Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  Bedroom wardrobe (door open): There are jeans and slacks with flares, lots of flares. A Biba maxi-dress; a couple of Laura Ashley frocks, plus blouses and skirts: all 1970s vintage.

  View along corridor, outside bedroom door: There are two more doors to right and left. At the end of the corridor, four steps lead down to another corridor, turning right.

  Bedroom 2: Second door on the left. Similar to Bedroom 1, but the bed is a single-width, and instead of a wardrobe there’s a schoolroom desk. Dusty Airfix models of Spitfires and Heinkels, carefully painted in Second World War camouflage, dangle on cotton threads from the ceiling. A creased promotional poster for the original Star Wars movie is sellotaped to one wall. It faces off against an Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999 and a photograph of Arsenal’s 1973 first eleven on the pitch at Wembley.

  Bedroom 3: As Bedroom 1, but no clothes or personal effects—set up as a guest room.

  View from top of stairs along short corridor to right: Corridor opens into rectangular hallway, 5 meters by 3.5 meters. High ceiling (3 meters) with fluorescent lighting tube: original plaster cornicework in place, painted white. Wooden floor, sanded and sealed, with rectangular woven rug in center. Five doors open off this space: one opposite the corridor, and two to either side. Indirect natural illumination provided via rectangular windowpanes above four doors.

  Kitchen 1: First door on left from corridor: 6 meters by 4 meters, cream linoleum floor, cream and pale blue paint. Center of opposite wall: AGA three-oven, oil-fired cooking range with two insulated hot plates on top (currently inoperative and cold). Floor-to-ceiling shelves to left of AGA filled with crockery, silverware, cooking utensils, 1950s vintage Kenwood mixer and accessories. Worktop to right of AGA, with window opening over garden. Left wall: two stainless steel sinks with spigot over cabinets. Right wall: floor and wall cabinets, worktop, refrigerator. Center of room: oak rustic kitchen table with extending flaps, three wooden chairs (assorted).

  Bathroom 2: White ceramic bathtub, toilet, and washbasin on pedestal. No carpet, linoleum floor. Window hinges outwards, gauze curtain. Mirror on wall above washbasin, floor-standing wooden cupboard. Fittings: 1940s?

  Laundry Room 1: Rectangular, 3 meters by 3.5 meters. Window hinges outwards, gauze curtain. White ceramic sluice basin, drain. Top-loading, twin-tub washing machine with drain and fill tubes plumbed into wall-mounted taps beside wooden worktop/draining board. Clothes airer suspended from ceiling by pulley: clothes rack opposite. Shelves with white cotton sheets, towels. Late 1940s?

  Pantry 1: 2 meters by 1.5 meters. Stone cold slab, icebox, wooden cupboards, shelves above cold slab. Vintage: predates domestic refrigeration and electric lighting.

  Library: Rectangular, 4 meters by 8 meters, bookshelves on all available wall surfaces …

  * * *

  Normally, Rupert’s habit of handing her a drop-everything-do-this-right-now black op annoyed the hell out of Evelyn. But just for once, everything was under control. Rupe was out from underfoot, the various business deals in progress were wrapping up or winding down for the annual holiday shutdown, and Eve was able to offload all her lesser bullshit jobs onto lower-level executive staff.

  Rupert wasn’t one for recreational reading—not when he could be indulging in more physical, not to mention less cerebrally demanding, pursuits—but over the years he had acquired a collection of rare editions and manuscripts. In Eve’s opinion it was mostly esoteric junk, but if the boss wanted to collect eighteenth-century anatomies bound in the skin of the hanged felon whose autopsy they documented, that was his lookout—it certainly wasn’t the most offensive of his hobbies. Over the years he’d cultivated a connection with an antiquarian book broker, Bernard Harris, who had traded out of an attic on Charing Cross Road since the 1970s.

  The bookshops of Charing Cross Road were barely a shadow of their former glory (rent rises and rapacious property developers had seen to that), but Bernard’s specialty didn’t require lots of retail floor space. Rather than holding stock, Bernard maintained a database and brokered private sales: occasionally he acted as an acquisitions agent on behalf of well-heeled buyers. A copy of The Lord of the Rings—the original Allen & Unwin hardcover, first impression, mint condition with unfoxed dust covers and flat-signed by the author—would have been about the cheapest item on his list.

  Not holding stock of his own had numerous advantages for Bernard. He could operate out of his home apartment without paying business rates—a discreet form of tax avoidance. There was no insurance premium due on rare books he didn’t hold, no need for security to protect his business premises, no working capital tied up in stock. And it meant no dusting. Just a comfortably furnished third-floor flat, crammed with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on every available wall.1 He’d converted the second bedroom into an office straight out of the early 1990s, complete with rotary dial telephones, a 286 PC with a tube monitor (its case the yellow of old ivory due to age), filing cabinets, and a modem with blinking red LEDs to bring it bang up to date. It was very atmospheric: a snapshot of a bygone age taped between the leaves of a photo album, taken just before the internet became a thing.

  Eve put her research into plastic surgery on hold, ordered the switchboard to hold or divert all her non-emergency calls, and told the Gammon to bring the Bentley round to the front door. It was time to visit the master’s favorite book dealer.

  Bernard’s apartment was on a stairwell hidden behind a metal door in an alleyway just round the corner from Charing Cross Road. It was one of several well-hidden flats occupied by stubborn revenants of the book trade, clinging on despite the multimillion pound valuations attached to even a cramped, dark, damp-stained tenement this close to the heart of London. Eve left the Gammon to find somewhere to stash Rupert’s wheels and climbed the stairs.

  Bernard waited with ill-concealed impatience behind his front door, which was just barely ajar. He tried to present as a parody sixty-something book dealer, from the scuffed tips of his oxfords to his corduroy elbow patches, but somehow managed to make it creepy. “Ah, Miss Starkey, hello, hello! Do please come in!” he oozed.

  Eve smiled automatically as she stepped across the threshold. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, so close that she could reach out to touch both sides of the passage. The carpet, gray with grime and threadbare in patches, was trapped beneath the wooden galleys. “I’m so glad I was able to catch you,” she gushed—laying it on a little thick since Bernard was a notorious agoraphobe who ventured outside only with the greatest reluctance. “You always seem to be so awfully busy.” She glanced back at the door.

  “Oh, excuse me…” Bernard slithered past her and chained the door, then slid an insane number of deadbolts into place on both sides of the heavily reinforced frame. “That’s better! Now we don’t need to worry about interruptions. Would you care for a cup of tea?” he asked. He led her to the sitting room, which featured a bay window with a fetching view of the back wall of a Uniqlo store. This room, too, seemed to be furnished principally with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, not to mention piles of books on the carpet that had accumulated like stalagmites, products of a steady drip of publication. “How do you take yours again?”

  “Milk, no sugar,” Eve replied automatically. Why am I even saying that, she wondered briefly, then nerved herself to drink what passed for Bernard’s brew and pretend to like it. Eve was a coffee person, but if it took drinking his tea to convince Bernard he shared a rapport with her, she’d suck it up.

  “Excellent!” Bernard bustled off to the tiny galley kitchen at the other end of the flat, monologuing about some sort of rare books trade show he wished he could attend in Antwerp while the kettle boiled. Eve perched on the edge of one of his ancient wing-back armchairs, the arms stained and grubby from use. Eventually Bernard returned from the kitchen, bearing a tray with two chipped and steaming mugs of orange-brown liquid. “Your tea, my lady. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “The book Mr. de Montfort Bigge caught wind of,” Eve said care
fully. “What have you been able to learn about it?”

  “It’s absolutely fascinating!” Bernard settled into the other armchair. “The book—yes, it’s on Rupert’s wish list, but at first I thought it was a joke.” As with all Bernard’s customers, Rupert had left a hit file of targets for acquisition with the dealer. “To my certain knowledge, at least seventeen different pastiches purporting to be the Necronomicon were published in the last century. Most of them are novelty items or ephemera, targeting fans of the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The book itself is widely considered to be a fictional construct Lovecraft concocted, supposedly a fount of blasphemous wisdom relating to the so-called ‘Elder Gods’ and their—”

  Eve’s smile became fixed. In a momentary lapse of attention she actually raised her mug and took a sip. To her credit, she managed not to spit it out again. She licked her lips: “I hardly think Rupert would be interested in a practical joke, do you?”

  “Of course not.” Bernard’s eyes almost crossed as he took a scalding mouthful of his brew. “To cut a long story short: like all the best stories, there is a nugget of truth buried beneath a continent of lies.”

  “Do go on.” Eve nodded encouragingly. “Please?”

  Bernard needed little or no encouragement to mansplain. “The title of Necronomicon, or Book of Dead Names, has been assigned to at least three different manuscripts that circulated in Europe between the late thirteenth and early eighteenth centuries. One—the most likely candidate—originated as an Andalusian work of scholarship titled Al Azif, which found its way into the custody of the Dominican order in the 1590s—its existence may have been part of the impetus for the creation of the Spanish Inquisition—at any rate, it has a most foul reputation. There’s a copy in the obscene manuscripts collection of the Bodleian Library, but it’s been sealed since 1945. Apparently the three most recent readers committed suicide after working on the damned book.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. There were reports of delusions—hearing strange voices, paranoia, a conviction that certain dead things were controlling their limbs while they slept—the usual. One of the scholars was so upset he sought an exorcism; afterwards, the priest had a nervous breakdown. Another of them shot his mistress then hanged himself, leaving a suicide note that said she was pregnant with the anti-Christ. But the real clue that this might be the actual book is that it isn’t in the Bod’s sealed collection any more.”

  “What happened?” Eve had noticed the tendency of Bernard’s gaze to track towards her chest, and adjusted her posture accordingly, leaning forward to present him with a better view.

  “It was borrowed,” Bernard confided, with evident relish, “by the Prime Minister.”

  “But the Bodleian doesn’t lend—” Eve bit her tongue before she could say too much. “Right.”

  “Right.” He nodded emphatically. “So, that’s Rare Manuscript AW-312.4, the Third Candidate. There are two other known copies: one’s in the Vatican archives, the other is in the royal library in Riyadh, although it disappeared after the Salafi ascendancy in the 1980s. But that’s not what’s for sale. Oh no.” He took another mouthful, then put his mug down on the carpet, slopping tea, and leaned closer. “This is even rarer. It’s the concordance!”

  “A concordance?” Eve forced a puzzled smile onto her face.

  “Indeed.” Bernard gazed into her eyes. “If simply reading AW-312.4 is bad for you, how damaging would it be to try and index the thing? To read it and to comprehend the significance of every word, to study the interrelation of concepts and interplay of references within the manuscript, and then to map every single occurrence of every term?” His smile was bright, fey, and not entirely sane.

  “Who was responsible?” Eve asked. If Bernard noticed the slight tension in her voice, he pretended not to.

  “Various friars and monks, during the seventeenth century.” Bernard sat back and waved his hand dismissively. “It always ended in tears before bedtime. Well, there were also a couple of autos-da-fé and burnings at the stake as well, but what else would you expect of the Spanish Inquisition? At least, that’s how they usually ended. There was a final attempt in 1833 and that was successful.”

  “How?”

  “Technology and … determination? A fortuitous combination. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Vatican copy came into the custody of a librarian, an Archbishop Rodriguez, whose ambition was to index everything. After all, what use is a territory without a map? He had heard of AW-312.4 and the disastrous attempts to index it, and he decided he was going to finish the job, once and for all, so that future clergy might be vigilant for even the most fragmentary sign of these unholy scriptures. And he had access to three things that no previous indexer had been blessed with: an entire scriptorium of Dominican monks; the scholarly letters and published patents of Sir Charles Babbage; and an early punched-card-controlled jacquard weaving machine.”

  Eve blinked. “Let me guess. One page per scribe, one punched card per index word, and he was familiar with Babbage’s difference engine? Perhaps how it might be used to drive a printer? Division of labor?”

  “Not exactly. The monks all wore an eyepatch, so they still had one working eyeball after they finished their assigned page. And they didn’t build a Babbage printer like the one in the Science Museum: they just wove a, a demonic tapestry. Afterwards they burned the Jacquard loom and the card deck in a last, secret auto-da-fé. Then Archbishop Rodriguez went into seclusion for six months, fasting and praying as he un-stitched the embroidered cloth encoding the concordance and transcribed it by hand onto pages blessed by the Pope himself.” Bernard leaned forward again, and touched her right knee: “It didn’t save him, of course; the poor bastard gouged his eyes out and died raving about a month later. But at least he finished the job.”

  Fascinating, Eve thought, resisting the impulse to break his fingers, one by one. “So what happened to the manuscript?”

  “Oh, the usual. They made a couple of attempts to print copies for Inquisition use, but something always went wrong, so eventually they decided to stop killing editors and proofreaders. This was back before it was practical to ship it to China for typesetting, where the workers, being unable to read the manuscript, would be immune to its effects. AW-312.4 vanished back into the archives and the concordance was locked in a closet for a few decades. It’s rumored that the concordance is warded, powerfully—an anti-theft sigil. You’re safe if somebody gives you the book, but if you try to steal it, oh dear no. Anyway, some time later it was stolen. Which ended badly for the thief, but at that point it was free for the taking by anyone who stumbled across it. And they did. It crops up again in Paris in 1872, then again in London in 1888, in a secret auction brokered by a barrister in chambers in Middle Temple who died within six months of its conclusion. And then the trail goes cold. The concordance vanishes from history—the chambers’ records were bombed during the Blitz—until about a week ago.”

  Eve nodded again. “What’s the story?”

  “Well.” Bernard squinted. “I can’t attest that it’s definitely the real thing, you understand, although the prospectus is quite—” he shuddered and finally removed his hand—“convincing. Ah, I will need to invoice you for expenses incurred, by the way.” She nodded encouragement. “They included a fragment of a book cover allegedly containing human DNA, as evidence of anthropodermic bibliopegy. There was also a scan of a single sheet that quite made my eyes water, even though their laser printer crashed a quarter of the way down the page. Ah-hem. Anyway. The prospectus and sample, along with bidding instructions, are in my bank deposit box—I couldn’t sleep with that thing in the house—and if you give me a ceiling I’ll submit a sealed bid. The seller wants ten percent, non-refundable, in advance to cover auction expenses, and the rest held in escrow—they’re retaining one law firm to disburse funds and another to receive bids, both offshore, it’s all a bit complicated. The winning bidder will receive instructions to retrieve the manuscript from secure storage. So, ah
, how much is it worth to Rupert? And you?”

  Eve stared at him for a minute as she pulled her scattered thoughts together. Thoughts like, Another goddamn cursed magic tome, really? And, Sealed bids? We definitely have competitors? And, Is this a come-on? She swallowed. “I’m not the purchaser you need to satisfy,” she finally told him. “Are there any other concordances of this … this book?”

  “Not that I know of.” Bernard paused. “There is a rumor.”

  “A rumor.”

  “The Bod’s copy. Right before Number Ten grabbed it, some civil service bunch got their greasy paws on it. Something to do with training a deep learning neural network to recognize the script in AW-312.4 and generate a concordance automatically.”

  “And did it?”

  Bernard kept a poker face. “Rumor has it they discovered six ways—hitherto unknown to computer science—to drive a neural network insane.”

  “So.” She leaned forward again, deliberately giving him an eyeful. “Let me get back to you with Rupert’s bid?” She smiled. “You won’t be talking about this to anybody, will you?”

  Bernard swallowed. “Of course not, my dear.”

  “That’s sweet of you.” She rose. “If you should happen to overhear the names of any rival bidders I’m sure you could find a way to let me know?”

  “Absolutely! But the vendor is being very secretive. Between you and me, I think they’re probably afraid of the Russian element.” Followers of Chernobog, or worse. He stood hastily. “My commission—”