Unbound

by Jim C. Hines

  I peered at the model of the Earth, suspended at the center like an oversized olive on a bronze toothpick. “Hello, Meridiana.”

  The Egyptian government has declared a state of emergency following the apparent assassination of three high-ranking officials, including the vice president.

  A group calling themselves the Shadows of Liberation claimed responsibility for the deaths in a video posted shortly after the assassinations. The video was released in English as well as Arabic, and warns that all who would disrupt the dream of a peaceful Egypt through greed and corruption will meet the same end.

  “For many years Egypt has suffered the tyranny of evil men, but the instruments of man cannot stop us,” proclaimed a hooded man holding a small, colored cap in his hands. “We stand on equal terms with the hidden powers of this world, and we will seize from them the reins of the nation.”

  The man then placed the cap upon his head and vanished, as if by magic.

  The reference to standing on equal terms with hidden powers, as well as several other quotes, appear to have been drawn from the novel Arabian Nights and Days, a modern retelling of the tales of Scheherazade, by Nobel-laureate Naguib Mahfouz. One of the tales in Mahfouz’s 1979 work describes an invisibility cap that matches the appearance of the cap used in the video.

  The Shadows of Liberation have published a list of future targets, whom they describe as traitors to the Egyptian people.

  Egypt’s president was quick to denounce the Shadows of Liberation as a terrorist organization, and dismissed their apparent magic as simple camera trickery.

  PONCE DE LEON PULLED a silk handkerchief from his pocket and draped it over the sighting tube. “According to Isaac, this tube was how His Holiness trapped Meridiana. Best not to risk anyone accidentally looking through the eyepiece and joining her.”

  Bi Wei pushed the outermost ring to the right. When she removed her hands, it crawled slowly back to its prior position.

  “Do you think Meridiana can feel you messing with her rings?” I asked.

  Before anyone could answer¸ the rest of the metal rings scraped into motion. The sighting tube rose, lifting the handkerchief like a flag. The small spheres of the sun and moon inched along their orbits. When everything came to rest, the sphere was in an entirely different configuration.

  I looked up, trying to imagine the position of the sun. Whatever the sphere was showing, it wasn’t the current position of the heavens.

  Bi Wei poked the rings again, but the sphere didn’t react.

  “Perhaps it’s miscalibrated,” Jackson suggested.

  I pointed to the azimuth, the flat, vertical ring. “It’s adjusted for forty-six degrees latitude, which runs through the northern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

  “But we’re not in—”

  I clapped a hand to Jackson’s mouth. “Important safety tip. The sphere has a wannabe goddess inside, and she’d like nothing more than to squash us all, just as soon as she can figure out where we are.”

  He was right, though. We were south of the bridge, putting us several degrees lower than the sphere indicated. I touched the flat band of the ecliptic ring, which was divided into months and days, and marked with the signs of the zodiac. I looked at the sun, projecting where it would intersect the ecliptic at sunrise and sunset.

  Lena pulled me back from the sphere. “What’s wrong, Isaac?”

  I rubbed my arms against a chill that started deep inside my body. I pointed to the position of the sun. “If I’m reading this right, the sphere is set for about ten in the morning on January fourth.”

  “That date means something?” Bi Wei asked.

  “My birthday.” But the sphere was moving again, faster than before. Metal hummed as the rings spun and slid into position. I waited for it to stop. “Anyone here born at eleven at night on the twentieth of June, around thirty-five degrees latitude?”

  The sphere spun to life.

  “I was born in early summer, hours after the sun had set,” whispered Bi Wei.

  I found it reassuring that the sphere seemed to recognize Bi Wei as an individual.

  “It’s returned to January fourth.” Ponce de Leon touched the metal rings, but nothing happened. “The sphere seems to like the two of you.”

  “It’s listening to us,” said Bi Wei.

  I thought back to the mythology of Gerbert d’Aurillac, scraps of rumor and legend I had read over the past week. “It’s doing more than that.” I dropped to one knee, bringing my face level with the sphere. “It reacted every time one of us asked a question.”

  “I asked you what was wrong,” Lena pointed out. “The rings didn’t move.”

  “Every time we asked a yes/no question,” I amended. “The stories said d’Aurillac possessed a brazen head, a bronze oracle that would answer any question.” I imagined the small orbs of the sun and moon as eyes peering through wild, tangled rings of metal hair. “Did Gerbert d’Aurillac use you as an oracle?”

  Nothing. I sat back on my heels, glaring at the sphere. Why would it react to some questions but not this one?

  “Did Nidhi eat the last of my Mackinac Island Fudge ice cream last week?” asked Lena.

  The sphere moved again, coming to rest in early December. Lena’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know the exact date of my birth, but I first stepped from my tree in the winter, several weeks before Christmas.”

  “This is wrong.” Bi Wei reached into the sphere to touch the moon. “The moon should be new on this date.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Nidhi.

  She stared through the sphere. “We can see it.”

  “Maybe it’s not equipped to guess the birthday of a dryad,” said Jackson.

  “That’s not it.” I grimaced. “It’s because I ate Lena’s ice cream, not Nidhi. Sorry about that, by the way. I bet the sphere shows the proper configuration for a yes, but introduces a mistake for no.” Which would explain why it hadn’t moved when I asked if it was an oracle. The answer was yes, but the sphere had already adjusted itself to my birth date. “Can Meridiana hear and remember the questions we ask?”

  The rings and planets whirled through time, returning to the positions of my birth. Yes.

  “Can Jeneta be saved?” I asked. “Restored to who she was, free of Meridiana’s influence?”

  Nothing happened, but when Bi Wei repeated the question, the sphere moved back to June 20. Yes.

  “Assuming it’s answering honestly,” Nidhi pointed out.

  “It’s impossible to be certain, but we don’t believe she has a choice,” said Bi Wei.

  “Are they ever going to have a woman play the Doctor on Doctor Who?” I asked.

  Nothing happened. Either the sphere didn’t consider my question worth answering, or else it couldn’t answer questions about the future, perhaps as a built-in protection against paradox.

  It was Lena’s turn. “If we chuck you into a smelting furnace, will that destroy Meridiana?”

  This time, the moon was in the correct position, but the date was off. No.

  “If anything, that would release her,” said Ponce de Leon. “I believe Johannes had the right approach. He intended to end Meridiana’s miniature universe, to bring about the end of days. Would this put an end to Meridiana?”

  The sphere moved again. We looked to Ponce de Leon for confirmation. For once, he appeared unsettled. “I didn’t think that through. I . . . don’t know the precise date of my birth,” he admitted.

  “Ask it a question you know the answer is yes,” I said.

  “Right, of course.” He paused a moment. “Am I wearing shoes?”

  We all reflexively looked at his feet, but the sphere didn’t move. Meaning the answer to both of his questions was yes.

  “Looks like your birthday is March thirteenth,” I said. “I’ll have to remember to send you a card.”

  “Does Meridiana know where we are?” asked Nicola.

  The sphere spun to August 5, only a few weeks ago. “Happy late birthday,�
�� I said.

  Nicola looked to Bi Wei, who shook her head. “It should be a first quarter moon.”

  “How can you know that without knowing the year of my birth,” said Nicola.

  “The configuration is just wrong. Like a poem with one character out of position.”

  Assuming Bi Wei’s reading was correct, we were safe for the moment. To the sphere, I said, “Gerbert trapped Meridiana—you—in this thing. How did you start to escape?”

  It didn’t respond, of course. I needed a yes/no question, which meant I had to figure it out myself, then ask for confirmation.

  Had Gerbert d’Aurillac made mistakes in his spellcasting? Or perhaps Meridiana was simply too strong to remain contained forever. She could have worked for centuries, a prisoner chipping away at the walls of her cell, until she punched a hole to the outside world. Gutenberg had been aware of her presence more than five hundred years ago, and of the ghosts she had drawn to herself. “Is the Ghost Army trapped in the sphere with you?”

  No.

  “Has Meridiana altered the magic of her prison?” asked Nicola.

  Yes.

  “How the hell did she do that?” I asked. Neither Nicola nor the sphere responded. “Can you be disassembled without freeing Meridiana?”

  Silence.

  The Porters had experimented with oracular magic before, but it was tricky to say the least. Anything connected to libriomancy ran the risk of distorting its answers to align with the originating text rather than the real world. Ask a crystal ball about your future, and likely as not it would show you spoilers from the story it came from. But d’Aurillac’s work had no libriomantic component.

  I sat down at the desk and held my hand behind my back. “Can you perceive how many fingers I’m holding up on my right hand?”

  Yes.

  “Cool. What about the individual cells of my body? Can you perceive them?”

  Yes.

  “Can you distinguish between healthy and sick or dying cells?”

  Yes.

  I turned to Lena. “You could use this thing as a medical scanner to screen for cancer and disease. I bet it would do instant pregnancy testing, too. If we could—”

  Ponce de Leon coughed quietly. “Perhaps we should get on with it before the temptation to play with the oracle distracts us from our true goals.”

  “Too late,” I said. “I’m distracted.”

  “Jeneta Aboderin.” Nidhi rested a hand on my shoulder. “The Ghost Army. Gutenberg. Focus, Isaac.”

  Jackson straightened. “Wait, what about Gutenberg?”

  “The Regional Masters haven’t shared that news yet.” Nicola paced the length of the room. “They believed it would be ‘too disruptive.’”

  Ponce de Leon reached toward the sphere, stopping with his hand an inch from the surface. “Meridiana is a thousand-year-old sorceress trapped within that armillary sphere. Yesterday, she murdered Johannes Gutenberg.”

  “I don’t know who you are, sir,” said Jackson, “but you must be mistaken. Gutenberg—”

  “I apologize for my rudeness. My name is Juan Ponce de Leon.”

  Jackson stared at Ponce de Leon, then at the sphere. He stepped back from both, as if he wasn’t sure which was the greater threat. “I don’t understand. You were banished. The Porters . . .” He swallowed, then looked at Bi Wei. “I know Doctor Shah and her bodyguard, and I’m familiar with Isaac. Who are you?”

  “My name is Bi Wei. We are the Bì She¯ng de dú zheˇ.”

  He turned to Nicola, silently pleading for an explanation.

  “I’ll need you to provide details on all of the fort’s enchantments,” she said flatly.

  “I . . . I should go.”

  “No, you really shouldn’t,” said Ponce de Leon without looking up.

  “The fort,” Nicola repeated.

  Jackson chewed the side of his lower lip, then nodded. “I have a copy of Jane Oshogay’s instructions in the file cabinet beside the desk. It’s basically a user guide for the whole fort.”

  While they reviewed the defenses, I returned my attention to the armillary sphere. All magic had limits. What were Meridiana’s? “If I took you outside in the daytime, would you be able to see the stars?”

  Yes.

  “But you don’t know where you are right now?”

  No.

  I silently thanked those paranoid French traders. “What about planets? Can you see them?”

  Yes.

  D’Aurillac had created so much more than a simple prison. This would have been an unimaginably important tool. While it couldn’t describe the skies to him, it could confirm or deny his observations and theories. “Can you see planets outside of our solar system?”

  No.

  So much for using Meridiana to prove the existence of alien civilizations.

  Nidhi sat down on the edge of the desk beside me. “Are you all right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You physically pulled away when I mentioned Jeneta’s name, before. Your shoulders are tight as rock, and you’re talking faster than usual.”

  “I’m okay. I’m just—”

  “You haven’t been okay for a while now.” She reached out to touch one of the sphere’s rings. “You remind me of a story I read a year or so back, about a village in Kenya. A pair of cheetahs had been eating the villagers’ goats. Cheetahs are unbeatable sprinters, but they can’t run forever. The men waited until the hottest part of the day, then chased the cheetahs on foot. Eventually, both animals collapsed from exhaustion.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Nidhi.”

  “You never have time,” she said firmly. “Ever since Gutenberg took your magic, you’ve been too busy running. You can’t run forever.”

  My vision blurred. I looked away, but I knew she’d seen me blinking back tears. Guilt and loss and grief battered through walls already weakened by exhaustion. I pressed my palms against my head, as if I could physically force everything back. I was painfully aware of everyone in the room watching me—or in Jackson’s case, deliberately not watching.

  “Gutenberg carved out a piece of your soul,” Ponce de Leon said gently. “He believed it was for the best, but such losses leave deep scars. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I knew they meant well, but his words just made me angry. Like I was a broken animal to be pitied. Wasn’t I one of the lucky ones? Unlike too many people who had died without knowing why, I had survived. “I don’t need to run forever. Just long enough to bring Meridiana down.”

  “All right. But when this is over, I want you to talk to someone.” Nidhi raised a hand before I could object. “It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Take a walk with Lena. Go out drinking with Jeff if you want to.”

  I turned back to the sphere. “What I don’t understand is why d’Aurillac hid this away in a poem. This sphere could have done so much for his work and research. Sending it away would be like . . . like permanently cutting off your Internet connection.”

  “The horror,” Lena said, giving a mock-shudder.

  “Maybe he felt guilty,” Nidhi suggested. “Gutenberg enslaved others to power his automatons, but he was forever conflicted about them. Gerbert d’Aurillac might have felt the same about using his former student.”

  “Let’s ask her.” To the sphere, I said, “Did Gerbert d’Aurillac enchant this intentionally to allow you to indicate yes or no, but with no other voice?”

  Yes.

  “A true voice might have allowed her to use magic,” Nidhi suggested. “Or to persuade someone to free her.”

  As a precaution, it made sense to limit Meridiana’s ability to communicate with the outside world, but I couldn’t see Gerbert d’Aurillac forcing her to serve as his own personal oracle. The man whose memories I had touched had never been cruel. Imprison a murderess, certainly, but this? He would have been revolted by such enslavement. There had to be another reason, something we were missing.

  I unhooked Smudge’s cage from the ceil
ing as I thought. He had been squeezed in that flattened rectangle for too long. I opened the door and let him scurry up my arm. He crouched on my shoulder to watch the sphere, as if it was a metal monster ready to pounce.

  “Rotting hell!” Lena staggered backward into the wall, both hands clutching her ribs.

  Nidhi and I were at her side a moment later, each of us grabbing one of her elbows to support her.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Nicola.

  Lena jerked free of my grip and slammed a fist against the wall behind us. The blow left a foot-long crack. Through gritted teeth, she said, “That really hurts.”

  She appeared uninjured. “Your tree?” I guessed.

  Lena nodded.

  Whatever was happening, it had to be in response to us retrieving Meridiana’s prison. “There should be Porters near the house. Nicola can contact them—”

  “Meridiana has a message for us.” Sweat beaded Lena’s brow, and her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

  “You can hear her?” Ponce de Leon asked sharply.

  “She’s carving the words into my oak.” Lena took several quick, tight breaths. “She wants to meet to discuss a truce.”

  “The question isn’t whether or not it’s a trap,” said Ponce de Leon. “It’s whether or not we can turn the trap to our advantage.”

  “I can’t allow it.” Nicola was insisting the only safe choice was to ignore Meridiana’s offer and proceed as planned. “The moment any of us approach Meridiana, she’ll rip the location of the sphere from our memories and send her forces to take it and kill the rest of us.”

  “There are ways of shielding those memories,” said Bi Wei.

  Nidhi and I sat with Lena. Sweat drenched her skin. Dark lines twitched and bulged on her arms as the grafts inside of her responded to the ongoing assault on her tree. Her lips parted. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Meridiana is threatening to release the Ghost Army if we refuse to talk.”