“Yes.”
“Good. A half hour, then.” It came out strongly. Asanti really didn’t have time for this. Not with what they were planning. She watched with gratitude as Frances moved through the Archives, tapping the other acolytes on the shoulder, making sure Asanti and Menchú had the space they needed. Asanti had been right about Frances. They already understood each other perfectly.
“Is this about the trip to Poland?” Asanti said to Menchú, when it was clear that everyone else was out of earshot.
“Yes,” Menchú said.
“Good. There are a lot of details to work out. The biggest involves transporting the Orb itself. I’m very worried about taking it on a plane and, perhaps worse, it being confiscated in customs because the officials don’t know what it is. Could we declare it as some sort of art object?”
“Asanti,” Menchú said.
“Or will it not pass inspection that way?” Asanti said. “It’s difficult to see it as anything other than a machine. Though, on the other hand, the most insane things pass for art these days, don’t they?”
“Asanti.”
“What?”
“I’m afraid you’ve gotten ahead of yourself.”
Asanti felt herself bristle, just a little, but fought it back. “In what way?” She moved to the desk to offer, with a gesture, a cup of tea to Menchú. He declined.
“I’m very, very concerned about what we saw on Testa Affondata.”
“It was disorienting, wasn’t it?” Asanti said. “But we know more about what to expect this time, and Frances has said she learned a lot about how to use the Orb from the test we ran. I believe her.”
“She’s very capable.”
“Yes, she is,” Asanti said.
“But you don’t worry about activating the Orb in a more crowded place? The number of people we might bring with us? I don’t think we can be responsible for them.”
“I’d thought of that too, and I agree,” Asanti said. “We’ll just have to wait until we’re alone. And Frances thinks she can make the affected area smaller. We might even be able to limit it only to our ourselves and our very immediate surroundings. Though if we have to make a mistake, I’d rather we take too much with us than too little, if you understand me. I’d hate to leave a couple toes behind just because I was being cautious.”
“That’s not all,” Menchú said. “What assurances do we have that the Orb will work the same way it did on Testa Affondata?”
“Well,” Asanti said, “Frances has done her research. As far as she knows—and she knows better than anyone here—during the test on the island, the Orb worked as it was designed. And Frances understands that design much better now.”
“Will she learn more by testing it further?”
“We talked about that,” Asanti said. “In an academic sense, yes, of course. But I’m not sure we have the time.”
“And are you certain that Team Four is going to be where your source says it’s going to be?”
“Certain is a strong word, and one that I don’t use often. I wouldn’t use it right now. But I believe we have enough to try what I want to try.”
“You’re going to endanger us all because you want to try something?”
Asanti took a breath. “I know how much you don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t. Because I am still not sure what we stand to gain.”
“Knowledge!” Asanti said. “Have I ever wanted anything else? If Frances and I are right, we’ll have the chance to talk with people who know far more than we do about our work.”
“And maybe they don’t. If you’re right, they have been sitting in the mountains of Poland for a few lifetimes.”
“What they know could make us better at what we do in a thousand ways,” Asanti said. “It could change the way we do everything.”
“You mean justify using more magic.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then what?” Menchú said. “I need something I can bring to the monsignors. I don’t outrank you; you can go where you will, and do what you will, and you can take the Orb and Frances with you. But I am responsible for the team. I have to justify to Fox and Angiuli what we’re doing as a group. And I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but I need to justify it to myself.”
“Arturo,” she said. “I know what magic has done to you. I don’t expect you to like what I’m doing. But I hope you can see that I’m not being naïve about this. I’m pushing for this because I’m worried. I’m worried about the Network, and I’m worried about Liam, after his experience in China. I’m worried about where the Society is going. And most of all, I’m worried about everything we’ve seen in the past few years. We’ve both been doing this long enough to notice, haven’t we?”
“I … don’t know what you’re suggesting.”
“That the magic in the world is getting stronger.”
“You have no evidence of that.”
“I know that in the past year, we had a couple cases that seemed like hundred-year cases. Once-in-a-career cases,” Asanti said. “And the Hand was a breach the likes of which the Society hadn’t suffered since it started keeping records.”
Menchú didn’t respond. Asanti pressed on. “We need new ways to fight it,” she said. “Ways that aren’t so … reactive.”
“You want to fight magic with magic?” Menchú said.
Asanti flinched. There was Menchú’s past, the destruction of his village at the hands of a demon, lying on the floor bleeding between them. There was no way she could win on those grounds. She switched tactics, just a little.
“That isn’t what I said,” she said.
“No? Tell me how it’s different.”
“It’s different,” Asanti said, “because we’ve seen so many mistakes that we already understand a little more how to not make them ourselves. And Team Four might be able to help us even more, not only to avoid making mistakes, but to help others avoid them. Maybe we’d even get good enough at using magic defensively that when the Network begins whatever it has planned, we’ll be powerful enough to undo it.”
“You think Team Four will be able to make this possible?”
“I don’t know,” Asanti said. “But I think we have to find out.”
Menchú paused. Even before he spoke, Asanti was pretty sure she had won.
“I can tell you,” Menchú said, “that I will consider you to owe me a great favor if I can convince the monsignors to allow us to do this. To bring the Orb out into the wild like that. To further our push to use more magic. They may be a little divided now, things may be chaotic. But they will be united in their opposition to any use of magic whatsoever, and will likely first ask why they haven’t fired you yet. I’ll make your case to them. But they’ve only read our reports. They’ve never seen anything we mention in those reports. Even the catastrophe here in the Archives. They only saw the aftermath, and that we could fix it in a few months. Do you understand? They won’t be happy. Convincing them will require both appealing to their sympathies and placing myself in their debt. It’ll weaken our chances of getting their permission for the even riskier missions that I am sure will follow this one. You say you want us to become better at our jobs. More effective. This action may run against that. It may make our jobs even harder. And God help us if things get much worse and we aren’t prepared.”
“That’s why I’m doing this,” Asanti said.
Menchú sighed. “I’ll talk to them.”
• • •
Menchú stood before the monsignors in the hearing room of the Vatican. He’d just finished explaining Asanti’s plan. He had explained it as he thought Asanti might. He had told them about his own reservations, and then explained, in the most positive language he could muster, how Asanti had addressed those concerns. It was the best argument he could put together. And at the end of it, both monsignors were frowning.
“Well,” Fox said. “Neither of you should be surprised that I object to everything about this plan. I’m struggl
ing to find a word gentler than idiotic.”
Angiuli took a breath. “I have to say, Father, that I also have my misgivings.”
Menchú reached deep, into the small part of himself that once tried to save his village through magic. “We have to try it,” he said. “I am afraid things will be worse for us if we don’t.”
“And how will they be worse?” Fox said.
“I don’t know,” Menchú said, “which is part of what makes it frightening.”
Neither monsignor said anything to that.
I’m not going to win this on logic, Menchú thought. I have to use something else.
“If this goes wrong,” he said, “I accept full responsibility.”
“Of course you do,” Fox said. But Menchú could hear the eagerness in the monsignor’s voice. He liked where he thought Menchú was going with this.
“In fact,” Menchú said, “if we create more problems than we solve, depending on their severity, I would consider stepping away from any defense of my actions, and I would acquiesce to whatever demands you may make of my team.”
“Grace?” Fox said. “You would let me reassign Grace?”
Menchú couldn’t bring himself to agree to that.
“You are placing much at risk,” Angiuli said. Menchú could see that he was coming around.
“I have the best team in the Vatican,” Menchú said. “The best people I can imagine for this job.” He spoke with complete conviction. Then he told the monsignors what he convinced himself was only a small lie.
“I want to see where this goes,” he said.
Angiuli nodded again.
Fox turned to Angiuli. “Let my objection be clearly noted,” he said. He turned back to Menchú. “I hope you get what you need from this expedition of yours. If you don’t, and if something goes awry, you can believe, without a doubt, that I will take advantage of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Menchú said.
“Good.”
And so Team Three, Asanti, and Frances were bound for Poland, with a machine Menchú didn’t have the first idea how to use, though he was pretty sure it could kill them all if they pressed the wrong button. The only thing that was left to calm him, allow him to do his job and believe that they would get what they came for, was faith.
4.
The team stood around a purple minivan in the parking lot of an Aldi in Biała Czapka, in the middle of the Tatra Mountains. The lot was busy. Two cars tried to pull into the same spot, and the drivers fought with each other through gestures. A middle-aged woman wrestled with her kid and a cart full of groceries. A young man had parked farther away and walked nonchalantly through the chaos of cars and children with an air of smug superiority, like he’d figured out this whole parking lot situation.
North of them was their first unmistakable landmark, a white-capped mountain so triangular, its shape so dictated by the angle of repose, that it seemed more like a well-executed painting of a mountain by an unimaginative painter than an actual mountain. From the tip of its peak one could draw a clear line down the valley. To the south was another mountain that stuck out less for its visible height than for the fact that a cluster of cell phone and radio towers had been installed at its summit. Maybe it didn’t look like the tallest mountain among its neighbors, but someone had clearly figured out that it was. And it made sense, from the information Izquierdo had given.
But the east and west mountains that were supposed to serve as landmarks were a harder call. In those directions were not so much distinct peaks as wobbly ridges with crests and valleys. Some jutted out more than others, but none towered over its fellows as an obvious choice. Asanti was rechecking the maps Izquierdo had sent her. Liam squinted at the peaks around them, turning around and around.
“I’m starting to think someone gave you bad directions,” he said.
“Izquierdo’s work is solid,” Asanti said.
“But based on old information,” Menchú said, with an impatience Asanti wasn’t used to from him. “One landslide in the past hundred years would make those instructions meaningless.”
Asanti looked up at him. “Not meaningless. Just less precise.”
“But how far off could we be?” Sal said. She pointed to the west. “Say it’s that peak with the house on it versus the peak next to it. The difference can’t be much more than a quarter of a mile.”
“I’m with Sal,” Grace said.
“Even if we’re moving in slow motion?” Liam said. “What if those flying worms are there?”
“Maybe they won’t be,” Grace said.
“And maybe what is here when we turn on the Orb will be worse,” Menchú said.
“Don’t we have to try?” Grace said.
“Grace, this is a rare kind of optimism from you,” Liam said.
“We’ve come a long way,” Grace said. “I don’t want it to be for nothing. I want to know what we can learn.” She sounded like herself, Asanti thought, but there was something else in her voice, a kind of longing, that usually wasn’t there. Menchú, Grace, and Asanti herself were all a little on edge. It wasn’t making any of this much easier.
“Grace is right,” Sal said.
“The two of you really have each other’s backs today, don’t you?” Liam said.
“Don’t you have our backs too?” Sal said.
“Always,” Liam said, sounding a little offended. “You know that.”
The overburdened mother drove away with her child. The argument over the parking space was settled when one driver honked his horn and pulled in. The other one scowled and drove on. A new fleet of cars was pulling in to the parking lot.
Menchú sighed. “Whether we’re in the right place or not, we can’t activate the Orb here. I am worried enough about the danger we’re putting ourselves in. I won’t endanger anyone else.”
“Tonight, then?” Grace said. “After the stores close?”
“Yes,” Asanti said. “Tonight. Here.”
They passed the day and said little. Liam went for a run. Grace went for a walk. Asanti and Frances talked shop. Menchú did almost nothing. When Asanti tried to talk to him, he responded, just enough to be civil. But she soon figured out that she wasn’t going to get much from him. He didn’t want to be here, hadn’t wanted to take his team on this expedition. Asanti may have won the argument they’d had before they left, but she couldn’t win his assent.
Biała Czapka became a much quieter place at night. Nobody walked on the streets. There was only the occasional car, a few stray dogs. The Communist-era factories, half of which were closed down, loomed over the center of the town. The Aldi parking lot was lit up like a stadium, but that only emphasized how empty it was.
Frances and Liam hauled the Orb out of the minivan and unpacked it on the asphalt. They gathered around, not quite as close this time, facing outward. Frances knelt down and began to operate the Orb’s dials.
“I hope you’re right, and that this is worth it,” Menchú said to Asanti.
“If there’s nothing on the other side, in the Everywhen, Frances can always bring us back,” Asanti said.
“Can she?”
Asanti looked at Frances. “Do it,” she said.
Menchú said a little prayer.
The sky lightened to that same orange, flashing with pink. The mountains softened, winked in and out of existence. The air turned cold, somehow sharp and sludgy at the same time, heavy with the ghosts of glaciers and floods. Just like before, none of it was there, and yet all of it was. Everything was in between, except them. And, some distance off—it was hard to say how far—there was a sphere, floating in the air. At first it appeared to be the size of a small building, its surface riddled with an ornate texture, the work of a sculptor paying too much attention to detail. As Asanti’s eyes adjusted to the light, she realized the sphere was much farther away, and much bigger. Big enough to hold a lot of buildings. A small town. She could see that the texture on the sphere’s surface was made of an array of doors and wind
ows, hundreds of ways into the sphere’s interior. They were all closed.
It took forever, but she raised her right arm, extended her index finger, and pointed at it.
“There,” she said. Felt the deliberation in her tongue as it moved from the roof of her mouth behind her teeth, opened the throat, then closed it again to form the word. “Team Four.”
The rest of the team nodded.
“How do we get in?” Sal said.
Asanti thought of a long sentence, then shortened it in her mind before speaking. It would take too long to say.
“When we get there,” she said.
They began to walk in the soft earth toward the sphere. Asanti looked around, allowed herself a thought that she regretted in an instant: Maybe we’re alone here.
After only a half a minute—if time passed the same way here—the ground lurched beneath their feet. A low moan escaped from the ground and started to rise in volume. Between Asanti and Sal, a conical creature with one squat leg and one arm, out of proportion to the rest of its body, pulled itself out of the shifting dirt. Its mouth split its face open, and it let out a roar. The arm swung around, thudded into Asanti, and she felt strong, fat fingers close around her chest. She struggled and felt what she thought was the hand’s grip loosening, but then saw that it was more that her movements were sanding off the first layer of the creature’s skin. Fine grains drifted from the hand and landed around her feet. The hand closed tighter to compensate. Asanti looked at Sal and didn’t have to talk.
Help me, her expression said.
Sal clambered onto the thing’s back and dug in with her fingers, was able to tear clumps of its body out and throw them away behind her. The creature bucked and swayed, trying to get Sal off its back; it lifted Asanti into the air and seemed poised to use her as a weapon against Sal.
Sal was having none of that. She plunged her hands into the place where the thing’s single arm met its body and started excavating. Even in the sluggish time of wherever they were, she made steady progress. Sweat broke out on Sal’s forehead and arms. The creature lowered its arm; there wasn’t enough of it left to support Asanti’s weight. Asanti kept fighting against it, and more sand poured around her onto the ground. But the hand would not let go.
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