“Are they valuable?”

“They’re certainly odd. Valuable? Not to me. Tell you the truth, I kind of wish you hadn’t brought them in.”

“Why?”

“They’re creepy. They’re too good. Kind of X-Files.” He gave me a sour grin. “Make up your own science fiction story.”

“Or live in it,” I said. We live in the science fiction of our youth.

He pushed the books across his cluttered desk. “Take ‘em away, Mr. Keller. And if you find out where they came from—”

“Yes?”

“I really don’t want to know.”

Items I noticed in the newspaper that evening:

GENE THERAPY RENDERS HEART BYPASS OBSOLETE

BANK OF ZURICH FIRST WITH QUANTUM ENCRYPTION

SETI RESEARCHERS SPOT “POSSIBLE” ET RADIO SOURCE

I didn’t want to go back to Ziegler, not immediately. It felt like admitting defeat—like looking up the answer to a magazine puzzle I couldn’t solve.

But there was no obvious next step to take, so I put the whole thing out of my mind, or tried to; watched television, did laundry, shined my shoes.

None of this pathetic sleight of hand provided the slightest distraction.

I was not (just as I had told Deirdre) a mystery lover, and I didn’t love this mystery, but it was a turbulence in the flow of the passing days, therefore interesting. When I had savored the strangeness of it to a satisfying degree, I took myself in hand and carried the books back to Finders, meaning to demand an explanation.

Oscar Ziegler was expecting me.

The late-May weather was already too humid, a bright sun bearing down from the ozone-depleted sky. Walking wasn’t such a pleasure under the circumstances. I arrived at Finders plucking my shirt away from my body. Graceless. The woman Deirdre looked up from her niche at the rear of the store. “Mr. Keller, right?” She didn’t seem especially pleased to see me.