Strangeness and Charm

by Mike Shevdon

  "He'll be fine. Stop worrying," she said over her shoulder.

  "What if he cries?" I asked her.

  She stopped and turned. "Will you stop it! This is the first time I've managed to get away and I will not have you spoiling it for me by reminding me at every verse-end that I've left him behind. If he cries then I expect Lesley will change his nappy. That's what I would do if he cried. For goodness sake, Niall, you have to stop fretting. You've been a father before; you know they don't die if you leave them alone for five minutes."

  "Yeah, well. I felt more in control the first time, and look where that got me."

  "So that's it, you're not fretting about the baby, you're fretting about Alex." She turned and continued down the corridor.

  "I tried to reach her again last night."

  "And?"

  "Little fragments of things, but nothing you could make any sense of. She's still blocking me. Who knows who these people are that she's fallen in with."

  "She doesn't want you interfering, and the way you've been behaving I can hardly blame her." Blackbird stopped at a Tjunction in the corridor. "They've repainted all this since I was last here, but it's this way. At least I think so." She marched off along the corridor again.

  "What if something happens to her? What if the authorities catch her and imprison her again?"

  "Do you honestly think they're going to catch her? The guards at the Tower couldn't, so what makes you think the police are going to do it? And if they do? What are you going to do about it? March in there and demand her release? Bring the penal system crashing down around their ears?"

  "I rescued her last time," I pointed out.

  "So you keep reminding me," said Blackbird. "Down here." She took the staircase that led down to the floor below ground.

  "Who is this guy, anyway?" I asked her as she pushed through double doors into a corridor lined with small rooms, mostly vacant, with the occasional sign indicating that offices were occupied by postgraduates or administrative staff.

  "I met him at an academic gathering and we got chatting. He was very charming and said I should look him up."

  "You mean he chatted you up?"

  "Well I don't think he was interested in my research, if that's what you mean."

  "Did you sleep with him?"

  Blackbird stopped and turned so fast that I almost walked into her. "That's a very ungallant question, Niall Petersen. Could it be that you are pricked by jealousy?"

  "It's not me that was…"

  "Enough! Stop that," she said. "It's unbecoming and quite inappropriate. I've had many lovers and I do not intend to discuss them with you. Who I chose to take to my bed before I met you is none of your business."

  "Except we're going to meet this guy and I'd like to know how the land lies," I pointed out.

  "We have not spoken for some time, and I am expecting that he will be surprised to see me. We are old friends and nothing more."

  "If you say so." Already I didn't like the guy.

  "I do, and we are here to ask a favour, so I would prefer that you refrain from upsetting him."

  She continued down the corridor through another set of double doors. In this area the lights came on as we approached, making it look as if no one had been here in days.

  "I haven't said a word."

  "You don't have to," she said. "We need Gregor's knowledge if we're going to figure out what Alex and her friends are up to before Garvin does. I think that's in everyone's interests, don't you?"

  She came to a side corridor and turned down it, coming to a wooden door with a sticky note on it. The note said, "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here".

  "Hell?" I asked Blackbird.

  "Gregor's lab," said Blackbird, knocking on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again louder.

  "Maybe he's not home and it's been a wasted journey," I suggested.

  "Except for the notice on the door. It's his little joke," Blackbird explained. She knocked again louder and opened the door.

  Inside was an expansive room well-lit by overhead fluorescent lights. There were three large benches, each crammed with equipment and scraps of notes. Broad-leafed plants stood in tall glass cylinders wrapped around with copper wire connected with crocodile clips to an array of car batteries. A tank of liquid stood to one side, filled with murky looking water and illuminated by a black-lamp that hummed quietly. It looked like the specs floating around in there were glowing.

  "What subject did you say he was teaching?" I asked.

  "I didn't. He teaches modern history, we met at an academic convention."

  "This doesn't look like history to me."

  "His research follows a rather wider remit. Gregor is a scientist and a magician – he's into all sorts of esoteric ideas and sees no distinction between science, philosophy and magic. Last time I was here he was trying to show me a perpetual motion machine."

  "That's not possible," I stated with some certainty.

  "You're a fine one to talk about what is and is not possible," she reminded me. "Gregor, are you here?"

  "Can't you see I'm busy?" A voice came from a smaller office attached to the lab. "The tutorials have all been rescheduled – new dates have been sent out by email. Check your spam filter – it's probably in the spam folder."

  "Gregor, I'm not one of your students," she called through to the office.

  "Then what are you doing in my…" His face appeared around the door. "Veronica! How absolutely delightful to see you. How long have you been there?"

  A barrel chested, moustached grandee of a man swept out of the office and picked up Blackbird in a bear-hug embrace, kissing both her cheeks noisily twice.

  "Mmmwa! Mmmwa! It is fantastic you are here. I have something to show you. Have you heard of wave energy stimulation? Do you have a bodyguard now?"

  "Gregor, this is Niall. He's helping me with some research and we wanted to pick your brains."

  He turned to me and extended a hand. "Gregor Leyonavich, at your service." He wore generous sideburns which almost connected with his moustache. Taking his hand, I shook it firmly and slowly.

  Gregor smiled. "Sword callous, right hand, a long weapon and heavy by the feel of it, not a practice weapon and not one of those toys, those lightweight foil things. I was joking about the bodyguard, Blackbird, but maybe this is not a funny joke?"

  I glanced at Blackbird.

  "Sherlock Holmes is one of Gregor's heroes. He observes everyone and everything," she said.

  "Sherlock Holmes never existed. He was a fictional character," I pointed out.

  "Quite so, but in his genius, Conan Doyle invented the ultimate rationalist," said Gregor, "sceptical about everything but assuming nothing, evaluating all possible alternatives. You have muscle underneath that jacket, which means you work at it. Your weight is balanced towards your toes, so you have been trained. You are no amateur, I think. Your right shoulder is higher than your left, which implies a bias to one side, so not a master swordsman, but very competent. Not often you come across a trained swordsman these days. But when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever you have left, no matter how unlikely, is the truth."

  "In my experience the truth is in the eye of the beholder," I said.

  "Well said, my friend, but without truth we cannot have beauty, which brings me back to the delightful Veronica. My dear, they told me you had sold your soul to the Americans."

  "I'm back for a little while," said Blackbird, "but I am not advertising my presence. I have no wish to get sucked back into academic rivalry."

  "An overrated occupation at best," agreed Gregor. "Come, let me show you my wave energy demonstrator." He gestured across the lab to a machine in the corner. "One day, machines like this will power entire cities."

  He went to a bank of switches and relays on the wall and clicked on a pair of large red switches. Boxes began to hum and lights flashed on displays. A laptop computer stopped showing screensaver pictures and began displaying a graph with flat-line red a
nd green readings.

  "The matter we wanted to discuss…" said Blackbird.

  "A moment only, I promise," interrupted Gregor. "This is impressive; wait and see."

  An orange indicator turned to green and Gregor threw a switch with a flourish. A laser emitted a blue-white beam which was split by a half-silvered mirror and bounced around various prisms before hitting another pair of prisms which brought the beams together again into a single beam aimed at a detector. Gregor carefully adjusted an instrument that was receiving the beam.

  The prisms and the mirror were inscribed with odd symbols – It made me wonder what his native language was. Something Eastern European by the sound of it.

  "Watch the display," he said. "The red one shows total energy input while the blue one shows the energy released."

  The lines on the graph started to climb until they levelled off about half-way up the screen, the red line on top indicating that energy input exceeded energy released by about a third again. A digital read-out measured the difference at just over minus twenty-seven percent.

  "This is the default state. The gaps between the lines indicate the energy used by the system," he explained.

  "Gregor, this isn't what we came to talk to you about," said Blackbird.

  Gregor ignored her, intent on the rig. "Now," he said, "I'm using microwave transmitters to introduce harmonics into the beams."

  He turned a dial and the blue line began to climb towards the red.

  "That's just increasing the energy input to the system," I pointed out.

  "It would be if the beams were absorbing energy from the microwaves," he argued, "but that's not what's happening. The energy in the microwaves is all accounted for in the measurements. There's no direct transference, or rather there is, but it's already been subtracted from the read-out."

  The red line rose slowly as he increased the input, but the blue line rose faster, until it passed the red line and stabilised above it. The read-out said plus eleven point two percent.

  "You must have an energy source that's not accounted for," I stated.

  Blackbird kicked my ankle hard enough to get my attention. "What Niall meant to say is that we have a question we'd like your view on."

  "No," he ignored Blackbird again. "It's all in the measurements. What's more, you can increase the input to the laser, and the percentage yield stays constant without increasing the microwave input." He adjusted the input to the laser and the blue line climbed even further away from the red one.

  "That's not possible." I was sure I was right. "Energy has to come from somewhere."

  "Niall. You're only encouraging him," said Blackbird.

  "You're missing something, surely?" The experiment was interesting, but there had to be a source for the increased energy. It couldn't come from nowhere. It was a long time since I'd done any physics, but it was a basic law of the universe that you don't get something for nothing.

  "That's what I thought," said Gregor, "but I'm damned if I can find it." He flipped the master switch and the system clicked off. The lines on the laptop dropped to nothing. "What was it you wanted to ask me?"

  Blackbird glared at me, but I shrugged. He was clearly enthusiastic about his experiment. What harm could it do to let him demonstrate it?

  "A couple of items were stolen recently," she explained, "and I thought you might be able to tell us what their significance might be."

  "What sort of items?"

  "A key from an Anglo-Saxon burial mound and a tail feather from a raven," I told him.

  His eyebrows lifted. "Not the usual sort of thing," he stated. "What makes you think these thefts are related?"

  "They were stolen at the same time," said Blackbird, "from the same place."

  "The Tower of London?" said Gregor.

  "How did you know that?" I asked.

  "Give me another instance where ravens and keys are kept in the same place," he said. "I cannot think of one. Besides, your question answered mine."

  "What do you think, Gregor? What are they doing with these things?" asked Blackbird.

  "You haven't mentioned jewels, so I assume they didn't succeed in stealing those?"

  "As far as we can tell," I said, "they didn't even try to steal them. They used the jewels as a distraction but then went for things that are worthless."

  "They are only worthless to someone who does not value them," said Gregor.

  "And you would?" asked Blackbird.

  "Perhaps. A key and a feather are both potent symbols. A key is for opening, and as a symbol of secrets – things locked away. A feather is also a symbol. The Egyptians believed that the feather represented truth, and that in the afterlife their hearts would be weighed by their gods against a feather of Maat."

  "Maat?" I asked.

  "The essence of truth, usually represented by an ostrich feather."

  "This was a the tail feather of a raven, not an ostrich," Blackbird pointed out.

  "But the symbology may transfer," said Gregor. "Symbols are all about the power you invest in them. They could have taken a feather from an old hat, and it would still be a feather, but because there was nothing invested in it, it would have little power."

  "So the fact that this feather was stolen from the Tower of London gives it power?"

  "In a sense, yes, perhaps."

  "So what is it for, Gregor? Why do they need a feather and a key?"

  Gregor rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. "I do not know," he said finally. "I am not aware of any rituals that would use just those symbols. They are too ambiguous – too loose, do you see?"

  "I'm not sure I do," said Blackbird.

  "Most magic is the art of converting something you don't want into something you do," he explained.

  "Like alchemy," I suggested, "transforming lead into gold."

  "A simple matter. You sell the lead to someone who needs it and they give you money, which you turn into gold."

  "That's cheating," I said.

  "Is it? Or is it simply using a path which people who do not think do not see? Much of magic is like that – trading one thing for another."

  "You make it sound ordinary," I said.

  "True magic, though, is very much rarer. In true magic you extend the bounds of the universe to include the infinite, where limits become meaningless and therefore exchanging one thing for another becomes like getting something for nothing. You can appear to get more out than you put in, like my wave energy demonstrator. If I am right, it is drawing power from the universe itself, and therefore exhibits a resource which is, for our purposes, limitless."

  "So is it science or magic?" I asked.

  "A great question," said Gregor. "You must tell me when you have the answer. A feather and a key? They have no unifying symbology, no theme to draw upon. They do not in themselves define the boundaries of anything."

  "You're saying they are insufficient in themselves?" said Blackbird.

  "Indeed I am, Veronica. Much of logical deduction is not knowing the answers, but knowing the right question."

  "What's the right question?" I asked her.

  She grinned at Gregor. "What else have they taken?" "Correct," he said.

  FIFTEEN

  The market was near closing time. My visit to Gregor with Blackbird had delayed me and I had almost forgotten my invitation to meet Andy the honey-seller at the cafe. It was an outside chance that he'd appear, but having made the offer I felt honour-bound to at least turn up.

  I sat in the cafe window, watching the market traders beginning to pack up their wares and close down their stalls. The idea of using someone to set up some sort of bridging arrangement with the fey courts appealed to me, but it needed someone the inmates would trust to front it. Andy had the potential, but I had to find him before I could pitch it to him. I'd been here for an hour, but there was no sign of him.

  The trader I'd left the coat with said he still had the coat under the counter, so Andy hadn't been and gone without seeing me. Of course, it was possible t
hat I had scared him off – having been arrested and carted off to Porton Down can't have done a lot for his trust for authority. He might have decided to abandon coat and money, cut his losses and run, but I thought not. He'd been arrested here in the first place. He'd returned here after the escape. Something was bringing him back, and I was hoping he would show himself sooner or later.