dry, woolly taste, like an old mitten. He thought of the generations
of students trooping up and down these stairs, all male until 1888,
then in coeducational platoons, carrying their books and papers and
anatomical drawings, their bright faces and clear eyes, each of
them convinced that a useful and exciting future lay ahead ... and
here, below their feet, the spider spun his eternal snare for the fly
and the trundling beetle, and here this crate sat impassively,
gathering dust, waiting...
A tendril of spidersilk brushed across his forehead and he swept it
away with a small cry of loathing and an uncharacteristic inner
cringe.
'Not very nice under there, is it?' the janitor asked
sympathetically, holding his light centered on the crate. 'God, I
hate tight places.'
Dex didn't reply. He had reached the crate. He looked at the letters
that were stenciled there and then brushed the dust away from
them. It rose in a cloud, intensifying that mitten taste, making him
cough dryly. The dust hung in the beam of the janitor's light like
old magic, and Dex Stanley read what some long-dead chief of
lading had stenciled on this crate.
SHIP TO HORLICKS UNIVERSITY, the top line read. VIA
JULIA CARPENTER, read the middle line. The third line read
simply: ARCTIC EXPEDITION.
Below that, someone had written in heavy black charcoal strokes:
JUNE 19, 1834. That was the one line the janitor's hand-swipe had
completely cleared.
ARCTIC EXPEDITION, Dex read again. His heart began to
thump. 'So what do you think?' the janitor's voice floated in.
Dex grabbed one end and lifted it. Heavy. As he let it settle back
with a mild thud, something shifted inside--he did not hear it but
felt it through the palms of his hands, as if whatever it was had
moved of its own volition. Stupid, of course. It had been an almost
liquid feel, as if something not quite jelled had moved sluggishly.
ARCTIC EXPEDITION.
Dex felt the excitement of an antiques collector happening upon a
neglected armoire with a twenty-five dollar price tag in the back
room of some hick-town junk shop ... an armoire that just might be
a Chippendale. 'Help me get it out,' he called to the janitor.
Working bent over to keep from slamming their heads on the
underside of the stairway, sliding the crate along, they got it out
and then picked it up by the bottom. Dex had gotten his pants dirty
after all, and there were cobwebs in his hair.
As they carried it into the old-fashioned, train-terminal-sized lab,
Dex felt that sensation of shift inside the crate again, and he could
see by the expression on the janitor's face that he had felt it as well.
They set it on one of the formica-topped lab tables. The next one
over was littered with Charlie Gereson's stuff--notebooks, graph
paper, contour maps, a Texas Instruments calculator.
The janitor stood back, wiping his hands on his double-pocket gray
