Jerry sighed. Then, steeling himself to necessity, he set the book down on the counter—carefully marking his place with a fork—and set to work. Fortunately, long experience had inured him to such hardships. He rather fancied himself a kitchen survivalist, in point of fact.
Old coffee grounds with a spoon full of new coffee on top will work, after all. And this wasn’t the first time he’d turned insufficient milk into impromptu skim milk by simply adding water to his cereal. As he ate his breakfast, the reopened book propped against the laid-flat cereal box, Jerry even congratulated himself on improving the healthfulness of his diet.
* * *
On the flight from Washington, Tom Harkness complained about not having real cream for his coffee.
* * *
Jerry Lukacs headed out for the Oriental Institute. Most people had long been at work already, but, well, he was pretty near nocturnal.
His progress was slow, of course, since he was still reading the book. Fortunately, with the honed skills of a rabid reader, Jerry had an almost instinctive sense for when he was approaching an intersection. A quick glance was enough to check the traffic light. Green, he marched across, still reading. Red, he waited. If he was lucky, and someone else was also waiting at the corner, he didn’t even have to glance up to see when the light changed. He just started walking whenever he sensed the person next to him go into motion.
As usual, therefore, he missed the scenery of the University of Chicago’s rather charming environs. As one of America’s older universities, the U of C had grown up inside a city rather than on a set-aside campus. Except for the central quad adjoining the Oriental Institute, the university’s grounds were intermixed with the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The end result was a kind of cosmopolitan pastiche of staid old college buildings and far less staid commercial establishments.
But Jerry, this day as on most, didn’t notice any of it. He also, of course, failed to notice the unusual number of police vehicles cruising the area. He was far too preoccupied with his dissection of this idiot thesis! advanced by Professor Kilmer concerning the origins of the sphinx mythology prevalent throughout the ancient eastern Mediterranean.
The Oriental Institute was only two blocks away from the Regenstein Library. By the time Jerry reached the steps leading up into the Institute, the population density of police vehicles resembled an ant hill. But Jerry was oblivious to it all.
* * *
As Jerry Lukacs walked through the entrance to the Oriental Institute, Lamont Jackson opened up his toolbox, down in the air handler room of the same building. It was a noisy place, buried in the middle of the large edifice. Lamont was one of the university’s mechanical repairmen. He was usually the one sent to the Institute whenever a job needed to be done. He was the acknowledged expert on all aspects of maintenance in that particular building.
To a large degree, the reputation was due to Lamont’s general level of skill. But Lamont also engaged in shameless self-promotion whenever repair work needed to be done at the Institute. Lamont was fond of working in that building, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, over the years he had found himself becoming fascinated with the work they did there. In his own eclectic way, the maintenance mechanic had developed a level of knowledge concerning ancient history and mythology which would have astonished the academics who worked at the Oriental Institute.
Well, except one—Jerry Lukacs. Which was the second reason Lamont was looking forward to the day’s work. The absent-minded Dr. Lukacs, Lamont had discovered, was not given in the least to putting on professorial airs when talking with a mere repairman. The visiting professor seemed to find nothing odd in Lamont’s interest. The fact that a man with no better than a high school diploma should be both informed and curious about mythology didn’t seem to strike Dr. Lukacs as odd. He seemed to assume everyone would know the Gilgamesh legend and the tales of Homer. Well, he obviously wasn’t born and raised in Chicago’s south side! And the professor shared Lamont’s own enthusiasm for that lowest of all literary art forms: the pun. Later that day, Lamont would wander up to Dr. Lukacs’ office on the third floor. They’d enjoy a few minutes’ worth of punstery. Since their last exchange, Lamont had thought up several new wordplays. Ancient names and terminology gave you a lot of scope.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156