Free Ice and Fire by David Wingrove Page B

wrong.
    Ben laughed, delighted, then stepped inside the room, shining his lamp about the walls. It was a library. Or a study maybe. Whichever, the walls were filled with shelves, and the shelves with books. Old books, of paper and card and leather. Ben hurried to the shutters and threw them open, then turned and stared back into the room. There was a door, two windows and a full-length mirror on the wall to his left. Apart from that there were only shelves. Books and more books, filling every inch of the wall-space.
    ‘Whose were they?’ she asked, coming alongside him; sharing his delight.
    He pulled a book down at random, then another. The bookplates were all the same. He showed her one.
    She read the words aloud. ‘This book is the property of Augustus Raedwald Shepherd.’ She laughed, then looked up into Ben’s face. ‘Then he lived here. But I thought…’
    Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he used this house to work in.’
    She turned, looking about her. There were books scattered all about their cottage, but not a tenth as many as were here. There must have been five, maybe ten thousand of them. She laughed, astonished. There were probably more books here – real books – than there were in the rest of Chung Kuo.
    Ben was walking slowly up and down the room, looking about him curiously. ‘It’s close,’ he said softly. ‘It’s very close now.’
    What’s close? she wanted to ask. But the question would only anger him. He knew no better than she.
    Then, suddenly, he stopped and turned and almost ran outside into the corridor again. ‘There!’ he said, exultant, and she watched him pace out the distance from the end of the corridor to the doorway. Fifteen paces. He went inside and did the same. Twelve. Only twelve!
    She saw at once. The mirror. The mirror was a door. A way through.
    He went to it at once, looking for a catch, a way of releasing it, but there was nothing. Frustrated, he pulled books down from the shelf and knocked at the wall behind them. It was brick, solid brick.
    For a moment he stood before the mirror, staring into it. Then he laughed. ‘Of course!’
    He turned and pointed it out to her. ‘Level with the top of the mirror. That row of books opposite. Look, Meg. Tell me what you see.’
    She went across and looked. They were novels. Famous novels. Ulysses , Nostromo , Tess of the D’Urbervilles , Vanity Fair , Howard’s End , Bleak House , Daniel Martin , Orlando and others. She turned back to him. ‘I don’t understand. What am I looking for?’
    ‘It’s a cryptogram. Look at the order. The first letter of the titles.’
    She looked, doing as he said. D.A.E.H.R.E. V.O.N.O.T.T.U.B. Then she understood. It was mirrored. You had to reverse the letters.
    He laughed, ahead of her, and reached up to find the button.
    With a faint hiss of escaping air the mirror sprang free. Beyond it was a room. Ben shone his lamp inside. It seemed like a smaller version of the library, the walls covered with books. But in its centre, taking up most of the floor space, was a desk.
    He shone his lamp over the desk’s surface, picking out four objects. A letter knife, an ink-block, a framed photograph and a large, folio-sized journal. The light rested on the last of these for some while, then moved upward, searching the end wall.
    Meg came alongside him. ‘What are you looking for?’
    ‘A window. There must have been a window.’
    ‘Why? If he really wanted to keep this room a secret, having no window onto the outside would be the best way, surely?’
    He looked at her, then nodded. But she, watching him, was surprised that he hadn’t seen it for himself. It was as if, now that he’d found it, he was transfixed by his discovery. She shone her lamp into his face.
    ‘Meg…’ He pushed her hand away.
    She moved past him, into the room, then turned back, facing him.
    ‘Here.’ She handed him the journal, knowing, even before he confirmed it, whose it was. Augustus. There was a space for