No Hero (12 page)

I stare at him. I try to comprehend. There are aliens trying to destroy the world, and no one cares? Because it doesn’t affect the GDP?

“What the hell?” I splutter.

Clyde retreats into his shoulders. “Turns out we’re both a bit late on the scene, old chap,” he says. “The old guard’s gone. All the people who’ve seen what we’ve seen. They’re retired. Reassigned. No one in government comes to read the book. They don’t see the Progeny. They don’t really know. So we just rattle around in the old space. Alone and forlorn. Except, well, not forlorn, because, well, despite it all, I quite like my job.”

“We have to get them to come down and see,” I say This is a travesty of justice. “We have to force them.”

“Shaw tries,” he says. “She’s always trying.”

I shake my head. I feel like reality just slapped me a bit. Four of us against the end of the world.

“But we keep on fighting, don’t we?” says Clyde. He gives me a little smile. “What else can you do?”

I shake my head. I don’t know. Because there isn’t anything else to do. You just fight. Good old-fashioned Kurt Russell man alone stuff. But that doesn’t seem such a good thing when it’s me playing the role of action hero.

“Come on.” Clyde gives me a pat on the back. “Let’s go find what we’re looking for.”

I trail after him as he resumes looking down corridors of books. I’m genuinely gobsmacked. I can’t believe they’re killing the MI37 budget. I am so totally voting for the other guys next time the elections come up.

“No,” Clyde is muttering. “No.” Then, “Quicker way to do this.” He pulls out a flat silver battery and pops it into his mouth.

“Arcum locium met morum um satum Winston.”

“Winston?” I ask. Because it genuinely did sound like he said that, but that sounds about as magical as my arse.

Clyde is a little too preoccupied to answer though. His head tilts back. His eyes roll back, something like static playing across the lower row of eyelashes.

I take a step backwards. Whatever just happened it doesn’t look like it went right. I wish I had my baton with me. Instead, I heave something substantial-looking off one of the bookshelves, and wield it above my head.

Clyde opens his mouth. A shuddering groan creaks out. Then, the groan mutates, becomes words.

“Of all the spells I ever cast,” Clyde croaks, “this one stings the worst.”

He’s up on his tiptoes now, and suddenly his body jerks forward, like someone is reeling him in, a rope tied around his midriff. I stuff the book back on the shelf and follow. He jostles and bumps down a long corridor until we’re deep in shadows and the faint smell of mildew permeates the air.

Clyde points a hand down one row of the stacks.

“This one,” he croaks. The sound makes me cringe. It’s like someone’s down in his throat, working on it with sandpaper.

I follow his hand and peer into the narrow corridor of books. It’s been blocked off halfway down by a wooden bookcase. The bookcase’s shelves are as stuffed as anything else here, but still it seems out of place, somehow. And there’s furniture here too, I realize now, but each piece made from piles of hardbacks, paperbacks, loose-leaf documents. A bedsheet has been spread over a pile of them at the base of the bookshelf. A stack of atlases makes something like a bedside table. There’s an anglepoise lamp wedged there and a glass of water. And a plastic container of rice and gyro meat.

“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

“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.