Mayor Bataldo was standing in a small snowdrift waiting for me outside the hotel. He was dressed in a long black coat, and atop his bulbous head was a ridiculous black hat with a broad brim. Seeing me, he flashed a grin so full of whimsy that I wanted, right then, to give him another beating.
"Beautiful day, your honor," he said.
"Contain yourself, Mayor, my patience is a brittle thing today," I told him.
The people of Anamasobia await you at the church," he said, his smile fading but never quite completely gone.
We started down the street, snow crunching beneath our boots, the town as still and silent as a graveyard. As we walked, the mayor reeled off the details of his preparations.
"I have assigned you a bodyguard, the most vicious of the miners, a fellow named Calloo. He will protect you in the event one of the citizens protests the protocol. Father Garland has set a screen up on the altar so that those who must disrobe will have some privacy. By the way, the father is beside himself with the idea of both nudity and science infiltrating his church on the same day."
"Keep him away from me," I said. "Whatever status he has in this town due to his religious station means nothing to me. I'll have him whipped like a mongrel if he interferes."
"Aria has suggested that you would like to see Morgan and his daughter, Alice, first, since they have generated some suspicion in the town."
"Very well," I said.
"Look, there are your specimens," said Bataldo, pointing ahead of us.
We were close enough to the church for me to appraise the haphazard line of oafish reprobates. When they noticed us approaching, they grew silent, and it did me some good to see a suggestion of nervousness and perhaps a tinge of fear come into nearly all the faces. Some of the bigger and more brutal looking of the miners showed no emotion at all. How could I really frighten them after their having spent such a large portion of their lives in darkness with the possibility of a cave-in or the invisible danger of poison gas always lurking? At least they did not openly show their contempt.
I was about to head for the door of the church when the mayor took my arm and stopped me. "A moment, your honor," he said. Then he turned to the crowd and, waving his arms in the air, called out down the line, "All right, as we practiced. Ready, one, two, three ..."
The townspeople broke into a raggedly coordinated chorus of, "Good morning, your honor," yelling like a pack of schoolchildren greeting their teacher.
It took me by surprise, and all I could think to do was give a half bow in acknowledgment. This brought peals of laughter from them. Bataldo was beside himself with glee. My anger surged in me, and for a moment I almost lost sight of the situation. Had I actually taken out the loaded derringer and shot the mayor as I so wanted to at that moment, it might have jeopardized the entire case. Instead, I took a breath, turned away, and made for the entrance to the church. It did not help that I tripped on the first of those crooked steps, for that brought forth another torrent of hilarity at my expense.
I realized I was sweating profusely as I made my way over the unsteady bridge just inside the doors of the church. With the Physiognomy nowhere in sight, I knew my only recourse was to pretend. In short, to put on a mask of competency, behind which I could hide my emptiness. The shadowy nature of the church was a blessing that would aid me. My greatest problem would be Aria, who now came toward me beaming with beauty and an uncanny knowledge of that which had once defined my importance.
"Are you ready to do some work?" I asked sternly as I handed her my bag of instruments.
"I was up all night rereading my texts," she said. "I hope I will be of service."
She wore a plain gray dress and had her hair pulled back in what I took to be an attempt to appear more professional by appearing less feminine. Still, with all the problems circling in my head like a coven of crows, I was instantly overcome by her presence. I touched her shoulder lightly and for a moment was transported to the Earthly Paradise. Then I saw Father Garland appear from behind the wooden screen he had erected on the altar, and heaven turned instantly to hell.
He came toward me like the strident possum that he was, his sharpened teeth gleaming in the torchlight. Pushing his way in between Aria and me, he said, * The mayor has warned me not to interfere with your proceedings, and I have agreed to suffer this humiliation for the good of the town, but you, you will pay in the hereafter. There is a certain chamber in the mine of the afterlife set aside for the sacrilegious where the torments surpass the living pain of loneliness and loss of love."
"Yes," I said, "but does it surpass one unbearable moment of having to listen to you?"
"I noticed you did not stay to discuss your findings on the Traveler with me last night," he said, smiling sharply. "It was our deal, I recall, that you would apprise me of your results."
"Prehuman," said Aria, coming to my defense.
"That is correct," I said, "a creature preserved from before the ascendancy of man. Interesting for its novelty as a museum piece but physiognomically empty of revelation."
"I will pray for you," said Garland. He turned and walked to the first row of stone pews, kneeled down, and clasped his hands.
"Spare me," I said and accompanied Aria to the altar. Waiting for us there was the fellow the mayor had assigned to accost unruly subjects. It seemed Bataldo had gotten the right man for the job, because Calloo, as he was called, was the size of the full-grown bear I had once seen in a traveling circus outside the walls of the Weil-Built City. He had a thick black beard and hair nearly as long as Aria's. I did not need the Physiognomy to see that his hands, his head, in short, every part of him was an affront to the common sense of nature. In addition to his strength and size, he exhibited few outward signs of human intelligence. When I gave him his orders, he relayed to me that he understood by means of grunts and nods. I sent him off to fetch the first of the subjects and then set out my instruments on the stone altar just as I had the night before.
If the eight year old girl, Alice, whom everyone suspected of having been fed the fruit by her father, had all the right answers, what I wanted to know was who was asking the questions. I sat before her naked form, making believe I was jotting down notes in my tiny book with the straight pin and ink. Along with the loss of my knowledge went this notation system, which now seemed to me an extravagance of the minuscule I could no longer grasp the genius of. Aria was doing a cranial reading as I questioned the girl.
"Alice," I said, "did you eat the white fruit?"
"Eat the white fruit," she said, staring at me with an expression that made Calloo look like a savant.
"Alice," I said, "have you changed recently in your thinking?"
"Stinking," she said.
I shook my head in exasperation.
"Have you seen the fruit?" I asked.
"Clean the suit," she said.
"Am I missing something here?" I asked Aria.
She shook her head and came over to whisper to me that the girl was a retrograde two on the intelligence scale and that the measurements showed her to be pure of heart.
"Next," I yelled.
It turned out that her father was no less brilliant than she. He had an inordinately large penis, which obviously revealed the curse of his ignorance. Aria showed great diligence in measuring this organ, but I cut her off in the middle of her work, saying, "There's nothing there. Next!"
With our lead suspects cleared by Aria's computations and my necessarily more intuitive approach, we began to go to work on the rest of the town. So far, my plan to make it seem as if I was using this opportunity to mentor my assistant had worked well. "And what did you find?" I would ask her with each instrument she applied. She handled the chrome tools with great adeptness, calling out numbers for me to record in my book. I was, of course, going to allow her to catch the thief for me. Occasionally, her confidence would falter, and she would look to me with a question in her eyes. Then I would say, "Go on, continue. I am watching. I will let you know when you have made an error." With these words of encouragement, she would smile, as if thanking me for my generosity, and I began to think that the whole affair might work out better than I had imagined.