"He asked for nothing," Satal smiled, "Rustle made it clear - it was his gift."
The truck bounced over a bump; one of the twins turned over in his sleep, and his father pulled him back on the bench.
"A strange creature," the captain muttered.
"An intelligent being," the magician brushed him off. "I wonder why Tangor did not get along with him."
The captain kept his opinion to himself: after all, forty days of the quarantine were still ahead for Satal.
Chapter 24
I listened to the speech of a new assistant director, broadcasting his vision of Biokin's future, and tried to figure out what again went wrong with my life. I had a job, a decent income that Uncle Gordon could only dream of, a place to live, respect from my colleagues, plenty of spare time, a city full of entertainment, no onerous duties, and even NZAMIPS forgot about me for a while.
What was I still missing? I felt myself a clerk and did not like this feeling. Should a real alchemist, privy to the mysteries of Existence, an almost almighty wizard, live like a clerk? Even the miserable life of Uncle Gordon was closer to my ideal: in our valley he was the only alchemist, while in Redstone I was the best of many.
As an incentive, Biokin offered its employees free coffee in any quantity - of course, without brandy. I sipped the murky swill and recalled with nostalgia coffee breaks with Polak's secretaries.
"Thomas, are you free tonight?"
As they say, mention a devil, and it will appear. Biokin's mastermind was full of enthusiasm as usual, but now Polak wore a business suit, in no way inferior to mine, and his hair was styled fashionably.
I did not plan anything for the upcoming evening and replied without hesitation, "Yes, I am!"
"This is great," he smiled. "We are going to have a party for the employees who worked here for a long time. Will you come?"
"Absolutely!" I didn't go out for a drink for some time, and my sober existence began to depress me. I browsed through the accumulated papers (one of the new alchemists had drawn a gasifier without a pressure relief valve; a trifle, of course, but when shit hits your face, it isn't funny) and at seventeen hundred sharp went out of the office looking for the party.
The employees with the longest service time were Polak, Johan, and me; Carl was not invited, and soon I understood why Polak and Johan devised a rebellion.
"Unfortunately, Biokin's investors are not interested in new projects. The company was conceived as a start-up for innovative projects, but now it has degenerated into a brigade of draftsmen," Polak sighed, passing to me a glass of beer and a plate of pork ears. Johan, who wrote endless reports at work, grimly nodded, agreeing.
I took a long sip - the beer was good. Maybe investors became a little bit smarter?
"Having trouble finding a new job?" I addressed my question to both of them.
Polak shook his head. I had never seen him so serious before.
"No, we aren't. We want to start anew. The problem is that our interests lie in a field most experts consider unfeasible. I can find money for it, anyway; but without your help we won't solve our task," a fanatical glow appeared in Polak's eyes. "If successful, this project will be a blast!"
I pondered, while eating the pork. Were these freeloaders trying to get on my neck? "What's your project about?"
Johan put a plump packet on the table, and Polak moved it toward me, "You'd better form your own opinion of the problem. You will decide whether we start this venture."
I turned over the bundle of papers, tied criss-cross with twine. "Okay, I'll look at it, but later."
Polak sighed, "Take your time. As far as I know, we have no competitors."
I returned home almost sober, with a hefty package under my arm. In the old days I greatly enjoyed free drinks, but now they didn't dissipate my boredom. Another "gift" waited for me at the concierge desk - a letter with a pre-printed address on the envelope: Redstone's commissioner of the Roland the Bright Fund invited me for an interview.
The arrival of the letter did not bother me; I sincerely believed that Satal would handle my affairs with the fund. In the worst case, I would discuss a repayment of my loan. I took the next day off and went to NZAMIPS to talk to my higher-ups about the upcoming interview with my lender.
The Holy Trinity - the senior coordinator, the captain, and the empath - were having tea in the small office of Captain Baer. "I told you," the captain grumbled.
I frowned.
"Have you read today's newspapers?" Kevinahari asked.
Were they bullying me?
"No, I haven't."
"Then what have you forgotten here?" Satal's question stunned me.
"Something important! Yesterday I received a request to come from the Roland Fund. What should I do?"
Satal indifferently shrugged. I must say that he looked like shit.
"Address your question to my successor."
"Your temporarily acting successor," the empath corrected him.
"Leave this verbiage out, Rona! In our business nobody forgives mistakes."
"What mistakes?" the captain was outraged. "Last operation was executed without a hitch. We haven't found the missing amulets yet, but it does not mean…"
Satal rolled his eyes up: "I do not care about the amulets. No one will allow a magician possessed by Rustle to supervise the region."
The last thing I needed now was a new supervisor. The filthy monster crapped on me again!
"Who will be my new boss?"
"It's a surprise."
I slammed the door behind me when I left. Shit! Did any of them ever think of me? Though, perhaps, it was too early to panic. The most that the Roland Fund could request from me under the contract would be a few years of work on an average salary. I could even agree to go to Arango. And let Captain Baer worry whether my new job would be compatible with my NZAMIPS duties.
On the way out, on the porch of NZAMIPS headquarters, I suddenly recalled that Satal was married. Should I tell him about Rustle's strange interest in sex or leave him to sleep in peace? Let it come as a surprise for him!
The commissioner of the Roland Fund reacted to my visit philosophically; perhaps, students frequently bothered him with the same questions. "Sir, there are some things that are not clear from the text of my contract…"
"Go ahead and ask, I'll be happy to clarify any ambiguities," the official smiled sourly.
"The contract shall enter into force in forty days. Has the day count begun from the delivery of the notice?"
"No, from your graduation date."
So my time was running out. "I heard that you sometimes agree to monetary compensation."
"Only in exceptional cases - for graduates who are needed for special projects, and they pay off the loan with a lump sum payment."
Thus, this option was for lucky guys bought by large firms. I was slightly short of the full loan amount. "Okay, I owe you two years…"
"Three," the official corrected me. "We paid for your extra classes, too."
Shit…Because of the damned dark magic, which I did not want in the first place, I owed them an additional year of work!
"Let it be three," no time to argue about trifles. "How will the 'average rate' be calculated?"
"As an average rate in the profession for a given level of experience."
"If my job is salaried, how many hours will I have to work per week? If by project, who will provide me with clients?" It was an important question; their "average across the industry" could be based on the low salaries of alchemists in the public sector, who had to work on two-three jobs simultaneously to make a living. Or I could be sent to a rural farm, where a wheel would be the only alchemic tool. I was afraid that I would have to keep the wolf from the door for the next three years.
The commissioner looked at me with some interest: "Do not worry, we watch out for the interests of our fellows. Your wages won't be lower than the subsistence minimum."
"Calculated for which location?" He seemed to be hiding
something.
The commissioner rummaged in his desk and handed me a brochure. "Our methods of calculation. Have a look."
For ten minutes I carefully studied the brochure. Their approach seemed to be quite reasonable: they were taking into account the local cost of housing and surplus or shortage of alchemists in the area.
"Thank you, sir," I returned the brochure to the official. "Could you please tell me where I will go?"
"Your place of work will be chosen from the list of municipalities that submitted their requests to the government of Ingernika."
The main thing was to be persistent. "Certainly, sir. I'm sure that such an approach is to the benefit of both our country and me," I showed enthusiasm. "But I was injured during my internship. I am taking a course of treatment and want to make sure that there will be healers of appropriate qualifications wherever you will send me to."
The commissioner pursed his lips as I put on his desk a letter from NZAMIPS, which explicitly requested in the inimitable doctor's jargon that I be provided with the appropriate care (the staff healer was more empathic than my direct supervisors).
"Hmm. If I give you a month of deferment, will you recuperate by then?"
"I think so."
"Then I'll postpone the date when you must begin your work. Bring me a letter from your doctor in a month."
"Agreed!" Within the next month I planned to meet the new senior coordinator and resolve the conflict of interest. If the commissioner didn't back out, I would be very busy in the next thirty days: to finish some financial matters, prematurely terminate my lease, get rid of unnecessary stuff, negotiate my new patent with Quarters and, of course, decide what to do with Polak's mysterious project.
After returning home, I grabbed the project: clippings and summaries of articles in the folder covered a period of the last twenty years; there was even a small monograph on the same topic. Half of the texts were in Kashtadarian, which I barely understood after a short university course I took three years ago. Kashtadar was the birthplace of alchemy, and they still tried to compete with us. I decisively put aside the gibberish scrolls and turned to the monograph, written in Ingernik.
The ore bacteria. Well, let's see why Polak wasn't satisfied with the traditional metallurgy.
The book really impressed me, a degreed alchemist with several years of experience, by its detailed calculations of profitability. My university professors paid almost no attention to issues of profit, and it turned out that I missed a lot of interesting stuff. Ingernika's industry suffered from the high cost of non-ferrous metals. Copper, gold, silver, iron, and lead were needed by all, magicians and alchemists. Our state experienced no shortage of iron ore, but the situation was totally opposite with non-ferrous metals: their resources were close to complete exhaustion. The depletion of metal deposits hampered the progress of our civilization. I began to see why Uncle Gordon tried to save every piece of scrap machinery.
The ore bacteria could help concentrate and extract metals - of course, if someone could figure out how to use them profitably. Polak compiled all the crazy ideas of our predecessors and came to the conclusion that they wouldn't work, that the costs would be prohibitively high. It was a very exciting reading. I wondered if I was clever enough to solve the major problem of humankind and decided that they overestimated my abilities. But Polak's phrase about our brilliant financial prospects, if we succeeded, already sprouted in my heart into a vision of a great me, a genius…rich…famous…a statue of myself from pure silver…a four-story tower with an elevator on an isolated island…
Chapter 25
Bilious and uncompromising quarantine healers gave Satal one day off for the delegation of powers to the new senior coordinator of the region. Normally temperamental and energetic, Satal was atypically quiet and sad, with an unfocused look. Captain Baer, instructed by the healers how to react to their patient's condition, wondered what visions Rustle shared with his former boss at these moments.
As soon as the former coordinator passed the secret keys and codes to the new one, he would promptly return to the quarantine hospital at the "cleaner" base. Satal was the only patient there, but the mage couldn't feel bored during his forced detention - there were too many familiar people around.
"How are your boys?" The story of Satal's children was still fresh in Baer's memory.
Satal smiled wanly: "They are fine. I do not communicate with my family now - my sons shouldn't see me weak."
Baer totally understood him; the captain's numerous nephews seemed to be angels compared to the Satal twins.
A black limousine with noticeably flashing protective signs under the enamel drove into the courtyard, with tires rustling. A short man with a leather briefcase in his hand and a neat badge on his lapel got out of the car. Senior coordinators bowed to each other in their usual "dark" style - without touching and shaking hands. Good thing that there was no feeling of mutual hostility in their postures and gestures.
"Did you work with him?" the empath asked Baer.
The captain grimly nodded. "For fifteen years. But I rarely saw him - his office was in Gerdana."
Kevinahari thoughtfully tilted her head. "A little reserved, not prone to emotional outbursts, reasonable. Not a bad combination for a superior of his rank!"
Captain Baer winced - his opinion of Larkes was ambiguous, but he did not want to criticize the new senior coordinator. "He's a very good leader, one of the best. His employees always did exactly what he wanted, though they never knew and were unable to understand what it was that he wanted." Baer remembered that a few very competent employees resigned or moved to other departments, because they couldn't endure the fact that they were treated by Larkes like extras in his plays and productions. Their attempts to obtain an explanation for his orders were perceived by Larkes as sabotage, refusal to work, and a personal insult.
The reconfiguration of the signs and seals of power took half an hour - Larkes was well familiar with the procedure. For a final touch, both magicians moved into the senior coordinator's office.
"You've confiscated the captain's room," Larkes noticed, smiling reproachfully. Satal shrugged; the friendly behavior of his rival disoriented him, though the former senior coordinator suspected that his colleague's smiles were just a mask.
"He survived it!"
"Why didn't you want to work from Gerdana?"
"Too far from the city."
"In case of an attempt on your life, there would have been less civilian casualties there."
Satal recalled a few of the latest episodes, but retorted anyway. "We should allow no such attempts!"
"I agree!" Larkes stated solemnly, and by doing this he plunged his colleague into confusion once again. "How is your talented young student doing? I must admit that teaching a necromancer combat skills has produced a brilliant result."
Satal chuckled and decided to end their strange conversation. He pulled out of a drawer a big puffy envelope and silently handed it to Larkes. The envelope instantly disappeared in the suitcase of the new coordinator.
"I'm heading back to the quarantine," Satal sighed. "My healer Mr. Arverti is probably pissing fire by now. Avoid the hands of the local healers – they are horrible people!"
Larkes saw his colleague to the porch, heartily wished him a successful end of the quarantine, then shut and locked his office door, turning the key twice. A smile brightened his face and then faded, giving way to doll-like stillness. The mage called his Source and carefully examined the room, nodded satisfactorily, and only then dumped the contents of his suitcase on the desk: a few cardboard folders, two dozen amulets, a beautiful crystal inkwell, and a long wooden pencil box, decorated with a strange ornament. Then he examined in detail his predecessor's gift. The big white envelope was stuffed with papers - copies of reports, maps, charts, and messages. The new coordinator shuffled them, re-assembled them according to some order known only to him, and then hid them inside a simple gray folder, which had the handwritten title The King's City.
The folder took a place on the bookshelf, perfectly blending into the room environment.
* * *
After learning from newspapers who would replace my teacher, I experienced mixed feelings. On one hand, Larkes seemed to be a more accommodating boss and he owed me a favor, on the other hand - he became my supervisor now. I doubted that he would treat me as his senior. Most likely, he would adhere to the formal hierarchy of NZAMIPS. I decided to deal with the problem as a typical dark - pretending that it did not exist - and began to pester Captain Baer to settle my dispute with the Roland Fund. The result turned out to be very different from the one I hoped for.
"Mr. Larkes recognizes the priority of the Roland the Bright Fund," the captain cheered me. "You had signed the contract with them before the one with us. You'll work off what you owe them first, and then what's left from your contract with NZAMIPS."
This skunk Larkes implied that I owed them my life for the next seven years! "Will NZAMIPS leave me alone for three years?" the thought was pleasant, but unrealistic.
"If your local authorities need help, the time of your work for them will be credited toward the overall duration of your NZAMIPS contract…"
I nearly choked with indignation. "What did you say? The remaining four years will be cut for me in coupons? No magicians work on such terms! I'll take you to court! And I'll tell everyone your secret – that the resurrection of animals is legally allowed!"
My last argument was serious. What a pity that at the first meeting with Satal I did not know about this small, but important gap in legislation. Probably, the authors of the relevant chapters of the law based their provisions on the horrible side effects of waking up human consciousness single-handedly. A general belief that any necromantic spells were forbidden was totally mistaken, though the legislation would probably be amended soon. Meanwhile, fans of animal corpses could only be punished for the physical damage caused by their zombie-pets. I was serious about complaining to journalists that NZAMIPS pursued me illegally!
My Path to Magic 2: A Combat Alchemist Page 22