decade or two earlier. Those Johnsons who were long-time residents of the area had their employment given in earlier directories even though the more recent ones omitted it.
They worked for two long days compiling a list of most likely subjects—Eastman Kodak Company employees and former employees; employees and former employees of optical companies; and those Johnsons directly connected with a technical product or service that suggested they might have the competence to invent a new form of len. Not until they attempted to make use of their list did they become fully aware of how hopeless their mission was.
On the basis of a few casual questions, they had to decide whether a total stranger had invented, or was about to invent, the most evil device in all of human history. Even if they had the good fortune to locate him, would he be likely to let them know he was the right Johnson? Why should he willingly confide information about his invention to strangers? And what could they do if he lied and professed to know nothing about lens?
It seemed like an impossible task, but of course they had to try.
They began with those Johnsons who had a likely business connection, and one Randell Johnson, listed as the owner of Johnson’s Cameras, stood high on their list. They called on him at his place of business and had a polite conversation with him. He was a gaunt, elderly man who would have been almost as tall as Roszt and Kaynor if he hadn’t been so stooped. He listened with a half smile to Roszt’s short presentation of the material Egarn had taught them for situations like this: They were searching for the descendants of Ebeneser Johnson, who had resided in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, at the time of the American Revolution. There was an inheritance involved—not a huge one but one sufficiently large to justify a diligent search for heirs.
By the time Roszt finished, Randall Johnson was smiling broadly. “What’s the catch?” he demanded.
Fortunately this had been a favorite expression of their friend in Buffalo. “There is no catch,” Kaynor said carefully. “We only want to learn whether you are a descendant of Ebeneser Johnson.”
“If I’m not, you’ll go quietly?”
“But of course.”
“I’ve never heard of Ebeneser Johnson. You’re shaking the wrong family tree.”
“We speak of a time more than two hundred years ago. You could have had eight, or ten, or twelve ancesters since then. Just give us the names and principal places of residence of your Johnson forebears as far back as you can remember. Our genealogist will connect you if he can.”
“And what does this cost me?”
“Nothing. The estate pays all expenses.”
“In that case, there won’t be anything left for the heirs,” Johnson said sourly, but he provided names and addresses for his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
Roszt and Kaynor returned to their car, which was parked around the corner, and discussed Mr. Randell Johnson. He seemed like a most unlikely inventer of the Honsun Len; on the other hand, he owned an obviously successful camera and photographic supply business. He sold lens, and there was nothing to indicate that he didn’t make them himself.
Doubtfully they turned to the next name, and as they slowly worked through their “most likely” list—Johnsons whose backgrounds made them immediately suspect—they also began sampling the Johnsons on their general list. Egarn had said many people in this civilization had private pastimes, and unbeknownst to friends and neighbors the Honsun Len Johnson might be an amateur len grinder. This confronted them with the task of discovering not only known occupations but also secret hobbies.
They visited the George Eastman House, the splendid mansion once occupied by the famous photographic inventor and industrialist and now the home of the International Museum of Photography. There they confounded a guard by asking to see the lens invented by Mr. Johnson. After investigating, the guard informed them that the museum had no record of such a lens.
They visited Johnson Center, an enormous old house on Mt. Hope Avenue near the university, which proved to be headquarters for various social services that had no discernable connection with anyone named Johnson. In studying a map of the area, they found a Johnson Road—near the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory, which was suggestive—but as far as they could determine, no one named Johnson lived on or near it.
When finally it became obvious that their inquiries were leading nowhere, they moved to the next step of their investigation: breaking and entering. They broke into buildings where a Johnson lived or worked and searched for evidence of an interest in lens—instruments or equipment using lens, drawings of lens, devices that could be used for len grinding.
Egarn had feared that their search would come to this, and he instructed them accordingly. They were to spread their activity as widely as possible and make it so varied that the police wouldn’t perceive the connection. They also were not to burglarize any Johnson they had called on recently. If they did, someone would be certain to associate the two events.
Thus began the most peculiar series of crimes in the history of the Rochester Police Department. Burglars for whom no lock or alarm system was a deterent broke in wherever and whenever they chose and left the premises as tidily secure as when they entered. Burglar alarms mysteriously malfunctioned in their presence. Surveillance cameras turned out blank photographs. There were no fingerprints because the burglars always wore gloves.
Even more bewildering was the fact that they took nothing. They sometimes made a mess in their search, as though they were looking for something of value, but after checking carefully, the perplexed owners always had to report nothing missing.
They took nothing because they found nothing—nothing, that is, that connected anyone with the Honsun Len. In a very short time they became so proficient at breaking and entering that they could literally do it under the noses of the police without arousing a wiff of suspicion. Each night they crossed more names off their list. The list, unfortunately, was a long one.
Two kinds of places gave them difficulty. With apartment buildings, they first had trouble figuring out addresses—often they were unable to determine the precise apartment the bewildering array of letters and numbers referred to. Next there was the problem of reaching an apartment through a common building entrance and passing numerous doors of other apartments without being seen. Until they discovered the telephone, they had a problem finding out in advance whether anyone was home. Large houses also posed a problem because of the constant presence of servants. There always seemed to be someone home in a mansion.
As they worked, their worry about Egarn and his team grew. They had heard nothing from him. The methods he devised for sending them messages and picking up the messages they left for him hadn’t worked. Each morning and night they searched their room, but always there was nothing. The messages they left for him —in an envelope attached to a weight placed at the center of an otherwise bare table where it could be picked up easily—were never disturbed.
Each night before retiring they signalled with a flashlight, using the code Egarn had taught them, but they received no sign at all that he was still watching. As the daez passed, they became tormented by fear that the Lantiff had returned to butcher everyone in the ruins as they had those at court and in the villages, leaving them completely on their own with a world to save.
16. ARNEAND DELINE
One-namers from the western peerdoms were devastated by the news Arne brought, but fate of Midlow Court affected Deline hardly at all. She had resented her mother, she had hardly known her sister, and—she remarked with a toss of her head—most of the peeragers weren’t worth bothering about anyway.
Only the ravaging of Midd Village distressed her. Midlow’s one-namers had been kind to her, and she wept for them, but her eyes were dry with anger. “The trouble with this war is that we aren’t killing enough Lantiff,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”
It was a different war, now. The little army was no longer defending the Ten Peerdoms. Half of these were gone; others were crumbling. Easlon, with its brilliant peer and prince, still stood, and both peerager and one- namer refugees who’d had the good fortune to escape the Lantiff circled far around the armies of Lant and arrived exhausted and starving. The one-namers, at least, were fiercely determined to sell their lives dearly and take as
