by Jack Vance
“Thank you for your advice,” said Wayness. ”Thank you, Nelda.”
“You may start toward the door, so that, if Bully should ask I can assert that I saw you on your way out.”
III.
Giljin Leepe and Nelda were gone. The office was silent. Half an hour passed before Mr. Buffums emerged from his inner chamber. He slid shut the door behind him and carefully locked it, using one of twenty keys dangling from his key ring. Swinging around, he marched across the office to the outer door and was gone. The thud of his footsteps diminished and became part of the silence. The premises were vacant.
Not quite vacant. In the shadows something stirred and shifted. Ten minutes passed and the shape seemed to become restless. Nonetheless it composed itself for a further period of waiting, lest Mr. Buffums, discovering that he had forgotten an important document, should return to repair the lack.
Another fifteen minutes passed. Wayness stole furtively from the shadows. “It is no longer Wayness Tamm the Naturalist," she told herself. "It is now Wayness Tamm the burglar. Still, burgling is better than dancing for Mr. Buffums." She moved to Giljin Leepe’s desk and availed herself of the key with the black tip. She noted the telephone switch panel at the side of the desk and resisted the whimsical impulse to call her Uncle Pirie and announce her knew avocation. Wayness became vexed with herself. “I am starting to be giddy. It is probably nervous hysteria. I must put a stop to it.”
Wayness went to the door at the back of the room. She fitted the key and eased open the door inch by inch by inch. With skin tingling she listened but heard only silence; the collection, no matter how rich, dark and heavy its essence could create no sound.
Wayness slipped into Buffums’ office. Taking the key from the lock, she slid the door shut and went briskly to Mr. Buffums' desk, sparing a single wary glance toward the marble statue.
Wayness seated herself before the communicator. She studied the keyboard a moment; all seemed standard. She indicated ‘CON-A’, then 'OB' to bring an alphabetical directory to the screen. She struck 'N', to elicit another directory. She wrote ‘Naturalists Society' and was provided a tabular listing, which included as categories: 'Correspondence’, 'Parcels, Description’, ‘Parcels, Disposition’ and finally: 'Subsequences’.
Wayness looked into 'Parcels, Description’ and almost at once discovered the notation pertaining to Frons Nisfit and his dealings. The listings were numerous and ended with 'Miscellaneous Papers and Documents’.
A box at the bottom of the listing labeled 'Comments’ contained the remark: 'I have notified Ector van Broude, fellow of the Society in regard to these transactions, which seem notably unwise E. Faldeker'
Wayness brought to the screen the category 'Parcels, Disposition’. The information she sought was contained in a single sentence: ‘This entire lot has been consigned to Gohoon Galleries’.
Wayness stared at the words. So there she had it! 'Gohoon Galleries’!
She jerked her head around: what was that? A tremor, a near-inaudible thud? Wayness sat stiff, head tilted to listen.
Silence.
A sound from outside, thought Wayness. She turned back to the screen and brought up the contents of the 'Subsequences' file.
She discovered two entries. The first was dated twelve years previously: ‘Request to view made on this date by off-world woman identifying herself as Violja Fanfarides. No conflict of interest perceived; request granted’.
The second entry bore the current date and read: ‘Request to view made on this date by off-world young woman, identifying herself as Wayness Tamm, Assistant Secretary of the Naturalist Society. Circumstances suspicious; request denied’.
Wayness stared at the remark, infuriated anew. Again she jerked her head around to listen. This time there was no mistake. Someone was at the door. In a single movement Wayness switched off the screen and dropped to her knees behind the desk.
The door slid open; Mr. Buffums entered the chamber, carrying a large parcel in his arms. Wayness shrank down, making herself as inconspicuous as possible. If he approached, she would surely be discovered.
Incommoded by the parcel, Mr. Buffums had left the door open; Wayness tensed herself, ready to dash for the outer office. But Mr. Buffums had turned in the opposite direction. Peering around the desk Wayness saw that he had carried his parcel to a table in the left part of the chamber and had started to remove the wrappings.
Wayness watched covertly. His back was turned. She rose from behind the desk; on stealthy feet she tiptoed to the door and with vast relief passed through. Noticing Mr. Buffums' key ring dangling from the lock, Wayness gently closed the door and locked it with a double turn so that it could not be opened from within. It seemed a fine prank to pay on Mr. Buffums. She hoped that he would be extremely inconvenienced and very much puzzled.
Wayness went to Giljin Leepe’s desk, where she replaced the key with the black tip. Again she glanced at the telephone switch-panel and studied it for a moment. She pushed two toggles, and turned a switch; Mr. Buffums would now be denied the use of his telephone and would be unable to call anyone for assistance. Wayness laughed aloud. It was, all in all, a good day's work.
Wayness returned to the Marsac Hotel. She immediately telephoned Giljin Leepe, using a blank screen.
“Giljin here”, said a cheerful voice.
“This is an anonymous call. You may be interested to know that by some peculiar accident Mr. Buffums has locked himself into his office, with his keys on the outside of the door. Hence he cannot get out.''
“Yes,” said Giljin Leepe. "I consider that interesting news. I will stop answering my telephone, and I will suggest to Nelda that she do the same; otherwise he will insist that one or another of us come to liberate him!”
“There is more interesting news. By accident his telephone has been connected to the instrument on Nelda‘s desk, and he will be unable to make his wishes known until someone arrives in the morning.”
“What a strange situation!” said Giljin Leepe. “Mr. Buffums will surely be perplexed and probably annoyed, for he is not a stoic person. He suspects no intruder?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Good. In the morning I will carefully put everything to rights, and Mr. Buffums will be more bewildered than ever."
IV.
After her call to Giljin Leepe, Wayness consulted the hotel's directories and learned that 'Gohoon Galleries' was still a viable concern, that its business was auctioneering, and that its offices were located in Sancelade, readily accessible to her inquiries, which she would continue tomorrow.
The time was late afternoon. Wayness sat in a corner of the hotel lobby, flipping through the pages of a fashionable journal. She became restless and, slipping into her long gray cloak, went out to walk along the promenade which bordered the River Pang. A breeze from the west, where the sun was setting, flapped the fabric of her cloak, rustled leaves in the plane trees, and sent a million little waves scurrying across the water.
Wayness walked slowly and watched the sun drop behind the far hills. With the coming of twilight, the breeze dried to a whisper and then was gone; the wavelets on the river disappeared. A few other folk were abroad: elderly couples, lovers who had made rendezvous along the riverbank, occasionally a person as solitary as herself.
Wayness paused to look out across the river, where the pale lavender-gray sky was reflected along the moving surface. She tossed a stone into the water and watched the black whorls dissipate. Her mood was unsettled. "I have had some success, true. I am not altogether ineffectual, which I suppose is good news. But after that — " The name ‘Violja Fanfarides' suddenly intruded. "I wonder…”. Wayness grimaced. “Odd. I feel queasy inside, as if I were coming down sick." She brooded for a few moments, then put the name aside. “I suspect that Mr. Buffums and his curiosa have affected me more than I might have liked. I hope there will be no lasting effect upon my personality."
Wayness went to sit on a bench and watched the afterglow fade f
rom the sky. She remembered her conversation with Pirie Tamm on the subject of sunsets. Surely on Cadwal she had known sunsets as mild and serene as this! Perhaps. That particular shade of twilight gray, after all, was not absolutely unique. Still, one would be a thing of Earth and the other of Cadwal, and so they would be distinct.
The stars began to appear. Wayness looked around the sky, hoping to find the racked 'W' of Cassiopeia, which would guide her toward Perseus, but the foliage of a nearby plane tree blocked her view.
Wayness rose to her feet and started back toward the hotel. She found herself a more practical frame of mind. “I will bathe and change into something frivolous, and then it will be time for dinner, and I am already beginning to feel hungry."
V.
In the morning Wayness dressed once again in her dark brown suit and after breakfast rode the slideway to Gohoon Galleries. In Clarmond, at the western edge of Sancelade. Here a few of Tybalt Pimm's most rigorous tenets had been relaxed. The buildings surrounding Beiderbecke Circus rose to heights of ten or twelve stories. In one of these structures Gohoon Galleries occupied the first three floors.
At the entrance a pair of uniformed guards, one male, the other female, photographed Wayness from three sides, and took note of her name, age, home and local address as stated on her identification papers. Wayness inquired the reason for such precautions.
“It is not arbitrary nuisance-mongering”, she was told. "We display much valuable merchandise for viewing prior to the auctions. Some of these articles are small and easily purloined. Cameras record such acts, and we can instantly identify the offenders and regain our property. The system, while strict, is efficient.”
“Interesting”, said Wayness. “I had not planned to steal anything; now the thought is farther from my mind than ever."
“That is the effect we are trying to achieve!”
"As it happens, I have come only for information. Where must I apply?”
“Information regarding what?”
"A sale conducted here some years ago.”
“Try the Office of Records, on the third floor.”
“Thank you.”
“Wayness ascended to the third floor” crossed a foyer and passed through a wide archway into the Office of Records: a room of considerable extent, divided down the middle by a counter. A dozen persons stood by the counter studying large black-bound tomes or waiting to be served by the single attendant a small crooked man of advanced years, who nevertheless moved with alertness and dexterity: listening to requests, disappearing into a back room to emerge with one or more of the large black tomes. Another attendant, a woman almost as old issued from the back room from time to time pushing a cart, which she loaded with books no longer in use and returned them into the back room.
The white-haired old clerk scuttled back and forth at a run as if he were fearful of losing his job, though it seemed to Wayness that he was doing the work of three men. She went to stand at the counter and was presently approached by the clerk. "Yes, Miss?”
“I am interested in a consignment from Mischap and Doorn, which was subsequently auctioned off.”
“And what would be the date?”
“It would be quite some time ago, perhaps forty years or more."
“What was the nature of the consignment?"
“Material from the Naturalist Society.''
"Where is your authorization?"
Wayness smiled. “I am Assistant Secretary of the Society, and I will write you out one at once, if you like."
The clerk raised his tufted white eyebrows. “I see that I am dealing with an important personage. Your identification will suffice.
Wayness displayed her official papers, which the clerk examined. ”Cadwal, eh? Where is that?”
“It’s out beyond Perseus, at the tip if Mircea’s Wisp”
“Fancy that! It might be a fine thing to travel far and wide! But then, a man can’t be everywhere at once.” Twisting his head sideways, he cocked a bright blue eye at Wayness. “And, do you know, sometimes I find it hard to be anywhere at all.” He scribbled a few words on a slip of paper. “Let me see what I can find.” He scuttled off. Two minutes later he reappeared, carrying a black-bound tome which he placed in front of Wayness. From a pocket inside the front cover he brought a card. "Sign your name, if you please.” He tendered her a stylus. “Briskly now; the day is not long enough for all I must do."
Wayness took the stylus and looked down the names on the card. The first few were unfamiliar. The last name, signed after a date twelve years old, was: ‘Simonetta Clattuc’.
The clerk tapped his fingers on the counter; Wayness signed the card. The clerk took card and stylus and moved to the next person waiting.
With nervous fingers Wayness turned the heavy pages of the volume, and in due course came upon the page labeled:
Code: 777-ARP: Sub-code: M/D;
Naturalist Society/Frons Nisfit, Secretary.
Agent: Mischap and Doorn.
Three parcels:
(1) Art Goods, Drawings, Curios.
(2) Books, texts, references.
(3) Miscellaneous documents. Parcel (1), itemized.
Wayness let her eyes slide down the page, and the next page, on which were catalogued a large number of oddities, art objects and curios, each tagged with the price it had brought at the auction, the name and address of the buyer, and sometimes a coded notation.
On the third page Parcel (2) was similarly summarized. Wayness turned to the fourth page, where the items of parcel (3) would be catalogued, but the goods offered for auction were stated to be the estate of a certain Jahaim Nestor.
Wayness turned the page back, read carefully, searched through pages back and forth. To no avail. The page describing ‘Parcel (3), Miscellaneous Documents’ was gone. Wayness, looking closely, saw where a sharp blade had excised the page at its inner border, after which it had been removed.
The clerk came trotting past; Wayness signaled him to a halt. “Yes?”
“By any chance, are duplicate records available?"
The clerk produced a whinny of sardonic laughter. “Now why would you be wanting reiterations of the very same matter which is here before your eyes?"
Wayness said meekly: “If these records were incorrect, or disordered, then a duplicate set might have them right.”
“And I would be running twice as far and twice as fast, with everybody wanting two books instead of one. And should we find a difference then we have the grandest foofaraw of all, with one claiming one way and another claiming the opposite. Never and by no means! A mistake in the text is like a fly in the soup; the clever man simply works his way around it. No, Miss! Enough is enough! This is an Office of Information, not Dreamy Cuckoo-land."
Wayness looked numbly down at the book. The trail had come to an end and she had nowhere to go. For a space Wayness sat motionless, then she straightened and stood upright. Nothing more could be said; nothing more could be done. She closed the book, left a sol for the comfort of the over-worked clerk, and departed.
Chapter V
I.
"A most discouraging denouement to your quest," said Pirie Tamm. "Still, there is a positive element to the situation.”
Wayness made no comment. Pirie Tamm elucidated. "On this basis. Monette, Violja Fanfarides, Simonetta Clattuc — whatever she calls herself — gained important information, but it has brought her no perceptible benefit, since the grant has not been reregistered. This must be regarded as a good omen.”
“Omen or not, there was only a single trail, and she wiped it out of existence.”
Pirie Tamm took a pear from the bowl at the center of the table and began to peel it. “So now," he mused, “you will go back to Cadwal?”
Wayness burnt her uncle Pirie with a brief smoldering glance. "Of course not you know me better than that!”
Pirie Tamm sighed. “So I do. You are a most determined young lady. But determination by itself is not enough."
"I am not
totally without resources,” said Wayness. “I copied the pages pertaining to Parcels One and Two.”
"Indeed! Why so?"
“At the time I was not thinking clearly, and perhaps my subconscious was in charge. Now it occurs to me that someone who bought from Parcels One or Two might also have bought from Parcel Three.”
"A clever idea, though the odds are not good. It has been a long time and many of the individuals at the sale will be hard to find.”
“They would be my last resort. Five institutions were represented at the sale: a foundation, a university and three museums."
"We can make inquiries in the morning by telephone," said Pirie Tamm. “It is but, at best and at worst, a forlorn hope."
II.
In the morning Wayness consulted the World Directory and discovered that, of the five institutions she had listed, all were still functional. She called each in turn, on the telephone, and in each case asked to be connected to the officer in charge of special collections.
At the Berwash Foundation for the Study of Alternate Vitalities, she was informed that the collections included several compendiums produced by Fellows of the Naturalist Society, all descriptive and anatomical studies of non-terrestrial life forms, and also three rare works by William Charles Schulz: THE LAST AND FIRST EOUATION AND EVERYTHING ELSE; DISCORD, GRINDING AND SLOPE: WHY MATHEMATICS AND THE COSMOS MAKE POOR FITS; and the PAN-MATHEMATIKON. The curator asked: “The Naturalist Society is perhaps preparing to make another donation?"
"Not at the present time," said Wayness.
The Cornelis Pameijer Museum of Natural History owned a set of six volumes describing a variety of alien homologues created by the dynamics of parallel evolution. The six volumes had been designed and published by the Naturalist Society. The Museum supported no other collection of Society documents or papers.
