(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

Spring in Massachusetts can be a time of chaotic weather for those who have lived long in New England's climes, but there are worse days by far than today. The air is buzzing with the work of bees, and birds are winging lazily overhead. A handful of scattered trees dot the grassy, well-kept landscape in all directions, but buildings rise taller than the majority of the trees in the distance.

Somewhere, a not-very-well-tuned carillon is ringing.

Comments

[gone_byebye]

"There's plenty of sugar on hand," Ray says. "There's also rum, although technically I'm not supposed to have it. Mostly I keep it on hand to offer some of the twitchier professors when they come in, but you're welcome to add some of it to your tea too."

He settles back in his chair and slides one hand under his glasses. "The majority of the books in the Orne Library, which is this building you and I are sitting in right now, are perfectly harmless volumes of history, science, and philosophy," he says. "Those are nothing to do with me. I mean, yeah, I do a lot of the cataloguing and I usually get the preservationist assignments, but other than that? Not my bailiwick at all. The books they hired me to look after, now, that's another story. Some of the books in this library are too valuable in their own right to get rid of, but much too dangerous to allow the reading public to glance at so much as a page of."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Ooo, rum." Suzi adds both to her tea, and turns her attention to Ray, head tilting. "Um. So they're books about the scary things outside the world? The ones in that man's head?"

[gone_byebye]

"Exactly," says Ray, nodding. "Them and the people who actively cultivate such things- cultists, worshippers, and general followers of that kind of monstrosity. Some of those books have spells and rituals in them that act almost like sonic keys to open up the passageways between this world, this dimension, and the realms outside all the known planes where the Great Old Ones wait to return and reclaim the world they held millions of years before the ancestors of man even existed."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"But you're not going to destroy them." she's just checking! She'd be perfectly willing to have a Dreadfully Unfortunate Accident if he wanted!

[gone_byebye]

"Destroying them would be an extraordinarily bad idea," Ray says. "They're insanely dangerous and run a chance of exposing the reader to ideas his or her mind isn't capable of handling without going mad- but they're also the only books of any kind to which we have access that contain even the slightest bit of information on how to repel the Great Old Ones or lock them out of reality. Otherwise the whole room would be torched in a heartbeat."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Suzi says, cringing rather a lot, "Oh. Um. I'll just...make new bindings for these, then?"

[gone_byebye]

"Probably for the best," Ray says. "I do a lot of that when I'm not cataloguing and classifying the books in the Restricted Section. It's safer that way. When I'm not doing either of the two I"m usually working on the machine, but I mostly do the design work here and the building at home. I'm currently renting a room in a boarding house on Pickman Street. You're welcome to stay there if you want, but my landlady has some fairly old-fashioned views on men and women even for baselines, so I'm going to have to introduce you as my sister on a temporary visit if we do that."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"If you don't take me in, Ray, where will I stay?" Suzi says, eyes wide, "I don't have any money, and I'm...here I'm a freak? I'm afraid." She's in a world where BOOKS can drive you MAD.

[gone_byebye]

"I was gonna say the alternative is that one or both of us bunk down here until I've got the machine done," Ray says mildly. "It's not like people haven't seen me sleeping here dozens of times before. I'd just get yelled at for failure to be properly hospitable, but around here they all think I'm a little bit cracked anyway."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"I'm not good at being alone." Suzi says, very firmly, "I'm very not good at being alone. Symbiont, remember?"

[gone_byebye]

"That's what I figured," says Ray. "I'll do the talking when we get back to the boarding house. Not that I'm particularly good at lying, but I can at least pretend really hard to be Peter Venkman if I need to."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"You're better at it than I am." Suzi promises grimly, "Stick as close to the truth as possible, or I'll be totally incapable of helping. Um. Considering the nature of the situation I don't think Whistler would be upset as Sosectu in Farris if I were to offer you the chance to join our Household. That would mean you are extended family."

[gone_byebye]

"That would make two groupings that've offered me extended clanship," says Ray thoughtfully. "The Knight household, and Farris. I don't see much of Michael or Kitt or Eddie or Bonnie or even Karr these days, but we still consider each other something in the way of extended family- would that be a problem?"

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Considering that Farris pretty much stands for to yourself be true, no." Suzi says, "It doesn't."

[gone_byebye]

"Okay then," says Ray. "If that's what it takes to get you a place to stay without societal issues, I have no problem with it. You're more closely related to me by physical measures than my daughter is, anyway."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"...So are puppies." Suzi points out, "It'll just...well, it means neither of us have to lie. Since you're neither Sime nor Gen there aren't even any duties to go with it. Richard says he's my bodyguard."

Silly werewolf.

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods. "I've been trying to keep the deception to a minimum since I got here, anyway," he says. "I got hired because they needed someone who knew American and European university library cataloguing systems and could read multiple languages, and I qualified. I told them I studied at Columbia University, which is true, but I didn't mention my doctorate because they might try to check up on that and my thesis simply isn't in the Columbia archives yet. They even know I have a sister, but I've never really gone into any kind of detail about her- not to mention that I don't have her picture." He grimaces. "I don't have anyone's picture from home. My wallet's back at Milliways."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Well," Suzi says, "Welcome to the family. I can tell them I'm a householder, and hopefully they'll just think it's slang for a homemaker?" she makes a dismissive gesture of crossing that bridge when we come to it which involves mostly tentacles.

[gone_byebye]

"That should work," Ray says. "We'll see how it goes when we get there. I'm going to be here until at least lunchtime today, and if Dr. Armitage doesn't come back I"m going to have to stay here until the library closes. Is there anything I can get you from the safe part of the library? They really do have some interesting reading material, and the overall tech level here is probably significantly closer to that of your native time than what you might've encountered elsewhere."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"Whatever you think will be most helpful." Suzi says with a firm nod, "I like to read."

[gone_byebye]

"All right," says Ray. "Hey, are you still trying for the citizenship exam? I can get you some of the school's textbooks on the kinds of questions they ask. They're a little old-fashioned, but they're very thorough."

[sime-channel.livejournal.com]

"I am, and yes. I'd like that." Suzi says, brightening, "I really, really want to be a citizen."