by Steven Brust
“All right. I get your point,” he said. “Are you recording this?”
“No.”
Matt studied his face. “All right.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I was paid five hundred, plus—”
“A thousand per kill?” said Donovan in time with Matt.
“If you already knew—”
“Just making sure you’re being honest with us. Keep doing that, and this will work out all right for you. Well, except for the part about you being dumped off in Jersey City to get back to California as best you can. Sorry about that. Do you know why someone wanted us dead?”
“No,” he said.
“How were you paid?”
“Small bills, left at a dead drop. Um, a dead drop means—”
“Yeah, I know what a dead drop is. What are the specifics?”
“It was taped to the inside of a trash can at Balboa Park.”
“And how did they reach you?”
“Anonymous email.”
“Why did you shoot at Marci each time?”
“If I were back home, I could show you the email. There was a description of her, and it said she was the most important one to take down.”
Donovan glanced at Marci; she seemed to be taking the news all right. Donovan turned back to Matt. “How did they find you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“No.”
“Do you have a criminal record? I’ll point out that we can check on that; it’s a stupid thing to lie about.”
“I have a dishonorable discharge. Does that help?”
“What did you do to earn that?”
“Look it up yourself.”
“So, something you’re not proud of.”
Matt caught Donovan’s eye and held it. “That is correct.”
“All right. But what I really want to know is, how did they find you? What made them think you’d be willing to take a rifle and kill three complete strangers? Can you tell me that?”
Matt looked from one of them to the other, then around the room. Donovan waited. Then Matt said, “Throw me a bone.”
“What kind?”
“Who are you people?”
Donovan turned to Marci and nodded. Matt relaxed as the invisible bonds released. Donovan said, “We’re the good guys. We hope. If you’re asking if what has happened to you in the last hour is the product of insanity, drugs, or magic, the answer is magic.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“The scary thing is, I almost believe you.”
“Yeah. So, do I get an answer?”
“Sniper training.” He gave Donovan a significant look and said, “I’ve also been trained in interrogation techniques.”
“Torture?”
Matt held his eye. “Never done it. It doesn’t work.”
“Yeah,” said Donovan. “There’s a guy I need you to explain that to.”
Matt shrugged. “Anyway, now I work as a bouncer at a titty bar because I can’t get anything else. Anyone with the resources to find an ex–Special Forces Operative with a DD could have found me.”
“Huh. You were a Green Beret?”
“Tell the truth, I’ve always thought of myself as kind of a flat cap.”
“Any ink?”
Matt rolled up his eyes, then his sleeve, revealing a black knife, up, entwined with blue flowers, surrounded by fig leaves.
“Doesn’t say anything about Special Forces.”
Matt tilted his head. “No, it doesn’t. They kind of frown on that. If you get captured, it gets hard to pretend you’re an insurance salesman on vacation when you have a tattoo that says you’re an S.F.O. But if you look close, you’ll see a one and a nine in the leaves.”
“Unit?”
“Nineteenth National Guard. Second Battalion, C Company, O.D.A.”
“Where was your base?”
“Draper, Utah, then Camp Dawson.”
“All right. So, if you have Special Forces training, why not go up against Susan?”
He shrugged. “She got me,” he said. “How does this magic thing work?”
“Hell if I know,” said Donovan. “I’m just the brains of the outfit.”
“There are places,” said Marci, “that a few people can tap into that allow the bending of reality. The closer we are, the more we can do easier. This apartment building is right on top of one.”
She waited. When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “The people who can detect and use the places are called sensitives; after training, we’re called sorcerers. Or freaks.”
“Nah,” said Donovan. “Hippie Chick is the freak.”
“Bending of reality,” said Matt. “That sounds kind of…”
“Yeah?”
“Cool.”
Marci smiled. “It is.”
“What can you do with it?”
“Be easier to say what can’t you do.”
“Okay, what can’t you do?”
“Break the law with it,” said Donovan. “Or people like us will come after you and do bad things to you.”
“So, you’re kind of like cops?”
“No,” said Donovan. The others looked at him, and he shrugged.
“You can’t violate natural law,” said Marci.
“Then it isn’t magic, is it?”
Marci laughed suddenly. “Imagine a dozen wannabe sorcerers, ages between thirteen and twenty-five, sitting around a cafeteria table arguing that at the top of their lungs, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what sorcery training is like. At least between sessions.”
“How did those things you did to me not violate natural law?”
“Which things?”
“The way we traveled, and making it so I couldn’t move?”
“The second is simple; I changed the makeup of part of your clothes to make it rigid and adhere to your chair. Nothing impossible about the result, just used different means to do it.”
“And the travel?”
“Same thing. Think of it like a train that moves at about four hundred miles a second. That one’s hard, though. You have to make sure nothing happens to the body during transit, and that the particles of your body remain coherent while passing through objects, and a host of other things. They build portals for that so even civilians can use it if they know how. It includes all sorts of technology, like voice recognition, and concealment spells, and things to check if the place you’re arriving at is occupied. There are specialists who keep them operational, and charge an arm and a leg for it.”
“Man. I almost believe you. How many are there?”
“In our group, or total number of sensitives?”
“People in the world who can do this.”
“Something like one person in a hundred thousand can sense the grid lines.”
“Seventy thousand worldwide, give or take,” said Matt with no hesitation. “Not many.”
“No.”
“And what do the good guys do?”
Donovan, whose mind had been occupied with trying to come up with a way to find who had hired Matt, suddenly came back to the present. “Hey,” he said. “How did this turn into you interrogating us?”
“I started asking questions.”
Donovan smiled in spite of himself. “It’s a whole thing,” he said. “You know, secret foundation, all like that. We protect each other, and try to learn more about how magic works, and do what we can to prevent bad people from using it for bad things, because then it would be discovered, and we don’t know what would happen to sorcerers if everyone knew about them, but I doubt it would be pleasant.”
“How did you know how much I was paid?”
“You aren’t the first guy who tried to kill us.”
“Shit. What happened to the last one?”
“We let him go. We’re generally catch-and-release types.”
“Generally?”
“Generally.”
“Yeah, about that. You sai
d all this stuff is secret. How secret?”
“You mean, is it secret enough that we’re going to kill you or something? No. Who would you tell, and who would believe you? The stuff we worry about is big and splashy and includes photographs.”
“So, you’re really going to let me go?”
“Yeah.”
Matt stood up and walked toward the door, glanced back at Donovan. “You really are letting me go,” he said.
“Like I said, catch and release. That’s how you know we’re the good guys.” He decided mentioning Becker at this point would ruin a perfect moment, so he didn’t.
“Well, damn,” said Matt. Then he came back and sat down on the couch. He remained there for a moment, brows furrowed. “You know,” he said at last. “I’d kind of like to be a good guy.”
5
CORPORATE POLITICS
Donovan almost didn’t take the call. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and Matt was still there, crashed out on the couch, and the coffee wasn’t done. So, when Skype notified him of an incoming call from Fenwood, Donovan very nearly ignored it. But he was awake, Susan and Marci had left, and he wasn’t in the middle of anything critical; there wouldn’t be a better time, and the Black Hole couldn’t be ducked forever. Then he took a breath, let it out, and clicked the answer button.
The familiar long, cadaverous face appeared. “Good day, Mr. Longfellow. This is Boyd Fenwood from Budget and Oversight.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fenwood,” he said.
“If you please, Mr. Longfellow. This is not a joking matter.”
“Oh. It isn’t? Well, damn. And all the other times we’ve talked, I thought you were just kidding around.”
“If you please.”
“Sure. Can I call you Boyd?”
“I would prefer you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m gonna keep asking. You gotta break down eventually.”
“Mr. Longfellow.”
“Well, all right then. I guess you’d better tell me about it. What’s on your mind? How can I help Budget and Oversight? Because you know that with everything I do, keeping Budget and Oversight happy is my first concern.”
“Mr. Longfellow, are you aware that every time you activate the Remote Portal Device it requires both the work of a skilled technician and certain expensive materials, costing the Foundation over two thousand, two hundred dollars to reset it? And nearly half that much for the return trip?”
“Why, no, Mr. Fenwood,” said Donovan, who had been given this figure roughly ten thousand times. “I had no idea. Is that what this is about? I’d thought you were going to ask for my recent expenses, so you could make paying them your top priority, like you usually do.”
Fenwood’s face kept jumping around on the screen, like he was moving his head all the time and Skype was having trouble keeping up. It was oddly disconcerting after Becker’s stillness.
“Mr. Longfellow, will you at least do me the courtesy of being serious?”
“I’ll try.”
“You have authorized the device for your team on six occasions in the last week. Are you absolutely certain that none of those trips could have been taken by mundane means?”
“Not if we wanted results. More time to the site means more time until the results of the investigation are in, and sometimes it means the thing we’re trying to investigate is no longer in condition to be detected.”
“I am aware of this. But you, in turn, must be aware that if we were to authorize fast travel for every investigation we would soon be out of money for, among other things, your wages.”
Why wait? Haul out the heavy artillery right away, as some general somewhere must have said. “Mr. Becker was insistent on results. If you would like to check this with him, I have his number right here.”
There was a pause. Becker was a trump card that could be played over and over, and the fact that Fenwood knew exactly what Donovan was doing did nothing to diminish the effectiveness. There was, however, a downside: Fenwood might cave, but he would have his revenge.
Donovan sat there for another ten minutes as the man from the Black Hole explained in detail the meticulous accounting necessary to stretch the meager funding from Grants and Acquisitions (“the Vault”) to not only continue the services the Foundation provided to its members but also simply keep it operating. Was Mr. Longfellow aware of what the Euro was doing in Spain, and the mere cost of maintaining the headquarters building, and paying the salaries of the clerical staff? It was not his, Fenwood’s, place to decide what services must be reduced, if not cut out entirely, but he would take his oath—yes, his oath—that it wasn’t Donovan’s, either, and yet by his promiscuous spending he, Donovan, was taking that decision out of the hands of both Budget and Oversight and the Executive itself, and surely even Mr. Longfellow could see that the Executive would not be pleased by this usurpation of their power.
There was another pause; Fenwood seemed to think he had perhaps gone too far with the “even Mr. Longfellow.”
“Very well,” said Donovan, in his best cold, deeply offended voice. “If that is all, I really must not keep Mr. Becker waiting any more.”
“Yes, of course. You understand, I’m only doing my job.”
“Yes, Mr. Fenwood. I understand entirely.”
With a barely concealed sigh of relief, Donovan ended the call and returned to his guest.
* * *
We were at the bus station, sitting in plastic seats facing away from each other, and he was telling me more about how magic works. I listened carefully, then said, “Why do you call it a grid when it isn’t even in squares?”
I could see him fight the urge to turn around and stare at me. “Nick, I’m telling you that magic is real, that miracles are possible, that sorcerers walk among us, and you’re worried that the language doesn’t make sense?”
“Okay,” I said. “Fair point. So, this stuff you do, you have to have a knack for it?”
“Yes, to feel and identify the grid lines. My theory is that it isn’t magic as such, just something we don’t understand yet. Clarke’s Law and all that.”
“Whose law?”
“Doesn’t matter. But you can do it, or you can’t. After that, it’s a matter of aptitude and training, like everything else.”
“What about you? Can you do it?”
“No,” said Charlie.
Was there the least hesitation before he’d said that? I wasn’t sure; I set it aside for later consideration. “How do people get the training?”
“The Mystici, or the Foundation.”
“The Foundation?”
“They’re the ones who are after us.”
“Oh.”
“So one group or the other, or else trial and error. Trial and error is a poor idea—it tends to create problems. Although there are a few who—no, that’s just a distraction. Skip it.”
“So, these groups. They’re, like, enemies? Competitors?”
“Not enemies. Maybe competitors. ‘Rivals’ might be the best term, at least in some things. They both look for sensitives, and offer to train them, and sometimes recruit them.”
“If I had the talent, would they find me, or would I find them?”
“Can work either way. They’re always looking, and have various ways of finding you. But some sensitives will feel a grid line and follow it to a node, and they have people watching a lot of the nodes in case that happens.”
“Node?”
“Where three or more lines come together. A lot of power there.”
“Then how—”
“No, that’s enough questions for now. You’re set with the next name on the list?”
It isn’t a name, part of my mind responded. It’s a person. Yeah, said another part. And a person I want to kill. That was as much of a peep as I ever got out of my conscience.
“Yes,” I said. “What do you have for me this time?”
He hesitated. “You don’t like this guy much, do you?”
“
No.”
“Then you’re going to like what I have. One thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Once you’ve used it, don’t discard it. I’m going to want it back.”
“This one can be used again? I thought that was impossible.”
“It is impossible. That isn’t why.”
“Then—”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Whatever you say.”
* * *
“What are you grinning about?” asked Donovan as he turned from his computer.
Matt shook his head. “Just, you know, how the universe works.”
Donovan grunted.
Matt sat back on the sofa, stuck his arms out, and stretched his legs. “So explain,” he said. “Who are the good guys? I mean, what do you do?”
Donovan rolled his computer chair the five feet from the kitchen to the living room, sat. “The main purpose is to study how magic works, what the limitations are, how it can be used. And to keep it secret. Mostly to keep it secret. Beer?”
“What kind?”
“Jesus. Picky motherfucker, aren’t you? Rolling Rock.”
“No th—oh, what the hell. Sure.”
Donovan got one for each of them. There were six left. He handed one to Matt, sat down with his, and they made a sort of vague toasting gesture toward each other, drank. Donovan liked the beer more than Matt seemed to.
“What will you do to keep the secret?” said Matt.
“Let’s cut to it, all right?”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“We won’t kill anyone. I mean, I won’t, and I’ve never heard of anyone in the Foundation ordering it.”
“Not killing leaves a lot open.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”
Matt shrugged.
“Yeah, it does leave a lot open. But you’ve killed, haven’t you?”
Matt shrugged again.
“And you’ve killed innocents?”
“What’s an innocent?”
“I’m saying, don’t judge us.”
“I’m not judging; I’m trying to find out who you people are. You said you’re the good guys. I want to know what that means.”