The Manual Of Detection Part 12

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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 gla.s.s 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 b.u.mping 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n manual."

"Detective Pith," he said, "I saw them shoot you."

"Aw, nuts," said Pith. He took off his hat and held it over his chest. There was a bullet hole in the top of it. "d.a.m.n 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 b.u.t.tons of his shirt.

Unwin got to his knees. He reached to take the knife but stopped himself. Had he read in the Manual Manual that removing the weapon will worsen the wound? "Don't move," he said. 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." 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 sh.o.r.e.

"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, Oneiric detection, Moore had whispered to him. Moore had whispered to him. In layman's terms: dream surveillance. 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 b.u.t.terfly," he said. "And how, when he woke, he wasn't sure if he really was an old man who had dreamed he was a b.u.t.terfly or if he was a b.u.t.terfly 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, sp.a.w.ned 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 a.s.sumed 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, a.n.a.lyzed. 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 sh.o.r.eline 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. "a.s.suming 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 a.s.sist 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."

Unwin recalled what Miss Greenwood had done to Brock that morning, at the carnival ticket booth. Something whispered in his ear and the man had fallen immediately into a kind of trance. "Cleopatra Greenwood is one of those people," he said.

Moore grunted. "The power of Greenwood's voice has been observed on several occasions. Sivart knew of it, though he didn't know what it was. You remember she had a brief career as a singer? When I left the Agency, the overseer was experimenting with recordings of her music, to see if they could help expand the uses of dream detection. To what end I'm not entirely certain. But Hoffmann, of course, is also aware of her talent. In fact, I no longer consider it a coincidence that one of Cleo Greenwood's songs was first played on the radio almost eight years ago, on the night of November eleventh."

Of course: Unwin had heard it, too. That was why he recognized the tune when he heard it performed at the Cat & Tonic the night before. The questions that Sivart had left unanswered in his report on The Man Who Stole November Twelfth returned to Unwin's mind: the day skipped on calendars across the city, the mysterious operatives-never identified or apprehended-who changed the date at all the government offices and news agencies. But maybe there had been no operatives, at least not conscious ones.

"Could Hoffmann have influenced us somehow?" Unwin asked. "Infiltrated our dreams and made agents out of us while we slept? We might have altered the calendars ourselves."

Moore frowned, his lips disappearing behind his whiskers. "He knows the technique of dream detection. Years ago the secret was leaked to him-the work of a double agent, probably. And he is more powerful by far than any of the watchers, because his mastery of disguise and ventriloquism makes him untraceable as he moves from one dream to another. But how he could have planted suggestions, fooled us into stealing a day from ourselves-that I cannot imagine. And if he had done it once, wouldn't he have done it again? Why stop with one day if he could take so much more? Every night, his sleeper agents would be doing his work."

"Last night the alarm clocks were stolen by a gang of sleepwalkers," Unwin said. "I saw one or two people emerge from every building we pa.s.sed-they must have broken in to each apartment and taken the clocks. They thought they were going to a party to drink and gamble, but really they were delivering their plunder to the Rooks. Miss Greenwood was there, singing to them, and Detective Pith was shot because he discovered the operation."

Moore shook his head. "There's something we're missing, then. Some tool the enemy has acquired. A battle is under way, Mr. Unwin. The last, maybe, in a long and quiet war. I don't understand the meaning of the maneuvers, only the stakes. Hoffmann's desire for vengeance has grown in the years since his defeat on November twelfth. The gambling parlors, the protection rackets, the black markets-these have always been means to an end, a web from which to feed through the long years of his preparations. His true goal is the destruction of the boundary between the city's rational mind and the violent delirium of its lunatic dreams. His ideal world is a carnival, everything illusory, everything in flux. We'd all be b.u.t.terflies dreaming we were people if he had his way. Only the Agency's rigorous adherence to the principles of order and reason have held him in check. Your work, Mr. Unwin, and mine."

From the north came the sounds of traffic, of the city awakening. Unwin's clothes were torn and bloodstained. How many people would have seen his name in the papers by now? It would not be good for his defense, he thought, to be found covered in another man's blood. He wondered whether there was a subway station nearby, one with access to the eight train.

"You realize by now that your search for Sivart is hopeless," Moore said. "He is probably dead."

"He contacted me," Unwin said.

"What? How?"

"He appeared in my sleep two nights ago. And again, I think, last night. He told me about Chapter Eighteen."

"Impossible. Sivart knows nothing about dream infiltration. None of the detectives do; they're given expurgated editions of the Manual, Manual, like yours." like yours."

"But the watchers-"

"The watchers never reveal the true source of their knowledge. It is disguised as intelligence gleaned from mundane informants. This is standard protocol; it's all in the Agency bylaws. The unabridged edition, of course."

"Someone told him, then. Zlatari saw him reading at the Forty Winks, just before he disappeared. It must have been a complete version of the Manual. Manual."

"Who would have given it to him?"

"The same person who showed you the gold tooth in the mouth of the Oldest Murdered Man," Unwin said. He stopped and took Moore's shoulder. "I thought you were only being forgetful when you said you dreamed her. But maybe it really did happen in your sleep."

Moore appeared suddenly dazed. He closed his eyes, and Unwin saw them darting back and forth under the lids. "It was Cleopatra Greenwood, I think."

"Are you sure?" Unwin said. "Describe her."

"You're right," Moore said, his eyes still closed. "She was younger than Miss Greenwood. Just as pretty, though. And very quiet, as if she thought someone else might be listening. Brown hair under her gray cap. Eyes gray, almost silver, like mirrors. She was dressed for bad weather. She was wearing, I think, a plaid coat."

The act of remembrance had left Moore in a stupor. Unwin stood with his hand still on his shoulder. The woman in the plaid coat had broken in to the old clerk's dream and shown him the thing he could not forget. She had unveiled Sivart's gravest of errors.

Little surprise that Moore had mistaken her for Cleopatra Greenwood. The resemblance, now that Unwin considered it, was obvious. The woman in the plaid coat was Miss Greenwood's daughter. And she was most certainly "in on it." But what did she have to gain from revealing the fake in the Munic.i.p.al Museum? Or from stealing a copy of the Manual Manual and giving it to Sivart? and giving it to Sivart?

Moore's eyes popped open. "We have a ride," he said.

A taxicab was approaching from a narrow side street farther up the block. Moore stepped out from under the umbrella to signal it with both hands. The taxicab lurched to the curb and idled there, its checkered cha.s.sis shuddering.

"We'll go to my place," Moore said to Unwin, "and plan our next move."

The driver of the cab was a slouched, thin-faced man. He lowered his window a few inches and watched them cross the street. Unwin drew his coat tighter over his shirt, trying to conceal the stains.

"You're available?" Moore called.

The driver took this in slowly, refusing to meet Moore's gaze. At last he muttered, "Available."

Moore nodded sharply and reached for the handle of the door. He tugged at it a few times, but the door held fast. "It's locked," he said.

The driver ran his tongue over his teeth and said, "Locked."

"Will you take us?" Moore demanded. "Yes or no?"

"No," the driver said.