A person of Neshiyah
Gilead Meron, librarian
Librarian
Gilead Meron
Librarian, about 83 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Gilead Meron, at seventy-five, still moves through the stacks like a man shelving a grudge, quick and precise, though his hands tremble slightly when he re-alphabetizes fiction. He is happiest alone, but the river draws him most evenings, where he sits on a damp stone and watches the fog line, half-muttering about distances that never agree. Curious to a fault, he believes most things he is told—the fog is the edge of the world, the fields need working—but a lie, once sniffed, sets his temper flaring, as it did with Hadas at the mill over nothing much. The town sees him as a crank with good handwriting, a man who keeps the records straight but trusts them too little. He wants the phone to tell one truth, once, before he dies.
Liesl's stopwatch is reliable, but I won't bend the council's rule. A pole test from the well might separate the mist's effect from the well's.
Liesl's right that phones could be off, but I've seen the rangefinder split too many times to call it a lie.
Temperament
Curious to a fault; quick to believe what they are told; hot-tempered; happiest alone; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
People say Gilead Meron has started asking questions about the fog that the Council would rather not hear.
What the record shows
- day 50 Gilead Meron went back to the east edge with a camera and it happened again.
- day 50 Gilead Meron the librarian was handed a seed a bird carried out of the fog, from no plant in the town's reference list.
- day 44 Liesl asks Gilead to let her test the splash delay from inside the fog at the south edge; Gilead refuses to break the rules but suggests a compromise test with a long pole from the well's mouth, and they end up agreeing to try that instead.
- day 42 Liesl and Gilead meet in the fields on an ordinary day, compare notes on the babies' fog words and the rangefinder reading, and agree to run a timing test at the well with a mechanical stopwatch to check if the phone is lying.
- day 38 Gilead Meron the librarian measured the distance from the north survey post to the fog with a rangefinder and got two different answers, 212 meters going out and 196 coming back.
- day 18 Gilead and Hadas came to blows at the mill over nothing much.