Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(89)

Thomas felt a jagged surge of real exhaustion and frustration. Another riddle. He hated this. His tired brain slid off the clues. Who makes me has no need of me. Plenty of things were made for others that their makers had no use for. Who buys me has no use for me. Why would someone buy something useless? Who uses me cannot see or feel me. Air? Oxygen? No, none of it made any sense at all. He wanted to shout at the automaton, tell it that he was doing this to save lives, just let him through. But he knew it wouldn’t help.

He closed his eyes and thought for long moments, leaping from one thought to another. His nerves burned under his skin. He just wanted to smash his way through.

Who makes me has no need of me.

What did someone make, and someone buy, that neither one used? What did someone use who couldn’t see or feel it?

And then he realized the answer: he was making the mistake of thinking the last person was alive.

Thomas opened his eyes and said, “A tomb. Táfos.”

The sphinx paused for long enough that it made him question his logic, but he refused to make another guess. He was right. He had to be right.

The sphinx moved, but its eyes were still burning that unearthly blue.

Behind it was a terrifying scatter of bones. Many bones, enough to be piled knee-high. Skulls rolling like marbles. And one body that had only half rotted, white bones cutting through the flesh.

Yet another test. The one everyone else failed. Had it been the riddle that had killed them, or the wall beyond?

Thomas stared at the wall, but it seemed utterly blank and featureless. He reached out but pulled back; surely touching it had been the first impulse of all of these dead people who’d come here before him.

He had to solve this problem another way. And standing here surrounded by the dead, he had no idea how to proceed. Every other puzzle had been logic and observation, or a riddle requiring viewing something from a different perspective . . .

A different perspective.

He crouched down and lifted his glow higher. There was something there, but so faint he couldn’t read it.

As much as he hated the thought, he was going to have to go all the way down. Lie on the ground and look up.

Like a body in a tomb.

Thomas cleared bones away, stretched out, and looked straight up at the door.

There was writing on it that was visible only from this angle. Greek letters that spelled out, What is lighter than a feather, but even the strongest cannot hold for long?

This one wasn’t even difficult. “Breath,” Thomas said, and remembered to give the answer in Greek. “Anapnoí.”

The wall slid away.

He rolled up to his feet and walked into the Tomb of Heron.

Someone was waiting, and Thomas stopped as the wall slid shut again behind him. He couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes, because it seemed that someone was alive here.

No. Not alive. But lifelike in the extreme. A man wearing a Greek chiton and a draped robe. Older. Balding. With a kind face, a rounded belly, thin arms. Shorter than Thomas by a head.

Made of metal, but so cleverly done—even to the eyes—that it seemed more a work of divine hands than human. It had the texture of skin where skin should be, and metal that flowed like cloth. Even its eyes seemed real, and seemed to focus on Thomas as much as he did on the automaton.

“Welcome,” it said. The voice sounded odd—real and not quite real at the same time. A human voice, captured through time. It spoke the same archaic Greek as the sphinxes. “I am Heron of Alexandria. You have come far to find me, but all you see before you is a ghost in a metal cage. I have inscribed the rhythm and tone of my voice on a wax tablet. What you now hear is a man long ago turned to dust, yet still I greet you.” The voice shifted. Grew more stern. “If you have come for riches, know there may be a high price. If you have come for knowledge, perhaps you will find what you seek if you’re clever and quick. Farewell, stranger. Find me in Elysium when your time on this earth is done, and tell me what use you made of what I have left for you.”

The voice stopped. The statue went still.

Behind it a door opened, and gleamed on wonders. Wonders. Thomas caught his breath and, almost against his will, stepped forward. Was that . . . was that Heron’s steam calliope? His automated puppet show that had drawn visitors from around the known world? And that fantastic machine in the corner . . . was that a letterpress? Like the one he and Jess had made, that started all of this? But of course Heron would have thought of such a valuable, important invention first.

They have suppressed it for so long. Not even Heron could be trusted with this, though there was no inventor the Great Library trusted more.

He hardly noticed when the door shut behind him. The air through the mask smelled fresh, and when he lowered the device, the air still seemed fine. He put the mask away—it was near the end of its useful life in any case—and walked to the steam calliope, a gilded array of tubes that rose in a fantastic swirl. Surely the boiler was dry now, and he didn’t try the switch, but to hear it play would have been astonishing.

He wandered past a machine with a pointed stylus that was set to a wax tablet. “What is this?” he wondered aloud, and watched as the stylus printed the words he’d said onto the tablet. He’d spoken in Greek, and it had understood. The same fascinating mechanism that must have recorded Heron’s voice before. A marvel that dated back to the very beginnings of the Great Library. He touched the delicate mechanism and thought, Heron’s hands made this. It was like touching genius. He blinked away tears, took in a sharp breath, and felt a twinge inside. I’m getting tired, he thought, but that wasn’t it. He coughed. Then kept coughing, a fit that racked him nearly double. He fumbled for the mask but couldn’t keep it on. His eyes burned, and his skin, and he realized now that there was a smell that had been building in the fresh air, something foul and chemical and almost sweet.