The Golem's Eye

horrendous crashing noise from the direction of Mr. Pinn's antique porcelain. Another step followed, then a ripping and a rending that could come only from the racks of suits that Simpkin had so carefully hung that very morning.
    Professional distress overcame his fear: he let out a groan of fury and, flexing the club, scraped it accidentally against the Counter.
    The footsteps stopped. He sensed something peering in his direction. Simpkin froze. Darkness coiled about him.
    He flicked his eyes back and forth. From memory, he knew he was only a few meters away from the nearest shuttered window. If he stepped backward now, perhaps he could reach it before—
    Something stepped across the room toward him. It came with a heavy tread.
    Simpkin tiptoed backward.
    There was a sudden splintering noise midway across the room. He halted, wincing. That was the mahogany cabinet that Mr. Pinn was so fond of! Regency period, with ebony handles and lapis lazuli inlays! What a terrible disaster!
    He forced himself to concentrate. Only a couple of yards more to the window. Keep going... he was almost there. The heavy tread came after him, each step a ringing concussion against the floor.
    A sudden clatter and screeching of torn metal. Oh—now that was too much! Those racks of protective silver necklaces had taken him an age to sort!
    In his outrage, he paused again. The footsteps were closer now. Simpkin hurriedly tottered a little farther and his searching fingers touched the metal shutters. He felt the warning nodes vibrating beyond it. All he had to do was break his way through.
    But Mr. Pinn had instructed him to remain within the shop at all times, to protect it with his life. True, it was not an official charge, made in a pentacle. He hadn't had one of those for years. So he could disobey it, if he chose.... But what would Mr. Pinn say if he left his post? The idea didn't bear thinking about.
    A shuffling step beside him. A cold taint of earth and worms and clay.
    If Simpkin had obeyed his instincts and turned tail and fled, he might yet have saved himself. The shutters could have been broken through, the alarm nodes torn open, he could have fallen out into the road. But years of willing subjugation to Mr. Pinn had robbed him of his initiative. He had forgotten how to do anything under his own volition. So he could do nothing but stand and tremble and utter hoarse squeaks of ever escalating pitch as the air about him grew grave-cold and slowly filled with an unseen presence.
    He shrank back against the wall.
    Right above him, glass shattered; he felt it cascading to the floor.
    Mr. Pinn's Phoenician incense jars! Priceless!
     
    He gave a cry of rage and, in his final moment, remembered the club held in his hand. Now, blindly, with all his strength, he swung it at last, lashing out at the looming dark that bent down to receive him.

8
     
    Nathaniel
     
    When dawn broke on the morning of Founder's Day, investigators from the Department of Internal Affairs had long been busy in Piccadilly. Ignoring the conventions of the holiday, which prescribed casual wear for all citizens, the officials were dressed in dark gray suits. From a distance, as they clambered ceaselessly over the rubble of the ruined shops, they resembled ants toiling on a mound. In every direction men and women were at work, bending to the floor, straightening, placing fragments of debris in plastic bags with tweezers or inspecting minute stains upon the walls. They wrote in notebooks and scribbled diagrams on parchment strips. More peculiarly, or so it seemed to the crowd loitering beyond the yellow warning flags, they uttered orders and made curt signals into the empty air. These directions were often accompanied by little unexpected air currents, or faint rushing noises that suggested swift and certain movement—sensations that nagged uncomfortably at the imaginations of the onlookers until they suddenly remembered other engagements and went elsewhere.
    Standing atop the pile of masonry that spread from Pinn's Accoutrements, Nathaniel watched the commoners depart. He did not blame them for their curiosity.
    Piccadilly was in turmoil. All the way from Grebe's to Pinn's, each shop had been disemboweled, its contents scrambled and disgorged out into the road through broken doors and windows. Foodstuffs, books, suits, and artifacts lay sad and ruined amid a mess of glass, wood, and broken stone. Inside the buildings the scene was even worse. Each of these shops