And If Thou Wilt, Forget

Tim would have rather have his balls roasted and peeled like a chestnut while they were still attached to his body than refer to listening to Eric Delano’s statement as getting it out of the way, at least not out loud, but he realized with a sinking feeling that it was a lot harder to put the box of tapes out of his mind now that the Eye was no longer trying to keep him from knowing there was actually a way to quit.

He tried. He had to. Gerry had been deeply affected by his father’s statement, more than he was letting on. He’d cried, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t even done that when he’d almost died of cancer, and while Tim was more relieved than he cared to admit that he even could still cry, it meant he’d been badly hurt. On top of that, the actual nature of the statement had definitely shaken them both. Over dinner, Gerry confessed to Tim that he remembered—vaguely—his dad in his last months of his life, remembered him being sick, but after he’d learned about the effects of trying to leave he’d just assumed he had stubbornly let himself waste away to nothingness rather than go back. Finding out that he’d gouged out his own eyes had not remotely been on his radar. Which was fair, because it hadn’t been on Tim’s either. That Gertrude had kept the tape at all was astonishing, and could only be attributed to that tiny bit of sentiment she refused to acknowledge she had that wouldn’t let go of the fact that she’d promised to keep the statement safe.

But even as he tried to be—even as he was sympathetic to Gerry’s upset, part of Tim’s mind kept wandering back to the damned tapes.

“Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?” Gerry asked. If the roles were reversed, it would have been because he was putting aside his own feelings to focus on Tim’s, as dangerous as that was, but Tim didn’t need any kind of supernatural ability to know he was deflecting to try and distract himself.

“Yeah, that’s not going to be a problem,” Tim replied, but didn’t elaborate. “Are you?”

Gerry sighed and flopped down onto the bed. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Tim took the precaution of wrapping himself around Gerry before he closed his eyes. He knew well enough that, these days at least, he didn’t move around much in his sleep, so hopefully he could keep Gerry safe and secure if he did start thrashing about in his sleep, or get restless. For his part, he fell asleep the same way he had for at least the last month—immediately, and deeply, and plunging him directly into a series of dreams he wanted to be afraid of but wasn’t. They ran their course quickly enough, anyway.

He awoke to a room that was still shrouded in shadow, the sun not yet risen, to find that Gerry had twisted himself and the blankets around his arm like a string of fairy lights tossed casually into a box with a clothes hanger. From the way he was shifting and muttering, he was either having an extremely vivid dream that was pissing him off mightily, or he was already awake.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” Tim asked quietly.

Gerry turned his head. “Hey—you’re awake.”

“I would say ‘no, I’m having an extremely vivid and specific dream and you’re a part of it because your waking world is my sleeping one’, but I’m pretty sure there’s a statement to that effect somewhere in the Archives.” Tim tried to extract his arm and found that to be impossible. “Jesus, babe, this is one hell of a Gordian knot you’ve got going here. And you didn’t answer my question. Have you slept at any point tonight?”

“No,” Gerry admitted. “Couldn’t get my mind to settle down. Or my body, really. And you were really deep under, which I first discovered when I tried to apologize for keeping you awake and got no response and then had firmly brought home for me when I gave up, tried to get out of bed, and discovered I was apparently in bed with a steel vise.”

“Well, at least now we know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Hold still.”

It took several long minutes, but Tim was finally able to find the end of the blankets and pick apart the knot Gerry had managed to tie through his wriggling. From there it was only a matter of seconds before both of them were free, Gerry to sprawl in starfish fashion across the whole of the bed and Tim to surreptitiously shake the life back into his arm. For a while they lay in silence.

Finally, Gerry asked, almost offhandedly, “Were you planning on going back to sleep tonight?”

“Nope.” Tim drew out the n and popped the p sharply. “Do you want to go back to the storage unit now?”

Gerry exhaled in obvious relief. “I thought you’d never ask.”

There was no real reason to bring the dog. Rowlf whuffed and twitched in his sleep, dreaming of chasing rabbits or running after sticks or heading to the crossroads to meet Queen Dripslobber while the Fairy Wogdog remained to guard the house, as they quietly passed his basket on the floor and let themselves out of the flat. It was around two in the morning, the pubs and bars and nightclubs all beginning to close, so they weren’t the only car on the road, which did at least mean they didn’t stand out. There were a few cars parked in the lot behind the storage unit, but it didn’t take a genius to spot that they were cars being stored, not people visiting their units. Still, at least they were able to get in.

Tim knew a bit better about what to expect this time, but that didn’t stop the slight clench of anticipation in his gut as he unfastened the lock and rolled up the door enough for them to duck under. He rolled it shut again, same as he’d done the first time, and scanned the heaps of moldering cardboard boxes, stacks of paintings, and tightly packed industrial shelves around them. “Where should we begin?”

Gerry took a deep, slow breath. “Turning on the light, maybe?”

Tim winced. “Oh…shit.” He checked over his shoulder to make sure Gerry wasn’t staring upwards, then grabbed the dangling cord and tugged it, flooding the unit with a sickly amber glow. “Sorry, Ger, I…didn’t realize I’d started doing that.”

“Forgetting I couldn’t see in the dark? Usually you don’t.” Gerry stepped up next to him. “Or at least not since we found where in the tunnels her body probably was. I get that you’re under a lot of stress right now, though. Right. Let’s just…take this one quadrant at a time. There has to be an answer in here somewhere.”

Tim nodded. “Widdershins or deosil?”

“You’re the only person in the world who uses those terms. You know that, right?”

“There’s a queer romance writer in North Carolina who begs to differ with you.”

They started in the back, on the grounds that Gertrude Robinson had been a paranoid old bat who would have wanted to keep the most important thing in the storage unit hidden as much as possible; they started in the left corner on the grounds that most people would have started in the front right and gone counterclockwise, so most likely they’d have given up by the time they got to that point. Also, there were a lot of paintings in the front, and Tim was keen to avoid them, just in case.

“He has to sleep sometime, right?” he murmured, more to himself than anything.

Gerry, however, nodded. “He’s still human enough. At some point, he needs more than a catnap, you know? And God knows he’s no Vetinari.”

“Comparing him to anyone from those books is an insult, but I think the closest would be Vorbis.” Tim shifted one of the paintings aside, then stared at it. “Never mind, she’s not stupid. All these paintings have their eyes cut out. It’s a wonder she bothered keeping them, but there you go. Still…”

“Yeah,” Gerry agreed. He prised open a cardboard box and shifted through the contents. “Looks like some kind of notebook…so who do we think he is?”

“General Woundwort, who else?” Tim looked over Gerry’s shoulder as he carefully opened the notebook. “Don’t suppose that says ‘My Plans For Saving the World,’ does it?”

Gerry angled the book towards him. “I think it’s her address book. Or possibly blackmail.”

“Not useful for us right now, then.” Tim kissed Gerry’s cheek and moved on.

The next box he opened was full of eyeless dolls of varying ages. He cautiously prodded one, but it thankfully didn’t rise up. “Either she was trying to keep all this contained, she was afraid that actually destroying them would unleash whatever was inside them, or she kept them as trophies.”

“Probably the last one, honestly. Maybe this is just a place for her to come and sift through her greatest triumphs, like hunters bragging about the game they bagged. Speaking of…” Gerry lifted a scrap of fur between two fingers, brittle and dusty. He wrinkled his nose at it. “What do you reckon this was when it was at home?”

Tim carefully took the fur scrap and examined it, turning it over a couple of times. “Gorilla.”

“No, seriously?”

“Yeah, look. This hair, this is primate hair of some kind. And this grey here? Probably a silverback.” Tim very carefully handed it back to Gerry. “Definitely not legal in the UK. Why does she have a scrap of gorilla skin?”

Gerry grimaced. “Probably because she cut it apart from the rest of the skin. Look.”

Tim looked at the pile of shredded skin and nodded. He poked one in particular. “Looks like she tried burning it, but, you know, skin is kind of difficult to destroy completely. Wonder why she had it.”

“Hopefully that answer is in here somewhere. Let’s keep looking.”

Tim straightened up and turned. Something caught his attention, and he frowned. “Hang on, that’s…what is that?”

“What is what?” Gerry followed his gaze. “A toolbox, maybe?”

Tim walked over to the hard plastic case and tapped it lightly. It felt…solid. Thicker than your average toolbox, with sturdy metal facings rather than equally cheap plastic ones. He squeezed the latches, forced them open, and lifted the lid.

And stared.

In the bottom of the case, which was easily three feet on each side, were rows of square, smooth blocks. One could almost mistake them for bricks of clay, but if they had been clay, they would have been of an exceptionally low quality, with a great deal of ash in them, to get them that color. They were almost the same consistency, though, and Tim didn’t doubt that if he pressed a finger into one, it would give slightly underneath him. It was a kind of putty, or…plasticine, really. The small offset case containing brightly-colored sticks with metal on the ends left him in no doubt what he was looking at, though.

“The security in this place is rubbish,” he said.

“What?” Gerry stepped up to his side and looked in the case, too. “Jesus. Is that…C4?”

“Some kind of plastic explosive, anyway.” Tim turned to look at Gerry. “Was this her backup plan?”

Gerry glanced sideways. “Must be. Look.” He reached across and plucked something off the raised lid, then handed it to Tim. It was a sturdy, plain white envelope, of the sort people put confidential documents like wills in. On the front, in Gertrude’s handwriting—though a bit rushed, as though she’d been in a hurry—it said, simply, Tim.

Tim shut the lid of the case and accepted the envelope, then moved off to one side and seated himself on a sturdy enough stack of boxes. Gerry sat next to him and looked over his shoulder as he methodically worked the flap loose and pulled out several sheets of paper. It was the sort of stationery that would have been given to a little girl in the fifties, delicate pink paper with careful lines and cherry blossoms printed on its front, but the handwriting covering it was just as distinctly Gertrude’s. Tim couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud, but he held the paper so Gerry could see, and they read together.

Tim -

This is yours to use as you see fit, but please read this letter in full before you do.

Hopefully the caprices of the postal service did not delay you in receiving the key to this unit for too terribly long, but of course I cannot Know that for certain. However, let us assume that, if it was not waiting for you when you returned from Viðareiði, it at least arrived very shortly afterwards. If you have already listened to the tape I recorded for you, then of course you likely know that you can safely disregard most of it. Not my warning about Elias—and that you will need to listen to the tape for, or come and speak to me—but much else will no longer be necessary.

I am sure that by now, you are aware of the destruction of the Magnus Institute. You are aware that it has burned down under mysterious circumstances, that there was a gas leak of some kind, perhaps. You may have heard that the police suspect foul play, although of course that is by no means certain. Perhaps the police have decided to write off the entire incident rather than investigate and risk more police officers—or firefighters, for that matter—having to fill out Section Thirty-One forms and risk being called out on such cases more often. Perhaps there was no one left to complain.

You deserve to know the truth. The truth is that I am the one responsible. As I write this letter, I am preparing to burn the Institute, starting with the Archives. There is a gas main below the Institute that is well buried, but I have an accomplice who can…alter that somewhat. I intend to have it brought closer to the surface, to be located in a key place, and to set a fire directly over it. Once I have lit the match, I will leave the Institute, post the key to you, and go home.

If you have heard that I am in the hospital, which I assume you have, you may believe that I was injured in the fire. Please do not worry about that. I will be well out of the way before the fire begins. However, I am injured, and it is of my own doing. I have resigned my post as Archivist.

I am aware that, as far as you know—as far as I have told you—there is no way to quit once you have begun working here, that an appointment to the Archives is one for life. However, a former assistant of mine—no. You—and Gerard, whom I am sure is either reading over your shoulder, listening to you read, or waiting impatiently for his turn to read this letter himself—deserve the truth. It was Eric Delano, Gerard’s father, who found a way to quit. And indeed, it is quite simple. How does one sever one’s connection to the Eye?

By removing its ability to use yours.

So yes. By the time you read this letter, I will be blind. I have a method in mind, a way to make my eyes irreparably nonfunctional, hopefully without too much damage to the rest of my body. I will likely need some medical attention, but I intend to summon it too late for them to save my vision. Please do not take such a drastic step yourself. I do not believe it will be necessary. Once I am no longer the Archivist, you should be able to walk away.

I shall explain my reasoning in full when I am well again, as I assume I am still recovering from the loss of my sight, but for now, please understand—Elias has a ritual of his own, and if he suspects what I do, he knows enough to have one that will work. I don’t know the details…but I will not be a part of it.

Depending on how much time you have before the Unknowing is scheduled to begin, you may not be able to speak to me before that point. If that is the case, you may disrupt it using the contents of this case. I trust you will be able to figure out how to use it—it is hardly difficult, and you are quite intelligent. Please take care, as I do want the opportunity to speak with you about it, and I do not wish to lose you to something as trivial as this. I suspect, however, that you will take as much pleasure in disrupting the Unknowing as I did in curtailing the Desolation’s ritual, for the exact same reason. You cannot bring Daniel back, any more than I could bring Catherine back, but wherever they are, I hope they will both be at peace, knowing that we were able to save anyone else from going through what they did…or, for that matter, what we did.

That being said, if you do have time to speak with me before the Unknowing, please do. I would rather you go into it with a fuller picture of the circumstances. Ultimately, however, the choice is yours, and I do trust your judgment.

One final note…there is every possibility I will not survive this. Not because I think I am likely to die when the Institute burns, although I have no idea how much losing the statements—the accumulation of all of that knowledge—will harm me, but because I do not know how deep my connection to the Ceaseless Watcher is. It is entirely within the realm of probability that I cannot sever that connection without losing my life in the process, or at least being severely diminished. If that is the case, I want you to know two things. The first is that I have no regrets, or at least none about dying. I have lived a full and complete life, I have done much, if not all, that I hoped I would be able to accomplish, and I have done what my conscience requires of me. And if I have any lasting legacy, I am thankful that it is my work, and you. The second thing I would like you to know is that I have every faith in you, and your intelligence. If I am unable to explain what I have learned, I am certain that, with a bit of effort and research, you will work it out.

I am equally certain that you will do so far faster than I ever did.

Hopefully we will speak soon. Be brave, Tim.

And good luck.

With all the love I am able to give,

Gertrude.

Tim let the last page fall into his lap. He stared vacantly at nothing, letting the words settle into the nooks and crannies of his soul and the knowledge emblazon itself into his mind. Something had told him, from the moment he’d heard the tape, that Gertrude had been planning to quit…eventually. And he’d definitely suspected she was planning to do it before the Unknowing.

But burning down the Institute? That was something he hadn’t expected. Still…he could feel it was true.

“Tim?” Gerry said quietly. “Do you have any idea what she meant?”

“No,” Tim said honestly. “Not yet. But I will.” He paused. “We will. She said we could figure it out with effort and research, and she’s right, we can. But not today. Today…well, we got the answers we came for. And a whole lot more, honestly.”

“And a whole lot of questions.”

“And that. For now…we know what she left to disrupt the Unknowing, what she sent you here for. And we know what she wanted me to find here.” Tim folded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope, then got to his feet. He looked around until he found a rusted galvanized bucket, probably an old milk pail, sitting off to one side. He picked it up and moved away from the case of plastic explosives. “Can I borrow your lighter?”

“What, here?” Gerry cast a nervous look at the case.

“It’s not for that. Anyway, you need to—never mind.” Tim held out his hand. After a moment, Gerry reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter.

“I’m not smoking anymore, you know,” he said as he placed the little brass box in Tim’s palm. “I really did give it up.”

“I know. I believe you. But lighters have their uses.” Tim flicked the little wheel a couple of times until he got the flame going, then touched it to the corner of the envelope. It blazed up quickly enough, and he dropped it into the bucket. Gerry stepped up to his side, and together they watched as the envelope and paper within turned to a smoldering pile of ash.

Finally, he placed a metal lid over the opening of the bucket, hopefully smothering the last of the flames, and turned to Gerry. “Let’s go home. There’s nothing more for us here today.”

Gerry wrapped an arm around Tim’s waist and pulled him close. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Tim understood what he was thinking as well as if he’d shouted it from the rooftops. Maybe they just knew each other that well, or maybe it was because he was thinking the same thing. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they had one end of the solution.

They just needed to find the other.