[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The man in the library in Chicago would have appeared, at first glance, to be like
any other academic making use of the facility. Only a closer examination might
have revealed, to an attentive observer, some incongruous elements.

To begin with, the man in the library was perhaps a bit more muscular than might
be expected for a sedentary man. He sat, perhaps, a bit too alertly, less entirely
absorbed in his work than one might expect. There were small scars to be seen by
an attentive observer, scars on his face and arms. None of them were particularly
noticeable, but there were perhaps more of them than one might have expected.

None of these individual peculiarities were particularly notable, in themselves and
by themselves, but all of them together lent the man a certain oddity in an academic
environment. Still, that hardly mattered since he was alone in the room with his
papers and books, there was no observer, attentive or otherwise, present to observe.

The book upon which the man was so intent was over six hundred years old, with
the delicacy of condition to attest to its age. The man handled each page with a
delicate care that might have seem faintly humorous in light of his obvious power
of body, his large hands carefully moving each page to avoid bending or cracking
the old paper, or straining the ancient bindings of the cover.

The cover of the book was inscribed with a Latin title, only partly legible after the
passage of half a millennium. If one was conversant in Latin, one could have read
enough of the title to see that the book was an account of a fantastical ocean voyage
which had occurred in the Thirteenth Century A.D.

As it happened, the book was one of the most precious treasures of the University
of Chicago, who had it filed in their rare books collection as a work of myth and
fantasy. This would have seemed like an obvious conclusion to almost any sort
of ‘reasonable’ person reading this tome in A.D. 1925. The content alone would
seem to admit of no other classification...and yet, a thoughtful reader might have
pondered a few things before closing the subject in his or her mind.

For one thing, writing and binding books was no small effort in the Fourteenth
Century, when this particular tome had been created. The production of a book,
in those times, involved both a great deal of skilled labor and considerable time,
it was not cheap and it was not done quickly. This had been near the end of the
time before the printing press changed matters forever, but still, this book did
predate the advent of the printing press.

Further, the story, written as a first-hand narrative, was rather mundanely written
for all that it gave a seemingly unbelievable account. The story was told in an
almost conversational style, quite unlike the usual writing of that age, and indeed
that age did not have a great deal of ‘fiction’ in the modern sense. Myths and
stories and tales, yes, but this account was rather different than those in many
ways, in both its way of writing and the events of which the account spoke. The
book represented a very large investment of time and effort in something rather
odd, for the time and place in which it was written.

Also, the book had an odd history of its own. The University had come to own
it when a wealthy collector had gifted it to the school in his will. He had, by
his own account, inherited the book from his grandfather, who had immigrated
to the United States from Spain. According to the stories associated with the
book, it had a legacy of sudden deaths, the man who had left it to the school had
reportedly done so in part because his own children half-believed the stories
of some kind of curse associated with the book, and did not want it.

Be all that as it might be, the man now reading the book clearly found it quite
fascinating, and he had filled an entire binder with fine hand-written notes. One
might have believed him totally absorbed in his work, if one did not know how
to read the little signs that showed he was still aware of his surroundings. Aware
of his surroundings...and of the man who entered the room behind him, a man
moving quietly and carrying a Luger.

The intruder raised his weapon, taking careful aim at the back of the head of the
man leaning over the book, but even as he began to pull the trigger, he found that
his finger was not strong enough to depress the trigger, some invisible force was
holding the trigger in place!

In his momentary surprise, in his instant of distraction, the gunman was caught by
surprise as his would-be target suddenly jumped from his chair, whirling around
and attacking the gunman in a single fluid movement. The useless gun fell to the
floor, and it quickly became apparent that in hand-to-hand combat, the gunman
was no match for his target. The latter man showered his attacker with rapid and
harsh blows, blows to the head, face, and abdomen, striking hard enough and fast
enough that his attacker could now only defend, and that not very effectively.

The fight ended in moments, with the would-be gunman unconscious, lying in a
helpless heap on the floor. Muttering under his breath at the unfortunate noise
the altercation had made, the first man scooped up his would-be killer and put
him over one shoulder, scooped up his notes, and exited the room before anyone
could arrive to investigate the sounds.

We will learn who the man with the book and his attacker were soon, but for now
let us turn our attention elsewhere.

MORE LATER.