The Legacy of the Motes

"Look up at the dome," Van Buren instructed the young scholar. "And roll your eyeball round to the left." "I was going across to that pub for lunch," Eliott told the helpful attendant, "When I saw this thing like a bird flying sideways through the sky. At least I thought it was the sky. But then at lunch it kept wafting back and forth across my page and I realized it was inside my eye." "One really shouldn't read in pubs," cautioned Van Buren, "The light is so poor." He gingerly pried back Eliott's eyelid with dry fingers and peered deep into the left eye. Good old Van Buren, he'd been able to flush the rarest of seven teenth-century obscurities out of forgotten stacks and was going to be remem bered specifically in Eliott's acknowledgements. "Does it hurt?" he asked. "Not a bit. That's the odd thing. Do you see a hair in there or anything? Though I'm sure I'd feel a hair." "Hmm. Roll it up and around. Now over that way. Not a thing. Do you think perhaps you've been overtaxing your eyes? It's quite possible, you know. You've been going at those books rather devilishly these past three months. Why not give things a rest? Go to a park, enjoy our English spring. If your eye is still troubling you tomorrow, you might pop over to Moorfield's Eye Hospital." Tomorrow. Wasn't that just like them. They took a week to launder a shirt. They were always going to parks. Van Buren spent half his lunch hour trudging