The Cabinet of Curiosities

Brisbane opened the case and stretched a slender hand toward a cabochon emerald the size of a robin’s egg. He plucked it from its velvet cradle and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “The Tev Mirabi emerald. It’s flawless. As a gemologist by avocation, I can tell you that emeralds of this size are never flawless. Except this one.”

He placed it before his eye, which popped into housefly-like magnification. He blinked once, then lowered the gem.

“Take a look.”

Nora again forced herself to swallow a rejoinder. She took the emerald.

“Careful. You wouldn’t want to drop it. Emeralds are brittle.”

Nora held it gingerly, turned it in her fingers.

“Go ahead. The world looks different through an emerald.”

She peered into its depths and saw a distorted world peering back, in which moved a bloated creature like a green jellyfish: Brisbane.

“Very interesting. But Mr. Brisbane—”

“Flawless.”

“No doubt. But we were talking about something else.”

“What do you think it’s worth? A million? Five? Ten? It’s unique. If we sold it, all our money worries would be over.” He chuckled, then placed it to his own eye again. The eye swiveled about behind the emerald, black, magnified, wet-looking. “But we can’t, of course.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t get your point.”

Brisbane smiled thinly. “You and the rest of the scientific staff. You all forget one thing: it is about show. Take this emerald. Scientifically, there’s nothing in it that you couldn’t find in an emerald a hundredth its size. But people don’t want to see any old emerald: they want to see the biggest emerald. Show, Dr. Kelly, is the lifeblood of this Museum. How long do you think your precious scientific research would last if people stopped coming, stopped being interested, stopped giving money? You need collections: dazzling exhibitions, colossal meteorites, dinosaurs, planetariums, gold, dodo birds, and giant emeralds to keep people’s attention. Your work just doesn’t fall into that category.”

“But my work is interesting.”

Brisbane spread his hands. “My dear, everyone here thinks their research is the most interesting.”

It was the “my dear” that did it. Nora rose from her chair, white-lipped with anger. “I shouldn’t have to sit here justifying my work to you. The Utah survey will establish exactly when the Aztec influence came into the Southwest and transformed Anasazi culture. It will tell us—”

“If you were digging up dinosaurs, it would be different. That’s where the action is. And it happens that’s also where the money is. The fact is, Dr. Kelly, nobody seems terribly concerned with your little piles of potsherds except yourself.”

“The fact is,” said Nora hotly, “that you’re a miscarried scientist yourself. You’re only playing at being a bureaucrat, and, frankly, you’re overdoing the role.”

As soon as Nora spoke she realized she had said too much. Brisbane’s face seemed to freeze for a moment. Then he recovered, gave her a cool smile, and twitched his handkerchief out of his breast pocket. He began polishing the emerald, slowly and repetitively. Then he placed it back in the case, locked it, and then began polishing the case itself, first the top and then the sides, with deliberation. Finally he spoke.

“Do not excite yourself. It hardens the arteries and is altogether bad for your health.”

“I didn’t mean to say that, and I’m sorry, but I won’t stand for these cuts.”

Brisbane spoke pleasantly. “I’ve said what I have to say. For those curators who are unable or unwilling to find the cuts, there’s no problem—I will be happy to find the cuts for them.” When he said this, he did not smile.

Nora closed the door to the outer office and stood in the hallway, her mind in turmoil. She had sworn to herself not to leave without the extra money, and here she was, worse off than before she went in. Should she go to Collopy, the Museum’s director? But he was severe and unapproachable, and that would surely piss off Brisbane. She’d already shot her mouth off once. Going over Brisbane’s head might get her fired. And whatever else she did, she couldn’t lose this job. If that happened, she might as well find another line of work. Maybe she could find the money somewhere else, rustle up another grant somewhere. And there was another budget review in six months. One could always hope . . .

Slowly, she descended the staircase to the fourth floor. In the corridor she paused, surprised to see the door to her office wide open. She looked inside. In the place she had been standing not fifteen minutes before, a very odd-looking man was now framed by the window, leafing through a monograph. He was wearing a dead black suit, severely cut, giving him a distinctly funereal air. His skin was very pale, whiter than she had ever seen on a living body. His blond hair, too, was almost white, and he turned the pages of the monograph with astonishingly long, slender, ivory fingers.

“Excuse me, but what are you doing in my office?” Nora asked.

“Interesting,” the man murmured, turning.

“I’m sorry?”