"I'm sorry, kid," he told me once. "I didn't know alienation was hereditary. " Of course, it wasn't-just the personality traits that led to it. I wouldn't say I ever loved him, but at least I warmed to him some. He had shaved and gotten a haircut, even a three-piece suit, by then, but it didn't fool anybody for very long. Especially me. Maybe that's why I wear chambray and blue jeans. And long hair, and a beard-like my early memories of him.
And early memories stay with you longest and deepest, so I really felt as if I were walking into the lion's den.
The cop at the desk looked up as I approached. "Can I help you?" About then, he could have helped me out of there, and I might have needed it-but I said, "I hope so. A friend of mine. He's disappeared. Right away, he looked grave. "Did he leave any message?" I thought of the parchment, but what good is writing you can't read? Besides, he wasn't the one who wrote it. "Not a word." He frowned. "But he was over twenty-one"' "Yeah," I admitted.
"Any reason to think there might have been foul play?" Now, that question sent the icicle skittering down my spine. Not that the idea hadn't been there, lurking at the back of my dread, mind you-but I had worked real hard not to put words to it. Now that the sergeant had, I couldn't ignore it any more. "Not really," I admitted.
"It's just not like him to pick up and pack out like that."
"It happens," the sergeant sighed. "People just get fed up with life and take off. We'll post his name and watch for him, and let you know if we find out anything-but that's all we can do." I'd been pretty sure of that. "Thanks," I said. "He's Matt Mantrell. Matthew. And I'm-"
"Saul Bremener." He kept his eyes on the form he was filling in.
"Three-ten North Thirteenth Street. We'll let you know if we hear anything. " My stomach went hollow, and my skin crawled. It doesn't always help your morale, finding out that the cops know you by name.
"Uh ... thanks," I croaked.
"Don't mention it." He looked up. "Have a good day, Mr. Bremener-and don't take any wooden cigarettes, okay?"
"Wooden," I agreed, and turned numbly about and drifted out of that den of doom. So they remembered my little experiments. It makes one wonder.
The sunlight and morning air braced me, in spite of the lack of sleep. I decided they were nice guys, after all-they'd left me alone until they could see if it was a passing fad, or something permanent. Passing, in my case. So it was smart-they'd saved taxpayers' money and my reputation. I wondered if there was anything written about me anywhere.
Probably. Somewhere. I mean, they had to have something to do during the slow season. I began to sympathize with Matt-maybe blowing town suddenly wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Get real, I told myself sternly. Where else would I find such sympathetic cops?
Back to the search. Maybe they couldn't do anything officially, but I wasn't official.
So I searched high and low, called the last girl Matt had been seen with-back when I was a junior-and started getting baggy eyes myself. Finally, I took a few slugs of Pepto-Bismol as a preventative, screwed my disgust to the nausea point, and went back into his apartment.
I scolded myself for not having moved that table; just lucky Matt hadn't left anything on it. I laid my notebook down on the desk next to the phone and gave a quick look at the table, the kitchenette counter, and the miniature sofa. Nothing there but dust and spider silk.
Then I went through that apartment inch by inch, clearing webs and squashing spiders. Or trying to, anyway-I must have been dealing with a new and mutant breed. Those little bug-eaters were fast!
Especially the big fat one-I took my eyes off it for a second to glance at the arachnid next door, and when I glanced back, it wasn't there any more.
it wasn't the only thing that wasn't there-neither was any sign of where Matt might be. I mean, nothing-until I turned and looked at the kitchenette table and saw the parchment.
I stared. Then I closed my eyes, shook my head, and stared again. it was still there. I could have sworn I'd put it back in my notebook-so I picked up the notebook and checked. Yep, the piece of sheepskin was still in it, all right.
That gave me pause. Practically a freeze, really, while I thought unprintable thoughts. Finally, slowly, I looked up and checked again. it was on the table.
I looked down at the notebook, real fast, but not fast enough-it was back between the lined sheets. I held my head still and flicked a glance over to the table, but it must have read my mind, 'cause it was there by the time I looked. Then I laid down the notebook, real carefully, and stepped back, so I could see both the notebook and the table at the same time.
They each had a parchment.
Well, that settled that. I gave up and brought the notebook over to the table. I set it down beside the parchment. Yep, they were both still there-Matt's parchment in my notebook, and a brand-new one where none had ever been before. At least, a few minutes before-I had checked the table as I crawled across it. I frowned, taking a closer look at the new parchment.
It was written in runes, and the "paper" was genuine sheepskin, all right.
How come runes?
Because runes are magical.
I tried to ignore the prickling at the base of my skull and told myself sternly that runes were just ordinary, everyday letters in somebody else's language. Okay, so it was an old language, and a lot of the items written in it had been ceremonial, which was why they had been preserved-but that didn't mean they were magical. I mean, the people who wrote them may have thought they could work magic but that was just superstition.
But it was also something that made the scholar in me sit up brightly and smack his lips. I mean, literature had been one of my undergraduate majors-justified an extra year on campus, right there and although it wasn't my main field any more, I was still interested. I'd learned at least a little bit about those old symbols-and I knew Matt had a book around here that explained the rest. I hunted around until I found it, blew the dust and webbing off, and sat down to study. I looked up each rune and wrote its Roman-letter equivalent just above it. I tried pencil first, but it just skittered off that slick surface, so I had to use a felt pen. After all, this couldn't really be anything old, could it?
After three letters, I leaned back to see if it made a word. H-e-y.
I recoiled and glared down at it. How dare it sound like English!
Just a coincidence. I went to work on the next word. P-a-u-l.
I sat very still, my glance riveted to those runes. "Hey, Paul"?
Who in the ninth century knew my name?
Then a thought skipped through, and I took a closer look at the parchment. I mean, the material itself. It was new, brand-new, fresh off the sheep, compared to Matt's parchment, which was brittle and yellow-several years old, at least. Something inside me whispered centuries, but I resolutely ignored it and went on to the next word. I wrote the Roman letters above the runes, refusing to be sidetracked, resisting the temptation to pronounce the words they formed, until I had all the symbols converted-though something inside me was adding them up as I went along, and whispering a very nasty suspicion to me. But as long as I had another rune to look up, I could ignore it-even after I'd already learned all the runes again and was looking each one up very deliberately, telling myself it was just to make sure I hadn't made a mistake.