And If Thou Wilt, Forget

One of the earliest things Gertrude Robinson had told Tim was that there were two places the Eye could not See: inside of itself, and the future. The Ceaseless Watcher dealt in knowledge, after all, in absolute fact and certainty, in truth no matter how inconvenient, and no future could truly be certain until it had gone through the present and become the past. Even the powers that claimed foreknowledge—the Web and the End—couldn’t really see what was to come; the End could see the future in that death was more or less inevitable, and the Web could make a good guess at how things would turn out based on patterns, but nothing was ever sure.

Still, Tim thought, couldn’t it have at least given him a clue? A hint? Some sort of indication that things weren’t going to go the way he’d hoped?

Okay, maybe that was obvious. As Gerry had pointed out while they’d been in Siberia, luck was never on their side. They survived because they had to, not because things were going their way. Any time Tim started thinking that, maybe, this time, they were going to catch a fucking break, something happened and they wound up sliding back almost to where they’d started. Still, he’d honestly hoped this time would be…if not better, maybe at least different. He’d hoped maybe having all the resources, tools, and information they had would mean they could, at the very least, stay in one spot.

He should have known better.

It quickly became obvious that he couldn’t spend as much time working out theories as he’d hoped. It was easy to lose track of time, and he’d almost been late for work Monday morning—a serious issue, since he’d taken the keys back—because he and Gerry had been trying to organize their notes until the wee small hours of the morning and stumbled out of the tunnels ten minutes to sunrise. He had to really force himself to focus during the day, too, and ended up using his lunch break for a power nap. Worse, he’d ended up—inadvertently—fighting with Gerry when he got home, an argument at least quickly resolved when Gerry asked what the fuck his problem was and he surprised both of them by saying he didn’t know.

In another universe, maybe, Tim made the choice to forgo the work of the Archives, keep his own counsel, stick to his own hours, and come in through the tunnels to do his own work without speaking to anyone. Then again, in another universe he didn’t owe anything to Gertrude Robinson. In another universe he didn’t have Gerry’s support and encouragement. In another universe he trusted Jon even less than he did now. In another universe he knew less than he knew now. In another universe he didn’t literally have the goddamned keys. It sucked, and it wouldn’t be something he could sustain for long, because the Unknowing was coming and he really did have to figure out how to stop it, but for the moment, Tim had made the conscious, deliberate choice to sacrifice time in the tunnels in favor of at least showing his face in the Archives.

That may, in fact, have been the only correct choice he’d made lately.

His desperate attempt to keep Melanie from accepting Elias’s job offer had backfired spectacularly. Not only had she accepted it, she very clearly thought he’d been trying to keep her, specifically, from working there instead of trying to keep anyone else from being trapped. And granted, the fact that he’d preceded her getting that offer by all but accusing her of the circumstances leading to Jon’s current predicament hadn’t helped. He’d reacted in anger, and while he still wasn’t entirely sure he trusted her completely, he at least had to concede that she probably hadn’t done it on purpose. Still, the initial encounter had definitely soured their relationship, and she was coldly, cuttingly polite when she absolutely had to talk to him and ignored him the rest of the time.

Honestly, he could deal with that. He may have killed a garden that hadn’t had time to grow yet, but at least he hadn’t salted the earth for good measure, or at least he hoped he hadn’t; even if he had, though, it was probably something he could live without. The problem was what he’d done to his relationship with Martin.

Things had been uneasy between them for a while, something Tim had…not exactly been oblivious to, but, honestly, kind of ignored. He’d just assumed that everything would be fine when he got the chance to explain himself, that Martin might be a little upset at not having been told—or Tim’s suspicions of Jon—but ultimately accept it and agree that he understood Tim’s reasoning, if not his conclusions. The conversation they’d had the day after the old man’s murder had seemed to confirm that. Even as tense as they’d been from anxiety and not knowing, Tim had figured everything would be fine.

Then, of course, he’d disappeared without warning, left Martin alone with the job and Melanie without even leaving a note. He’d had to—any note could have, would have been intercepted by Elias, and it couldn’t look premeditated—but he’d sort of assumed he’d at least get a chance to explain once he got back.

Nope.

Tim recalled reading somewhere—or maybe someone had told him—or maybe the Ceaseless Watcher had just dropped the information in his head—that rabbits usually only flopped down around other animals they trusted, but if they were engaged in some kind of battle of wits with a truly hated rival, they would sometimes make a show of flopping down in front of them, a sort of sarcastic you aren’t even worth perceiving as a threat kind of thing. Martin’s attitude reminded him of that. He treated Tim more or less like he always did, at least ostensibly, but to anyone who truly knew him, the difference was obvious. There was no warmth, no sincerity behind it. He deferred to Tim as a superior, but there was no camaraderie there.

As he watched Martin work away at his filing, drawn and unsmiling, Tim thought of the line in Small Gods about Om’s first experience with humanity being a shepherd and not a goatherd—that sheep were stupid, and must be driven, whereas goats were intelligent, and needed to be led. He’d completely misinterpreted what his flock was. Not that he thought Martin was stupid—far from it—but that he’d assumed his personality to be a lot more docile than it was. He didn’t have to protect him from Melanie because she was more aggressive and dangerous and stubborn than he was, although in some ways she probably was, but…well, Martin was equally determined, in his own way.

Gerry had said that Tim would tear down the city with his bare hands if anything happened to the Archivist, and he was right. Martin, however, would do it for Jonathan Sims.

Maybe he was a dog in his own right.

Elias, for his part, had been lurking outside the Archives for most of the previous week, looking increasingly more irritable every time Tim asked if he could help. Tim wasn’t quite sure why, but it had become something of a fun project just the same, especially when he’d come back from a quick nip up to the canteen for a sandwich and found him talking to Martin with a triumphant look in his eye that had vanished instantly when Tim joined the conversation. Martin had seemed irritated and exasperated, too, but he avoided any attempts on Tim’s part to get him aside and explain after Elias finally left, without whatever it was he’d come down for, if Tim was any judge. That had been confirmed the next day when Tim had returned from a pastry run, meant as an attempt at conciliation, to be greeted with a pleasant, satisfied smile from Elias as he emerged from the Archives.

“He wanted a few statements” was all Martin had to say on the subject, and Tim had ended up staying a few minutes after hours to try and get an idea of which ones he’d absconded with. It was hard to tell, though. Martin had put his frustrations at everything—Jon’s troubles, Tim’s absence, Melanie’s presence, the statements and the worms and the atmosphere of distrust—into a fierce bout of organization, and Tim would need more than half an hour to pick out which holes in Gertrude’s pseudosystem were the result of a refiling and which were actual removals. Sighing, he’d tabled that and gone home.

The orange glazed cinnamon buns hadn’t really done much to help matters, honestly, but they hadn’t hurt either.

It was Thursday—recording day—and Tim and Martin had had a very polite go-round about which of them would be doing the recording that ended when Tim, out of patience, had picked up the entire stack of completed files and ordered Martin to go get some goddamned lunch immediately. It was only after Martin had spun on his heel and strode out without prevaricating that he’d tasted the static on his tongue and realized what had happened.

It was sensible, he told himself as he settled in to record and sifted through the stack for the real one he knew was in there. Martin didn’t take care of himself as it was, he needed to eat something or he’d get ill, and his safety was Tim’s responsibility as long as he was in the Archives. That didn’t mean he had to like compelling him, especially since that was going to make it harder for him to make things right later. There was probably blame on both sides, but he didn’t need to be able to see the future to know he’d have to be the one to start.

Just as he extracted the statement in question, the door opened and a figure stepped in—Basira Hussein, dressed in a plain, ordinary outfit. She checked a bit at the sight of Tim. “Oh. I, uh—thought Martin would be here.”

“He’s at lunch.” Tim opened the folder and reached for the tape recorder. “My turn to record today, anyway.”

“Huh.” Basira frowned at the recorder. “You still recording, then?”

“Yep. Why, you thought that was a Jon thing?” Tim raised an eyebrow at her. “Did you want something, or just to chat?”

Basira narrowed her eyes at him. “Yeah, well, your boss is busy and I didn’t see anyone else, so…”

“So you’re stuck with me,” Tim completed. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Daisy.”

“Look elsewhere.”

Basira pursed her lips, obviously annoyed, but pressed on. “They said at the station this was the last place she had checked in.”

“When she was interviewing us,” Tim pointed out. “Which was at least a month ago.”

“Yeah, I haven’t heard anything, so I went to check on her at the station, and they said she hadn’t been in since February.” Basira shrugged, but she was obviously worried.

Tim raised an eyebrow. “And nobody’s looked into that?”

“I mean, they don’t keep a close eye on—” Basira broke off and changed tack. “Well, she goes off the grid sometimes when working a case. Never this long, though. I thought it might have something to do with…y’know.” She gestured at the room.

Tim grunted noncommittally. “You know, mandatory microchipping went into effect last year.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Basira immediately puffed up on the defensive.

“It means that if you’re not able to control your dog, you shouldn’t have one.” Tim got to his feet and stared Basira, all five foot nine of her bristling, and let out just a bit of the anger and protectiveness he was trying to throttle back. “She hasn’t been back to the Institute since she interrogated us trying to railroad Jon, and I can prove that, because if she had come anywhere near me or mine she’d currently be lying in several shallow graves under the begonias. I told her if she so much as lays a hand on Jon, or on Martin, or on any of my people, I will destroy her, and I meant it. I don’t know or care what the hell she’s doing, as long as she’s staying away from them, so get a leash and a muzzle or ship her off to a farm up north, whatever you need to do. Good luck finding her, because I don’t intend to help you. Now, get the hell out of my Archives.”

The snarl rose unbidden in his throat, and Basira actually flinched and backed off. She was out the door with it shut behind her before she’d clearly had time to think about it, and Tim, slowly, settled back into his seat.

That was…rude, probably. Almost certainly uncalled for. Basira wasn’t really a danger to the Archives or anyone in it, more fox than wolf—she’d eat them if a bigger animal dragged them down, but they were too much to hunt on her own. But at the same time, he hadn’t forgotten what he said to her when he first met her about terriers and mastiffs. She might not try to hurt anyone herself, but she didn’t trouble herself too much with what happened to the people her partner caught.

Tim took a deep, steadying breath, picked up the first page of the statement, and pulled the recorder a bit closer. “Case number 0031104, Enrique MacMillan. Incident occurred in Saint Ives, twenty-fifth of October, 2003. Statement given fourth of November, 2003. Committed to tape thirty-first of March, 2017. Tim Stoker recording. Statement begins.”

As statements went, this one was short and straightforward, logical to follow from beginning to end—no meandering timelines, no long stalking, no delays between discovery and claiming. Just a man who’d found something he didn’t understand and fallen to it quickly. It was unpleasant to Tim, though, and the why was at the end of the statement, in the way Mr. MacMillan described his dream—the way he talked about the voice calling to him, about trying to save himself. About how he both feared and craved what he knew was coming.

“Statement ends,” he said finally. “At this point, according to the few notes in the folder and the statements we were able to get from the older staff who were here at the time, Mr. MacMillan tried to dig up the floor of the Archivist’s office, with his bare hands no less. There was a fight—one of Gertrude’s assistants at the time, one Michael Shelley, was a bit protective of her and thought she might get hurt—leading to Mr. MacMillan’s arrest, not to mention the replacement of a good bit of the floor. He died in prison while awaiting trial. Official cause of death was asphyxiation. He wouldn’t have been able to actually dig himself into the floor, but I’m sure that it claimed him, just the same. The book itself, which wasn’t in Leitner’s actual catalog but would have been if he’d ever actually found it, is in a box in Artefact Storage, welded shut. Like most of those books, it’s fine as long as you aren’t stupid enough to read it.”

He sighed and set the papers down. “Jon, if you’re listening to this, let that be a lesson to you. Not knowing what you’re getting into won’t save you. These things don’t let you plead ignorance to keep from being claimed. You’re stronger than an old man mudlarking along the Thames, but that doesn’t mean you’re not at risk, just that maybe you’ll last a little longer. Just because they speak the words you want to hear in the tone you want to hear them doesn’t mean they’re telling you the truth, and they will destroy you in the end.”

A knock on the door startled him out of his mood, and he looked up with a frown. “Yes, come in.”

He didn’t know who he was expecting. Melanie wasn’t it. She looked marginally annoyed as she came in, then sighed and schooled her face with a visible effort. “Hi—have you got a moment?”

“Yeah, I got the important one out of the way.” Tim closed the folder he was looking at. “If the other stuff doesn’t get done today, it’s not the end of the world. What’s up?”

Melanie hesitated, glancing over her shoulder, then back at Tim. “Um…is Martin all right?”

Tim’s instinct was to deflect with a he’s fine, but something seized his tongue and forced honesty. “Not really. Just a lot of change lately, you know? You, and Jon, and what happened to Sasha, and…you know, the way I acted didn’t really help. He’s not dealing with it as well as he could be. And he’ll be the last person to think about himself, so he’s trying to work himself into the ground rather than deal with it properly. It’s the uncertainty and the…not knowing getting to him. He’d be okay if he knew for sure, especially if he knew for sure Jon was okay, but I think he’s afraid to ask anyone else in case he won’t like the answer, you know?”

“Yeah,” Melanie said. She looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Yes, it’s…it’s probably, um…”

“Sorry, you didn’t want all that.” Tim sighed and rubbed his face. “Or did you? I’m guessing you didn’t come in here to check on Martin’s welfare.”

“Oh, right, yes.” Now Melanie looked a bit flustered, at least momentarily. “Is there any sort of database, maybe? Statement givers or people referenced? I’m trying to get hold of a witness from a recent one.”

What went off in Tim’s head wasn’t exactly an alarm bell, but it was definitely some sort of warning—less a tornado siren and more a “check engine” light on a car’s dashboard. Melanie was asking for a completely different reason than her stated one, and giving her the information she wanted, or leading her to it, would be extremely dangerous. He couldn’t say why he felt that way, but he did.

Still, he kept his face entirely blank. “Nope, sorry, nothing like that. Closest we’ve got is the database of what boxes come down from Research when, but it’s just box labels, file names, and times.”

“No one’s even tried to make one?” Melanie persisted.

“Nah. No point, really.” Tim tapped the side of his head. “Gertrude had a pretty good idea of when names or places cropped up more than once, and I got used to it too. We’d pull them and compare, maybe, if we thought we needed to, maybe add a note to one of the files, but we never had any kind of formal database. I know Jon wanted to set one up, but it was kind of low on the list of priorities. And you’ve seen how slow that computer is.”

Melanie tossed a scowl in the direction of the computer before turning back to Tim. “So how do you track someone down?”

“We’ve got connections in a few places. Records rooms, police stations, that kind of thing. I know people in dozens of industries and hobbies and locations, so sometimes I’ll just call a buddy or an old professional contact or whatever, call in a few favors, and get names. Sasha—” Tim hesitated for a moment. “I think Sasha used to be good at hacking into systems.”

“You think?” Melanie repeated.

“You said yourself, the person you’ve been talking to for months wasn’t the Sasha you remembered,” Tim pointed out. “The rest of us had our memories replaced. I’m not sure how much was really Sasha and how much was fake memories. Doesn’t tend to replace everything, though, so she probably really was a hacker. Anyway, beyond that it’s mostly detective work. Little bit of manipulation, a bit of acting, and voila.”

“Right, right.” Melanie pursed her lips. “Um…this one, the name is Jude Perry. Does that mean anything to you?”

Another warning signal joined the first. Tim racked his brain and couldn’t come up with specifics. “Means danger, but I can’t recall a statement—were they a victim or a witness?”

“Um. Witness, I think.”

“Well, I’d stay away from her if I were you, but other than that, I can’t give you any more than that.”

“Yeah, sure.” Melanie started to leave, then paused and turned back. “Oh, one more thing. Who do I talk to about Artifact Storage?”

Tim glanced involuntarily at the folder, then back at Melanie. “Depends on what you want to know about it.”

Melanie narrowed her eyes at him, just briefly. “I just need to talk to know who I talk to about missing pieces.”

“Sonja would probably have the inventory. What are you looking for?”

“An old calliope organ. It’s there in the inventory, but—”

Tim was out of his seat before he fully realized it. “What?”

Melanie actually jerked back, surprised. “You know it?”

“Shit fuck damn!” Tim slapped his hand on the table in front of him. “They must have taken it when they dropped off the table.”

“What? They who? What are you talking about?” Melanie demanded.

Tim shook his head. “I need to go—fuck.” He snatched up the recorder, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to have a record of this conversation.

The click of it turning off, despite his hand being nowhere near the STOP button, was the opposite of comforting.

He was only vaguely aware of Melanie trailing after him as he bolted out of the Archives and up the stairs, and only marginally aware of Rosie’s attention. The subsequent conversation with Sonja Davis did not help his mood. She was defensive at first, then surprised when he cited the exact location where the Calliaphone should have been, then horrified when he asked if anyone had had eyes on the delivery men the entire time they’d been dropping off the table. He finally left when she began bawling for her employees to get their asses into a meeting pronto and almost slammed into Melanie, who’d apparently been dogging his heels.

At least she apologized, and it sounded sincere. Hopefully his acceptance was equally sincere.

When he arrived home after work, his first words to Gerry—before he’d even said hello or anything civil—were, “We need to hurry.”

“Why?” Gerry turned away from the stove with wide, worried eyes. “And where are we going?”

“No, not—with figuring out the Unknowing. We’ve got to get it figured out fast. They have one of their tools.” Tim took a deep, steadying breath. “Hi. How are you? How was your day?”

“Hi. I’m fine. I didn’t kill the Brodie kid and I’m almost done the painting, so both pluses.” Gerry kissed Tim’s cheek. “What do they have, and for that matter, who is they?”

“Remember when I said I was pretty sure the Stranger delivered that table?” Tim paused. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“You did, yes,” Gerry assured him. “Or at least that you thought the delivery men were probably part of the Stranger. Why?”

“Because while they were up there, apparently, they took something. An antique red Calliaphone steam organ, with a locked lid, and the words ‘Be still, for there is strange music’ carved into it.” Tim met Gerry’s eyes as understanding dawned. “It was Nikolai Denikin’s organ, Ger. The one that he played when he was with the Circus of the Other, the one his granddaughter inherited and lost after the clown doll murdered her boyfriend. We had it—the Calliaphone, not the doll—in Artifact Storage, and now it’s gone from there, too. If they’ve got it…I don’t think they’re planning to put it in a museum. It’s meant to be played.”