Death and the Librarian ESTHER M FRIESNER Esther M. Friesner holds a B.A. from Vassar College and a Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale, and is the prolific author of novels and short fiction. Her over seventy published stories have appeared in all of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines and in several anthologies; among her novels are The Sihser Mountain, Here Be Demons, Harlot's Ru,se, Demon Blues, The Psalms of Herod,, MqVk bV Accident, Maiyk bV Design, and Majyk by Hook or Crook. Esther Friesner is justly renowned as one of the funniest and wittiest of fantasy writers, both in person and in print. Her Nebula Award-winning "Death and the Librarian" reveals that she can also write moving and delicately wrought fiction about love and loss. Of her inspiration for this story, she writes: "During the recent Science Fiction World Convention in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of breakfasting with T"try Pratchett, who is not just a friend but one of my favorite authors. Creator of the Discworld fantasy series, he has proved again and again that humor can be funny and thought-provokittg at the same time. "The understandable popularity of his books has led to their adaptation into a host of other media, including games. At our breakfast, he gave me a pair of metal miniatures used in one of the Discworld games. These were the figures of Death (who is the typical robed and scythe-bearing skeleton, although that's about as far as the character's adherence to reader expectations goes) and the Librarian (of the wizardly Unseen University, who was transformed into an orangutan and elected to stay that way because it made it easier to do his lob). "I sat there pluFtrg with the miniatures in my hand and muttering, 'Death and the Librarian ... Death and the Librarian .. . Death and the Librarian ...' (Be it noted that T"try is a very long-suffering gentleman.) I just liked the sound of it. Okay, I admit that it was early and I needed more coffee, but I also contend that there are instances in a writer's life when a certain combination of words touches off a spark that won't blow 6o o Nebula Awards 3r out. All I know is that I thought that 'Death and the Librarian' sounded like a good title for som,ething, and I was going to have to find out what that something was and write it or be haunted forever. "Considering the source of my inspiration, I expected to write a funny story. Somewhere between there and here, the images of the robed skeleton and the bibliophilic orangutan went their own ways, and a whole new cast of characters showed up for work. I suppose I could say that a haunting title demanded a hauntitrg story. I know where I get my ideas, but at times they're something else entirely by the time I finally set them down on paper." In an October dusk that smelled of smoke and apples, a lady in a black duster coat and a broad-brimmed hat, heavily veiled, called at Rainey's Emporium in Foster's Glen, New York. She descended from the driver's seat of a black Packard, drawing the eye of every man who lounged on the wooden steps of the crossroads store and attracting a second murmuring throng of idlers from Alvin Vernier's barber shop across the way. The men of Foster's Glen had seen a Packard automobile only in the illustrated weeklies, but to see a woman driving such a dream-chariot?! However, by the time the lady reached the steps of Rainey's and said, "I beg your pardon; I am seeking the home of Miss Louisa Foster," she had become a middle-aged man in a plain black broadcloth suit, a drummer with sample case in hand and a gleamitg derby perched on his head, so that was all right. "Miss Foster?" |im Patton raised one eyebrow and tipped back his straw hat as he rubbed his right temple. "Say, you wouldn't be a Pinkerton, now would youP" And the other men on Rainey's steps all laughed, because Ii- was reckoned a wit as wits went in Foster's Glen, New York. The gentleman in black smiled politely, and a trim moustache sprouted across his upper lip to give him a more dapper, roguish air. (This at the expense of his drummer's case, which vanished.) "Yes, she's in trouble with the law again," he replied, turning the jup" back to its source and stealing Jim's audience along with his thunder. "Lollirg on the throne of an opium empire, I'm told, or was it a straightfor- Death and the Librarian ' 6t ward charge of breaking and entering?" He patted the pockets of his vest. "I'm useless without my notes." The idlers laughed louder, leaving poor Ji* no hope but to drop the cap-and-bells and try the knight's helm on for size instead. "That's a scandalous thing to say about a lady!" fi* snapped. "And about a lady like Miss Foster?! I can't begin to tell you all she's done hereabouts: church work, the Ladies' Aid, visiting the sick.... Why, she's even turned the east *ing of the judge's house into a library for the town!" "Is that so?" The stranger shot his crisp celluloid cuffs and adjusted a fat .itrg, pearl and silver, on his lefthand littlest finger. It twinkled into diamond and gold. His remark was only a remark, but |im Patton took it for a challenge to his honesty. "Yes, that's so," he blustered. "And she's even set aside the money to make the judge's house over to the town for use as a library entire after she's gone." "What does the judge have to say to all this?" "What does??" 1im gaped. "Why, you scoundrel, old ]udge Foster's been dead these twenty years! What's your business with his daughter but mischief if you don't even know that much about the family?" "That would be business that concerns only Miss Foster and me," the stranger replied, and he grew a little in height and breadth of chest so that when Ji* Patton stood up to face him they were an even match. Still, Ii* bellowed, "I'll make it my business to lcnow!" and offered ftsts the size of small pumphns for inspection. He was farm-bred and raised, born to a father fresh and legless returned from Gettysburg. Caleb Patton knew the value of begetting muscular sons to follow the plow he could no longer master, and Ii* was his sire's pride. The stranger only smiled and let his own muscles double in size until his right hand could cup Ii* Patton's skull without too much strain on the fingers. But all he said was, "I am a friend of the family and I have been away." And then he was an old man, dressed in a rusty uniform of the Grand Old Army of the Republic, even though by rights the thick cloth should have been deep nary blue instead of black as the abyss. 6z ? Nebula Awards 3r The Packard snorted and became a pluffip, slightly frowsty-loohng pony hitched to a dogcart. It took a few mincing steps forward, sending the Emporium idlers into a panic to seize its bridle and hold it steady until the gaffer could retake his seat and the reins. Most solicitous of all was Ii* Patton, who helped the dodderitrg veteran into the cart and even begged the privilege of leading him to Miss Foster's gate person"lly. "That's mighty kind of you, sonny," the old man in black wheezed. "But I think I can find my way there right enough now." "No trouble, sir; none at all," Jirrr pressed. "When your business with Miss Foster's done, I'd be honored if you'd ask the way to our farm after. My daddy'd be huppy to meet ,rp with a fellow soldier and talk over old times. Were you at Antietam?" The old man's tears were lost in the trvilight. "Son, I was there too." And he became a maiden wrapped in sables against the nipping air. She leaned over the edge of the dogcart to give Ji* a kiss that was frost and lilacs. "Tell Davey to hug the earth of the Somme and he'll come home," she said. She drove off leaving Ii- entranced and bewildered, for his Davey was a toddler sleeping in his trundle-bed at home and the Somme was as meaningless to his world of crops and livestock as the Milky W"y. The lady drove her pony hard, following the directions Ji- and the rest had given. Her sable wraps whipped out behind her in the icy wind of her passage. The breath of a thousand stars sheared them to tattered wings that streamed from her shoulders like smoke. Her pony ran at a pace to burst the barrels of the finest English thoroughbreds, and his hooves carved the dirt road with prints like the smiling cut of a sword. They raced over distance and beyond, driving time before them with a buggnvhip, hastening the rnoon toward th; highpoint of the heavens and the appointed hour. At length the roud Ii* Patton had shown her ended at the iron gates of a mansion at the westernmost edge of the town. By the standards of Boston or New York it was only a very fine house, but in this rural setting it was a palace to hold a princess. Within and without the grounds trees shielded it from any harm, even to the insinuating dugger of curious whispers. The judge himself had ordered the building of this fortification on the borders of his good name, and the strain of Death and the Librarian o 63 shoring up his innumerable proprieties had aged wood and stone and slate before their time. The maiden stepped out of the dogcart and shook out her silvery hair. The black htten mewed where the pony had stood and sniffed the small leather portmanteau that was the only tiding or trace of the dogcart. The elderly woman gathered up portmanteau and kitten, pressing both to the soft fastness of her black alpaca-sheathed bosom with the karakul muff that warmed her hands. She glanced through the fence's tormented iron curlicues and her bright eyes met only darkened windows. She had ridden into town with the twilight, but now she stood on the hour before the clocks called up a new d"y. "None awake? Well, I am not in the least sulprised," she commented to the kitten. "At her zge, quite a few of them grow ti...
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