The Last Dragon Chronicles: Fire World: Fire World Read Online Free PDF

The librarium must haveheard ‘broom’ instead of ‘bathroom’. So
    he closed his eyes and carefully refined his thoughts, picturing a tub and a cistern and a sink. Within twenty seconds, he was there.
    He applied the same tech:nique to ‘wardrobe’ and burst through a door into acloset full of shirts and sweaters (making Runcey wince). But he was learningquickly, and by the time he’d strolled into Mr Henry’s study, wearing blue denim

    jeans, kicker boots like Rosa’s and a plain khaki combat jacket over a smart maroon T-shirt, he’d also found a bedroom (a hammock slung between two bookshelves) and a room with kitchen implements hooked onto a wall. He was, he thought, beginning to get the hang of it.
    “Wow,” said Rosa, sitting cross-legged on a large cushion. “Look at you. All ready for action or what?”
    David had been quietly wondering about this, his course of action, his grand adventure. He ignored Rosa’s jibes and spoke up boldly. “Mr Henry, I really like the librarium. But what am I actually doing here? When does my adventure begin?”
    Mr Henry thought about the question carefully. He poked around in the drawers

    of a desk and found several blunt-nosed pens of different colours. He took them to a flipchart and exposed a large sheet of plain white paper.
    David’s mouth fell open in surprise. Was the old man actually going to   write   something? In these days of :coms, no one ever did that.
    But Mr Henry, as Rosa had rightly said, liked words. Without further ado he inscribed one in bright red capitals on the lower part of the paper: ORDER.
    “Order?” queried David.
    Mr Henry circled it (twice). “Essential in a librarium, boy.”
    “I already put the books in order,” Rosa piped.
    “Hmm,” said Mr Henry. “But it’s time to move onto another level, child. We’re

double-handed now. Have to make use of the new pair of hands.” He drew a curved arrow away from ‘order’ and wrote a new word, in blue this time: GENRE. “Who knows what that means?”
    Rosa’s hand shot up like a daisy stalk. “It means a type of something.”
    “Quite,” said Mr Henry. “Imagine the greater   order we would have if we putthe books together not just by author but bytype.”
    Rosa’s big brown eyes almost poppedfrom her head.
    “Won’t that take a long time?” asked David.
    “Oh yes,” said Mr Henry. “A very long time.”
    “But won’t we get… erm, bored?” David said. Boredom was a concept so

    alien on Co:pern:ica that he’d struggled
    for a second or two to find the word.
    But Mr Henry understood the conceptwell. “Not if you both do this,” he said. And he drew another line to another
    circled word.
    “Read?” said David.
    Mr Henry smiled. “Read the books, David. Read them as you go.”
    “All of them?” asked Rosa. She didn’tseem fazed.
    “Any that appeal to you,” Mr Henry
    said.
    “But won’t that take even   longer ?”
    asked David.
    Mr Henry smiled again and completed the triangle on his chart. “Think of the worlds you will enter, David. Think of the knowledge you will gain, the enjoyment to

    be had. This is your adventure – to soak up the librarium and see what you become.”
    “Is this what my father wants of me?”
    Mr Henry lifted his chin and stared at the boy for a long, long moment. “This is what the   librarium   wants of you,” he said.
    “You may begin.”

    8

    Two days after leaving his son at the Bushley  librarium,   Harlan  Merrimanreceived a high-priority e:com to hisoffice at the Ragnar Institute for Realismin Phys:ics. The sender was Thorren Strømberg. The message was short:

    Harlan  sent  back  a   message   ofacknowledgement, before copying all thefiles to an encrypted micro:pen. Then,

    dimming the office lights, he sat back in his chair and ran the films again.
    He was on his second playthrough of the view from camera two when a voice
    behind him said,