16
Wheaten Street

June 8th

Friday

HERMANN CAUGHT A FEW FITFUL HOURS of sleep before dawn, sitting in a chair in a waiting room. When he woke, he was as stiff as a corpse. His hip and back were locked up, numb and unpliable. It took several minutes of stretching and standing before he could walk, and when he did, every step ached like the spaces in his joints had been filled with white-hot cement. He went to look in on Newton. A nurse told him there was no change.

The sun was rising when he left the hospital for the underground. It would be another hot day. The train was full. He asked a stranger for a seat, gesturing meaningfully with his cane, and sank down, closing his eyes. He was still wearing Newton’s jacket. He shoved his hands into the pockets and felt the assortment of objects within. There was the Mahler ticket stub, a stick of gum, a toothpick, other tiny ends of garbage stuffed in thoughtlessly; a small gray rock, an Allen wrench, a lighter, a golf pencil, a battery, an assortment of European and American coins. He still had Newton’s wallet, too, and his house keys. Hermann examined his overburdened keyring. Its single adornment was a medallion from M.I.T., engraved with its motto: Mens et Manus. Mind and hand.

Hermann pressed the medallion into his palm and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. He really had no right to be angry with Newton for passing secrets, he reflected. Not when he himself had come so close to doing the same. Rennie, Bowen, he was hardly different. It could just as easily have been him.

There was a funereal silence over the Century lobby. It was populated with Division employees, but they were strangely still. A man in a suit waited at the receptionist’s desk, immobile; the watchman stared at the parquet floor. Head down, like an intruder among mourners, Hermann limped to the lift.

In the empty lab, he unlocked his desk drawers, hoping against hope he had stashed painkillers somewhere inside. The Orpheus file was on top, the encoded transmissions stored within. He would need to copy these somehow, and express mail them to Caitlin.

He looked underneath, for the printout of Newton’s travel records. If he was going to cover Newt's trail, his first order of business was to destroy the hard copy of his travel records, and then alter them in the IBM database. But the printout wasn’t in his drawer. Frowning, he searched the rest of his dek. He found no printout, but he did find a bottle with two pills left. Thanking the incompetent deity watching over all this, he shook them into his palm and went to the lab's tiny kitchen.

He passed Weeks’s door, and saw that his light was on. In the kitchen, he filled a mug with coffee and downed his pills. Then, gritting his teeth, he went to knock on Weeks’s door.

“Come in,” his manager called.

Hermann opened the door, but didn’t enter.

“Sir, has Wesley been in?”

Hal Weeks looked up, taking his pipe out from between his teeth.

“Morning, Hermann,” he said, smoke coming out of his nose. “No, not this morning.”

“Will he be in soon?”

“I don’t think so. I told him to take the weekend early.”

“Why?” said Hermann, apprehension growing.

Weeks set his hands on the table, one fist still holding the pipe. His expression was unusually hard.

“He was being difficult yesterday, in fact,” said Weeks. “Late in the afternoon, I was looking for the results of the last Orpheus cross-checks. I couldn’t find you, so I asked Gus.”

Hermann’s heart was thumping. “I did have them.”

“Yes. Well, Wesley wouldn’t tell me where they were. He kept saying he didn’t know. I could tell he was lying. He’s quite a bad liar.”

Hermann nodded cautiously.

“Do you need the file?”

Weeks, in a rare display of coolness, put the pipe back in his mouth and leaned back, looking at Hermann from his chair. “I found it inside your desk. Where Wesley said it wouldn’t be. He was sweating quite a bit by this point. I took a look at it. The results are pretty unequivocal, aren’t they?”

Hermann closed his eyes.

“Yes, sir. They are.”

“Don’t you think you should have alerted me?”

“I was going to, sir, I was just—cross-checking, first.”

“Well, I sent the results upstairs.”

Hermann looked up sharply.

“When? Yesterday?”

“Yes.” Weeks shook his head. “I’m afraid they'll be seeking a warrant for Dr. Geiszler’s arrest.”

Hermann flushed, furious with Weeks and absurdly proud of Wesley, for his brave, futile effort.

“Another step up the ladder for you, I suppose?” Hermann spat. “Anything to get up out of this basement.”

“What alternative do you propose, Hermann? That we harbor a bloody traitor?” said Weeks, plainly angry too. “The envoy from Washington arrives tomorrow. Victor’s got to get the device back, or there’ll be hell to pay!”

“I have no idea where Dr. Geiszler is,” Hermann said, with the cold conviction of his rage. “But if I did, you can be sure I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” barked Weeks. “Maybe you should take the weekend early as well.”

“I have work to do,” said Hermann. He turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the office door.

“There will be questions for you to answer!” Weeks shouted after him. “You can’t protect a traitor!”

Hermann rounded the corner and entered the empty lab, leaving splashes of hot coffee in his wake. I can't? Weeks had no idea—none of these people had any idea—what Hermann was capable of.

At his desk, he set down his mug but didn’t sit. He picked up his phone and pressed "7" for the Century directory.

“Directory,” said a female voice.

“Archives, please,” he said.

“Just a moment.”

There was a pause, then a gruff male voice said:

“Who’s this?”

“Radio lab,” said Hermann. “I’d like to come in and read a file this morning. Can I make an appointment?”

“Slots are full this morning. I have one after lunch.”

Plenty of time to copy the Orpheus file and express it to Lightcap.

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

“You have the reference number?”

“Yes. It’s just that it’s rather urgent. Are you open during lunch?”

“‘Course not. Nothing’s urgent in the Black Chamber. Take it upstairs to Central if it’s that important.”

“They haven’t got it.”

“Then we’ll see you at 1:30.”

The line went dead.

“The Black Chamber’s strongest line of defense is disorder,” Caitlin Lightcap had said to him at a back corner table in the stuffy hospital cafeteria, while he took obscure notes on the back of a receipt. “They’ve been adding files for more than a hundred years, and there’s no governing organizational system. There’s never been an overhaul. No one has ever made a central directory. It’s impossible to find anything if you don't already know where to look.

“I was one attendant in a long chain. No one stays there long—another line of defense. I only know where to find materials from the last 50-odd years. So will the current attendant, more or less. His name is Shepherd. He’s a bit of a hard-ass, but outsmarting him won’t be impossible.

“I know the schedule, and the general layout. I can’t tell you exactly where to find the file, but I can tell you which sections to case, and how.”

“Why keep all these files, if we can't even access them?”

“Plausible deniability,” said Caitlin. “What’s an institution without a memory?”

“But an inaccessible memory?”

She shrugged. “They have all the cards. If you need it, you can't find it unless they want you to. If they need it, they can find it. It might take them some time, but time is always on their side. The house always wins.”

The attendant will go out for lunch. Get there when the assistant is closing up.

“Excuse me,” said Hermann. The assistant jumped and looked up at him, keys in hand, eyes wide. Hermann stepped into the anteroom of the Black Chamber and brought his full disgruntled professor persona to bear. “I’m looking for Mr. Shepherd. Is he in? We had an appointment a half an hour ago.”

“Shepherd?” said the boy. “I’m afraid he was transferred some time ago—the archives attendant is Irvine.”

“Irvine?” Hermann barked. “Since when?”

The boy straightened up in his seat. “Nearly six months, sir!”

This was a bad start. “I made this appointment months ago. I work in Cheltenham. I don’t get down to London much. Which means I don’t have time to waste. When will Mr. Irvine be back?”

“After lunch, sir. 1:30. But I believe he has an appointment—”

Hermann was shaking his head. “I have a meeting in half an hour. I need to take a look at this file, now.”

“Sir, I’m not authorized, and even if I was, sir, I wouldn’t know where—”

“I know full well where to find it, thank you!” said Hermann sharply. “I don’t need your help. And I don’t believe I need your permission either. I don’t have any more time to waste!”

Get him to let you inside. I can think of two different sections this file might be in. You’ll need to case them both.

The assistant opened the door and illuminated the ancient, flickering lights of the Black Chamber. There were thousands, millions of files, some in filing cabinets, some in bookshelves, some in tatty stacks of cardboard boxes. The light weakly illuminated the first few rows, but beyond that, the shelves stretched into cavernous darkness. They might have gone on for miles, down into the earth.

“Section F-14-F,” said Hermann.

The assistant, torch in hand, led him along the rows. “Here we are,” he said. “Do you have the number?”

The IDs in this section are formatted like this, Lightcap had said, writing out a sample on his receipt. Give him something that fits that formula.

“Yes,” said Hermann. He recited his invented file number to the assistant.

They turned down the aisle, and the assistant turned on his flashlight as they entered the darkness. He stopped in front of a set of maroon filing cabinets, then flipped through an astounding collection of minuscule keys on several chains before finding the right one, and unlocking the cabinet. He slid the drawer open for Hermann. Hermann bent over by the dim torchlight and examined the labels one by one, looking for the one that matched the the Blueberry’s output number.

1957. Prague. 1957. Berne. 1957. Morocco. 1956. Prague. 1955. Istanbul. 1952. New York City.

None matched. It wasn’t here.

This isn’t working, he thought, fighting down panic.

“It’s not here,” he said sharply. “Does this set continue below?”

“Are you sure?” said the boy. “This is all in that set...”

“Then this is the wrong section,” said Hermann. “It must be G-16-F.”

The assistant closed the file cabinet obediently, locked it, and led him down the aisle. The darkness was thick like a cobweb. The lights behind them grew distant. Only the torch lit their way.

The assistant opened the cabinet and held the torch so that Hermann could search it. The file was there. Hermann saw it pass by under his fingers. His hand trembled but he didn’t stop. He stopped at the file behind it, pulled it out, and examined it.

“This one, sir? That’s not the right number,” the boy said, passing the flashlight over a report on a low-grade informant in Rome, circa 1944.

“This is the one,” Hermann said with confidence, and the boy looked at him with what Hermann felt, with a shiver, was his first inkling of mistrust.

“This one?” he said again.

“I knew this man,” said Hermann, inventing randomly. He pointed at the picture. “I told Shepherd I suspected as much. I just wanted to—check.”

The boy frowned. “Er, yes.”

Hermann opened his mouth to justify himself further, then closed it. He had no story prepared—why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t Caitlin? This was never going to work.

He snapped the drawer shut.

“Not really what I was looking for. That’s a disappointment.”

“Right, sir.”

See which key he uses.

The boy took out his keys to lock the cabinet. Hermann watched the keyring. It was #44. Silver. High collar, two small bitting cuts, one deep curve.

Hermann followed him back out of the archive.

Then circle back.

The Black Chamber took up an entire floor of the Century basement. There was no traffic outside the elevator, and Hermann had no trouble staking out the archives entrance for the next hour and a half. He saw Irvine return, and waited until the breathless assistant left for his lunch hour. Caitlin had been wrong about the attendant’s identity, but her schedule was still right. It was 1:35 by then, so Hermann arrived late for his appointment with Irvine.

Now that Hermann had cased the archive, he knew exactly which cabinet in Section G-16-F contained the file he needed. But he couldn’t request that specifically, of course, so he requested a different one—a decoy, made up, from an adjacent section, G-15-F. If, in some future inquiry, anyone consulted Irvine’s records, they would see that Hermann had requested a totally unrelated file from an unconnected section.

And if this plan worked, then in that future inquiry, the file they actually needed would be gone.

Hermann requested the decoy file from Section G-15-F, as Lightcap had instructed. Irvine, an unshaven man who had, by the smell of his breath, spent his lunch hour drinking, led him in. The problem now was getting the key from Irvine, and getting him to leave. Lightcap's plan had been somewhat involved, and hinged on Shepherd’s obsession with model ship building, but as Hermann followed Irvine’s light into the darkness, he had another idea.

Irvine came to an abrupt stop at the file cabinet and slammed the electric torch down on top with a startling clang. He laboriously removed his keys from his belt, then started to sort through them.

Hermann helpfully picked up the torch and held it over his shoulder for him. “Thanks,” grunted Irvine, searching until he found the right key.

The torch flickered and dimmed. He glanced up. Hermann shook it, frowning. The light brightened, and Irvine resumed his search. He found the right key and inserted it into the lock. Just then, the light went out.

“Damn.”

There was a rattle in the darkness as Hermann shook the flashlight again. Irvine took it back from him and slapped it twice with his open palm.

“I can’t believe this,” he sighed angrily. “I changed these batteries not three days ago. Unbelievable. You don’t have a spare, do you?”

“No.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered again. “Want to come back with me, or wait here?”

“I’ll wait,” said Hermann. Leave the keys, leave the keys, leave the keys...

Grumbling, Irvine shuffled away towards the lighted end of the cavern carrying his sabotaged torch. Hermann saw the light of the door opening, then closing.

He was alone in the archive.

He pulled out Newton’s lighter and flicked it on. By the light of the small flame, he located key #44 on the ring, and detached it. Leaving the keyring where Irvine had left it, inside the lock of the G-15-F cabinet, he took #44 to Section G-16-F, and found his cabinet. He leaned his cane against it and unlocked the drawer.

Holding the flame dangerously low, Hermann located the record that the Blueberry had matched with Orpheus, the one previous instance when this book code had been used. He pulled it out. It was from 1953, used in a long-defunct network in Berne, under Robert Bowen’s leadership. So that was why they had the key on record—Orpheus’s code was one of their own.

Hermann slid his thumb across the page to the book’s title and edition, and his heart sank. The Fellowship of the Ring. 1953 edition, English.

He looked back. All was dark. No one was there. He slid the piece of paper out of the file and replaced the folder. He folded the paper up, unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and stuffed it in under his undershirt. He buttoned Newton’s jacket over it, locked the cabinet, and returned to G-15-F to wait placidly for Irvine’s return. He eventually came back with a functional torch, and they looked at an insignificant file together, and then Hermann left, paper in his shirt and key #44 in his pocket.

“Oh. I get it,” Caitlin had said, hours into their conference the night before, after Hermann had finished his story. “You wanted to help Birch out because he’s like Newt.”

Hermann had shaken his head. “No,” he had said. “Newton isn’t like anyone.”

Between mundane work he had been assigned a lifetime ago, Hermann shredded the papers from the Black Chamber, edited Newt's travel records, and . He had no hope that any of this might clear him, only that it would confuse and delay the search. The afternoon stretched interminably. Alone in the empty basement, the last one not yet banished from the lab, he worked by desk lamp light on mundane tasks he had been assigned a lifetime ago. Hours passed and he waited for an inquiry to come down upon him, but nobody came. He received no news about the arrest warrant. He remembered this feeling—he was back in East Berlin. The perpetual fight-or-flight. The fear of every look from his colleagues, the distrust he imagined there. The bitterness of his last conversation with Newton, who now existed in some sort of suspended state in Hermann's brain—not unlike the way he had existed in Hermann's head back in the summer '63, a petrified gargoyle of anger and shame, not endowed by Hermann with any ability to process emotionally, just an ability to be hurt by Hermann. Newton was the one—the one who had turned. But it seemed that everything was Hermann's fault. If he had never volunteered for the Wagner mission—if he had gone east when Rennie's friend recruited him—if he had been a better partner, more attentive, less judgmental. He tried and failed to eat; guilt and anxiety choked him.

The little scraps of home he’d kept at his desk—a souvenir pin from Glasgow, a postcard from a friend, his reference books, his blue coffee mug—he had to leave them behind. After the things he’d done, he had no confidence he'd ever return.

It was strange to take the regular train, return home to his flat in Kenton, after being gone for what felt like months. The painkillers were wearing off. It was a slow walk up the stairs at the Wheaten Street station.

He climbed the stairs of his apartment building even more slowly. He paused on the second landing, his hip and back aching. In his pocket, he touched Newt’s medallion, then continued upward.

As he rose on the last flight, he saw his door, and saw that it was ajar.

He stopped. He listened. He heard movement, too distant to gauge.

Hermann slipped out of his shoes. Then he stepped as quietly as he could up to the landing.

He listened at the open door. Noises were coming from the kitchen. He pushed the door open and entered silently.

He was halfway across the living room carpet when he heard a metal bowl bwong onto the linoleum, and a voice say “Rats!”

“Jacob?”

His twelve-year-old neighbor looked up at the doorway. “Oh! Mr. Gottlieb, you’re all right!”

“Yes,” said Hermann, utterly relieved.

Jake collected the upset cat bowl from the floor. “I was just feeding him. He’s been in a bad mood. He's hiding from me, and hissing when I find him. I think he’s in the pantry now.”

Jake was small for his age, with a round face and bright eyes. Hermann watched him pour food into the cat’s bowl, over-filling it. It had, after all, only been a few days. There was still a real world, full of people and cats. As Jake set the bowl on the linoleum, Hermann felt a pressure on his calf.

He looked down. Laplace was rubbing his rhomboid face on the cuff of his pants. He looked up at meowed at Hermann.

Hermann exhaled. “Hello, you. Ich bin zuhause.”

“Oh, there he is. He’s all right,” said Jake.

Hermann wanted to crouch down and pet the cat, but he couldn’t. He was in too much pain.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, then?”

“Yes, I’m all right. How are the birds?” asked Hermann.

“The budgies? They’re fine. My mum doesn’t like the noise, but I don’t mind it, so they’re in me and my brother’s room. Is Newt coming back soon, d’you know?”

Hermann shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

“I thought he might be back,” said Jake. “I saw the lights come on in his flat last night. The bright lights. But he hasn’t called.”

“When?” said Hermann, perhaps too sharply. “When did you see the lights?”

“Oh. I dunno,” said Jake, taken aback. “Must have been yesterday, late afternoon. Evening, I s’pose. It was dark out.”

Perhaps Newton had come home before he left. To fetch something?

“So you’re all right, then?” Jake asked again. He was filling the cat’s bowl with water, and directed his question at the sink.

“Yes, I’m fine. It was a mistake, with the hospital,” said Hermann.

“Well, good,” said Jake. The water kept running, though the bowl was full. “But are you sure? Sure you’re not hurt? You can tell me, Mr. Gottlieb. Really. You can. It’s a shame, you living alone, my mum says, with your leg and your cane and no one to take care of you. And if something was wrong, and nobody knew, and then... And then something bad happened to you? And nobody knew? Except Laplace? Who would take care of him? Only I...” He glanced at Hermann, then back to the water.

“I’m all right,” said Hermann, with more attention. The child seemed truly concerned. “It was a mix-up with the records. Really, Jacob. They had the wrong person. I’m sorry they alarmed you.”

“Only my friend, his neighbor down the street, she died, she was old, she just had cats, and nobody found the body for days,” said Jake all at once, “And he said the cats—ate her eyes, and her face.” He looked stricken. “Mum said he was lying. But I found her obituary in the paper, it said she had no family. So I think it might be true. Who else would find her?”

“I'm not sick,” Hermann reiterated, trying to be gentle. “Laplace won’t eat me unless he has to. But if he has to—better that than starve, don’t you think?”

“It’s just so sad,” said Jake, frowning hard at the running water, like he was keeping tears at bay.

“It is,” said Hermann. “It’s terribly sad.”

“If you died, I’d take care of Laplace,” Jake said, looking up at Hermann as he approached and picked up the kettle. “Dad’s allergic, but he can live in my room.”

“Dad can?” said Hermann. Jake moved the water bowl aside so that Hermann could fill the kettle. He turned off the tap, and put the kettle on the stove.

“Laplace,” said Jake, finally setting the water bowl on the floor. “I think Dad’s lying about it anyhow. He just doesn’t want a cat.”

Hermann made them tea, and Jake told him all about school and football and the church play. Before he left, Hermann thanked him again, and told him he would pay him for the bird-sitting as well as the cat. “I’ll put the envelope through your slot later tonight, all right?”

“All right—and you’re sure everything’s all right, Mr. Gottlieb?”

“Everything is all right.”

Hermann shut the door behind him.

The flat was bright and silent in the everlasting summer twilight. Hermann closed all the curtains and took two more painkillers. While waiting for them to take effect, he walked through his flat, looking for signs of a search. He didn’t find any, but the people they worked for were quite deft. He didn’t find any bugs either, but Newton’s innovative designs were quite minuscule. At the door to the back balcony, he drew the curtain for a moment and looked across the courtyard to Newton’s apartment.

He'd gone back before he left.

What had he gone back for?

When he felt ready, Hermann left his flat, leaving the lights on and the radio playing. On the second floor, he slipped the envelope into Jake's family's mail slot. Then he exited via the back courtyard.

It was still hot, the kind of relentless heat that would to give way to rain. The sun was heavy in the western sky, making shadows long and harsh. In the back staircase of Newton’s apartment building, it was already dusk. The light turned the white walls blue, the wooden stairs black. Hermann climbed quite slowly. The slower his steps, the less they hurt. He had no expectations about what he’d find in the apartment—signs of Newton’s trail? More incriminating evidence? He was drawn by a new, passive sort of curiosity, slim but sturdy. The future held things unknown, but they couldn’t get any worse. It was a little like hope.

Maybe it was a little like forgiveness. He was reaching the first landing, considering his partner’s betrayal of their organization. Indeed, he’d come close to doing the same. It could have been him, once. He thought back to Newton’s reaction to the story of the Wagner Mission, sitting in the hotel room—“It wasn’t your fault. You obviously feel guilty. You shouldn’t.” Did Newton feel guilty for what he'd done?

Well, in any case, he was wrong about Hermann’s feelings. Hermann didn’t feel guilty about Wagner. The lost prize, the police, the “death” of Charles Rennie, the fire, the flight across borders. The memories weighed on him in a place he couldn’t easily access, an anchor too deep to dive to safely. And he didn’t like to talk about them.

But it wasn’t guilt.

It wasn't his fault.

Hermann paused on the second landing to rest. His almost-defection, that was what he was ashamed of. It could have been me. Bowen on the front page of every paper—that could have been Hermann. Countless lives ruined and ended. Rennie, shot through the chest. It could have been me.

Now, it was Newton. He didn’t know how to confront that.

On the third floor landing, he unlocked the three locks with his three keys, and slid his thumb over the bolt as he opened it. He thought about little Jake, feeding his cat so it wouldn’t eat his bachelor neighbor. Inside, he shut the door carefully, and locked it again. He removed his shoes while his eyes scanned the hardwood floor, searching for something. For what? The slivers. The little slivers of wood, left on the bolt to signal whether someone had been in... There. He hadn’t heard them fall when he came in. With difficulty, he bent and collected them.

Newton’s front hall was long and dark. Every door was open, and the lights were off in each room, leaving pockets of blackness. The only light came from the living-room-turned-bedroom. As Hermann limped slowly towards it, the boards beneath his socked feet turned to carpet. Then he reached the doorway and stepped in, and the lights blared on.

He jumped back, grabbing the door frame and shielding his eyes. The floodlights—how could he have forgotten? He fumbled for the switch on the wall, and found it. The floodlights dimmed down, and he dropped his arm, but his heart rate took longer to lower. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins.

As the light receded, his eyes readjusted to the familiar room. It washed back into semidarkness: the overstuffed shelves, the unmade bed, the jumbled boxes. Everything looked the same to him, but as his eyes readjusted, it became sharper, as if he was looking at something under shallow water and the surface had stilled.

Newton was right. He was wrong. It was guilt. Hermann did blame himself. Not for Rennie’s death, or for surviving the purge—he blamed himself for Bowen's defection. Because, Hermann thought, it could have been him.

That was why the revelation that Rennie had lived did nothing to alleviate his guilt. That was why he never spoke of it to anyone. Hermann had spent ten years thinking that it could have been him who turned—who betrayed trust given to him, who sold out to a government just as evil as his own, turned his back on friends and allies just to serve himself. Hermann had told himself that because Bowen, even Rennie could do it, so could he. And if they deserved punishment and censure, so did he. And if the collapse of Wagner and all the other operations and networks was their fault, it was just as much his.

But he hadn’t. Because that was ridiculous. He wasn’t Charles Rennie.

Hermann was hardly a hero, and maybe he acted callous or unkind in moments when he felt insecure or agitated. That was not the same as being a cold-blooded traitor, a collateral killer. He wasn’t that kind of person, because he hadn’t done it. Q.E.D.

Hermann was breathless with the realization, a little dizzy. His heart rate was still high from the lights, and his hip hurt from the stairs. He needed to sit down. He crossed the room slowly like a sleepwalker, and sank down on top of Newton's unmade bed.

The room looked the same as he remembered it, though he doubted his ability to detect a disturbance among this chaos. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Then he remembered he was alone here, protected from outside observation. So he lay back on Newt's bedspread and exhaled, long and slow, closing his eyes and relaxing his body for the first time in—God only knew how long.

The ceiling over Newton's bed was painted white, glowing dimly pink from the light sneaking in above the curtains. As soon as Hermann understood how he’d blamed himself, he understood why, too: to put himself in the at-fault position was to take responsibility for the disaster. It was a way to exercise a modicum of control over a devastating, unmanageable situation in which he had been, in almost every way, completely powerless.

But it was true, Newton was right—it wasn’t his fault.

Finally, he sat up. The door to Newton’s workshop was painted green. Hermann had never been inside. Propelled by the energy of the door just unlocked in his own head, he stood and went over to it.

If Newton had come here yesterday, this workshop had surely been his destination. But how to get inside?

He pulled Newton’s keys from his pocket, holding them by the medallion, and searched for the one that matched the brand of the lock. His thoughts were still racing, and when he found it, and turned the lock, he found that it had been unlocked all along.

The door opened.

The workshop was a cluttered nightmare. Hermann walked down the canyon between the overflowing bookshelves, observing the books and papers, boxes of parts, schematics on the walls, all of it lit by homemade light fixtures. In all, it was not terribly different from the bedroom or from Newt's office in Century.

At the workbench, Hermann turned on an overhead lamp. It illuminated a desk full of tools and bits, a sheet of notes, a long-dried orange peel, and a bulletin board. He recognized the schematic tacked there—a hand-drawn recreation of the transmitter. As he leaned in for a closer look, marveling at his partner’s carelessness, his hand rested on a hardcover book on the desk. He looked down. It was Fellowship.

Hermann picked the book up, slowly. He looked at it. He had the sensation that he’d skipped a line or two while reading, and continued, knowing he had to go back—go back, just check. His personal realization had so disoriented him, and he was still adrenalized from the lights. But the book he held in his hands, that he’d found in Newton’s lab, did not belong to Newton.

No... No. It wasn’t his. Hermann checked inside. It was the 1953 edition, all right. It would decipher the Orpheus messages. But it was not Newt’s beloved, dog-eared paperback copy.

Hermann scanned backwards, back to the lines he’d missed. The book wasn’t Newton’s. The workshop door was unlocked. The slivers had been out of the door. Yesterday, the bright lights had come on, Jake said, after dark—but Newt wouldn’t have tripped his own lights. And he hadn’t been here after dark, yesterday. He’d been with Hermann, at the hospital.

Hermann stared out the one little window in the workshop, half-obscured by a shelf. The clouds outside were turning red. He had been wrong about so many things.

Back at the hospital, they had moved Newton from emergency care to an inpatient room. Hermann took a doctor aside. “There’s something stuck in his ear canal. I can’t tell you how I know this,” he said. “Take it out.”