Shadow

THE first old dream she places on the table is nothing I know as an old dream. I stare at the object before me, then look up at her. She stands next to me looking down at it. How is this an "old dream"? The sound of the words "old dream" led me to expect something else—old writings perhaps, something hazy, amorphous.

"Here we have an old dream," says the Librarian. Her voice is distant, aimless; her tone wants not so much to explain to me as to reconfirm for herself. "Or it is possible to say, the old dream is inside of this."

I nod, but do not understand.

"Take it in your hands," she prompts.

I pick it up and run my eyes over the surface to see if I can find some trace of an old dream. But there is not a clue. It is only the skull of an animal, and not a very big animal.

Dry and brittle, as if it had lain in the sun for years, the bone.

"Is this a skulTof one of the Town unicorns?" I ask her.

"Yes. The old dream is sealed inside."

"I am to reacVan old dream from this?"

"That is the work of the Dreamreader," says the Librarian.

"And what do I do with the dreams I read?"

"Nothing. You have only to read them."

"How can that be?" I say. "I know that I am to read an old dream from this. But then not to do anything with it, I do not understand. What can be the point of that? Work should have a purpose."

She shakes her head. "I cannot explain. Perhaps the dream-reading will tell you. I can only show you how it is done."

I set the skull down on the table and lean back to look at it. The skull is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself. The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void.

There is a sadness about it, an inherent pathos. I have no words for it.

"Please show me," I say. I pick the skull up from the table once again and feel its weight in my hands.

Smiling faintly, she takes the skull from me and painstakingly wipes off the dust. She returns a whiter skull to the table.

"This is how to read old dreams," the Librarian begins.

"Watch carefully. Yet please know I can only imitate, I cannot actually read. You are the only one who can read the dreams. First, turn the skull to face you in this way, then gently place your hands on either side."

She touches her fingertips to the temples of the skull.

"Now gaze at the forehead. Do not force a stare, but focus softly. You must not take your eyes from the skull. No matter how brilliant, you must not look away."

"Brilliant?"

"Yes, brilliant. Before your eyes, the skull will glow and give off heat. Trace that light with your fingertips. That is how old dreams are read."

I go over the procedure in my head. It is true that I cannot picture what kind of light she means or how it should feel, but I understand the method. Looking at the skull beneath her slender fingers, I am overcome with a strong sense of deja vu. Have I seen this skull before? The leached colorlessness, the depression in the forehead. I feel a humming, just as when I first saw her face. Is this a fragment of a real memory or has time folded back on itself? I cannot tell.

"What is wrong?" she asks.

I shake my head. "Nothing. I think I see how. Let me try."

"Perhaps we should eat first," she says. "Once you begin to work, there will not be time."

She brings out a pot of vegetable stew and warms it on the stove. The minestra simmers, filling the room with a wonderful aroma. She ladles it out into two bowls, slices walnut bread, and brings this simple fare to the table.

We sit facing each other and speak not a word as we eat. The seasoning is unlike anything I have ever tasted, but good nonetheless. By the time I finish eating, I am warmed inside. Then she brings us cups of hot tea. It is an herbal infusion, slightly bitter and green.

Dreamreading proves not as effortless as she has explained. The threads of light are so fine that despite how I concentrate the energies in my fingertips, I am incapable of unravelling the chaos of vision. Even so, I clearly sense the presence of dreams at my fingertips. It is a busy current, an endless stream of images. My fingers are as yet unable to grasp any distinct message, but I do apprehend an intensity there.

By the time I finally manage to extract two dreams, it is already past ten o'clock. I return to her the dream-spent skull, take off my glasses, and rub my eyes. "Are you tired?" she asks.

"A little," I reply. "My eyes are not accustomed to this. Drinking in the light of the old dreams makes my eyes hurt. I cannot look too long for the pain."

"I am told it is this way at first," she says. "Your eyes are not used to the light; the readings are difficult. Work slowly for a while."

Returning the old dream to the vaults, the Librarian prepares to go home. She opens the lid of the stove, scoops out the red coals with a tiny shovel, and deposits them in a bucket of sand.

"You must not let fatigue set in," she warns. "That is what my mother said. Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself." "Good advice."

"To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called 'mind', what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard."

"The mind is nothing you use," I say. "The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements."

She shuts the lid of the stove, takes away the enamel pot and cup to wash, and returns wrapped in a blue coat of coarse material. A remnant torn from a bolt of the sky, worn so many years that it too has lost memory of its origins. She stands, absorbed in thought, in front of the extinguished stove.

"Did you come from some other land?" she asks, as if the thought had only then occurred to her.

"I think so."

"And what was that land like?"

"I cannot remember," I say. "I cannot recall a single thing. They seem to have taken all memory of my old world when they took my shadow. I only know it was far, far away."

"But you understand these things of mind?"

"A little."

"My mother also had mind," she says. "But my mother disappeared when I was seven. Perhaps it was because she had this mind, the same as you."

"Disappeared?"

"Yes, she vanished. I do not want to talk about it. It is wrong to talk about people who have disappeared. Tell me about the town where you lived. You must remember something."

"I can only remember two things," I say. "That the town I lived in had no wall around it, and that our shadows followed us wherever we walked."

Yes, we all had shadows. They were with us constantly. But when I came to this Town, my shadow was taken away.

"You cannot come into Town with that," said the Gatekeeper. "Either you lose the shadow or forget about coming inside."

I surrendered my shadow.

The Gatekeeper had me stand in an open space beside the Gate. The three-o'clock afternoon sun fixed my shadow fast to the ground.

"Keep still now," the Gatekeeper told me. Then he produced a knife and deftly worked it in between the shadow and the ground. The shadow writhed in resistance. But to no avail.

Its dark form peeled neatly away.

Severed from the body, it was an altogether poorer thing. It lost strength.

The Gatekeeper put away his blade. "What do you make of it? Strange thing once you cut it off," he said. "Shadows are useless anyway. Deadweight."

I drew near the shadow. "Sorry, I must leave you for now," I said. "It was not my idea. I had no choice. Can you accept being alone for a while?"

"A while? Until when?" asked the shadow. I did not know.

"Sure you won't regret this later?" said the shadow in a hushed voice. "It's wrong, I tell you. There's something wrong with this place. People can't live without their shadows, and shadows can't live without people. Yet they're splitting us apart. I don't like it. There's something wrong here."

But it was too late. My shadow and I were already torn apart.

"Once I am settled in, I will be back for you," I said. "This is only temporary, not forever. We will be back together again."

The shadow sighed weakly, and looked up at me. The sun was bearing down on us both.

Me without my shadow, my shadow without me.

"That's just wishful thinking," said the shadow. "I don't like this place. We have to escape and go back to where we came from, the two of us."

"How can we return? We do not know the way back." "Not yet, but I'll find out if it's the last thing I do. We need to meet and talk regularly. You'll come, won't you?"

I nodded and put my hand on my shadow's shoulder, then returned to the Gatekeeper.

While the shadow and I were talking, the Gatekeeper had been gathering up stray rocks and flinging them away.

As I approached, the Gatekeeper brushed the dust from his hands on his shirttails and threw a big arm around me. Whether this was intended as a sign of welcome or to draw my attention to his strength, I could not be certain.

"Trust me. Your shadow is in good hands," said the Gatekeeper. "We give it three meals a day, let it out once a day for exercise. Nothing to worry about."

"Can I see him from time to time?"

"Maybe," said the Gatekeeper. "If I feel like letting you, that is."

"And what would I have to do if I wanted my shadow back?"

"I swear, you are blind. Look around," said the Gatekeeper, his arm plastered to my back.

"Nobody has a shadow in this Town, and anybody we let in never leaves. Your question is meaningless."

So it was I lost my shadow.

Leaving the Library, I offer to walk her home. "No need to see me to my door," she says.

"I am not frightened of the night, and your house is far in the opposite direction."

"I want to walk with you," I say. "Even if I went straight home, I would not sleep."

We walk side-by-side over the Old Bridge to the south. On the sandbar midstream, the willows sway in the chill spring breeze. A hard-edged moon shines down on the cobblestones at our feet. The air is damp, the ground slick. Her long hair is tied with twine and pulled around to tuck inside her coat.

"Your hair is very beautiful," I say.

"Is it?" she says.

"Has anyone ever complimented you on your hair before?"

"No," she says, looking at me, her hands in her pockets. "When you speak of my hair, are you also speaking about something in you?"

"Am I? It was just a simple statement."

She smiles briefly. "I am sorry. I suppose I am unused to your way of speaking."

Her home is in the Workers' Quarter, an area in disrepair at the southwest corner of the Industrial Sector. The whole of this district is singularly desolate. No doubt the Canals once conducted a brisk traffic of barges and launches, where now-stopped sluices expose dry channel beds, mud shriveling like the skin of a prehistoric organism. Weeds have rooted in cracks of the loading docks, broad stone steps descending to where the waterline once was. Old bottles and rusted machine parts poke up through the mire; a flat-bottom boat slowly rots nearby.

Along the Canals stand rows of empty factories. Their gates are shut, windowpanes are missing, handrails have rusted off fire escapes, walls a tangle of ivy.

Past these factory row is the Workers' Quarter. Betraying a former opulence, the estate is a confusion of subdivided rooms parceled out to admass occupation of impoverished laborers. Even now, she explains, the laborers have no trade to practice. The factories have closed, leaving the disowned with a meager livelihood, making small artifacts for the Town. Her father had been one of these craftsmen.

Crossing a short stone bridge over the last canal brings us to the precinct of her housing block. A nexus of passageways, like medieval battlements, entrenches the cramped grounds between one building and the next.

The hour approaches midnight. All but a few windows are dark. She takes me by the hand and leads me through this maze as if trying to evade predatory eyes. She stops in front of one building and bids me good-night.

"Good-night," I say.

Whereupon I climb the slope of the Western Hill alone and return to my own lodgings.

Skull, Lauren Bacall, Library

Outside it was dark, it was drizzling, and the streets were filled with people going home from work. It took forever to catch a cab.

Even under usual circumstances I have a hard time catching cabs. By which I should explain that in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations, I make a point of not taking the first two empty cabs that come my way. The Semiotecs had fake taxis, and you sometimes heard about them swooping off with a Calcutec who'd just finished a job. Of course, these might have been rumors, since I don't know anyone it actually happened to.

Still, you can't be too careful.

That's why I always take the subway or bus. But this time I was so tired and drowsy that I couldn't face the prospect of cramming into a rush-hour train. I decided to take a taxi, even if it took longer. Once in the cab, I nearly dozed off several times and panicked to false alert. As soon as I got home to my own bed, I could sleep to my heart's content. A cab was no place to sleep.

To keep myself awake, I concentrated on the baseball game being broadcast on the cab radio. I don't follow baseball, so for convenience sake I rooted for the team currently at bat and against the team in the field. My team was behind, 3-1. It was two outs with a man on second base when there was a hit, but the runner stumbled between second and third, ending the side without a run. The sportscaster called it rotten playing, and even I thought so too. Sure, anyone can take a spill, but you don't stumble between second and third in the middle of a baseball game. This blunder apparently so fazed my team's pitcher that he threw the opponent's lead-off batter an easy ball down the middle, which the guy walloped into the left-field bleachers for a home run.

When the taxi reached my apartment, the score was 4-1. I paid the fare, collected my hatbox and foggy brain, and got out. The drizzle had almost stopped.

There wasn't a speck of mail in the mailbox. Nor any message on the answering machine.

No one had any business with me, it seemed. Fine. I had no business with anyone else either. I took some ice out of the freezer, poured myself a large quantity of whiskey, and added a splash of soda. Then I got undressed and, crawling under the covers, sat up in bed and sipped my drink. I felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book.

As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.

I'd finished half my whiskey when the telephone rang. The telephone was perched on a round table two meters away from the foot of the bed. I wasn't about to leave my nice warm bed and walk all the way over to it, so I simply watched the thing ring. Thirteen rings, fourteen rings, what did I care? If this had been a cartoon, the telephone would be vibrating midair, but of course that wasn't happening. The telephone remained humbly on the table ringing on and on. I drank my whiskey and just looked at it.

Next to the telephone were my wallet and knife—and that gift hatbox. It occurred to me that I should open it. Maybe it was something perishable that I should put in the refrigerator, something living, or even something "urgent". But I was too tired. Besides, if any of the above had been the giver's intention, you would think he'd have told me about it. When the telephone stopped ringing, I bottomed-up my whiskey, turned off the bedside light, and shut my eyes. A huge black net of sleep that had been poised in ambush fell over me. As I drifted off, I thought, do you really expect me to know what's going on?

When at last I awoke, it was half light out. The clock read six-fifteen, but I couldn't tell whether it was morning or evening. I pulled on a pair of slacks and leaned out my door to check the neighbor's doormat. The morning edition was lying there, which led me to conclude it was morning. Subscribing to a paper comes in handy at times like this. Maybe I ought to.

So I'd slept ten hours. My body still craved rest. With nothing particular that required my attention for the day, I could happily have gone back to bed. But on second thought, I got up. Rise and shine with the sun, I always say. I took a shower, scrubbing my body well, and shaved. I did my usual twenty-five minutes of calisthenics, I threw together breakfast.

The refrigerator was all but plundered of its contents. Time to restock. I sat down with my orange juice and wrote out a shopping list. It filled up one page and spilled over onto a second.

I dumped my dirty clothes into the washing machine and was busily brushing off my tennis shoes at the sink when I remembered the old man's mystery present. Dropping the shoes, I washed my hands and went to get the hatbox. Light as ever for its bulk—a nasty lightness somehow. Lighter than it had any need to be.

Something put me on edge. Call it occupational intuition. I did a quick scan of the room.

It was unnervingly quiet. Almost sound-removed. But my test cough did sound like a cough. And when I flicked open my spring-action knife and whacked the handle on the table, the noise was right. Having experienced sound-removal, I had gotten suspicious. I opened a window onto the balcony. I could hear cars and birds. What a relief. Evolution or no evolution, a world ought to have sound. /

I cut the tape, careful not to damage the contents of the box. On top was crumpled newspaper. I spread open a few sheets—the Mainichi Shimbun, three weeks old, no news of note. I crumpled the pages up again and tossed them away. There must have been two weeks' worth of wadded newspapers in the box, all of them Mainichi. With the newspapers out of the way, I now found a layer of those—polyethylene? styrofoam?—those pinkie-sized wormoids they use for packing. I scooped them up and into the garbage they went. This was getting to be one chore of a present. With half the plastic cheez puffs out of the way, there surfaced an item wrapped in more newspaper.

I didn't like the look of it. I went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Coke. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the whole thing. I trimmed a fingernail. A black-breasted bird appeared on the balcony and hopped around on the deck table, pecking spryly at some crumbs. A peaceful morning scene.

Eventually, I turned my attention back to the newspaper-wrapped object and gently removed it from the box. The newspaper was wound with further orbits of tape, looking very much like a piece of contemporary art. An elongated watermelon in shape, though again, with hardly any weight to it. I cleared the table and undid the tape and newspaper.

It was an animal skull.

Great, I thought, just great. Did the old duffer really imag-ine I'd be overjoyed to receive this? He had to have a screw loose, giving a skull for a present.

The skull was similar to a horse's in shape, but considerably smaller. From my limited knowledge of biology, I deduced that the skull had been attached to the shoulders of a narrow-faced, hoofed, herbivorous, and not overly large species of mammal. Let's see now. I checked my mental catalogue of animals matching that description. Deer, goat, sheep, donkey, antelope… I couldn't remember any others.

I placed the skull on top of the TV. Very stylish. If I were Ernest Hemingway, I'd have put it over the mantle, next to the moose head. But my apartment, of course, had no fireplace. No fireplace and no sideboard, not even a coat closet. So on top of the TV it was.

I dumped the rest of the packing material into the trash. There at the bottom of the box was a long object rolled up in newspaper. Unwrapping it, I found a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs exactly like the ones the old man had used on his skull collection. I was reminded of the ivory baton of a Berlin Philharmonic conductor.

"All right, all right, I'll play along," I said out loud. I went over to the skull on the TV and tapped it on the forehead. Out came a mo-oan like the nasal whine of a large dog. Not the hard clunk that I expected. Odd, yes, but nothing to get upset about. If that whiny moan was the noise it made, who was I to argue?

Tapping the skull got old quick. I sat down and dialed the System to check my schedule.

My rep answered and told me he'd penciled in a job four days hence, was that okay? No problem, I told him. I thought about verifying the shuffling clearance, but decided not to.

It would have entailed a lot of extra talk. The papers were all in order, the remuneration already squared away. Besides, the old man said he'd avoided going through agents to keep things secret. Better not complicate matters.

Added to which, I was none too enthused with my rep. Tall, trim, thirtyish, the type who thinks he's on top of every-thing. I try my best to avoid talking with guys like that any more than I have to.

I finished my business and hung up, then went into the living room and relaxed on the sofa with a beer to watch a video of Humphrey Bogart's Key Largo. I love Lauren Bacall in Key Largo. Of course, I love Bacall in The Big Sleep too, but in Key Largo she's practically allegorical.

Watching the TV screen, my eyes just naturally drifted up to the animal skull resting on top. Which robbed me of my usual concentration. I stopped the video where the hurricane hits, promising myself to see the rest later, and kicked back with the beer, gazing blankly at the item atop the TV. I got the sneaking suspicion that Vd seen the skull before. But where? And how? I pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it over the skull so I could finish watching Key Largo. Finally, I could concentrate on Lauren Bacall.

At eleven o'clock, I left the apartment, headed for the supermarket near the station, stopping next at the liquor store for some red wine, soda water, and orange juice. At the cleaners I claimed a jacket and two shirts; at the stationery shop I purchased a pen, envelopes, and letter paper; at the hardware store, the finest-grain whetstone in the place.

Then to the bookshop for two magazines, the electrical goods store for light bulbs and cassette tapes, the photo store for a pack of Polaroid film. Last, it was the record shop, where I picked out a few disks. By now, the whole back seat of my tiny coupe was taken up with shopping bags. I must be a born shopper. Every time I go to town, I come back, like a squirrel in November, with mounds of little things.

Even the car I drove was purely for shopping. I only bought it because I was already buying too much stuff to carry home by myself. I was lugging a shopping bag when I happened to pass a used-car dealer and went in and saw all the different cars they had.

Now I'm not particulary crazy about cars, nor do I know much about them. So I said simply: "I want a car, any make, nothing fancy, nothing big."

The middle-aged salesman started to pull out a catalog, but I didn't want to look at any catalog. I only wanted a car for shopping, I told the guy, pure and simple. It didn't need go fast for the highway, didn't need to look smart for dates. No family outings either. I had no use for a high-performance engine or air-conditioning. No car stereo, no sun roof, no super radials. All I wanted was a decent compact that cornered well, didn't belch exhaust, wasn't too noisy, and wouldn't break down on me. And if it came in dark blue, so much the better.

The car the guy showed me was yellow. I didn't think much of the color, but otherwise it was just what I described. And because it was an old model, the price was right.

"This is how cars were meant to be," said the salesman. "If you really want to know, I think people are nuts."

No argument from me.

That's how I came to own my shopping car.

I wound up my purchases and pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast-food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.

From the restaurant window I could see the expressway, with cars of all makes, colors, and styles barrelling along. I remembered the jolly old man and his chubby granddaughter. No matter how much I liked them, I couldn't help thinking they had to be living in the outer limits. That inane elevator, the open pit in the back of a closet, INKlings, and sound removal—I wouldn't believe it in a novel. And then, they give me an animal skull as a memento.

Waiting for my after-meal coffee, I thought about the chubby girl. I thought about her square earrings and pink suit and pink high heels. I thought about her body, her calves and the flesh around her neck and the build of her face and… well, things like that. I could recall each detail with alarming clarity, yet the composite was indistinct. Curious.

Maybe it was because I hadn't slept with an overweight woman in a while that I just couldn't picture a heavyset woman in the altogether.

The last time I'd slept with a fat female was the year of the Japanese Red Army shoot-out in Karuizawa. The woman had extraordinary thighs and hips. She was a bank teller who had always exchanged pleasantries with me over the counter. I knew her from the midriff up. We became friendly, went out for a drink once, andWled up sleeping together. Not until we were in bed did I notice that the lower half of her body was so demographically disproportionate. It was because she played table tennis all through school, she had me know, though I didn't quite grasp the causal relationship. I didn't know table tennis led to below-the-belt corporeality.

Still, her plumpness was charming. Resting an ear on her hip was like lying in a meadow on an idyllic spring afternoon, her thighs as soft as freshly aired futon, the rolling flow of her curves leading gracefully to her pubis. When I complimented her on her qualities, though, all she said was, "Oh yeah?"

After I left the restaurant, I went to the library nearby. At the reference desk sat a slender young woman with long black hair, engrossed in a paperback book. "Do you have any reference materials pertaining to the mammalian skull?" I asked.

"Huh?" she said, looking up.

"References—on—mammalian—skulls," I repeated, saying each word separately.

" Mam-ma-li-an-skulls?" she repeated, almost singing. It sounded so lovely the way she said it, like the first line of a poem.

She bit her lower lip briefly and thought. "Just a minute, please. I'll check," she said, turned around to type the word mammal on her computer keyboard. Some twenty titles appeared on the screen. She used a light pen and two-thirds of the titles disappeared at once. She then hit the memory function, and this time she typed the word skeleton. Seven or eight titles appeared, of which she saved two and then entered into the memory alongside the previous selections. Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.

While she was nimbly operating her computer, I was looking down at her long hair and elegant backside. I didn't know exactly what to make of her. She was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

She pressed the copy button for a printout of the screen data, which she handed to me.

"You have nine titles to select from," she said.

1. A GUIDE TO MAMMALS

2. PICTORIAL ATLAS OF MAMMALS

3. THE MAMMALIAN SKELETON

4. THE HISTORY OF MAMMALS

5. I, A MAMMAL

6. MAMMALIAN ANATOMY

7. THE MAMMALIAN BRAIN

8. ANIMAL SKELETONS

9. BONES SPEAK

I had an allowance of three books with my card. I chose nos. 2, 3, and 8. Nos. 5 and 9 did sound intriguing, but they didn't seem to have much to do with my investigation, so I left them for some other time.

"I'm sorry to say that Pictorial Atlas of Mammals is for library use only and cannot be borrowed overnight," she said, scratching her temple with a pen.

"This is extremely important. Please, do you think it would be at all possible to lend it to me for just one day?" I begged, "I'll have it back tomorrow noon, I promise."

"I'm sorry, but the Pictorial Atlas series is very popular, and these are library rules. I could get in trouble for lending out reference materials."

"One day. Please. Nobody will find out."

She hesitated, teasing the tip of her tongue between her teeth. A cute pink tongue.

"Okay. But it has to be pack here by nine-thirty in the morning."

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," she said.

"Really, I'm very grateful. May I offer you some token of my thanks. Anything special I could do for you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. There's a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor across the way. I'd love a double cone of mocha chip on top of pistachio. Would you mind?"

"Mocha chip on pistachio—coming right up!"

Whereupon I left the library and headed for the Baskin-Robbins.

She was still not back with the books by the time I returned, so I stood there at her desk with ice cream cone in hand. Two old men reading newspapers took turns stealing looks at this curious sight. Luckily the ice cream was frozen solid. Having it drip all over the place was the only thing that could have made me feel more foolish.

The paperback she'd been reading was face-down on the desk. Time Traveller, a biography of H. G. Wells, volume two. It was not a library book. Next to it were three well-sharpened pencils and some paperclips. Paperclips! Everywhere I went, paperclips!

What was this?

Perhaps some fluctuation in the gravitational field had suddenly inundated the world with paperclips. Perhaps it was mere coincidence. I couldn't shake the feeling that things weren't normal. Was I being staked out by paperclips? They were everywhere I went, always just a glance away.

Something went ding. Come to think of it, there'd been a couple of dings lately. First animal skulls, now paperclips. It seemed as if a pattern was establishing itself, but what relationship could there be between skulls and paperclips?

Before much longer, the woman returned carrying the three volumes. She handed them to me, accepting the ice cream cone in exchange.

"Thank you very much," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

She held the cone low behind the desk. Glimpsed from above, the nape of her neck was sweet and defenseless.

"By the way, though, why all the paperclips?" I asked.

" Pa-per-clips?" she sang back. "To keep papers together, of course. Everybody uses them. Don't you?"

She had a point. I thanked her again and left the library. Paperclips were indeed used by everyone. A thousand yen will buy you a lifetime supply. Sure, why not? I stopped into a stationery shop and bought myself a lifetime supply. Then I went home.

Back at the apartment, I put away the groceries. I hung my clothes in the wardrobe. Then, on top of the TV, right next to the skull, I spread a handful of paperclips.

Nice and artsy. Like a composition of down pillow with ice scraper, ink bottle with lettuce. I went out on the balcony to get a better look at my TV-top arrangement. There was nothing to suggest how the skull and the paperclips went together. Or was there?

I sat down on the bed. Nothing came to mind. Time passed. An ambulance, then a right-wing campaign sound-truck passed. I wanted a whiskey, but I passed on that too. I needed to have my brain absolutely sharp.

I went to the kitchen and sat down with the library books. First I looked up medium-sized herbivorous mammals and their skeletal structures. The world had far more medium-sized herbivorous mammals than I'd imagined. No fewer than thirty varieties of deer alone.

I fetched the skull from the TV, set it on the table, and began the long, laborious process of comparing it with each of the pictures in the books. One hour and twenty minutes and ninety-three species later, I had made no progress. I shut all three books and piled them up in one corner of the table. Then I threw up my arms and stretched.

What to do?

Put on a video of John Ford's Quiet Man.

I was sprawled on the bed, h&h-browned, when the doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole and saw a middle-aged man in a Tokyo Gas uniform. I cracked open the door with the chain still bolted.

"Routine safety check," said the man.

"One moment please," I replied, slipping into the bedroom to pocket my knife before opening the door. I smelled something fishy. There'd been a gas inspector visit the month before.

I let the guy in and went on watching The Quiet Man. The inspector pulled out a pressure gauge and proceeded to check the water heater for the bath, then went into the kitchen where the skull was sitting on the table. I left the TV on and tiptoed to the kitchen in time to catch him whisking the skull into a black plastic bag. I flicked open my knife and dived at him, circling around to clamp him in an armlock, the blade thrust right under his nose. The man immediately threw the bag down.

"I… I didn't mean any harm," he stammered. "I just saw the thing and suddenly wanted it. A sudden impulse. Forgive me."

"Like hell," I sneered. "Tell me the truth or I'll slit your throat," I said. It sounded unbelievably phony—especially since the knife wasn't under his chin—but the man was convinced.

"Okay, okay, don't hurt me. I'll tell the truth," he whimpered. "The truth is, I got paid to come in here and steal the thing. Two guys came up to me on the street and asked if I wanted to make a quick fifty-thousand yen. If I came through, I'd get another fifty thousand. I didn't want to do it, but one of the guys was a gorilla. Honest. Please, don't kill me. I've got two daughters in high school."

"Two daughters in high school?"

"Y… yeah."

"Which high school?"

"The older one's a junior at Shimura Metropolitan. The younger one just started at Futaba in Yotsuya," he said.

The combination was odd enough to be real. I decided to believe him.

As a precaution, I fished the man's wallet out of his pocket and checked its contents. Five crisp ten-thousand-yen bills. Also a Tokyo Gas ID and a color photo of his family. Both daughters were done up in fancy New Year's kimono, neither of them exactly a beauty. I couldn't tell which was Shimura and which Futaba. Other than that, there was only a Sug-amo-Shinanomachi train pass. The guy looked harmless, so I folded the knife up and let him go.

"All right, get out of here," I said, handing back his wallet.

"Thank you, thank you," the gas inspector said. "But what do I do now? I took their money but didn't come through with the goods."

I had no idea. Those Semiotecs—I'm sure that's who they were—weren't what you could call gentlemen. They did whatever they felt like, whenever. Which is why no one could read their modus operandi. They might gouge this guy's eyes out, or they might hand him the other fifty thousand yen and wish him better luck next time.

"One guy's a real gorilla, you say?" I asked.

"That's right. A monster. The other guy's small, only about a meter and a half; he was wearing a tailor-made suit. Both looked like very tough characters."

I instructed the man to leave the building through the parking garage. There was a narrow passage out back, which was not easy to detect. Probably he'd get away without incident.

"Thank you very much," said the gas inspector. "Please don't tell my company about this."

Fine, I told him. Then I pushed him out, locked the door, and bolted the chain. I went into the kitchen and removed the skull from the plastic bag. Well, at least I'd learned one thing: the Semiotecs wanted the skull.

I considered the circumstances. I had the skull, but didn't know what it meant. They knew what/it meant—or had a vague notion of what it meant—but/didn't have the skull. Even-steven. At this point, I had two! options: one, explain everything to the System, so they'd protect me from the Semiotecs and safeguard the skull; or two, contact the chubby girl and get the lowdown on the skull.

I didn't like option no. 1. There'd be pointless debriefings and investigations. Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, have too many stupid people.

Option no. 2, however, was impossible. I didn't know how to go about contacting the chubby girl. I didn't have her phone number. Of course, I could have gone to the building, but leaving my own apartment now was dangerous. And how was I going to talk my way into that top-security building?

I made up my mind: I would do nothing.

I picked up the stainless-steel tongs and once again tapped the crown of the skull lightly.

It made the same mo-oan as before. A hollow, pathetic cry, almost as if it were alive.

How was this possible? I picked up the skull. I tapped it again. That mo-oan again. Upon closer scrutiny, the sound seemed to emanate from one particular point on the skull.

I tapped again and again, and eventually located the exact position. The moaning issued from a shallow depression of about two centimeters in diameter in the center of the forehead. I pressed my fingertip into the depression. It felt slightly rough. Almost as if something had been broken off. Something, say, like a horn…

A horn?

If it really were a horn, that'd make it a one-horned animal. A one-horned animal? I flipped through the Pictorial Atlas of Mammals again, looking for any mammal with a single horn in the middle of its forehead. The rhinoceros was a possibility, but this was not a rhinoceros skull. Wrong size, wrong shape.

I got some ice out of the refrigerator and poured myself an Old Crow. It was getting late in the day, and a drink seemed like a good idea. I opened a can of asparagus, which I happen to like. I canapeed some smoked oysters on crispbread. I had another whiskey.

Okay. For convenience sake, I agreed to entertain the remote hypothesis that the owner of said skull might be, conceivably, a unicorn.

What else did I have to go on?

I had a unicorn skull on my hands.

Great, I thought, just great. Why were all these bizarre things happening to me? What had I ever done to deserve this? I was just your practical-minded, lone-wolf Calcutec. I wasn't overly ambitious, wasn't greedy. Didn't have family, friends, or lovers. I saved my money. When I retired, I was planning to settle down and learn the cello or Greek. How on earth did I get mixed up in this?

After that second whiskey, I opened the telephone book and dialed the number.

"Reference desk, please," I said.

Ten seconds later, the long-haired librarian was on the line.

" Pictorial Atlas of Mammals here," I said.

"Hello. Thank you for the ice cream," she said.

"You're welcome," I said. "But could I ask you for another favor?"

"A favor?" she said. "Depends on the species of favor."

"Can you look up what you've got on unicorns?"

" U-ni-corns?" she repeated.

"Is that too much to ask?"

Silence. She was probably biting her lip.

"You want me to look up what about unicorns?"

"Everything," I said.

"Please, it's four-fifteen. The library gets very busy around closing time. Why don't you come around first thing tomorrow morning? Then you could look up all about unicorns or tricorns or whatever you like."

"This can't wait. I'm afraid it's exceedingly urgent."

"Oh, really?" she said. "How urgent?"

"It's a matter of evolution," I said.

" E-vo-lu-ti-on?" She seemed to be caught off guard. "By evolution, you wouldn't be referring to the evolving-over-mil-lions-of-years kind of evolution, would you? Excuse me if I misunderstand, but why then do you need things so quickly? What's one more day?"

"There's evolution that takes millions of years and there's evolution that only takes three hours. I can't explain over the phone. But I want you to believe me, this is dead urgent.

This will affect the next step in human evolution."

"Like in 2001: A Space Odyssey?"

"Exactly," I said. I'd watched it countless times on video.

She didn't say anything.

"Can't decide if I'm some kind of a maniac or a harmless nut?" I took a shot.

"You got it," she said.

"I don't know how I'm going to convince you, but I'm really not crazy. A little narrow-minded or stubborn maybe, but crazy I'm not."

"Hmph," was all she said to that. "Well, you talk normal enough. And you didn't seem too weird. You even bought me ice cream. All right, at six-thirty, meet me at the cafe across from the library. I'll bring you the books. Fair enough?"

"Unfortunately, it's not so simple. I, uh, can't go into details, but I can't leave my place unattended just now. Sorry, but—"

"You mean…" she trailed off. I could her hear drumming her front teeth with her nails.

"Let me get this straight. You want me—to bring the books—to your doorstep? You must be crazy."

"That's the general idea," I said sheepishly. "Though, of course, I'm not demanding. I'm requesting."

"You're requesting an awful lot."

"I know, I know," I said. "But you wouldn't believe what's been going on."

Another lengthy silence.

"I've worked in this library for five years now and never have I come across any borrower as impudent as you," she fumed. "Nobody asks to have books hand-delivered. And with no previous record! Don't you think you're being just a little high-handed?"

"Actually, I do think so, too. I'm very sorry. I realize it's highly irregular, but I have no other choice."

"I don't know why I'm doing this," she said, "but I don't suppose you'd want to tell me the way to your place?"