“Ah. So I did. Please, Mr. Palgrave, sit down.” I tipped my gym bag off the folding chair in the corner.

He stayed where he was. “Mr. Clarke—” he began.

“Jeff,” I said. “Please call me Jeff.”

He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. “Whatever for?”

“Well, it’s just—if we’re going to be working together, I thought it would be nice to be on a first-name basis.”

“Do you imagine that we’re going to become friends, Mr. Clarke?”

I tried to read his eyes. “I just thought—” I broke off and tried again. “It’s casual Friday.”

The answer appeared to satisfy him. “Yes, of course. Jeff.” He somehow broke it into two syllables, as if translating from Old English. “Let us review the offending section of my description of food rations during the Chattanooga campaign.”

“Look, I was simply checking the sources. I didn’t mean—”

“As always, a staple of the Union fighting man’s diet was hardtack, a hard, simple cracker made of flour, water, and salt. Hardtack—a term derived from tack, a slang term common among British sailors as a descriptive of food—offered many advantages to an army on the move. Cheap to produce and virtually imperishable, hardtack easily withstood the extremes of temperature and rough handling to which it was subjected in the average soldier’s kit. Indeed, the thick wafer proved so indestructible that soldiers were obliged to soften it in their morning coffee before it could be eaten. This extra step offered an additional advantage—at a time when improper storage conditions meant that many of the army’s foodstuffs were infested with insects, a good soaking in coffee allowed any unwanted maggots or weevil larvae to float to the top of the soldier’s cup, where they could easily be skimmed off. As a result, the soldiers often referred to their hardtack rations as worm castles.”

Palgrave stopped reading and looked at me expectantly. “Well? This did not meet with your approval?”

“It’s perfect,” I said. “Very concise and informative. But I need a source for the phrase worm castles.”

“A source?”

“I’ve checked every source in the packets you were given. Furgurson, Foote, Livermore—all of them. I’ve found any number of slang terms for hardtack. Tooth dullers. Dog biscuits. Sheet iron. Jaw breakers. Ammo reserves. But I can’t find worm castles.”

“I don’t see the problem.”

“I need a citation. It may be just a formality, but I need it. My job, as I understand it, is to check the facts—even the trivial ones. If somebody says that Grant’s first name was Ulysses, I have to check it. You can’t just say that Civil War soldiers walked around using the phrase worm castles without a source. What if they didn’t?”

“They did.”

“I’m sure they did. I just need you to tell me where you got it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Clarke, I have worked here for thirteen years.”

“I appreciate that. And I’ve only worked here for a few weeks. So I’m asking you to help me do my job.”

“You may rest assured that my facts are in order.”

“With respect, I can’t take it on faith. I need a source.”

“I am the source.”

“But how do you know it’s right?”

“It just is.” He closed the folder and stared at me for a long moment. “Per aspera ad astra,” he said, walking away.

I recognized that one. Through hardship to the stars.

PALGRAVE began weaving a single unverifiable fact into every page of his work. Again and again I went to him asking for sources. Each time he looked me square in the face and said, “It just is.” The red check marks continued to bloom in the margins of his copy, creating a logjam in the production chain. The burden of breaking the jam rested entirely with me.

One day Peter Albamarle appeared in the doorway of my office. It was rare to see him moving among the drones, so I had a pretty good idea of what was coming. “I understand you and Thaddeus have been at odds,” he said.

I looked at his face and knew my job was on the line. My first job. The job that was supposed to be my entrée into big-time journalism. “Not at all, Mr. Albamarle,” I said.

He folded his hands. “Thaddeus . . . can be something of a challenge,” he said slowly.

“I’m sure we’ll iron this out. I’m still learning the lay of the land.”

“Perhaps.” Albemarle stepped into my office and closed the door. This can’t be good, I thought. “It’s no reflection on you,” he said, “but not everyone is cut out for this job. If you like, we can reassign you to Imagination Station and pass Thaddeus off to a more seasoned researcher.”

Imagination Station. The kiddie series. The Siberia of LifeSpan Books. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” I said.

“It’s not a reflection on you,” Albamarle repeated. “Thaddeus takes a certain pleasure in being difficult. This office is his entire world. He has never once in thirteen years taken a vacation. Not once. I’ve tried to speak with him, but . . .” He raised his palms and shrugged.

“I understand,” I said. Actually, I had no clue, but I understood that he was prepared to throw me under the bus.

“It’s just—it’s just that if you can’t resolve your issues, we won’t be able to meet the drop date. That’s ten days from now.”

“So I have to find a source for each of the red checks in Mr. Palgrave’s work.”

Albamarle gave a tight nod. “Exactly,” he said.

“Without his cooperation.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Somewhere among all the tens of thousands of books and references we have available on the Civil War.” I flipped the pages of the book I was holding. “A needle in a haystack—only the haystack is the Library of Congress.”

Albamarle had the decency to look abashed. “I’m afraid that’s the situation precisely,” he said.

AND the strange thing was, I began to think I could do it. I wanted to prove to Palgrave that I could take whatever he threw at me. It became my only goal in life to erase every single red check. I came in early to get first crack at the 128 volumes of The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. I dipped into the memoirs of officers and enlisted men—Company Aytch by Sam Watkins and Following the Greek Cross by Thomas Worcester Hyde. I made a special study of Major General John D. Sedgwick, the highest-ranking Union casualty of the war, who fell to a sharpshooter’s bullet at Spotsylvania. His last words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”

Brian and Kate watched with mounting horror. “You can’t learn everything there is to know about the Civil War in ten days,” Brian told me. “It takes three weeks, minimum.” But I wouldn’t be deterred. I began refusing to go out for lunch, preferring to stay at my desk with a tuna and avocado pita pocket, skimming through regimental histories. If a call of nature pulled me away from my desk, I hummed “I Cannot Mind My Wheel, Mother” on my way down the hall. After five days, I had erased seven check marks. By the eighth day only three remained. And by the last day I had whittled the list down to a single red check mark—the one that had started it all. Worm castles.

On the night before my deadline, Brian and Kate returned to the office after dinner and found me dozing over a copy of Advance and Retreat. “Right,” Brian said. “This is not healthy. We’re going out for a drink.”

They pulled me out of the building, all but dragging me by the ear, and hustled me to the Irish pub. Kate refused to speak until we were settled in a corner booth with beer and nachos. “This has to stop,” she said at last. “You’re turning into him.”

“Look, I’m the newest member of the staff. I’m just trying to save my job. If I have to put in a little extra time, so be it.”

“Extra time? You no longer leave your office. You no longer sleep. You have become careless in certain areas of dress and personal hygiene.”