Chapter 22: What the Clarification Interview Produced

He had identified two of the three things by the time he reached the end of the corridor, and the third by the time he reached the dormitory stairwell.

The first was the Natural Philosophy section. He had not collected from it in four days, and four days was the outer edge of a safe interval. He collected now, moving through the library's north aisle at a pace that was neither purposeful nor aimless — the pace of a person returning a book he had finished and not yet decided what to read next. The forty-third volume on the third shelf was in its proper position. He drew it out, confirmed the folded strip inside the back cover, transferred it to his left sleeve in the same motion as closing the book, and reshelved it spine-flush with its neighbours. The Thought-Watcher at the north entrance was on a three-minute relay. He had been in its sightline for forty seconds.

He did not read the strip until he was in the lavatory adjacent to the east stairwell, which was on Maret's clean list, and even then he read it in a single pass and tore it into six pieces and distributed the pieces between three bins on three separate floors. The message was from Brennan and it contained four words: *stay away from Crane.*