Wilt Johnson was a young man, and he had admirable rapport with his youthful customers. He seemed to know most of them personally. The young waitress who flitted gracefully about the crowded room was his wife.
There was nothing to suggest that this Johnson had the remotest connection with any kind of len; nevertheless, he exemplified the problem they faced. They began to eat breakfast regularly at his Snack Shack. They sat in the most remote corner, enjoyed the largest meal the establishment offered at that time of day, and listened to the other patrons’ conversation while they gave the proprietor their puzzled scrutiny and reflected on the fact that all of their laborious research had missed him completely. They wondered how many more anonymous Johnsons this enormous city contained.
The revelation seemed to add an entirely new dimension to their investigation, and they weren’t quite sure what they should do about it. Puzzle reposed within puzzle in this baffling civilization. If a “restaurant” could be called a “snack shack,” was it possible that Johnsons, too, were sometimes called something else? Roszt and Kaynor had learned—again entirely by accident—that women often changed their names when they married. It was also true that they often didn’t. The two men from the future could think of no reason why the Honsun Len couldn’t have been invented by a woman—but what if she no longer called herself Johnson?
One morning at the Snack Shack, the conversation took a totally unexpected twist: Roszt and Kaynor suddenly heard themselves talked about. In a booth near the front, four students—two couples—were having their morning coffee. Roszt and Kaynor watched them surreptitiously when they weren’t watching the proprietor. The manners of students, particularly their overtly sexual behavior, confounded them.
One male student was reading a newspaper. The others were studying. The couples had arms draped about each other affectionately, but all of them kept their attention on their reading.
The student with the newspaper called to the proprietor, “Hey Wilt—those Johnson burglars get around to you yet?”
“Why would they bother me?” Wilt demanded. “I got nothing worth stealing.”
“What are they stealing?”
“How would I know? Ask Fred—he’s working on it.”
The student with the paper called, “Hey, Fred—you the detective on those Johnson burglaries?”
A man of about thirty, wearing an ordinary suit but every inch a policeman, turned and grinned. “Some of them.”
“What is being stolen?”
“As far as we can make out, nothing.”
The student said incredulously, “Nothing? All those burglaries and nothing taken?”
His girlfriend nudged him. “Wilt’s got a problem.”
“How do you figure that?” the student with the paper asked.
“He says he’s got nothing worth stealing, and that’s what’s being stolen. Nothing. He’s in danger of losing his nothing.”
Her boyfriend glared at her. Then he got up and dropped some change on the table. “I’ve got a class,” he said and hurried away.
A student across the room remarked, “Whoever’s doing it must be looking for something. Do you suppose it’s connected with those characters who’ve been pretending to trace Johnson heirs?”
The detective grinned but said nothing.
“You’ve got descriptions, haven’t you?” the student persisted. “Even the papers have descriptions.”
“Descriptions—” the detective shrugged. “We have as many descriptions as there are witnesses. All we know for certain is that there were always two of them.”
“How are you going to catch them? Stake out every Johnson residence in Monroe County?”
The detective grinned again and shook his head, and the conversation turned to a subject Roszt and Kaynor found totally bewildering—baseball.
They were shocked and alarmed. They ordered more food and kept themselves as inconspicuous as possible until the students and the detective had left. Then they carefully calculated the tip—giving the waitress too much or too little would fix themselves in her memory, Egarn had said—and left with what they hoped was calm nonchalance.
Not only had they been the subject of casual conversation in a restaurant; they also were the object of a strenuous police search, and that staggered them. They didn’t know what “stake out” meant, but it sounded sinister.
Further, someone had connected their innocent queries about Johnson heirs with the burglaries. They would have to stop everything until the clamor died down. While they were waiting, perhaps they could think of an entirely different approach. It was obvious that the one they were using had become dangerous. Also, it hadn’t worked.
* * * * Egarn had watched their fumbling search with increasing distress. In the complications of getting them to the right place, and preparing them to live in 20th century America, he hadn’t given enough thought to the problem of finding the right Johnson. Their intense activity when they first arrived in Rochester elated him. As time passed, they began to resemble the man who mounted his horse and rode off in all directions. If only he could have talked with them for a couple of minutes—asked them what they thought they were doing and pointed them in the right direction.
Suddenly they dropped everything and did nothing at all. They kept to their motel room except to exercise Val, and they began buying and reading newspapers. He had no idea what had happened, and he was plunged into despair.
He kept trying unsuccessfully to send them messages and to pick up the messages they faithfully left for him on their table each night. The code messages they signaled with a flashlight had long since degenerated into a routine, “Search continuing, no results,” and the date. They continued to go through the motions of communicating, but because they had heard nothing from Egarn, they probably thought he was no longer watching. Now their search was at a standstill. Egarn’s workroom was shrouded more deeply in gloom each dae.
The loyal team of helpers, most of whom never saw the workroom’s interior and had little notion of what went on there, sensed that things were going badly. They connected Egarn’s distress with the fact that supplies were running low. The food seemed to get worse with each succeeding meal, and Fornzt was in despair. Every time he used the last of something, he knew he was one step closer to the last of everything. Some of the outside sentries went on regular foraging missions—they thought they weren’t needed at the ruins because no outsider had been sighted anywhere in Midlow since the Lantiff left—but they rarely found anything. Old Marof, the one person who could have helped them, had died shortly after the destruction of Midd Village from illness and perhaps a broken heart.
Then Arne arrived, and everyone brightened. Egarn’s confidence in Arne was shared by all of them. Arne would take care of everything. First and foremost, he would refill their empty larder. If Egarn’s distress had to do with something else, Arne would repair that, too.
He knew where each village had kept its reserves of flour and tubers—or, if he didn’t, he knew how to find them. He had been ranging all across the Ten Peerdoms emptying these underground storage bins, many of which were buried under the villages’ charred remains, and he had sent a huge pack train east for the use of those still fighting the Lantiff. Now he plundered the reserves of Midlow for Egarn’s team and quickly restocked Fornzt’s shelves.