The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
course, and whoever it was, he couldn’t protect it all by himself. Nobody
can. So, presumably, he chose people around him he could trust, and they
guarded the Tablet. Not only did they guard it with their lives, but with the
Tablet’s help, they prolonged their lives in order to guard it.
“And since then the Tablet has been a rumor. An inspiring rumor, to be
sure, but then so was the Fountain of Youth. El Dorado. The lost city of
Atlantis. The Chamber of Green Lions. That the Tablet actually existed
never mattered if nobody ever saw it except those who wanted it to remain
unseen.”
“What do you mean, they prolonged their lives?”
“Have you not been listening to me? Alchemy is the science of transformation.
Rocks into diamonds, or money, or ducks, or other rocks. Whatever
you like. An old body into a young one, for instance. Or in my case a damaged
face into a healthy one. I should be angrier if I thought my injuries beyond
repair.
“But back to the point—the Tablet came and passed from vogue. Every
few decades someone else claims to finally ‘understand’ it. Only by now,
especially in this country, the Tablet has become so obscure that even its supposed
adherents and discoverers attract no attention. Every few years you’ll
have a book or a prurient television show about Atlantis, and children learn
that the legend of El Dorado attracted Spanish explorers to the New World.
But the Tablet, for some reason, became the whisper of a shadow of a rumor
of a relic. And it would have stayed that way, had its current guardian not
grown bored, and hungry for the things in this world.”
“Jaan?”
“Of course. I presume that one of the things you found in his office was a
travel itinerary? A rather adventurous one?”
I nodded.
“You know, not everyone is as cynical as a callow newspaper reporter.
The world, in fact, is filled with people who know what the Tablet is and are
willing to pay immense sums of money for its influence.”
“Why would he need to sell it? If the Tablet can do what you say it can,
couldn’t Jaan just have made money out of grass clippings or pipe ash or
something like that?”
342