Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Read Online Free PDF

been led around in a circle back to the same room? Maybe in fact I had; maybe in fact I hadn't. Hard to memorize the precise position of each scattered paperclip.
    The old man looked me over. Then he picked up a paperclip and unbent it to scrape at a fingernail cuticle. His left index finger cuticle. When he'd finished with the cuticle, he discarded the straightened paperclip into the ashtray. If I ever get reincarnated, it occurred to me, let me make certain I don't come back as a paperclip.
    "Accordint'my information, those INKlings are like this with the Semiotecs," said the old man. "Not that they're in cahoots, mind you. INKlings're too wary, and your Semiotec's got his own agenda planned out way ahead. So cooperation's got't'be limited to the very few. Still, it doesn't bode well. The fact that we've got INKlings pokin' around right here, where there oughn't't'be INKlings 'tall, just shows how bad things are. If it keeps on like this, this place's goint'be swarmin' with INKlings day and night. And that'll make real problems for me."
    "Quite," I concurred, "quite." I hadn't the vaguest idea what sort of operants these INKlings were, but if for any reason they'd joined forces with the Semiotecs, then the outlook wasn't too bright for me either. Which was to say that the contest between our side and the Semiotechnicians was already in a delicate balance, and the slightest tampering could overturn the whole thing. For starters, I knew nothing about these INKlings, yet they knew about me. This already tipped the scales in their favor. Of course, to a lower-echelon field independent like myself, not knowing about INKlings was only par for the course, whereas the Brass at the top were probably aware of them ages ago.
    "Well, if it's all right with you, let's get hoppin'," said the old man.
    "Absolutely," I said.
    "I asked them't'send 'round their crackest Calcutec, and seems you've got that reputation.
    Everyone speaks mighty highly of you. You got the knack, got the gumption, you do a crack job. Other than a certain lack of team spirit, you got no strikes against you."
    "An exaggeration, I'm sure," I said.
    The old man guffawed again. "And team spirit's no great shakes. The real question is gumption. You don't get't'be a first-string Calcutec without your share of spunk. That's how you command such high wages, eh?"
    Yet another guffaw. Then the old man guided me into an adjoining workroom.
    "I'm a biologist," he said. "But the word biology doesn't begin't'cover all that I do.
    Everythin' from neurophysiology to acoustics, linguistics to comparative religion. Not your usual bag of tricks, if I do say so myself. These days I'm researchin' the mammalian palate."
    "Palate?"
    "The mouth, son. The way the mouth's put together. How the mouth works, how it gives voice, and various related topics. Here, take a look at this."
    Whereupon he flicked a switch on the wall and the lab lights came on. The whole back of the room was flush with shelves, each lined with skulls. Giraffe, horse, panda, mouse, every species of mammal imaginable. There must have been three hundred or four hundred skulls. Naturally, there were human skulls, too. Caucasoid, Negroid, Asiatic, Indian, one male and one female of each.
    "Got the whale and elephant in the storeroom downstairs. Take up a lot of space, they do," said the old man.
    "Well, I guess," I said. A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood.
    All the skulls had their mouths propped open, a chorus ready for inspection; all stared at the opposite wall with empty sockets. Research specimens or no, the atmosphere in the room was not exactly pleasant. On other shelves, although not so numerous as the skulls, were jars of tongues and ears and lips and esophagi.
    "What d'y' think? Quite a collection, eh?" twinkled the old man. "Some folks collect stamps, some folks collect records. Me, I collect skulls. Takes all kinds't'make a world, eh?"
    "Er, yes."
    "From early on, I had this interest in mammalian