The Brief-Mobile

Rachel was in excellent shape, but adrenaline both spurred her speed and caused her to look at her new friend from a competitor’s viewpoint. Yarawi was very young and possibly had an exercise program of her own to match or even surpass Rachel’s daily climbs up 77 meters of steep watchtower stairs. Our Observer 3rd Class did not gain on Yarawi, but neither did she lose ground.

Although Rachel was putting out effort so maximized that each breath burned down her trachea, she still found energy to be flabbergasted by the performance of the “elderly” Manqu. He augmented his lead steadily, and as he disappeared around the rear end of the mammoth tank trailer, Rachel thought, If we lose him, we’ll have no idea where to go.

The stretch of trailer finally ended where it was snugly backed into the rear corner of the garage. Yarawi coped adeptly with the demands of the tiny alley between truck and wall and performed a graceful high-velocity leftwards pivot on the oil-slick floor, but even with the advantage of a preview of her friend’s technique, Rachel’s outside heel began hydroplaning as she entered the turn, and that leg slid towards the wall as its mate was pushing off in its new direction, with the result of a tearing feeling at the crotch, as though she had attempted an overly ambitious ballet split. She recovered sufficiently to avoid the disaster of full body contact with the floor, but elbows and knees were banged on both sides, slowing her down so much that by the time she could look up, Manqu was no longer visible. Rachel concentrated on following Yarawi’s supple and softly efficient pistoning alongside the towering tires of another interminable tank trailer.

Yarawi glanced up at the tanker as she ran. She saw something significant enough to make her stop, turn around and check on Rachel’s progress. Within two seconds, Rachel pulled up next to her, panting. Yarawi pointed to a course of widely spaced rungs leading up the side of the tank trailer. Four stories up, where the curve of the tank bent out of her sight line, she saw the hunched form of Manqu, shrunken to insect-size by distance and silhouetted against the glare of the ceiling lights. He continued moving steadily up like the lead rock climber on a granitic dome.

Yarawi looked at Rachel with a mixture of apprehension and empathy and said, “Let me give you a boost.” Rachel was about to protest, but then saw the lowest rung. It was set below the curve of the tank, and if an aspiring climber set foot on it without a concomitant handhold, she would fall backwards before even starting up. The second rung was that necessary handhold, but was located high enough that a pure upper body pull-up would be required merely to get a foot planted on the first rung. Extraordinary strength would be needed, and Rachel, brutally honest with herself, admitted she might not have the requisite, so she gave a thankful nod.

Yarawi braced herself against a giant tire and proffered her interlaced hands, palms up, as a foot booster . Rachel, cognizant of the time pressure Manqu had described and of the large lead he had on them, did not hesitate but placed her right foot on the manual launch-pad as she reached up to grasp the second rung. Yarawi assisted with firm upward propulsion and a grunt, and as Rachel found the bottom rung with her dangling foot. She pushed off with that and was then able to begin scuttling up the side of the tank. Three meters below, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Yarawi unassisted, performing the same maneuver to gain her initial purchase on the route.

The truck trailer’s size had been overwhelming even from below. Now that she was scaling it, the vertical dimension seemed magnified by at least a factor of two. She was thankful there were no familiar objects on the floor below to look tiny due to her height. However, as soon as she had ascertained this, she wrenched her eyes away and kept moving, thankful for all the time and energy she had invested in anti-acrophobia exercises.

As the ladder curved up the tank, its pitch decreased. At the point where she almost felt comfortable stepping up the rungs without using her hands, the route ended at the lip of a rectangular cavity of person-depth which ran the length of the trailer top. Projecting from its center line were five nipple-like structures, giant spigots that presumably functioned to fill or empty the tank below. Manqu stood by the closest of this quintet of mammoth nozzles, his back to her. Rachel hopped down and made her way over the thankfully level floor to join him. She heard Yarawi right behind her.

Manqu turned from fiddling with some buttons set into the outer wall of the teat. “I think I've got the combo right, but we can't be sure until we try. There are three handholds-it's weird, but it's as though they were expecting three people...Let's each take one and try to turn this nipple thing!”

The pair of female activists positioned themselves 120 degrees apart along the circumference, where each found her hand-notch. Manqu yelled “Clockwise!” and the trio all shoved together. The teat-shaped cover responded with an astonishing performance. It smoothly split into multiple triangular segments which had a common origin at the center of the circle. Every other skinny isosceles then moved to cover its neighbor. As they overlapped, they retracted from the center until the nipple had opened like the diaphragm of the lens. The thin pie-slice pieces continued to stack and retract, while disappearing with a hiss into a slot which circled the inner circumference.

Bright lights immediately flicked on, and Rachel and Yarawi gasped in unison. The performance of the teat-cover had been just a prelude to what it revealed. The truth-seeking trio looked down into a luxuriously-appointed library reading room occupying the entire 20 million liter capacity tank.

On the flat hardwood floor, red and gold carpets with complex patterns set off each of the four long reading tables. The curved walls of the tank were not noticeable, as floor to ceiling shelves were placed in front of them. At the far end, a desk placed so its occupant could survey the whole room was obviously meant for the traditional role of the librarian, but its chair was empty.

The only jarring note to detract from the appearance of a traditional reading room in which expensively suited attorneys might relax and talk in lowered voices (if the librarian would allow it), was the stepladder which had smoothly extended from below their feet to the library floor as soon as they opened the upper entrance. It was plain steel, without any special concessions to safety, but after the rungs leading up to the top of the truck, it seemed like a grand staircase.

The trio swarmed down the ladder without waiting for a signal, Yarawi in the lead, Rachel in the middle, and the elder aactivist in the anchor position. Their visual impression of luxury was confirmed when they landed on the springy floor. The books and documents were protected behind glass doors from which brass handles gleamed. The bookcases towered over the three, as the top of the tank was nine meters above the floor. A one-person elevator was ready beside every case, and a track contained in a projecting lip just above the bookcase finials enabled the elevator platforms to move laterally so that every document was accessible.

Rachel and Yarawi instinctively stopped in front of the librarians desk, and the two young women looked at Manqu as though to say, “What now?”

“We look in the card catalog,” he answered , as though he could hear their unspoken question. He motioned to an impressive structure of dark wood situated behind the librarians desk.

The sheer number of compartments in the bank of drawers reminded Rachel of a honeycomb. At a glance, she guessed there were 40 rows and twice that many columns… 3200 drawers?!?? “We need a catalog for the card catalog,” she said wryly to Manqu.

“It's not as bad as it looks,” he responded. “You just have to know what you're looking for.” He slid a finger into the groin pocket of his coverall and fished out a scrap of paper. “Their language is impossible to remember, so I wrote it down. ‘Sprawnia Division Aridity Special Directive’,” he read from the note. “OK, five words,” he continued. “I'm the most experienced so I'll take the first two. ‘Special’ is probably harder than ‘aridity,’ so it's yours, Rachel, as the library scientist. Yar, you take ‘aridity.’ Start searching!”

The tenacious trio spread out. Rachel found herself on the far left of the giant rack of cubbyholes, far removed from her friends over at the “s’s.” Finding the “ar” drawer near the bottom of the third column, she slid it open, enjoying the lubricity of its carriage but wondering if that meant the library was well-frequented, incredible as that would be.

She delved into the cards at her best guess for “ari-,” but wound up with “Arsenic Extraction and its Hominid Effects in the High Desert Alkali Flats of the Sierra Descuidado.” Those effects must have been bad, she thought. Here in a secret law library, they're already preparing to defend against people that aren't even part of their legal system. She made a mental note: Arsenic-ask Manqu if he knows about its distraction... I mean, extraction.

Before she could pull her attention back to the search for “ari-” she was distracted by “ ‘Arse, Move Your’: Verbal and Sexual Harassment Liability in Physical Education.” OK, legal for sure... she thought. But in a high security library? I guess they're covering themselves in every way possible.

Under “arid,” she only found “Aridity, Spiritual: Psychological Consequences and Ecclesiastical Obligation.” Definitely not it, she thought. She was about to join Yarawi and Manqu at the “s’s,” but as she turned to leave, she saw them coming towards her with the look of defeated warriors who were nevertheless determined to turn the next battle in their direction. The father and daughter stopped about six or eight columns towards the “z” from her, and began ransacking two of the drawers in that area. Having nothing else to do after striking out on “aridity,” Rachel sauntered over to provide moral support.

Manqu looked up. “We're checking the ‘d’s’,” he confirmed. “Yar, I predict “directive” is the one we’ll actually find, and that's yours, so be ready. If we find ‘division’, I’d eat my hat if I had one.”

Rachel visualized this and giggled. Yarawi’s nose was already in the drawer. Just minutes later , she gave a small cry of triumph, quickly followed by a sigh of dismay as she saw the magnitude of the category. She displayed the index card. It appeared that “directives, special” had been generated in multiples by each of MISS’s multitudinous departments. Moreover, there was nothing in the “a’s” or “d’s” subheadings about “aridity” or for that matter, about “division.” Even Manqu looked discouraged, but quickly started checking for “division” as a primary entry.

The three were silent for awhile as their leader worked. After that while, Manqu turned a slightly reddened face up to them and admitted, “Now, I’m really glad I don’t have a hat! The damn thing’s filed under ‘Division, Sprawnia, Directive, Special, Aridity!’ Oh well, at least it’s here-it would be a bit demoralizing to go through all this and find this library has nothing for us.”

Feeling that their elder had done enough and wanting to take the initiative, Rachel memorized the location code from the card and walked off in its direction. She arrived at the indicated stack and looked up 3 stories, to where a lighted legend just large enough to see displayed the items location code again. She boarded the one-person platform and punched in the code.

A smooth motor whirred and she quickly ascended. Arriving at the correct height, the platform paused with a soft tunk! as the gears shifted to horizontal mode. She was moved laterally to the left and the conveyance stopped with an even softer sound.

Directly in front of her was the desired document. Nine meters below, Yarawi and Manqu looked up from the polished hardwood floor, eager to know what the cloistered and heavily secured brief she would soon retrieve would reveal about Sprawnia’s future supply of the more vulnerable of the two most basic life-giving molecules.