A Princess of The Linear Jungle

“And I’m Arturo! Now, let’s adjourn to the Burncoat Pub and celebrate our new relationship, Merritt.”
    Six Bohm-Moravia Pale Ales apiece later, leaning in practically cheek-to-cheek with Merritt, Arturo said, “Would you like to see those hideous, libidinous scars the savage Papoons inditedindicted indited upon my very flesh, Mer?”
    “Yes, Art! Yes, I would!”
    The next day at the NikThek, Merritt caught her boss Edgar Cham-bless scrutinizing her oddly from time to time. She did not think the old man was savvy enough to recognize that she still wore yesterday’s exact outfit, since, truth to tell, she often dressed identically from day to day. But then she realized that she still bore and disseminated Art’s signature aftershave scent straight to the nose of his ex-mentor.

    Although the taciturn and crusty old fellow did not promulgate his views in the classroom unless pressed—at which time he was forthright and unapologetic about his beliefs—Merritt knew that Professor Durian Vinnagar was a devout Vasukian. The stout, short, gruff academic wore a small lapel pin on his omnipresent tweed coat that symbolized his dogma that the Citybeast—that half-legendary, seldom apprehended, never utterly totalized serpentine entity that underpinned the Linear City, and whose riskily purloined scales stoked a thousand thousand superstitions—was male in gender, and dubbed Vasuki. Vinnagar’s golden Ouroboros jewelry jetted a tiny static spurt of metallic semen.
    This affiliation alone would have set Professor Vinnagar against his colleague Arturo Scoria, who was a Reform Manasan, and who therefore doctrinally maintained in a quasi-agnostic fashion that the Citybeast was female and prefered the cognomen of Manasa. (The silver pin of the Reform Manasans showed the tail-in-mouth serpent girdling an egg.)
    But the two rivals bore animosity toward each other on sundry professional levels as well. Outside the classroom, among their peers, Vinnagar had been heard to call Scoria a “showboater,” a “dilettante,” and a “sensationalist.” Scoria in turn labeled Vinnagar an “antiquarian,” a “retrogradist,” and a “doctrinaire Diffusionist,” this latter insult attacking Vinnagar’s old-fashioned, out-of-style belief that there was one ur-Borough from which all others had been populated millennia ago.
    But even given her new amorous and professional affiliation with Professor Arturo Scoria, Merritt could not find it in herself to dislike or discredit Vinnagar and his teachings. The man housed in his head a huge stock of valuable polypolisological information, much of it derived from ancient tomes too little consulted these days. He also exhibited a dry wit and genuine pedagogical talent and enthusiasm.
    Vinnagar’s course that Merritt was auditing in parallel this semester with Scoria’s was “Statistical Tools for Polypolisology.” It appealed to her linear, rational side just as much as Arturo’s story-telling appealed to her romantic visions, and she strove to do well in “Polyp Stats.”
    The week after she had cemented in his messy bachelor bedroom her new relationship with Art, Merritt found herself in Vinnagar’s classroom. Throughout the lecture the man seemed to cast a dubious eye upon Merritt. Her suspicions as to a shift in Vinnagar’s attitude were borne out when he detained her after class.
    Merritt had to stifle a giggle at the sudden notion that Vinnagar would ask her to become his lover as well. But predictably, her teacher took not a seductive but a monitory tone.
    “Miss Abraham, I am not one to spread or encourage rumors. But reliable reports inform me that you and Professor Scoria have formed a bond both intellectual and, ahem, physical that bodes ill toward your professional career. Surely you can see that tight allegiance with anyone faction in the department—especially such a shallow and academically dishonest member of our staff—can only result in skewing your future path. You owe it to your own considerable talents to maintain a studious neutrality—at least until you are more advanced in your studies, say at the time of choosing your thesis topic.”
    Here Durian Vinnagar essayed a small smile. “I had even hoped that perhaps if your status at the University became more normalized, you would consider having me as your advisor.”
    Merritt hardly knew how to respond. “Professor Vinnagar, I’m genuinely flattered and honored. But all of this seems premature.