“Someone lives here?” I can’t keep the astonishment out of my voice.
Clyde coughs and spits out the batteries. He doubles over wheezing for a moment, then straightens.
“Yeah,” he croaks, then coughs again. He pulls out a large white handkerchief and spits into it. “Sorry,” he says. “Yes, someone does. He moves about quite a bit, hence the handwavery to find him, though.” He looks away from me. “You can come on out now Winston, he won’t bite.”
There’s a rustling sound from a shelf to my right and I snap around. Some of the books shift, start to tumble off the shelf. Someone is hiding behind the stacked books I realize, someone crouched tight in-between the shelves.
But the person doesn’t appear and the books keep falling, and then I realize that the person isn’t going to appear. Because the books start to pile into legs, into a torso and arms, and then I realize that the books themselves are Winston.
A man made out of books. Of course. Should have seen it coming really. I wonder, yet again, if I’ve gone mad.
The book-man, Winston, stands about five feet tall, his feet made of heavy reference tomes, his legs an accordion stack of paperbacks, on top of which balances a jumble of pamphlets and pages. Covers wheeze open and shut as Winston shifts his weight, as his chest rises and falls. His eyes are finger puppets mounted into circular holes in infants’ board books, his mouth is a dictionary laid on its side that snaps up and down when he speaks.
“All right, Clyde, mate,” Winston says.
I look from the dictionary mouth to the gyro.
“What?” Winston asks me, taking a step forward. “I don’t bloody spill shit, all right. I’m incog-fucking-nito, mate. I move like a shadow, all right? They don’t know I’m here. You didn’t know. Did you?” One of the finger-puppet eyes—a small yellow-faced bee—waggles knowingly.
“It’s all right, Winston,” Clyde says with a soothing tone. “He’s with MI37.” He looks at me. “He’s new.”
“Fresh as a fucking fish, is he?” Winston asks.
“I’m Arthur,” I say after a pause, during which I try and get my sense of wonder to be quiet so I can make polite conversation.
“Nice one. Nice one.” Winston takes a step forward and slaps me congenially on the shoulder with one hand—a copy of Pride and Prejudice that snaps open and shut like a lobster claw. The moment exists in some limbo place between awesome and hideously creepy.
“All right then, gents,” Winston says, stepping back, “what can I do you for, then?”
“A book,” I say.
“A book he says,” Winston barks, his rough voice sharp and loud in the quiet space. “Of course a fucking book. I’m made of fucking books. I’m in a fucking library. You’re hardly going to be here to ask me about the pleasant summer weather, is you? What book, mate? A name, an index reference, a Dewey fucking decimal number, if you please.”
“Thaumaturgic Practices in Milton Keynes,” Clyde says quickly.
“Hmmm.” Winston cocks his blocky head onto one side and makes a great show of cogitating. “This way gents, if you please.”
He lopes off past us and we both have to hurry to follow him.
“Don’t mind him,” Clyde says conspiratorially as we pursue. “He’s just a bit put-out because he knows he must have messed up. He knows we only do this when he missed a book.”
“Missed a book?” I’m not sure the answer to the question will help me, none have so far, but if yesterday taught me anything it’s that I need to try and get answers when I can.
“Well,” Clyde says, “I made him to catch any suspicious texts coming into the library. Obviously he didn’t catch this one.”
“You made him?” My ability to be surprised is being steadily eroded, but Clyde still manages it.
“Well,” Clyde says, and shrugs, because it’s been about five minutes since he last did it, “technically I brought an animating force over from another reality, invested it into a pile of books and set it certain tasks that were within the parameters of an ancient agreement I found in a couple of Sumerian texts, but ‘made him’ is easier to say.”
I stopped listening after the bit where I went crosseyed so I just nod. “But you made him...” I search for the words. “The way he is?”
“A little too much Dickens and Irvine Welsh in the stack of books I used.”
Which makes about as much sense as anything else I’ve heard so far. Still, I wonder what would happen to Winston if MI37 was finally closed up. Would he stay here, munching on gyros and reading books? Would he just fall apart? Would anybody except Clyde care?
Winston stops at a small stack of file cards. He fiddles with the drawer for a minute cursing quietly under his breath, and I clearly catch the phrase, “opposable bloody thumbs,” but eventually he gets it open. He... well, he doesn’t thumb through the cards, exactly... but he’s able to get through them pretty quickly anyway and pulls out a card.
“Here we are,” he says. “Bob is very much your uncle. Paternity suit denied.” He extends the file card. “Thaumaturgic Practices in Milton Keynes, if you please.”
Clyde plucks it from between clenched pages. He skims it quickly. “So?” he says finally.
“So what?” It’s hard to read expressions on Winston’s makeshift face but I can still see that he’s suddenly as shifty as a used-car salesman.
“How did you miss it?” Clyde is not exactly confrontational, but there is a tone of paternal disapproval.
“Look,” says Winston, “I mean, come on. Seriously?” Clyde just looks at him. “It’s a fucking copyright library, mate. You have any bloody idea how many fucking books there are here? How many come in every day? I can’t keep up with that. You having a laugh? I very much doubt it, but I’ve got to live with practicalities here, mate. I’m in the fucking trenches I am. I’ve got to prioritize.” He manages to emphasize each syllable in the last word.
“Ancient texts, mate,” he continues. “Primary sources. The real fucking deal. That’s what I look for. That’s what I get you. I mean, what’s that?” He snatches back the card. “Published 2009? I can’t be dealing with that. You want someone checking the modern stuff you give me subordinates, mate, you give me a workforce. Then I’ll get you your work done.”
“Winston,” Clyde says. “It’s called Thaumaturgic Practices in Milton Keynes, that couldn’t be more suspect if they’d tried. Milton Keynes was only built in the sixties.” He shrugs. “It’s hardly going to be a hotbed of thaumaturgy. And—” he grabs back the card “—print run of two. There’s only one other copy.”
“Hold up on that,” I say. A little shiver of adrenaline runs through me. Because I think I finally have something to contribute.
“What’s that, mate?” Winston turns. So does Clyde.
“Two copies?” I ask.
Clyde looks back down at the card. “Yes.”
“One for the British Library and one for here.”
“Yes.”
“Why bother?” I ask. “Why bother copyrighting it? Why not just print it for yourself and never bother copyrighting the thing? Not even... Unless you want to guarantee that it’s here, want to guarantee that some idiot student comes across it and tries out the stuff written in it.”
There’s silence as I think.
“Got me stumped, mate,” Winston says.
“It’s a plant,” I say. “It’s a plant with a booby-trapped spell in it. Someone stuck a bomb in this library and waited for a student to set it off. And they know who the disposal squad sent in will be. You guys. MI37. Us.” I say the last word with a sense of slight shock. Because it still doesn’t feel like “us.”
“Whoever wrote and printed this book,” I say, “was gunning for MI37.”
“Bit fucking unpleasant of them,” Winston chimes in.
Clyde looks down at the card. “Olsted,” he reads. “Benjamin Olsted.”
I smile. “Looks like we got ourselves our next Progeny,” I say
12
“Benjamin Olsted,” Tabitha says. She points abstractedly at a PowerPoint presentation, as if daring us to give a shit about it. She does, however, seem to have taken a lot of time and care with it. There are clear, concise bullet points, and animated graphics, and the whole thing is rather professionally done. It seems only fair to give it as much undivided attention as I can. But Tabitha is wearing a huge black dress today—like the negative exposure of one of those meringue wedding dresses from the eighties—and it rustles every time she turns to click a slide. The sound triggers memories I’d almost forgotten.
She is not what you think she is.
Who isn’t? Tabitha? Kayla?
Except, of course, that phrase is just paranoia and blows to the head.
I try and focus. I need to know about Olsted. So we don’t screw up.
Tabitha’s slide shows a small man in his late sixties. His skin is worn and folded like ancient leather. He does not look happy to have his photo taken. Probably because of the whole shoe-leather-face thing.
“Owns Olsted PrintTech,” Tabitha continues. “Manufactures laser printers. Not the sort to do limited runs of thaumaturgy texts.” She looks significantly at Clyde, the recipient of most of her gazes today. Kayla’s not here per Shaw’s new ruling. And I’m still in the doghouse because of that.
“Personal life—” Tabitha clicks and a series of black-and-white photos spiral onto the screen.
“Nice.” Clyde nods his appreciation.
“Whatever,” Tabitha says, and then turns with a particularly extravagant swish of pleasure. “Anyway Widower. One daughter. Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.” She finally looks at me. “Mad cow.”
“Cheers.” I knew that, but I’m going for brownie points. Not earning them though, apparently.
Her gaze flits back to Clyde. “Anyway, Olsted. Very wealthy. Disproportionately wealthy.” Dollar signs explode over the screen. “Everything looks above board, but way above average with investments. Almost prescient.” She raises an eyebrow. A significant eyebrow. Because apparently everyone can do that except me.
“Plus, passionate for ancient anthropology. Studied it at university. Lots of visits to old tombs. And—” another significant eyebrow waggle “—investment success skyrockets within six months of visiting a Peruvian temple. Bad trip reportedly. Tunnel collapse. Dead guides. Only he survives. Fewer trips after that. All to Peru though.”
“Grimoire?” Clyde asks.
“Grimoire,” Tabitha answers.
“Grim-what?” I add—a faulty echo.
“Spell book,” they say in unison. Clyde grins broadly at Tabitha. She almost lets a smile flicker at the edges of her lips.
“Most of what we know about thaumaturgy,” Clyde explains, “all of the spells we know, basically, come from old texts. See, a spell is electricity violating the boundaries between two realities. Our reality and another one. You focus the electricity, either with thought patterns caused by the words of the spell, or you can make a machine do it. They focus the electricity with mathematics and totems instead. Fascinating stuff actually. Lot of texts written on it in the eighteenth century. Mad for it they were. But machines are a bit limited though. You can only program one spell into a machine. People can cast all sorts, different spells. Because we can say all sorts of things. Machines, a little lackadaisical in the vocab. Specific...” He catches my blank expression.
“Anyway, not totally relevant. But basically the electricity reaches out of our reality into another one and pulls something through. The problem isn’t reaching out of our reality; it’s knowing where exactly you’re reaching into and what you’re going to pull out. So it’s nice to know someone else has tried it before. See, a spell’s like a map. It lets you know where your spell is going and what it’s going to bring back with it. If you just randomly open holes in reality you have no idea what might come through. Nasty stuff, often.”
“Chernobyl,” Tabitha says.
“Exactly.” Clyde is animated now. “See, Chernobyl wasn’t really a nuclear meltdown. That was the Russians trying to pioneer their own spell. Tried to punch a particularly tricky and experimental hole and it did not go quite as well as they had hoped.”
“Wait a second,” I say. I blink several times. The gears are turning. I feel like I can almost get a handle on this one. “You’re saying the Chernobyl accident was caused by a communist Harry Potter?”
“Little more complicated.” Tabitha gives a disingenuous shrug and seems about to leave it at that, but then can’t help herself. “Experienced bastards, actually. Too ballsy for their own good, though. Ended the magic arms race. Pretty much. No one wanted to mess then. Beginning of the end. For us. This place.”
Clyde nods. “After that nobody wanted to play magic anymore. Everyone pretty much just gathered up their marbles and went home. Which, you know, understandable. Bit knee-jerk perhaps. I mean, depends on your point of view. Made things harder for us, though.”
“Freak out,” Tabitha says. “Massive. Collective trousershitting.”
“So a lot fewer funds. And a lot fewer people hunting down the remaining grimoires,” Clyde says.
“Speaking of which...” I start.
“Yes,” Clyde says. “Well, basically, a grimoire is like an atlas. Or a travelogue. Big list of where someone’s spells went, what they brought back. So you can reproduce the effect if you want.”
“And Olsted probably owns one,” Tabitha says.
“And now,” I say, finally connecting dots, “he’s using it to target MI37.”
“Working hypothesis.” Tabitha nods, still not quite looking at me. “So: either in league with the Progeny or is one of the Progeny. Neither scenario is very good.”
“Why, in God’s name, would anyone help the Progeny?” The idea is beyond me.
“Daughter,” Tabitha says.
“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Clyde says. “What Tabby says.” He shrugs.
Tabby? This time there’s no reaction from Tabitha to the nickname. There is something... But didn’t Clyde mention a girlfriend? Something else I can’t wrap my head around.
“What exactly did Tabby say?” I ask, trying to catch up.
Tabitha gives me the finger, so I’m still shy my Brownie points for the day.
“The Progeny do brain stuff,” Clyde continues. “Olsted’s little girl has got a brain problem. The whole mad cow thing. And I think... we think... Tabby thinks and I agree that there’s got to be, you know, some sort of overlap, some sort of knowledge. I don’t know. Even if there’s not, maybe one of them is riding around in a brain surgeon or something.”
I nod slowly. “OK,” I say. “Makes sense.” Probably. And Tabitha looks at me without abject disdain for a fraction of a millisecond, so maybe it really does.
“So,” I ask, “what’s next?”
There is a long pause.
“Get the grimoire.” Tabitha shrugs.
“Do we know where he’s keeping it?” I ask.
“Internet a bit light on that.” Tabitha doesn’t smile.
“I sort of... I don’t know—” Clyde shrugs “—just rather assumed the what-do-we-do-next bit was your sort of territory. Didn’t want to tread on toes.”
And there you go. Kayla’s gone and I already have a niche. I smile. “So we need to find out where he has it. Well, have I got a great idea for fans of coffee and body odor.”
Clyde cocks his head. Tabitha rolls her eyes in as disinterested a way as I think is humanly possible.
“Who’s up for a stakeout?” I say.
EIGHT EXCESSIVELY LONG HOURS LATER
Stakeouts. The paragon of policing tasks. Tedium at his most absolute. We’ve spent the entire working day parked outside Olsted’s apartment, crammed into Tabitha’s beaten-up Honda, and so far our most significant learning is that it only takes four cups of coffee before Clyde’s hands start to shake.
Tabitha could be happier about the situation. Actually, she could be happier about most situations, but this
particular one seems to have irked her more than usual. The phrase “I’m a fucking researcher” has become her mantra. I hear its echoes even though it’s been about ten minutes since she last said it.
There again I think I made a pretty good argument about needing as many eyes as possible. Which she ignored. And then Clyde made a terrible one on the same point, and she agreed to come along.
There is seriously something going on there.
She sits in the driver’s seat, he in the back, but I keep catching nervous-looking glances between them. Clyde seems to unconsciously touch his ear every time he speaks to her.
Working that mystery out seems like the least of my problems, though.
The doorman at Olsted’s building has a serious aversion to remaining behind his desk. He patrols the glass-fronted lobby, striding between leather couch, stone fireplace, and mahogany end tables. He doesn’t stay still. His eyes don’t stay still.
“He’s patrolling,” I say eventually. “Walking the perimeter. Guarding the place.” I shake my head. “That’s not what doormen do.”
“Wasn’t a doorman all his life.” Tabitha is sitting next to me. Despite her insistence that she shouldn’t be doing fieldwork, she’s good at this.
“Definitely,” says Clyde from the back seat. “I mean... probably. I guess. If you guys say so.”
That is actually one of the more exciting moments. And the sad bit is that part of me likes it. I feel comfortable in the car. Despite the pleather seats.
But the patrolling doorman makes me think that maybe we know where the grimoire is.
Then, just before midnight, a limo pulls up. Olsted gets out. Clyde jots down the plate number. And watching Olsted walk away from us, toward the building, I realize that our big takeaway from the evening is going to amount to knowing which door he prefers—left or right. A piece of minutia. Something that might be useful if we were going to carry out this operation in a month or two, but I don’t know if reality has that long. If Ophelia has that long. What we’re doing is sensible, but there’s no time for it.
No Hero Page 10
