A Rare Book of Cunning Device, Page 2

  “I don’t want to cramp your style,” shouted Postmartin over the roar of the air-conditioners. “But I’d be rather careful about using magic just here. A moment of overenthusiasm and it’s ‘Good-bye, priceless national treasure.’”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll ask you to come quietly then.”

  “Might be worth a try,” he said.

  Toby growled softly, and belched. I followed his gaze and saw movement just behind a pillar of silver metal pipes and bracing struts. Judging by the yellow and black hazard flashes, tampering with them could result in electrocution, suffocation, and/or freezing. Or more seriously, should you allow books to be damaged, death by librarian.

  I told the librarians to stay where they were and advanced, cautiously. I stopped when I had a good view. It was hanging off a junction box by, I estimated, eight of its ten legs. These, I saw, were cables made from thinner strands twisted together. Perhaps a deployment of the dulcimer strings. The book part was open like a pair of wings or a carapace, and hid how the cables connected to the main body.

  It was trembling as it clutched the junction box, and occasionally a twitch would ripple along the gripping legs. I had the strange impression it was feeding. But off what? Electricity? That would be pretty bloody unprecedented, magically speaking. Not to mention astonishing, in something crafted in 9th-century Baghdad. But obviously not impossible.

  It had been the leathery book cover that had put me in mind of a huge insect. But now that it was staying still, I found it a lot less frightening, right up to the point where it leapt off the box and went for my face.

  I don’t like insects, never have. I jumped backwards so hard that I practically landed on my bum, and looked up just in time to see the Cunning Device skittering over the concrete floor towards me. I ran. And I’m still impressed with the way I managed to flip over and get my legs under me before the bloody thing reached me.

  I went hairing down a corridor of silver pipes and blue tanks towards a chunky looking fire door. I didn’t dare risk looking behind me, and I doubted I’d hear the pitter patter of legs over the industrial noise of the air conditioning.

  Do you know that moment in a film, when someone on foot is being chased by a car, and instead of veering onto the pavement and hiding in a doorway or behind a bollard, they keep running straight ahead until they get run down? I like to learn from the mistakes of fictional characters. So at the next opportunity, I veered left down a corridor formed by rows of storage lockers. There, freed from the risk of committing treasonable levels of property damage, I turned, took a deep breath, and prepared an Impello.

  I figured my best bet was to flip it on its back and then pin it down. I stood ready, keeping my mind clear, and waiting. And waiting.

  Now, the thing is, you need a clear mind to do magic properly. And the thing about a clear mind is that it allows you to think rationally about your actions. So when the Cunning Device walked past my position — quite slowly I noticed — and blithely continued on its way, I was slightly insulted, to be honest.

  So I stepped out after it had gone past, to see what it did next. Which turned out to be: Bang into the door.

  It stepped back and tried again, harder this time. But the door was designed as a serious firebreak, and was too heavy. The Cunning Device skipped half a meter to the left and banged against the wall on that side, and then repeated the maneuver a meter to the right.

  Then, it rotated slowly in place, as if having a good look around before returning up the corridor towards me. Now that it wasn’t chasing me, I could see that the Cunning Device didn’t move that fast. The tips of its long spindly legs skittered on the smooth concrete floors.

  What it needed, I decided, was a set of tiny slippers, or more practically, friction pads on the ends of its legs.

  I considered jumping on it, and snapping its covers shut, the way you’re supposed to with an alligator’s jaws. But I was getting a handle on its behavior, so I stepped smartly out of its way, and followed behind.

  “Salman ibn Jabir al Rasheed,” I thought, “you must have been well chuffed with yourself when you built this. And we may only know you through your work, but what a piece of work it is.”

  “What can you tell me about this Salman al Rasheed?” I asked Ms Winstanley when she and Postmartin joined the parade. Almost nothing, as it turned out. He was mentioned in a text from 10th-century Baghdad as having been a worthy successor to the Banū Mūsā, the famous trio of inventive brothers, and as the author of the Book of Cunning Device. And that was it.

  “It’s not that unusual,” said Postmartin. “There are many people we only really know from their work.”

  “Shakespeare, for example,” said Ms Winstanley. “Came from Stratford, went to London, wrote plays, was a genius, retired back to Stratford with the fruits of his pen. His will, his grave, the house he used to live in is just about all we have. And the plays, of course, the glorious plays.”

  “You don’t think they might have been—”

  “Nooo!” said both librarians simultaneously.

  “Our Salman is 700 years older still,” said Ms Winstanley. “He could have been the toast of Baghdad in his day, but there’s no guarantee we would have heard of him.”

  I wondered how close we’d come to having a magic robot based industrial revolution in the 10th century. And what had happened to prevent it? I decided that for the moment, I was going to add that question to the long list of what my cousin Abigail has taken to calling The Big Bumper Fun Book of Unanswered Questions (001.098).

  So, we trooped after the Cunning Device as best we could as it worked its way back down to Basement 2 – via the Paternoster Book Delivery System, I noticed, and returned itself to its assigned shelf in the book cage.

  “What now?” asked Ms Winstanley.

  I didn’t think it was a good idea to let an unclassified magical device run around inside the nation’s rare book collection. So I asked Postmartin whether the Folly, under one of its many agreements, had the authority to confiscate dangerous magical artifacts.

  “As a matter of fact, I think we do,” said Postmartin.

  “Now see here, Harold,” said Ms Winstanley.

  But Postmartin held up a placating hand. “We’ll call it a loan, and craft a nice, tailor-made storage facility,” he said.

  “Inside a Faraday cage,” I thought. “Inside a room paneled with greenwood and corkboards and other nonmagically conductive stuff.”

  “You can research under controlled conditions, and partake of Molly’s growing range of afternoon teas,” he said.

  I think afternoon tea might have clinched it, because Ms Winstanley deflated, but only a little.

  “I told you he was a pirate, didn’t I?” she said.