Manuscript Tradition by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

The door to the special room clicked open. The small rumble of plastic wheels on carpet told Feyrouz it was a janitor making rounds. Probably Tony Loquasto; no one else from the custodial staff would be authorized to come in here. She hadn’t known he was, but it made sense. Even with no academic rank, he was as trusted, as reliable, an employee as the Beinecke boasted. And, while air filters ensured that the special room didn’t get dusty in a hurry, it did get dusty.

Thanks to the noise from those wheels, Feyrouz kept an ear on where Tony was going. Somehow, she wasn’t completely astonished when he turned down the aisle that led to the shelf where the Voynich Manuscript usually perched. She also wasn’t astonished when the noise stopped right about there. She hadn’t expected the janitor to know about the manuscript, but one never knew, did one?

She closed the volume, stood, and carried it back to its beige-painted metal case. Sure enough, there stood Tony, doing a not quite good enough job of pretending to dust.

“Hello,” she said. “Were you looking for this?” She held up the Voynich Manuscript.

He did a not quite good enough job of pretending he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he must have realized it wasn’t quite good enough, because he chuckled and shrugged and nodded. “As a matter of fact, Professor Hanafusa, I was.”

“Have you looked at it before?” Feyrouz asked, her voice a bit tight. If he’d pored over images from it on the infosphere, that was one thing. If he’d got not just eyeprints but perhaps greasy fingerprints on the actual, irreplaceable physical book, that was something else again.

He hesitated. Then he nodded. “The pictures, you know, they’re pictures of plants and stuff from, ah, Faraday.”

“You saw that, too?” she said.

`”Yeah, I did.” Tony Loquasto nodded again. “Which ones made you spot it, you don’t mind my asking?”

She still had the gloves on. She opened the Voynich Manuscript and pointed out the plants. “This one … and this one. I saw them on a news projection this morning, and naturally I recognized them.”

“Thank you,” Loquasto said, which baffled her. Then he nodded one more time. “The hadadband and the potta, hey? Yeah, them are a couple what stand out from the crowd, like.”

“The which and the what?” Feyrouz was baffled again. “Do you mean the plants? Why do you call them that?”

He sighed. By the look on his face, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Since he hadn’t, though, he needed to answer. “Why? On account of those’re their names.”

“They are? In what language?” Feyrouz didn’t call him a nut right out loud. But no one had ever deciphered the Voynich Manuscript. Plenty of people had claimed they’d done it, but none of the claims held water.

She might not have called him a nut, but he knew what she meant. “I don’t think I better talk about it no more,” he said. “You’ll send for the boys in the white coats with the straitjacket and the butterfly nets.

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