A Princess of The Linear Jungle Page 5

  “I’ve got to finish my teaching stint for the spring semester first. It’ll be a tedious bore, anticipating what’s ahead, but the administration insists. And we wouldn’t want to leave during the bad weather anyhow. I’m aiming for an April departure. That seems like a long time off. But believe me, there are a thousand thousand details to attend to. It all starts with a meeting tomorrow at four.”

  “But I don’t get off work until five.”

  “Your leave of absence starts today, remember?”

  No more uncrating dusty relics and typing up informational cards, eating cheap egg-salad sandwiches in the cafeteria while swotting up that night’s reading for class? How could she have predicted any of this in May, as the Samuel Smallhorne pulled into its Wharton Slip?

  Suddenly the past seven months of curatorial drudgery and classroom diligence seemed nostalgically delightful. Even crusty old Chambless assumed an aura of saintliness. He had watched over her in his gruff fashion, she knew. A visit to the fellow was in order before departure, and she added it to a mental list of chores she knew would only grow longer and longer.

  The Board Room in the Cutajar Building held seven eminent men when Merritt and Scoria arrived: the steering committee of the University, plus President Ogallala. Impeccably dressed in three-piece Upthegrove suits, the Board members—they resembled a matched sextet of bookends, thought Merritt—were outshone by the President, sleek in his ensemble of pearl-gray shagreen.

  In his rough-and-ready explorer’s garb, Arturo Scoria seemed unintimidated by this fine haberdashery. Merritt’s throat, however, had gone dry, and she resolved to let Art do all the speaking. She flipped open her notebook and poised her pen intelligently over the page.

  After greetings, marked by smiles of varying degrees of sincerity, Arturo took the floor.

  “You all know that a lot is riding on this expedition—my personal reputation as well as that of the University, not to mention the advancement of polypolisological studies in general. Therefore, we must take every precaution to make our venture into the Jungle Blocks a success. As the veteran of many similar field trips—although none more challenging or unpredictable—I have given considerable thought to what is needed. Here is my preliminary outline of our requirements, to which I expect you gentlemen will kindly accede with a minimum of fuss about costs.

  “First off, we need a reliable victualler. This person must have good contacts in the Borough of Hakelight, the Borough immediately Uptown of Vayavirunga, where we will obtain our supplies. I have found the perfect candidate for this position. He should be awaiting us out in the reception area. May I introduce him now? Excellent!”

  When Balsam Troutwine walked confidently into the room, Merritt dropped her notebook and pen. Bending over to retrieve the items, she felt her face mottling up. Straightening, she found the bluff liquor distributor regarding her with a distinct leer. Tarry scents of a vanished rope locker infused Merritt’s nostrils. She heard nothing of Troutwine’s presentation, but it must have been successful because he left smiling.

  “My next concern involves porters. We need some sturdy, reliable fellows to bear our supplies into the interior of Vayavirunga, where any kind of wheeled vehicles, featuring impellers or otherwise, would be impractical—at least so far as we can reasonably conjecture. After surveying local delivery firms, I settled on a bike-messenger outfit. They won’t be able to employ their bikes, naturally, but the messengers are all in superb physical shape, and quite used to safeguarding whatever is entrusted to them. I have the firm’s vice-president ready outside.”

  Dan Peart presented no embarrassing memories for Merritt to contend with. But his presence here nonetheless contributed to her growing sense of unreality. She had never mentioned these two mento Arturo Scoria, so no intentional actions on his part could have brought them to this room. Merritt experienced a momentary sense of some unknowable force molding her life into a strange destiny, before Peart’s clipped speech dragged her focus back to the room.

  “Strong backs, strong legs, plenty of balls. That’s what you’re getting when you hire our boys. I’ll be there myself to inspire them.”

  The Board seemed impressed. Peart departed. Scoria continued.

  “Entrance to Vayavirunga, as I will elaborate in a written presentation later, is going to be tricky. My feeling is we’ll do best to approach by water. Therefore, I’ve hired a boat that will meet us in Hakelight by setting out some time ahead of the rest of the expeditionary force, which will motor more swiftly down Broadway.”

  By this point, Merritt did not even flinch when Art nominated Captain Canebrake of the Samuel Smallhorne as his choice. She merely felt eerily prophetic.

  “There are a few other trivial details to attend to, gentlemen, but there you have the major features of this assault on the Jungle Blocks. What do you say?”

  President Ogallala smiled broadly, his nut-brown face creasing into well-worn laugh lines. He seemed disproportionately elated, and Merritt immediately suspected some monkeywrench in Arturo’s plans. But this once, Scoria bulked overconfident and failed to see the blow approaching.

  “You have lived up to your reputation for boldness and perspicacity and far-sightedness, Professor Scoria. But you have forgotten one crucial failsafe measure. A backup for the most vital part of the mission.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Yourself.”

  President Ogallala got up and opened the Boardroom door. “Come in, please, Professor.”

  To his credit, Durian Vinnagar exhibited no expression of vindictive triumph or gleeful one-upmanship. Rather, he maintained his usual dour, sober and phlegmatic mien, allowing President Ogallala to state Vinnagar’s case by proxy.

  “As you are well aware, Professor Scoria, Professor Vinnagar represents a different school of polypolisology than the one you adhere to. His unique insights and perceptions will counterbalance yours, and ensure that no potential findings of this mission are overlooked. Moreover, should one of you chance to come to harm, the other will be able to continue directing the expedition. Professor Vinnagar has many backers in the department—and among alumni and donors—who all render his presence on this mission essential and non-negotiable. Although he will of course assume subordinate status to you, since it was your discovery that prompted this whole affair.”

  Merritt watched Arturo’s face cycle through a whole spectrum of emotions, from frustration and irritability through rage and jealousy, before settling on wounded resignation. He stepped forward and thrust out his hand.

  “Vinnagar, I’m counting on you for sensible support. No ideological feuding.”

  Vinnagar grinned, and took the offered grip. “You have my word—by Vasuki’s tail.”

  In the wild welter of the following few months, Merritt was kept exceedingly busy arranging all the thousand-and-one details of the Vayavirunga Expedition. She even learned to liaise with journalists, who maintained a constant appetite for all news relating to the Jungle Blocks. Merritt took to fabricating the most egregious tall tales, careful to label them speculative. But of course, her modest disclaimers were always the first things dropped from the subsequent coverage.

  “Vayavirunga home to a fierce creature called the bonasus!” “SwazeProf hears voice from Vayavirunga over radio!” “Crimson sex slaves await virile bike boys!”

  Although often falling into bed exhausted well before midnight, Merritt was thrilled and stimulated and engaged as she had never been in any other professional situation. She felt she was using all her talents and skills—although, to be sure, her actual polypolisological knowledge was in somewhat scanty demand. But even that deficit, she was sure, would be remedied once she reached Vayavirunga.

  Arturo Scoria definitely approved of her performance, claiming she exhibited a natural flair and showmanship. “How I could have used you during my rough time with the Schnellageisters, Mer! We’re a great team!”

  Merritt felt proud and appreciated by a man she esteemed.

>   (Although she still could not quite see herself and Arturo as forever soulmates.)

  As the day of departure neared, Merritt made a special effort to break away from her duties and visit Edgar Chambless at the NikThek, to say thank-you and farewell.

  Entering the big old pile felt strange to Merritt. She would have sworn she held no especial fondness for the museum. But a transfixing and ennervating wave of nostalgia and melancholy overtook her nonetheless, as soon as the familiar smells of the artifacts of deep time and far off exotic Boroughs overtook her. “Soul abulia,” people called the sensation, from Diego Patchen’s famous invention of that term in his Dictatorship of the Emotions.

  Chambless sat in his cluttered office, employing a magnifying glass to study a crumbling clay tablet indited with wedge-shaped runes. He only slowly registered Merritt, but seemed genuinely pleased to see her.

  “Ah, Miss Abraham! I’ve been following your exploits with great pleasure. I’m certain that when you return to our halls, you’ll bring with you vast new experiences that will aid you in our curatorial mission. For instance, what do you make of this?”

  Chambless handed her the tablet, and Merritt studied it.

  “Lower Marmolejo, perhaps? Three centuries old?”

  Chambless took the tablet back. Without warning, he dashed it to the tile floor! It crashed and shattered.

  “Try ‘the forgers of Orsinwalls, six months ago.’ Let this be a lesson in appearances for you, Miss Abraham. The authentic and the fake are often hard to tell apart.”

  Merritt nodded humbly. Chambless began to rummage among the litter of his desk.

  “Now, where is that gift I had for you? I put it right down here just a week ago….”

  He came up with a scabbarded dagger, exhibiting richly worked case and handle, and tendered it to Merritt.

  “I took this myself off a native of Breviary Minor fifty years ago. He generously embedded it in my shoulder before I cracked his skull. Still twinges in wet weather. My shoulder, not the blade or even his putative skull. It’s yours. Methinks it might stand you in good stead where you’re going.”

  Merritt’s eyes grew wet. She embraced the old polypolisologist. He felt like a sheet wrapped around sticks and ropes.

  “All right, all right, on your way now. And don’t come back missing any of your delightful parts.”

  Merritt threaded the scabbard onto her belt. “No, sir!”

  She recounted the visit to Art that evening. He chuckled and shook his head. “Edgar’s seen a lot. But I expect he’s grown overcautious.”

  Merritt wondered.

  Eventually Spring came. The first week in April marked the slightly premature end to Arturo Scoria’s last class. All the preparations for their trip had been made.

  Or so Merritt believed.

  Art approached her late one afternoon and said, “We have a business dinner tonight. Dress nicely, because it’s at the Petaluma.”

  Seated at the chic restaurant that evening, laughing and sipping champagne, Merritt knew herself to be on top of the world.

  Then in strolled Ransome Pivot and Cady Rachis.

  They headed straight for Merritt’s table. Scoria rose to greet them heartily. Merritt found herself stuttering her hello. The pair sat down, Pivot pulling out Cady’s chair for her, and Scoria extemporized.

  “Merritt, it’s like this. We really should have a medico along on this expedition, and I’ve been unable to secure one from the WMA-approved ranks. Seems the Wharton Medical Association doesn’t license its members to practice out-of-Borough. I suppose I could’ve scouted for a competent sawbones in Hakelight or elsewhere. No guarantee of success there either, though. But then I thought, we don’t need a brain surgeon for this romp, just someone reasonably competent in first aid. So I hit upon your old Borough-mate here. I like his character. He made a mistake in his choice of pals when he was starting his career, but he was blinded by his quest for knowledge. We can all empathize with that, I think. And he didn’t rat out his friends or plead ignorance. He’s smart, and he just needs a chance to rehabilitate himself, which this expedition can offer. Plus, he’s a big bruiser who looks like he can take care of himself in a punch-up. I want to bring him onboard. Do you object?”

  Merritt studied Ransome Pivot’s pared-down lineaments. She sensed that all his boyish bumblepuppy innocence had been burned away, leaving him wiser and humbler, with a core of suffering. How could she refuse?

  “No, of course not, Arturo.”

  Cady Rachis spoke in her torch singer’s throaty purr. “You won’t have cause to regret our presence, dear.”

  Merritt turned google-eyed toward Arturo, who had the good graces at least to look chagrined.

  “Sex appeal and show business, Mer! The final touch! ‘Gorgeous nightclub singer lulls savages with song!’ Can’t you just see the headlines?”

  Merritt fumed silently for a moment, then burst out laughing. She raised her champagne flute and said, “Vayavirunga, beware!”

  The spanking-new cherry-colored and impeller-powered charabanc from Roger Kynard & Progeny was easily eighteen feet long, and featured six rows of padded bench seats.

  A hired uniformed driver occupied the first row behind the steering wheel.

  The second bench hosted Arturo Scoria, Durian Vinnagar and Merritt, with Merritt in the middle as buffer between the rivals.

  In the third rank sat Ransome Pivot and Cady Rachis, holding hands.

  Balsam Troutwine lolled alone in the fourth row with easy imperiousness.

  The last two benches were jammed with six bike messenger boys, looking like a family of slightly disreputable cousins.

  The well-stuffed, strapped-down boot of the charabanc was laden with essential items which Scoria felt uncertain of purchasing in Hakelight.

  The charabanc could make fifteen miles-per-hour with no strain. So whereas the Samuel Smallhorne needed twelve hours to traverse the hundred Blocks of a Borough (and so had set out two days ago), the motorcar could cover that same distance in under two hours. Thus, the trip from Block 70 in Wharton, through the adjacent Borough of Colglazier, and right up to the Wall at the Downtown end of Hake-light, could theoretically be traversed in under six hours. But Scoria had determined they should proceed more slowly, to allow the maximum publicity and attention from crowds along the way.

  If the turnout now lining both sides of Broadway here in Wharton was any accurate indication, their slow progress would be justified. The crowds tooted horns and threw confetti and shouted good luck messages.

  Dan Peart stood alongside the charabanc, straddling his beloved Calloway Tempesta. The empty seat beside Troutwine had been reserved for him, but he had declined.

  “Got to stretch the old hamstrings. Won’t get a chance when we’re wading through those damn weeds.”

  Mayor Milorad Hastings of Wharton gave a brief, albeit pompous speech, President Ogallala fired a compressed-air starter’s pistol with a loud pop!, and the expedition was off!

  Merritt considered how her departure from Wharton compared to her arrival, and was not displeased with what she had accomplished so far in her young life.

  Arturo Scoria was standing up in the moving vehicle, waving boisterously to the crowd. Merritt yanked him down. He boldly kissed her, evoking a tongue-clucking from Vinnagar.

  Merritt turned around and stuck out a sliver of tongue at Cad Rachis.

  So far, so fine!

  7.

  INTO VAYAVIRUNGA!

  DAN PEART TOSSED ANOTHER NAIL-STUDDED WASTE PLANK into the dancing flames contained in the big battered metal oil drum, sending a gout of sparks leaping upward into the night sky. Merritt thought to see a Pompatic swooping unnaturally low over their camp. The sight made her shiver, but she tried not to interpret it as an ill omen. Death was the one unavoidable outcome for everyone, and random reminders of it meant nothing.

  “Cold for April,” Peart said. “But I bet the Jungle Blocks ‘are steamier.”

  The entire crew of t
he Scoria-Vinnagar Vayavirunga Expedition sat on wooden crates set close around the industrial-style campfire. The fire disclosed four large tents pitched in an urban interzone deliberately stripped of all other structures. This barren swatch of territory, half a Block wide across the whole Borough, intervened between Hakelight proper and the enormous Wall that protected them from Vayavirunga.

  Merritt could sense the incredible mass of the Wall looming beyond their tiny sphere of illumination. The first time she had seen it up close, just this very day, she had been flummoxed. The top of the Wall seemed a thin line rulered against the blue of the sky. But the bottom of the wall, she knew, measured twenty feet thick! Composed of hewn granite blocks, so precisely shaven that no mortar had been necessary in their mating, the Wall dominated both the nearest buildings and any people daring to approach it, like a living stone creature poised to leap. Running from deep into the trashlands beyond the Tracks right up to the lapping River, the Wall cleaved the Linear City, here and, by counterpart, three ex-Boroughs distant, enclosing some seventy-five miles of unknown vegetation-fecund territory: the former Boroughs of Coconino, Fogtown and Gramercy. The base of the structure was a palimpsest of graffiti and wheat pasted posters from the ground up to about the height of one man standing on another’s shoulders. The texts varied from rude to worshipful, from germane to generic, from commercial to idiosyncratic.

  Merritt had rested a hand on the cold, implacable stones. “Who built this, and how?”

  Scoria replied, “Records are scanty. The period of construction was some three centuries ago, after all. The vegetable plague began, cause unknown, in the middle Borough, the old Fogtown, and started to spread inexorably, both Uptown and Downtown, at the rate of roughly three Blocks per year. The citizens of Hakelight did not believe in the threat immediately, so construction of the Wall did not commence right away. Yet when the Wall was finally finished, people say, the Jungle already lapped right up against the lowest courses of stone. So if you do the math, you see that it must have taken, um, thirty or forty years to finish the Wall.”