By mutual reference to the Manual, she managed to convey to him that a new edition would be out soon, and that it would be edited down to five minutes reading time. Did he want to sign up for a copy?
Walther gave her a stricken look, and silently shook his head.
Puzzled, she led him to the other classics on his list. Each was a new blow. "Great Expectations" was cut to twenty pages, all of Thoreau to one thin pamphlet, Henry James to a pocket-size digest of less than ten pages; "Leaves of Grass" to a few lines of verse.
Walther's sense of loss became more than personal. He saw uncounted generations of boys who would never know Whitman, who might never have time for the open road in the Spring, the sweet springtime of life. The road and the poem, they were part of each other. Without one, the other could not live.
The fire of Walther's dream flamed up fiercely within him. There was yet time for beauty in Andromeda. Time for quiet and thinking and true leisure. Somehow, he must rescue the treasures of the ages from the tomb of Earth and let them live again, three-quarters of a million light years away.
He beckoned to the old librarian, and laboriously communicated his question:
"The originals of these classics—where are they?"
She frowned in bewilderment. He pointed to the proper words again, and gestured with his hands to indicate a large book.
A smile of understanding replaced her frown. She consulted a larger edition of his own Manual, and wrote:
Digester's Vaults—lower six levels.