Because we know they exist, and they may yet be found, replied the girl. For example, we find new scraps of Sappho’s poems now and then. When this happens, we move them up to the library—from the darkness into the light.

“And the rooms that are simply empty,” guessed Lenora, “that’s the knowledge we’ve lost and don’t even know it.”

Yes, said the girl. Like my library, and even my town, which was destroyed in a tsunami decades after I died. Nothing was ever written down about any of it, and so it’s all forever lost. Forever forgotten. Just like me.

“We should write more things down,” said Lenora quietly.

The girl did not reply. There was no need.

We’re here, she said a moment later.

Lenora did not need to be told what to do next. Jutting out from the wall was a tube the size of her arm, flared at one end. She’d seen these before at playgrounds—listening tubes that let you hear what someone rather far away is saying at the other end. Trembling without quite knowing why, Lenora put her ear to the tube.

Voices. A man was talking, somewhere in a room far away, but the listening tube brought his words to Lenora as though she were beside him.

It was also especially easy to understand the man, because he had an extremely loud, booming voice. “To be honest,” he was saying, “you’ve got a great, great library here. The biggest, most beautiful library. And no one is saying you haven’t done a fantastic job with the place. I mean, they are saying that, but you know, that’s so, so unfair.”

A woman’s voice then spoke up; Lenora recognized it immediately as Malachi’s. But she could not tell what the Chief Answerer was saying, because the loud man kept talking as though Malachi hadn’t said a word.

“And I think you’ll be just as excited as everyone else about the new leadership on the Board, and the exciting changes we’ve got coming, with a new vision for the library’s mission—”

Malachi did not sound excited from what Lenora could hear. She was still trying to interject, but the man simply wouldn’t stop talking.

“—for example, the question of profitability. The library simply isn’t making money.”

And here the man paused for breath long enough for Malachi to say, “The value of a library cannot be counted in money.”

The man continued as though Malachi had not spoken. “And the new leadership thinks we could do better by running it more like a business. Your role will continue to be very important—extremely important of course, almost no one would say otherwise. There will be a lot to do, getting rid of the less profitable books and moving in new ones, and loyal team players like yourself will be critical to the new process—”