The Curator
“Since we’re on this side of Serannian,” said Dass as they left the restaurant, “and since we’ve an hour or so to spare before the Tilt, I suggest we visit the Museum.”
“You know, Limnar,” Eldin sighed after a moment’s thought, “I’ve somehow grown to like you—despite the fact that you constantly speak in riddles! What, pray tell, is the Tilt?”
“And what,” Hero added, “has it to do with our seeing Kuranes?”
“Transport problems in Serannian,” Dass began by way of explanation, “are nonexistent. We have bicycles, and we have the Tilt. Serannian’s surface is more or less flat, or would be under normal circumstances. But four times a day everything is downhill …” He paused and smiled as if to say, “there you have it.”
“Good!” cried Eldin when it became apparent that Limnar had said his all. “Excellent! Clear as bloody mud!”
Hero looked deep into the captain’s eyes but found no trace of humor there. Since Dass was obviously sincere, the fault must lie elsewhere. “Would you like to
say all of that again?” he invited. “Only—could you possibly put it some other way?”
“One we can understand,” Eldin added.
Dass sighed. “The sky-island has a built-in tilt,” he said. “Not a big one, but a tilt nevertheless. We call it the Tilt. It travels clockwise and completes a circuit every six hours. Therefore, four times a day you can cycle downhill, right across the city if you wish.”
“Hmm,” mused Hero. “Yes, I’d noticed that.”
“Eh?” said Eldin, mouth agape. “Noticed what? How come you always notice things after the fact?”
“The bikes,” Hero answered. “Lots of bikes, but all going in one direction. And none of them have pedals!”
“Of course not,” said Dass. “By the time you’ve spent an hour or two in any one place, it’s usually time to ride the Tilt home again! Why pedal when in a couple of hours you can freewheel? Anyway, don’t worry about it. After we’ve had a look at the Museum you’ll be able to experience the Tilt for yourselves. Kuranes’ manor house is on the other side of the city, so we’ll have to bike it.”
“His manor house?” queried Eldin. “Not a palace?”
Dass grinned in a manner the adventurers were becoming used to. “No,” he shook his head. “Oh, he’s King, right enough, but he styles himself Lord. Lord of Ooth-Nargai, Celephais, and the sky around Serannian. He was once a waking-worlder, remember? Old habits die hard.”
The adventurers stared at each other for a moment, then Hero turned back to Dass. “It’s a funny old place, your Serannian,” he said. “But tell me, Limnar, what makes you think we’d be interest in … a museum, did you say?”
“
The
Museum, yes. Follow me.” He led them down an alley to the sea wall, then pointed across the
cloudbank sea to where a great circular structure was perched on a promontory at the eastern extreme of the sky-island. Beneath the circular building the rock was a shallow crust less than fifty feet thick, and beneath that—nothing.
Eldin frowned. “Captain Dass,” he said, reverting to the formal, “that seems a damned strange place to build a museum. Why, it looks ready to break off and fall into the sky!”
“
The
Museum,” Dass insisted. “Oh, it’s safe enough. Indeed, that’s the whole idea—safety. There’s only one way into the Museum, you see, and that’s along the causeway over the neck of the promontory. One way in and one way out. Thieves think twice before they tackle the Museum. That’s why I thought you’d like to see it. Give your imagination something to work on. Take your minds off your interview with Kuranes. Oh, yes, the Museum would be a hard place to crack, all right—but the Curator, impossible!”
“Yes, well, you’ve lost me again,” said Hero. “I mean, we’re talking about a museum … all right,” he quickly held up his hands, “
the
Museum—a place of mummies and bones and books and—”
“Gems and jewels and precious stones,” said Dass. “And golden figurines, ivory statues, jade miniatures; and priceless antiques, works of art and—”
“Whoa!” cried Eldin. “Hold on a minute. All of that? In there?” And he leaned on the sea wall and nodded his head toward the building on the promontory. Dass grinned as he noticed the gleam in the older adventurer’s eye. In Hero’s eyes, too.
“Jewels?” said the younger man in a dry voice. “Gold?”
“That’s right,” said Dass. “I guessed you’d be interested.
Come on then. It’s closer than it looks. A ten-minute walk, that’s all …”
The causeway was narrow, walled, and perhaps thirty yards in length. Since there was room for only two abreast, the three men had to cross single file in order to allow sightseers leaving the Museum the right of passage. Looking down over the low wall as they went, Eldin and Hero were able to gaze almost straight down into uncounted fathoms of air—the aerial “deeps” of the Cerenerian Sea—beneath which the cites, towns, lakes, rivers, mountains and less extraordinary seas of Earth’s dreamland were spread like some fantastic miniature world which reached to the horizon. Far off they could even see Celephais, clearly recognizable where snow-capped Aran’s white head was raised before the nearby Tanarians.
“Hardly the place for a walk on a windy day,” Hero dryly commented as fleecy clouds scudded by beneath his feet.
They entered the Museum through a great archway and found themselves in a three-storied building of stone whose sealed windows were of unbreakable crystal. Ventilation was through the archway, which had no door, and also through a square aperture in the ocean-facing curve of the wall which was big as a large window but placed much higher. Its sill was all of five feet from the floor, so that when the adventurers stood on tiptoe, they were just able to stick their heads out to look down over the sky-island’s very rim.
Though the Museum had three stories, the first and second floors contained only those items with which ordinary museums commonly concern themselves: Hero’s “mummies and bones and books,” and suchlike. The visitors opted to remain on the ground floor, however,
for this was where the museum’s valuables were housed—of which. the quantity and quality were utterly beyond belief.
“Strangely,” said Eldin, pausing before an open cabinet of cut rubies as big as pigeon’s eggs, “I feel a sort of affinity with this place. Curious, eh?”
“What’s strange or curious about it?” asked Hero. “You’re a damned thief, right? And this place is crammed with goodies!”
“No, it’s not that,” Eldin answered with a frown, “though granted I do find these baubles attractive. No, it’s something else, but I don’t quite know what. I rather fancy I must have been an erudite, scholarly sort of chap in the waking world. A haunter of museums or some such.”
“Is that right?” said Hero, frowning a pseudo-serious frown. “Well, perhaps you’d tell me, learned haunted one, if you’ve noticed anything else strange about this place?”
“Hmm?” Eldin cocked his head on one side.
“There’s no security,” said Hero. “These treasures—why, we could just walk right out of here with them! It completely contradicts what our good friend here, Captain Limnar Dass, told us.”
“I told you the Museum was safe,” said Dass. “And so it is. You’d know what I meant if you could see the Curator. But you probably won’t. He’s here somewhere, but very rarely seen. Usually he only puts in an appearance if someone tries to steal something.”
“But how could the Curator know?” asked Hero.
Dass shrugged. “He always does,” he answered.
“Something else!” cried Eldin, snapping his fingers. “I knew something was puzzling me. There are no labels, notes, histories of the exhibits. There
are
exhibits—” he licked his lips “—indeed there are—but nothing to tell us anything about them.”
“Only the fact,” said Dass, “that everything is very rare, very beautiful, or very precious. I’ll tell you what I know of the Curator, if you wish; not that it amounts to a lot, but—”
But at that moment, coming toward them through a crowd of visitors from a dozen different regions of the dreamlands, Dass spied a small whiskered man dressed in the livery of the waking world. “Ah!” the captain said. “One of the King’s retainers. It looks like Kuranes has finally sent for you.”
The captain was right. The whiskered man introduced himself as Lord Kuranes’ No. 3 Butler, and he asked Dass and his wards to go at once to the manor house. They followed him out under the stone archway and onto the causeway, but halfway across there was someone—some
thing
—waiting for them. Something which brought them to an abrupt halt.
The Curator was vaguely manlike, thin, tall, spiky, lumpy, shiny and tough-looking, many-armed, and he had glittering crystal eyes. He was built of metal, which was rather noisy when he moved, but apart from that he was silent. He was silent now as he confronted Kuranes’ butler, Dass and the two adventurers.
“Now what’s all this about?” wondered Hero out loud as the gangling metal being clanked to one side and let the butler pass.
“Perhaps he’s been somewhere and only just returned?” Dass suggested.
“No,” said Hero through clenched teeth, his eyes narrowing as he turned them on Eldin where he had fallen back to bring up the rear. “No, I think he’s here on business—but not with you and me.”
As if in agreement with the younger adventurer’s
words, the metal man once more stood aside to let first Dass, then Hero pass; but when a rather pale Eldin shuffled forward, the Curator clankingly blocked the way. His crystal eyes glittered palely and faint beams of light flickered of the Wanderer’s drawn face. From somewhere deep inside Eldin managed to summon up a mirthless grin. He tried to squeeze past the Curator …
Quick as thought the robot shot out incredibly thin arms to lift Eldin clear of the causeway and hold him out over the wall. Looking straight down, Eldin saw clouds scudding by, and far below them a shore of dreamland washed by gently foaming waves. Knowing he was about to be dropped, the Wanderer sought for words with which to protest his end. They stuck in his tinder-dry throat, unspoken, as on the causeway Hero hurled himself upon the Curator’s flank.
“Damn you, you metal dog!” he cried. “If you drop him, I swear I’ll see to it that you rust in some ferrous metal hell!”
The Curator said nothing, but one of his many metal arms grasped Hero by the hair and shoved him out to arm’s length, lifting him until he danced on tiptoe. With Hero held in this painful position, Eldin was brought back from eternity and set down upon the causeway. Weakly he leaned against the wall as the Curator pointed a metal hand at his jacket pocket.
“Yes, you’re right, damn you!” Eldin gasped, and with a trembling hand he took out a single large ruby and held it up. Now the Curator released Hero and pointed back across the causeway to the Museum. People made way as Eldin turned and walked unsteadily back to the archway and beneath it, with the Curator clanking along behind him.
Hero made to follow but Dass stopped him. “Your large friend is lucky,” he said breathlessly. “The Curator
has been known to kill would-be thieves outright—out of hand. And you may be sure your threat didn’t worry him. I doubt if he even heard or understood it.”
They waited on the causeway like a pair of pariahs while the rest of the Museum’s visitors hurriedly departed, and in a few seconds Eldin reappeared and joined them. He turned back to stare into the shadows under the archway, where now the bizarre figure of the Curator silently stood, his crystal eyes full on the three.
Eldin shuddered involuntarily. “If ever he lays eyes on me again,” he said, “he’ll kill me. And I’m sorry but … I think the same goes for you two. He didn’t say so—said nothing—but I got that impression.” “Oh?” snarled Hero as he and Dass ushered Eldin over the causeway. “And what did we do to annoy him?”
“You were with me,” the Wanderer answered. “That’s enough.”
“Eldin,” Limnar Dass softly called when they were off the causeway and safely out of sight of the Museum. As Eldin turned toward him he continued: “Never do anything like that again, not in my company. For if you do—big man as you are—I swear I’ll knock your head off!”
“I’m a thief,” growled Eldin. “I couldn’t resist it.”
“Next time—if ever there is one—resist it,” Dass advised. “It certainly won’t help your cause where Kuranes is concerned. His No. 3 Butler, who by now will be halfway to his master’s manor house, is bound to tell him.”
They found a railed square where several bikes were parked near shrubs and fountains. The bikes had engaged/vacant indicators set centrally on their handlebars. They took three vacant bikes and set off, Limnar Dass leading, straight across the sky-island and through the inner streets of the city. Vague memories lingered,
of bike-rides in the waking world; and so the adventurers soon got used to free-wheeling and their riding quickly became less wobbly and erratic as they rode the Tilt through Serannian.
Half an hour later, leaving the busier streets behind them and coming out into the suburbs on the western side of the city, the two adventurers drew level with Limnar Dass and after a while the captain began to talk to them. His friendly grin told them that Eldin’s instinctive thievery was forgiven—by him at least. This prompted the Wanderer to ask: