Wayness went to sit on a bench and watched the afterglow fade from 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."
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