed?' she asked doubtfully, 'Did you learn how my Father died?'
'No.'
'He was killed.'
'By a mob, by the village I should hope!'
'No, by a single man. The mob stood silent, Thomas did not.'
'Hannah's friend?' asked Ben, somewhat surprised.
'He was more than a friend, very much more. Those cells and atoms you talk of, well Hannah's dreams, her feelings and thoughts, they lived in his.'
'Why?'
'Why?' she asked him surprised, 'Don't you know?'
'He killed your father, for revenge?'
'For love, for loss, yes for revenge, and for justice, too! For Hannah!...It broke him. I watched his rage, a madness I should say. Justice, that of the law, may have contained it, but there was no official justice, only that which he brought himself.'
'Then what happened?'
'He stood, unafraid, for all to see. He did not jump, he did not flee, he took himself to the mob and spoke only the truth!'
'He confessed?'
'Yes.'
'And then?'
'They, too, called h
im a murderer and treated him as such. He was hanged by neck till dead! I watched, as much as I could bare. How still he was, how calm, how willing.'
'And he did it all for Hannah?'
'Yes, I think. Some for himself, perhaps, to stop the pain.'
'Of his loss?'
'Yes.'
'We shouldn't be here,' said Ben forcing himself to change the subject. 'We should be on our way to London. Are you ready?'
'Yes.'
'Then lead the way!'
They passed through the suburbs into London, with the rooftops as their road. They travelled as VIP commuters above the hustle and bustle, unaffected by the smog that dulled and encased the city. Red buses stood out like imposters, like bursts of neon against the colourless floods of people and traffic. Through the smog, and the blur of speed, and his own ignorance, Ben recognised little, although the buildings he did recognise were not quite right. There was no Big Ben towering above The Palace of Westminster, and the Dome of St Paul's was missing.
They came to a stop on the roof of the north wing of British Museum: one of four wings that together formed a quadrangle. Below them stood the inner courtyard, in the centre of which stood a large round, domed building that Victoria said was the Reading Room.
'Did you notice St Paul's?' asked Victoria.
'Yes. And Big Ben,' Ben answered.
'The clock tower, Big Ben is only the bell in the clock tower.'
'Oh. And here, the museum?'
'The same, I think, thankfully. The door is unlocked at seven.'
Ben took his cue. They entered the Round Reading Room in the shadow of a security guard. Once inside, Ben took Victoria back few hours so that the space was theirs alone.
'Wow! It's amazing!' said Ben feeling giddy.
'And still full of books!' said Victoria.
They stood as droplets in a vast cavernous space. A bookshelf, three storeys high, lined the entire round wall from the floor to the beginnings of the great domed ceiling.
As if a towering cliff face it imposed a sense of awe and intimidation, yet also enticed with a call to be scaled. Here was a city of books, Ben thought, a sanctuary to vast sways of human knowledge and history, monument greater than all the statues of gods and warriors that stood on guard outside. But as he continued to cast his stare over the immense array of books a sense of dejection began to fill him.
'But where is the one we must find?' he asked.
Victoria looked at him, hesitantly. As he turned to face her, she looked away.
'Let's get the others,' Ben continued.
They travelled through time and soon found The Moof, who was standing alone in the centre of the room looking rather under whelmed. As soon as he caught sight of Ben and Victoria he began to address them.
'Oh, hey. Oh hey. I'll say this. This one too. This is all just vanity! You's showing off! Ain't no need for it. Trouble with you folk. You think too much. You waffle on. The Moof does quality. Not quantity. Not always. Not with books. Most of these books here. I could replace with a quality mime. Yes. Food for thought that. Ain't it? The worst kind of food, too. And here's another spoonful of thought food! You think too much! You're born. You die. And all in the middle you make on the hoof while plodding along. So then. He's one for yer. How many books do you really need? How many books do you's need before you only starts confusing yourself? Talk the answer, mind! The Moof's no worm of any kind!'
'I have no answer,' replied Ben.
'I'll tell you. Four.'
'I was confused before I started to read.'
'I was. Me. Confused after I started to read,' continued The Moof now filling with a sense of wonder, 'We should put our heads together. We'd meet in the middle. And then all the world would be ours!'
'What's left of it! Where's Albert?'
'Here!' Albert shouted. They looked. He hovered high above the floor near to the top tier of books.
'I can find no Shakespeare, no Jünger!' he continued, somewhat alarmed.
'History, we're being chipped away,' Ben said quietly to Victoria.
'But think how great we could become!' Albert continued with a burst of enthusiasm. 'The works only we know of that we could now reproduce!'
'Other people's work!' Ben said, as Albert swooped down towards him.
'Humankinds!' countered Albert, as he settled next to Victoria, 'It belongs to us all!'
'We're ghosts, what chance have we-'
'To live again? To write? To give the work back to the world?'
'To take the credit!'
Albert gestured towards the vast array of books on display, 'Look for yourself!' he said, 'Look how many great works are missing!'
'The shelves are full! And we're looking for only one!'
'Your book! And where is that amongst all of these? If, indeed, it is even here.'
'Not, here, no,' said Victoria nervously. Ben looked at her, shocked.
'It's not here? But this was your suggestion,' he said.
'Not, here, in a normal sense,' she replied.
'None of us are here in a normal sense,' added The Moof
'Exactly!' said Victoria.
'Exactly?' asked Ben.
'We, as ghosts, exist in a different dimension, as The... exist in a different dimension. So could it be that this book, which we must find, also exists in a different dimension? Here, in the library, but not in the space we are in or can see.'
'So,' said Albert, with a simmering anger, 'our search isn't just up and down, left and right, back and forwards, or indeed through time but, potentially, it also through an infinite number of unknown dimensions?'
'Yes,' Victoria replied meekly.
'Well at least we now know our search is impossible! Thank you for the clarity!'
'It's not impossible!' proclaimed Ben, 'The book is here! I'm sure it's here! Why wouldn't the heaviest book be here? It's a book of power, a book of legend! It's here, hidden! Like we have been hidden!'
'It's here, and he's sure of it! All then is well and fine!' replied Albert sarcastically.
'I am sure!'
'Then lead us, dear leader! To the book!'
'Is there nothing hidden in you?'
'What does that mean?'
'What in you do you keep hidden?'
'Nothing!'
'We all do! This room is a brain, it's a mind! Look at it, feel it! There's something here, something we can't fully understand.'
'You think so?'
'I know so! Spaces we can't even see. Corners that are hidden. Darkness and shadows and tricks of light. And yet all this space that we can be in - illuminated space, where the books are - is here for us to discover whatever we want! All knowledge is here! The book is here; I'm sure of it! We just need to think!'
'Hear yourself! What sense you are making? None!'
'I'm making every sense! And how many senses do you think we have? The number they taught me at school, I bet, five, just five! I remember the class. I remember being too frightened to ask, 'but what about balance? What about feeling hot and cold? What about instinct? What about the sense we have to survive, for sensing monsters, creatures and things?'
'We didn't survive!' replied Albert. 'Not when it mattered!'
'It matters now!' He turned to speak directly to Victoria and The Moof.
'We must think! Question!'
'Think? Think?' asked The Moof worried.
'Yes! You've got two brains. If ever there was a time to use them, it's now!'
'Oh. Right. I's always feared this day would come. Is that a request?'
'Yes!'
'Right. Stand back! If I start cryin'. Tickle me. If I start fartin'. Open a window. Or live with the pain. If I'm not back in five minutes. Leave me. I'll have likely reached nirvana.'
His face froze, fixed in a trance.
'Wow!' said Albert contemptuously. 'Our best people working to save us. How can we fail?'
Ben ignored him and instead spoke to Victoria.
'You too, Vict
oria. You've got brains and ideas! Use them for us!'
'Just think?' she asked.
'Yes. Be inspired!'
Victoria smiled and nodded her head, keen and excited. Ben turned to Albert.
'And you, what are you good for? Oh, I know, you can cross your fingers and even your toes. In fact, dream something up then pray it comes true,' he said, scornfully.
'You cheeky little, shit!'
'Yes, finally!' Ben said with a burst of celebration.
'Oosshh!' The Moof snapped out of his trance. 'That wasn't as painful as I's was led to believe. I could cope with that near monthly. Anyways. I's used both me brains. Pushed 'em to the max of absolute mentalism. And well, I says. I do. I says, the clue's in the title. The heaviest book. It must be heavy. A right heave-ho. And cos of that, its not somethin' I see as bein' stored up high. Or to the right! It's somethin' I see as bein' down, low. Cos it's heavy. Odds are it's been dropped a hundred million times. So best thing for it. Put it down low. Low as possible. Somewhere it can't fall no further. And it's size. I reckon it could be tiny. Just cos it's heavy don't mean it's a whopper. You should have seen The Moof as a pup! So small and heavy it could be. Super small and super heavy! And very low down.'
'Ha! Brilliant! So what? We dig a hole on top of the one we're already in? Problem solved!' proclaimed Albert, mocking and triumphant.
Inspired, Victoria turned to Ben and asked,
'How heavy is the book? What mass does it have?'
'I don't know. Why?' he asked back.
'Heavy and small, or just plain heavy, maybe the clue is the title! If we knew its mass, if we could become equal to, or even surpass its mass, here in this space, then maybe, I don't know, but maybe, we would fall down into a...'
'A void of reason? ' Albert snapped, more to himself than anyone else.
'Into another space, or dimension!' Victoria continued.
'To where the book is!' said Ben.
'Yes!'
'We're ghosts, we have no mass!' said Albert.
'Ben does!' replied Victoria.
'Virtually none! And how do you suggest we fatten him up?'
'Oh, if only we were's livin',' said The Moof dreamily. 'Me. You's. A weekend. And we'd be whoppers. Giants of joy and jubilation!'
'Speed!' Victoria continued, 'The greater the speed of an object the greater its mass. We can all travel fast, incredibly fast. And this space is perfect! Think how we could fly round and round, faster and faster, heavier and heavier, down, down, further down! To where? Imagine! To where? And the greater an objects mass, the greater its gravity. Our gravity, the books gravity, attracting, pulling us together...Perhaps.'
'How heavy do you think this book actually is?' asked Albert, 'The collected works of everything, ever?'
'Yes! To us, it is everything!' replied Ben. 'Come on! Hold hands. This has to be done!'
'No! Wait!' cried The Moof urgently.
'What?' asked Ben.
'Not hands! Waists! Hold waists!'
'Why?'
'For the fastest ever conga line! Stupid!'
'I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'Look it up when you find the book of everything,' sneered Albert.
'If nothing else becomes of us. At least we'll be known. Historically. As the conga greats! Record breakers!' said The Moof.
'Waists it is!' said Ben.
Ben turned his back on Victoria, who placed her hands around his waist then looked at The Moof for approval.
'Like this?' she asked.
'Right exactly. Natural, her. Or on shoulders,' he answered, as he placed his hands on her shoulders.
Ben looked at Albert, who continued to stand away from them.
'Albert, are you going to be a record breaker?' Ben asked.
'I want this book as much as you,' he answered, as he moved to position himself behind The Moof.
'Right then. Ready?'
'Wait!' cried The Moof. 'It's daytime. It's wrong. You can't do a conga in the day. It's crass. Take us to night. To the midnight hour. Ar! Even better! Weird things happen in the midnight hour. That's what my Mama Moof would say. Said I's should be thankful. Papa Moof too.'
Ben thought this was a valid idea, so he quickly took them to the midnight hour. Night lights and their own ghostly glow helped illuminated the room.
'Right. Ready. Go!'
With a burst of acceleration, Ben led them away in a frenzy of speed, skimming over the reading desks to complete lap after lap of the Round Reading Room. Centrifugal forces soon pushed them out towards, and then up and onto, the ground level run of bookshelves. This positioned them perpendicular to the floor. Ben pulled; the others pushed, all contributed to the constant acceleration. Ben got heavier, as, to their surprize, did they others. They all had mass. Not as much as Ben, but still enough, a seed of weight to rise and grow.
When they went passed the speed of sound they lapped The Moof's cheers of record breaking joy, followed by his pained, weight-gain induced, cries of dismay.
Ever faster, ever heavier, but still static, still stuck in the library going nowhere. They went so fast they seemed hardly to move at all. But then, they began to collapse into each other, as if crunched together smaller and smaller, and in a slow teasing manner so that they all could see themselves becoming a single physical whole. This made all but Ben release a horrified scream. Did they want to stop? Ben did not care, on he went, on and on. They continued round and round, faster and faster, their bodies compressing together, becoming a mixed up mash. Soon, as the shortest, Ben and Victoria's heads were all that were distinguishable as their own. But only for a moment, as then, in an instant, all four of them collapsed into a vortex of swirling, shrinking light that compressed them into one whilst drawing them down into a dark, unknown abyss.
Each one saw as the other saw. Each felt as the other felt - luckily the conscience mind at that moment felt nothing but fear, and repulsion, at the thought of becoming one with the others. Each heard each others screams - louder and louder invading the mind never to leave, as close as a parasite, leeching hope and dreams. Until something gave, a point was reached that bounced them out again to become individual and themselves once again.