A Princess of The Linear Jungle

hang patient.”
    Reaching its inevitable conclusion, the trial of the Boy Docs resulted in the expected, non-appealable sentence—death by the traditional yet ironic mode of lethal injection.
    The day scheduled for the execution, the first of December, a Saturday, dawned grey, cold and wan. Merritt waked alone. Art had been very busy the past week, away on mysterious missions, some of which involved, she knew, high-level consultations at the University, but others of which saw the polypolisologist doing fieldwork of a sort among the local Trainmen. He adamantly refused to disclose the import of all these activities, nor how they interrelated.
    At first Merritt had been intent on staying as far away from Wharton Block 11, site of the Ludwig Hilberseimer Prison, as she could manage. But in the end, due to her intimate connection with the case, she felt compelled to attend the enactment of justice.
    Out on Broadway, where traffic had been temporarily halted due to the throngs, Merritt studied the grim façade of the prison. How often she had passed it, never remarking on the ugly building or its function. Now it possessed such supreme significance. There, except for chance and goodwill and some measure of inherent moral fiber, Ransom Pivot himself might have been lying on the death trolley.
    Just then, as if summoned by her thoughts, Merritt thought to catch a glimpse of a haggard Ransome himself through a momentary parting of the crowd. Did he have a woman with him? What did Merritt care?
    The crowd gasped as one. Merritt looked up.
    For decades afterwards the people of Wharton would talk about this moment, how they had never seen such a tangled mass of Pompatics, their numbers uncountable really, all contending in their descent on the Prison, as if each wished to bag the honor of carrying off the “corpses” of Henry Yun and Goodge Adams, those delayers and despoilers of natural death.
    That evening Merritt’s lovemaking with Arturo Scoria was vast and violent, as if to reaffirm her allegiance to life.
    After Art had relearned how to breathe and unrolled his eyes from the back of his head, he said, “Torture me as you will, fair Gretchen, you’ll not get the secrets of the last week from noble Sermak!”
    With its reference to torture, the joke caused Merritt to burst into a flood of bitter tears—but tears that proved ultimately cathartic.
    And just one day later, she had the secrets as well—albeit only twenty-four hours in advance of the rest of Wharton, which would soon be abuzz with the news.
    Professor Arturo Scoria galloped into the NikThek cafeteria that Monday, found Merritt, and dragged her willy- nilly, without securing permission, into Chambless’s empty office.
    “Look! Look at this!”
    He shoved a motion-blurred photograph under her nose. Merritt could discern only a welter of vegetation.
    “Closer! Use your eyes!”
    From between two tree boles poked a naked human arm and shoulder and bit of torso, the skin an astonishing brick-red.
    “What—what does it mean?”
    “The Trainmen snapped it during a run! It’s Vayavirunga! With human presence! Perfect polypolisological specimens! Untouched! And the University is funding my expedition there!”

6.
    EXPEDITION HO!™

    TABLOIDS SUCH AS THE WHARTON YAWP AND THE BOROUGH Busybody , with their massive reading public, gobbled up news of the Scoria expedition to Vayavirunga like teething tots at a teat.

    JUNGLE JAUNT FOR FAMED EXPLORER!
    THE BOROUGHS THAT TIME FORGOT!
    RED NATIVES OF THE FORBIDDEN BLOCKS!
    PROBE OF THE MYSTERY MILES!

    This reaction was precisely what both Professor Arturo Scoria and the deans and trustees of Swazeycape University had been counting on. Instantly forgotten was the infamous scandal of the Boy Docs. Swazeycape’s reputation as an unimpeachable bastion of cerebral pursuits, flavored with daring forays into the unknown frontiers of knowledge, was restored, and even received a fresh burnishing.
    And Scoria’s personal reputation had never shone more scintillating or alluring. Feted by high society and besieged on campus by students and colleagues alike, Scoria basked in the attention, almost visibly plumping up like a pouter pigeon in Spring.
    Merritt, however, found her boyfriend’s new status annoying and confusing. In private, he remained the man she fancied and admired. (And loved? She continued to be conflicted about using that loaded word, sometimes in her heart endorsing the emotion entirely, at other