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otherwise. It is enough, for Mallory, that
Catastrophism proved a fortunate road to higher geological truth, leading him
to his greatest personal triumph: the discovery, in 1865, of continental
drift.
More than the Brontosaurs, more than the ceratopsian eggs of the Gobi Desert,
it is this astonishing leap of reckless insight that has assured his immortal
fame.
Mallory, who sleeps little, seats himself at a curvilinear Japanese desk of
artificial ivory.
Past the open curtains, incandescent bulbs gleam beyond the polychrome,
abstractly patterned windows of his nearest neighbor. The neighbor's house,
like Mallory's own, is a meticulously orchestrated riot of organic forms,
roofed with iridescent ceramic dragon-scales -- England's dominant style of
modern architecture, though the mode itself has its turn-of-the-century
origins in the thriving Republic of Catalonia.
Mallory has only recently dismissed a purportedly clandestine meeting of the
Society of Light.
As the final Hierarch of this dwindling confraternity, tonight he wears the
formal robes of office. His woolen chasuble of royal indigo is fringed in
scarlet. A floor-length indigo skirt of artificial silk, similarly fringed, is
decorated with concentric bands of semiprecious stones. He has set aside a
domed crown of beaded gold-plate, with a neck-guard of overlapping gilt
scales;
this rests now upon a small desk-printer.
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He dons his spectacles, loads a pipe, fires it. His secretary, Cleveland, is a
most punctilious and orderly man, and has left him two sets of documents,
neatly squared atop the desk in folders of brass-clasped manila. One folder
lies to his right, the other to his left, and it cannot be known which he will
choose.
He chooses the folder to his left. It is an Engine-printed report from an
elderly officer of the Meirokusha, a famous confraternity of Japanese scholars
which serves, not incidentally, as the foremost Oriental chapter of the
Society of Light. The precise text of the report cannot be found in England,
but is preserved in Nagasaki along with an annotation indicating that it was
wired to the Hierarch via standard channels on April 11. The text indicates
that the Meirokusha, suffering a grave decline in membership and a growing
lack of attendance, have voted to indefinitely postpone further meetings. It
is accompanied by an itemized bill for refreshments, and rental fees for a
small upstairs room in the Seiyoken, a restaurant in the Tsukiji quarter of
Tokyo.
Lord Mallory, though this news is not unexpected, is filled with a sense of
loss and bitterness. His temper, fierce at the best of times, has sharpened
with old-age; his indignation swells to helpless rage.
An artery fails.
That chain of events does not occur.
He chooses the folder to his right. It is thicker than the one to his left,
and this intrigues him. It contains a detailed field report from a Royal
Society paleontological expedition to the
Pacific coast of Western Canada. Pleased by an awakened nostalgia for his own
expedition days, he studies the report closely.
The modern labor of science can scarcely be more different from that of his
own day. The
British scientists have flown to the mainland from the flourishing metropolis
of Victoria, and have motored at their ease into the mountains from a
luxurious base in the coastal village of
Vancouver. Their leader, if he can be given this title, is a young Cambridge
graduate named
Morris, whom Mallory remembers as a queer, ringleted fellow, given to wearing
velvet capes and elaborate Modernist hats.
The strata under examination are Cambrian, dark shale of a near-lithographic
quality. And, it seems, they teem with a variety of intricate forms, the
paper-thin and thoroughly crushed remnants of an ancient invertebrate fauna.
Mallory, a vertebrate specialist, begins to lose interest; he
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt has seen, he
thinks, more trilobites than anyone ever should have to, and in truth he has
always found it difficult to conjure up enthusiasm for anything less than two
inches in length. Worse yet, the report's prose strikes him as unscientific,
marked by a most untoward air of radical enthusiasm.
He turns to the plates.
There is a thing in the first plate that possesses five eyes. It has a long
clawed nozzle instead of a mouth.
There is a legless, ray-like thing, all lobes and jelly, with a flat, fanged
mouth that does not bite but irises shut.
There is a thing whose legs are fourteen horny, pointed spikes -- a thing
which has no head, no eyes, no gut, but does have seven tiny pincered mouths,
each at the tip of a flexible tentacle.
These things bear no relation to any known creature, from any known period
whatever.
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