Free Dominance by Will Lavender Page A

hadn’t somehow gleaned firsthand knowledge of his macabre subject matter back in his Delaware prep school.
    â€œThat’s right, Mr. Kane,” Aldiss said. “He had just begun the volume when he met his demise. Just a few entries. As you see, he was still in the A’s. But this encyclopedia—it was so much different from the Funk & Wagnalls he was selling door to door. This book was unusual. It seemed to be about Charles Rutherford himself, about his own experiences, the things he did and the people he spoke to every day as he sold his wares. At first, the line between this amateurish, navel-gazing writing and the labyrinthine, puzzles-within-puzzles writing of Fallows is clear. But as the scholars began to dig deeper, they saw that Rutherford’s encyclopedia was itself a kind of puzzle.”
    â€œHow do you mean?” Michael Tanner asked.
    â€œI mean Rutherford seemed to be playing a game. A game with himself, maybe—but then again maybe not. Look at this.”
    Aldiss held another sheet up, this one much like the first. The paper looked so old and used that Alex felt as if she might be able to smell the must wafting off of it.
    â€œThis is one of the last entries. A, Albridge. A tiny description of a town follows that heading. Albridge, Iowa—population two thousand. A nowhere town not far from where Rutherford lived and worked. But what’s unusual is when you look at a map of Iowa—”
    â€œIt doesn’t exist.”
    Keller again. Alex saw how quick he was, how he beat everyone in class to the answer. Whereas her mind, so tediously slow, moved much more carefully. Deliberately. She found herself looking at Keller again, glancing over and willing him to catch her eye.
    â€œAlbridge, Iowa, is indeed fictitious,” said Aldiss. “It was not on any maps at the time and still isn’t. In his ‘encyclopedia entry,’ Rutherford claims he was there. That he sold encyclopedias to a few residents. That he ate in a small diner near the town square. But none of that was real. And so, armed with this information, we must ask a greater question.”
    For a moment the class remained silent, hyperaware. They hung on Aldiss’s voice. He was moving them toward something now, drawing closer to a connection between Charles Rutherford, the dead man whose image had appeared on the books, and Fallows himself. The only sound in the lecture hall was the electronic hum and crackle of the television.
    â€œWhy?” Alex asked.
    Aldiss looked at her with knowing eyes. Eyes that seemed to pick up everything in their path, to notice everything. Eyes that had once belonged to a young, clearly handsome man. But now they looked as if they contained too much, like when she refilled her mother’s sugar bowl at home and some of the granules poured out on the table. That was it, Alex thought: there was some of the professor pouring out, overflowing through the screen itself.
    â€œThat’s right, Ms. Shipley,” he said now. “The question is ‘Why?’ Why would Charles Rutherford make up the small town of Albridge, Iowa? Why would he claim he’d spent his days there? The only solution is that Rutherford was playing a trick on someone. That his encyclopedia wasn’t an encyclopedia at all but rather a—”
    â€œA novel,” said Sally Mitchell in her too soft, too sweet voice.
    Aldiss didn’t respond; he only grinned, pleased that these nine ( No, Alex reminded herself, we are eight now ) special students were moving so fast.
    â€œBut there are always problems with the Rutherford–is–Paul Fallows theory,” Aldiss said. “The obvious one being that the man was dead when the second book appeared, which blew the whole thing out of the water. The photograph on the book jackets—it meant nothing, the scholars claimed. It had been a joke. Another play by Fallows in the game.”
    â€œDid anyone at least go to