by Jim C. Hines
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I get it, Isaac. I do. I’m not even that angry.”
“Really? Because you do a great impression.”
He snorted. “Yah, okay. I’m angry. But I’ll get over it. I keep having to remind myself this is who you are. You’re off doing important libriomancer shit and trying to save the world, and that’s always going to be your priority.”
“Would you rather I didn’t try to save the world? You think I wanted to be in the middle of a magical crossfire last year in Copper River? Of all the ways I like to spend my free time, fighting dead magical megalomaniacs is really far down on the list.”
“What is it you want, Isaac?” he asked wearily.
“I want to say hi to my niece. To see how she’s doing.” Years of habitual secrecy made me hesitate before adding, “I also want to read what they did to her.”
“Read what? You mean her records?” He snorted. “I didn’t think you Porters cared about privacy laws. You were keeping medical information about my family for years. Why bother asking permission now?”
“I didn’t know the Porters had a file on you.” Though I should have. The Porters had recruited me before I finished high school. Of course they’d have investigated my family as well. “You’re right. I have access to all of the research files, including Lex’s.”
His face went stony. “You’re looking for something that’s not in her files.”
“I’m not looking for anything specific. I just want to be sure, to read her. To see the magic they used to heal her.”
“You can do that? I thought libriomancers just pulled stuff out of books.”
“They—we do. But there are outliers. I know a girl who learned to do libriomancy with ebooks. Gutenberg carried stories around in a sword. As for me . . .” How to explain everything I’d learned, all the ways I’d changed in recent years?
A pair of doctors emerged from the room. I waited until they’d gone, then said, “Call it trial-by-fire. I’ve had to learn new tricks to survive some of what’s come my way.”
For the first time, I saw something more than frost and anger in his eyes. “What do you mean? What happened to you?”
Despite public hearings, investigations, and countless interviews, there were plenty of details I’d never shared. Details I tried not to think about. My instinct was to deflect the question, but that would only lead to another round of verbal fencing with poisoned blades. “Which time? Do you want to hear how I got stabbed, then merged my body with a five-hundred-year-old wood-and-metal automaton built by Johannes Gutenberg? That was a fun day. I got to visit the moon.”
He stared at me. “Bullshit.”
“When I was done, I plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere. Nearly burnt myself to a cinder in the process. Then last year, I deliberately triggered a trap created a thousand years ago by Pope Sylvester II that ripped my mind from my body and locked it away.”
“Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because the woman inside that trap had taken a friend of mine, burned down my house, and murdered thirty-seven people in Copper River, and I was damn well going to stop her.” He’d grown up in that house, too, and we’d both known most of those thirty-seven people who died. The only difference was that I’d always known why they died.
My heart thudded against my ribs, and my throat tightened. Memories surged through my mind: collapsed buildings and broken bodies, the smell of smoke, screams of fear and pain. I clenched a fist and looked away.
“What happened to her?” he asked. “The woman who took your friend?”
“She tried to escape.” I swallowed. “I stopped her.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. “That healing magic you Porters can do. How many times have you had to use that on yourself?”
I didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.
“Jesus, Isaac.”
“It’s not all bad.” I stared at one of the painted stars on the floor. “I spent a lot more time cataloging and researching than I did in the field. I’ve gotten to hang out with magic-users who were born centuries ago, and seen things everyone insisted were impossible. I’ve been to space twice. I even tried a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.”
“From Hitchhiker’s Guide? How was it?”
“Not a clue. I remember taking the drink, and I remember waking up two days later. In Ontario. Wearing a nineteenth century Mountie uniform. Everything else is a bit of a blur.”
“None of this makes me want to let you anywhere near my daughter.” His chuckle was short-lived. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”
I sat down with my back against the wall. He followed suit a moment later. “It’s something Alexander Keeler said during the hearing in D.C.”
“Keeler’s the guy who wants to license and regulate magic, right? The one with the face of a hairless cat with epic constipation?”
“Oh, great. Now I’ll never be able to look at him without seeing that image.” I nodded to a passing nurse. “They’re not wrong to be cautious. New Millennium could change things. Really change things, I mean. Magic can’t fix everything, but it could make the world so much better. It could also do unimaginable damage. That’s one of the reasons we’ve had to move so slowly.”
“What kind of damage?” Toby glanced over his shoulder at Lex’s door.
“Nothing that could hurt Lex.” I hesitated. “But her being here doesn’t make sense. You know the Porters and New Millennium are fighting hard for public support, right? We can’t afford any kind of taint or scandal. So why sign off on bringing the Director of Research’s niece into the medical study?” Whatever I might think of Senator Keeler and his committee, the man had a point about favoritism and the potential bias to our research.
“I figured it was because most people didn’t feel safe enough to volunteer.”
I shook my head. “We can cure cancer, Toby. Plenty of people are desperate enough to try anything, even magic.”
Toby wasn’t stupid. I could see him sifting through the implications. “Could be someone did it so you’d owe them. They want to call in a favor down the line.”
“Maybe.”
“Or they want to use her against you somehow. Isaac, I swear to God, if you’ve put Lex in danger—”
“Let me look her over. I’ll be able to tell whether anyone has used additional magic on her. Or you and Angie.” I peered at him over my glasses. “You’re clean.”
“What kind of additional magic?”
I looked away. “When I was working as a field agent, I once installed a magical bomb in a vampire’s skull to keep him from preying on humans.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” His hands started to shake. “If they did something like that to Lex, can you fix it?”
“Yes. It’s probably nothing, Toby. I just need to be sure.”
“What if it’s not nothing? What if someone tries to use us for leverage?”
“Then I’ll make them wish they hadn’t.”
“Look at you, getting all badass.” His words trailed off. “Damn. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I shrugged and stood up. “Shall we?”
“All right. But if you lie or hold back anything that could hurt Lex, I’ll kick your skinny ass.” He got to his feet. “And then I’ll tell Mom.”
Lex sat in a wheelchair, wearing a purple princess nightgown. A trio of New Millennium medical staff examined her leg, while her mother hovered next to the chair.
Lex’s brown hair partially hid a circular white patch the size of a quarter stuck to the side of her neck. A single LED on the edge of the patch glowed green, indicating that her vitals were within normal range.
The monitor patch was one of my accomplishments . . . sort of. It had come from an article in Medical Science Today about the future of diagnostic medicine. The author had described her vision for the next generation of medical monitoring tools, from a disposable monitoring patch with a wireless transmitter to a diagnostic capsule capable o
f providing a full-body scan from the inside. I’d contacted her the next day with a contract allowing us to use libriomancy to create those tools, and granting us the rights to use them in our work at New Millennium. Within a week of the magazine’s publication, we’d created twenty-four sets.
“Uncle Isaac!” Lex beamed and waved.
“Hi kiddo,” I said. “Long time no see. How are you feeling?”
“We’re fine,” her mother answered. Angie tended to be a quiet woman, always listening and assessing. Right now, she looked like she was assessing the best way to dispose of my body if I said or did anything to harm her daughter. “New Millennium has taken very good care of us.”
“It’s amazing.” That was Jennifer Simpkin, an orthopedic surgeon from Reno who’d been working and consulting for us part-time. She returned her reflex hammer to the pocket of her lab coat and stood to shake my hand. “The new leg is as healthy as the original. Healthier, in some respects. There’s no scarring where it joins the older skin and tissue. Blood flow, reflexes, everything is flawless.”
A younger woman I didn’t recognize glanced up, spotted Smudge, and jumped to position herself between Lex and me. “Sir, you can’t bring a spider in here.”
“Would it help if I told you he was self-sterilizing?”
“It’s all right,” said Dr. Simpkin. “Lex has no open wounds or sutures to worry about, and most hunting spiders are better than some people about grooming and cleanliness.” She typed something into her tablet computer. “I’ve been validating the readouts from the diagnostic patch, and they’ve been accurate within about two percent. If New Millennium can mass produce them, the applications are mind-blowing. Continual glucose tracking for diabetics, monitoring infants overnight to prevent SIDS—have you tested to see if they can distinguish fetal life signs from those of the mother?”
Her enthusiasm made me smile. This was why I’d fought so hard to help create this place, for the possibilities and the hope and the wonder. “I don’t actually know. Email me a reminder to add it to the research agenda at next week’s meeting? As for mass production, that’s trickier. There’s a limit to how many times a book can be used for libriomancy. They develop magical charring, like burning out a filter. Magazines are even more short-lived. But we’re looking into other ways of duplicating them.” I sat down on the side of the bed. “Do you mind if I give Lex a quick magical once-over?”
“Will it hurt?” Lex asked. There was none of the stuttering that had marked her speech since the accident.
“Nope.” I swallowed a knot in my throat, dropped to one knee, and unclipped Smudge’s cage. “You remember Smudge, don’t you?”
“Your pet tarantula? Cool!”
Most people cringed at the sight of a four-inch spider, but I remembered Lex’s interest in all things creepy crawly, from worms and lizards to snakes and her short-lived pet cricket Jimmy. I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial level. “I couldn’t tell you before, but he’s not exactly a tarantula.” I grabbed a plastic bag of gummi worms from my pocket. “Do you want to feed him?”
She looked to her parents for permission, then took one of the gummi worms. I grabbed a narrow table from beside the bed and rolled it over by the wheelchair, then set the cage so the fiberglass-lined side was down.
Lex stretched the worm until it broke, popped half into her mouth, and poked the rest through the bars of the cage. Smudge snatched it up in his forelegs.
“Watch this.” Tiny triangles of red flame flowed down Smudge’s legs. The worm softened and began to melt.
Her mouth formed an O. “Smudge is magic?”
“He’s a fire-spider. He can create his own flames when he’s afraid or angry, or when he wants to cook his meals. He once set my laundry on fire because he was mad at me.”
Lex leaned in to watch as Smudge slurped up red and green semi-liquefied gummy worm.
Her parents pressed closer. Dr. Simpkin and the other medical staff crowded behind me. I felt like an exhibit.
I studied Lex’s feet. One was moderately dirty, the toenails rough and torn. The other was clean and lacking in any callouses, with short, perfect nails. “Ready for the first test? I’m betting the doctors forgot to do this one.”
Lex steeled herself. At nine years old, she had endured more procedures and labwork and injections than most people five times her age, but that didn’t make them any less unpleasant.
I tickled her toes. She squealed and jerked back hard. Angie caught the wheelchair’s handles to keep it from tipping over.
“Tickle reflex appears to be working,” I said in my most official voice. “But we should probably check the other foot for comparison.”
“No,” she said, laughing.
“All right, fine. But don’t complain to me if you end up tickle-impaired!” I winked. “How did your first round of physical therapy go this morning?”
“It’s boring.” She made a face like she’d bitten something rotten. “I mean, walking up and down three steps was cool the first time, but they want me do it a million more times!”
“Physically, she’s perfect,” added Dr. Simpkin. “But her brain has to relearn so much about balance and movement. It’s going to take time and practice.”
“What about . . .” I searched for a tactful phrase to describe the mental impairment she’d suffered.
Lex saved me the trouble. “No more brain farts!”
“That’s what we called it when she struggled to remember words or had balance problems,” said Toby. “When she had a full-blown seizure, that was brain vomit.”
Seizures had been one of the many ongoing effects of Lex’s damaged brain. Medication had suppressed most of them, but for the past year, she’d been averaging one seizure every couple of months. I’d never witnessed her full-blown brain-vomit. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had.
“The MRI and CAT scans we took before lunch appear normal,” added Dr. Simpkin. “We’ve got specialists reviewing the results, and we’ll be running a lot more tests, but it looks very encouraging.”
I could have healed Lex years ago. We could have done this for thousands of other kids by now. I thought about the family who’d spoken to me after the hearing in D.C. and the long list of critically ill and injured people on our research trial waiting lists.
“Uncle Isaac?”
“Sorry.” I removed my glasses and set them on her meal tray. The rest of the room blurred, but the text of the magic in Lex’s body sharpened.
“Why don’t you just fix your eyes with magic?” asked Toby.
“For the same reason healing magic doesn’t change a vampire back into human. The damage isn’t a physical thing. It’s magically written into the essence of who and what you are.” I leaned closer, trying to read the fading magic in Lex’s body. The text was faint, and I didn’t see any active spells. “Did the libriomancer explain that this was a one-shot thing? That means the next time you scrape your knee, it’ll have to heal the old-fashioned way. So be careful.”
“I know.” Lex sounded so annoyed and put-upon by the reminder I couldn’t help but smile.
I read several lines, enough to identify the source of the spell. “They used a book called Our Lady of the Islands. The protagonist develops the ability to heal with a touch. What exactly did it look like when they healed Lex?”
“Dr. Parisi did the actual healing,” said Dr. Simpkin. “She called it a controlled partial manifestation.”
“It was like the book was a window and the lady inside the book reached out and shook hands with Doctor Alyce!” Lex added. “She put the book-lady’s hand on my forehead, then on my knee.”
“Makes sense.” With the NIH and everyone else looking for the slightest excuse to shut us down, we’d been going with the least intrusive measures possible. Alyce Parisi was a good libriomancer and an equally good doctor. She wouldn’t have done anything that risked harm to her patient.
Despite its effectiveness, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the techni
que. Living manifestations of fictional characters were too unpredictable, especially intelligent characters. They couldn’t handle the transition to the real world. Lena was one of the only exceptions I’d encountered, and her existence and sanity had come with a cost. Even Smudge had struggled when I accidentally drew him from his familiar goblin tunnels into my high school library.
Partial manifestations—a single hand or arm reaching from the pages—were certainly safer. We’d used them in the past to take blood samples and such. But exactly how much of the character did we create in the process? Did the mind achieve any kind of momentary sentience? Was there a flicker of awareness, of existence spread between the real world and the magical potential of the text?
I stood and slid my glasses back onto my face. “Lex is great. It’s exactly what we’d hoped for.”
“That’s a good thing.” Toby’s hesitation turned it into as much a question as a statement.
“Yah, of course.” I was being paranoid. Whatever chaos was happening throughout the world, she was safe here.
“Is there anything magic can’t do, Uncle Isaac?”
“Plenty.” I forced a smile. “But wouldn’t it be boring if we could do anything?”
From her frown, she wasn’t convinced.
“Want to see something I can do?” I clenched my jaw, glanced at the phone, and subvocally dialed their direct extension. When the phone rang, I smiled at Lex. “It’s for you.”
She picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Lex!”
Her face lit up. “Uncle Isaac? How are you doing that?”
“I told you. It’s magic!”
She climbed out of her chair. Her parents both swooped in to catch her if she fell, but she shooed them away. She grabbed my arm for balance and stood on tiptoes to study my mouth “Do it again.”