Mysterium

“The Bureau de la Convenance Religieuse. The Proctors. But please remember, I’m a contract employee. I work for the Bureau but I don’t represent the Bureau, not directly. There are several of us in town, civilian workers I mean, mainly academics. For instance, there is a surveyor, an electrical engineer, a documentary photographer, a medical doctor—”

“Each one writing a report?”

“You pose the question with too much malice. If the circumstances were reversed, Mr. Graham, if one of our villages had appeared in your world, wouldn’t your government do the same thing? Compile records, try to understand the miracle that had happened?”

“People have died here. In good conscience, I don’t know if I can cooperate.”

“I can’t speak for your conscience. I can only say that my work isn’t harmful.”

“In your eyes. It’s certainly a nuisance to my work—we’ve already established that.”

“Lieutenant Demarch sent me to you because he thought a teacher of history would have a broader grasp of cultural issues—”

“Did he? My guess is that he was hoping to piss me off.”

She blinked but forged ahead: “I won’t attribute motive. The point is that I can go elsewhere if I’m interfering with the school. I really don’t care to cause trouble.”

Her meekness was maddening. Also deceptive. She was relentless, Dex thought. He looked at her over the trestle table, searching for something in the composition of her features: a glimpse under the porcelain exterior. She came from the world outside Two Rivers, but she wasn’t a Proctor or a soldier—and that made her nearly unique, potentially interesting.

Too, her curiosity seemed genuine. She might or might not be a tool of the Bureau, but there were obviously questions she wanted to ask. Fair enough. He had a few questions of his own.

He said, “Maybe we can compromise.”

“In what way?”

“Well, first of all—you’d be a lot less conspicuous if you lost your bookends.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The gentlemen attached to your elbows.”

Both guards gave Dex a stony glare meant to intimidate him. He smiled back. He was tired of the Proctors. They dressed like Boy Scouts and swaggered like hall monitors: pions, a good word, he thought.

“I will have to talk to Lieutenant Demarch,” she said. “I can’t promise anything.” But the idea seemed to appeal to her.

“You might consider changing the way you dress, too. It draws attention.”

“I have considered that. But I’m new here, Mr. Graham. I’m not sure what would be appropriate, or appropriately modest.”

“You’re staying at the Woodward Bed-and-Breakfast?”

“Nearby. The motor hotel.”

“You’ve met Evelyn Woodward?”

“Briefly.”

“She’s about your size. Maybe she can lend you something. She seems to have a new wardrobe these days.”

“Yes. Well, perhaps. Do you have any other requirements?”

“Certainly. A quid pro quo. I want something for my time.”

“And what would that be?”

“A map of the world. An atlas, if possible. And a good basic history.”

“Your history for mine?”

“Right.”

She surprised him by smiling. “I’ll see what I can do.”

∞

His fever broke the night the lights came back to Two Rivers, and Howard Poole emerged from his sickness feeling fragile but immensely clearheaded. It was as if the disease had starved all confusion from the bone of logic.

He waited a day for Dex to show up, but the schoolteacher didn’t come. That was all right, Howard thought. It wasn’t always easy for Dex to get away; he might have been followed. It didn’t matter. It was time to take some initiative on his own.

At noon, when the ration lines opened and the streets were most crowded, Howard packed some food and bottled water and a camp knife into the ample pockets of a big Navy jacket and stepped out into the biting October air.

Maybe he had been in hiding too long, or maybe it was the autumn weather, but everything he looked at seemed to have been cut from a luminous glass. Sidewalks, windows, the tumbled leaves of the trees, were all thin as ice under a cellophane-blue sky. He wanted to take it all in at once, to hoard these colors against another dark season. He forced himself to walk with his head down. He didn’t dare attract attention.

He was carrying identification, actually Paul Cantwell’s ID. Lucky Paul, Howard thought, on vacation when the roof of the world fell in. It was good documentation, but there was obviously no photo ID; and the cards, if you looked closely, were all out of date—except for the ration card. He might pass muster if the military questioned him. But he might not. He didn’t want to run that risk. It was better not to arouse suspicion.

He crossed the intersection of Oak and Beacon and walked east past lifeless businesses, shop windows shadowy and haunted by ghosts: by cameras, computers, fashionable clothes, big-screen TV sets. No one had stolen these things even in the chaotic first days of the military occupation. Nobody wanted them. They were useless to the natives and frighteningly foreign to the soldiers, the trinkets and ornaments of a lost race…