READ THIS FIRST – 12

Yellow Hat is here. I didn’t hear him arrive but I just looked up and there he is, standing under the observatory dome. Smiling. He hasn’t said anything, only nodded when I asked for enough time to write this page.

I didn’t finish the filing. Sorry. And I didn’t wash up the dishes this morning. There was more I wanted to tell you, about Sanna, and the place in Koh Phangan where they still have pineapples, and how the seed catalogue works, and what to do when Rohini has toothache.

I thought I was ready. I’m not ready at all. I’m scared. I love this place. I don’t want to leave it. I don’t want to leave Rohini. You have to look after them both, Theseus. Please. Please love them both for me.

I wish I could have met you.

READ THIS FIRST – 11

I’ve left the front door open so Rohini can get in and out. He hasn’t had much chance to hunt recently, what with all the running, and feeding him from bartered stuff gets expensive. That cat eats a lot, given the chance. He’s not too keen on rat, but horse or rabbit are good treats if you can get them. I think there’s quite good hunting round here so hopefully he’ll be fine until you come. The door opens into a cave, so the snow doesn’t come in, and most other animals will back off when they smell Rohini.

I wonder if he’ll be lonely without me. Maybe he’s already lonely. Sometimes I hear him roaring outside, a way off. There’s never an answer. Perhaps there’s no other tigers left in the world. Lots of things died in the Cold. There’s copies of them downstairs in the DNA bank, but what good is that? Even if the tech to bring them back still existed, and the fuel to make it work, the world is too broken for them to survive in. The war didn’t just take lives. It took the way of life.

The Collection is a memorial for everything that died. Including us.

You’d think, after the war, people would try harder to get along. But everywhere I’ve been, there’s little fights and big fights and murder for no reason than because someone’s different. Like we’re not all dying slow anyway. Like fighting will fix anything. The world’s ash and ice, and we’ve learned nothing. Worse than nothing. It’s too easy to forget, these days.

The Collection has a real physical place, by the way. It doesn’t just live in a weird pocket dimension, like some of the books on Class 8 talk about. It’s inside a mountain in the Himalayas. We built Leibowitz’s cairn on top, near the observatory window. It seemed right to bury him next to the thing he made. I go and sit there sometimes. He deserves to be remembered for what he did, even if it’s only by one person.

You’ll have to go back occasionally to wipe the snow off the dome. If you pull the handle of the antikythera so it’s pointing straight out from the wall, then turn so it’s facing down and push it flat again, the door will go there. You know what it looks like from the outside. That’s where you came in.

READ THIS FIRST -10

In case you’re wondering, there’s no way to turn the lamps off. They’re powered by thermal coils, and my best guess is they tap into the same heat source as the hot water (wherever that is). It never bothered me – there’s so much dark outside and it’s not like they’re especially bright – but Sanna used to bury her head right under the pillow to get to sleep.

They don’t break often but very occasionally the metal wire will warp or snap. There’s a coil in the workshop which should be enough for two lamps, but after that you’ll need to barter for more. There’s plenty of that kind of thing in the European settlements still. When you’ve got it, lift the lamp cover off – it comes easy, it’s not secured to anything – and use the tiny screwdriver to release the old wire from the two clamps. Change it out for the new stuff, and replace the cover. Easy. The wire will heat up pretty quick though, so you can’t hang mess around.

The left-hand lamp in the bathroom needs fixing. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.

When you go into markets to barter, you need to not be too clean. It’s an easy thing to forget. There’s enough hot water for a shower every day, more than one if you want. But being clean’s a sure way to mark you out as different. Privileged. At best, they’ll make you pay way over the odds. At worst, they’ll kill you. You know being clean’s reason enough in some places.

Also, don’t go alone if you can help it. There’s not many places are friendly to strangers. The last few times, when Sanna wouldn’t leave The Collection, I went with Rohini. He doesn’t like it, all the people and the noise, but he’ll come if you take a treat with you. Rabbit’s a favourite, and not too rare.

Sanna saw Yellow Hat at the market. It’s why she wouldn’t go out. Every market, anywhere we went, she said she saw him. Just out of the corner of her eye or disappearing round a corner. I never caught a glimpse but she swore he was always watching. I didn’t push, figured it was just a reaction to Mum going and she’d get over it eventually. But it got worse. After a couple of months she started seeing him inside The Collection. I knew that wasn’t true – Rohini would have growled – but she refused to leave the workshop, where her bed was. Is. Still is.

I came back from helping design a waste drainage system for a small settlement, and heard her screaming. I thought she’d had an accident, broken a bone or burned herself. Broken bones don’t necessarily mean death in The Collection but shock can still kill you. I dropped everything and ran to the workshop. She was curled up on her bed, pushed right up into the corner, with both hands pulling at her hair. I shouted at her, slapped her, wrapped myself around her – nothing worked. In the end I used some of the morphine from the medicine cupboard. It’s valuable but I didn’t know what else to do. Finally she went limp. I tucked her up and brought my own blankets to sleep on the floor next to her. I didn’t want her waking up alone.

It took me ages to drift off, and I felt like I’d only been out for a few hours before Rohini woke me up by headbutting my stomach. Sanna’s bed was empty. She didn’t answer when I called. Rohini was whining by the door, shifting from foot to foot. I followed him to the lift and he took me down to the basement. When he stands on his back legs he’s tall enough to punch the buttons with his nose.

She was in the bathroom. The noose had broken the lamp. The metal in it was as cold as her.

I couldn’t bear to fix it. I’m sorry.

Sanna, I’m sorry.

READ THIS FIRST – 9

There’s still places where the ground is sick from the war. If you stop at one of those, Rohini will snarl at the door before it’s even opened. That’s how you know about the sickness. There’s a big yellow suit in a cupboard in the bathroom which lets you go out safely. It’s worth it because there’s usually something to save from those places. No one else scavenges there. Always make sure there’s no holes in the suit before you go out, otherwise you’ll get sick too. When you come back, shower in it really thoroughly, take it off and scrub it, and then shower again. There’s a big safe on Class 0 to put scavenged things from those places – only open it when you’re wearing the suit. They have to be kept locked up because they’ll make you sick, but Mum said that after years and years the sickness will fade. The safe number is 29139.

The briefcase was in there for a time, after Dad opened it.

We went back. Not deliberately, it just happened that one turn of the handle took us to the shepherd’s hut by the Dead Sea again. Mum said it was a sign. She told Sanna and me to stay inside, no matter what. She promised she’d be back in a couple of hours. Then she took the briefcase and left.

It got dark and she still hadn’t come back. Sanna started to cry, saying she’d abandoned us, but I knew that wasn’t true. She’d gone to barter because she loved us. We loved her, so we went after.

Yellow Hat’s settlement was half an hour’s walk, up a valley that must have had a river in it once. We came to fields first, full of crops that stood tall and weren’t covered in snow. Shapes were moving through them, slow and silent. I put my hand over Sanna’s mouth and we crouched at the edge, watching. It took me quite a long time to realise that they were people. I opened my mouth to ask who farms at night, but then I remembered Dad saying they were dead, and I shut it again. We snuck around the edge and crept to where the buildings were. One of them – the biggest – had lamps still burning and the door open. The smell of hot food came from a window. It smelled just like Mum’s Anything Curry. Sanna sniffed, then stood up and looked through the window. She gave a little cry and called out to Mum. I grabbed her by the wrist but there were already shadows moving towards the door.

Mum came out into the street. She looked at us and her face didn’t change. I knew then what Dad had meant about the people here going away into their heads. Sanna cried and tried to go to her, but I held her still. Then Yellow Hat appeared in the door. He was holding the briefcase in one hand and a steaming bowl of Anything Curry in the other. He smiled at Sanna, and his teeth were too white.

I didn’t let her stop running until we were back. I think she hated me for leaving Mum there. But there wasn’t anything to bring home.

READ THIS FIRST – 8

Dad’s boots are under the coat rack. You can have them, if you like. There’s a good few years of wear left in them, if you repair the inner seam on the left one. You’ll get good at repairing things here, if you aren’t already. Like I said before, books are fragile things, especially when they’re old. Spines crack, stitching comes loose, and no one else is going to fix it.

All the stuff is in the workshop on Class 0. First you’ll need to remove the damaged cover with a sharp blade. Use the piece of straight wood to make sure all the pages are lined up together, if they’re loose, then clamp them tight. You might need to sew some of them back together – there’s a sewing kit in the box. Make the holes first with the punch pliers. Don’t pull the thread too tight or you’ll tear the pages when you try to open the book. Cut the new cover out of leather, using the old one to get the size right. Put glue up the spine, wrap it round the pages and clamp it all together for a day.

Sanna was really good at fixing books. She had clever fingers. That’s what Dad used to say. “You’ve got clever fingers, baby,” and she’d light up with pride. She was Dad’s daughter – they had the same sensitivity, the same love of beauty and need for praise. Mum and me were the practical ones. Well, someone has to be. The Collection needs both kinds of people. Maybe that’s why we were chosen in the first place.

The man who was here before us was one of the founders. He was very sick, or maybe he had been sick before the war, I’m not sure. He knew there weren’t medicines any more to make it better, so he started searching for someone to take care of The Collection when he was gone. He looked for nearly a year before he found us. Mum and Dad were part of a group living in some caves in Greece. There wasn’t enough food to go around – Dad was cutting his rations so Sanna and me could eat. She was barely walking then, but I could help carry water and watch the fires.

I don’t remember the stranger arriving. First he wasn’t next to my fire, and then he was. He had a nice smile so I wasn’t afraid. He started talking to me, I don’t remember what about, and Dad came running over to pull me away. The stranger held his hands wide, but he started coughing and folded in half. There was blood on his lips when he straightened up again. I remember that very clearly. It gleamed in the firelight.

He and Dad talked for a long time. Mum came back from fishing with Sanna, and they all talked for even longer. Then Mum and Dad both cried a bit, and I helped Mum put everything we owned in a blanket. Dad was too weak to carry it, so Mum put it on her back and I took Sanna. We followed the stranger to the back of the cave, to a door I’d never seen there before. And after that we were warm, and fed, and safe.

He died a few months later. We wrapped him in our old blanket and buried him on top of a mountain, like he wanted. Leibowitz, he was called. I don’t have many memories of him, beyond a soft voice and a kind hand. We had to be careful when we touched him. His skin was so pale and thin, and bruised so easily. Towards the end he could hardly breathe for coughing. If he hadn’t had The Collection, he would have died much earlier.

Sensitive people don’t do well in the Cold.