CLUES

Every string which has one end also has another end.

–finagle's first fundamental finding

Clem Cotex had been nosing about the Lincoln Park Zoo for several days and was more puzzled than ever. The facts were undeniable: The zoo had, indeed, purchased over 200 gorillas in the past decade and only two of them were on exhibit; 198 were missing. Any sort of casual questioning of the primate house attendants brought instantly vague answers in a well-rehearsed manner. They were all in on the cover-up. The public was being protected against all knowledge of the inexplicable, the weird, the surrealistic. All part of the usual governmental pretense that human affairs were rationally administered by experts who knew what was really going on. They feared that if people ever discovered that those in power were as confused by this inexplicable universe as those out of power, then the whole charade might collapse.

There was no Black Hole in the zoo; Cotex was sure of that. All gravity conditions were normal. The gorillas were not falling through a Schwartzchild radius into the universe next door or anything really spooky like that. They were simply teleporting somewhere… maybe back to their homelands in Africa. Although, considering the unpredictability of teleportive currents as documented by Charles Fort-who had recorded cases of snakes landing in Memphis, Tennessee, and coconuts being deposited in Worcester, England-the gorillas might actually be reappearing anywhere.

Since anything might be a clue in such occult enigmas, Clem had carefully copied all the graffiti in the men's room at the primate house. It was the usual jumble of disparate and ambiguous signals: "Black P. Stone Run It," "For a good blow job call 555-1717 and ask for Father James Flanagan," "Help Prevent Von Neumann's Catastrophe!," "Arm the Unemployed," "Free our four-legged brothers and sisters. A zoo is a child's heaven and an animal's hell," "Save the Whales-Harpoon a Honda," "Off the Landlords," "Stamp Out Sizeism."

Probably, Cotex thought morosely, there is an important signal in there and I'm just not imaginative enough to see it.

God bless America.