The Book of Destiny

by Melissa McShane

  “I was afraid we’d have to fight the crowds,” Wallach said. For a change, he wasn’t wearing scrubs, of which he seemed to have an endless supply. Instead, he wore an old-fashioned black suit with wide lapels and white pinstripes, black and white saddle shoes, and a tie wider than his lapels. It should have looked ridiculous, but on him it had a weird, sprightly dignity, if those three words could be used together.

  “No, it’s been quiet,” I said. “Good luck, Ariadne.”

  Wallach held the door for her and let it swing carefully back into place, though it no longer slammed shut if you let go of it at the wrong time. “I hope you’re doing well, Mrs. Campbell,” he said.

  “I’m fine. I’m happier now that the new alarm system is in place. Though I guess it’s more a defense system than a simple alarm.”

  “Here’s my request,” Wallach said, extending a torn piece of paper toward me. I took it, glancing at Viv, who was bouncing on her toes with excitement. Her lemon-yellow bob swayed with her movement.

  “Um…is there something I should know about?” I asked. “You seem more chipper than usual.”

  “Go ahead and get the augury, and we’ll tell you,” Viv said with a wide smile.

  I raised my eyebrows. “That doesn’t fill me with dread at all.”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Wallach said.

  I took the piece of paper into the oracle. Immediately I felt its presence surround me, pressing down on me with the lightest touch that I knew would become unbearable over time. “So you’re interested in this augury,” I said. Despite myself, I felt heartened by its awareness. So long as it didn’t start talking about endings, I enjoyed having it near.

  I unfolded the paper and read, Where is the navel? “Huh,” I said. “Navel of what?”

  The oracle’s attention never wavered. In the distance, blue light flared. I headed in that direction. “I know he said not to worry,” I continued, “but Mr. Wallach has done a lot of crazy things in the past, and I can’t help thinking he doesn’t have the same definition of ‘safe’ as most people. You’ll steer him right, won’t you?”

  The book was a pretty hardcover titled One Was a Soldier. I examined it without opening it for a few seconds before heading for the exit. The oracle followed me the whole way, giving me the impression that it was looking over my shoulder.

  I handed the book to Wallach with a flourish. “$4500,” I said. “And you’d better let Viv tell me what has her so excited, or she might pop.”

  Wallach rooted around in his suit for his wallet. “Go ahead,” he said.

  Viv grabbed me by the shoulders. Her radiant smile prompted a smile from me, though I didn’t know what we were happy about. “We know how to end the Long War,” she said.

  11

  I stared at Viv, dumbfounded. “You what?”

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Viv said. She let go of me and went back to bouncing on her toes. “Nobody ever thought to look for a solution like this, but it’s really obvious once you know. Obvious even to me, and I’m no scientist.”

  I turned to Wallach just as Judy emerged from the stacks, looking disgruntled. “What do you mean, end the Long War?” I said.

  “What?” Judy exclaimed. She sounded as incredulous as I had.

  “I don’t know the mechanics of the solution yet,” Wallach said, “but the principle is, as Ms. Haley says, obvious. If we can misalign our reality with the invaders’, they won’t be able to enter anymore. Problem solved.”

  Judy and I exchanged glances. “That sounds…really simple,” I said. “It seems someone ought to have thought of it before.”

  “You’d think so, yes?” Wallach said. He finally dug his wallet out of the depths of his amazing suit coat and started counting out bills. Judy stepped forward to accept the money, but her wide eyes told me she was still stunned. “But it’s only been in the last five or so years that we’ve understood much about the non-Euclidean geometries defining the space invaders come from, or how that intersects with the Euclidean geometry of our world’s effective reality.”

  “And now it’s not simple at all,” I said. I’d understood the individual words he’d used, but taken all together, they left my brain feeling mushy.

  “Well, the details, as I said, I don’t know yet. But I’m certain it’s possible.” Wallach finished counting bills and put his wallet away. “I’ll probably have a number of augury requests in the coming days. I’m not so proud as to think I can do this entirely myself.” He patted the cover of his augury like a baby.

  “Have you told Lucia?” Judy asked.

  “I left her a memo. If she wants more information, she can come to my lab for an explanation.” Wallach’s smile went smug. I couldn’t blame him. Getting Lucia’s attention sometimes meant resorting to cryptic measures.

  “You should keep this quiet until you have a practical plan,” Judy said. “Otherwise you might raise people’s hopes only to dash them. What if it turns out the mechanics are impossible?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s the case,” Wallach said, “but I agree with you about keeping it secret. I prefer not to have people nagging me with questions in the early stages of development.”

  “And I get to help!” Viv exclaimed. “I’m experienced at interpreting auguries now that I’ve helped Jeremiah with so many. I think I have a gift for it.”

  I couldn’t think why this whole situation made me uneasy. “I agree,” I said, wishing my words didn’t feel false. I was sincere; if Viv hadn’t taken the job with Wallach, I’d have suggested she train as a professional interpreter. So why did I feel like a mom patting her child on the back for learning to dress herself?

  “Thanks for this,” Wallach said. “Like I said, I’ll probably be back often.”

  “We’ll be ready for you,” I said, and waved goodbye before shutting the door.

  “That was unreal,” Judy said. “And it does feel like someone should have thought of it before, but he’s right that it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone until recently.”

  “I have no idea what he was talking about. Misalign our reality?”

  Judy leaned against the counter. “Well, you know how our reality is orthogonal to the invaders’?”

  “And ‘orthogonal’ means ‘at right angles.’ That’s about all I know.”

  “Mr. Wallach is talking about shifting our reality so it no longer matches up to theirs. Like scooting it over half an inch so the cracks are covered, only this shift would make it impossible for new cracks to form.”

  “Wow. Is that possible?” Her mention of cracks reminded me of something I’d heard recently, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “For Crazy Wallach? Almost certainly. At the very least, he’ll come up with three new magical technologies out of the research.” Judy ran her fingers through her short black hair. “No more Long War. I can barely imagine it.”

  “I don’t want to imagine it.” At Judy’s look of surprise, I added, “I mean, obviously I want the war to be over, but daydreaming about it will make it harder for me to handle the reality that it’s not over yet.”

  “That makes sense.” Judy looked beyond me at the plate glass window. “Looks like we have a customer. I’m glad no one was here when Crazy Wallach dropped that little bombshell. He’s going to have enough trouble keeping the secret when people start asking what he’s researching now.”

  I smiled pleasantly at the Ambrosite who entered and accepted her augury request. When I entered the oracle, its attention was elsewhere again. “I’m sorry I don’t understand you better,” I said. “You were clearly interested in Mr. Wallach’s augury, but I have no idea why. I hope it wasn’t a message to me that I missed.”

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully, with only a few people coming in before closing. One of them confirmed that they’d expected Abernathy’s to be closed until tomorrow, which suggested tomorrow might be as busy as today had not been. When I finally locked the front door at six o’clock, it was with an unexpe
cted sense of relief that nothing awful had happened. The only really exciting thing had been Wallach’s announcement, but since that hadn’t been accompanied by gunfire and explosions, I couldn’t call it excitement.

  “You’ll be all right?” I said to Judy anyway. “Alone here?”

  “I’m fine. The store is secure, and the neighborhood is safe.” Judy set the computer to hibernate and pushed in the office chair. “I’m looking forward to a quiet night alone.”

  “Let me know if anything happens.”

  I waited outside in the rear parking lot for Malcolm. The heat of the day lingered, though the parking lot was in shade most of the afternoon. It smelled of hot asphalt and buttered popcorn from the theater next door and the tang of heated metal radiating off the beater car nobody claimed ownership of. I’d never felt frightened of living in the apartment over the store in the whole time I’d lived there, and the only time I’d been in danger had been from my ex-boyfriend, Chet, when he was under the influence of an illusion. Now, though, I wasn’t sure I could be as carefree as Judy—but then, she hadn’t been present for the attack on the store, and didn’t have troubling memories to disturb her calm. And I had faith in Campbell Security as vouched for by Malcolm. She would be fine.

  My mind wandered back to Wallach’s announcement. Judy’s example had made sense to me: shift our reality out of sync with the invaders. How that could happen, I couldn’t begin to imagine. As I understood it, our “reality” wasn’t the same as the physical world, so I didn’t think Wallach had moving the universe in mind, but what else was there?

  Come to think on it, what else was there, out there in the place where the invaders’ reality met ours? The invaders, I’d been told, had attacked many realities, draining them of their magic and moving on. If we shifted ourselves out of their reach, would that prevent them latching on to some other world, or would they simply move to the next? Unease rose in me again. I wasn’t sure we had a right to condemn some other reality to the invaders’ attack. On the other hand, we had the right to defend ourselves…oh, it was all too confusing, and I didn’t know enough to take a position either way.

  Malcolm’s car pulled into the parking lot, and I waved. I’d tell him about Wallach’s plan, and maybe he could help me understand the ramifications. And then maybe my uneasy feeling would go away.

  Midmorning of the next day, I was searching for an augury when the oracle’s attention suddenly pressed down on me, painfully this time like being caught in a vise. “What?” I said, more sharply than I’d intended because of the unexpected pain.

  They strike, I thought. They fall. No more cracks.

  “I don’t understand,” I began.

  Then I did.

  I dropped the augury request and darted for the exit, though I didn’t know who I could tell. If I was fast enough, maybe the Wardens would be able to save the invaders’ next target.

  “Write your request again. Sorry,” I told the waiting Nicollien. “The invaders are attacking,” I said to Judy. “I need to warn someone.”

  “Call Lucia—no, call Dave,” Judy said. “Where are they attacking?”

  “I don’t know. The oracle said it was happening. Maybe it showed up in the Pattern, but—I have to warn someone!”

  I called Dave Henry and got his voicemail. Cursing, I tried Malcolm. “The invaders are attacking again,” I said when he answered. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Take a breath,” Malcolm advised me. “Where are they attacking?”

  “The oracle didn’t say. Why would it tell me and not mention the important part?”

  “Abernathy’s might be in danger again. There’s no reason the invaders might not make a feint elsewhere and focus their real attack on the store. Did you call Lucia?”

  “I tried Dave. He’s not answering.”

  “Leave it to me. Don’t let any of your customers leave for now. You’re perfectly safe, but if invaders swarm the store, anyone outside might not be.” Malcolm abruptly disconnected. I put my phone away and turned to my mystified customers.

  “I’ve just learned the invaders are trying another attack,” I said. Gasps and muttered profanities swept through the small crowd. “We’re not sure where, but if they attack here, we’re all safe.”

  “You think they might attack here?” an elderly woman said.

  “I have no idea. I think not, or the oracle’s warning would have been different. But everyone should stay inside for a while, until we find out what happened.”

  Movement outside the plate glass window caught my eye, and I pushed past Wardens until I stood next to it. Three familiars were leashed securely to a lamppost just outside. I was used to that, since familiars weren’t allowed inside Abernathy’s, but their presence still made me uncomfortable. Normally they sat, or climbed over each other, behaving like the dogs they were disguised as. Now, however, they strained at their leashes in eerie silence, all of them apparently desperate to get free. They reminded me of dogs in a movie who’ve just heard a dog whistle.

  Someone beside me said, “That’s strange.” He was looking at the familiars, too, his brow furrowed in concern. Outside, a couple of young men holding hands walked past, turning to watch the straining familiars. Then one of the creatures, a bright orange-furred beast with six multijointed legs, let out an unearthly howl that shivered down my spine. The young men recoiled and hurried on, faster than before.

  “I’m going to see what’s wrong with Pestilence,” the man beside me said.

  “No, don’t!” I cried out as he moved toward the door. “It might be a trap!”

  “Familiars can’t harm people,” the man said. He opened the crystal door.

  The orange familiar lunged for him. I cried out, but the man didn’t react. He went down on one knee and took the creature’s elongated muzzle in one hand. A ripple went through the familiar, a full-body shudder that shook the man’s hand. Then the familiar collapsed.

  Now the man cried out. He rolled the familiar onto its back and pressed a hand against its bony chest. Another, more violent shudder ran through the thing, but other than that, it didn’t move.

  Someone beside me shouted and pushed forward to the door. The other two familiars had fallen and now lay motionless on the sidewalk. One of them had fallen halfway into the gutter. Two women hurried to their side. One of the women was crying.

  All around me, people took out their phones. Some scrolled through the displays, while others texted or made phone calls. A few took pictures of the dead familiars and were scolded by their neighbors. Judy and I looked at each other. “I’m calling my father,” Judy said. “What are the odds that three familiars mysteriously died just here and nowhere else?”

  “And died just as the invaders are attacking?” I said.

  My phone rang. “It was Sheffield,” Malcolm said. “In northern England. The oracle wasn’t the only one that knew about it, because the Wardens were there almost as soon as the attack began. They kept it from becoming a total disaster, but more than two thousand people were killed.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm. “And it looks like the others? A fast-acting illness?”

  “No,” Malcolm said. “It looks like biological warfare. And that’s how it’s being reported.”

  “Terrorism,” I said. “If the invaders wanted panic, they’ve got it.” I couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying to the average person than the possibility of a biological attack that could strike anywhere, at any time.

  “We have to stop them permanently soon,” Malcolm said in a low voice as if there were people nearby he didn’t want overhearing this conversation. “The world’s governments can’t not take notice of this, and they’re going to react. Badly, from our perspective.”

  “Malcolm, something else happened.” I quickly described what had happened to the familiars.

  “That can’t be a coincidence,” Malcolm said.

  “Judy’s calling her father—actually, hang on,” I said. Judy was waving a
t me frantically.

  “It’s happening everywhere,” she said. “There are reports coming in from all over. Familiars just dropping dead. Father is communicating with other Nicollien leaders around the country and they report the same thing.”

  “But is it an attack?”

  “Father thinks so. There’s nothing else that could kill all the familiars, all at the same time—not even Ambrosites could work that kind of magic. He believes it was meant to be a distraction from the latest attack on the node in Sheffield—you know it was Sheffield?”

  “Yes. Hang on.” I told Malcolm what Judy had said, and added, “If it was meant to weaken the Nicolliens in Sheffield, it wouldn’t work. There aren’t any familiars left in Great Britain.”

  “It’s possible it was intended as a more global distraction,” Malcolm said. “If we hadn’t had the Pattern and the oracle’s warning, we would have been dealing with the familiars’ deaths when the attack in Sheffield happened, and the invaders would have destroyed the city and the Bridgerton Node.”

  “But now it seems there might be no more familiars. What will the Nicolliens do?”

  “Adapt. I know, it sounds harsh, but there is no alternative. Building up another cadre of familiars would take years, and we don’t have years. And maybe this is what we’ve needed all along—to remove the primary source of friction between the factions. Removal of the familiars by a third party, instead of the Ambrosites demanding it or the Nicolliens doing it grudgingly, might be the best option.”

  “You don’t really think this will make the factions get along, do you?”

  Malcolm sighed. “No. But your optimism is infectious.”

  I laughed, and quieted myself before I could draw more than a few irritated stares. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Do you know if there are any similarities between the Bridgerton Node and the others?”

  “No. Lucia will investigate, and if there’s anything, she’ll announce it. I have to go, love. I’ll see you tonight.”