Fifteen - Illiterati

She entered with the usual explosion of dust clouds and obscenities, flinging herself across the room like a bad tempered missile and making straight for the drinks cabinet.

“You moved the drinks cabinet!!”

It was all she could do to restrain herself as she turned to face the smiling man who sat serene behind the comfort of his desk.

“Well what did you expect?” the man asked innocently. “Strange people kept bursting in and downing my liquor. I’m not made of spirits you know.”

“I don’t think you even have one of your own,” she countered, all the while peering this way and that looking for the new location of her promised-cabinet.

“Aha!!” she cried with delight upon peering behind a barrage of potted plants to find her quest completed. “Next time you’d do better to simply empty all the bottles.”

Drudge Kipling, lady of elegance that she was, dusted herself down causing large clouds of detritus to billow off her jacket, before climbing over the full blooms of venus fly traps to grasp at the nearest bottle. It was somewhat lighter than she’d expected, and there was no sound of sloshing liquid inside. She shook it once, then twice, just to make sure, before she turned to the man at the desk for clarification.

“Well,” he smiled, “I did empty all the bottles. But I thought it might be fun to make you look for them before telling you that. You look fabulous Drudge my dear. Why don’t you take a seat?”

Defeated, the sullen Ms. Kipling pocketed the empty bottle and flopped into a leather chair before her grinning counterpart. With resignation she picked up the name-plate that sat upon his desk and traced the letters on it with her fingers. D. A. N. T. E.

“So, I guess you’ll want the book then,” she muttered grumpily. Zachariah Dante simply nodded by way of reply. With a sigh the elegant Ms. Kipling opened the beaten leather satchel she carried over one shoulder and carefully removed a book from its folds. It was a threadbare volume, leather-bound cover worn and pages loose upon a broken spine.

“As promised, Zac, ‘Wind in the Fallows’ by Kenneth Grahame. Treat it gently.” She gave a wistful smile as Dante reverently lifted the tome from her grasp. “You’ll never guess what happens to Toad. Quite amazing.”

“You read it then?” Dante asked distractedly as he began to carefully thumb his way through the pages.

“Of course, I’m not in it for the money as well you know.”

“Indeed.” Dante could barely tear his eyes from the pages long enough to look up at she who had delivered them. “Thank you Ms. Kipling. The money has already been deposited into your account. I will have a new assignment for you in a day or two.”

“No problem,” Drudge replied. Seeing that her employer was once more engrossed in the book she quietly rose and made her way out.

***

Queequeg’s Tavern bustled with its usual energy as Drudge Kipling sidled inside and made her way to the bar. She had barely reached the wooden counter, spectacle of ring-marks and soiled beer-mats, when the barman deposited a large pint of black liquid in front of her.

“I trust it’ll be your usual Drudge. This one’s on the house – I hear congratulations are in order.”

“Yeah,” came her quick reply, drowned momentarily in the gurgles of a brief swig. “I’m making a habit out of this aren’t I? They do say I’ve got the knack.”

“They say a lot more than that. There’s been more than one customer asking after you this last week. You’re starting to build a bit of a legend out there.”

The barman was a thin elderly man, wiry grey hair brushed back and kept close to the scalp. His watery blue eyes smiled as he patted Drudge’s hand amiably.

“Let me be the first to say - Well Done. Now, Dobson has requested a private booth and your presence, so I suggest you take your drink in that direction.” He pointed off to the far side of the room where a number of solitary tables were nestled in candlelit darkness. “He’s been waiting for at least an hour already.”

Drudge smiled in reply.

“It won’t hurt him to learn a little patience. Thanks for the drink – I’ll see you in a bit.” Smiling in farewell, she made her way across the hubbub of the room toward the quiet of the darkened booth that awaited her on the other side.

“You took your time,” came the gruff bark of the bearded Ernst Dobson. He sat sipping pink lemonade and reading from a leather-bound collection of All Star comic-books. “I’ve been waiting here all day.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Drudge smiled. “And stop frowning, you’ve got enough wrinkles on your face already. I had to stop by Dante’s office.”

“Yeah, I heard. You found another one. An unwritten tome.”

“A lost manuscript you mean. And yeah, I did. Word travels fast around here.”

Ernst laughed, a booming chuckle that echoed across the table and caused the candle upon it to gutter briefly.

“Only where you are concerned my friend, only where you are concerned. What’s that, five now? Shakespeare’s ‘Puck’. Milton’s ‘Paradise Unbound’. J. M. Barrie’s ‘Wendy’. Lovecraft’s ‘Melted Nausea’, and now this, another ‘Wind in the Willows’ book.”

“It’s mostly about Toad as it happens,” Drudge illuminated. “Personally I think it’s even better than the original tale.”

“Before you started in on the search the most anyone had ever turned up was the ‘Necronomicon’.”

“Yeah,” Drudge nodded, “and that wasn’t even a first edition.”

“Tell me something,” Dobson lowered his voice to a whisper as he leaned in closer. “How do you do it Drudge? I’m not the only one who wants to know.”

“I don’t know,” Drudge shrugged evasively. “I just sort of… do it. Look, enough about me. What have you got? You wouldn’t have waited around unless you had something you wanted to tell me.”

Dobson nodded slowly, his face suddenly serious. He looked out from the booth to the tavern beyond, glancing this way and that as if searching for any sign of someone who might be listening in. Once satisfied that no one was, he returned his attentions to Drudge once more, voice lowered to a sepulchral whisper.

“It’s nothing concrete you understand. Just rumours and the like, but I’m starting to get a little worried. People keep mentioning this cult, a bunch of characters who like to call themselves the Illiterati. There’s not much known about them. They’re searchers, like you, but more specific in intent. They’re after something they call The Word. No-one seems to know what that is, but there’ve been a lot of enquiries lately in all the caches. They’re looking everywhere, and word is they don’t take no for an answer.”

“Okay,” Drudge frowned. “Fair enough, it’s good to know who else is climbing the stacks these days, but I really don’t see why you’re being so melodramatic about it.”

“That’s just it, Drudge,” Dobson continued, “you’ve been making such a fuss lately, all these great finds… I got word last night – nothing concrete mind, just a rumour – but the rumour is the Illiterati are looking for you. They want you to help them with their enquiries.”

***

“It’s a simple question Dante, do you know anything about them?”

The air was crisp outside the tea-rooms and not even the steaming brew Drudge nestled in her hands could warm her. A cold ache in her heart told her she was in trouble.

“My dear Ms. Kipling, I thought we were here to discuss your next job for me. What is all this sudden interest in a shadowy secret society?”

“You do know them then.” Drudge was beginning to lose patience. Ordinarily the banter she kept up with Zac was a game they both enjoyed, but her instincts were playing merry havoc with the fear centres of her brain and this was no time for banter. “Zac, please, I’ve been told they’re gunning for me and my instincts tell me this is no idle rumour. You know everyone in the literary game, from wordsmiths to librarians and every reading circle in between. If anyone can help me…”

“Alright Drudge, alright, there’s no need to panic. Yes, I’ve heard of them. An esoteric group of party-poopers who go around hunting for a mythical living story called The Word. Not my crowd obviously, they have a tendency to burn books rather than read them. Heathen customs and all that.”

“They burn books?” Drudge looked shocked. “But… why?”

“You’ve heard of the Bible haven’t you Drudge? Quite a popular short story collection, written by a rather diverse bunch of authors dating back over the last two thousand years…”

“Very funny,” came the droll reply. “You know full well I was the one who found the Red Sea Scroll with the prequel to Genesis and the sequel to Revelations.”

“Yes. Well, you may remember the line ‘in the beginning there was the Word and the Word was God’.”

“Sure. That is only one of many possible transliterations, but…”

“Your secret society, this Illiterati, they believe that God is, quite literally, the Word. They believe God is language and that our world, indeed our whole universe, was created from it. We are story, creatures composed of language, formed of words, and words are the key to unlocking creation, of accessing the divine.”

Drudge shook her head sadly as she took a sip from her tea. She looked into the tea-rooms to the warmth of the glowing fireplace, to the people chatting as they sipped their drinks and, not for the first time, regretted the need to sit at an outside table. But someone was after her, she could sense it, and she wasn’t going to take any chances.

“They sound a wacky bunch. But if they believe language is divine then why are they burning books?”

“Ah,” Dante leaned back in his chair and regarded his companion with wide eyes, “because it is their holy mission to destroy the universe as we know it.”

“What?”

“They believe that woven into the fabric of reality is the Word of God, a living story that exists within the fabric of written words, a divine entity that exists in order to educate and enlighten. This living fiction, according to them, can be glimpsed in written texts dating as far back as ancient Mesopotamia. Writers call it into being unknowingly, giving it life within the words they scribe, bringing the divine into our world through the power of imagination, allowing humans access to the sacred knowledge with which to transcend their own mortality.”

“Steady on Zac, you’re beginning to sound like a zealot yourself.”

“You know how much I love a good story, Drudge. Now shut up and drink your tea.” Dante ignored the tongue his companion poked out at him and continued. “The Illiterati cannot read. They are kept isolated from all books, indeed all language, from birth. It is said that the youngest of them can sense the living Story – the Word of God – and they hunt it. Whenever they find evidence of it they destroy the books, the words, the very body of this thing. You know the story of the fire at the Library of Alexandria. That has long been believed to be their handiwork. Some of the Third Reich’s book-burning activities were also said to have been instigated by the Illiterati. Even the earthquake that claimed the Third Catacomb Cache is said to have been their handiwork. They are loathed and feared by every reader across the globe, Drudge. They are the bogeymen of the literary world.”

Drudge shook her head in shock.

“How is it I’ve never heard of them before?”

“Oh come now Drudge, ancient secret societies hardly advertise in the local paper. I only know about them through whispered rumour and stories told in the dead of night. All very insubstantial. To be honest I’m not really sure they exist at all. They are to most no more than a contemporary urban legend. I’d not put too much stock in these rumours if I were you.”

“Dante,” came Drudge’s level reply, “my instincts are never wrong. These Illiterati, they exist, and for some reason they are after me. Why are they doing this? What is their ultimate objective?”

“I’d have thought that would be obvious,” Dante smiled, raising the cup to his lips for a sip before continuing. “Destroy the spine of a book and the whole thing unravels. It is the same principle. They are hoping to destroy The Word and thus expose enough plot holes for them to slip through the fabric of our reality and remake the world in their own image.”

“A world without language,” Drudge whispered, “a world without stories.” And she shivered violently. It was not due to the cold.

***

For the next two weeks Drudge dug up everything she could on the Illiterati. She searched every source, asked every person she could think of, chased down each obscure lead… and ended up with nothing more than what she’d started with. It seemed that secret societies covered their tracks well as no-one could tell her anything more than Dante already had done.

“They’re phantoms,” the Chief Librarian of Cache Twelve had told her, “the sort of thing we scare the young file clerks with. Nothing real.”

“I’ve heard nothing more,” Dobson had shrugged, “just the same. I’m sorry Drudge, but I do believe they’re real. Make sure you watch your back.”

“As I told you before my dear Ms. Kipling,” Dante had smiled, “I don’t think you can assume that they are any more than a story themselves.”

But all of Drudge’s instincts told her they were real. Very real. Even if they just weren’t tangible.

“They don’t read,” she muttered to herself as she walked home after another fruitless day of searching, “they don’t write. How do you look for a written record when there is none.” The question was a bug biting at her brain as she entered through the large cast iron gates at the entrance to Morsley Park, one of her favourite shortcuts between the Abbey Reading Rooms and her house. In the distance she could see a mime artist performing on an open grass area. He was walking against an imaginary wind.

“It’s impossible,” she cursed, “just impossible. I find books. I find words. That’s what I do. How can I possibly find something that is the complete antithesis to what I know? The antiword, of all things, the enemies of language.”

The mime artist stopped walking against the wind and started trying to get past an invisible wall. He had no audience other than the approaching Drudge but seemed content to continue has act none-the-less.

“Maybe…” Drudge mused, “maybe if I look for the absence of words… the space left when something is taken away… But if I were to look for that… oh this is hopeless!!”

Drudge threw her hands up in the air and decided to call it a day. “I’ve wasted enough time on this nonsense. If the Illiterati want me they can bloody well come and find me, I’ve had enough of chasing ghosts.”

It was then that the mime artist hit Drudge over the head with a large, blunt and heavy object.

As the eloquent Ms. Kipling fell to the ground the last thing she saw was the painted white face of the mime, grinning at her in triumph. Then blackness overcame her and she knew no more.

***

When Drudge came to she was in a room lined with case upon case of books. Groaning, she pulled herself up from the floor, staggering to a nearby pile of leather-bound tomes to lean against while she steadied herself.

“That’s the last time I support performance art,” she winced, gently feeling at her tender head. Once she was certain there was no discernible damage other than some bruising, Drudge began to take in her surroundings in more detail. The books around her appeared to be arranged in absolutely no order what-so-ever; indeed they seemed to have just been thrown randomly into piles. Drudge imagined them being dumped here as unceremoniously as she obviously had been. She peered at the nearest pile and read the titles from the book spines. They revealed a strange mix of romance novels, fantasy epics and horror collections. All different authors. All different eras. No pattern at all.

“Weird,” she muttered to herself, and regretted it immediately as the movement of her jaw caused her head to spin a little faster. She spent the next ten minutes looking for an exit, but she could find no way out. The chamber had no doors or windows, only books. Endless, random books.

In frustration Drudge picked up a tome at random and opened it, equally randomly, upon a random page. Upon the write paper the following words were scribed in black and white:

“Hello Drudge.”

In a panic she closed the volume and dropped it back onto its pile.

“Okay, that was strange…”

Selecting another random book from a pile on the opposite side of the room she opened yet another page to find:

“Please Ms. Kipling, do not be alarmed.”

It took her a moment to calm down and scan through the rest of the book, but the remainder of it appeared to be a fantasy tale about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, amongst which there were no further messages for her at all. She chose another book from nearby, operating on pure instinct, and found within it the words:

“I am the living story, The Word if you like. All around you, you can see my flesh, my body. The clues are in the stories. Read of me and understand.”

And that was all. But it was enough. Drudge rolled up her sleeves and looked and the towers of tales that surrounded her.

“It’s a good thing I can speed read,” she mused quietly. Then she got to work.

***

From behind hidden windows they watched in silence. Faces painted white, kept blank and expressionless behind their masks. Anyone who saw them would have thought them to be nothing more than an army of mimes, clad in black and white, silent and still. But there was something sinister about them, something altogether unholy about the way they stood and watched, unmoving, unspeaking.

They did not speak because they could not. They had no language with which to speak. They could not speak, could not read, could not write. From birth they were segregated from all things linguistic, all things semiotic. Language to them was not a system with which to communicate thought, but rather a system by which it was controlled. It limited what you could say, what you could do, what you could be, for without a word to express your thought you could not think it. At least, this was so for others, but the Illiterati did not think in thoughts.

Brought up without language their minds were free to take shape within a web of proto-communication. Their thoughts were free to soar unhindered by the constraining ties that held other minds down. They had no limitations, their minds suffered no binding. But it was not enough. They were not totally free.

For in their hearts the Illiterati wanted to share their transcendence with others, wanted to make all others free. But to do that they needed to rid the world of language. And to do that they needed to destroy The Word.

They could hunt it. The youngest of their number could sense its presence within the vessels that made up its body. Unholy words scattered across the length and breadth of the globe, a body made up of language. They could find its parts, but they could not read them, could not gain confirmation of their capture of the beast. For that they needed another.

They did not know her name, did not know that such things as ‘names’ existed, but if they had constructed a title for her it would simply have been ‘The One’. They knew that, somehow, like them, she could think beyond the bounds of language, she could see the threads that wove things together, yet she partook in their structure as well. She was a reader who also knew how not to read. And she could confirm for them whether this time they had succeeded. Whether this time they had collected enough of the creature’s body to be able to finally, irrevocably, destroy it.

So they watched, silently from behind their hidden windows, as in the chamber below Drudge Kipling made her way from book to book, reading mere lines in some and entire volumes of others, sorting, seeking, understanding in a way that they could not. She was communicating with The Word. And when she had finished, they would destroy it…

***

She understood. Somehow she understood it all.

They were fragments, pieces, jumbled stories written in a variety of styles by many different authors. There were violent tales of war and meandering conversations on the nature of fiction, there were disturbingly amusing accounts of insane lab-workers and archaeological insights into the origins of humanity. There were tales of anger, death and music. Tales of libraries, computers and machines housing thoughts and spirits not their own. They were parables, insights, clues. Some contained it in no more than two words, others throughout pages of passages, but all of them contained something, some part of the living story known as The Word.

It had woven itself into fiction, it lived within the words, and Drudge could sense it somehow and understand its shape. It was in the books, all around her, and with fear she realized what the Illiterati has amassed. It was not the entire being, to assemble that would be nigh on impossible. But it was the reason of it, the thought center, the head of the beast. And without its head the body would be nothing more than a floundering, dying shambles. Drudge discovered with horror just how many of the books here were rare editions of out of print titles and one off limited edition pieces. These were rare, more than likely the only copies in existence. If the Illiterati destroyed them then they would succeed. The Word would die.

It was as Drudge thought this, the exact second that she reached this conclusion, that hidden doors opened all around the chamber and they entered. The Illiterati. An army of silent mimes walking forward in eerie silence. Each and every one of them carried a burning brand.

“No,” Drudge cried out. “No, you can’t do this. You can’t!!”

One of the mimes caught her attention with a sweep of fire from the lit torch he held. She turned to gaze at him as he bowed low to her, catching her eye with his own dark pools. And somehow Drudge understood the gesture, the significance of it. They understood her, somehow, without language, there was still communion between them. All they had wanted from her was confirmation, and she had given it to them. They knew now that they had succeeded, that finally their great mission was to become complete.

“Please,” Drudge begged, “do not do this…”

But before she could even finish her sentence the Illiterati had already chosen, already acted, and it was already far too late. The burning brands were cast outward in short arcs to land upon the beds of books that lay about the chamber. There was a moment of silence before a great crackling ‘whomp’ sounded and all around Drudge the great chamber of books caught alight and began to burn.

“No!!!” Drudge held her hands outward, as if to hold back the flames, but it was no good, it was already too late. The old books caught fast and burned quickly. And all those words, all those beautiful words blossomed red and turned to ash before there was any chance to stop it. She felt tears tumbling down her face as the beautiful books burnt black around her, as the head of The Word was severed from its body. As The Story died.

The Illiterati member who had caught her attention before did so once again, with a second low sweeping bow. All around the other mimes had already begun to back out the chamber doors and vanish into darkness. One by one they slid away, leaving the burning red pyre in their wake.

Now alone and desperate Drudge threw herself at the piles of books, trying to salvage something, but it was too late for that now. The tomes fell into pieces in her hands, black fragments floating empty upon the sea of heat and death. There was nothing but flame and ash around her now and the elegant Ms. Kipling found herself running for the exit, coughing and retching as the smoke coiled within her lungs.

There was only one chamber door left open now. She took it at a run and followed a long corridor out into the darkness of the night. Fresh air hit her in a welcoming wave as she skidded to a halt in the outside world. A small back alley entrance, all dust-bins and graffiti. Behind her the door back into the Illiterati stronghold closed and locked. There was no smell of smoke anymore, no sound of engines or sign of fire. Not that she had expected that there would be. The Illiterati had destroyed the world’s Story, and no-one would ever even know. It was over. It was all over.

Silently, with tears rolling down her face, Drudge made her way back home.

***

It took two showers to rid her skin of the smell of ash, and four cups of coffee before the taste of burning could be banished from her mouth.

Drudge sat, silent and alone in the darkness of her study, pondering on what had been done, what she had seen but been unable to prevent. All those books, those wonderful, beautiful books, destroyed, so some bizarre secret society could feel secure in their illiterate existence. She wondered what it would be like to live without language. To exist without story. It made her shudder and she felt the tears well in her eyes once more. All those words gone forever… it made Drudge shudder to think that none other than herself would know about those stores. That no-one else would remember…

Remember…

In a sudden panic Drudge leapt to her feet and grabbed at a pen upon her desk. She remembered!! She remembered the stories. And so long as she remembered them she could write them down again. It didn’t matter anymore, what the Illiterati had done. They had destroyed something beautiful, but you could never truly kill a story. After all, there was nothing more enduring than an idea.

The elegant Ms. Kipling looked across her desk and saw the bottle she had taken from Dante earlier, but now rather than being empty it was full to the brim. With a smile she uncorked it and took a sip. The delicious taste of something wonderful suffused her body.

There were stories to tell, and Drudge Kipling, guardian of The Word, was just the person to tell them. With a smile upon her face she took up her pen and began to write.