Worldweavers: Spellspam (7 page)

“I’ll tell you what we know,” Mrs. Chen said, “but it isn’t much right now—we were hoping to learn more before involving the FBM.”

“I hear you,” said Humphrey. “Thea…you are Paul and Ysabeau’s daughter, the Double Seventh child. Am I to understand that you have found your path…? I know you did something to this room. With a computer in your hands.”

Thea bit her lip, and then said quietly, “There
is
a way of getting more than four people into that room. And I could just…show you….”

“It would save a lot of explaining,” Mrs. Chen murmured.

Humphrey said nothing, but his eyes were vivid with interest.

“But…wait a minute,” said Mrs. Chen, “you’ve already transferred once…can you
go one further from a secondary sphere and not affect the four there below with it?”

“I think so,” Thea said. “If I
specify
that. Wait just a second….”

She thought for a moment, chewing on her lower lip, and then typed furiously for a few moments before looking up from her screen.

“This time, you’d better hold on,” Thea said.

“Mr. May, put your hand on her shoulder,” said Mrs. Chen after a moment.

Humphrey May obeyed with an economical motion, his fingers resting lightly on Thea’s upper arm.

“Okay, here goes,” Thea said, and punched
ENTER
.

“O
Y,” SAID
H
UMPHREY, AFTER
a beat of silence.

Thea and Humphrey appeared to materialize above and behind the quartet in the Nexus room, looking at them as though through a mirrored one-way window.

The four in the Nexus room seemed to be unaware of the watchers. Terry was seated at the computer, typing something and apparently talking at the same time—or at least Thea and Humphrey could see his mouth moving, but there was no audio to this scene.

“Can we turn up the sound?” Humphrey asked, as both became aware of the barrier of silence.

“I don’t know, I never thought to specify
that
, there were too many other things to think of. But let me see,” said Thea. “You stay. I’ll be right back.”

She winked out next to Humphrey, who actually flinched. Mrs. Chen flinched in exactly the same way as Thea popped back into her other self, back into the principal’s office.

“What did you do with him?” Mrs. Chen asked, with some consternation, looking around for Humphrey. She may not have liked the presence of the government mages at the Academy, but the loss of one of them, at a student’s hands, would probably have been more trouble than it was worth.

“Don’t worry, he’s fine,” Thea said with a grin, typing. “I just needed the computer. There, that’s done it. I’ll be right back, Mrs. Chen.”

She winked out again, back to where Humphrey May was apparently trying to lip-read the conversation through the backs of the heads of the people in the room below. Just as Thea materialized beside him, both their ears seemed to pop in a manner not unlike that in a climbing airplane, and sound flooded in from the room below.

Where, now, there appeared to be
five
people.

Thea blinked and blanched, the color draining from her face as she reached out to clutch the nearest support—which just happened to be
Humphrey May’s elbow.

“That’s
Twitterpat
!…I mean…that’s Mr. Wittering…,” she whispered. “How…?”

Humphrey turned to her. “Twitterpat?” he echoed, amused. “But that isn’t a ghost—Terry just turned him on. I’m guessing that Twitterpat must be some sort of a holographic projection, left behind as a program in the machine. I think they’ve been having a chat in there, but the sound…only just came back on. Thanks, by the way. Neat trick. Now,
shhh
.”

“…would rephrase your question,” the Twitterpat hologram was saying. It was not very good quality, with blurring at the edges and a set of defined expressions that appeared to rotate on its features randomly. “My abilities are limited at this time.”

“Again?” Luana said. “What’s the point of this, if he can’t answer a simple question? If you go to the trouble of leaving behind a virtual copy of yourself as a help file, it isn’t very helpful to be constantly told that the help file can’t help you.”

“I only just found the program,” Terry said. “There may be refinements I haven’t discovered yet.”

“Have you asked it?” Luana said acerbically.
“I know, don’t tell me, it told you to rephrase the question. Which brings us back to the original track. The gobbledygook spellspam. I can see how that was done.”

“I figured that one out myself,” Terry said under his breath, staring at his hands on the keyboard. “As soon as it hit. As soon as I found it.”

Luana shot him a look of pure dislike, and continued as if she had not been interrupted.

“I can see exactly how that particular spell was executed—it’s a pretty neat embedding,” she said. “I know precisely how to counter now. Principal Harris, you simply have to let us handle this one our way. We were sent in to deal with this problem even before you had the emergency—but right now, it’s of the utmost importance that we contain this outbreak. And that, while making absolutely
sure…”
She glanced at Terry again, briefly enough to be deliberately insulting, and then back at the principal. “We have to firewall this location, apparently far more solidly than has been done so far.”

Terry roused, his head coming up sharply, his eyes flicking briefly to Luana’s face and then coming back to fasten on the principal’s—who was standing back, his arms folded
defensively across his chest.

“I’d be grateful if you could rephrase your question. My abilities are limited at this time,” said Twitterpat’s hologram serenely.

“Shut that thing off!” Luana snapped. “If it isn’t helping…”

The computer pinged once, sharply, in a “you’ve got mail” alert.

Luana and Keir both turned instinctively toward the screen even as Terry reached for the dreamcatcher device lying on the desk. The principal unfolded his arms, leaning forward, and then glanced briefly up toward the stairwell. Thea thought she could hear a voice calling down something almost inaudible, but raised, as though posing a question.

Luana, who was on the right side of the desk, reached out and seized the computer mouse at Terry’s elbow.

“No, wait…
don’t touch that
! I need to…,” Terry yelped, trying to prevent anyone from looking on it with an unshielded eye.

“Usme bhi kuch na kuch gadbad hai
⁴
,”
Luana said.

“What?” said the principal, leaning closer.

? ? ? ?

“Lako ih je prepoznati kad znas sta trazis
⁵
,”
Keir said practically in the same instant, nodding.

“Kya bola?
⁶
”
said Luana, turning around to look at him.

“Meddyliais i buasa hyn yn digwydd
⁷
,”
the principal muttered, closing his eyes.

“Molim?
⁸
”
said Keir.

“I’d be grateful if you could rephrase your question. My abilities are limited at this time,” said Twitterpat’s hologram helpfully.

Luana straightened up, staring at the two men.
“Tum dono kya khel khel rahe ho?
⁹
”
she demanded.

“Oh,
God
,” Thea said, already raising a hand as though she was about to smash it through the “window” that separated her from the others. “I’ve got to—”

“Wait!”
Humphrey said, catching her wrist. “I still don’t know how you do what you do, but forcibly breaking a boundary between any two
of your spheres can’t be a good thing for anyone. Let’s get back and we will go and…”

“Olin ka ilii an my öhässä sil lä kerrallan
¹⁰
,”
said Terry despairingly.

Humphrey stopped, mid-sentence, mid-motion. “
That
was Alphiri,” he said softly. “Now I am really starting to worry about this. How did they get their fingers into this pie? Take us back, Thea. Now. I need to undo this one, fast.”

With a last frightened look at the astonished people talking at one another in four different languages, Thea obeyed.

“Is everything all right?” Mrs. Chen demanded, surging forward as Thea and Humphrey popped back into the principal’s office.

“No,” said Humphrey, crossing the room in two long strides and launching his lanky frame down the hidden stairwell.

“Thea?” said Mrs. Chen weakly as she subsided onto the edge of the principal’s desk, clutching it for support.

“There’s been another spellspam,” Thea said, typing furiously. “Luana went and opened it, and they all…That’s what Humphrey’s gone
down there to try and fix. And I’m trying to…take them all back to…”

The room blinked again, as it did once before, and then everything seemed to settle down into its proper position once more.

“Hang on,” Thea said, dumping the laptop unceremoniously onto the chair next to her and crossing the office in Humphrey’s wake to peer down the stairwell. “Everybody okay?” she called out.

There was a murmur of voices from below, and then a sound of footsteps on the stairwell. Thea stepped back, her face white and drawn. Mrs. Chen launched herself from the principal’s desk, in time to catch Thea as she swayed and crumpled, her legs folding bonelessly underneath her.

“Is she all right?” the principal demanded, stepping into his office from the Nexus stairwell.

“I think you’d better get the nurse in here,” Mrs. Chen murmured. “What just happened?”

“She stretched too far,” Terry murmured, from the stairwell doorway.

Humphrey came over as well, knelt beside the principal, took one of Thea’s hands in his own,
and rubbed at it gently. “By the time I got down there, she’d…I don’t know…wound back time. To just before the spellspam e-mail came in. Just before everyone looked at it. I made sure…they didn’t. I was going to try a counterspell, but it wasn’t needed—Thea had managed to…prevent…” He shook his head, very slightly. “Time
and
space,” he murmured. “Perhaps we should reconvene tomorrow, and before then I’ll try to explain to Luana why her approach…would not be a good thing right now. But I also have a far bigger problem.”

“Bigger than
her
?” Mrs. Chen muttered, with a swift glance of dislike in Luana’s direction.

“The Alphiri,” Humphrey said. “I’ll set Luana on that—it’s the sort of crisis that would be far more her thing. And while she’s doing that…let me take care of the Academy. In the meantime…” He bent forward and effortlessly scooped Thea into his arms, unfolding his long legs like a crane and getting up while cradling her against his shoulder. “Terry, would you like to show me the way back to the infirmary?”

T
HEA WOKE SUDDENLY, WITH
a start. She was in a strange room with a white enamel bedside cabinet on which sat a half-full glass of water. The window was in the wrong place, across the room instead of beside her, and in front of it sat Tess, engrossed in a book.

Thea’s mind clicked into gear and started to classify.

Infirmary.

The Nexus. People doing strange things…speaking in weird languages…
Twitterpat
.

Thea laid her palms flat against the mattress
and bolted upright into a sitting position.

The sharp movement made Tess lift her head. For a moment it looked like she might content herself with that and go back to her book, but then her eyes lost their soft, slightly unfocused look and her face lit up with a smile of genuine delight. She closed the book with one hand and crossed the room to perch on the edge of Thea’s bed.

“Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty,” Tess said. “About time you woke up.”

“What time is it?” Thea said. “What happened? Where is everyone? Did they really…”

Tess laughed, lifting both hands to stem the outburst. “You slept for…” She consulted her watch briefly. “Well, it’s pretty close to twenty hours,” she said. “Another hour or two and Mrs. Chen would have had the nurse declare you to be in a coma and taken to the hospital. But Humphrey May said you’d be okay, and apparently he was right.”

“Are they still here?” Thea asked.

“Who?” Tess said. “The hotshot triplets? Yeah. Luana’s been prowling the place like a caged tiger. She was supposed to go back to Washington yesterday with Keir, but the car that
was supposed to pick them up never arrived—and now apparently the bigwigs are sending a helicopter for them. Or so the rumors have it. It seems that whatever was going on with all of you folks just before you passed out has stirred up a nice little hornet’s nest back at headquarters.”

“Could you start at the beginning, please?” Thea asked. Her hair was a tangled mess, hanging over her face and dangling before her eyes, and she lifted one hand to push it back. “I’ve been
asleep
for nearly a whole day.”

“I was hoping you’d tell me the details,” Tess said. “All I know is that Terry somehow invoked Twitterpat’s ghost, and apparently that was enough to spook everyone—”

“That wasn’t what spooked everyone,” Thea said slowly, trying to piece together the fragments of her memory. “When Terry suddenly started spouting Alphiri…”

Tess sat up sharply. “What?”

“Everyone was jabbering in tongues,” Thea said. “I have no idea what any of them actually
were
, even, and I don’t know if they did either—and I’m not even sure that any of them were aware that they were talking funny, they all just thought that everyone else was—and then Terry
said something and Humphrey said that was Alphiri, and that he needed to find out…and then we went back…and I went…”

Her voice died out altogether as she sat in the infirmary bed, frowning slightly, trying to remember something elusive and yet important, which was nagging at the fringes of her memory. Tess glanced down at her watch again, and then at the door.

“Humphrey made everyone swear that they’d call him the moment you woke up,” she said, “but if nobody else knows you’re awake, then nobody can call him…. Do you want a bit more time to pull yourself together?”

“Are you telling me that someone’s been sitting with me nonstop?”

“Yeah,” Tess said. “It was mostly Magpie and me, in shifts, and Ben, once—and the nurse has been keeping an eye on you at night. Whatever went down was
big
, apparently, and you made quite an impression on the government folks.” She shook her head a little, a gesture full of the regretful knowledge of someone bearing bad news. “I have to tell you, I am not entirely sure of how much of a good thing that is.”

“From obscurity straight to center stage,”
Thea said with a grimace. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Mrs. Deaver would shoot you for using a cliché,” Tess said primly, and then laughed. “But I know what you mean.”

“I just wish…I could remember what exactly happened back there,” Thea said. “I can see stuff, but it doesn’t make any real sense….”

“Do you want me to get Humphrey?” Tess said. “Maybe he can explain things to you.”

“He’ll probably need to haul the other two in here, too,” Thea said. “Mrs. Chen doesn’t like that Luana woman, and I can’t say I do, either.”

“She’s a political sharklet,” Tess said. “I’ve seen plenty like her—they show up at our house all the time currying favor—young and hungry and just waiting for a chance to make her mark. I think she smells it here. Which is bad, because such people are remarkably good at stirring up trouble where there wasn’t any before. But I know how to get word to Humphrey alone.” Tess actually smirked as she said that, and Thea was instantly distracted.

“You
know
something,” she said.

Tess leaned forward a little in a conspiratorial manner. “He’s smitten with our Woodling,
apparently, from what I hear,” she said.

“Signe? Signe Lovransdottir?”

“Yup. He practically ran our gorgeous Environmental Studies teacher down in a corridor just outside the infirmary after he left you here, and he looked into her eyes and was lost. He’s been following her around adoringly ever since. What’s more, it’s mutual.”

“How do you know? You’ve been in here with me,” Thea said.

“Well, I have the first from eyewitness testimony—Terry saw them trip over each other.”

“Terry wouldn’t know smitten if it bit him on the nose,” Thea said succinctly.

Tess laughed. “Not all wrong, but in this case he was just reporting on what he saw, not stating an opinion.”

“Ugh, enough, already,” Thea said. “Is there anything to eat around here?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tess said with a grin, and slipped out of the room.

About fifteen minutes later, a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes in front of her, Thea was feeling much better—but increasingly frustrated.

“I think you’d better call Humphrey May,” she said to Tess through a mouthful of potato. “I
need to know what happened back there. I’ll be no use to anyone if I just wilt away like a scythed flower every time I try to do anything with…you know. I need a vacation….”

“I don’t think you can count on having one this summer,” Tess said frankly. “You had a reprieve because nobody outside your family and a few trustworthy friends knew what you could do. Now you’ve done it in public. The Feds know. They’ll want a piece of you. Trust me.”

“But we can
all
do it,” Thea said, rebellious. “With the whale…when we hunted the Nothing…you guys followed me….”

“You left a trail,” Tess said. “
You
led the way there. You left us a message, however cryptic, on the computer—and we knew what it meant, because of what we had all done before. But that was before anyone else knew about it—before you ripped away the curtain, and Luana was there to see it. You’re dead meat. They’ll cut you up and serve you with relish.”

“Thanks a lot,” Thea said.

“My uncle will make sure of it,” Tess said morosely.

“Knock, knock,” said Humphrey May from the door. “Okay if I come in? Your uncle will
make sure of what, Tess?”

Tess had looked up, startled, and her look quickly passed from surprise to wariness. “I’m just saying,” she said, with a touch of defensiveness in her voice, “Thea is toast. After this. What with the Bureau…”

Humphrey raised a hand, palm out, in a gesture of oath-taking. “I will not let anyone toast Thea,” he said solemnly. “That’s a promise. Glad you’re finally awake. Are you feeling better now?”

“A little,” Thea said. It was hard to believe, after having slept for so long, but now that she was safe and fed and warm, she was beginning to feel drowsy again.

Humphrey saw her eyelids fluttering, and smiled.

“I do want to talk to you—no toasting involved—but it can wait until tomorrow. I am going to strongly suggest to Mrs. Chen that you spend tonight here before going back to the residence hall. And I’ll keep Luana away from you, at least until you’re well enough to run and hide by yourself.”

“Is everything…all right?” Thea asked carefully.

“Everything is under control,” Humphrey said. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning—there’s plenty of time for everything.”

As it turned out, he was wrong—but Thea happily snuggled back down into her pillow until late the next morning, when she finally woke up feeling much more like herself—ready for yet another day that threatened to dissolve into crisis.

It was a Saturday, and Tess and Magpie both came to spring Thea from the infirmary, walking on either side of her like a pair of human book-ends. The three of them ran into Ben and Terry on the steps of the infirmary.

“They’re at our heels,” Ben said, “and I don’t know if I should tell you to stand your ground or turn around and flee back to bed, Thea.”

“It’s probably just as well you’re near the infirmary,” Terry said. “Back to bed might not be a bad idea.”

“Talk sense!” Tess said. “What are you going on about?”

“Her,” said Thea with an economical toss of her head in the direction of Luana Lilley, who was striding toward them with a sense of doom-filled purpose, closely followed by Mrs. Chen
and a couple of other people who might have been the principal and Keir Adama.

“Where’s Humphrey?” Tess hissed. “He said he would be here to protect you….”

“He’s on his way,” Terry said. “I swear, I don’t ever want to get that guy angry at me. He sent us here, and he was
mad
.”

“At whom?” Thea said, just as Luana and Mrs. Chen both arrived at the foot of the steps, flushed and breathless.

“All right, you’re awake,” Luana snapped. “And I want some answers, now.”

“I don’t care who you are, I will not have you terrorizing a student in this manner,” Mrs. Chen snapped back. “The principal is on his way, and you can be sure that I will make a report directly to Washington if I have to….”

“You don’t. I’ve already done so,” said a familiar voice from behind Thea.

Humphrey May, who had just rounded the corner of the infirmary, was coldly and fiercely angry, his blue eyes chips of diamond-edged ice. “She knew better, as always,” Humphrey said, and his voice, too, was low and cold. “What were you hoping Thea could tell you, Luana? That she could lead you to Signe?”

“What happened to Signe?” Thea asked. She liked her Environmental Studies teacher, aside from being honestly intrigued by her exotic Faele origins.

“Thea Winthrop should come to Washington with us right now, Humphrey—you know that,” Luana said, lifting her chin defiantly. “You have to admit she’s been close to every one of these spellspams when they happened.
She
was in the library when the first one hit the school.
She
was there when the long-word spellspam became an aural spell and started spreading by the spoken word.
She
was close by when we were all hit by the language spell at the Nexus—”

“And she was still practically unconscious when
you
opened the one that sent Signe away,” Humphrey said. “You’re reaching, Luana.”

“Thea and Terry both,” Luana said obstinately, keeping the focus off Signe and what had happened to her. “We should take them both back with us. I think we all agree that they know more than they are saying. They can help us figure it all out.”

“They are
kids
, Luana,” Humphrey said. “Your entire case rests on two kids from the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent?”

They all winced at the deliberate use of those words. It was a name Thea herself had used once, but that seemed a very long time ago. Mrs. Chen looked honestly appalled that the phrase had been uttered out loud, right in the heart of the Academy, within hearing of its students.

But it had not been Humphrey who had used those words first. It was obvious that it had been Luana’s snide dismissal of the place, not his own.

“Well,” Humphrey said, ignoring everyone else’s reaction, “you’ve learned better, haven’t you? We will discuss later, in much more detail, whose competence is in question here.”

“What happened…?” whispered Thea.

“There was another,” Terry said. “Another of those messages.”

Humphrey made a chopping motion with his hand. “Not out here,” he said. “Terry is right. Another of those spellspam messages slipped through. Luana didn’t go through your gateway, Terry, she used an outside network—from
my
laptop—and one got through. And it was just Signe’s bad luck that she happened to be the one to see it first. And Signe’s
gone
. I don’t know
how or where yet. But you”—he turned back to Luana, the ice back in his eyes and voice—“you
are
going straight back to Washington, and I will make an earnest recommendation that you be held fully responsible for all of this. You’ve always wanted responsibility—I will make sure you get it, in spades. Keir,” he said, addressing their recently arrived colleague, “make sure she doesn’t get into any more trouble before the helicopter gets here.”

“What are you going to do?” Keir asked in a low voice.

“I’ll stay here. I have to find her. Fast.”

“The branch,” Magpie said, suddenly understanding. “Her branch. Her tree. If she was taken without it, and stays without it for too long…”

“What?” Thea whispered, her eyes full of tears.

“She could die,” Magpie said.

Humphrey turned a bleak look on her, and then turned away.

Keir had shepherded Luana away, and the principal, after a few whispered words to Mrs. Chen and a quick nod to Thea, had followed them.

“Phone your parents from my office, Thea,” Mrs. Chen said as she gathered the others and turned toward the residence hall. “I have been keeping them apprised, and Humphrey talked to your father, but I think you should reassure them that you are all right.”

A passing teacher hailed Mrs. Chen with a question, and she broke step to answer; while her attention was elsewhere, Thea turned and clutched at Terry’s sleeve. “What got through?” she hissed, and then rolled her eyes. “You probably can’t even say it. Tess, do you know?”