Chapter 47

Absolutely Fabulous

As Betty fluttered into the room, Quinn was once more taken by the fact that the imprint of scales that rippled under her skin shimmered ever so faintly in the light. She needed to look into exactly what sprites were. Betty’s hummingbird wings hummed in a fresh melody that lent hope to everything she passed.

The Sprite flew straight up right in front of Quinn, her entire five-inch frame drawn up to its fullest. A sense of peace washed over Quinn as the little sprite gave her a winning smile.

“Now dear, what is it that I can help you with?”

“Well,” Quinn said, “you did say you had a proposition.”

“I do, but you look like you need help, so I thought I would ask you first and then we can talk about me.”

Quinn laughed, feeling so much of the tension leak out of her. Lynx popped into the room at that moment and his eyes fell on Betty. Even he seemed relieved to see her there.

“It’s good you’re both here,” he said cryptically.

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

“Nice to see you, Lynx,” Betty, however, seemed oblivious to any tension and turned her attention back to Quinn.

The Librarian cleared her throat. “You mentioned you were previously a Library assistant. Can you tell me about that?” She wasn’t entirely sure how to assess somebody else’s previous assistant. Why was she a previous assistant? Why had she left? Although if she’d been an assistant for Korradine, Quinn was fairly certain she knew why she’d left. Meanwhile, Quinn had pulled up the information that the system still had on Betty. She’d handled the check-in desk, roster allocation, new hires, and branch coordination, complex retrievals...

“Oh,” said Betty, and she looked slightly conflicted, as if she didn’t want to speak ill of the dead. “Well, I...”

“Maybe I should ask you what you did?” Quinn interrupted, even though from the list it would probably be faster to ask her what she didn’t do.

Betty laughed like silvery little bells. Lots of people laughed like silvery little bells. Maybe it was a Library acoustics thing. “Well, under the previous Librarian I really did a lot. I hired most of the other assistants and needed to coordinate between the branches depending on what events we had going on. I also did event coordination. Any complex retrievals. I handled all the refurbishments when they were necessary. Coordinating with the Library for quite a lot of things. I handled the check-in desk, roster allocation, filling in for sick people. You know, just the usual things your supervisor does. That I did so much was the reason for our first disagreement. Kor and I didn’t see eye to eye.”

“What did you do as a Library Assistant Supervisor before Korradine?”

“Well, I worked under Esotar. He was a marvelous Librarian.”

“So you were with the Library for quite some time?” Quinn asked, realizing just how inconsequential her tiny amount of time had been. No wonder Hal called her an egg.

“Yes, Esotar was a Salosier who was the Librarian for, oh, I don’t know, a couple thousand years. He was Escadril’s uncle, I think.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow, feeling a pang of sadness for Escadril.

Betty barrelled on. “Anyway, he was Librarian for a couple of thousand years and as a friend and a sprite dust contributor, I gladly came and helped him out. Except back then, I was only in charge of roster allocation, new hires and the check-in desk. He took care of most of everything else. You know, he retrieved difficult-to-retrieve books and located all the problems within the Library. He did all the branch and event coordination. Everything that a Librarian should be doing while he was still powering up. I enjoyed my time with Esotar. His decision to terminate his time as Librarian took me by surprise. It took us a few years before we found Korradine and she was great in training. Easy to roster, easy to communicate with. She’d come to all of her shifts, prepared and ready to tackle everything I allocated to her. So much I think it alleviated much of the misgivings I had about the sudden departure of Esotar. She seemed to be the perfect replacement. But the day she took over, she changed everything. The way all the assistants worked, who had to do the bulk of the work, which ended up being me as the head supervisor. I must admit I probably let it go on a bit too long, Librarian.”

Quinn looked at her, quite aghast. She couldn’t imagine asking Dottie or Geneva or Eric for that matter to do that much work. “It sounds like you had a lot on your plate.”

“Exactly! That’s what I said to her, and she told me if I didn’t want to be the supervisor anymore, I could be gone and take my sprite dust with me.”

“What?” Quinn said.

“What?” Lynx said at the same time. “I don’t remember that.”

Betty looked at him sadly. “I know, Lynx,” she said. “And the horrible part is that you were there when this went down and you were just sort of blank as if you didn’t really care.”

“No! I would have cared,” Lynx said, shaking his head, as if trying to jolt more memories. “If anything, it would have been because I didn’t notice.”

“But you were right there the whole time, Lynx. I complained to you multiple times. Over a few hundred years, I believe I complained to you about a dozen times. I really did bring it up.”

Lynx frowned. That was a lot farther back than they’d initially anticipated the interference going. It cemented the fact that she’d been a plant from the very beginning. Quinn could see why he’d be upset. She just wasn’t sure how to make it any better for him.

“Anyway,” Betty said. “That’s water under the bridge. I realize now that you, too, had problems with Korradine.”

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He shook his head. “More than you know.”

“Anyway, I stuck it out for a couple of centuries. I spoke to Lynx. I told him that I would have to resign if Kor didn’t do her job properly. You seemed blindsided and bewildered and then you took her side when she said she was doing all the work and that I was trying to take credit for it and that I’d wished I’d been the Librarian even though I don’t even have the right affinities to be the Librarian. I have all of those required to be an assistant, but none of the Librarian components. I never wanted to be the Librarian. Anyway, I left with the promise to still provide sprite dust on the regular, but after a few millennia even that passed. It was like she was trying to make me an outcast from the Library which was very sad because I spent thousands of years here and I really enjoyed it. Now, now it feels different again. It feels right. But anyway, I left and took my sprite dust with me. And I mean from my entire species. We weren’t going to be treated like that.”

“That sounds kind of nightmarish,” Quinn said. “I’m so sorry she did that.”

“Oh, it’s okay darling. As I see it she did a lot worse than just that. I can’t believe the Library was closed for this long.” Betty looked around the office, nodding to herself as if approving of the layout. “I’m glad it’s opened again. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I just didn’t believe it because, well, I thought it was her playing some sort of trick again. Anyway, I see that you’re trying to get everything done all by yourself and I figured you’re nice. I like you. Lynx seems much more himself. Even Milaro and Hal like you. So I came here to offer my help should you need it.”

Quinn watched the energetic sprite for a few seconds, her mind racing. There were so many questions she had for her. How had she been a Librarian assistant so many years ago? Just how old was she? Was it still rude to ask somebody who was thousands of years old how old they were? Because didn’t age just not matter at some point? Still, Quinn shook her head. Betty must have seen more than what was going on. Was she that involved with the Library that she didn’t notice how weird things were becoming? And had Korradine really started messing with Lynx’s memories way back then? There were so many questions, but if she had Betty by her side, there was plenty of time for her to ask them and have them answered. They were mostly mere curiosity. Then again, age was timeless. The Library had practically been around since the beginning, so who was Quinn to actually judge time, anyway? Even if it was something that had been ingrained into her as a human being back on earth. She took a breath and smiled.

“I’d actually just started delegating, which is sort of new to me and I didn’t really think to do it before. I thought I had to do everything until Uncle Hal went and gathered the rest of the books I needed to open the last two branches. And I realized that if he can do that, other people can too, and that a lot of stuff will get done a lot faster with some help.”

“That’s just mighty fantastic of you,” said Betty. “Did you realize so many people don’t understand they don’t have to shoulder all the responsibility themselves?”

Quinn nodded, wondering how she could talk that fast all the time.

“May I take a look at what you’ve done?” Betty asked.

“Of course,” Quinn said and activated her HUD to show for Betty when she looked over her shoulder. Floating there, hovering with her humming wings, that still sent out that soothing sensation helped Quinn feel like she was getting a handle on things.

“This looks like a fantastic setup. Why, yes... I do believe Dottie and Geneva would be best in that capacity. Eric, hmm, well, I haven’t seen him in much action. He seems to only have just come back, is that right?”

“Yes, sort of,” Quinn said, wondering how she... But then she was tiny and probably highly observant. “Did you not notice that things were odd back then?”

Betty sighed quite theatrically. It was a big sigh for something so tiny. Her shoulders heaved, and she looked sad. “I didn’t really notice, at least, not at first,” she said. “And when I did, I didn’t notice for the right reasons. I have to admit having been much younger and quite frivolous in my ways. I was far too focused on the resentment I felt toward Korradine to realize there was a lot more at play here. I truly wish that I had noticed it.” The topic seemed to sober her up.

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Quinn said. “Just trying to pinpoint exactly when it all started. Just how long they were putting their plans into effect.

“Well, it probably started before she took over the Library.” Betty looked thoughtful. “I definitely hadn’t been expecting Esotar to retire. I don’t even think Esotar expected to retire. It was abrupt and sudden and his death caused loss for a lot of people. I wouldn’t be surprised if things were set into motion long before she arrived here.”

“So, do Librarians all die when they stop being a Librarian?” Quinn asked, somewhat apprehensive, “Like all of them?

“Not if it’s within their species’ normal lifespan,” Lynx interrupted. “If you would usually live usually 500 years then and you decide to become a Librarian and you’re a Librarian for 200 years and you’re like 280 when you decide you don’t want to be a Librarian anymore, the odds are that the uncoupling isn’t going to kill you because you’ll just revert to who you were before. But if your species usually lives about 500 years and you’ve been a Librarian for 2,000 then when you uncouple you will die. It doesn’t happen immediately though,” Lynx said, as if that made it so much better. “It takes a few decades or so.”

And really, Quinn thought the power of the Library prolonging the Librarian’s lifespan made a lot of sense since there was so much involved in becoming the Librarian in the first place. “So it takes a few decades to wind down then, like it did with Korradine.”

“About 50 or so years, give or take. It leaves plenty of time to put affairs in order, make sure everything’s, you know, the way you want to leave it.”

Quinn nodded slowly. “Esotar’s resignation was unexpected, then?”

“Yes, it was quite odd,” Lynx’s eyes were flickering, obviously trying to read his own memories. “But he had been a Librarian for thousands of years, so it was a bit beyond the Salosier lifespan.”

“Hmm,” Quinn said. “Interesting.” She jotted down a little note on a pad next to her, trying to lock it into her mind.

Betty had turned her attention back to the delegation list and frowned. “Sweetheart, are you even sure that you need my help? I’m only offering it because I thought it looked like you weren’t taking care of yourself and I would very much like to help you do so. But if you don’t need my help, I won’t take offence. I’ll still come and visit and I’ll definitely give you the Sprite dust because, from the smell and the sensations, I think your filtration chamber could definitely use a buttload of the stuff.”

Quinn laughed. This little breath of fresh air was the highlight of her day. That and that the dog-ear Bell had run into her room and jumped up on the couch. Her little snores were oddly melodic. Aradie cooed at her as if she could tell Quinn’s thoughts and was reminding her that the owl was always there. Quinn smiled, feeling like maybe, maybe, everything wasn’t completely impossible.

“I would definitely appreciate your help. If I can trust that the person in charge is taking care of everything and making sure the Library’s day-to-day functions are taken care of, then I can relax while I’m off finding missing books, potential enemies, powering myself up, and synchronizing with the Library. While I know that Geneva and Dottie are perfectly capable of running the Library, they’re also the people I’ve chosen to do something else extremely important to all of us. All in all, I need more people I can trust.”

Lynx coughed. “I think you can trust her.”

“Oh good,” Betty said. “I think, I think you can trust me too.”

Quinn laughed. “I thought you might say that. I’d love you to come aboard if you really mean it. I’ll be able to concentrate on restoring the Library to a point where we can all research what we want, have discussions, and cake and cookies, and only occasionally have to worry about the end of the universe as we know it.”

“I shall gladly accept then,” Betty said. “Oh, this is going to be absolutely fabulous.” And then the tiny Sprite turned all serious. “But once we’ve got all of this sorted out, you and I need to sit down, have a bit of a chat about that pixie dust you mentioned. I’m a bit worried about you, dear.”