Beatriz In The Infinite Library: An Offworld Adventure

By Bridget Smith

When Beatriz and Iris step through a hidden portal their world is forever changed.

A far-distant world terrorized by an oppressive regime.

An indigenous people who change gender at will.

And a test of this new world's strength in the face of evil.

College students Beatriz and Iris

• Language: English
• Publisher: ICS Media
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578294766

Bridget Smith

Bridget Smith started out life as Gordon Smith. As Gordon, she spent a mostly idyllic childhood in rural upstate New York, chasing butterflies and snakes. In college she gave up organic chemistry for painting, and served a term as chief of the Antioch College Fire Department. After graduating she moved to San Francisco, where she has remained. Her first book, The Forest in the Hallway (Clarion, 2006) was published before she became Bridget. The transition from painting to writing has also

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Contents

A Summer Abroad in Uqbar

Dr. Ptolemy Explains

A Quick Look Around

A Suspicious Disappearance

First Encounter

Curiouser and Curiouser

Conversation with a Seal

An Enigmatic Dream

The Rebellion Revealed

Journey by Train

What was in the Wolf’s Den

Too Close for Comfort

Approaching Oorn

The Wolf’s Gift Revealed

The Glove Held Hostage

Outside In

Journey by Car

Ubis, Guardian of the Library

The Unknown Side of the Stone

Beatriz in the Infinite Library

The North Americans’ Project

Borges at Last

The Prisoners Escape

Sigrid

What to Do About the Library

An Enigmatic Dream of Ubis

Confrontation

The Flock Attacks

Getting Metaphysical

Again into the Library

The Enemy Retreats

Long Live the King!

A Much Different Train Ride

History Evaporates

North

An Adventure Concluded

Chapter One

A Summer Abroad in Uqbar

the PLANe banked sharply, circling a small airport: a dozen sleek, white jets clustered around a single terminal, a few hangars and sheds, and miles of scrubby desert all around. The angle was so steep that Beatriz was almost directly above the ground, peering down through the sand-scarred airliner window. Feeling a momentary surge of panic and vertigo, she looked to her college roommate Iris, sitting beside her, for reassurance. Iris, equally unnerved, ignored her by pretending to be absorbed in a book about moths, her chosen field of interest.

Leveling out for its final approach, the plane brought into view a vista of low brown mountains, rugged and barren, looming in the hazy distance. Sunlight flashed off the glass cladding on modern office towers in a city several miles away.

They had flown in over the coast, a seemingly endless strip of brilliantly white sand. High-rise hotels lined the beachfront, surrounded by lush green lawns and palm-studded gardens. A dozen large yachts were anchored offshore.

It was the end of a grueling seventeen-hour flight from New York to Uqbar, with only an hour’s layover in Frankfurt to stretch their legs and blearily search out some yoghurts. Beatriz had slept fitfully between New York and Frankfurt, briefly dreaming that a new favorite author, Jorge Luis Borges, was sitting in the seat next to hers, snoring quietly. She had discovered his Labyrinths during her first year at Huxley College for Women, and he was an inspiration for her choice of Uqbar as a place to study abroad. She had been particularly intrigued by the parts of the book involving the world of Tlön:

The metaphysicians of Tlön are not looking for truth, nor even for an approximation of it; they are after a kind of amazement.

She loved that idea. Not that she wasn’t eager to learn the truths of our world, but finding amazement at the phenomena of the world—nature, physics, people—was even more exciting.

In her dream, she nudged Borges gently, hoping he’d stop snoring. He turned his head and looked sadly at her with rheumy, sleep-dimmed eyes and said, There you are, Beatriz. I’m so glad you’re on your way. His gaze was odd, she thought, since in real life he had been completely blind. He tenderly took her hand in his and patted it.

The dream was disturbing. It seemed more realistic and more coherent than the usual jumble of her dreams.

Beatriz, lately of Des Moines, Iowa, was, she believed, a mature twenty years old, balanced and outgoing. She had long brown hair and a droll sense of humor. Iris, having failed to come up with an entomological summer internship at several zoological societies and universities, had, with Beatriz’s eager encouragement, decided to pursue an independent study course on the moths of Uqbar. Iris was from Cambridge Mass, as she always put it, though her grandparents had emigrated to the U.S. from Japan after World War II. She had straight jet-black hair cut in bangs, and a fondness for dresses Beatriz thought too daring. Quieter than Beatriz, she often communicated more with glances than with words. She had begun tagging along after Beatriz in their freshman year, and a somewhat parasitic relationship had grown into a more equal one over the course of two years. They were coming to the Middle East to Uqbar, a small rhombus of a country on the Strait of Hormuz, nestled into the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf, for their summer abroad. Most of their friends who ventured out from the safety of Huxley went to Italy, France, or China, but they had taken Professor Jake Vaziri’s Roots of Conflict history class and developed an interest in, not only the bearded and doe-eyed Jake, but his native Uqbar and its complex history and culture, about which Borges had also written.

It had taken some convincing on Beatriz’s part to get Iris to agree to her choice.

It’s the Middle East! Who wants to go there?

It’s a beautiful country! And it’s protected by mountains on three sides, and it has beautiful valleys with farms and olive groves. And the National Museum is full of interesting stuff.

Interesting to who?

Well, to me. Borges wrote about it and it’s on an old trade route, so there’s plenty of history. And Jake said there’s nothing to fight over. No oil, no desperate poverty—there aren’t any terrorists, just tourists from Iran. There hasn’t been a war there since the 1400s’s! And 120 species of moths—I looked it up—most of which I bet you’ve never even heard of. Come on. It’s an adventure. Something different.

Let me think about it.

.....

With a hardly noticeable bump they were on the ground. Beatriz, as the plane taxied toward the terminal, awkwardly wrapped a plain, violet scarf around her head, a requirement for entering—and remaining in—the country. She nervously twirled a lock of hair around her finger, worked loose from its ponytail by hours of uneasy shifting about in the tiny prison of her airline seat and now unpleasantly confined by the headscarf. She generally kept her hair well reined in, except for some mornings in the bathroom, when she would briefly look in the mirror and think about letting it stay loose. She had blue eyes and thought them exceptionally attractive. She detested how she felt wearing the scarf, like an old Russian peasant.

You look like my mother’s cleaning lady. Iris laughed, though she was having trouble draping a bright pink scarf around her head.

Their fellow passengers kept to their seats as the plane slowed to a stop on the runway.

Are they going to let us off or what? Beatriz saw no reason for the delay. There were plenty of open slots at the terminal and no other planes were taking off or landing at the moment.

Resting in Beatriz’s lap was a well-worn (by whom? she wondered) copy of A Guide to Uqbar. She’d been thumbing through it before landing in the country they’d chosen to visit over the objections of their parents and even Jake, though it was obvious he was tremendously flattered. Table of Contents; History; Getting There; Out and About; Uqbar After Dark; Useful Phrases; Appendix: The Literature of Tlön and Mlejnas.

The cover showed a crowded bazaar, filled with people and shops selling the mirrors for which Uqbar was famous. She thumbed through it to the section on the literature of Tlön and Mlejnas, her particular interest since she had read Borges’s supposedly fictional account of those places in Jake’s Reflections on Culture: Art and Commerce in 20th Century Uqbar.

She re-read the guidebook’s description of Tlön:

A mythical world invented by 7th Century Uqbari romantic poets, Tlön in recent decades has been the subject of some speculation as to its actual existence as a now-lost city in the mountainous reaches of northern Uqbar. Literature from this period, in Uqbar and throughout the region, was suppressed by 13th Century Christian scholars, forcing Uqbari historians from the 13th through the 17th centuries to speculate in secret about Tlön’s inhabitants and history. The Biblioteque Nationale in Paris possesses several 15th and 16th Century manuscripts, copies of which can be seen in Uqbar at the National Museum. Efforts to regain possession of the originals by the Uqbar Ministry of Culture continue to this day.

A mythical world. When she’d first read Borges’s wonderful story she had believed it was a real place. And after she’d looked into it a little more, with the relentless curiosity of people her age drawn to subjects that interested the people she found interesting, she discovered that there was actually some debate as to its mythical status. But the debate centered on whether Tlön had been a city in the mountains above Uqbar, hard to get to and not particularly distinguished, or if it had been a once-thriving center of literature and the arts that had gradually declined. The debate was not whether it existed as a different world, as portrayed by Borges.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden pang of homesickness. For all her scholarly interest in Jake Vaziri’s native land, it was the Middle East, and with the exception of Uqbar and a few other countries, a region consumed by terrorism, war, and oil. A momentary panic returned when she thought of the text message from Dr. Ptolemy, her and Iris’s promised mentor, guide, and protector, saying he wasn’t going to be able to pick them up at the airport. Something to do with a family emergency. He had arranged for them to stay at a hotel for the night and asked them to meet with him at the museum in the morning.

After a few minutes of quiet immobility, the plane revved its engines and taxied slowly to the terminal, where two men in white polo shirts and khaki shorts wheeled a portable stairway up to the door. Beatriz and Iris walked out into what felt like a furnace. Waves of heat radiated up from the asphalt, and the sunlight was so intense that Beatriz had to squint.

Wow, she said out loud, her voice nearly drowned out by the whine of the dying jet engines and with her headscarf flying in all directions. "It’s really hot here!" She had another moment of panic: What if they don’t have air conditioning?

Whose idea was this anyway? Iris asked.

Wasn’t it your idea? Beatriz stopped briefly to clear a bit of dust out of her eye.

My idea was researching hawkmoths at the Museum of Natural Sciences in London, not roasting in the desert. She was teasing Beatriz: they were both excited to be visiting a country no Huxley student had ever been to, lording it over their friends traveling to more traditional destinations.

Of course the terminal was air-conditioned—it felt freezing cold after their brief walk from the plane. The terminal windows were tinted a dark grey to cut down on the glare. Half a dozen ragged-looking pigeons sat in a row on the narrow, shaded perch of the window frame outside the waiting area, gazing jealously at the air-cooled people inside.

The customs official seemed mildly surprised to see them—the only other passengers on the plane had been a dozen or so Arab businessmen, dressed in long white robes, who looked as if they knew where they were going. They flashed their passports and hurried through customs.

And the purpose of your visit is… The customs man spoke with what Beatriz took to be a faintly British accent.

We’re working with Dr. Ptolemy, at the National Museum, said Beatriz, vainly attempting to rearrange her scarf.

We’re students, added Iris. He was supposed to meet us here, but… The customs man frowned and she didn’t finish her sentence.

Students, he repeated slowly, looking first at one then the other with a raised eyebrow. I see. He put down their passports and leaned back in his chair.

I’m doing research on Tlön, said Beatriz. The literature. With Dr. Ptolemy. Dr. Farzeen Ptolemy. At the National Museum, she repeated. Iris is an entomology major.

No reaction from their interrogator, but one of two guards armed with black assault rifles, came over and picked up their passports from the customs officer’s table. For a tense few moments he examined them, saying nothing, then put them down and walked back to his post. Beatriz felt her jaw unclench.

The customs man looked at her blankly for another few seconds, then half-smiled.

And you are staying where?

At the Sheraton. Just for tonight. She felt this was not enough of an explanation. The downtown one. Then with Dr. Ptolemy’s family. He’s arranged it.

The official stamped their passports, seemingly reluctantly, and reminded them that their visas were only good for one year—twelve months. But they’d be back at Huxley long before that, warmly embraced by the familiar life and climate of upstate New York, in time for the fall term.

This is a list of precautions for visitors. Prohibited items and suggestions the government asks you to take very seriously. He handed them a card filled with numbered items in very small print. His brief smile had vanished. On passing inspection, your bags will arrive at the luggage carousel. Allow me to wish you a pleasant stay in Uqbar.

They waited alone for several minutes at the carousel, which was silent and unmoving. It finally started up, disgorged their four suitcases, and abruptly stopped.

Out again into the heat. There were two cabs at the taxi stand.

Sheraton? the driver asked, brushing sleep from his eyes. On the waterfront?

The downtown one, please.

He made a quick u-turn and headed off on the road to the city. It was a four-lane highway, perfectly straight and flat, running through the dusty brown desert scrub. They didn’t see a single other vehicle until they left the dry landscape and entered the city, where irrigation had allowed a lush green oasis to flourish. Numerous late-model luxury cars cruised slowly through a rectangular grid of wide streets and boulevards lined with palm trees.

The lobby of the Sheraton was like other up-scale hotels Beatriz had seen, in photographs and on a gawking tour of mid-town Manhattan, but this was more spacious and almost entirely marble-clad, with polished brass fittings. Several of the male hotel guests, moving through the lobby in groups of five or six, wore the long white robes that were the standard dress of nearby Saudi Arabia. The only variation was in their headgear: squares of fabric in varying hues and patterns, mostly cool pastels, held in place by thick, tiara-like circles of fiber or twisted cloth, pulled down nearly to the ears. Other guests wore western-style suits and seemed always to be getting into or out of the long, black limousines with tinted windows that pulled up at the lobby entrance. There were no women outside, and only a few in the hotel, mostly airline pilots and flight attendants, all with fashionable head scarves. A pleasant-sounding fountain echoed throughout the lobby.

The desk clerk, wearing a crisp suit and tie, was polite but rather formal.

You will be in the care of our staff until Dr. Ptolemy attends to you. He is apparently a very busy man. The clerk looked at them and raised an eyebrow. It is most unusual.

I’m sorry. He said it was a family matter. He’s coming tomorrow, Beatriz explained.

Yes, that is what I have been given to understand. He handed them each a credit-card-sized piece of plastic that was their room key. Eighteen-twenty. Shall I have someone help with your bags?

That’s okay. I’m okay. Beatriz touched the handle of one of her suitcases possessively. Iris nodded in agreement.

Once settled in, Beatriz gratefully pulled off the headscarf and dropped it on one of the two beds. The thought of wearing it all summer repelled her. She called her parents, who had been on the verge of panic that Dr. Ptolemy wouldn’t be there to meet them, but after she told them about the hotel, that it was only for one night, and that the staff were being very helpful and nice, they calmed down and read off what seemed to be a prepared list of things to be careful about. She sighed inwardly. She wasn’t a child anymore. Perhaps, she said, they would like to do the list up in small type and print it out on a card, like the one the customs man had given them? Her mother did not find this amusing.

Iris claimed the shower first, and Beatriz spread out her meager resources on the bed: Borges’ Labyrinths; her guidebook; Jake Vaziri’s depressingly short list of places to see and things to do; annotated printouts from three websites she had found—one of which was the Uqbar National Museum’s; and a road map. There was basically one main road connecting Uqbar’s three principle cities, all sea-ports, and nothing much in the interior besides mountains, desert, and small towns—dots on the map, though there was no dot for Tlön.

She hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane from Frankfurt and exhaustion quickly overtook her. It was the middle of the day, but she collapsed on the bed after her shower.

This was her dream:

She was in a dense pine forest, hushed by a carpet of fallen brown pine needles, and looking at the reflection of the trees in a small, oval puddle. A breeze rippled the surface of the water, bending the branches into sharp zigzags separated by sky-blue streaks. When it calmed, the surface darkened, and she could see that it was more like a window into a dimly lit scene inside a building. There was a desk, equipped with a computer, placed next to an ornate, iron-work railing overlooking an immense atrium, across which Beatriz could see a great many stories of a library, each one crammed floor to ceiling with bookshelves radiating away from the center like spokes on a bicycle wheel. At the desk sat a white-haired old man, dressed neatly in a cream-colored suit and a dark red bow tie.