Free In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley

soldier.
    Like every librarian, I had been born in the clan’s ectogenetic farm. A selection of genetic information from the clan’s files had been randomly crossed according to law and custom, the resulting genome transcribed into DNA, the DNA spun into artificial chromosomes and inserted into a denucleated ovum, the ovum kick-started into mitotic division, and the embryo (me) grown to full-term in an artificial womb, decanted, and raised and schooled on a farm rock in the bosom of a sturdy foster family. I had learned the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, and far too much about vacuum-organism farming, and at the age of eight years by my foster family’s antique way of counting time – about two hundred and fifty megaseconds – I had been claimed by my clan.
    My foster family had given me a name: Isak. When I took my vows I also took the clan’s name, and became Isak Sixsmith, a novice in service of the Library. I expected to live there for the rest of my life, but soon after achieving the rank of navigator I stumbled and fell, and was sent into exile. And now I had been summoned back.
    I gave the Horse leave to spend some personal time in the Permanent Floating Market, passed through the checkpoint, with its scanning clouds and data sniffers and guards dressed in scarlet tabards and black hose like mimesists in a mystery, and climbed the broad span that arched above the black water of the moat to the entrance we called the Alexandrian Gate.
    It was the first time I had returned to the Library since my disgrace and demotion. The dear, familiar place seemed unchanged yet utterly different, and I realised with a pang of melancholy that it was I who had been changed, by my adventures in the worlds and worldlets of the Archipelago. I was no longer the eager neophyte, with a grand and glorious career ahead of me: I was an itinerant exorcist, bitter and battle-weary, with no home or prospect of advancement, responding with little hope and considerable apprehension to a summons from the only person who could forgive my sins.
    A young and shy novice I didn’t recognise met me at the entrance and escorted me across the tall space of the Great Court and up a winding stair to the Redactor Miriam’s office. It was a long room with black walls and floor and ceiling, lit only by the many windows hung in the air. The Redactor Miriam and her three assistants walked amongst them, monitoring everyone currently using the Library. She seemed not to notice when the novice announced my arrival, and I followed her as she moved from window to window, until at last she asked if I had given any more thought to the offer she had made just before the beginning of my exile.
    ‘I haven’t changed my mind, Majistra.’
    ‘Even though the work bores you?’
    ‘I can’t say that I enjoy it, but isn’t that the point?’
    ‘I’ve seen your reports. You’re growing careless. Cutting corners. Taking pointless risks. Do you think that if a demon kills you it will be an honourable death? That it will redeem you?’
    ‘I hope that I am already doing all I can to redeem myself.’
    The Redactor Miriam turned away from the window she had been studying (showing a long open colonnade somewhere in the vicinity of the Hall of Screaming Statues, where the avatar of a data miner was riffling through a raft of longcase files floating in the dusky air) and walked off to a window at the far end of the room. I followed her. When she had finished tweaking the window’s parameters, she said, ‘We can’t let you back into the Library. No matter what Svern promises you, it isn’t going to happen. He is our leader still, but his word is no longer final. The consensus is that you should never be allowed to return.’
    ‘Yet he wants to speak to me.’
    The Redactor Miriam looked at me for the first time since I had entered her office. She had aged since I had seen her last. The lines at either side of her mouth had deepened and the beak of her nose was