Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  He played with his beard, twisting it into a point. “I complain of having too little time, and your advice is to play Monopoly?”

  “When was the last time you checked in with your therapist?” Nidhi asked.

  Gutenberg frowned. “The network connection isn’t secure enough, and the bandwidth—”

  “I didn’t ask for excuses, I asked how long?”

  He blinked, and his lips quirked upward. “Two months,” he admitted. “Maybe three.”

  Porter gossip suggested Gutenberg’s therapist was a 130-year-old woman whose mind had been transferred to a computer system in the late seventies. Gutenberg’s comments about connectivity suggested there might be truth to the story. I would have loved to learn how that had all come about.

  “That’s the reason I’m here, right?” Nidhi circled around the bar and dug through the fridge. She surfaced with a small bottle of orange juice. “To protect me and prevent me from being used against Lena and Isaac, sure. But also because you know you need someone keeping an eye on your mental health. You’ve always known.”

  Ponce de Leon looked back and forth between them, as if he were appreciating a particularly exciting game of ping pong.

  “It is my professional opinion that you are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted,” Nidhi continued. “If you don’t take a break, you’re going to get your people killed.”

  Gutenberg retrieved his cigarette from the floor and sighed. “Damned therapists,” he muttered. “One hour. That’s all I can give you.”

  “One hour?” Ponce de Leon pulled a deck of cards from his suit pocket. “That should give me plenty of time to trounce you in Noddy.”

  “I’m not playing with any deck you’ve had your hands on,” Gutenberg said sharply.

  “You didn’t seem to object when I— Oh, I’m sorry. Did you say deck?” He limped into the hallway, cutting the cards one-handed as he walked. Gutenberg shook his head, but followed.

  I coughed to hide my laughter. On a whim, I turned back to my work and tried searching for patterns of letters that would correspond to the pips on various playing cards. I did find the word “muria,” which meant to pickle, but I was pretty sure that was just coincidence.

  Lena had brought Smudge out with her. She grabbed a banana and offered him a chunk, but he refused. With a shrug, she popped the piece into her mouth and came over to study my work. She stopped several feet from the table. Smudge was calm for the moment, but neither of us were about to risk him getting close to a thousand-year-old book.

  “It’s still wrong,” I said.

  “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “That’s not it. I wrote the poem exactly as he did, and it was right when he used it. But it’s not anymore.”

  “Maybe you need to take an hour to play a little naughty,” she said.

  “Noddy, not naughty. It was an early version of cribbage from the sixteenth cent—oh.”

  She chuckled sadly. “What are we going to do with you?” Before I could respond, her eyes fell upon an antique-looking floor lamp that hadn’t been there the day before. A post-it note with Lena’s name on it was stuck to the stained glass hood.

  She dragged a chair over, turned on the lamp, and stretched like a cat in a sunbeam. “Mm. We are definitely getting one of these at your house. And another for Nidhi’s apartment.”

  I pulled my attention back to my crumbled and discarded notes. What was I missing?

  “Do you think the poem is somehow keyed to the user?” asked Lena.

  “I thought about that. I searched for permutations of Gerbert d’Aurillac and Sylvester, thinking maybe the letters of his name were the answer, and I’d have to rewrite the poem with my own name. I couldn’t find anything.”

  “It’s a shame you don’t want a lover who’s smarter than you.”

  “What?” I stared at her. Her expression was unreadable.

  “I’m what my lovers make me, remember? If you fantasized about being with a super-genius, I might be able to see something you’d missed.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s all right. Being with you and with Nidhi, this is the smartest I’ve ever been, and I’m grateful for that.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry. You deserve more.”

  “I know.” This time her smile was genuine. “We all have limitations, and you can’t help your insecurities.”

  “I’m not—”

  She laughed. “I’m satisfied with who I am and what I have. At least for the moment.”

  “What about the future?”

  “You mean after you and Nidhi get old and gray and wrinkly and die peacefully in your sleep at the age of a hundred and eleven? I plan to find a kind, brilliant, passionate Michelle Rodriguez lookalike and live a life of shameless, hedonistic luxury.”

  “Good to know you’ve thought this through.”

  She shifted Smudge to her other shoulder and leaned back in her chair. “Just thinking about Rodriguez in that Resident Evil film . . .” She shivered. “If you’re not careful, I might have to physically drag you away from those books.”

  “If you could find the answers in this thing, I’d take you right here.”

  “On the table?” she asked playfully. “Gutenberg wouldn’t be happy if anything happened to his antique book.”

  “Fine, we could move to the couch.”

  She walked over and studied the poem. For a moment I thought she had been setting me up, that she was about to point out some pattern I had missed. Instead, she pursed her lips and shook her head. “Sorry. I guess I’ll have to somehow make it through the day without your manly touch. Alas and woe.”

  “Laying it on a little thick, eh?”

  She grinned. “Just trying to cope with my disappointment. The pain may force me to seek solace in the arms of another woman.”

  I didn’t respond right away.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lena. “That wasn’t—”

  “It’s all right.” I wasn’t sure I would ever be one hundred percent comfortable with my girlfriend having a girlfriend of her own, but they say with time you can adjust to anything. Nidhi had described us as family, and in a way, she was right. I certainly spent more time with the two of them than I did my brother or my parents, and the things we had seen and survived created a powerful sense of connection. This might not be the family I had imagined building when I was younger, but when had the universe ever listened to my plans?

  Nidhi and I would never be in love with one another. On the other hand, she was a friend and a good person, and I had gotten used to her being a part of my life.

  “Tell you what.” Lena circled around behind me and kissed my ear. “You solve this thing, and then we’ll celebrate together.”

  The erotic tingles racing down my neck were squashed a second later when Smudge decided Lena had bent down for his convenience, allowing him to jump from her shoulder to the top of my head. Spider feet tickling my scalp turned out to be a powerful mood-killer. I yelped and tried not to make any sudden moves that might cost me my hair.

  Lena laughed and lured him away with an M&M. “Gerbert d’Aurillac designed this so people could retrieve the sphere if they needed to. He wanted you to figure it out.” She kissed me again, then pulled away before Smudge could return. “Let me know when you do.”

  This is a photo of my nine-year-old daughter Klara.

  Three days ago, she was in the ICU waiting for the tumors that had colonized her body to finish killing her.

  Today we brought her home.

  The doctors can’t or won’t explain how a terminal patient, a little girl who spent the majority of her young life fighting a losing battle with cancer, could overnight become the model of health. I’m terrified this is a dream, that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and be back in that hell, listening to my princess struggle to breathe.

  Klara says the night she got better, she woke up to see a teacher standing over her. Her mother and I asked why she thought it was a teacher. She told us,
“Because she had lots of books, and she smelled like coffee.”

  Whoever it was, she gave Klara a drink of something sweet. Something that “tasted like magic honey.”

  The next morning, Klara was literally bouncing in her hospital bed.

  Go ahead. Tell me it wasn’t a miracle. Tell me how else but magic the tumors that riddled her body could literally vanish overnight.

  A week ago, I lived in a world where I had to watch my dying child fade one day at a time. Today, I live in a world where Klara won’t stop pestering us to go to Disney World in the United States so she can get Peter Pan’s autograph.

  Klara’s magic teacher healed two other children that night. The best medical care in the country had failed our angels. Magic saved them.

  There are no words for the relief, or for the terror that it will somehow be yanked away. I prayed for so long, bargained with God and screamed at him, offered my life for hers. I’ve broken down crying ten times a day since Klara got better.

  Most of the time, they’re tears of joy. Other times . . .

  When your child is seriously ill, you get to know other families struggling through the same thing. You share their triumphs, and you mourn with them when their child finally escapes the pain. When they earn their wings, as one mother described it.

  Where was the magic for those children? How many of them could have been saved? Why were we blessed when so many other parents had to bury their little ones?

  I don’t have the answers, and the questions haunt me every night. But tonight we watched Klara devour an ice cream sundae the size of her head, watched her run through the house like a miniature tornado in Reksio pajamas, and finally tucked her in to her own bed.

  I don’t understand. I don’t know who Klara’s magical teacher was, or whether she’ll ever see this note. But whoever you were, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

  GUTENBERG SET A STACK of books on the coffee table and settled down on the sofa with the topmost book. Grateful for the excuse, I abandoned my ever-growing hill of notes to see what he was reading. Though “reading” wasn’t precisely correct, given that Gutenberg didn’t bother to open the books, let alone look at the text inside. He simply held each one, stared at it for several seconds to absorb the contents, and set it aside.

  Learning how he did that was high on my To Do List if I ever got my magic back.

  I picked up the book he had just discarded and turned it over, skimming the summary on the back cover. “You never struck me as a Nora Roberts fan.”

  “I prefer Jude Deveraux for romance,” he said. “In this case, however, Miss Roberts had the better preorder numbers, meaning a stronger pool of reader belief.”

  There was no particular theme to the books, save that all were brand new, and all were by popular authors. I spotted two thrillers, three more romance novels, a fantasy, a tell-all, and a political memoir. I snatched up the fantasy. “I didn’t think Simon Green’s new one was coming out until next month.”

  “We manipulated the release schedule.” Gutenberg scowled and tossed another book onto the table. “The official publication date isn’t for another week and a half. We arranged to delay printing of the ‘corrected’ versions as long as possible in order to minimize the chances of anyone noticing our changes and pulling them from production.”

  “What was corrected?” I asked.

  He pointed to the Green. “Chapter nine now introduces a magic wristwatch that allows line-of-sight teleportation. Patterson’s novel includes a thumb drive with a program that hacks into every camera in the world—cell phones, satellites, streetlights, security feeds—to locate and track a particular individual. Roberts’ book is set out west. In chapter three, we added an old six-shooter that supposedly belonged to Billy the Kid. According to legend, the gun always hits its target dead center in the heart, no matter how far away.” For a moment, he almost looked embarrassed. “As this is supposed to be a romance novel, I tried to write it as a metaphor for love, a kind of Old West version of Cupid’s arrow.”

  I stared. “You wrote these books?”

  “Only some of them, and only the extra scenes.” He opened one and touched the first page of the prologue. “None of which do us a damned bit of good until people read the bloody things.”

  “Tell him about the Rowling,” said Ponce de Leon. He and Lena were darting to and fro by the window, bokken and cane clacking together as they fenced. His bad leg didn’t slow him down much. His technique was far more precise than Lena’s, but her strength and endless energy was balancing that out.

  “You have a new book by J. K. Rowling?” I scanned the pile.

  He pulled out an oversized hardcover. “Harry Potter and the Goblin’s Scepter.”

  I stared open-mouthed and fought the urge to snatch the book from his hands and barricade myself in the bedroom for the rest of the day. “No. Fucking. Way.”

  “I’m afraid not. Several years ago, we enlisted a popular fanfiction author to pen a plausible eighth book in Rowling’s universe. We needed something that would guarantee instant, worldwide readership.”

  A new Harry Potter would certainly do that. “When is it coming out?”

  “In two days. There will be an immediate backlash, of course. I expect the lawsuits and the negative publicity may utterly destroy a good publishing house. I have eight people working full-time to keep the book’s release a secret, even from the printers and publishing staff. Nobody should know anything until the book arrives simultaneously in bookstores throughout the world. The stores will be confused, naturally. Some will contact the publisher for clarification, but once they realize what they have, most will begin selling, unwilling to delay and risk losing out to their competitors.”

  A sharp, triumphant cry pulled my attention to Lena, who had driven Ponce de Leon into the corner where the bookshelves met the windows. She jabbed her bokken at his leg.

  He slapped her weapon aside with his cane while reaching with his other hand to grab a book from the shelf. He flung the book toward her face.

  Lena lowered her head, taking the impact on her brow, but it distracted her long enough for him to tag her thigh with the tip of his cane.

  Gutenberg coughed. “If you two idiots want to bash each other’s brains out, fine. But I’ll thank you to leave my books out of it.”

  Ponce de Leon backed away and mopped his brow with his sleeve. “I believe that’s one point to me,” he said calmly. To Gutenberg, he added, “They deserve the whole truth, Johannes.”

  The Porters were using other authors’ work to create tools and weapons for their war against Meridiana. To forge a Rowling book suggested they needed something stronger, something that required the belief of millions. “What does the Goblin’s Scepter do?”

  “It’s a last resort,” Gutenberg said wearily. “In the story, the goblins of Rowling’s universe design a doomsday weapon for use against the wizarding world. One with the power to end magic.”

  Lena shoved her bokken through her belt. Nidhi lowered the e-book reader she had curled up with. Even Nicola turned away from her computers.

  “What do you mean ‘end magic’?” I asked softly.

  Gutenberg pointed to my forehead. “What was done to you would be done to the world. It would be irreversible, and it would put an end to the threat Meridiana and the Ghost Army present.”

  When I recovered enough to speak, I could only whisper. “You’re insane.”

  He took the book from my hand. “Was Hamlet mad, or merely desperate? I won’t use the scepter until all other options fail. I’m not keen on the idea of ending my own immortality. But Meridiana could destroy this world, Isaac. If we eliminate magic, we eliminate her power. The mere threat of this weapon may be enough to persuade her to surrender.”

  “What happens to Lena if you use that thing?” I asked. “To Smudge?”

  “That’s a fascinating question.” Ponce de Leon leaned more heavily than usual on his cane as he joined us. Sparring with Lena had winded him.
“Where’s the line between natural and supernatural? My body is healthy flesh and blood, which suggests I could live another sixty years without magic, assuming good diet and exercise. But what of your average vampire? What traits are bound to their flesh and blood, and what relies on magic? The truth is, we don’t know.”

  “I never imagined myself saying this, but I vote we continue on in ignorance.” I couldn’t conceive of how such a spell would operate, let alone the impact it would have. The power required would likely destroy whoever tried to cast the spell. “You can’t know what kind of impact that would have on the world. Twenty-six years ago, a Porter researcher theorized that sentience itself was an evolutionary adaptation to magic. It was a crackpot theory, but if there was any truth to it—if intelligence and consciousness are dependent in any way on magic—”

  “None of us can foresee the consequences of such a step.” Ponce de Leon ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back into place. “Though after centuries of watching mankind, I sometimes suspect intelligence is overrated.”

  Gutenberg returned the last of the books to the table. “As the truth emerges, bookstores and publishers will pulp their remaining stock of our altered titles. Their power will wane. We have only a limited window during which this option will be open to us.”

  Ponce de Leon cleared his throat. “I believe that’s his not-so-subtle way of telling you to get back to work, Isaac.”

  “Yah, I got that, thanks.” Like I hadn’t been under enough pressure already.

  I paced the length of the bookshelves, shoving another bite of cinnamon raisin bagel into my mouth without tasting it. Nidhi had insisted I stop and eat something. I was finishing up the last few bites when it hit me.

  “Two-dimensional thinking!”

  My exclamation was loud enough to make Nicola jump. She turned from her computers, searching the room for whatever had made me cry out.