his, I guess.” She leaned her head back on a suitcase and closed her eyes. “Money, you know, it’s... a lifeline up to a point, it lets you live, but after that it’s a cushion. You fall, you hit the cushion, you’re fine. You get right back up again. Life is softer, easier. It gives you more options than just to fall onto the floor.”
“Hell yeah. What’s that saying? It greases the wheels.”
“Check. It won’t buy us the information we need,” she added, “because that’s got no price but ingenuity. But it will help us find it.”
“What if you get robbed or something?”
“What, like I’ve never been robbed? People try in every single country I’ve ever been in. Why do you think I travel with a steel mesh bag? There’s always ways to access the funds.”
“What a creepy, rich-person thing to say,” I said. But it wasn’t just access, I thought. It was that she was missing something different, something fundamental about being rich. Maybe the authority, the markers of authority: the clothes, the security, the planes and cars and jewelry. She had some of them, but still struck me as one of those bright birds that is bright to attract a mate, but she preferred to pretend she was dull because she liked the dullness better. Everyone might say ‘That’s because she doesn’t want a mate,’ even though it was more that she didn’t want to be noticed at all.
But any small moving thing in the stillness would be noticed.
I leaned my head on a suitcase, shoving my hair behind my ear. “Anyway, tell me about this library we’re going to.”
“It’s kind of an amazing story,” she said. “It was started by this woman named Fatima Al-Fihri—”
“A woman? That must have been some news story around here.”
“Wow, way to pigeonhole the entire population of the Middle East for all time,” she said. I felt myself blush despite the heat of the bus. It actually had been a shitty thing to say; I wished I could swallow my words and just let her tell the story. Smooth move, Prasad.
She said, “Anyway, if you’re about done knowing nothing about the history of human civilization, she inherited some money from her father—he was a businessman—this would have been back in about eight-fifty AD, by the way. Not eighteen-fifty, eight-fifty. It was a mosque, and then a small school, and then a university. So what we’re going to is technically the university library, although it’s not a university any more.”
“What is it now?”
“Uh, closed. It’s being restored.”
“What?”
“I think the mosque is still in use. But the library, it’s in rough shape—roof is crumbling, electrical system is shot, water leaks and stuff—so people aren’t technically allowed in. Just the restoration staff.”
“Then how are we supposed to use it?” I said. “More bribes?”
“Gather data, yada yada, improvise. We’ll just have to watch out for…” She chewed on her lip, uneasy. “Fes is kind of a collection spot for magic; it rolls there like rainwater finding the low spot in the landscape. There are a couple of dozen, worldwide. Places like that attract… things like that. Human and otherwise. The minimal levels of natural magic wouldn’t usually be an issue, just a curiosity. But now…”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know. It’s a place where magic could be used. Where if I use my abilities, it might be like sending up a flare. And I’ve been thinking about the reactor, about what Drozanoth said...”
I hated to hear its name in her mouth. The familiarity of it, the way she didn’t hesitate or call it monster or thing. Her eyes were glassy in her red face, seeming much lighter than usual.
“I was running through the calculations again on the plane and it kind of struck me: where are the topographical atoms going?”
“…What?” I said, helpfully.
“They’re not here. They’re not in transit. They’re somewhere else, but they didn’t move to get there; they just flipped.”
“Uh.”
“Well, and my measurements were showing... it’s, um, it’s a little vague, but I think it might be another dimension.”
“Oh,” I said uncertainly. “Like from... what’s that book Carla’s reading in school. With the drawing. Tesseracts? Length, width, height, time, and...”
“No, not like that. But I mean, sort of exactly like that? It’s not a...they’re not going a distance away. They just flip across a plane, which is two dimensions. And then they flip back. And that’s what’s generating the power. I thought they were just staying in the water, but they’re not. They go next door,