1.25am
There are two powers in every secret: that others do not know it and that others may be told.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
Fabulo had walked off in a daze. He meandered between the grey cabinets, ducking under the connecting shelves, finding his way gradually deeper into that vast room. His flimsy plan had collapsed. There was no person to be held hostage. John Farthing would be outside the mirrored door already. Wooden wedges would not hold them back for long.
Each of the stenotype keys had been printed with a letter of the alphabet or a number. To one side of the recess was a hopper, containing a great stack of cards. I took the topmost, examined both sides, which proved blank, and flexed it. It was perhaps nine inches by four and no more stiff than a playing card.
Jeremiah came to stand beside me. “I want to thank you,” he said.
“You’ll be hanged because of me,” I told him. “If they don’t shoot us all first.”
“I picked that lock. It’s the greatest thing I ever did. You were right in what you said before. I would have been running forever. But this way I’ll die knowing…”
“…you’re the greatest locksmith of the age.”
He chuckled. “Maybe I am.”
“Then tell me,” I said. “What does this machine do?”
I handed him the card. He examined it as I had done, then stepped to the side and held it against a slot in the machine. The width of the card matched perfectly.
“The cards move through here,” he said. “If you look at a low angle, you can see small wheels. They’re rubber coated for better grip. They shoot the cards along. See those shelves between the cabinets? They’re about the same width. I’m betting the cards will travel through them.”
“But why? And where’s the engine to power it?”
“I’m stronger on the how than the why,” he said, then pointed to a small lever on the machine, next to the C.O.M. nameplate. “Doesn’t that look familiar?”
It was of the same design as the wall-mounted levers that had operated the lights. I reached out and flipped it down.
The lights in the room dimmed for a moment and a low whirring noise began. It emanated from the cabinet in front of us, but also from other cabinets around. The entire room was humming with it. I had barely time to react before the hopper juddered and a card whisked along the slot, where it came to an abrupt halt. A vent in the metal was blowing air against my leg.
Fabulo was running back between the cabinets. The others stepped closer, fearfully, as if they were approaching a bomb.
“What does it do?” asked Lara.
“Shall we find out?”
I pressed the stenotype key marked “E”. A chatter and thud from the slot made us all jump. A neat rectangular hole had been punched in the card, and the letter “E” had been printed, though I’d not seen it happen.
Fabulo reached us, panting for breath.
I pressed the keys: L I Z A B E T H B A R N A B U S. On each press, an arm sprang out and stamped the letter. And each time another hole had been punched in the card. I could make no sense of the pattern.
We all stared.
“What now?” asked Fabulo.
“What do you think that might do?” asked Jeremiah, indicating a button set apart from the others. Rather than a letter, it was marked with a word: SEND.
I pressed it. Immediately, the card shot away along the slot, disappearing into the machine. There were new sounds now. A rattling and a whirring that started close, but moved quickly on to the next cabinet, and the cabinet beyond. Then an answering chatter began somewhere deep in the room, rushing back towards us, hopping from machine to machine. With a click, two new cards shot out of a slot nearby, coming to rest in a shallow tray.
Ellie picked them up and passed them to me.
They were pale blue, but the same size as the card we’d sent. And they were punched with holes, much as it had been. But these were printed with type front and back.
Subject: Elizabeth Barnabus
Category: Person
Date of Birth: Unknown
Year of Birth: 1989
Family: Gulliver Barnabus, Father. Felicia Barnabus, Mother. Edwin Barnabus, Twin.
Class: Informer and Suspect
Status: Wanted for Questioning
I turned the cards, scanning the text, finding lists of names – my friends and people I’d associated with. Finding also a great list of case numbers, among them surely the reference to the court case that had ruined my family, killed my father and sent me over the border in exile. Against each case was a filing reference. All began with IPC. All had Roman numerals – references to the rooms we’d passed, the doors we’d not opened.
“It’s a filing machine,” I said. “An index.”
Fabulo snatched the cards from my hand. “But if it’s the Custodian of Marvels…”
“Don’t you see? We’re talking about the Patent Office. For them that’s just what this is. They’re not interested in the things themselves. They’re fixed always on the knowing. On who knows and who isn’t allowed to know. This machine – this great index – it gives access to knowledge. It is the custodian.”
So focused had we been on the cards and the machine that, for minutes, none of us had turned to look at the great door. And under the whirring of the machine, small sounds were lost.
“Elizabeth Barnabus!” barked Agent Chronis, behind us.
I froze, expecting a bullet, my guts clenching.
Fabulo raised his hands above his head. Lara followed his lead. But Tinker turned to face the door.
“Attention, Elizabeth Barnabus!”
Tinker tugged at my sleeve. “It’s the speaking tube,” he said.
We all turned then and found the door wedged closed as we left it. “Someone go speak to him,” I said. “Buy us time.”
Lara was the first to move. She ran to a grille on the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before.
“Who are you?” she asked, pressing the button.
“You know who I am!”
“But I’m not sure I do.”
Knowing we were in good hands, I turned to the machine once more, trying to filter out Chronis’s angry questions. Jeremiah had taken some of the cards from Fabulo.
“It talks about me,” he said.
I nodded. “They know we’re associates. They’ve been following us.”
“Give the machine my name,” he said.
“No,” said Fabulo. “Ask it about Harry Timpson.”
“For what? There’ll just be more references to files in rooms we can’t get to!”
Chronis’s voice barked behind us. “We know the door is unlocked. We will be able to force it open. Remove whatever is blocking it.”
“Why would we do that?” asked Lara.
“If you fail to comply, we will use lethal force once inside.”
“You’ve done that already,” she said, her voice bitter.
I bent over the stenotype and started pressing keys. A blank card shot through and the hole punch chattered.
B A R R E L B R E E C H
I pressed SEND and the card shot away. I listened to the humming and clicking of its progress. Then, as before, the sound rushed back from across the room and a card shot out into the tray.
Subject: Barrel Breech
Category: Terminology
Class: Restricted. Agents only
Operation Code Name: Clean Start
There was a great list of case numbers that spilled over onto the other side. My hands were back on the stenotype keys.
C L E A N S T A R T
As I sent the new card shooting off into the machine, a terrible creaking noise began behind me. The door shuddered.
“Keep it closed,” I shouted.
They all ran to lean against it, bracing themselves.
“Just give me time!”
The answering card shot out into the tray.
Subject: Clean Start
Category: Operation Code
Class: Restricted. Agents Only
Related Terms: Napoleonic Weapons. Breech Loader Musket. Converter Musket. Battle of Waterloo.
My fingers flew across the keys, printing each of the phrases. This time I didn’t wait for a return card before sending out the next. The noise of the machine grew. But louder still was the grinding and creaking of the door beginning to open, fraction by fraction, forcing the wooden wedges to scrape across the floor.
A response card shot into the tray, others following rapidly after it. I picked out the top one and read:
Subject: Waterloo
Category: Historic Battle
Class: Expunged from History. Agents Only
Date: 18th June to 20th December 1815
Casualties: 3.19 million
Combatants: France. Prussia. Belgium. Netherlands. Britain. Russia.
The list went on over to the other side and to three more cards after it. I stared at them, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the revelation. The great halls of guns and ammunition suddenly made sense. There had been a terrible conflagration. A battle of a scale beyond understanding. Many people dead for each of the guns we’d seen in that vast storeroom. And all of it had been wiped from history. Expunged by the Patent Office.
I remembered Professor Ferdinand’s terror, not at the thought of history being changed, but at the possibility of proof existing. The Patent Office had gone beyond its authority, beyond the provisions of the Great Accord. The Patent Office had broken the law.
The great door juddered and screeched, inching its way towards us.
“We can’t hold it,” yelled Lara.
“Tell them we’ll give up!” I cried.
Lara threw herself towards the speaking grille and pressed the button. I gathered up the cards and ran towards the brass pipes on the wall.
“We give up!” she shouted. “We surrender!”
The scraping noise stopped. Chronis’s voice was cold. “Remove your barricade. Then lie face down on the ground. Hands spread. Anyone who disobeys this simple instruction will be shot.”