“I know Elf.”
“Elf? Come on!”
“Yes, the language. But only the written part.”
“I don’t suppose Berlitz offers a total immersion course. You converse in Esperanto too, I suppose.”
“No need to be cynical.”
“What do you mean you know ‘Elf’?”
“I hinted at bits of this before. As I told you the other night, I was teaching here. I had to … leave the United States for a while. To let things cool down a bit. A fake passport was the easiest part. I used my University levers and spent a time at Oxford with Professor Tolkien. He introduced me to these documents and to the Elvish language. I was, to put an image to it, very much The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I became lost in the Mirkwood of these documents. Dreams replaced the thin skein of reality I’d managed to knit together. That’s why, as I’ve told you, when I returned here things weren’t the same. They are never the same. Later, I marched in the aimless army of the homeless. Deep beneath these streets I found places utterly lost to the diagrams of the city engineers. Doorways to hidden rooms.”
“You mean you live underground?”
“Did. These days, I sleep in city shelters and eat in soup kitchens. Listen, by the time I was nineteen, I was part of the revolutionary vanguard, one far-out chemical proselytizer. I wore my hair long, adorned my face with wire-frame glasses, and made the phrase ‘Tune in, turn on, drop out’ an achievable goal for everyone that cared to open the gate. I was the Henry Ford of psychedelic drugs. If I was that kid today, I’d be an entrepreneurial geek. I’d own EA or Narcross Ventures, I’d be inventing computer games that make millions. Such is the tyranny of the Five Percent Departure.”
“The what?”
“The Five Percent Departure. In life, as in geometry, what starts as a slight alteration of direction seems like no big deal, just a deviation. But as the lines lengthen, as time moves forward, that five percent makes a big difference. You end up a long way from where you thought you were headed.”
“So where’s Elf fit in?”
“Ah, yes. The Professor had worked out several invented Elvish languages from remnant sources, the Welsh Karbindoos for one. But these documents only showed that his languages were a pale imitation of the reality. The power and breadth of true Elvish, even slightly comprehended, is breathtaking. It captivates the reader like a fly in a web. That’s why I came back to the United States. I was overwhelmed. I fell away. I had to. The Professor, stalwart to the grit, stayed to his task. But I’ve disclosed too much already.”
“So you still remember how to read it?”
“You don’t ‘remember’ this thing. It’s really a logic path, and a dense one. Not unlike the organic chemistry I once knew. Of course, as I discovered, there are deeper subtleties. Elf can be playful or diabolical. It deliberately misleads. It hides. It reserves its true import for the, shall we say, native speaker. So grazing on the most amateurish level, I can translate some and do a passable, if unsophisticated, job. If you’ve got someone else for the task let me know.”
Perplexed, Cadence tented her hands, bit her thumbs, and looked back into those sad eyes. The man behind those eyes wasn’t needy, he was lost. She decided to take a chance. “Great, so you can decipher some of these documents?”
“Look, I still am the novice on this, which is to say, the wise king in the world of the utterly clueless. Which is pretty good. I can probably translate the ones in basic Elf. The ones that look like Old English or Anglo-Saxon, that not even Chaucer would’ve found readable, no. There was once a kind of key, and to get anywhere we would need that.”
The fall of a book in some nearby stacks, like an angry clap, startled them both.
Osley leaned down to the tabletop and whispered like a wind battering against the eaves. The voice of the prophet returned.” We have talked like fools! We must leave at once. First I, then you follow.”
Then he stopped. A curtain inside him seemed to part. “Those … long ago things that stalk and edge closer. They have reappeared. They grow desperate enough to approach the watch fire of our diligence. Cadence, be careful. I will tell you more when I can. I will see you at the West End Bar. Tomorrow at ten.”
“In the morning?” But he was gone. This guy had a tedious way of coming and going. And he never told her where those archives were.
That evening Cadence found Osley’s trail on Wikipedia, the article dated March 2, 2005:
Osley, Ludwin A.
Legendary elusive genius and fugitive chemist, Osley was a follower of the LSD cult of Dr. Timothy Leary (“Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out”). He pioneered the mass-production of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the early 1960s, while he was still an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley. His academic records, partially missing, state that he was admitted to UC Berkeley at the age of 16 from Los Gatos High School. He had a double major of organic chemistry and linguistics. Osley branded LSD capsules he mass-produced as “Osley’s Blue-Dot.” He operated out of mobile laboratories hidden in semi-trailers that crisscrossed the United States.
Sought by FBI and state authorities in numerous jurisdictions, Osley was reportedly non-violent and apolitical. He associated with “psychedelic” rock bands such as Lothar and the Hand People, Country Joe and the Fish, and Electric Banana. There are no known photographs or fingerprints, and his California DMV records are missing. He frequented legendary venues such as The Family Dog emporiums on Filmore Street in San Francisco and Colfax Avenue in Denver.
Osley was last seen in August, 1967. He was dropped from the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 1975.
Cadence fidgeted with the Wikipedia article, checking the footnotes and clicking through links to old articles in the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She leaned back and sized up her situation. For some reason, she was sure he posed no danger. The danger was in the terrain they were traversing.
She felt like a small forest animal, easing through the oneway gate in a camouflaged live trap. She was inching forward, tantalized by the elusive, irresistible scent of a secret.
Chapter 18
OCTOBER 23
The next day Cadence had a hunch. She decided go back to the library to check on her own on Professor Tolkien’s brief visit at Columbia. Charming an intern at the research desk paid big dividends. In that random way that old records yield clues, the intern found a batch of index cards, held together with disintegrating rubber bands, crammed in a drawer. There, miraculously, was a card for the Professor’s materials left behind when he departed the University so long ago.
An hour later, she stood, backpack and notepad in hand, at the entrance to C-ar-47. The notation, inscribed like runes over the arched brick entrance, was itself a relic. It predated by ages the cataloguing systems of Mr. Dewey and the Library of Congress. The intern told Cadence the code referred to the seldom-visited “inactive archives” section of the library. “You know, where they keep the stuff no one ever wants to see, but they’re not supposed to throw away?”
“Like what?” she asked, milking him for more information.
“Like old handwritten notes, lecture transcripts — there’s a box or so for every professor who ever taught here or even just visited and didn’t take it with him. Sometimes the boxes are books and office stuff, you know pictures, paperweights — that kinda thing.”
“So, how do I find something in particular?”
“Alphabetical, by last name. If it’s not there, then by year. If nothing turns up, try by subject or just snoop. It’s all a mess.”