“OK, but what’s wrong with borrowing when he used it to create such great stuff?”
Her waiter unobtrusively placed her breakfast before her.
“Precisely, my dear. Tolkien felt no unease in this. To him, every name and every tale was a place to begin a new story. Which reminds me. Hell, I’m just a professional middleman, but I’d say Wagner’s opera, The Ring—about the one ring that could rule the world, and the remaking of the mythical sword that was broken — all sounds pretty familiar. Except Wagner wrote it in 1869. In any case as Tolkien said, the road goes on and on.”
“Yes. So?”
“So it means we’ve got the moral high ground. Tolkien’s view was that any story that borrows from older stories is a fair and natural part of the process. You see, creativity and innovation thrive on borrowing.”
“Mel, don’t take this the wrong way, but your inner poet must be trying to get out. You don’t strike me as one to rely on moral high ground very much.”
“Very true!” he laughed. “Nor will the ones I am about to talk about. They are the wielders of the power. They will seek to stifle and destroy anything new that is attributable to Tolkien even if it is authentically his.”
“Well, if you read what’s barely readable in this so-called fourth book, it looks like maybe he wrote, or at least translated, some small part of it, but by far most was written by other people, maybe at different times in the past. As in long, long ago. If you read it literally, it comes from some very strange place. Not his story book Middle-earth, but someplace different. The real one. The one he tried so hard to imagine. Ninety percent of it needs translation if that’s even possible. It’s just runes and stuff.”
“Let’s don’t get carried away. Parts of this may seem a little strange, but no matter.”
Cadence turned away from a nearby table of patrons and hunched over the phone. She dropped her voice. “‘Strange’ seems to be the operative word here.”
“Well”, he said, “I could have said ‘curiouser and curiouser’. In the vein of odd things, though, I just learned an interesting factoid about our Good Professor.”
“I can’t wait. No, honest, I want to hear it.”
“He was a spook.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed, as if he was a pure nut case. “You mean Tolkien’s a ghost?”
“No, stupid, a spy, a secret agent. As in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Because of his linguistic skills, he was recruited as a code-breaker at the beginning of World War II. You know, deciphering the Nazi Enigma Code, all that movie stuff. Anyway, he only did it for a short period. It’s a blurb in the news today. Declassified by M16.”
“How in the hell is that going to help me?”
“I don’t know. Who knows all the twists and turns in this? To answer your question, it probably doesn’t help. Only you can do that, with support from me.”
Cadence sat back and stared at her rapidly cooling scrambled eggs, wondering if things were about to get a lot curioser. “You know, Mel, I’m not sure what all this is about either. What I really care about though, more than anything, is finding out who my grandfather was and what happened to him.”
Cadence heard a voice in the background on Mel’s phone, “Mr. Chricter, Mr. Jackson’s office on 2.”
“Hey, uh … Cadence, hold on. I’ll be right back.”
She heard him put the phone down, get up, and talk on a speakerphone somewhere else in his office. It was dim but clear.
“Yeah, its Mel. Look, tell Peter I’m onto something here. I’ve been approached with something interesting. Yeah, I know they had to rewrite Tolkien again. Gotta have those ingénues. So this should also be interesting. Heck, maybe there are already clues somewhere. Where? The Narcross scene? I know you only want stuff that puts legs on the franchise. OK, OK, so talk to his people. Talk to Guillermo. I’m on a call.”
He picked up the phone again. “Cadence? Fine, just keep the faith. And don’t get into any strange cabs. This is big-time stuff and who knows who, or what, may be watching you.”
She hesitated for a moment. “OK, I’ll be careful.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes.”
“Since you’re having breakfast at the Algonquin,” and I’m covering your bill, she heard in his tone, “you’re in the Round Table Room. Back in the Twenties, that was the meeting place of the American counterpart to Tolkien’s Inklings group. All the New Yorker magazine hotshots and Broadway luminaries traded jibes there. So it may be a sign, right?”
“Right. Maybe some good will come out of that. If I can’t find the tracks of good ‘ole spymaster Tolkien, I’ll just switch to Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker.”
“Chin up. You’re on the right track.”
“Yeah, I guess I need to decide on my next move.”
Mel’s voice hushed. “Remember one word.”
In his pause she thought he was actually going to say “Plastics.”
“Provenance, Cadence, provenance. Is this stuff authentic? Prove that and we can get a deal.”
She wasn’t sure any more that she even wanted one of Mel’s deals. She said good-bye and hung up. What was her next move? She amused herself with the wry image of being marooned in a pathless forest, with discarded road signs leaning askew all about. “Secret Gate This Way.” “Moon Clock Running.” “Provenance and Proofs. Information Booth Up Ahead.” She especially liked the one that read “Homeless Man Advice. Next Exit.”
What she didn’t like was this feeling, like a pair of eyes peering at her from deep in that same imaginary forest.
Barren was studying his prey carefully now. He knew where she grazed. He would let her get comfortable and slack in her vigilance. He walked the streets to lower Manhattan and in time he came to a great excavation.
Instinct told him a great tumult had happened here, a fall of towers and a killing of innocents. From his own experience, he could sense the embers of panic and fear.
Now, however, he had a mission to conclude. The only question was where are the scribbles, the documents his master desired? He felt an easy confidence, having donned their garments and mastered much of their speech.
He walked north up the canyons of steel and glass, and came to stairs leading down into a tunnel entrance. It was just as an oracle’s entryway might be, he mused. This, he knew, was the roadway for their strange, noisy machines. He went to the ticket kiosk and bought a fare card with money he had pilfered from one of the bright-faced people. They never felt the gentle slip of his hand.
As he waited on the platform for the E train to arrive, he assessed his advantage. In his walking about, he had seen things he innately recognized from his past life, vestigial relics, like broken shell bits betokening a once great ocean. Now they were powerless fragments of magic and illusion. The power in the token in the small pouch slung about his neck far outstripped all the remnants here. It had, after all, served its purpose. It enabled him to learn, swift as an arrow.
So, if there was little magic to use here, he would still manage. He first had some distractions to take care of.
As Cadence left the entrance to the Algonquin, passing under the distinctive A’s, she looked for a Starbucks. She found three of them, all visible from the same spot. She chose instead an independent, Grousin’ Grounds, with an angry caffeine addict logo on the door. She ordered a triple macchiatto and handed over her credit card. It felt ever thinner. This time, inevitably, it would be the dissolving prop from Mission: Impossible. She bit her lip, praying it wouldn’t be declined.