The Nominal Hero, chapter 9: A Council of War
So there were seven of them in Caden’s room, including Paz, whose participation was the price of getting to have his friends over. “Just let her play with you,” Mr. Keller had said tiredly, before disappearing into his office for the day. “It won’t hurt you to make her feel included.”
Right now she and Duck were playing with Caden’s Legos at his desk. Mushroom stood by the window, looking out at the snowy yard. Ruth sat in a chair she’d dragged in from the kitchen, and the three boys were crowded onto the bed.
Caden felt like the setting ought to be more ominous. It should be a dim, candle-lit room at the top of a stone tower, with a table covered in maps, and serious people with swords standing about. A council of war shouldn’t have Legos, or Tanker Man posters, or loud chewing noises as Masami crunched his way through a bag of apple slices.
And, really, Caden thought, it probably shouldn’t have kids.
But if not them, then who?
“Okay, so there are two problems,” Ruth said. She had a notebook and a pen in hand. “First, the war in the Nouns’ world. Second, the witches in the woods.”
“If we win the war, the witches will have to surrender, right?” Hunter asked.
Duck turned from the desk to face them. “Who’s we, exactly?” they asked mildly.
“Me and you and Caden and Ruth and you and me,” Paz offered. Duck glanced fondly down at her.
“Because it sounds,” they continued, “like you’ve already picked a side.”
“Well,” Hunter said, “this is a world of science. We don’t have magic here.”
“Maybe we ought to, though,” Masami said. “I want to see more magic. Don’t you want to see more magic? I mean, the witches were scary, but they were cool. And the fish were cool. And like--” He frowned, trying to put words to what he was thinking. “I mean, the fish being endangered is a science problem, right? Like, scientists invented chemicals and, um--”
“And plastic,” Caden agreed, seeing his point. “And the ozone layer.”
“No, the ozone layer is a good thing,” Hunter said. “You mean putting holes in the ozone layer.”
“Oh, yeah. Why did they do that?”
“To let the spaceships get through,” Masami said promptly, around a mouthful of apple.
“Okay, that is definitely not true, because on New Adventures of Captain Planet--”
“Okay, okay, anyways,” Masami said loudly, “the world has a lot of--I mean, maybe magic could solve some of the science problems in the world. Our world, I mean, I don’t know if the Noun world has water pollution or, or--what else does science give you?”
“Cars,” Caden said. “Factories. Smoking.”
“Bombs,” said Hunter.
“Antibiotics,” Ruth countered. “Telescopes. Phones. Knowing about washing your hands. People used to die because they drank water that had horse manure in it. Would you really want to live in a world where scientists hadn’t figured out that was a bad thing?”
“I bet I could have figured out it was a bad thing,” Masami said loftily. “I’d smell it and go, yuck, horse manure water, maybe I’ll drink something else.”
“That’s not how--ugh, okay, never mind that.” Ruth bit the end of her pen, thinking. “I’m just saying, if I had to choose, I’d rather have a world with science in it than one without.”
“But we don’t know what a world with just magic would be like,” Caden pointed out. “Science is sort of the safe option, because we know about science. A magic world could be anything.” Is he too cautious or is he too bold? Maybe the witches had foreseen this conversation; maybe they were trying to influence Caden to make that leap, to choose the unknown.
Part of him wanted to. Masami was right, it had been a thrilling couple of days, and probably none of it would have happened in a world that obeyed the laws of physics as humanity knew them. Of course, maybe the Nouns’ powers were some kind of super-science. It seemed to Caden like even the Nouns themselves weren’t really sure.
Mushroom, the scientist, turned away from the window and spoke for the first time. “This is all a little bit academic, though, isn’t it?” they said. “You’re acting like whichever side you choose will automatically win. I haven’t heard anything yet that sounds like an actual strategy for making that happen. And--forgive me--you don’t exactly seem like soldiers.”
“Kids aren’t supposed to be soldiers,” Ruth said. “There are laws against it.”
“We have a plan,” Caden said. He and Hunter and Masami had talked it over for most of the morning, before the others arrived, and he was pretty sure it ought to work.
Ruth blinked. “You do?” Caden nodded, a little stung that she sounded so surprised. “Okay, well, what is it?”
“Actually, maybe you shouldn’t say,” Mushroom broke in. “At least, not--well--” They looked aside, seeming embarrassed.
“At least not until you’re sure someone here isn’t going to run off and tell your enemies?” Duck suggested. “Someone who actually happens to like living in a world with a soul?” They held up the Lego construction they’d been fiddling with. It was a red-and-white mushroom, with glasses. “Ooh, look at me, I’m a botanist and a military genius--”
“Not funny!” Mushroom made a grab for it. Paz squealed. “You of all Nouns should know better than to start playing around with anything that represents people. Things in this world have effects we can’t calculate.”
“Ooh, I’m a scientist, I’m full of fancy science words!” Duck sounded bitterly furious.
“Knock it off!” Caden clambered to his feet, one hand on the wall so he didn’t overbalance on the squishy mattress. Again he thought of how much more dramatic this would have been in a book: standing on a stone table, waving a dagger to emphasize his words, being taller. “This isn’t helping. I’m going to tell you our plan, and Duck, I trust you. At least I trust that you’d tell us first if you were going to fight us. But I think you’d rather have no war, even if it means no magic too.”
Duck nodded reluctantly. “Well, yes,” they said. They took a deep breath. “I still think you’re choosing the wrong side. But I’ll help you.”
“Okay,” Caden said. “Here’s the plan.”
It was a simple plan, really. All the Nouns seemed to have niches they fit into, in their world. The existence of, for instance, the Bookshelf type of Nouns meant that there were not just bookshelves specifically, but everything you needed for bookshelves to be common: books, and bookstores, and delivery trucks, and furniture design studios, and warehouses, and roads to drive the trucks on, and on and on.
Mushroom and Duck looked at each other, shrugged, and agreed that this was true.
And the creation of new Nouns, Caden went on, led to them having always existed. This meant that the infrastructure around them had always existed too, ever since the beginning.
The Nouns admitted that this was generally the case.
So all they had to do, Caden concluded, was call up Nouns that would give the scientific, technological side of the war a decisive advantage. Once they existed, once they had always existed, the Science side would have had that advantage right from the start, and the war would be over as soon as it had begun. Magic would never gain a foothold, because Science would always have had the tools to defeat it.
There was a long silence in the room.
“You are talking,” Mushroom said at last, slowly, “about weapons.”
Caden nodded.
“We started making a list,” he said. “Missiles. Grenades. Fighter jets.”
“We’re not sure about fighter jets,” Hunter added, “because maybe Nouns have to be just one word, which is why ‘those robot police dogs with no heads’ is probably also no good.” This was directed at Masami, who shrugged.
“Robots, anyway,” he said. “Drones. Mechas. Tanks.”
“You’re talking about turning their whole world into a battlefield,” Ruth said, appalled.
“It already sort of is, though,” Mushroom said. “It does sound terrible, having all those things--but if it’s going to end the war, make it never have happened--” They shrugged. “I think it’s a good plan.”
“Weapons.” Duck shook their head. “You’re going to turn Noggles themselves into a weapon. This feels wrong.”
“I don’t know how war’s supposed to feel,” Caden said, “but I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t feel right.” He pulled out the glasses. “If these can--”
He stopped.
The glasses were whole again.
Tape was still wadded around the joint and wrapped across the lens, but the lens was unbroken now, the cracks in it gone. “That’s weird,” Caden said slowly. Every time he thought he was starting to get a handle on the rules of all this, some new wrinkle appeared.
Duck absently preened their feathers. “No, I can see it,” they said. “Hunter fixed them, and hunters have to have good eyesight, so they grew back together.” They shrugged. “It’s a stretch, sure, but lots of Nouns’ powers are more loosely connected to their traits than that.”
“You’re saying I have Noun powers?” Hunter asked, bewildered. “I did that?”
“But people aren’t Nouns,” Masami protested. “Hunter’s not actually a hunter.”
“I’ve gone fishing before,” Hunter said. “That’s like hunting fish.”
“Well, okay, but people aren’t--”
“No, wait, Bookshelf said something about that,” Ruth remembered. “Some people are half connected to the Nouns’ world already, they said, or something like that. Maybe having a noun for a name helps make that connection?”
“It can’t be just that,” Caden objected. “There’s loads of people named--um--Rose, or, or Bill. Grownups and all. Someone would have noticed something.”
“Maybe the powers only affect the Noggles,” offered Hunter, still looking a little dazed by the idea. “So if someone never saw a pair, they’d never know, right?”
“We should figure out what else you can do,” Caden said. “It could be useful.” For the war, he didn’t add, but everyone knew what he meant. The gloom that had been lifted for a minute by this new discovery wrapped itself around them again.
Ruth broke the silence. “We’d better have some lunch,” she said, “and then I need to get back to school. Let’s--let’s give this plan some thought, okay? Let’s not do anything until we’ve had time to think it over.”
“We have to finish the list of Nouns we’ll need anyway,” Hunter said. “And we should all go over it to make sure.”
Privately, Caden was glad of a reason to delay. It was his plan, mostly, but Duck was right: it felt wrong.
“Tomorrow, then,” Ruth said. “We’ll all make lists, and compare them tonight, and I’ll come home for lunch tomorrow and we’ll do it then.”
“Tomorrow,” Caden agreed grimly. A new world.
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