Brightly Burning(30)
“You’re really good,” he said. “Do you draw people?” I nodded, and he didn’t hesitate, navigating his way to my portrait subfolder, albeit slowly. “You weren’t kidding about this being old. . . .”
“I’ve had it since I was eleven, and it was my cousin’s before me. It’s likely older than Jessa at this point.” I took a moment to realize Hugo wasn’t listening. His gaze was locked on the tab. He was looking at a picture of George.
“Who is this?” he asked, tracing the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“That’s George,” I said, swiping the image away. Then the next three of George, my cheeks burning. The next, one of Karlson, reminded me I owed him a message. I’d finally relented after five messages and started telling him about the Rochester’s vegetable slate. Weirdo.
“Are these all boys from the Stalwart?” Hugo asked, flicking to the next portrait, thankfully one of Arden, followed by Joy. Then another of George, the one I’d started before I came here.
“All two of them? Yes.”
“It’s a wonder you wanted to leave.”
For a brief second, I wondered if he was jealous, and I allowed myself the flutter of hope that spread warmth throughout my body. But then he wrested himself away, his expression turned sour.
“I’m too drunk to read. I’m going to bed early.”
He left me speechless and alone, feeling as uneven as George’s half-finished portrait.
“I wish these old books came with reference manuals. Or footnotes. And pictures.” I put down the latest in my spy series, trying and failing to envision twentieth-century Berlin.
“Hmm?” Hugo hummed, barely looking up from his own book. Four nights later, and he was still powering through his Dickens—?Great Expectations. And he’d been nothing but pleasant since our last encounter. Neither of us mentioned his mini-tantrum and walkout.
“I’m having trouble picturing some of these places,” I said. I sighed back into my chair. “I asked Rori if she had anything to supplement me, but she came up empty. Said something about not having authorization.”
Hugo finally set down his book.
“Come with me,” he said, getting up from his chair and not bothering to check that I followed. Which I did. Of course.
He led me down the corridor toward the aft end of the ship, into the elevator, and down to the lower level. Instead of going left, Hugo turned right, to parts unknown. I checked the location markers on each bulkhead we passed. Deck Three, Ward O, Ward N, Ward M . . . until he stopped at a bulkhead labeled Ward K and opened a door with his fingerprints. We stepped into a room packed to the gills with circuitry, row after row of eight-foot-tall server bays spanning the room.
“Welcome to the library,” he said, much to my confusion. There were no books here; how could it be a library?
“My family was concerned about the mass loss of culture the ice age would bring, so they made an arrangement with the Library of Congress,” Hugo explained, leading me farther into the room, which pulsed hot and cold simultaneously. “What you see here is the most extensive digital archive of documents, maps, books, and the old Earth Internet in the fleet.”
I gawked at the towering vessels of knowledge around me, which hummed and whirred and wheezed. “Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
“Because I’m giving it to you,” Hugo said. “Rori doesn’t have access to most of it for performance reasons. It’s a vast archive, and I don’t want it clogging up her programming. Or having her morph into an evil supercomputer.”
“Very funny, sir,” Rori chimed in, reminding me she was always present, always listening.
“But there is a way to search through everything, view files, transfer books and documents to your reader.” Hugo led me through the maze of servers to the back of the room, where I found a desk tab the size of a window. “This is connected to the servers in this room, so you can search by category, historical period, document type, keyword . . . and it’s a bit antiquated, but all you have to do is connect your reader to the desk tab and manually drag-and-drop any books you want onto it.”
He turned the tab on so he could show me. It was slow to start up, and the interface that greeted us seemed ancient—?boxy graphics and busy colors—?but parsing through it seemed easy enough. I started by popping the term MI5 into a search box, and hundreds of results came up, sorted by which category they fell under. I clicked into the nonfiction folder and found dozens of historical accounts of British intelligence.
“I’ll add your bio markers to the door scan,” Hugo said, “so you can come down here whenever you want.”
Tightness seized my insides, shock and awe and gratitude bubbling up, making me warm all over. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” I croaked out, surprised to find myself on the verge of tears. It would be too mortifying to cry in front of Hugo; I faked a cough so I could wipe my eyes, compose myself.
“It’s not a big deal.” Hugo shrugged, like he’d just given me a handkerchief.
“But it is,” I insisted. “You’ve given me access to something precious. Something few other humans will get to touch in their lifetime.” Books. History. Art. Hugo’s trust. The weight of the last bit brought heat to my cheeks that I was glad he couldn’t easily see. I cleared my throat. “Is this what Xiao and the others keep referring to when they say most of what’s down here is cold storage?”