you—it’s wipe off or be wiped out, like our General says. Heh-heh! He’s wonderful with words, oh yes… What’s that you’re holding—ah, The Universe in a Drawer —what’s his name again? Hyde, yes. A bit old-fashioned, but not bad. The Subcustodian of Archives spoke highly of it, and he’s an expert in the field. Life in a Lavatory? Why would you want that? ”
I put the book back hastily and pulled out another. My head was beginning to spin; an unbearable smell, overwhelming but unidentifiable, perhaps a little like mildew, or even sandpaper—this heavy, nauseating breath of the moldering centuries seemed to pervade everything.
I should have settled for anything, taken the first book that came to hand and left. But I kept browsing, as if I were really looking for something. It certainly wasn’t The Deontology of Treason , nor the small, dog-eared In Imitation of Nothing , nor the black handbook Updating the Transcendental , which for some reason was shelved in the Espionage section. Around a comer was a row of thick tomes, their bindings brittle with age and the paper spotted and yellow. The illustrations were woodcuts, as was the frontispiece of The Compleat Spye, or, Everyman’s Handbooke of Espyonage yn Three Partes, Prolegomena & Paralipomena by the Author-Nugator Jonahberry O. Paupus . Between these bulky works were several incunabula, their covers tom and barely legible: Cloak-and-Dagger without Guesswork, Anarchy by Remote Control, The Bribe—a Spy’s Best Friend, Snooping in Theory and Practice . There was a bibliography of scopological and scopognostic literature, including scoposcopy. Machina Speculatrix, or, The Tactics of Counterespionage. Cohabitation and Collaboration. The Fine Art of Treachery and The Constant Traitor. Do-it-yourself Denunciation. Favorite Blunders and Slip-ups with full diagrams. Traps and Taps. There were even artistic items—a musical score with the title carefully written in violet, The Walls Have Ears, a Divertimento for Four Trombones and Hidden Mike, and a collection of sonnets entitled Microdots.
Someone groaned. It was a terrible, heartrending groan that came from behind a partition. I grabbed the old man’s sleeve and asked:
“What was that?”
“Ah yes, the recruits are listening to records. It’s a seminar on Applied Agony, Simulthanasia, or something like that. Tombsters, we call them,” he muttered.
And indeed, that same groan was being played over and over again. I was ready to leave. But the old geezer fell into a fever of activity; he bustled about the shelves, jumped up on tiptoe, moved the rusty ladders here and there, darted up the rungs, threw books down, and in general raised a thick cloud of dust—all this to regale me with yet another exhibit, some decrepit rarity or other. And he never ceased his ranting and raving, almost to the rhythm of the howling behind the partition. The glistening drop at the tip of his nose swung wildly but never fell. Somehow, his cross-eyed gaze never left me, so I had to be very careful—he might discover I was here under false pretenses, an impostor. But no, he continued his frantic inspection, eager to show me still another dusty volume. Basic Cryptology was pressed into my hands and fell open to these words: “The human body consists of the following places of concealment…”
“Ah, here is Homo Sapiens As a Corpus Delicti , a splendid work, splendid … and this is Incendiaries Then and Now , and here’s a list of the experts in the field—listen: Meern, Birdhoove, Fishmi, Cantovo, Karck, and we’re in it too of course, there’s our Professor Barbeliese, Klauderlaut, Grumpf—imagine that, Grumpf! This? The Morbitron by Glauble. Yes, he’s an author as well … heh-heh! Now this pamphlet—”
He pulled out a stack of disintegrating cards.
“Umbilicomurology and, yes, the breeding and care of coypus—there isn’t anything we don’t have here… What you’re holding there, that’s Fashion.
I put the book back hastily and pulled out another. My head was beginning to spin; an unbearable smell, overwhelming but unidentifiable, perhaps a little like mildew, or even sandpaper—this heavy, nauseating breath of the moldering centuries seemed to pervade everything.
I should have settled for anything, taken the first book that came to hand and left. But I kept browsing, as if I were really looking for something. It certainly wasn’t The Deontology of Treason , nor the small, dog-eared In Imitation of Nothing , nor the black handbook Updating the Transcendental , which for some reason was shelved in the Espionage section. Around a comer was a row of thick tomes, their bindings brittle with age and the paper spotted and yellow. The illustrations were woodcuts, as was the frontispiece of The Compleat Spye, or, Everyman’s Handbooke of Espyonage yn Three Partes, Prolegomena & Paralipomena by the Author-Nugator Jonahberry O. Paupus . Between these bulky works were several incunabula, their covers tom and barely legible: Cloak-and-Dagger without Guesswork, Anarchy by Remote Control, The Bribe—a Spy’s Best Friend, Snooping in Theory and Practice . There was a bibliography of scopological and scopognostic literature, including scoposcopy. Machina Speculatrix, or, The Tactics of Counterespionage. Cohabitation and Collaboration. The Fine Art of Treachery and The Constant Traitor. Do-it-yourself Denunciation. Favorite Blunders and Slip-ups with full diagrams. Traps and Taps. There were even artistic items—a musical score with the title carefully written in violet, The Walls Have Ears, a Divertimento for Four Trombones and Hidden Mike, and a collection of sonnets entitled Microdots.
Someone groaned. It was a terrible, heartrending groan that came from behind a partition. I grabbed the old man’s sleeve and asked:
“What was that?”
“Ah yes, the recruits are listening to records. It’s a seminar on Applied Agony, Simulthanasia, or something like that. Tombsters, we call them,” he muttered.
And indeed, that same groan was being played over and over again. I was ready to leave. But the old geezer fell into a fever of activity; he bustled about the shelves, jumped up on tiptoe, moved the rusty ladders here and there, darted up the rungs, threw books down, and in general raised a thick cloud of dust—all this to regale me with yet another exhibit, some decrepit rarity or other. And he never ceased his ranting and raving, almost to the rhythm of the howling behind the partition. The glistening drop at the tip of his nose swung wildly but never fell. Somehow, his cross-eyed gaze never left me, so I had to be very careful—he might discover I was here under false pretenses, an impostor. But no, he continued his frantic inspection, eager to show me still another dusty volume. Basic Cryptology was pressed into my hands and fell open to these words: “The human body consists of the following places of concealment…”
“Ah, here is Homo Sapiens As a Corpus Delicti , a splendid work, splendid … and this is Incendiaries Then and Now , and here’s a list of the experts in the field—listen: Meern, Birdhoove, Fishmi, Cantovo, Karck, and we’re in it too of course, there’s our Professor Barbeliese, Klauderlaut, Grumpf—imagine that, Grumpf! This? The Morbitron by Glauble. Yes, he’s an author as well … heh-heh! Now this pamphlet—”
He pulled out a stack of disintegrating cards.
“Umbilicomurology and, yes, the breeding and care of coypus—there isn’t anything we don’t have here… What you’re holding there, that’s Fashion.
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