24
My mouth fell open. “An aegis?”
“In a magus, the aegis acts as a secondary control system,” Rick said. “It regulates magic production and distribution, which is how it lets the magus tap into his or her own magic. If the aegis is damaged or destroyed, the person’s own system picks up the slack. But that means the opposite must be true—if the natural mechanism regulating magic is damaged, an aegis should be able to take its place.”
“Must be?” I said. “Should be? Those sound like it’s never been tried before.”
“It hasn’t,” Jeremiah said. “And it’s impossible. She’s unconscious, damn it, there’s no way she can consent to the Damerel rites.”
He sounded so angry I was taken aback. “But—it would be to save her life. Do they need consent under these circumstances?”
“Not that kind of consent,” Malcolm said. “You remember when I received my new aegis I had to make the conscious decision to accept it. A person must be awake and clear-headed to undergo Damerel.”
“And nobody knows if she’s even a viable candidate,” Jeremiah said. He glared at Rick, who was unmoved by his hostility. “It’d just be another kind of death sentence.”
“With this, she has a chance,” Rick said. “It’s certain death if we do nothing.”
I put my hand on Jeremiah’s arm, which tensed. “He’s right,” I said. “You know Viv wouldn’t hesitate to take the chance.”
“Viv’s reckless.” Jeremiah closed his eyes. “But it doesn’t matter. If they can’t get her to wake up, she can’t have the aegis implanted.”
“I’m working on that,” Rick said. “But we won’t do anything unless you give us permission.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t own her.”
“You know her better than anyone. And giving permission is the wrong word. More like…confirming that it’s what Viv would want.” Rick glanced my way. “But you need to make the decision soon.”
Jeremiah let out a deep breath. “All right,” he said, looking at me. “If she were conscious, she wouldn’t think twice about it.” He smiled, a little half-twist of his lips. “She’d probably be excited.”
“Then think about what aegis would suit her best,” Rick said, “and I’ll work on rousing her and putting a team together for the Damerel rites. Helena, why don’t you come with me and we’ll take care of your hand first.”
I’d forgotten the other reason I’d come to the Gunther Node that evening. I squeezed Jeremiah’s arm lightly and then followed Rick to another room down the hall, holding Malcolm’s hand. Rick had me sit on the unmade bed and took my bandaged hand gently in his.
“It may look a little strange,” he warned me. When I stiffened, he laughed and said, “Not deformed. I mean the skin may be slightly discolored or mottled and your fingernails will be rather long. A side effect of the regeneration field.” He unwrapped the bandaging to reveal a hard white plastic ball around which my fingers curled, just as if I were preparing to pitch a softball. When he removed it, the stiffness I’d felt the last few days disappeared, and my fingers felt light and untethered to my hand. I held still, afraid to move them.
Each finger had been individually bandaged, and once the outer wrappings and the ball were gone, I looked like a mummy, though one the years had been kind to. Rick carefully removed the rest of the bandages. He was right, my skin looked yellow and dry in the fluorescent lights of the hospital room, and my nails were at least half an inch long.
“Okay, Helena, I want you to close your hand,” Rick said.
I tried, and my fingers quivered but didn’t move. “It’s all right,” Rick said, seeing my distress, “you’re just stiff from not moving that hand for a few days. Pretend you’re closing your hand on a doorknob.”
I closed my eyes and pretended I was reaching for the door. Slowly, my fingers contracted—not much, but enough that I could feel it. It didn’t hurt, just felt tight like I was squeezing a rubber ball. I opened my eyes. I thought I’d closed it more than that.
“I’ll give you some exercises to work on your mobility,” Rick said. “Your skin color should return to normal eventually—I’m sorry I can’t tell you how long. You can use ordinary lotion to treat the dryness. Keep it out of direct sunlight for a week, wear gloves if you can, and call me if you feel any pain or numbness. But it looks perfect.”
I brought my hand close to my eyes. It looked exactly as it always did, except the scar in the web of my palm where I’d cut myself in tenth grade art class was gone. In fact, my skin, aside from being yellow, was free from the few dark brown beauty marks I’d always had and looked…perfect. I felt along the bones of my fingers and the center of my palm. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “It’s completely restored.”
“You can thank Dr. Morris for that,” Rick said. “He’s a craftsman. Ruby and I just healed the surgical incisions so you wouldn’t scar and created the regenerative field.”
“Even that’s more than enough. Thank you, Rick.”
“It was my pleasure. We’re all putting it on our CVs. Makes us look impressive.” Rick grinned, and I smiled back.
Malcolm put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me. “I’m so relieved,” he said.
“Were you worried?” Rick said.
“Yes. Reconstruction on the level you described…I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to worry Helena, but I knew how difficult it would be.”
“Thank you for not saying that,” I said. “I would have freaked out.”
“I have to go,” Rick said. “I have a theory I want to test, a technique that will wake Viv long enough for us to perform the Damerel rites. I’ll send Ruby to talk to you and Jeremiah about Viv’s aegis.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re her closest friend. Once I wake her, we’ll only have a short time before her magic drains permanently. There won’t be time for her to make a decision on what aegis she feels drawn to. So you and Jeremiah will have to figure that out.” Rick ran a hand through his hair, messing it up further. “Ruby will supervise the creation of the aegis. All we have to do is get Viv conscious, and…really, I think this will work.”
I didn’t feel nearly so confident, but I nodded.
When Malcolm and I returned to Viv’s room, Jeremiah was sitting in the room’s lone chair with his head in his hands. “I can’t do this,” he said.
“Jeremiah, it will save her life,” I said.
He looked up at me, his gaze as bleak and hopeless as I’d ever seen. “We’re talking about a procedure that has a ten percent failure rate even in a healthy, prepared candidate. How prepared can she be, if she wakes up to a bunch of people gabbling at her about what happened and what they want her to do? There’s no way this can work.”
“The alternative is that she slips away from us,” I said. “I can’t bear that. And I’m sure Rick and the other bone magi will work out how to make it as safe as possible.”
Jeremiah turned to look at Viv’s still face. She moved just then, twitched as if she were aware of his regard. Her lips turned down in a frown, parting slightly, and her hands atop the blanket closed into loose fists. I gasped and took a few steps to stand by her side.
“It’s an autonomic reaction,” Jeremiah said. “They think she might actually be dreaming, based on her brain activity. So she’s still herself in there. Helena, if she dies from the Damerel rites, I might as well have killed her.”
“Don’t think that way!” Anger flooded through me, and I almost slapped him for being so self-centered. Instead, I said, “You’re not the only responsible one. I am too. Stop thinking of yourself and think of Viv. They want us to choose an aegis for her—does it have to be a specific one?”
Jeremiah sighed. “The aegis is supposed to be something you have an affinity for. Like how front line fighters with the wood or steel aegis are usually the type of people who have a strong urge to fight evil. The sort of people who’d be police officers or soldiers under other circumstances
. But Viv isn’t awake to make that decision.”
“So it’s up to us.”
Malcolm said, “You should consider Viv’s personality and desires. Often the choice of aegis is obvious.”
I thought about it. Not wood or steel. Viv was squeamish, so not bone. Malcolm was right, the choice was obvious. “Glass,” I said. “She’s perceptive and good at seeing to the heart of things.”
Jeremiah’s face cleared. “That’s what I was about to say.”
“Which means good things, right? That it was obvious to both of us?” I squeezed Viv’s hand, which was cold and once again limp. “Just think how excited she’ll be to be a magus.”
A smile touched Jeremiah’s lips. “True. I don’t think it’s anything she ever considered seriously, but she’s griped so much about not having telekinesis whenever the remote is too far away, I think…I think she’ll love it.”
The door opened, and Ruby Wallach walked in. “So, we have a plan,” she said with a smile. “This must be what Grandpa felt like all the time.”
“We think it should be a glass aegis,” Jeremiah said.
“That should be fairly simple to produce.” Ruby checked Viv’s vital signs. A cloud passed over her face briefly. “Good thing, because we have less time than I thought. No, don’t worry, it’s not urgent,” she said, forestalling Jeremiah’s protest, “it’s just that the lower her magical reserves during Damerel, the less time we’ll have for implantation. So the sooner we can do this, the better.”
“How soon?” Malcolm asked.
Ruby’s eyes went distant with calculation. “Tomorrow at seven a.m. Excuse me, I need to get someone working on that aegis. Go home and get some sleep, all of you. I’m sure you’ll want to be here for this.”
Jeremiah and I looked at each other. It was the understatement of the century.
At 6:15 the following morning, Malcolm and I were on the freeway headed for the Gunther Node. We’d said goodbye to Claude earlier as he prepared to return to Switzerland. “It is all right, yes, to use your wardstone?” he’d said. “I have appreciated your hospitality.”
“Of course,” I’d replied. “I’m so glad we could put you up—and that you survived.”
“I will contact you later, when I know the status of the Athenaeum,” he’d said. “But if we are to restore it, it will be many months, perhaps years. It is better than ‘never,’ but I fear the Athenaeum will be of no immediate use in the fight. Again, I am angry, but there is nothing else I can do.”
It made me angry, too, angry and worried. As each named Neutrality slipped away from us, it felt even more like we were headed for disaster. Whatever might happen if they all were destroyed didn’t bear thinking about.
I tucked my hand under my leg—the dawn light was pale and slanted toward us from the east, but I was superstitious that if I exposed my hand to any sunlight, it would stay yellow forever—and traced the line of the door handle. “How many of these have you seen? Aside from the two you were in?”
Malcolm glanced my way. “Of the Damerel rites? Ah…ten, I think. No, nine. The tenth was aborted by the participant, who changed his mind before it began. So, nine.”
“And were they all successful?”
Malcolm’s peaceful expression gave way to a frown. “Two of them failed. One was someone who should never have undertaken Damerel, but we couldn’t convince her of that. The other…just failed. Occasionally that happens.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t let that upset you, Helena. Viv has as good a chance as anyone. Maybe better, because she’s a survivor, and that matters.” He took the freeway exit and turned right. “Have faith.”
Faith. I clung to that. It was all that was left to me.
Someone was waiting at the teleportation circle that served as the entrance to the Gunther Node. He nodded to us as we joined him inside the circle. Holding a plastic card attached to a lanyard around his neck, he knelt and dipped the card into a thin slit like running a credit card. “Three,” he said, and in an instant we were in the great central hub. This morning, it smelled like maple syrup overlaying the usual gardenia scent. “Waffle Wednesday,” the tech explained, and shooed us out of the circle before disappearing.
I took Malcolm’s hand, and we followed the green line down the infirmary corridor all the way to Green 1. We saw Rick there, talking to a large man in teal scrubs whose tidy blond beard made him look like a well-groomed Viking. Rick waved us over. “This is Earl Kirschbaum,” he said. “He’s a bone magus from Yakima who’s done a lot of work in sports medicine. I asked him to assist in rousing Viv because he understands head trauma, which has some similarities to her condition.”
Malcolm and I introduced ourselves. Kirschbaum shook hands politely. “Friends of Ms. Haley?” he said. “I have to warn you, this is not going to be pretty. She’d be disoriented even if all we did was wake her, but the amount of information we have to throw at her…you need to be prepared to be a calming influence.”
“We understand,” Malcolm said. “Is there anything in particular we need to be aware of? Anything to do?”
Kirschbaum scratched his beard. “Usually, rousing someone who’s unconscious is a simple matter of goosing the autonomic system. It’s confusing as hell to the patient, but sometimes it’s necessary. The problem here is that Ms. Haley needs to be clear-headed for Damerel, and she hasn’t responded to that intervention anyway. So that method is useless.”
“Earl has something different he’s tried in the past,” Rick said. “We’re going to shock her system with an influx of sanguinis sapiens. Processed, of course, but a concentrated dose.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I said. “It sounds like what caused the damage in the first place, being hit by a high dose of magical energy.”
“That was raw, unprocessed magic,” Rick said. “This is distilled, refined…you might think of it as magic with the rough edges filed off. It’s true too much of it could be dangerous, but only in the sense that any drug is dangerous in high enough doses. We propose to give her just enough to wake her. But there is a different kind of danger involved.”
Kirschbaum said, “The danger is combining this treatment with Damerel. She’s going to have a lot of magical energy flooding her system, which could interfere with implantation of the aegis. With Mr. Wallach not here to supervise her body’s resonance, we have to wait a while for that magical energy to work its way through her to a manageable level. And I’m told, with her own magic draining away, time is not something we have a lot of.”
I realized I was clutching Malcolm’s hand hard and released him only to have him grip my hand in turn. “But won’t that magical boost increase her body’s magic?”
“Not by as much as you’d think,” Rick said. “It might give us a few extra minutes. Of course, even a few minutes could make a difference.” He tapped the Fitbit he wore on his right wrist and checked the time. “Let’s go in. Jeremiah and Judy Rasmussen are already here, and we need to discuss what will happen once Viv wakes.”
He led us out of Green 1 and down two levels along the red line to a door labeled 36. I’d been here before, when Malcolm received his second aegis. It looked just as it had the other times I’d been there: bright, soft-edged LED lighting, cabinets along the far wall, a padded operating table in the center of the room. It gleamed with whiteness and resembled a film set for a science fiction movie about abnormally hygienic aliens. Jeremiah leaned against the wall, staring at nothing. His hard, emotionless look frightened me. I hoped he hadn’t changed his mind. Judy stood beside him, looking as if she’d tried to make conversation and failed.
I eyed the table, which had white leather straps with buckles dangling from it on all sides. “You’re not going to strap her down before you wake her, are you?” I said. “Because if it were me, I’d be freaked out if I woke up bound.”
“No, you’re right,” Rick said. “It would save time in one respect, but we’d lose time calming her down, so it’s a wash.”
“Just tell us what to do,” Jeremiah said. His voice, by contrast to his face, was calm, which relieved me somewhat.
Rick nodded. “Here’s what will happen. We’ll bring Viv in and get her settled on the table. Earl will then boost the magic going into her system.”
“There’s no way to know how soon that will wake her,” Kirschbaum said. “But when she wakes, she’ll be a little disoriented. Jeremiah, you’ll need to be the first thing she sees. You’ll tell her everything we discussed.”
Jeremiah nodded.
“Helena, when Jeremiah finishes, you’ll talk to her,” Kirschbaum went on. “Reassure her that she can do this. Tell her about seeing Damerel before and be honest with her that it’s going to hurt. She needs to hear this from people she trusts instead of strangers.”
“I understand,” I said.
Kirschbaum looked at Rick. “That’s it,” he said. “Nothing left but to go for it.”
“Just remember,” Rick said, “we don’t have a ton of time. Be thorough, but be concise. I realize that’s asking a lot.”
“Just…let’s get this over with,” Jeremiah said.
Rick raised his Fitbit to his lips and murmured something into it. So it wasn’t just for tracking his movement. I made Jeremiah look at me. “This will work,” I said.
Jeremiah’s expression was bleak. “I hope so.”
“If you are not convinced, Viv will know,” Malcolm said. “You need to be optimistic for her sake.”
“Please don’t let Viv see how worried you are,” Judy said. “It could be fatal.”
Jeremiah nodded again, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I survived this,” he said, “and she’s tougher than I am. It will work.”
The door opened, and a handful of people in scrubs filed in, including… “Harriet!” I exclaimed, and went forward to hug her. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“I thought it might help,” Harriet Keller said. “I created Viv’s aegis, so it was reasonable to have me on the Damerel team.”
I suddenly felt about ten pounds lighter. “I know she’ll appreciate having a friend involved.”
The Book of Destiny Page 27