Before Lenora could move, the man dumped the books onto a belt and hit a button on a nearby control panel.
The machine started. Books of hate began moving down the belts. And then—
“Lenora!”
Ada shot into view. She had given up her outlandish outfit and platform shoes, and for some reason had dressed up in the costume of an old-fashioned explorer. She threw herself into Lenora’s arms. “Lenora, Malachi told all your friends—”
“I know,” replied Lenora. “Now Ada, please listen. This machine is supposed to sort all books into their correct sections, but it’s been reprogrammed. I don’t know how to fix it. I need you to do it, and fast. I have to deal with this man.”
“What man?” Ada asked.
Lenora turned. The man was gone. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a flash of green. The man was running down one of the belts, and he was out of sight a moment later.
“Quickly,” she said to Ada. “I’ve got to go after him. And you’ve got to fix this machine before any of those books go out.”
“But I’ve never seen it before,” cried Ada in despair. “Please, Lenora, stay and help me!”
Lenora held Ada by her arms and looked into her eyes. “Ada, I will do my best, but I will not always be there to help you. Know that you are braver and smarter than you realize, and you will find you do not need me as much as you think. Now hurry. We’re out of time.”
Ada gulped, tears in her eyes. Then she nodded and ran to the control panel.
Lenora jumped onto the conveyor belt and chased after the final member of the Board. She found that by running on the belts that were moving in the direction she wanted to go, she could move at blinding speed, and soon she caught up with the man, who had his back against a wall.
He turned to her, grinning. “You can never defeat us, you know. We might be silenced for a while, but we will always come back. Eventually we will win.”
Lenora felt her hate for him returning. But now she understood this thing for what it was, and knew that she must not become that same thing.
So though it was difficult, she said calmly instead, “I remember how I felt outside the Director’s office, when you and I first met.” Though she supposed she had met this creature before, in other forms. “I hated you. And it was one of the most awful feelings I’ve ever had. How terrible it must be for you to feel that same way all the time. I’m very sorry for you.”
At these words, the man howled terribly, and just as he began to turn into a dark nothingness, he was sucked away to wherever the others had gone.
“Fixed it!” she heard Ada yell.
The belt Lenora was standing on reversed, and she stumbled and fell.
Lenora could see right away that not only had Ada fixed the sorting machine, but it was now operating three times faster than before and it would be dangerous to stand on it. She had just managed to push herself into a seated position when the belt whooshed her onto a small platform and some spinning wheels came up and rolled her right onto another belt. All around, books on this and other belts were getting the same treatment, being pushed from belt to belt and then through doors in the walls marked ECOLOGY and GENETICS and FUNGI and every other topic one could possibly think of.
Lenora’s belt roared toward a door in a wall and she found herself speeding along through a glass tunnel, and below her she could see a vast, sunlit reading room completely lined with tall bookshelves all along the walls, every one of them filled with books, and there were smiling librarians hurrying about, directing patrons to this or that. She could see all their faces, and on them she saw not one bit of fear or hatred, and she knew that every one of those patrons was being directed to books filled with truth, and warmth rushed through her as she realized: We won.
A moment later, Lenora shot through the end of the glass tunnel and onto another platform, only this time the platform began to rise through the air, and as she passed a window she could see onto the roof of a nearby building, across which ran a koala with a glittering object clutched in one paw as Rosa flew in pursuit.
Lenora couldn’t see what happened next, for the platform continued upward. She passed another window, and now she was looking into another room, where she spotted Malachi giving some solemn instruction to Ada in her explorer’s clothes, and the girl nodding gravely before stepping into a portal just like the one her father had vanished through.
That view disappeared as the platform continued upward. At last it stopped, and two robotic arms came out from the wall and turned Lenora gently so she was facing the opposite direction, and then more rollers sent her onto a new belt, and soon she was headed right for the door above which was written in bold black letters: LENORA.
And then she was tumbling down a steep slide, head over heels, until she fell through a small square portal that instantly slid shut behind her. It slid shut so perfectly that where there had once been a door, you could not now tell there had been anything but a wall. She looked about and saw that she had been sorted back to exactly where a Lenora should be—behind the information desk of a wonderful library with lovely, large windows through which sunlight poured eagerly in, and beautiful cedar beams that stretched up to the high ceiling. She had just gotten to her feet and dusted herself off when she heard a woman’s sharp voice from around the corner:
“I tell you, that girl has been gone for ten minutes now! We’re leaving!”
And a boy’s voice replied:
“Please, just a little longer!”
Lenora raced around the corner toward the boy who was waiting for an answer about the world’s largest number, and soon she would tell him all about Milton Sirotta and TREE(3) and Graham’s number, and that even bigger numbers might be found by someone armed with the light of knowledge, and after that he would stagger with a smile from the library under the weight of a stack of math books Lenora had chosen for him, and as she watched him go she would smile happily, too, for on her chest over her heart was a new badge, a badge with words that were simple but summed up everything: