A Princess of The Linear Jungle

yesterday’s deadline for preparing all the display cases in advance of tomorrow’sopening of the NikThek’s newest exhibit, “The Diaries of Cadwal Throy.”
    Merritt hastened to the big hall hosting the exhibit. Empty of visitors, its high-mounted, tall, waxed-fabric shades still drawn so that the only illumination came from sunlight leaking around their brown edges, the cavernous space, with its famous Essy Baniassad friezes, evoked the legacy of some forgotten, mysteriously extinct civilization. Merritt experienced a small frisson, then shook off the sensation and got to work.
    Cadwal Throy had flourished, up until his death fifty years ago, in the Borough of Zulma. An undistinguished civil servant, he had minutely chronicled his daily, unexceptional life in millions of scribbled words in identical bland accountant’s ledgers. Intriguingly odd behavior, yes—but worthy of inclusion in the vaunted archives of the NikThek? Not without the accompanying illustrations, nearly one per page, which represented an artistic vision that might best be characterized as that of a megalomaniacal erotomane. The fact that chemical analysis revealed the “ink” to have an admixture of blood only added to the academic attractiveness of the diaries.
    Of such myriad odd artifacts as the Throy oeuvre, organized into vast interlocking categories by theorems and paradigms, was the discipline of polypolisology compounded. The study and explication of the entire range of human behaviors as culturally modulated and channeled by conditions in all the varying segments of the linear metropolis.
    Donning her white cotton curatorial gloves and adjusting a portable goosenecked lamp that clipped to the table legs, Merritt began arranging the diary volumes in their display cases, first removing them from their elaborate packing cases, then turning to the pages selected by the curators, banding the pages open, propping the books artfully on their stands, positioning the explanatory typed cards on the velvet….
    By ten AM she had a sense that if she continued at the same pace, skipping lunch, she would be able to meet her deadline. She plunged ahead, insensible now to her surroundings. Throy’s disturbing drawings began to enmesh her in some alternate, not entirely comfortable world….
    After some nebulous interval, Merritt became aware that she was not alone in the room. Her ears acknowledged the sounds of lively patrons beyond the doors of this closed gallery. She looked up to confront her superior, Edgar Chambless.
    Having forgotten more polypolisological arcana than Merritt might ever hope to learn, the elderly Chambless had acquired a legendary status even so far away as Jermyn Rogers College in Stagwitz. Weedy as a mullein in stature and shabbily dressed in a wool suit, despite summer’s swelter, he owned the face of a lugubrious longshoreman, rather than that of any effete scholar.
    “Miss Abraham. I understood this exhibit was to be finalized by end of day yesterday, and that today you would be helping install the Squillacote scrimshaws.”
    Merritt gulped. “Ah, yes, sir, that was the plan. But you see, I got busy studying this fascinating material, and—”
    Merritt faltered to a stop. Chambless stared at her through the thick lenses of his rimless eyeglasses as if inspecting a shipment of obscene fetiches from Lesser Hutsong. Finally he said, “Miss Abraham, please accompany me back to my office.”
    “But the exhibit—”
    “It will be ready in time. Now, come.”
    He turned and walked away without waiting for Merritt’s acquiescence.
    Chambless’s office featured tottering piles of books and file folders, manuscripts and photographs, maps and charts, all topped with sculptures, paintings, handicrafts and jewelry—the exotic detritus of a thousand expeditions and professorial trades-by-mail up and down the length of the Linear City. The odor in the windowless chamber deep inside the NikThek spoke of strange spices and perfumes, the differently scented dust of far-off stretches of Broadway, realms beyond easy travel or effortless sympathetic ken.
    Chambless lifted a huge tangled heap of smelly hempen fishnet off a chair. “Recognize the knotting technique here, Miss Abraham?”
    Merritt studied the netting. “Fantino-style?”
    “Ah, an excellent eye. Have a seat, please.”
    Merritt sat. The chair cushion felt damp, but perhaps that was only her imagination.
    Chambless took up position behind his desk. Only his