The Wells Bequest Read online

  “But science fiction is based on science! Science is real. Like my friend Jake says, a lot of those things ended up getting invented later on, and the ones that didn’t, they might soon. But magic—that’s just nonsense! There’s no such thing. There can’t be. By definition—otherwise it wouldn’t be magic.”

  “Well, what can I say? There is,” said Jaya. “Right down there in the basement.”

  I hated the idea. Not as much Sofia and Dmitri would hate it, but a lot. “That’s just wrong,” I said. I guess I was a real Novikov after all.

  “Not nearly as wrong as the Lovecraft Corpus,” said Jaya. She was clearly enjoying watching me get so upset.

  “What’s the Lovecraft Corpus?”

  “Stuff from gothic stories and horror,” said Jaya.

  “Like what? Ghosts? Vampires? Severed heads?” What a horrible thought!

  “You don’t want to know. I went in there once—it was really, really creepy. That’s the one Special Collection I’d rather not explore.”

  I shuddered. “What else do they have here?”

  “What other Special Collections, you mean?” She counted them off on her fingers. “There’s the Grimm Collection, the Wells Bequest, the Lovecraft Corpus, and the Gibson Chrestomathy.”

  “The Gibson what?”

  “The Chresto, for short. It’s is a collection of cyber stuff—artificial intelligences, computer viruses, bionic body parts, that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, okay.” That didn’t sound so bad. More like the science-fiction collection—stuff that theoretically could exist. I thought of something else. “Are all the Special Collections all objects from fiction?” I asked.

  “That’s one of those philosophical questions Ms. Minnian was talking about,” said Jaya. “What is fiction? If the objects exist, don’t the stories have to be true, not fiction?”

  “Unless somehow the fiction comes true and produces the objects,” I said.

  “That’s one theory,” said Jaya.

  “It’s easy enough to test,” I said. I took a handful of scrap paper and a stumpy little pencil from the cabinet next to the card file and started scribbling. I covered four little squares of paper. “There,” I said, handing them to Jaya.

  She read out loud. “‘Once upon a time there was an . . .’ Wow, you have messy handwriting. What’s this word?”

  “‘Awesome.’”

  “‘ . . . awesome boy named Leo Novikov. One day he wrote a story on some pieces of paper about an awesome boy named Leo Novikov. The awesome boy in the story invented an awesome machine. When you pressed a button, the awesome machine would fix everything that was broken that you put on the platform.’ What platform?” asked Jaya.

  “The platform on the machine, of course.”

  “You didn’t say there was a platform on the machine.”

  “Obviously there is, or where would you put whatever you wanted fixed?”

  Jaya rolled her eyes and went on reading: “‘It would also make your teeth straight and make you get A’s in all your classes. When the awesome boy Leo Novikov NOT in the story finished writing about the awesome boy Leo Novikov IN the story, he looked around and what did he see? He saw the machine that the awesome boy Leo Novikov in the story had invented! It was right there in front of him! And it worked perfectly! The end, by Leo Novikov.’” Jaya handed me back the slips of paper. “Well? What did that prove?”

  “Well?” I said. “Where’s the awesome machine? If writing a story makes science-fiction objects exist, it should be right here in front of me.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Jaya. “Maybe it only works with good stories.”

  “Hey! You’re talking to the next Jules Verne here,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “Or maybe it doesn’t work until after seventeen years have passed.”

  “Why seventeen?”

  “Why not seventeen? Or maybe the story needs to be published for it to work. Or maybe it needs to be popular. Who knows how it might work? All you’ve proved is that you writing that particular story didn’t do anything. Except make me laugh my head off, deep down inside.” She grinned. Her one crooked tooth looked like it was laughing at me too.

  I crumpled up the pieces of paper and threw them at her. One of them stuck in her hair. “So if this is a circulating library, do all those objects in the Special Collections—you know—circulate? Can people borrow them?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Jaya. “But you need to leave a serious deposit. And some objects are so dangerous they don’t really let you take them out. Technically you can do it, but you would have to leave your life behind as a deposit, and there’s not much you can do without your life.” She picked up the pieces of paper, including the one in her hair. She uncrumpled them and handed them back to me. “Here’s your masterpiece,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I put it in the recycling basket. I thought about how cool it would be to borrow a spaceship or a very powerful telescope. I wondered if I could afford the deposit.

  • • •

  When our shift was over, Jaya and I clocked out and walked downstairs with Francis. The three of us paused on the steps outside the repository to say good-bye.

  Simon burst through the doors. “Jaya? Jaya! There you are! This came for you,” he said. He handed her a blue envelope with a foreign stamp.

  “What is this? Where did you get it?”

  “Ms. Callender had it on her desk. It’s from the Burton—it must be,” said Simon. “Open it!”

  Jaya slid her finger under the flap and tore the envelope open.

  “Well? What does it say?”

  “Hang on. I can’t tell you till I read it.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope and unfolded it. Then she gasped. “I can’t believe it! I got it! I got the guest page position!”

  “Yes! I knew you would!” said Simon. He threw his arms around her. She looked a little uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as I wished she looked.

  “Congratulations, Jaya. I’m very happy for you,” said Francis. He smiled, but his voice sounded flat.

  Jaya wiggled out of Simon’s embrace. “I’m so sorry,” she said, hugging Francis’s arm.

  He shrugged slightly. “They made an excellent choice. You deserve it—you’ll be a great guest page,” he said. “Well, I’d better go. I’ll see you guys next week.” He freed himself from Jaya and walked quickly down the stairs. Jaya frowned after him.

  “Aren’t you happy, Jaya?” said Simon. “This means we’ll be together all summer. It’s very good news.”

  “Sure, I guess,” said Jaya. “But I feel bad for Francis. He really wanted the job. And it involves the music collection, so he’s more qualified than me.”

  “Well, they must have liked your application,” I said. “They chose you, didn’t they?” I didn’t want her to go away. But I couldn’t imagine anyone not choosing her for anything, no matter who else applied.

  “I guess so. And I love London. It’s just—I hope they didn’t think they had to take me because Auntie Shanti’s on the board of directors! I would feel terrible about that.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t your aunt. If you really want to know,” said Simon confidentially, “there was a . . . an irregularity with Francis’s application.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . .” He leaned closer to her and spoke so softly that I almost couldn’t hear him. “I happen to know that his letters of recommendation went to the Burton on the slow boat with the oversize inter-repository loans. The Burton wouldn’t have had his complete file by the deadline. And Dr. Pemberley-Potts is very particular about that sort of thing.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Because I was the one who . . . Well, let’s just say, I know it firsthand.”

  Jaya took a step back and stared at him in horror. “What are you saying? You mean you sabotaged Francis’s application?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t say that. I just helped yours a little, that’s all.”
r />   “By ruining Francis’s chances? That’s horrible! I can’t believe you would do that!”

  Now Simon looked angry. “I thought you would be pleased, Jaya,” he said. “You wanted that position! You told me you were sad I was leaving New York! You said you would enjoy working with me again. I was just helping make that happen! I didn’t do anything actually wrong. I made sure the recommendations got sent—just not by courier.”

  “You call that helping me—sabotaging my friend?” Jaya’s eyes flashed. I hoped she would never aim those weapons at me. “Come on!” she said, grabbing Simon by the elbow and pulling him toward the repository door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Upstairs to Dr. Rust’s office. You’re going to explain what you did and you’re going to ask Dr. Rust to call Dr. Pemberley-Potts and fix things for Francis. And after that I never want to speak to you again!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My Brilliant Idea

  That evening I texted Jaya to find out what had happened with Simon. Dr. Rust had fired him, she told me. When I got to the repository for my next shift, I found the pages clustered around Ms. Callender’s empty desk gossiping about what had happened.

  “He went back to London yesterday,” said Abigail. “Good riddance! I never liked him. He was so self-involved.”

  “Did he get fired at the Burton too?” I asked.

  “No, they’re giving him a second chance,” said Jaya. “His father is the president of their board of directors.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to work with him when I get there,” said Francis.

  “So you got the summer page job after all?” I asked.

  He nodded vigorously.

  “Congratulations, Francis! That’s awesome!”

  “It’s because of Jaya. I couldn’t believe it! She told Dr. Pemberley-Potts she wouldn’t take the job, and she got Doc to talk her into reconsidering my application. Jaya, you’re an amazing friend!”

  “Doc just had to get Pem-Po to ignore the missed deadline—your application speaks for itself,” said Jaya.

  “Pem-Po?” asked Francis.

  “That’s what Auntie Shanti calls her. Not to her face. I would stick to ‘Dr. Pemberley-Potts’ if I were you.”

  “Does your aunt work for the Burton?” I asked. “I thought she invested in start-ups.”

  “She does, but she’s also on the Burton’s board of directors,” said Jaya.

  Alan Stein—a tall, redheaded page I didn’t know very well—said, “What I don’t get is, why did he do it? Simon, I mean.”

  “Because he was in love with Jaya, duh!” said Abigail. “Didn’t you see how he was always staring at her? And how he was always trying to get Ms. Callender to put them both on the same stack? He wanted her to go to London.”

  I blushed. I wondered whether I was always staring at Jaya and whether Abigail had noticed.

  “But did you hear the funny part?” Abigail went on. “After Doc fired him, Simon tried to borrow the time machine!”

  “Abigail! You know you’re not supposed to talk about . . . you know,” said Alan.

  “It’s okay, Alan,” said Abigail. “Leo knows all about the Special Collections already. Doc took him downstairs.”

  “But what did Simon want with the time machine?” I asked.

  “He said he wanted to go back in time and fix things,” said Alan. “Stop himself from sabotaging Francis’s application.”

  “Fix things, ha,” said Abigail. “He probably wanted to fix things so he didn’t get caught. Our librarians would have to be crazy to let a creep like that run around in the past, changing the future.”

  “Well, they didn’t,” said Jaya. “They revoked his borrowing privileges and took away his keys.”

  “But I don’t understand—I thought the time machine didn’t work?” I said.

  “It doesn’t. I guess he was desperate,” said Abigail.

  “The sad thing is, I kind of liked him before,” said Jaya. “I mean, I wouldn’t have gone out with him or anything, but I thought he was a decent person, just a little shy or something. When I ran out of the Wilkins tawny orange marmalade that my aunt sends me from London, he ran all over town looking for a shop that carried it. I know the rest of you think he’s snobby and self-involved, but he was always nice to me.”

  “Of course he was nice to you,” said Abigail. “He had a big, fat, juicy, creepy crush on you. He wanted to touch you all over with his squishy marshmallow fingers.”

  “Ick, Abigail! Stop it, that’s disgusting!”

  “Well, he did.”

  Jaya hit at Abigail with her scarf. Abigail ducked, giggling.

  “Everybody here?” asked Ms. Callender, coming up behind us. “Jaya, why don’t you take Leo up to Preservation and show him what to do? Abigail, you and Francis take Stack 5. Alan, I’m putting you on 3 with Mariela . . .” She went down her clipboard checking off pages and stacks until we were all distributed.

  • • •

  Jaya led me to a long, tall room on the top floor. Daylight poured in through high skylights in the slanted roof. There were cabinets all around the walls and a long table down the middle. I was glad to be alone with Jaya again.

  “Welcome to Preservation,” she said. “Ready to work?”

  “Of course. What do we do?” I asked.

  “We fix things.” Jaya opened a cabinet and took out a toaster and a doll’s chair. “Here, start with something easy,” she said, handing me the chair. “The arm needs regluing.”

  “What’s wrong with the toaster?”

  “Not sure. Doesn’t toast, probably. It should say on the tag.”

  “Could I fix that instead?” I asked. “I’m pretty good with toasters.”

  “Sure, if you want. Can you hand me the wood glue? It’s right behind you.”

  I used my multi-utility tool to unscrew the toaster’s bottom panel. A zillion crumbs fell out. “Why was someone borrowing a toaster?” I asked, pulling out something sticky. It looked like a burnt raisin.

  She checked a tag. “They were using it as a theater prop. So tell me, little toaster—how did it feel to be a Broadway star?”

  Almost to my surprise, the toaster didn’t answer.

  “What do the librarians do when people break things?” I asked. “Do they just have us fix them? What if someone loses something?” I had lost my share of library books when I was little.

  Jaya uncapped her glue. “The patrons pay fines. Not that much for a broken toaster—that’s easy to fix. Seriously high fines for something really valuable—or for stuff from the Special Collections.”

  “Like how high?”

  “Well, one time this guy Aaron—he was a page when my sister worked here—once he lost a cooling cloak—”

  “What’s a cooling cloak?”

  “Just what it sounds like,” she said, a little impatiently. “A normal cloak keeps you warm. A cooling cloak keeps you cool. There are two of them in the Grimm Collection. They’re very popular in August. Anyway, when Aaron lost the cloak, he had to give up his sense of humor.”

  “His what?”

  “His sense of humor.”

  “But how? Is a sense of humor even . . . I don’t know, detachable?”

  “Sure. Sense of humor, sense of proportion, ear for music—all those things. Dr. Rust collects them as deposits and keeps them safe in a special box. When Aaron lost his sense of humor, his girlfriend broke up with him. She said he was pointless without a sense of humor. I knew they’d be miserable without each other, so I had to find it for him. I’m good at finding things.”

  “Where was it?” I asked.

  “It had fallen behind the radiator.”

  “His sense of humor fell behind the radiator?”

  “No! Weren’t you listening? Doc was keeping his sense of humor in a special box. The cooling cloak fell behind the radiator. I thought that was hilarious, but Aaron didn’t see what was so funny. Not even after he got his sense of humor back.”
r />   “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. She didn’t look like she was kidding, though.

  “Perfectly serious. How’s that toaster?”

  I pulled at a wire. “There’s a loose connection. Should I just tighten it or rewire the whole thing? Maybe add a digital color sensor to check for proper browning.”

  “No fancy stuff. Just fix it,” said Jaya, wiggling the loose chair arm into place. “The point is to put everything back as close as possible to how it was before it broke.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I could make it so much better.”

  “I’m sure you could. But don’t. The librarians wouldn’t like it.” She clamped the chair arm to hold it tight while the glue hardened.

  “What happened to that chair?” I asked, twisting together two wire ends. “Did a really fat doll sit on it?”

  She laughed. “Looks that way, doesn’t it? Here’s a broken stove—want to fix that next? It’s a salesman’s sample.”

  “A what?”

  “A salesman’s sample.” She held it out. It looked like a little kid’s toy stove. “It’s hard to carry around a bunch of full-size stoves, so the salesmen from the furniture company would take miniature samples on their sales calls instead.”

  I examined the sample stove. It was like a stove out of an old black-and-white movie, only mint green and a fifth the size. Everything looked functional: all the burner knobs turned, the oven door opened, and the little oven racks slid in and out. But the oven door wouldn’t stay shut. I checked the tag. Broken oven door hinge, it said.

  “So this is a working stove?” I asked. “If I hooked it up to a gas line, could I bake a cake?”

  “Once you fix it, yes. A cupcake, anyway.”

  I opened and shut the oven door. A spring was missing on one side. “Where would I find spare parts? I need a spring.”

  “Try the drawers in the cabinet over there,” said Jaya.

  I chose a handful of different-size springs and brought them back to the worktable, but they were all either too big or too small. “Oh, this one’s so almost! If only it were a quark smaller,” I said.

  “If you really can’t find one that fits, we can use the shrink ray to resize it,” said Jaya.