Only then did I begin to understand how dangerous I was.
I SPENT THE NEXT hour on my laptop, lost in Porter databases and old research reports. I rarely used the laptop, which might have been why the insects spared it. Magic provided an amazing connection with the Porter network, but even magic couldn’t force the outdated hardware to process information at a faster rate.
In one window, I scrolled through various weapons we had cataloged over the years, looking for ideas to clear the rest of the bugs from Lena’s tree. I found nothing that looked like it would destroy metal while leaving her oak intact. The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who might have worked, having been canonically established as being ineffective on wood, but nobody had ever figured out how to use the controls on the blasted thing.
I was also reading abstracts of every paper and report Victor Harrison had ever filed. I didn’t expect to find a description of a secret self-destruct code that would blow up his six-legged creations, but I had hoped to find something that might help us.
“You’re a librarian. Can’t you do some sort of keyword search to speed this up?” Nidhi stood by the window where she could peer out at Lena’s tree in the backyard. Lena had returned to the garden, asking to be left alone.
“Sure, and that would help if he’d filed his paperwork correctly.” I fought the urge to throw the laptop against the wall. “Even if he had, the real problem is figuring out what he didn’t document. Half the things Victor built could have gotten him kicked out of the Porters.” He had won twenty grand one year by betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl, a game he had recorded on his illegally-modified VCR a week before it aired.
“He was as bad as you are in some ways,” Nidhi said. “Rules were never a priority. Once you start playing God, nothing else matters. You’re incapable of walking away from an idea, no matter how bad an idea it might be.”
I glanced away, thinking of certain reports and experiments I had failed to file with the Porters. “I know, I know. ‘If you really want to kill a libriomancer, hook a bomb up to a big red button and tell him not to press it.’”
For the first time that night, Nidhi almost smiled. “That sounds like Doctor Karim.”
“She knows her clientele,” I admitted. Regular appointments with a Porter-approved shrink were one rule you didn’t get to break. Even Gutenberg had his own personal therapist, though rumor had it she was a hundred and thirty years old and preserved on a heavily fortified computer system, courtesy of a brain download performed using a Richard Morgan cyberpunk novel. “Doctor Karim’s worried about post-traumatic stress after the mess downstate. I’m pretty sure she’s also screening me for signs of bipolar disorder.”
“A manic period is normal after magic use.” She looked pointedly at my legs, and I forced myself to stop drumming my heels on the floor. “Lena has been worried about you. She says you’re not sleeping well, and when you do, you have nightmares.”
I shoved the laptop away and rubbed my eyes. “What other things has she shared?”
“That Doctor Karim has prescribed stronger pills to help you sleep, and you’ve gone through two refills already.” She sighed. “Are you surprised that Lena and I talk about you, Isaac?”
I was, a little. My relationship with Lena had brought Nidhi Shah into my life in a new and unexpected way, but I found it easier not to think about that when I was with Lena. “What else does she say?”
“That you’ve been cutting back on your work at the library, and you spend hours locked away in your office. She says you and Gutenberg haven’t had the smoothest time working together. No surprise there. Anyone with his centuries of experience will have trouble making allowances for those of us with mere decades.”
“I am but an egg,” I said ruefully. She just stared at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never read Stranger in a Strange Land?”
“Heinlein?” She made a sour face. “No thank you.”
I had reread several Heinlein titles earlier this summer, trying to get a better framework for our three-way relationship. Unfortunately, the free love fantasies of Heinlein’s work hadn’t provided much insight into making such a relationship work in the real world. I had tracked down a few nonfiction titles that were more useful, though my boss had given me a very odd look when she saw my interlibrary loan request go through.
“Those computer chips have to be important,” Nidhi said. “Could you use an EMP to wipe them clean? Even a strong enough magnet—”
“Magnets won’t touch a boson chip.” I jumped up and began to pace. “Those things can survive a nuclear blast at close range. We need to lure the bugs out of the tree and destroy them all at once, and we need to do it quickly. You’ve known Lena longer than I have. How much time do you think she has before she has to return to her tree?”
“When her oak is healthy, she can stay away for up to a week if she absolutely has to. But with these things weakening her, I’m not sure.”
I glared at the laptop “Why the hell would Victor make something like this?”
“The same reason you keep drawing up plans for magic-based space exploration. Victor loved his toys. He loved to create, but he wasn’t always good at thinking through the consequences.”
I thought back to what we had seen that afternoon. “The man we saw was wearing metal armor of some sort.” I picked up the decapitated ladybug. “Imagine a swarm of these things clinging to you.”
“They could serve as armor and weapons both,” Nidhi said, nodding. “We thought the wendigo’s wounds had been made by bullets, but they were roughly the size of the holes these insects drilled through your door and ceiling.”
I shivered, remembering the insects landing on my body, biting into my skin. I imagined them burrowing deeper, through flesh and bone. “He’s got to be controlling them. When we showed up in Tamarack and began snooping around, he sent his insects to attack Lena’s tree.”
“How did he know where to find it?” Nidhi asked.
“One question at a time.” I steepled my fingers and tapped them against my chin. “Instead of destroying them, what if we overrode their orders?”
“How?”
I grabbed the phone and dialed the line for Jeneta Aboderin’s camp. I spent the next five minutes explaining that I was her internship supervisor, and yes, this really was a crisis.
The counselor on the other end sounded about fifteen. “It’s eleven o’clock. Curfew was an hour ago. Everyone is supposed to stay in their cabins until reveille.”
“Dammit, man, this is an emergency. We’ve got a burst water pipe here, and more than two thousand books that have to be bagged and frozen immediately!”
“You’re…you want to freeze the books?”
“I want to save them. Freezing minimizes the damage while we get them shipped off to be vacuum dried.” I talked over his protests, channeling a particularly obnoxious and arrogant Art History professor from Michigan State University. “That’s just the first step. If we don’t get this place dried out quickly, we’ll end up with mold, fungus, and possibly even…” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Silverfish.”
The counselor stammered an apology and went to fetch Jeneta. He must have been running, because she picked up only three minutes later.
“Do you have any poems that could draw insects out of a tree?” I asked the moment I heard her voice.
“Seriously? You dragged me out of bed for a termite problem?”
“I called because I need your help.”
“Oh, really?” I could hear her grin through the phone. “Before I agree to anything, does this mean you’ll take me with you next time you run off to do something interesting? Because if I’m going to be—”