“Wake up,” he said to Moore. “Wake up, will you?”
He slid himself forward, bringing his feet close to the other man’s, and tapped the sole of one of his shoes. “Wake up!” he shouted.
“Hush,” said someone behind him. “The Rooks will hear you. You’re lucky they prefer to watch their victims drown.”
Unwin recognized Miss Greenwood’s voice. “How did you get here?” She knelt behind him and tugged at the ropes. “More easily than you did,” she said. She reached into her coat, and Unwin looked over his shoulder to see a dagger appear in her hand. It was identical to those that Brock carried—it must have been the one that pierced her leg during his knife-throwing act, all those years ago.
“I don’t like being left in the rain without an umbrella, Mr. Unwin.”
“Those elephants back there,” he said. “Something ought to be done about them, too.”
She sighed. “Caligari would be furious.”
Unwin waited, listening. He felt the edge of the blade against his spine. Then a sudden pressure, and the fibers of the rope started snapping. He held the umbrella over Miss Greenwood while she cut the cords around his ankles. When they both were standing, she said, “I know you’re not a detective.”
That passage from page ninety-six of the Manual returned to his mind. Without any secrets he was lost forever. But what was he now, if not lost already? “No,” he admitted. “I’m not a detective.”
“Not a watcher either. Something else, some new kind of puppet. I know you’re working for him. I know he sent you to taunt me.”
“Working for whom?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That phonograph record, those sounds. You have no idea what it’s like, Mr. Unwin. To always find him there waiting for you. To have his eyes in the back of your skull.”
“Whose eyes? What are you talking about?”
She stared at him, still disbelieving. “The Agency’s overseer,” she said. “Your boss.”
It had never occurred to Unwin that the Agency had an overseer, that one person could be in charge. Where, he wondered, was that man’s office?
Miss Greenwood must have seen that his surprise was real. “He and I . . . we know one another,” she said. “Hoffmann is dangerous, Mr. Unwin. But you ought to know that your employer is something worse. Whatever happens, he can’t find out about my daughter.” The barge shifted, and she stumbled on her bad leg. Unwin moved to steady her, but she pushed him away. “There’s a boat tied up on the starboard side,” she said. “Go, take it.”
He gestured at Moore. “Will you cut him free?”
“There’s no time,” she said. “The Rooks aren’t far.”
He held out his hand. “Give me the dagger, then. I’ll do it myself.”
Miss Greenwood hesitated, then turned the handle over to him. “I hope this rescue goes better than your first,” she said.
Unwin knelt and started cutting. These ropes were thicker, and he made slow progress.
“I didn’t want to come back to the city,” Miss Greenwood said.
“I was through with all of this. With the Agency, with Hoffmann; I can hardly tell the difference between them anymore. But I had to come back.”
Unwin cut through the last cord around Moore’s wrists and started working to free his ankles.
“These clocks remind me of a story I used to read to my daughter,” she said. “It was in her favorite book, an old one with a checkered cover. It was the story of a princess who’d been cursed by an old witch—or was it a fairy? In any case, the curse meant she would fall asleep—forever, maybe—if she were pricked by a spinning needle. So the king and queen did what any good parents would do, and piled up all the spindles in the land and burned them, and everyone had to wear worn-out old clothes for a very long time.”
The last of the ropes fell away. He swung Moore’s arms up over his shoulders and with Miss Greenwood’s help lifted him onto his back. She put the umbrella into his hand, and for a moment they stood looking at one another.
“How did the story end?” he asked.
It was not a question she had expected. “They missed one of the spindles, of course.”
UNWIN TRUGED TOWARD THE starboard side of the barge, following a narrow trail between mounds of alarm clocks. His shoes squeaked with every labored step over the slick metal deck. He would have taken them off, but shards of glass from the broken faces of clocks were everywhere.
He paused often to catch his breath and to reposition Moore’s limp body over his back. Finally he saw the edge of the barge. Bobbing over the green-gray swells was the little rowboat Miss Greenwood had promised. But one of the Rooks was nearby, leaning over the water with his big left boot on the rail: Josiah. He gazed across the bay at the mist-shrouded city, smoking a cigarette while the rain poured over the brim of his hat, which was nearly the size of Unwin’s umbrella.
Unwin thought he could reach the boat without Josiah’s seeing, but not without his shoes betraying him. So he crouched and waited for Josiah to finish smoking.
Somewhere amid the hills of clocks, a bell began to ring, a futile attempt to wake some sleeper a mile or more away. To Unwin the sound was a hook in his heart: the world goes to shambles in the murky corners of night, and we trust a little bell to set it right again. A spring is released, a gear is spun, a clapper is set fluttering, and here is the cup of water you keep at your bedside, here the shoes you will wear to work today. But if a soul and its alarms are parted, one from the other? If the body is left alone to its somnolent watches? When it rises—if it rises—it may not recognize itself, nor any of brief day’s trappings. A hat is a snake is a lamp is a child is an insect is a clothesline hung with telephones. That was the world into which Unwin had woken.
While he listened, the one bell was joined by another, and then another, and soon a thousand or more clocks were sounding all at once, a chorus fit to rouse the deepest sleeper. He glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock; many in the city had meant to wake up now. Instead they had given him a chance to reach the rowboat undetected. The squeaking of his shoes was nothing compared to that thunderous proclamation of morning.
His sleeping companion’s feet dragged bumping behind him as he ran, and the umbrella wobbled above. He leaned against the rails, heaving Edwin Moore up and over. The old man landed hard and the rowboat shuddered beneath him. One of his arms flopped into the water, and his bruised face turned up to the rain.
Josiah looked over—he had felt the rail shift under Unwin’s weight. He flicked his cigarette into the water and came toward Unwin, an expression of mild disappointment on his face.
Unwin clambered up onto the rail, collapsing his umbrella. In his haste he caught the handle on the sleeve of his jacket, and the umbrella popped open again. The wind pulled at it, and Unwin pitched back onto the barge.
Josiah took him by the collar and swung him to the deck, his coat flapping in the rain as he fell upon Unwin. The heat coming off the man was incredible—Unwin thought he saw steam rising from the Rook’s back. Josiah put one enormous hand behind Unwin’s head, as though to cushion it, and the other flat over his face. His hand was dry. He covered Unwin’s nose and mouth and did not take it away. “Let’s both be very quiet now,” he said.
The bells were ringing all around them—some stopping as others started. The ringing joined with the ringing in Unwin’s ears, and a darkness rose up as though from the sea. It seemed to him that he stood on a street in the dark. Children had left chalk drawings on the pavement, but there were no children here. It was the avenue of the lost and secret-less: empty tenement buildings all the way to the bottom of the world.
Detective Pith emerged from the shadows and stood in the cone of light from a streetlamp. “Papers and pigeons, Unwin. It’s all papers and pigeons. We’ll have to rewrite the goddamn manual.”
“Detective Pith,” he said, “I saw them shoot you.”
“Aw, nuts,” said Pith. He took off his hat and held it over his ch
est. There was a bullet hole in the top of it. “Damn it, Unwin. Do something!” he said, and when he moved the hat away his shirt was covered with blood.
Unwin tried to hold the wound shut, but it was no use; the blood seeped between his fingers and spilled everywhere.
When the darkness receded, the blood was still there, pouring down Unwin’s arms and over his chest. Not Detective Pith’s, though. Miss Greenwood’s dagger was in his hands again—he had slipped it into his pocket without thinking—and now the blade was stuck deep in Josiah’s chest. Unwin had stabbed him.
Josiah took his hand from Unwin’s face and sat down next to him, staring at the handle there between the third and fourth buttons of his shirt.
Unwin got to his knees. He reached to take the knife but stopped himself. Had he read in the Manual that removing the weapon will worsen the wound? “Don’t move,” he said.
Josiah closed his eyes. From below came the whirring of machinery, and the deck of the barge began suddenly to lift. Unwin grabbed Josiah’s hand and tried to pull him toward the rowboat but could not budge him. The deck angled higher, and Unwin’s shoes slipped. It was too late. He let go of Josiah and grabbed his umbrella, then scrambled under the rail and into the rowboat. He swiftly undid the knot securing them to the barge and started to paddle.
Josiah Rook tipped, then tumbled across the tilting barge. The hills of alarm clocks collapsed and slid with him. Many were still ringing as they spilled into the bay, going mute as the water took them.
Edwin Moore sat up and blinked. “I don’t know any songs for this,” he said.
Unwin did not know any either. He was thinking of the backgammon board he had seen in the Rooks’ cottage, of the game left unfinished there.
UNWIN ROWED WHILE Edwin Moore held the umbrella over their heads. It swayed and bobbed above them while the boat bobbed beneath. They sat close to keep dry, facing one another with knees nearly touching. Someone had left a tin can under the seat, and Moore used it to bail water. Sometimes the wind dragged the umbrella sideways and they both were drenched.
Moore shivered and said, “I tried to forget as much as I could, but I couldn’t forget enough. They knew me the instant I fell asleep.”
The world was two kinds of gray—the heavy gray of the rain and the heavier, heaving gray of the water. Unwin could barely tell them apart. Reaching through both was the yellow arm of a lighthouse beacon. He rowed toward it as best he could.
“Who knew you?” he asked.
“The watchers, of course.” Moore squinted, and drops of water fell from his thick eyebrows. “They watch more than the detectives, Mr. Unwin. They are detectives themselves, in a manner of speaking. Of course, I didn’t know who would catch me first: Hoffmann’s people or the Agency’s. Some of your colleagues must still be using the old channels, the ones the magician knows to monitor.”
Unwin understood that no better than he understood how to keep the boat pointed in the right direction. It veered as soon as he rowed on one side, then spun the other way when he tried to compensate.
Moore set the tin can on the seat between them and wiped his face with his hand. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I lied when I told you there is no Chapter Eighteen in The Manual of Detection.”
“But I saw for myself,” Unwin said. “It ends with Chapter Seventeen.”
Moore shook his head. “Only in the later printings. In the original, unexpurgated edition, there are eighteen chapters. The last chapter is the most important. Especially to the watchers. And to the Agency’s overseer.” He set his elbows on his knees, looked down, and sighed. “I thought you knew all this. That you were a watcher yourself, maybe, and had been sent to toy with me. I’m the architect of an ancient tomb, Mr. Unwin. I was to be buried inside my own creation, the better to keep its secrets. I will not tell you more, for your sake. But if you ask, I will answer.”
The rain drummed on the umbrella as water splashed against the sides of the boat. Unwin’s arms were sore, but he kept rowing. Their little craft was taking on water. He watched it swirl around his shoes, around Moore’s shoes. The water was red. There was a stain on his shirt, and his hands had stained the oars.
“I killed a man,” Unwin said.
Moore leaned close and set his hand on Unwin’s shoulder. “You killed half of a man,” he said. “It’s the other half you have to worry about.”
Unwin rowed faster. He was getting the hang of it now. The trick was to play each side off the other, but gently. Still, it would take a long time to reach the shore.
“Tell me about Chapter Eighteen,” Unwin said.
WHEN THEY REACHED THE harbor, it was far from the pier of the Travels-No-More. Unwin rowed in the shadows of cargo ships, and each splash of the oar echoed in the vastness between the towering hulls. It was dark, and the air smelled of rust and brine. They landed in a small cove at the base of the lighthouse, where bits of junk had collected among the rocks and seaweed. Together they dragged the boat out of the water.
Unwin noticed something gleaming at the fore of the craft as the light swept past. It was an alarm clock, and it looked a lot like the one that had vanished from his own bedside. Unwin put the clock to his ear, heard its machinery still at work, and wound it. The clock just fit inside his coat pocket.
They walked together through abandoned dockyards. What Unwin understood of Moore’s description of Chapter Eighteen he would have disbelieved entirely if not for the events of the last two days. Oneiric detection, Moore had whispered to him. In layman’s terms: dream surveillance.
This is was what Miss Greenwood must have meant when she spoke of another’s eyes in the back of her skull. Dream spies. Had the Agency’s overseer done this to her? Hounded her through her sleep so she never rested? She said she did not want him to know about her daughter. Would a dream of the girl be enough to betray Miss Greenwood’s secret? Unwin wondered whether he himself could ever sleep easily again.
Edwin Moore, his feet back on solid ground, seemed to have discovered new stores of vitality. He walked with a jaunty step, his cheeks reddening from the exertion. He was still trying to explain how dream detection worked. “You’ve heard the story of the old man who dreamed he was a butterfly,” he said. “And how, when he woke, he wasn’t sure if he really was an old man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or if he was a butterfly dreaming it was an old man.”
“You’d say there’s truth to it?”
“I’d say it’s a lot of nonsense,” Moore snapped. “But the mind struggles with the question nonetheless. How often have you tried to recall a specific memory—a conversation with an acquaintance, maybe—only to determine that the memory was a delusion, spawned in dream? And how often have you dreamed a thing, then found that it spoke some truth about your waking life? You solved a problem that had been impenetrable the day before, perhaps, or perceived the hidden sentiments of someone whose motivations had baffled you.
“Real and unreal, actual and imagined. Our failure to distinguish one from the other, or rather our willingness to believe they may be one and the same, is the chink through which the Agency operatives conduct their work.”
“But what do they do, exactly?” Unwin asked. “Lie down next to someone who’s sleeping? Rest with their heads touching?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to be near your subject; you only need to isolate that person’s frequency. It’s work a watcher can do from the comfort of an office chair.” Moore winced and touched the lump on his forehead, which had assumed a purple hue. He sighed and went on. “You know of course that signals from the brain may be measured, even charted. There are electrical waves, devices to read them, people who study these things. Different states have been identified, cataloged, analyzed. What our people figured out is that one brain may be entrained to another, ‘tuned in,’ so to speak. The result is a kind of sensory transduction. Not so different, really, from listening to the radio.
“That’s my metaphor, at least. Those who practice dream
detection describe it as a kind of shadowing, only they tail their suspect through his own unconscious mind rather than through the city. If they are after some specific piece of information, they may even influence the dreamer in subtle ways, nudging him toward the evidence they need.”
They left the dockyards a few blocks from the cemetery. They would have to keep to the shoreline now—Unwin did not wish to draw too close to the Forty Winks and be spotted by someone who might inform Jasper Rook of his whereabouts. He led his companion north, and Moore seemed content to carry on with his lecture, following wherever Unwin directed his umbrella.
“Some in the Agency believe that this technique has been practiced for a long time but called different things through the centuries. It was easier to do, they say, when people lived in small tribes spread over the earth. Fewer signals to sift through then, and a greater willingness to allow them to mingle. The omens, visions, and prophecies of shamans and witch doctors: these might have been rooted in what we call dream detection.
“But I don’t care much for the history, and in any case things are different now. In our city, each night is an enormous puzzle of sensation, desire, fear. Only those who have trained extensively can distinguish one mind from another. At the Agency their training is put to use on behalf of the organization’s clients. The watchers, whose work is coordinated by the overseer himself, investigate the unconscious minds of suspects while the detectives seek out clues of a more tangible nature. It is this technique that gives Agency operatives their unprecedented insight.”
“What if someone tried to use the technique with only a little training?” Unwin asked.
Moore glared at him. “Assuming he succeeded at all, he would put himself and others in danger. There are reservoirs of malevolence in the sleeping city, and you would not want to tap them accidentally.” He paused, then added quietly, “There are, however, some who can assist in the process. Who can induce the focused states necessary to employ oneiric detection—or be more easily subjected to it. Their talents, when used, might appear as hypnosis to the uninformed.”
The Manual of Detection Page 15