"This," Macavity said, "is Etaoin Shrdlu."
"Don't put me on. They're the most often used letters in the English language."
"It's his alias, Alf," Glory explained. "He doesn't want his real name known because he's committed a crime."
"What he do? Spit on the sidewalk?"
"Burglary," Adam said. "Breaking and entering after dark."
"And this Count Alesandro needs for his Iddroid?"
"No, he needs what Etaoin burgled."
"What?"
"These." Adam held out what looked like three yellow postage stamps.
"What are these," I quoted, "so wither'd and so wild in their attire, that look not like th 'inhabitants o' the earth, and yet are on't?"
"Shame on you, Banquo. You're supposed to be the science absolute. Don't you know microchips when you see them?"
"They are? Really?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
"And they're for the Iddroid?"
"What's in them is."
"What's in their memory cells?"
"Thousands of books."
"What hath William Caxton wrought! With the help of Texas Instruments. The whole scenario, please."
"Etaoin's a filing clerk in the Library of Congress. He's never been promoted because he lacks formal college degrees. So he decided to cheat his way into a master's and doctorate in belles-lettres."
"Ah-ha!"
"Under cover of darkness he snuck into the library stacks with chips and input gear and implanted in these three the contents of every book he could find on the subject. Each chip has two million memory cells, six million in all."
"Oh-ho."
"Yes, most of the world's literature, philosophy, and history is contained in these tiny packets. The good, the bad, and the gross. If the Library of Congress has it Shrdlu's recorded it here."
"And he'll trade all this for a couple of fake degrees?"
"No, he wants the real things—transcripts as well as diplomas."
"How'll you manage that?"
He laughed.
"A few years ago a young doctoral graduate from an Ivy League school traded me his degrees. I sent him back to talk to his younger self, advising him to enroll under a different name."
"What name?"
"Told him we'd let him know. Now it's time to go back again and tell him it's Shrdlu. No problem."
"What did he get for his degrees?"
"He wanted a piece of a statistical anomaly—that is to say, luck. Just enough so that he'd never have to work. Wouldn't need the degrees then. He'd discovered he didn't much like teaching."
"You can deliver something like that?"
"Sure, this place is designed to deal with the improbable. He spends half of his time on cruise ships playing poker, the rest of it in comfy digs enjoying his winnings. Never play cards with a guy who insists you not call him 'Doc.'"
"This whole wishing business that brings in the customers . . . ?"
"We need something like that because we can't afford to advertise. If we did we'd be swamped with frivolous requests. We only want to attract the serious-minded."
"Understood, Pussycat. But how does it work? The wishing thing? You said you'd tell me."
"It's a matter of desire, and will. Either a person learns of us from one of our many happy customers, or the person makes us up—a 'wouldn't it be nice if there were a place where—' In either case, they then have to want to do the deal badly enough for the desire to activate the customer attractor in the singularity. The rest is post-Einsteinian physics. Getting home is easy afterwards. Same thing in reverse."
"Well, why do we often get customers from the past or the future? Why don't they wind up in your shop of their own day?"
"It's like taking a number. Appointments get shuffled by the attractor for me, perfectly. The past and the future keep changing as much as the present, partly from things we do. And sometimes a person starts to wish and changes her mind—or drops dead. All the customer sees, and all we see, is the end result: They wish and they're here. And we service them. Prompt. Efficient."
Glory hissed and passed me the bottle.
"What about manuscripts found in miniatures?" I asked. "How do they wish something like this to you?"
"It would have to have been transported physically, by a sentient organism," he said. "For the sake of drama, it seems the narrator would have us believe that the individual responsible was a bejeweled mouse. Don't believe it. The mouse is a red herring. The narrator could as easily have projected himself here from behind bars as not. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space—"
"Burma Shave," I said. "But could a mouse have brought the thing?"
"Possibly, and she wouldn't be the first animal to wish here. 1943-44. London in the middle of the blitz. Why no mention of that? France occupied by the Nazis. How'd this minibottle get out and over to Old Bond Ltd? And the machine revolt? Deliriously absurd."
"Then it has to be a put-on."
"If it is we've got to meet the author of the extravaganza. You and Nan go find the perpetrator. He's probably somewhere around forty-four."
"What? Why send me in, coach?"
"Because I've got a long, long session with Dr. Shrdlu ahead. No telling when we'll be finished."
"How come? Usually you're in and out of the Hellhole in a flash."
"Mary Shelley and her descendants."
"What do they have to do with it?"
"She gave birth to Victor Frankenstein, who put together you-know-what which generated God knows how many imitations. That's no input for a nice Jewish Iddroid from the Bronx. They've got to be ID'd and winnowed out."
"Damn right. Can't have it attacking us in the brain's basement. Hey, d'you think it'll look like the Hollywood versions of Frankenstein's monster?"
"Damn if I know what the Count has in mind. It might end up looking like anything from framboise to Freud."
"Oh no!" I laughed. "Not a psycho-raspberry!"
"Be serious, Alf. There're a few hundred pounds, English, in coin in that chest. Walking-around money, but make sure you take the right dates, pre-'44. And remember the blitz. Be careful back then, no macho-jock-stuff. Nan, if there's the slightest danger, get him the hell out. No joke's worth you two."
It was a frustrating manhunt, and only Glory's charm turned it into a successful treasure hunt. I'll be brief.
London: Piccadilly Circus. June 1944.
Background: Locals all going about their business. Pillars of smoke rising in the distance and even nearby. Overhead the occasional keen of a buzz-bomb. No one paid much attention until the sound cut off, which meant that a bomb was dropping. Then almost everybody stopped and waited until the explosion sounded somewhere and another pillar of smoke towered up. Then more business as usual through the howl of sirens.
Regent's Park: Now filled with anti-aircraft batteries and crews. Zoological buildings taken over as barracks. No sign of anyone imprisoned by machines. Surprise. Surprise.
Old Bond Ltd: Bombed out.
Hall of Records: For name and address of proprietor of same.
Half Moon Street: Home of said proprietor. Not available. Now a P.O.W. in Germany. The slavey minding the house knew nothing about Old Bond or champagne. She asked us if we were spies. We told her yes.
Cadogan Hotel in Sloane Street: A suite because it looked as if we'd have to stay the night. Very posh but took my word that we'd just been bombed out with nothing left but the clothes on our backs. Registered as Mr. and Mrs. A. Noir. Ten pounds.
Ancient bellhop who led us up the stairs (elevators not running, of course) proudly told us that this was the very same suite where Oscar Wilde had been arrested in 1894. Liar. It was 1895, and Wilde got busted in the court of Old Bailey.