"This concludes your orientation. Please face to your right and take 
short, measured steps. You will be guided to a room where you will 
be allowed to remove your blindfold. Some of you will receive your 


first Acquisition case; upon completion you will receive limited 
membership and a reward to be arranged with your contact. Thank 
you for your time." 


As Edward walked carefully towards the door he was struck by the 
fact that the other footsteps were only echoes of his own; in fact, the 
more he allowed himself to reflect on it the more certain he was that 
he was, apart from MC&D's employees, alone in the chapterhouse, 
and that the whole initiation ceremony with its cultic trappings had 
been arranged specifically for his benefit. 


After walking a good hundred paces he heard a door close behind 
him and hands lowered him into a rich leather chair. The blindfold 
was removed—as he had expected, Jeremy sat across from him on 
the other side of a dark wooden desk lit by an elegant angle lamp, 
surrounded by densely packed shelves of aged-looking books. 


"Edward! Glad to see you made it. Welcome aboard." He was toying 
with a gold-banded fountain pen. 


"So, | imagine you'll be presenting me with a task right away." To 
prove my loyalty, he thought. He strongly suspected no-one walked 
out of the chapterhouse without a favour to complete. 


"That's correct. There's a document we want you to acquire; nothing 
illegal, just a little straightforward persuasion. Some charm, Mr 
Gradley. Ten thousand pounds will be wired to your personal 
account to make the purchase—you will be expected to return any 
money left over. The current owner of the document does not know 
its real value and the amount we have provided should be more than 
adequate to persuade her to make the sale." 


"Would | know the owner?" 

"You were selected for this acquisition exactly because you have 
made her acquaintance; she is an infrequent guest of the Lady 
Penelope. The daughter of Christophe Beaumont—Maria 
Beaumont." 


Edward fell silent for a second. He was effectively being asked to 


scam the woman. Not only that, but his instincts had told him of the 
existence of a relationship between her and David Went; she had 
not confirmed his suspicions but it was enough to make him wary of 
the errand. After a few moments he made up his mind. 


"This document—what am | looking for? | imagine Miss Beaumont 
will have lots of valuable papers in her possession." 


"A very astute question. You are looking for a manuscript authored 
by Gervase of Langford, a fourteenth century writer thought for a 
long time to be apocryphal. He is supposed to be a contemporary of 
Chaucer—a long-lost pioneer of English literature. Excerpts from the 
manuscript in question, A Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians, 
were touted around in the late Victorian era as prophetic literature, 
but scholars widely considered the book a ‘ghost’, a phantom 
invented by later authors or perhaps an embellishment of a more 
well-known document. Shakespeare's "Cardenio" is another so- 
called ghost. Except of course, the Viage has been found; traced, at 
considerable expense, by our Documents team." He slid a slim 
briefing document over the table—noticeably absent, Edward 
noticed, was any trace of the MC&D cartouche. 


"In the possession of the Beaumont estate." 


"Yes; the original manuscript is recorded as having been sold for 
four guineas to a French businessman called Guiger in the sixteenth 
century. There the trail ended, until we discovered a reference to a 
‘Voyage au Pays des Cimmeériens' having been acquired by the 
library of Jean-Paul Beaumont in 1897." 


"What would it look like?" 


"Obviously we can't say for sure—we believe, however, that it will be 
a codex." 


"A codex?" 


"Much like the tomes surrounding me—a book. Most likely bound in 
metal, given the documentation. We believe it was transported from 
France in the 1980s with the rest of Christophe Beaumont's 
collection. It should be in the library of the Beaumont residence, 


SCP-573. Anyone attempting to use SCP-573 will find themselves 
able to play the flute as if they had been playing for years, and can 
play any song they desire. 


Addendum: As of / / ,SCP-573 is not to be used on human 
subjects. As revealed in Diary-573, SCP-573 provokes feelings of 
revulsion and paranoia in the user, specifically oriented towards 
prepubescents. These feelings increase gradually but steadily, until 
the wielder finds himself acting out violently and maliciously towards 
any prepubescent under his influence. Human testing with SCP-573 
is thus suspended indefinitely. -O5-6 


« SCP-572 | SCP-573 | SCP-574 » 


which should not be hard for you to locate." 
"And if it isn't?" 


"Then our working relationship will be a brief one. Now, there are 
several non-disclosure agreements to sign, prohibiting you from 
discussing the involvement of Marshall, Carter & Dark during the 
transaction or thereafter..." 


The Beaumont residence, located in Belgravia, was a six-storey 
terraced property; white stucco with fluted columns supporting an 
expansive porch supporting a balcony filled with a tasteful 
assortment of topiary. Edward all but hurdled the distance from his 
car to the doorway but still somehow managed to get drenched from 
head to toe. He rung the bell and stood shivering in his probably 
ruined suit until Maria opened it, summery in a floral blue dress and 
a wide-brimmed hat. 


"Oh look at you; you're soaked to the skin. Come in, come in." 
Edward wasn't even sure if she recognised him from the clubhouse. 


She laid down newspaper for Edward to tread on and took his coat, 
which she spread over the radiator. 


"You should come through to the solarium. I'm just doing some 
gardening." 


After removing his shoes Edward followed her through the elegant 
interior, furnished in the Louis XVI style and lit with high, diffuse 
lights that offset the cream walls. She led him up a short flight of 
stairs and into a wide circular courtyard surrounding a neatly 
maintained flower bed. The light here was a warm orange and they 
seemed to have suddenly entered evening in late summer. Edward 
looked up and saw the rain beating against a tinted glass dome. 
Maria knelt down on a small cushion and began bedding a number 
of small pink flowering plants from a tray. 


"You have a lovely home," he said. 


"Thank you, but it's not mine. It belongs to my father—but he spends 


most of his time in France, on business." 
"Oh." He watched her gardening for a few minutes. 


"| thought you might have been coming by to give me flowers," she 
said. "| don't like that. David always brings me flowers and | watch 
them die. Being uprooted like that; it's too cruel." Edward wondered 
if she was thinking of her own childhood, brought to Britain at the 
age of seven if the research he'd done last night on the family was 
correct. 


"Actually," he said, "| was hoping to ask you a favour. There was a 
certain book | was looking for and can't seem to find anywhere. 
Someone told me that the Beaumont library might have a copy." 


"Oh dear. You can certainly come and look, but | don't think | can be 
of help to you. Come with me." 


Again Edward found himself trailing behind Maria as she navigated 
flights of stairs and led him through various impossibly lavish 
drawing-rooms. 


Finally she came to a stairwell that led sharply upwards to a 
trapdoor. 


"When my father came from France he had the whole collection put 
in crates and shipped over; but he never had the time to recatalog 
it." She opened the trapdoor and they rose into a high-vaulted loft 
space, the floor littered with dozens upon dozens of great boxes, 
every surface covered in a thick layer of dust and fibreglass fluff. 
Edward looked on in despair. 


"So you see, if the book you were looking for is part of my family's 
library it is somewhere in there." She shook her head. "I'm so sorry." 


Edward looked at her—the light from the trapdoor lit up her arms 
and legs and made her seem something ethereal, less than solid. 
He had already decided what he was going to say. 


"I'll help you. I'll get it all organised, put them up on shelves." 


Maria's expression was hard to read in the shadow of the attic. 


"Won't your bosses mind?" 
"I'll do it out of office hours. That is, if you're happy?" 


"Yes, yes! But you mustn't do it for free. I'll phone my father and ask 
him to pay you for it. There's a room on the second floor he always 
meant to be the library—there are some mementos on the shelves | 
will need to clear." 


And that was how the weeks played out—Edward would play the 
stock market during the day and spend the evenings and weekends 
at the Beaumont residence, hauling boxes down from the attic and 
cataloging their contents. First-edition Proust, an autographed copy 
of Les Misérables, the complete works of Frangois-Thomas-Marie 
de Baculard d'Arnaud. Several times Edward found himself sitting 
and reading through volumes of Comte and Montesquieu in their 
original French, before chiding himself for wasting time. No date had 
been set by Jeremy for the acquisition of the Viage, but he imagined 
this delay could not have been appreciated. 


The little library soon filled up and Maria annexed the parlour next 
door, bringing in new shelving during the day. Edward opened box 
after box of tomes packed in yellowed styrofoam, but there was no 
metal-bound medieval manuscript. Maria would walk in from time to 
time, bringing him sweet tea in little china cups and wafer-thin 
biscuits. 


"Edward, you will not be able to come around tomorrow evening," 
she told him once. 


"Oh. Why?" 


"Well, David is coming over, and you were right. He can be a little 
jealous. You have been so good in doing this—I! do not want him to 
get the wrong idea." She held his cheek with her hand for a moment 
and suddenly flushed before turning away. 


One rainy Saturday—there was no sun anymore, it seemed, at least 
outside office hours—a bone-tired Edward levered off the top of the 


latest crate, a damp, miserable thing he had found lurking near the 
edge of the attic. The books at the top were ruined; little more than 
dried pulp between the covers. Seventeenth century Moliére, now 
mush. Below the ruined books there seemed to be only emptiness; 
an expanse of styrofoam peanuts all the way to the bottom of the 
box. Or was it the bottom? The cool, unyielding surface he had 
encountered didn't seem far enough down. Scrabbling around he 
found one corner, then another, and lifted the object out of the 
packing crate. 


It was more a box than a binding—a plain, almost crude iron cuboid 
with a hefty haft. On it the word 'Gervais'—presumably the French 
spelling—had been not engraved but scratched into the metal. He 
held his breath as he undid the clasp. Had it been reduced to mulch 
like the others? The pages were yellowed, brittle, cracked at the 
edges; but intact. The title page took his breath away—still-vivid 
reds and greens spiralling together in an ornate 'A' that began the 
title: ‘A Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians'. He closed the box, 
and took a deep breath. Now the hard part. 


"To buy? Oh, no, I'm sorry, Edward. That book is part of my family 
estate—they all are. | could not sell them, not for any amount of 
money." 


"Perhaps your father..." 


"My father entrusted the house and everything to me—do you see? | 
cannot sell you the book." 


"But ... they were in packing crates for years. Your father probably 
doesn't even know it's in here, surely there's no harm in letting it 
go?" he said, a little roughly. Then, softening his tone, "It would 
mean a lot to me." 


"Edward! Please, listen to me. You are a dear man and | hope a 
dear friend. | do not like to say no to you. Please do not let some old 
silly book come between us." 


Edward collapsed into a chair and gazed into the middle distance. 
Maria, unwilling to let Edward see her cry, turned away. Edward left 


shortly afterwards, books and packing material still strewn around 
the floor like the wreckage from some terrible explosion. 


Maria called several times over the next few days, each time on his 
home phone during office hours, hanging up when it went to 
answerphone. He couldn't bring himself to call her back. 


Unable to decide what to do next in the Beaumont acquisition, 
Edward simply let it rest for the moment, the ten thousand pounds 
resting accusingly in his personal current account. He would have 
been content to leave it there forever before something happened to 
make him act. This time it didn't come from apocalyptically-named 
IRC personalities, shady gentleman's clubs or even David Went. It 
began with an innocuous phonecall from Wil Hamilton, his one-time 
best friend back at Redmayne-—Bracknell. 


"We should meet up for a drink sometime," suggested Edward, 
reflecting that since joining Cooper Drake he had all but given up 
friends. His occasional outings with David Went were the closest he 
came to sharing time with friends these days, especially since he 
had stopped going to Maria's house. 


"Sure. So how are things as a master of the universe?" 
"Tiring." 

"You don't say. Keeping your eyes on the prize, right?" 
"When | can. How is HR treating you?" 


"It's my busy season too. So many companies are closing we're 
getting deluged with applications. You know how it goes—all the 
handwritten letters, in the bin. All the "To whom it may concerns'—in 
the bin. Pile A is the first-class degrees from Oxbridge, pile B is the 
first-class degrees from other unis. The rest go in the bin. All the off- 
white paper; in the bin. All the ones on company letterhead; in the 
bin. Interview the first ten from the top of each pile and chuck the 
ones who start the interview with 'um’. If you're left with one 
candidate from pile A and another from B, chuck the B-lister." 


"Heh," Edward thought: you're missing out a trick there, mate. | 
know for a fact you look at the surnames and chuck the ones that 
don't sound like they attended Eton in the 1950s. 


"Here's something you could probably use—you know Western 
Instruments?" 


Edward vaguely remembered it as a dinosaur of a New England firm 
that made graphic calculators and replied in the affirmative. 


"Well, they're jumping ship in their dozens. I'd say about one in 
every five applications we're getting over in Accounts are from 
them." 


"Why?" 


"Well, nothing's been announced yet, but it's common knowledge at 
the firm. They're only getting jumped by the Slasher." 


Bashir "Slasher" Khan (he wouldn't have got into Redmayne— 
Bracknell under Wil Hamilton's watch, sad to say) was an 
aggressive young tycoon who had made millions buying up dying 
British and American companies, ruthlessly cutting them to the bare 
bones and selling them on to multinationals. He was the master of 
the hostile takeover, appealing directly to shareholders and 
bypassing management altogether. After firing half the workforce 
and paring back output to its most profitable components a company 
‘slashed’ by Bashir Khan could be worth as much as fifteen percent 
more. 


"Really? I'll look into it. Thanks for the tip." 


They concluded their discussion with some light ribbing and a 
promise to get together some time, maybe pulling in friends who had 
left for different firms. 


Then Edward started researching Western Instruments and Bashir 
Khan. It all seemed to check out—Khan hadn't made an acquisition 
for months and was surely looking to expand again. Western 
Instruments was a sad, bloated carcass of what it used to be, still 
insisting that people needed single-purpose computing equipment at 


the price of a smart phone. A trickle of orders from the schools were 
the only thing keeping them in business.