The Physiognomy Read Free Page A

knew I would have to check my change after every monetary transaction that passed between us. The hotel itself, with its tattered carpets and fractured chandelier, spelled out a gray, languorous rage.
    â€œAny special requests, your honor?” said Mr. Mantakis.
    â€œAn ice-cold bath at dawn,” I told him. “And I must have complete silence in which to meditate upon my findings.”
    â€œWe hope your stay will be—” the old woman began, but I cut her off with a wave of my hand and demanded to be taken to my rooms. As Mr. Mantakis took my valise and led me toward the stairway, the mayor announced that he would send someone for me at four.
    â€œA gathering to stand as an official welcome for you, sir,” he called after me.
    â€œAs you wish,” I said, and mounted the rickety stairs.
    My lodgings were fairly spacious—two large rooms, one to serve as my sleeping quarters and one as an office with a writing desk, a lab table, and a divan. The floors creaked, the autumn breeze of the northern territory leaked through the poorly caulked windows, and the wallpaper of vertical green stripes and an indefinite species of pink flower gave rise to thoughts of carnival.
    In my bedroom I was startled to find one of the hardened heroes the mayor had told me about. An old man dressed in miner’s overalls stood slightly bent in the corner, supporting a long oval mirror.
    â€œMy brother, Arden,” said Mantakis as he put my valise down next to the bed. “I didn’t have the heart to send him to the city as fuel.”
    As the old man was about to leave, I asked him, “What do you know of this fruit of the Earthly Paradise?”
    â€œArden was there when they found it about ten years ago,” he said in his slow-witted drawl. “It was pure white and looked like a ripe pear you want to sink your teeth into.” As he said this, he showed me his crooked yellow teeth. “Father Garland said it should not be eaten. It would make you immortal, and that flows against the will of God.”
    â€œAnd you subscribe to this twaddle?” I asked.
    â€œSir?” he said, unsure of my question.
    â€œYou believe in it?”
    â€œI believe whatever you believe, your honor,” he said and then backed out of the room.

2
    I studied my own image in the mirror held by the petrified Arden and considered my approach to the case. It was true that the Master had banished me to the territory as a punishment, but that was not an invitation to perform shoddily. If I were to shirk my duties, he would immediately know and have me either executed or sent to a work camp.
    Not every fool and his brother could achieve the status of Physiognomist, First Class in less than fifteen years. Time and again I had conducted hairsplitting physiognomical investigations. Who was it who had discovered the identity of the Latrobian werewolf in a six-year-old girl when that beast had wrought havoc among the towns just beyond the circular wall? Who had fingered Colonel Rasuka as a potential revolutionary and headed off a coup against the Master years before the would-be perpetrator even knew himself what he was capable of? Many, including Drachton Below, had said I was the best, and I wasn’t going to damage that estimation, no matter how trivial the case, no matter how remote the location of the crime.
    Obviously, this was a job for one of those first-year graduates who can’t help wounding himself with his own instruments. The religious ramifications of the affair elicited a distinct aching in my hindquarters. I remembered the time I had pleaded with the Master to do away with all religion. Its practice had died out in the city, replaced by a devotion to Below that seemed born of the people’s desire to participate in his own unique form of omniscience. Out in the territories, though, lifeless icons still held sway. His answer was “Let them have their hogwash.”
    â€œIt is a