The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,89

gutter, where the water carried it away. He rose slowly to his knees and watched it go, his breath coming in hoarse wheezes. Then he got to his feet, brushing himself off with his hands. So it was not Enoch Hoffman who had murdered the watcher.

He looked nowhere in particular and said, “All right, end of the tour. There’s little else I can do to help you. We’re pickles in our own jars, Mr. Unwin. That’s how it has to be now.”

He wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was breathing easier, but his voice was quiet. “I could have done better. I could have shown you more. We’re in trouble, the whole lot of us. Read your copy of the Manual. Find Sivart if you can, and get him out of there before he makes things worse.”

Lamech thrust his hands into his pockets and looked around. “Well?” he said. “Wake up, already.”

Unwin woke up.

BENEATH THE HEAVY COTTON BLANKET, his feet were damp in their socks. His head was heavy, and the pillow felt heavy beneath it. He had the odd impression that his skull had been magnetized. There was an unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth.

No music played in the third archive, and Miss Palsgrave had left her machine. Hilda, the Giantess Hildegard, the Chief Clerk of—of all this, Unwin supposed—was nowhere to be seen. Around him her underclerks carried on with their slumberous labors. What strange visions had Hoffmann and his daughter contrived for their perusal? Only the ever-wakeful Jasper Rook could remain immune to them forever—and Jasper, Unwin reminded himself, was probably back in the city by now, searching for the man who killed his brother.

The phonograph needle had reached the lead-out on the record of Lamech’s final dream and was traveling an endless, soundless loop. Unwin stopped the machine and flipped the record over, found more grooves on the B-side. Lamech had told him there was nothing more to see, but the watcher did not seem to understand everything that was happening. Unwin needed more; he put the needle down and closed his eyes.

Again the sounds formed patterns, the patterns shapes, and this time he sank into the dream from above. For a moment he had a dizzying view of Lamech’s city beneath him. He descended quickly, matching speed with the rain, so that each long drop appeared to hang unmoving in front of him. He looked up. More drops hovered like daggers over his eyes; he wished for his umbrella, had it, opened it. The umbrella parachuted over his head, and he swung below it like a pendulum while the rain drummed over his head.

Lamech was headed for the entrance of a building, the tallest in this part of the city, in all of the city, maybe. It stood a little apart from those nearby, a dark obelisk. There was something familiar about the place. Just as Unwin’s feet touched the ground, he realized why. It was the Agency office building.

Unwin followed, slipping through the lobby doors before they closed behind Lamech, then collapsed his umbrella on his way toward the elevator, just as he had done many hundreds of times before in that other lobby, the real one. If Hoffmann’s mind was represented by a hall of mirrors, whose dreaming thoughts were housed here?

Lamech went past the elevator doors, mumbling to himself as he walked. “Stupid, stupid,” Unwin heard him say—to himself, apparently. Then he shook his head, as though to clear his thoughts. At the back of the lobby, he angled his watch in the dim light. Someone called out, “Come in, Ed, you’re right on time.” Unwin did not recognize the voice; it came from behind a door stenciled in black letters: CUSTODIAN.

When Lamech went in, Unwin heard a noise that was immediately familiar. It was the rustling of paper and the cooing of pigeons. The sounds froze him for a moment, and he barely had time to squeeze through, ducking under Lamech’s arm as the watcher closed the door.

The room was small, and smaller for its contents. Piles of paper, some bundled into files, some floating free, were stacked floor to ceiling. Filing cabinets stood in rows and at odd angles, forming a kind of maze. A living breeze inhabited the place, lifting pages from one pile and dropping them onto another or discarding them on the floor. Some of the file drawers stood open, and in most of them pigeons had roosted, with nests of twigs and paper and bits