With a quiet touch derived from caution and reverence, she gentle pried the doors apart, and nearly gagged on as the stale air contained within rushed out.
The rush of stale air didn't last long, thanks to her companion. She nodded her thanks once before stepping into the chamber.
Yomiko Readman frowned as she smelled the air. Water had gotten in to the old library, which meant many of the books they were looking for was probably ruined.
Normally, one wouldn't think books a treasure worth looking for, but with people still trying to recover the civilization long since lost, books could be worth a small fortune, depending upon their contents and condition. Texts on history or sciences, for example, were highly sought after, but even a good fantasy novel or a collection of short stories could cover their living costs for a while.
With most libraries destroyed, any form of knowledge could be surprisingly valuable. What few libraries survived were often in bad condition and located far from anything resembling civilization, and many had been buried or overgrown as the climates changed.
"Think you can give us some light, Fam?" she asked, trying to assess just how much damage had been done. She couldn't hear the sound of water running, so it was possible some of the books could be salvaged.
The mutant nodded as she focused on creating light. She help up her hand and generated light in her palm, illuminating the chamber.
Fam was a very cute mutant with a lot of potential under the right circumstances. Her thick blond tail and pointed ears clearly marked her as a mutant, but her head-to-toe blond fur was nearly invisible against her tanned skin. And she had a power that sounded truly impressive - the ability to transform matter and energy.
In practice however, Fam's power fell short of expectations, since she couldn't create, move, or control either. That meant that if she created a fire it would burn her just as quickly as it would burn anything else it touched; she'd learned that the first time she tried creating fire in her hand. And since it took a lot of energy to 'create' matter, she couldn't create anything heavier than an ounce or so. Nor could she shape matter in any meaningful way, so if she created an ounce of steel it was usually either a shapeless glob or an small orb.
Her power was also limited to arm's length, and by what matter and energy she could gather from that scope. Creating a light or starting a fire was easy enough, but if she wasn't too careful she'd suffocate herself by removing most of the breathable air within arms length.
She had learned to use her gift offensively, which made it dangerous to get too close to her. Few who survived the experience made that mistake again, though there were more survivors than there would have been if Fam could bring herself to use her powers on vital organs instead of body fat or muscle.
Still, the girl who was always eager to make friends had killed her share of attackers.
As Fam's light filled the chamber, a mass moved inside the chamber. Fam tensed, and pulled out her pistol ready to fire at a moments notice. The caliber of the gun was too small to do much damage, but she could put a static charge on the bullet as it left the chamber to add some more punch to the weapon.
Yomiko also wasted little time, using her own power to shape some of the paper she carried on her into a blade. She, like Fam, had once been fair more hesitant to kill, but life as a book collector quickly weaned one of those habits. It was kill or be killed, and Yomiko found she had few problems choosing to live.
When nothing attacked after a few moments, Yomiko started to scan the library, though neither relaxed. They'd both lost a partner and friend by not being cautious enough earlier in their career, and were not eager to repeat the experience. There were a few puddles of standing water on the floor of the room, all stagnant and likely foul. From the looks of it, most of the books near the ground could be written off as total losses.
Yomiko wept a bit for that. She was one of the best in this business, and that was because she was so well read herself. A true bibliophile at heart, she'd read every book she'd recovered so far from cover to back, and because of that she knew which books to look for, which books were going to be worth real money, and which were likely to wind up kindling. Most other had to judge the books by their covers.
She led Fam into the library. The books higher than waist high looked to be salvageable, though certainly not in the best of conditions. One or two good ones would cover the cost of the trip here, and once she picked those two books out they could begin seriously searching for the rarer books - another hard-learned lesson: cover the basic expenses first and then look for the stuff that could set one up for life, just in case you didn't have as much time as you wanted, and Yomiko found she never had enough time.
Sounds from outside the library drew the pair's attention, and Fam dimmed her light as they turned back toward the doorway, weapons ready.
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(Posted Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:13)
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