But their search for Mard Sinnt, the man Redace insisted should be consulted about the lens, was not at first successful. Although everyone had heard of him, no one knew where to find him. He did not frequent any of the well-known clubs and societies. He had not made known any new work lately. Some believed him to be dead.
Eventually they were directed to a back-street tavern on the other side of the city. Coming in out of downpouring rain, they found themselves in a low-ceilinged dive, the upper stories of the building supported by thick pillars of the local wood, jet black and immensely strong. Only old men were drinking there, and they looked on suspiciously at the entrance of younger faces.
The man they had been told to ask for sat alone in a corner, a saucer of syrupy fluid before him. It seemed to be the favorite beverage here; it could not be drunk directly, but was best lapped and slowly swallowed. Rodrone suspected that it also helped to relieve the bronchial troubles which must be rife in this humid, unhealthy atmosphere. “So you look for a man of science, do you?” the old man answered to their question, speaking laboriously. “You young fellows don’t know what science is all about.”
“Hmm. Well, you know, at least we have time to learn. You couldn’t say the same for your case.” Redace put this not-too-kind point in a tone of affable reasonableness.
“Young pups, always think you can do better than your fathers,” the other continued, ignoring him. “But you can’t. Your half-cocked notions are so much water down the drain. In our time it was different—no deduction, no philosophy, only induction. Hard empirical fact. That’s the only method. Stray from it and you might as well bury your head in a barrel of muck.” He lifted his saucer, sipped and swallowed painfully. “Pah! They think of energy as if it was something to worship. Bad, very bad… projection of subjective feelings. They seem to think the sun is a purposive intelligence. Yes, these youngsters even talk about deities.”
He uttered the last word in a tone of incredulous disgust, then went on to remark on the mental decadence of the younger generation. Fascinated, Rodrone prompted him further and began to piece the picture together. The men in the tavern represented an older generation of hard-liners who perhaps for the first time in centuries had tried to put physics back on a solid line of planned progress. They had stuck strictly, almost fanatically, to the experimental method and had ruthlessly thrown out any idea or theory that was not a suitable subject for demonstrable proof. But the generation they had reared had grown tired of their tough, colorless doctrine. They had begun to philosophize, and the insistence on fact had foundered in a morass of cults and cosmic speculation. Embittered and excluded, prevented even from pursuing their own brand of research, the elders now spent their time reminiscing and cursing their children.
For a moment Rodrone wondered whether this man, or one of his colleagues, might be a more suitable recruit than Sinnt for the investigation of the lens. But he rejected the idea. If the old man had once possessed the right qualities, he no longer did so. He lacked the necessary spark of creative imagination. His power was spent, his mind wandering in disappointment and endless recriminations.
Rodrone bought him another saucer of syrup. “But you knew Mard Sinnt.”
“Don’t speak that name to me,” the other said bleakly. “He is dead, gone, useless. Ten years I spent drawing up the plan for him to follow, and he rejected it.”
“Plan?”
He hesitated. “The plan for a lifetime’s research, already mapped out. If it had been followed, it might…” His fist clenched and unclenched. “One lifetime is not enough for some things.”
“So you do know him?” Clave was becoming exasperated.
“He is my nephew. His father entrusted him to me and charged me to see that he carried out the task. But he was more rebellious than a sea dragon.” He smiled, shaking his head. “The dragon that destroys itself, devouring its own body and drinking its own blood…”
He gave a deep sigh, then seemed to come out of his mood somewhat. With yellowed eyes he glanced sharply at the three.
“Why do you want him?”
Rodrone decided to be rash. “We have a Streall artifact. We need him to help us examine it.”
“Indeed? What kind of artifact?”
“A very sophisticated one. We know little about it yet.”
“Hmmm… The Streall do have some interesting gimmicks. Perhaps we could…” His eyebrows rose speculatively.
“If you want to know more about it, ask Sinnt,” Redace said harshly. “If we ever find him, of course.”
“Well, I suppose young Mard has ability, given to him by his father and myself. Wasted, of course, utterly wasted.” Shipping his syrup, he laid the saucer down again and waited expectantly.
With bad grace, Rodrone ordered more drinks.
The night was well advanced by the time they left the tavern and drove to a run-down district on the south quarter of the city.
The house of Mard Sinnt was old and decrepit, fronted with Kelever’s black wood which, however, had begun to rot and looked like rusted iron. The building had an indeterminate number of stories, perhaps four or five, and gave the appearance of being endlessly ramified within.
Rodrone climbed stone steps and placed his hand on an arrival signal plate. After some seconds a voice whispered from a speaker in the door.
“Who is it?”
He was aware of a television eye scanning the three of them. “You don’t know us,” he answered. “We have something of interest to Mard Sinnt.”
“Who sent you?”
Redace stepped forward. “Your fame has traveled far and wide, honorable one. At any rate, it has traveled as far as Cantilever City, that’s on what they call the Broken Planet—nothing but cliffs and chasms and other vertigo-inducing phenomena. A chap there by the name of Diron Mactire told me of you, and since we are looking for an expert, you naturally came to mind.”
“I never heard of the Broken Planet, but I know Diron Mactire. Follow the lights.”
The door swung open. Within, the passageway was gloomy, almost dark. Along the walls arrow-shaped lights began to stream away, leading them along the corridor and down a long flight of stairs.
Mard Sinnt, sitting at a large table strewn with papers, rose to meet them as they entered a long corridor-like room. At first they could see very little except the papers and books on the table, which were illuminated by a reddish lamp. Sinnt himself was no more than a humped shadow in a strange, purple darkness.
“You prefer normal light, perhaps?” the figure said in a hollow voice. An arm moved, and lights sprang to life.
Now they could see Sinnt clearly. He was not young, as the old man in the tavern had led them to believe, but approaching fifty. He was short, and slightly bowed, but his shoulders were broad and looked strong.
The face was startling, horrifying. Its expression was sharp and alert, but it was the expression that might be seen on a statue: there was no life in it. And the eyes were blind, completely blank and unpupiled, just like the dead eyes of a statue.
This last puzzled Rodrone for a second. Blindness was usually remediable, if the eyes were useless, either by eye transplants or the fitting of artificial eyes which looked only slightly different from the real thing. But Sinnt had chosen to fill his eye sockets with steel balls. His sight came from a camera apparatus fixed to his right shoulder. As Rodrone stepped forward to meet him, the camera turned to keep him in view, its two lenses glowing slightly. He noted the cable that joined Sinnt’s skull two inches behind his ear, connected no doubt directly to the optic nerve.