Wheeler-Bell Thirty-Eight
Wheeler-Bell 38: The Insufficient Data Advisory
Glimpses, pretty much random, of what happened during the Discworld week (eight days a week, as the Beatles memorably said) when Johanna was, quite literally, out of the loop and without too much fuss, a rather elastic reality re-adjusted itself around her.
EDIT: necessary tidying.
Empirical Crescent, Ankh-Morpork
"Welcome back." Ponder Stibbons said, with diffident sincerity. "I knew you'd be back and, well, after a few minutes' thought I guessed it'd be about a week. I still really missed you, though."
Johanna smiled and kissed him. She felt quite warmed.
"Well, I'd better bring you up to date on what's been happening…"
Ruth N'Kweze, who knew what was called for and who in this case didn't mind too much about expectations placed on the black woman to go and make a pot of tea for white people, went to sort out a brew.(1) Lucy went to assist. Johanna received the grateful and relieved welcomes of the others, hugs and greetings from Bernadette and Amy, the diffident relief of Howard and Raj at seeing her again. Sheldon Cooper, the man who had inadvertently sent her back in time for a Discworld week and precipitated a situation where there were suddenly two of her, spared her a brief nod of acknowledgement and returned to intent focus on his computer screen. She glanced over. What looked like an intricate and eye-watering three-dimensional model of Empirical Crescent was emerging on the screen, with inter-relationships between its rooms mapped out in various glowing colours. It looked like a combination of an architectural blueprint and a Brindisian meal designed by a chef who had catastrophically mixed up the mushrooms, and tasted the resultant passata. The image rotated dizzyingly, taking on new and disorientating dimensions. Sheldon did not look worried at all.
After a while the group sat down with what, for Johanna, was her first cup of tea in a week.
"So there is definitely, end definitively, now only one of me?" she asked.
Ponder nodded.
"If you still have a duplicate, she's keeping a low profile. The Guild School had to re-assign all your classes, for one thing. And Heidi stepped up at the Zoo to run things there."
Johanna relaxed. It was definitely done with, then. She remembered that giddy moment of confusion on scrambling back through the window, where something had happened and it had felt, for a second, as if several versions of herself had been put through a blender and stirred up. With, thankfully, a sort of Johanna Prime emerging, staggering around inside the room, until it all settled down. It was an experience Johanna later described as like a bad migraine combined with vertigo, Meuniere's Disease, and a sort of wholly unaccustomed sense of existential wooliness. (2)
She listened to various stories and accounts of the last week.
Amy Farrah-Fowler had drawn the cellars of Number Five. She didn't mind that. She had no phobia concerning dark places and had no fears. It almost made her feel like Daphne… she stopped and reflected – well, like Velma Dinkley… fearlessly investigating a haunting in some stereotyped backwood of the USA. She wished Johanna's dogs were here. They were certainly Scooby-Doo sized.
Amy moved carefully down the stairs, paying out the green string she would follow to get back to the control centre. The operating plan they'd worked out with Howard was clear in her mind: take notes of dimensions of room and any side-doors or passages leading off. Don't investigate side-corridors or side-rooms yet. Just note type and location, move to any sub-floors and basements in an apparent direct line from what they had dubbed Mission Control, or the Command Centre. It was important to get the basic layout straight first. They could explore in detail later.
Amy took frequent photographs with her cellphone – at least the camera worked here, and the shots could be downloaded later. She wondered if it might be worthwhile to get some videocams when they sent a routine flight back to Caltech. Hand-held shots taken in a spooky, possibly haunted place with a bad rep, where weird things happened. It might make a sort of movie.
She passed and recorded another door leading off a landing. She frowned, reflecting that something about Empirical Crescent that would make it more complex in the normal run of things was that it was built into a gentle slope, running down towards a river. Thus the rear of the building was apparently a floor lower than the front. It apparently had four floors in back but five in front. That was normally explicable by the sloping ground it was built into, and not weird at all. And Ponder had said there was other stuff underneath, the foundations, ruins and cellars of an older city. There might well be other cellars under the official basement. Ankh-Morpork apparently went a long way down. Johanna had said there were real Dwarfs here. They really loved underground places. But you'd expect that.
She resisted the temptation to explore the side rooms. For now. Ponder had said when they really started doing that, they should go in pairs. And to be careful about opening windows, and certainly careful about climbing out of them. She hadn't seen it, but she'd heard a window at the University, in Penny's apartment there, somehow opened directly into Caltech. It had caused complications.
Amy moved on as the lights grew dimmer. She had a flashlight function on her phone, but was aware of the need to conserve battery power. It didn't worry her as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. She felt oddly excited and at home, in fact.
She paused and secured the string into the wall with another thumb-tack. Another flight of stairs led down. This was probably the basement…
She remembered the plan. Basements might have half-windows at a high level to admit some light. In normal architectural convention, they'd be at apparent ground-level outside. She was to attach a piece of brightly colored card to any external window where it could be seen from outside, saying "BASEMENT, NUMBER FIVE", so it could be identified from outside of the building and logged. Another part of the puzzle for Howard and Sheldon to factor in. Gathering experimental data in the field.
Well, we're all trained for that….
Then take dimensions of the basement room, length, height, width. Note any other doors or floor hatches. Other interesting features. Ponder had said there was an artist's studio somewhere in Empirical Crescent that hadn't been touched, or even found, since the artist had gone all Van Gogh. Apparently, the local Art Gallery would be really interested in it.
Howard had speculated about what long-lost paintings by a guy thought of as a Grand Master might be worth. Ponder had said, very quickly, that these would be University property by default. He had then considered and said "Well, I could probably organise a Finders' Fee. Treasure trove money. It would pay you for your stay here.."
Bernadette had frowned and asked exactly how this artist guy had gone nuts. Ponder had evasively said "Let's not go into that just yet…"
Apparently this Methodia Rascal had been a bit crazy to begin with, or he wouldn't have lived here. (3)
And now Amy was looking through a half-open door into the basement. This seemed to be as far down as the stairs went. Although she was sure she'd walked down at least three flights of stairs. And the Command Centre should be on the next floor up?
She shrugged, and went in.
A large basement room. The usual accretion of residence: crates, boxes, furniture sent here to die, a musty rolled carpet, a line of three high half-windows at just above head-height, admitting some reluctant light through grime and cobweb. Amy frowned. Best to clean some of the crud off, so the card would be visible. Yellow card, black highlighter script. Howard had suggested everything relating to Number Five be color-coded in yellow. To make it clearly identifiable. When they moved onto Six and Four which were apparently on either side, they'd use different colors. It made sense.
She looked around for things to stand on, and elected to drag a large sturdy but apparently empty crate over to the window. This occupied her for a few moments. As she stood up, she felt the hairs on the back of her legs prickle. She realised she wasn't alone in there.
Amy Farrah-Fowler sighed. This might be inconvenient. She stood in deep thought by the window, Behind her, as if on the verge of hearing, she heard a voice chuckling in the "Hur – hur – HURR!" manner that implies the owner of the chuckle has a defenceless woman exactly where he wants her. It was a low chuckle that was intended to frighten and intimidate.
Amy recognised this. She decided to let the situation develop and see where it went. She also reached into her bag and inobtrusively groped for the familiar shape of a spray-can of Mace. Women living in the Greater Los Angeles area have remedies available against possible irritations to the smooth unimpeded flow of their lives. Amy, in her heart of hearts, had been quietly wishing for an opportunity to use it for some time now. It was a sign that at least one guy found her attractive, for one thing. Validation, of sorts.
But something wasn't right here. She turned slowly and unhurriedly, and saw nothing. And the voice had sounded somewhat ethereal…
Amy considered her environment with a cool logical eye. There weren't too many places for somebody to hide in here. The stacks of crates were too low for a guy to hide behind and anyway they were too close to the walls. He'd have to be a small guy.
She considered prudence, backing towards the door and getting out into the corridor. A voice said I've got a cellphone. Could it still work locally, an internal message to a cellphone a floor or two up, to say there's trouble? Use it like a walkie-talkie?
She considered. The door to the basement had opened wide and was pushed back against the wall. But not so far back to the wall. A guy could hide behind it… Amy smiled slightly. Then lifted her foot and kicked the door. As hard as she could. There was an "ooof!" noise. Pain and surprise. She had a brief glimpse of a shape she couldn't quite identify. It looked human-shaped, but the proportions were wrong. It appeared to flow behind the door again. Amy considered, then kicked the door again. There was another yelp of pain and consternation.
"Why don't you come out?" she said. "Whoever you are."
She carefully moved to a position that would allow her to run back into the corridor. Just in case. But whoever was behind the door seemed in no hurry to reveal himself. She kicked the door for a third time.
"Aaargh! Will you stop doing that? Please?"
Amy considered. The can of Mace in one hand and a thumb-tip on the nozzle, she took her cellphone in the other and activated the flashlight.
Whoever it was screamed as if in pain.
Amy frowned. Shining a light into the face of a potential attacker in a dark place could be disconcerting, yes. She'd closed one eye, as she'd read somewhere, to preserve something of her dark-places vision. But what sounded like extreme physical pain?
"It sounds as if you can't come out from behind that door." she said, with clear logic. "So I can keep kicking it. To cause you discomfort. Or I could just reach over, and shine the flashlight right at you. And don't ask what a can of Mace does. You could find out."
"Please, miss! Not the light!"
Amy smiled.
"Now we've established who's got the upper hand." she said. "You could tell me who you are, what you're doing here, how you came to be here, and behave peaceably and in a non-threatening manner?"
There was a silence.
"Please, miss. I'm a bogeyman. Errr…"
Amy considered this.
"You mean a fabulous spirt of myth and legend who lives in dark places and emerges to, for instance, capitalise on the fear a young child might have, concerning things living under the bed, or in the dark shadows of a bedroom at night?"
"That's it, miss." said the bogeyman. "Dead right, except for the myth and legend part. Err…"
"And part of the power of the myth is that you cannot be seen and will not let yourself be seen. Except in the briefest possible glimpse that suggests a thing of great evil power and potency. Which reinforces the fear on the part of the subject, and allows their mind to build you into a far greater peril than you actually are."
Amy paused.
"So it's all bluff, basically. Suggestion."
"Err…" said the bogeyman. "Don't make me come out, miss. Please don't open my door. Err."
Amy smiled slightly and sat on a packing crate.
"This is very professionally interesting." she said. "In my profession as a neurological doctor specialising in the brain chemistry responsible for manifestations of the mind, I find it fascinating to actually meet an anthropomorphic personification of the deepest fears emerging from the hypothalamus and the amygdala, the reptilian hindbrain. Freud postulated these are created as manifestations of an externalised id, the lowest level of the mind. His colleague Jung went one stage further and said they are projections from the collective subconsciousness shared by all of humanity, which can take on a localised reality which is more than mere subjectivity. Evolutionary neurology suggests these are hangovers from an earlier epoch, ancestral memories of very real fears of night predators experienced by the first dawn humans and maybe by the creatures that preceded us. And are indeed coded in our very DNA. And in dark places and at times when the conscious higher mind shuts down, say in sleep, on the very liminal edges of sleep, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states of consciousness, where we become more suggestive and a different brain chemistry applies, these primal fears may surface and take apparent form."
There was a bemused silence from behind the door. People tended to respond this way to Amy's explanations and speculations. She smiled again.
"But my advice from those who know this place better than I do is that there are many sentient intelligent races here, only one of which is human as I know it. I believe I have encountered a sentient non-human species. It would be very interesting indeed to study your brain and neuropathology. To dissect neural tissue and pathways and to examine them in detail."
There was silence. Then the voice from behind the door said
"Oh, shit. Pardon my Klatchian. I've clocked you now. You're an Igorina, aren't you? I mean. All that talk about extracting and dissecting my brain. That's Igor talk."
Amy realised she was dealing with a very frightened bogeyman indeed, who had discovered the terrible dark things lurking on the other side of his door. Which currently included Amy Farrah-Fowler.
Discovering the bogeyman, whose name was Schpilkes, was harmless and had only been driven by his own existential imperative to scare and frighten, she graciously permitted him to carry on squatting in the basement and to perform a useful job, with regard to keeping rats, mice and bugs under control. A casual mention of the name of Johanna Smith-Rhodes helped. The bogeyman screamed in fear. Apparently bad news travels fast on a specialised grapevine.
"She's here? The woman who won the Teatime Prize three years running?"
"I could bring her down here." Amy said. Discovering Johanna had a reputation for taking on supernatural entities in her profession of Assassin was useful information. And that the Assassins' Guild actually awarded a trophy for it. Amy reasoned this would enforce compliance.
"She's kind of in charge."
Amy finally left the basement, having, in a funny sort of way, made an ally. Or at least somebody who would not misbehave. She wondered about Igors and Igorinas. They sounded interesting. What do they know about neurology, she wondered. She decided to ask Ponder Stibbons and to see if he or Johanna could set up introductions. She also wondered about vectoring Howard or Raj down here. If they were to get annoying.
The City Zoo, Ankh-Morpork:
Ruth had suggested a day trip for those not engrossed with the mystery presented by Empirical Crescent. She suggested renting a cab and taking a long route through the City, pointing out things of interest on the way, that could be viewed from the safety and comfort of the inside of a vehicle. The Zoo was well on the other side of the City and offered the chance for a long ride. You know, just to orientate you and give you an idea.
Bernadette, Lucy and Amy had leapt at the chance.
Sheldon opted to remain, at least for now; Howard and Raj asked to join the girls. A horse-drawn taxicab was called for and there was a wait whilst Ruth went out to obtain one. Ruth felt Lucy would pass unremarked since as before, she was dressed in a manner suggesting a Licenced Thief. She felt Bernadette and Amy, casually dressed in Roundworld trousers and tops, might just pass, but aspects of their clothing would look strange. She suggested they wore cloaks over their street clothes, as these were ubiquitous Ankh-Morporkian garments and not out of the ordinary on a dull cold day. Raj, dressed in Young Fogey mode in jacket and waistcoat, looked a little odd. But "a little odd" was perfectly everyday for Ankh-Morpork.
There was a difficulty finding a cloak small enough for Bernadette that didn't drag on the ground as she walked. Ruth solved this by detouring the cab past the Assassins' Guild School, nipping in for a moment, and borrowing one belonging to a petite lower-school pupil who was in several of her classes.
"We'll have to fit in a clothes-buying trip." Ruth said. "Get you all looking the part."
There was general approval of this idea. They'd all seen Penny wearing local clothes and looking… wow. Ruth sighed inwardly and wondered if she could reclaim the cost as expenses. Or get Johanna to stump up. Wherever Johanna currently was. HEX had assured them she was in no danger. And Ponder Stibbons, a man finely attuned to danger, was completely relaxed about it too. He'd said he thought it was a case of the Universe noticing a problem, re-adjusting itself, and compensating. Err. Probably.
Bernadette liked the rich comfortable feel of the cloak. Thick, soft, well-lined, really good material in black. Out of interest she had noticed the owner's name on a tag in the collar. It read Rivka ben-Devorah Bechstein, Black Widow House.
Ruth smiled slightly.
"She was happy to help. I explained she was about the right height and build to help you out. But she still wanted rent on the loan. Cost me two dollars."
"Called Bechstein, huh?" Bernadette said.
"Formally." Ruth said. "But naming conventions are tricky. My full name goes something like Igama Sibongo {{Isithakazelo}} Ubuzwe Inkosazana umNtwana Umntanenkosi Ruth Sisiwayo N'Kweze. And that's just a short version. If you take the Isithakazelo part, that's a one-word shorthand for my family lineage, great deeds and accomplishments of my illustrious ancestors - and maybe even one or two of my own. And so on and so on. It runs on for about three pages when it's all written down.(4) So it got shortened to Miss Ruth N'Kweze for convenience. Same with Rivka. The Bechstein part gets dropped."(5)
Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, no stranger to long names, nodded, understanding.
"Yeah, got it. Only the name sounds sorta Jewish. Funny how I keep getting' drawn to Jewish folk. I married one."
Ruth had a little understanding. She agreed.
"Cenotian, here. They've got an odd origin story. Their legend says they arrived here from a different world. They think they might have seriously annoyed their God, who wanted to make exile really emphatic."
Ruth paused and considered this. "There's a Cenotian temple on Gods Street. You know, Ponder said something odd about having had to go to a Jewish temple with Howard? Escorting his mother there? Ponder said he could have sworn he was among Cenotians… still, something else to think about. Who knows, maybe they really did come from Roundworld."
"Jews get everywhere." Bernadette said.
Then conversation died as, travelling out of the city, through suburbs where housing got more sporadic, there was a distant rumble over to the left and a screaming whistle accompanied by a low chugging. Everybody looked over to the left. To surprise and awe, they recognised an old-fashioned steam engine tugging old-fashioned passenger coaches. It was, even for Roundworlders, an unforgettable sight.
"Hey, you've got trains!" Raj said.
Ruth smiled.
"Line out to the Stos." she said. "All pretty new."
"Sheldon is going to love that!"
"We could take him on a trip on one." Ruth agreed. "Keep him occupied and out of trouble."
"Sheldon? Don't let him anywhere near the cab. He is capable of crashing one." Raj said.
Ruth heard all about Sheldon Cooper and trains. She agreed it would need close supervision. Still, it was good to be warned.
"We can take him to the railway station. He might appreciate a day trip to Sto Kerrig, perhaps, or something like that."
Long enough to keep him confined to a carriage for a few hours each way, where we can keep an eye on him, and allows enough time for a trip round DamnHamster or Sto Kerrig town, Ruth reflected. Boring uneventful places where nothing much happens. Clogs, tulips, cheese and windmills. Sto Kerrig. Anyone with any go about them upped and left for Howondaland a few centuries ago. She winced. Many White Howondalandians, like Johanna Smith-Rhodes and Heidi van Kruger, could trace their lineage back to emigrants from Sto Kerrig. It explained their language, a dialect form of Kerrigian. All those unwelcome economic migrants had caused her people, the Zulus, a lot of bother over the centuries.
They smelt the Zoo long before they got there. A lot of animals in a relatively close environment generate a lot of smells. The cabbie's horses started to get a little skittish.
"Nothing to worry about." Ruth reassured the others, as the carriage rocked slightly. "The horses are getting a whiff of predator on the air. They're not to know the lions and tigers and wolves and things are securely confined."
Then they started hearing the animals. It was kind of exciting. It brought back lots of childhood memories about visits to the zoo. An evocative noise.
Ruth paid for the party at the turnstile(6) and paid off the cabbie, taking care to keep the receipts. There was a moment of confusion when she realised she had to explain to most of her passengers what, or specifically who, Trolls were. This was eventually accepted. Drivers of horse-drawn cabs didn't like to hang around the Zoo for too long because of the way their horses got nervous concerning nearby lions and things, and in any case there was a line of people waiting for a cab out. Turnaround was usually quick.
And the afternoon passed pleasantly.
"Hey." Howard Wolowitz reflected. "This is a whole cageful of monkeys who are going at it like it was the Playboy Mansion. But there's one guy out here on his own who ain't getting none."
He indicated a woebegone looking bonobo who was being spurned by nearby females, and looked slyly at Raj.
"Any relation?"
"Errr…" Ruth said. She drew attention to a prominently displayed notice on the outer side of the bonobo chimpanzee enclosure. It read;
ADVISORY: THE CREATURES IN THIS HABITAT ARE APES. VISITORS ARE RESPECTFULLY ADVISED THAT NO OTHER WORD IS TO BE USED TO DESCRIBE THEM. USE OF ANY OTHER COLLECTIVE NOUN BEGINNING WITH "M" IS STRICTLY DISCOURAGED. ZOO MANAGEMENT WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY UNFORTUNATE CONSEQUENCES OF DISREGARDING THIS ADVISORY DISCLAIMER.
Indeed, as Raj scowled, several bonobos turned unfriendly eyes to Howard and began to chitter, breaking off from the principal recreation of the bonobo chimpanzee. Ruth stepped back, drawing Bernadette and Amy with her.
A second or two later, Howard spluttered as he received a faceful of impeccably aimed dung.
Ruth shook her head.
"Important lesson." she said, helping him clean up. "By the way, Howard. A little later on we get to see gorillas. Who are also apes. In this case, great apes."
"I believe I perceive the reasons why Johanna took pains to instruct me concerning apes." Amy remarked. "So we'll be seeing orang-utans here, too? They interest me."
Ruth took a short, pained, indrawing of breath.
"No, Amy. There are no orang-utans here. Strictly by order. You are likely to encounter one orang, but it won't be in the Zoo. Trust me."
The group met several interesting people in and about the Zoo. Ruth was able to discreetly explain about Dwarfs. Several parties of Dwarfs were in and about the premises, largely in the rodent house which they regarded as a sort of window-shopping for interesting dietary ideas. Raj and Howard enthused about seeing people straight out of Middle-earth; as frowning faces turned to them, Ruth had to do some on-the-fly diplomacy and explain that these people aren't from round here, they're from a place that doesn't have Dwarfs, much…
A spokes-Dwarf nodded, sagely.
"Oh, Acerians." he said, as if that explained much about the ambient weirdness. He nodded up to Howard and Raj, in a way that presented his chain-mail and axe for inspection, in a wholly unthreatening way. Ruth's Assassin-black and visible weapons were also a visible consideration.
Ruth breathed out.
She got the group away from Dwarfs they might visibly offend, and steered them round the large paddocks and fields on the outer rim of the Zoo that housed… deer. Among other things.
She understood; Lucy was watching things like muntjacks and roe deer with a deep intent fascination. She tensed herself. But no, no sign of the were-transformation. One of the deer did amble over to the fence and watched Lucy with a deep mutual fascination. For quite some time. Understanding, everyone else let her have some quality time. It could be family, after all. You never knew.
Eventually Lucy shook herself and said
"I guess all those odd dreams kind of make sense now. About running with deer and being one of them."
They moved on.
"We bring students out here." Ruth explained, noting a group of school-age pupils who were being assigned tasks. She exchanged greetings with several. "The Guild is a big owner here. We use the Zoo to teach. Somebody over here you should meet, Bernadette."
This detail of Guild School pupils appeared to have been assigned groundskeeping duties. It made sense; a Zoo isn't just about animals. A lot of landscaping happened, and the habitats of many animals needed to have the sort of flora and greenery the creatures could thrive in. This had to come from somewhere and needed human attention too.
The students were engaged in tasks ranging from trucking and planting new bedding plants, maintaining the ones already there, and in several cases the dogsbody chores of merely clearing litter. The instructor in charge of them was dressed in everyday working black and wore a slightly stained purple sash denoting her Teacher status. She was kneeling on a hassock and engaged in transplanting shrubs and plants into a verge.
She looked up, and smiled.
"Hello, Ruth. Covering for Johanna while she's off on a contract. And these are the visitors from, er, elsewhere?"
The woman, in her early forties, blonde and seemingly good-natured, smiled up from behind big round glasses. She looked utterly unthreatening and wore no obvious weapons except a tool-belt with trowels and dibblers on it. But everybody knew what black clothing meant. And, Lucy noted, the working edges on that trowel – and the fork - seemed kind of sharper than you might expect on the average gardener. And the various probes, spikes and dibbler things gleamed, too.
"Doctor Davinia Bellamy." Ruth said, making introductions. "Principal teacher in Botany, and all the useful things you can do with plants."
Introductions were made.
"Nice to meet you." Davinia Bellamy said, pleasantly. "Johanna briefed me. She thought I might find you interesting."
She looked appraisingly at Bernadette.
"You're the one who knows about pharmacopeia and apothecary things? That's an interest of mine too. You might like to come and see my labs and we can compare notes, perhaps? I was told what you managed to do for the Bursar, by the way. That was impressive. I have a feeling that what you call – thorazine, was it? It might relate to what we call dried frog pills. It would be interesting to compare notes."
She looked at Bernadette as if sizing her up, then at a passing Dwarf party, and back again.
"I've also got a few ideas about how you might blend in better here. Remind me to introduce you to Cheery. She's a sort of police officer, by the way. Helped arrest me a few years ago."
Leaving this baffling non seqiteur hanging in the air, Davinia suggested Bernadette at least dropped round for dinner sometime. It would get you away from that Empirical Crescent place, and we could talk pharmaceutics. By all means bring Howard.
Coming next:
Bernadette's makeover. Maybe even Sheldon's exposure to the Rail Ways. You never know.
(1) This defined the relationship between Johanna and Ruth. Johanna came from a culture where black-skinned people were servants. Ruth was a proud Princess of her people who in normal circumstances would not respond positively to the expectation that her role in life was to make tea for white people. But Johanna considered that her former pupil and now graduate assistant should make the tea. Ruth conceded that she could make an exception for some white people. In these special and extraordinary circumstances where both were a long way away from Home, in a country with different social and cultural norms. Ruth made the tea. As between professional peers. For somebody she liked and respected. And not, let her make this abundantly clear, for any other reason that anyone looking in from outside might mistakenly read into it when they saw a Black Howondalandian making a brew for a White Howondalandian. "I do this of my own free will because I happen to work alongside and quite like the woman, OK?" She pointed to the fact that her year-mate and co-graduate Heidi van Kruger shared Johanna's ethnicity. And when called for, Heidi made the tea for Ruth. Approximately half the time. Ruth had also been on Roundworld long enough to become acquainted with fairly recent cultural perceptions of black women in the USA. Shown some really old Tom and Jerry cartoons by the boys – which she'd loved – she'd immediately assumed the black woman standing on a chair and shrieking when the cartoon mouse appeared was the housewife, the house-owner. Well, some people have a phobia about mice. She understood that. It was funny. She had been surprised when Howard and Leonard had shuffled in embarrassment at her assumption and said "Errr… not really, Ruth…" and reluctantly explained that, errr, America in the 1940's. Cultural perception. The only role a black actress could get in films and soforth was… err.. the Black Mammy. Errr…
(2). "Ah." Ponder said, later, with the sort of professional know-all-ness that made her want to slap him. She got this way sometimes. "Typical of temporally sundered multiple selves converging and fusing. So it is really all over, then."
(3) Refer to Thud!, by Terry Pratchett.
(4) And I know – for any Zulu readers – this is horribly oversimplifying it. Naming conventions for Princesses of the Paramount Royal House have something in common with vampires.
(5) As readers of other tales might have guessed, this pupil was simply Rivka ben-Devorah or, "Oh, ye Gods…" or "Oh Hell, I hope I've not annoyed her" to staff and contemporaries. Bad news travels fast. Ruth, like many other Guild educators, took care to look puzzled and say "I don't know what all the fuss is about. She's a perfectly nice girl and a really good pupil whenever I have to deal with her." Other teachers, the ones she didn't get on with, had different opinions.
(6) Another of Johanna's management inspirations here had been to organise things so that an incoming coach or carriage could draw up alongside a cash kiosk and either the driver, or else a passenger, could lean down or across to pay a clerk at the same level without needing to get out. On payment, a Zoo troll would salute, raise the barrier, and direct the coach to a parking space or a turnaround. Trolls made ideal car-park attendants. They had the right temperament and intelligence level.
Notes Dump:
That place for non-linear discontinuities, things and concepts which will prove the essential truth of the Copenhagen Interpretation and which, in the manner of waves and particles projected through a slit, might impinge on either the past or the present of the tale or multiple alternate-universe versions thereof. Odd stray thoughts with no immediate relevance to the tale at hand, but which need to go down somewhere lest I forget.
Lovely quote:
If it's green and wriggles, it's biology. If it bubbles and stinks, it's chemistry. If you don't understand a bloody word, it's physics.
(Fortean Times 353, May 2017)