The Golden Specific (6 page)

Remorse had offered to leave the A.D. 82 indexes on one of the mahogany tables so that Sophia could return to her work without interruption. As she began, she found that the volumes had been moved.
A.D. 82
:
v. 1
through
A.D. 82
:
v. 5
, which she had read already, were still neatly placed to the left of her work space. But instead of
A.D. 82: v. 6
, which she had left out to work on next, Sophia found
A.D. 82: v. 27
in front of her. She returned the volume to the cart, where it belonged, and withdrew
A.D. 82: v. 6
.

She began working her way through the volumes as quickly as possible, scanning each line and moving on to the next. Every once in a while, as her eye moved over the index entries, she heard the echo of that unforgettable voice, urging her onward:
Find us while we still draw breath.

I'm trying,
she replied silently.
I am trying.

Remorse worked steadily nearby, dusting bookshelves and reorganizing volumes. At one point, when Whether had left the room, she wandered up to the table and set down her duster. “How goes the reading?” she asked expressionlessly.

“It goes,” Sophia replied. She turned back to the index. A moment later, she realized that Remorse was still standing there. She looked up, disconcerted. “How goes your work?”

“It goes as well.” Remorse sat down abruptly. “I won't be here many more days. I've accepted a Nihilismian mission.”

Sophia blinked. “Where are you going?”

“The Papal States.” Remorse paused. Then she asked, “What do you think about the missions?”

Sophia frowned. “I am not sure,” she said truthfully.

Remorse nodded. “Some Niles think it is the most devout work in the world, going to other Ages to keep them on the right path. Last year, I heard, the mission to the Papal States prevented a disaster that would have resulted in the early death of Christopher Columbus.”

Remorse's voice was neutral, but Sophia replied carefully. “That does seem important. Though surely Columbus's voyages cannot happen now the way they did in our own past.”

Remorse cocked her head. “That is what Whether says. He says that the missions are pointless because we live in an apocryphal Age, so why should what happens in it matter? This is not a real world, anyway.”

Sophia hesitated. Clearly Remorse did not believe this, or she would not be undertaking a mission. “I think both explanations make sense.”

“If this is not a real world,” Remorse continued, as if Sophia had not spoken, “then why do we feel sad and angry and happy in it? We should feel nothing if this is all not real.”

Sophia had learned enough about Nihilismians to know why they behaved as they did. They were attempting to demonstrate that they felt nothing: that they felt no sadness or happiness, because there was no reason for emotions in a false world. But she had never considered that Nihilismians might genuinely struggle to conceal what they felt. More—that they
struggled
not
to feel. She felt a twinge of unexpected pity. “That is difficult to answer,” she said slowly. “I don't know.”

“Nor do I,” Remorse replied. She looked down at the table.

“Can you say more about what your mission will be?”

Remorse rose from her seat as abruptly as she'd taken it. “No. But I am leaving soon.” She tucked the duster under her arm. “It is not always most productive to read the volumes in order,” she said, changing the subject.

“It is easiest to keep track of what I've done this way.”

Remorse looked at her a moment longer. “Very well.” She turned away and resumed her work.

Sophia regarded the Nihilismian, wondering about her comment. She considered that Remorse had been the one to suggest the 1881 index. Was she offering something more than general advice? Sophia looked for some flickering sign, some further indication of her meaning. But the Nihilismian dusted with perfect discipline, and she betrayed nothing.

 5 

News from the Eerie Sea

S
OPHIA
HAD
SPENT
three days reading the indexes for A.D. 82. In those three days she had read through nineteen volumes. Remorse encouraged her by commenting impassively that she read very fast. But Sophia knew otherwise: it was not fast enough. The three days she had known would be safe were over, and she would now need to gamble every morning as she arrived at the archive with the likelihood that she would be discovered and accused of fraud.

Find us while we still draw breath,
she heard in her head, as she walked back to East Ending Street from the trolley stop.
I don't know how to,
she thought.
I don't know what else to do.
There was no guarantee that A.D. 82 was even the right year. What if the clue she was looking for lay three shelves away on A.D. 83?

So it was an especially disheartened Sophia who walked up the steps to 34 East Ending Street. She opened the side door, dropped her satchel on the bench, and suddenly froze.

The sound of laughter reached her from somewhere inside the house. Three voices—no, four. Her pulse quickened. She listened a moment longer as a slow smile crept across her face. Then she raced down the hall, into Shadrack's study, and down through the open doorway to the underground map room. “There she is!” she heard Shadrack say merrily as she clambered down the stairs.

Sophia burst into the room, dimly aware that Shadrack was seated at the table and that Mrs. Clay and Miles Countryman were in the armchairs near him. Standing at the foot of the stairs, with his arms crossed over his chest and his brown eyes looking up at her expectantly, was Theo. Sophia pulled herself up short just one step shy of where he stood. Pausing for a few moments—which felt to Sophia like no time at all—she registered the astonishing sense of happiness and relief that flooded through her at the sight of him: worn-looking, taller than she remembered, but essentially the same.

He uncrossed his arms and held out his scarred hand, a surprising tremor running through it. “Are you going to make me
wait another hour for a hug, or what?” he demanded gruffly.

Sophia pitched herself forward with a delighted laugh and wrapped her arms around him. “Where have you
been
?” she cried. “You've been gone forever!”

“Still having trouble keeping time, I see,” he said laughingly, but the pleased smile on his face as Sophia pulled back left her no doubt that Theo had missed her, too.

She turned away with effort to greet Miles, who embraced her happily, and whose mane of white hair, looking even more unkempt than usual, threatened her with imminent suffocation. “My dear Sophia,” Miles exclaimed, finally releasing her, “we have fought our way back to you tooth and nail, and here we are at last, back where we belong.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Although if you ask me, it is the perfect moment for another journey.” Shadrack and Mrs. Clay groaned. “It is!” Miles protested. “Sophia is finally done with her classes, the forecast in the
Farmer's Almanac
is very auspicious, and I love the smell of foreign breezes in June!”

Shadrack shook his head with mock exasperation. “At least take a few minutes to tell us about the Indian Territories before you leave in search of savory foreign breezes, Miles.”

“Well, if we all leave together, Theo and I can report along the way!”

Sophia and Mrs. Clay laughed.

“Miles,” Shadrack remonstrated, “I am forced to conclude that you expressly intend to torment me. Knowing full well that the Ministry confines me to Boston like a rabbit in a pen, or a
chicken in a coop, or—more accurately—a helpless prisoner in jail . . .”

“Very well, very well,” scoffed Miles. “I can see that the Ministry has given you license to put on airs, and that now there are too many other issues of importance competing for your time, so that even the merest little sea voyage—a slight skip and a jump—is an interruption to Great Matters of State.”

Sophia and Theo exchanged grins.

“By all means, Miles,” Shadrack burst out, “let me resign my post at once and nominate you. I would do anything to rid myself of the unfathomable Matters of State and the inevitable headaches that accompany them.” He sighed and said in a more serious tone, “In truth, I would not wish the Ministry position on my greatest enemy.”

“Not even the magnificent, handsome, and brilliant Gordon Broadgirdle?” Miles's voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Surely you could spare the esteemed member of parliament a headache or two, if only to remind him of how it feels to be mortal.”

“Well.” Shadrack smiled, as if determined to see the problem humorously. “Perhaps Broadgirdle.” He stood up with sudden energy. “But on such a night we should be celebrating, not inviting thoughts of our least favorite MP into our midst! If you'll join me upstairs, you'll see that I'm not entirely unprepared for a small celebration. I have ginger beer and two meat pies from the Stamp and Whistle, and Mrs. Clay bought the largest maple-sugar cake she could find at Oliver Hamilton's.
Miles and Theo, if you would kindly bring the maps to show us every mile of your progress, we will have everything we need.”

Miles bounded for the stairs. “Theo will have to do the talking; my mouth will be full.”

Mrs. Clay followed him, muslin skirts bunched in her hands to avoid tripping on the stairs, with Shadrack close on her heels. “Hurry, Mrs. Clay, for Fates' sake,” Shadrack urged her. “The man will leave us nothing to eat, and we'll be forced to make a meal of the crumbs on the floor.”

“What a good thing the maple cake is upstairs in my apartment, then,” Mrs. Clay replied.

“Oh, he'll find it,” Shadrack cried. “Nothing is safe from that man's stomach, not even the kitchen table.”

Sophia and Theo laughingly followed. “Hey,” Theo said, grasping Sophia's hand as they climbed the stairs. “How have you been?”

Sophia smiled, the sudden shyness she had felt at first seeing him momentarily returning. “Fine.” She squeezed his hand. “I'm glad you're back.”

“Me, too. Shadrack says you've been spending all your time at the library.”

Sophia looked down at her feet. “Yes. Just trying to decipher the letter. I've made no progress. Right now I'm trying to read through three hundred volumes that might possibly have some clue.”

“Well, now it's summer. Maybe,” he went on, his voice light, “it's time to take a little break from that letter.”

Sophia looked up at him with surprise. They had reached the top of the stairs. “Take a break from the letter?” she asked, astonished, as if he had suggested burning it in the fireplace.

“Sure. You know, sometimes things look different after a break. Rest your head a bit. Do something other than read for a while.”

Sophia pulled her hand away. “I'm not taking a break.”

“I don't mean forget about the letter—I'm not saying that. Just a break. We could persuade Shadrack to let us sail for a month with Calixta and Burr. Maybe you'll have some new ideas.”

“I don't want to take a break. I want to find my parents.”

“All right, all right,” Theo said at once, his tone conciliatory. “I just got back. I don't want you mad at me already.” He grinned. “I can come along. We'll go read those three hundred volumes together, and it will go twice as fast. What do you say?” He reached for her hand again.

Sophia looked up at him, her expression softening. “I have to read them myself. But thanks. I'm glad you're back.”

“Sophia, Theo,” Shadrack called. He appeared in the doorway of the study. “Are you going to help us fight Miles for the food or not? He has already plunged a fork into one of the pies, and I'm not sure we can hold him off much longer.”

“The scoundrel!” Theo exclaimed, pulling Sophia after him. The meat pies and bottles of ginger beer had pride of place on the kitchen table; as Mrs. Clay laid out the plates, napkins, and utensils, she swatted Miles's hands away from the main course.

When they were all seated, Shadrack divided up the first pie, poured ginger beer out for all, and raised his glass in a toast. “Welcome home, Theo and Miles. Here's to a safe voyage concluded.”

“And many more to come,” Miles added, raising his own glass. “Starting tomorrow.”

They all laughed and dove into the pies, which were every bit as good as Shadrack had promised. When they had finished, leaving only crumbs and empty glasses, Mrs. Clay brought dessert down from upstairs and served generous portions of the soft yellow cake slathered in maple sugar frosting alongside cups of Charleston tea.

Miles sat back with a satisfied sigh after his third piece. Then he began his account of the journey, describing the long route west through New York and the northwest corner of Pennsylvania that led to the Indian Territories. At times flaring into argument with Theo where his recollection of certain circumstances differed, Miles admitted that their travels west had been fairly uneventful, even up to their arrival at the Eerie Sea. “The only difficulty we encountered was a decidedly prejudicial view toward Bostonians,” Miles said sourly. “The border closure has not improved our popularity. An old man in Salt Lick actually spat at me when I told him where we came from.”

Theo chuckled at the memory. “Miles spat back, of course.”

“Well, I had to!” Miles protested. “I had to explain why I loathe the border closure more than he does.”

“Apart from that lively event, the only obstacle was finding
Cabeza de Cabra. We took as many days doing that, once we reached the Eerie Sea, as we did getting there from Boston.”

“That's true,” Miles assented.

“No one could agree on where he lived,” Theo explained to the others, “and the lead we were following was so vague to begin with.”

Miles and Theo had departed in late winter in pursuit of a rumor. Word had reached Boston of a hermit living near the glacial Eerie Sea, a man from the Papal States named Cabeza de Cabra who, for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, shunned all human contact. Then, on the three hundred and sixty-fifth—the day of the winter solstice—he emerged from his solitude to rant about the end of the world, the next Great Disruption, and the mysteries of Ausentinia. He spoke a curious amalgam of Erie, Castilian, and English, and the unsolicited sermons were dismissed by the villagers as the wanderings of a madman.

But the distant echoes of his annual ravings had traveled all the way to Boston, along with the name “Ausentinia,” which had been mentioned nowhere else except Bronson's letter. The March snows were still falling when Miles and Theo journeyed west.

“By the time we found the tree house where Cabeza de Cabra had been living,” Miles continued, “it was late April, and his body had been lying unattended so long the crows had taken it to pieces.”

“Ugh,” Mrs. Clay said, shuddering.

Shadrack sighed with disappointment. “And did you find anything there, in his home, to indicate how he might know of Ausentinia?”

“Cabeza de Cabra lived like an animal,” Miles said, frowning. “He dressed in skins and slept on a filthy piece of hide. There were no pots and pans, shoes or books or tools. I have no idea how he fed himself. We were about to leave the place, after finding it so barren, when Theo noticed something that I, frankly, would have missed.”