The carnival had disentangled itself from the knot of baffled underclerks and was preparing to move on. The elephants stamped impatiently, the drivers returned to their trucks, and Penny left Unwin’s side to join the front of the line.
Zlatari offered him a ride. He turned down the offer but set his portable typewriter and his briefcase in the cab. He had found the time, that week, to oil the chain of his bicycle.
Maybe Penny was correct, and this was not the kind of thing he could be late for. He glimpsed Caligari’s old motto emblazoned across the side of another truck: EVERYTHING I TELL YOU IS TRUE, AND EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS AS REAL AS YOU ARE.
If that was right, then nothing Unwin saw was real and the ticking of his watch was just another magician’s trick. He had time, so much time. He had all the time he needed.
Some of the underclerks wrapped themselves in the blankets they had brought with them from the archive and stood watching the parade withdraw, dumbfounded. A few of them, confused by all the sights and sounds, or just because they had no place to go, went with it. Other people joined the carnival as it moved west between the office buildings—those who, no doubt, had been among Penelope’s sleepwalkers, the members of her resistance. They had helped rebuild the carnival in their sleep and recalled enough that it mattered. The carnival was twice as large as it had been by the time it left the city.
He allowed himself a last glimpse of the Agency office building, and it appeared to him as it had many times before: a watchtower, a tomb. Not his, now, though someone there—the overseer herself, probably—would be expecting his report. If Unwin dispatched a copy from afar, would its recipient be surprised to find that it originated in the camp of the enemy? He smiled at the thought of it, and the smile surprised him into laughter. He was still laughing when a wind rose up from the river, nearly taking his hat. He held it to his head and steered his bicycle with one hand.
It would be hours at least before they halted long enough for him to set out his typewriter, so he carried on with his work as best he could, drafting in his mind the report that was the last of one series and the first of another.
I rode alongside the steam truck for a while, then overtook it and wove my way to the front of the column. Penelope Greenwood walked with the reins of the lead elephant in her hand, and the big beast flapped its ears in the wind. What frightens us about the carnival, I think, is not that it will come to town. Or that it will leave town, which it always does. What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes.
It is taking me now, and I am frightened and alive and very much awake.
Where are we going next? With what purpose? Penny says she will carry on with Caligari’s work, and whatever happens, someone is going to have to write it all down. So I have my job back, in a way, but the words mean nothing, all is mystery, and always there’s room enough for more.
I’ll try to record it as we go, but that’s for another report. This one ends here, on a bridge over the river with the elephants leading us toward what routes they remember, and Hoffmann still out there with his thousand and one voices, and Agency operatives already on our tail, and the city waking, and the river waking, and the road waking under our feet, and every alarm clock ringing at the bottom of the sea.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first to my family: Sean, Caitlin, and Kellin Bliss, Kevin, Debbie, and Michael Berry, Michael Bliss, and Robert Boolukos. Cara Parravani, Dorothy Strachan, and Frank, Ellen, and Kyle Berry, each greatly missed, are everywhere in this novel. I am deeply indebted to Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Sabina Murray, Mira Bartók, and Holly and Theo Black for their friendship and advice. Thanks also to Chris Bachelder, Brian Baldi, Robert N. Casper, Cecil Castellucci, Ellen Datlow, Miciah Bay Gault, Noy Holland, Shahrul Ladue, Leigh Newman, Jon Sequeira, and Terri Windling for all their help and sound criticism; to Esmond Harmsworth for his guidance and great insight; to Eamon Dolan for his encouragement and general brilliance; to Jason Arthur for his support, and for bringing this book to the UK in style; to Mimi Di-Novo for her generosity; to Deirdre d’Albertis for Chesterton, to William Weaver for Calvino, to Bradford Morrow for Carter and most everyone else; to Christa Parravani for lending me her dream of the sea.
This book is dedicated to my mother, Maureen Berry Bliss, who is always looking for a good mystery.
Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
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