“Nonsense, my dear.” Caldenia’s eyes gleamed. “I love watching her work.”
“He deployed scout spheres,” Arland said, watching the handful of robotic scouts meander their way into my territory. “He’s trying to map your range. An expensive way to do it.”
“Expensive and pointless,” Maud said. “They’ve been in range for the last six meters. She isn’t just going to destroy them the moment they touch the boundary.”
I concentrated on the depiction of the grounds. An area from the west side rushed at me, zooming closer and closer. The brush grew to mountain size, the individual blades of grass became a forest, and within that forest a chain of ten ants hurried toward the inn.
I’d scanned the ants when I first felt them crossing the boundary and now I tossed the results of the scan onto the screen so the others could see it. One individual ant expanded, rotating, the analysis rolling next to its image, listing the complex readouts. I was looking at a masterpiece of cyborg technology: a living insect carrying within it roughly a million nanobots. Silent, virtually undetectable by all but the most advanced scanners, the ants were meant to reach Gertrude Hunt and let loose their horde of tiny robots, capable of everything from surveillance to sabotage. The Draziri had no idea the architecture of the inn was fluid and changed at my whim. He was trying to map out Gertrude Hunt, looking for weak points.
Arland bared his teeth. “Clever bastard.”
“Not as clever as he thinks,” I murmured.
Magic tugged on me. I opened a second screen in the wall. The Hiru appeared on it.
“How may I be of service?” I asked.
“I realize… this time is not the best.” The Hiru’s voice sounded strained. “The first Archivarian has arrived on Earth.”
Not good. “Where?”
The Hiru raised his right palm. A small map of Red Deer appeared, a tiny glowing dot marking one of the streets. Walmart parking lot. Well, at least the first member of the Archivarius wouldn’t stand out.
“What does it look like?”
The Hiru touched his palm and a projection appeared of a man in his mid-thirties, brown-skinned, with a bald head and an intelligent face. His features were off somehow. Something about them telegraphed alien so loudly, it practically slapped your senses. It took me a moment to figure it out. His face had no pores. No wrinkles, no small imperfections, and no variations in tone troubled his skin. He looked plastic. The effect was freakish. But in darkness he would pass for a human.
“The Archivarian must be retrieved,” the Hiru said. “Immediately.”
No pressure. The ants were still a good two hundred yards away. The spheres drifted perilously close to the point where they would become a problem.
“The retrieval may have to wait.”
The Hiru leaned forward, his voice gasping. “The Archivarian cannot maintain its form in your planetary conditions. He must be submerged in inert gas to contain himself.”
Inert gas meant an argon chamber. A piece of cake, but only on the inn grounds.
“What happens when he loses his form?” I asked.
“He is a being of energy.”
Not good. So not good. The release of energy could mean anything from explosion, to bright light, to complete disintegration of the local space-time continuum.
“He must be retrieved. We have risked everything.” Desperation vibrated in his voice.
This information would’ve been excellent to have had earlier. “How long?”
“Thirty-four minutes.”
Damn it. I tossed a counter on the wall, seconds ticking back from thirty-four minutes to zero.
“Very well,” I said. “How will the Archivarian know my people?”
“Take this.” The Hiru’s left forearm slid open, revealing a small pen-like transmitter. “He will hunt your signal.”
And so would the Draziri, if they ever put two and two together. Arguing about it would waste time we didn’t have. After we dealt with this initial assault, the Hiru and I would have to sit down and talk.
I nodded and cut off the communication.
“I’ll take care of it,” Maud said.
I loved my sister so much. “Take my car. It’s bulletproof. Walmart is only seven or eight minutes from here.”
“My lady,” Arland said, and it took me a second to register that he wasn’t talking to me. “I would be honored to assist.”
“I can handle it,” Maud said.
“Take the vampire, my dear,” Caldenia said. “You never know when you may require muscle.”
Maud’s eyebrows knitted together.