A Princess of The Linear Jungle Read Free Page A

typed cards on the velvet….
    By ten AM she had a sense that if she continued at the same pace, skipping lunch, she would be able to meet her deadline. She plunged ahead, insensible now to her surroundings. Throy’s disturbing drawings began to enmesh her in some alternate, not entirely comfortable world….
    After some nebulous interval, Merritt became aware that she was not alone in the room. Her ears acknowledged the sounds of lively patrons beyond the doors of this closed gallery. She looked up to confront her superior, Edgar Chambless.
    Having forgotten more polypolisological arcana than Merritt might ever hope to learn, the elderly Chambless had acquired a legendary status even so far away as Jermyn Rogers College in Stagwitz. Weedy as a mullein in stature and shabbily dressed in a wool suit, despite summer’s swelter, he owned the face of a lugubrious longshoreman, rather than that of any effete scholar.
    “Miss Abraham. I understood this exhibit was to be finalized by end of day yesterday, and that today you would be helping install the Squillacote scrimshaws.”
    Merritt gulped. “Ah, yes, sir, that was the plan. But you see, I got busy studying this fascinating material, and—”
    Merritt faltered to a stop. Chambless stared at her through the thick lenses of his rimless eyeglasses as if inspecting a shipment of obscene fetiches from Lesser Hutsong. Finally he said, “Miss Abraham, please accompany me back to my office.”
    “But the exhibit—”
    “It will be ready in time. Now, come.”
    He turned and walked away without waiting for Merritt’s acquiescence.
    Chambless’s office featured tottering piles of books and file folders, manuscripts and photographs, maps and charts, all topped with sculptures, paintings, handicrafts and jewelry—the exotic detritus of a thousand expeditions and professorial trades-by-mail up and down the length of the Linear City. The odor in the windowless chamber deep inside the NikThek spoke of strange spices and perfumes, the differently scented dust of far-off stretches of Broadway, realms beyond easy travel or effortless sympathetic ken.
    Chambless lifted a huge tangled heap of smelly hempen fishnet off a chair. “Recognize the knotting technique here, Miss Abraham?”
    Merritt studied the netting. “Fantino-style?”
    “Ah, an excellent eye. Have a seat, please.”
    Merritt sat. The chair cushion felt damp, but perhaps that was only her imagination.
    Chambless took up position behind his desk. Only his superior seated height allowed for eye-contact above the clutter. The administrator regarded Merritt for a time over steepled fingers, then spoke.
    “Miss Abraham, you are bright. Very bright. Why are you not enrolled in Swazeycape’s polypolisological graduate program, instead of toiling among the arrowheads and fertility talismans here, if I may employ that handy synecdoche?”
    Merritt’s face reddened, although she had no real reason for shame. “It’s money, Professor Chambless. Just money. I can’t afford the tuition. It took all my scraping and striving just to pay for my studies at Jermyn Rogers. That’s why I needed five years to finish. I was a waitress the whole time. And even then I had to take out several loans. I owe too much already to go further into debt. I never even applied here, though I’m sure my grades….”
    Merritt tailed off, wary of sounding boastful.
    “Our University offers no relevant grants or stipends?”
    “None that I qualified for. Believe me, I checked. And Swazeycapeis very expensive, as you well know.”
    “And so you took your position here at Nikolai Milyutin. Why is that?”
    “Well, I knew that as a University employee, I’d get to audit courses for free. That won’t lead to a degree, I know, but I’ll still learn a lot. When the semester starts next month, I intend to sit in on several sessions outside of working hours, including Professor Scoria’s of course.”
    “I note that your immediate answer to my last