blush of anger spreading through my face until I heard how harsh my answer was: “Is my life all a lie? Well, you would know, wouldn’t you, Dad?
If
you are my dad!”
I gave the fake log one last strong blow from the fire poker, then stood and turned. I pointed the poker at him accusingly. “How many universes are there? You
know
, don’t you?”
6. Rare Books
The same day Professor Dreadful was dragged away in a straitjacket, raving, I discovered what he had been working on.
You see, I did not want to go home and face the looks on the faces of Dobrin and Father. Looks of total not-surprise, looks that said
I told you so
louder than words. And I could not stay at the Museum; they had a cordon around it.
It was a simple choice. Either he was crazy, and there was no way to translate random marks left by a random energy discharge during a random accident because there was nothing to translate, just a crazed mind seeing patterns in chaos, like a child who keeps seeing his mother’s face in the fluffy clouds. Or he was crazy, but right, and had read them.
I decided on option two. Because that meant I did not need to go home right away and face Dobrin’s carefully sarcastic unshocked looks.
So your Professor who collects animals that don’t exist actually was a babbling lunatic after all, not just a guy who acted like one?
What angle had the Professor been working on? What had he seen that the rest of the world had not?
So I went to the library. I looked up his work, read his papers and articles.
Hours went by, but it was not hard work, like weeding ruins, just brainwork, and if bow-hunting teaches anything, it teaches patience.
I struck gold when I found a recent issue of
SIGN AND SEMIOTICS
journal, which published peer-reviewed papers on comparative symbology. Tucked in between an article on Merovingian Grail-Kings and an article on the links between Egyptian esoteric practices and the Cathars of Andalusia, was a paper by my own Professor Achitophel Dreadful.
It was an article on semantic drift between Akkadian Cuneiform and a hypothetical proto-Sumerian logogram system, deduced from an application of Grimm’s Law. The article had extensive footnotes, as you’d expect, and some of the references were to books right here in this very library—where, come to think of it, the Professor was doing most of his research last year.
I had to get the librarian to unlock the case in the rare books room tucked into a corner of the top floor.
“You have to sign in,” she said sharply, pointing with her beaklike nose toward the visitor’s log.
I was looking for one book in particular from the Professor’s footnotes. And I found it, tucked between the sole surviving volume, number XI, of the lost
First Encyclopædia of Tlön
compiled by the Orbis Tertius Society, and a rare unabridged edition of
A Study of the Chaldaean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language (with observations on the early tin trade in West Cornwall)
by W.S.S. Holmes. The book I sought had the catchy title of
Paleogenetic Assessments of Epipaleolithic Migration and Population Replacement in Erythraean Coastal Areas
by the Eritrean Research Project Team.
The librarian had to sit in the rare books room with me, since I was underage, or maybe she just did not trust my sloping cranium with its supraorbital brow ridge. She watched me with a cold and scowling eye while I read, no doubt fretting that, had she not been there, I would have blown my nose on the antique pages. I even had to wear white plastic gloves while handling the book. I don’t know if everyone who steps into the rare books room has to wear them, or only teenagers with oily skin.
I thought it would be dull as ditchwater. Instead, I kept having that dizzying sensation Dorothy must have felt when she stepped out of her monochrome Kansas house into the Technicolor Munchkinland. Twice I flipped back to the front matter to assure myself that this was a real, copyrighted book published by
If
you are my dad!”
I gave the fake log one last strong blow from the fire poker, then stood and turned. I pointed the poker at him accusingly. “How many universes are there? You
know
, don’t you?”
6. Rare Books
The same day Professor Dreadful was dragged away in a straitjacket, raving, I discovered what he had been working on.
You see, I did not want to go home and face the looks on the faces of Dobrin and Father. Looks of total not-surprise, looks that said
I told you so
louder than words. And I could not stay at the Museum; they had a cordon around it.
It was a simple choice. Either he was crazy, and there was no way to translate random marks left by a random energy discharge during a random accident because there was nothing to translate, just a crazed mind seeing patterns in chaos, like a child who keeps seeing his mother’s face in the fluffy clouds. Or he was crazy, but right, and had read them.
I decided on option two. Because that meant I did not need to go home right away and face Dobrin’s carefully sarcastic unshocked looks.
So your Professor who collects animals that don’t exist actually was a babbling lunatic after all, not just a guy who acted like one?
What angle had the Professor been working on? What had he seen that the rest of the world had not?
So I went to the library. I looked up his work, read his papers and articles.
Hours went by, but it was not hard work, like weeding ruins, just brainwork, and if bow-hunting teaches anything, it teaches patience.
I struck gold when I found a recent issue of
SIGN AND SEMIOTICS
journal, which published peer-reviewed papers on comparative symbology. Tucked in between an article on Merovingian Grail-Kings and an article on the links between Egyptian esoteric practices and the Cathars of Andalusia, was a paper by my own Professor Achitophel Dreadful.
It was an article on semantic drift between Akkadian Cuneiform and a hypothetical proto-Sumerian logogram system, deduced from an application of Grimm’s Law. The article had extensive footnotes, as you’d expect, and some of the references were to books right here in this very library—where, come to think of it, the Professor was doing most of his research last year.
I had to get the librarian to unlock the case in the rare books room tucked into a corner of the top floor.
“You have to sign in,” she said sharply, pointing with her beaklike nose toward the visitor’s log.
I was looking for one book in particular from the Professor’s footnotes. And I found it, tucked between the sole surviving volume, number XI, of the lost
First Encyclopædia of Tlön
compiled by the Orbis Tertius Society, and a rare unabridged edition of
A Study of the Chaldaean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language (with observations on the early tin trade in West Cornwall)
by W.S.S. Holmes. The book I sought had the catchy title of
Paleogenetic Assessments of Epipaleolithic Migration and Population Replacement in Erythraean Coastal Areas
by the Eritrean Research Project Team.
The librarian had to sit in the rare books room with me, since I was underage, or maybe she just did not trust my sloping cranium with its supraorbital brow ridge. She watched me with a cold and scowling eye while I read, no doubt fretting that, had she not been there, I would have blown my nose on the antique pages. I even had to wear white plastic gloves while handling the book. I don’t know if everyone who steps into the rare books room has to wear them, or only teenagers with oily skin.
I thought it would be dull as ditchwater. Instead, I kept having that dizzying sensation Dorothy must have felt when she stepped out of her monochrome Kansas house into the Technicolor Munchkinland. Twice I flipped back to the front matter to assure myself that this was a real, copyrighted book published by
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