"No! He threw me out. Hates me. Hates me!" She was crying, digging at her eyes with the side of her fist like a little girl. Her nose turned red.
Ken was keenly aware that the bartender was keeping an eye on them. She had noticed Robbie's distress and was starting to walk toward them with intent. Gulping at the thought of the baseball bat under the bar, he pulled a handful of money out of his pocket and slapped it on the bar. Very gently, he helped Robbie to stand up.
"Let's go for a walk," he suggested. He put his arm around Robbie and helped her off the bar stool. Casually, he strolled with her out into the neon-glazed night, with one final glance over his shoulder to make sure the bartender wasn't picking up the phone to call the police.
"Okay," Ken said, steering her out onto Toulouse. "I know a good place to go."
"Okay," said Robbie, biddably, her sorrows forgotten. The drugs were taking effect at last. Ken held out his free arm and gestured toward the sky.
"Now, the lights are coming up. Michael's already out on the stage with the band. You're sitting behind your console. Your hand moves toward the control board... ."
* * *
Upstairs, in the empty press room beside the control room, a finger of green-tinged power crept out of the metal box containing the transmission lines, down the cables snaking from it to the room next door. Everybody in the control room was too busy to notice the tongue of flame dancing along the black cables. It rippled over to the special effects station, which hummed into life.
"Tone down the mikes on Voe's drums, Sheila," Gary Lowe, seated at the lighting station, was saying. He slid several pots and hovered his finger over a button. "We want to hear Dijan's bodhran here. Bring up Carl's harp. Lovely. And... cue the cascade."
The green fire blazed into life. The readout on the laptop computer beside the special effects station began to scroll down its long list.
* * *
Liz squirmed back into her place next to Boo-Boo. The American seemed troubled.
"Do you hear that?" he asked, pointing vaguely up toward the ceiling. "It ain't exactly music."
Liz listened intently. A chord had added itself to the topmost registers of the music, a disturbing harmonic that set her teeth on edge. Fee and Michael both heard it, glanced at each other, wondering what it was. Michael gestured at the techies with a flattening hand, ordering them to do something about it. They all shrugged. Alarmed, both singers glanced backward to where Liz and Boo were concealed. Boo-Boo waved his hand, showing them there was nothing to worry about.
"What is it?"
"Dunno. Bad mojo on the way. Any minute now, I'm guessin'."
"Then why did you tell them to go on?"
Boo-Boo's blue eyes glinted at her. "It'd be worse if they stop."
Hastily, Liz started chanting the protection cantrip over and over. She hadn't begun a moment too soon. The cascade of colored lights had just ended, changing Fionna's white dress to every color of the rainbow. Without warning, there was an explosion at the south end of the stage. Brilliant pillars of white and gold roared up practically under Fionna's nose. The Roman candles were launching! With shrill whistles, fingers of flame shot up halfway to the ceiling. They burst into sparks that showered down on the wildly yelling crowd. Tiny red embers fell over Fionna's head, but bounced harmlessly off the bubble provided by the spell.
No one noticed the effect but Lloyd, who glanced toward the agents and gave them a surreptitious thumbs-up. He approved.
Fee looked nervous for a moment, then took the reappearance of the pyrotechnics in her stride. She stretched out an arm toward the fire as though she was invoking power from it. As the rockets launched, she matched them scream for scream. The crowd loved it.
"I thought they were doing this without effects," Liz said, watching the rockets zip around the huge arena. Mentally, she ticked off the sequence of events as they each appeared on schedule: rockets, lasers, smoke, more lasers, light show. It was as though Robbie had never left.
"Maybe the guys found another special effects technician here in town," Laura Manning speculated, huddling in behind them to watch Fionna dance. "After all, she left her cue sheet program and all the equipment. Good thing, too. Gary Lowe's had just one headache after another. It's bad enough that the lighting director took off, too."
"What?" the agents asked in unison, turning toward her.
The makeup artist looked from one surprised face to the other.
"Nigel didn't tell you? Yeah, right after he canned Robbie Unterburger, Kenny Lewis disappeared. Went out to make a phone call, Sheila said, and has never been seen again. I thought he had feelings for Robbie, but she couldn't see he was alive with the eye magnet over there," Laura nodded in Lloyd's direction. "Poor Gary's running the lights himself."
Boo and Liz exchanged glances.
"I thought that young lady wasn't doin' all this on her own," Boo said, his mouth set in a grim line. "It just seemed out of character. Now, him I could believe."
"We'd better check upstairs and make sure," Liz said.
Hugh Banks thought it was an odd question, but he grabbed his headset mike and inquired. His face was troubled when he looked up. "You're right. No one's at Robbie's desk. The whole thing is working by itself. Is it a ghost in the machine?"
"Could she have mechanized it to work off the cues?" Liz asked. "She had everything listed on a laptop computer."
"Possibly, but why didn't she tell us she was doing that?" Banks asked. He turned to the manager, who looked shocked.
"Can they turn it off?" Boo asked. Banks muttered to his microphone again. His usually ruddy face turned pale.
"No."
"It's going by remote control," Liz said, feeling icy fingers gripping her stomach. "She's making it all happen by remote control."
"But nothing bad has happened yet," Nigel Peters said, hopefully.
"I wouldn't take no bets on it stayin' that way," Boo-Boo said. Liz agreed with him. "Can't do anythin' now but stay on guard, and hope we can handle what he throws at us."
Nigel tore at his thin hair. "This is all my fault. I should have kept the silly girl where she was."
"Should we stop the show?" Banks asked. Boo-Boo shook his head.
"Just do your job, and let Ms. Fionna do hers."
The star was responding magnificently to having the fireworks and lasers running, however unexpectedly. Privately, Liz thought she must be vastly relieved. No need to show her bare face, so to speak.
The exciting rock number was ending. After a halt of a few beats, the tempo changed to the challenging rhythm of Green Fire's diatribe against hostile occupation of one country by another. The plaintive wail of the uilleann pipe began to snake in and out of the melody.
The music itself began to sound sinister to Liz. During rehearsal she had put it off to the subject matter of the song. It was a violent protest against partisan hatred, a touchy subject to one of her nationality, yet there was more to it than the theme itself. Something was wrong in the fundamental sound of it. A destructive force seemed to be taking hold within the Superdome, but how was it happening? The girl was not there, had never entered the building at all. Every security guard there had her picture and was on the lookout. Ken Lewis hadn't been seen either. Neither one was on site, yet it was undeniable that the feeling of the concert had changed. No matter how benevolent the meaning of the lyrics, it was being perverted somehow into bad magic. The figure of a rampant lion etched in green lasers leaped up out of the steam and roared at the crowd.
"Cor! Effects are getting better all the time!" Laura Manning said, wonderingly. "I didn't know they could do anything like that."
"They're not," Liz said. Cupping her hands around an imaginary bubble of air, she strengthened the ring of protective energy around Fionna. Who was at that moment launching herself forward, toward the front of the stage, step by step, following the lyrics of the song. Liz felt as though she wanted to race out there and pull her back.
It was too late. One more lu
nging step, and Fee kept moving, right off the end of the stage. Instead of falling into the crowd, she was hoisted up into the air by invisible hands. Her singing turned into more of a scream than usual. The dangling white fringes of her dress went into frenzied shimmying as Fee kicked at the air. Rockets began to blast off again, practically going up her skirts.
The question of how Roberta Unterburger was doing this, with or without Ken Lewis, would have to wait. Other things, like saving Fionna and the band, were more important. The singer was floating higher and higher, until Liz feared she would crash into the Jumbotron. Four gigantic images of her frantic face were being projected on the screens, thanks to the roving cameras in the crowd.
Liz sent an alarmed glance toward Boo-Boo. She couldn't stop the protection charm. He nodded and stepped forward with his arms outstretched.
"Spirits of the air, release. Let your hold on this one cease," he recited. He tossed out a pinch of the feathers he always carried in his pockets. They were caught up in the maelstrom that engulfed the singer and whisked out of sight in a twinkling. "To earth softly let her feet return..."
"Oh, my God, she'll crash and burn!" Laura Manning cried, wringing her hands.
"Do y'all mind?" Boo-Boo asked mildly, with a look of reproof at the makeup artist. "I'm chantin' here... and let her then in peace sojourn!" Boo-Boo threw a handful of energy up towards Fionna. Sparks engulfed the woman in white and settled around her waist like a celestial belt. The crowd oohed, thinking it was part of the special effects.
"Technically this here spell doesn't work, y'know," Boo said to Liz, hauling an invisible cable down hand over hand. Fionna dropped toward him with a shrill cry that echoed out of every speaker in the hall. Boo resumed pulling, but more gently. "But in point of fact it does, in the hands of real magical folks like ourselves. It's about as close to telekinesis as departmental regulations go. I'll show you how if you like."
"I'd enjoy that," Liz said, watching with admiration. "Can I help?"
"Just hang on in there protectin'," he said.
Liz redoubled her chants. When Fionna looked about frantically for them, Liz caught her eye and mouthed, "Keep singing!" Fionna responded like a champion, putting everything she had into her lyrics. Liz felt a rush of affection for her old school chum. She was showing the stuff St. Hilda's girls were made of.
The pipes hissed, producing a huge cloud of steam. A dragon etched in laser fire stretched up from it and spread gigantic wings that extended beyond the wisps of steam. Uh-oh, thought Liz. The energy here was beginning to take on a life of its own.
The line-drawing dragon nipped at Fionna's heels. Descending toward the floor through Beauray's efforts, she was being drawn right into its jaws, bubble and all. It shot out a line drawing of red fire that licked around her legs, causing the fringe on her dress to singe. She kicked at the dragon. Her foot disrupted some of the lines, kicking up sparks. The dragon roared an angry protest. It leaped up, reared back its head, and closed its jaws around her. The protective shell cast by Liz reacted to the attack, blazing up like a light bulb. The dragon burst noisily into a thousand flecks of fire. Tiny flames hissed down onto the stage. The audience, thinking it was all part of the show, screamed with delight. Liz sighed, relieved. Her spell had held. Fionna was safe. Soon, this would be all over, and the concert could proceed uninterrupted.
Fionna kept singing gamely while Beauray continued to haul her down from the air. When she was only a few feet from the floor, there came an audible snap! Fee squawked as the invisible cord broke. She shot up, stopping herself from banging into the Jumbotron with her outstretched hands.
"For pity's sake," she shouted, shoving herself away from the multiple grimacing images of herself and the band. "Get me down from here! I'm not a bleedin' kite!"
"Well, I'll be," said Boo, shaking his head. "It's not strong enough. Whatever that Robbie is pumpin', it is some powerful mojo."
"Do somethin', you sufferin' fools!" Fionna shouted, her accent thickening. "I can't do me dance steps up here!"
The band stopped playing to stare at their lead singer hovering over their heads. When the music died away, the crowd let out cries of protest. In the upper stands a few people started to chant.
"No! No! No! No!"
"Oh, no, we can't have that," Liz said in alarm. "They'll start a riot." She leaned out of the shelter of the speakers, heedless of whether the audience could see her. "Start playing!" she ordered the band. Voe and Eddie looked at each other uncertainly, but Michael strode forward into the center of the round stage, and struck a forceful chord on his guitar.
Bless him, Liz thought.
Automatically, the other musicians followed suit and began to play. Fionna, still hovering above them, started singing again. As the positive side of the energy began to reassert itself, Fionna dropped slightly, lowering to within twenty feet of the stage. The audience, or most of it, cheered.
Not all the protesters stopped complaining. In the area around the apron of the stage, some of the fans began to fight. A skinny man in a T-shirt yelled as he was hoisted up and tossed onto a crowd of bystanders. They threw him off and went to beat up the people who had flung him at them. Up in the stands, more fights were breaking out.
Fed by the anger building in the arena, monsters leaped forth from the steam pipes. Each new creation was larger and more fearsome-looking than before. Each pulled angrily at its roots, achieving a little more distance from the curtain of vapor. It looked like soon they would be able to sustain their reality without touching it. The crowd's own energy was making the threat worse. These new creatures were drawn in multiple colors, disgusting hues of sickly green, blood red, decay brown. Fans near the stage retreated, shrieking, as the beasts struck out at them. The creatures were still insubstantial, but that could change any moment.
"What's going on?" Lloyd demanded, appearing at their shoulder. "Make it stop! Get her down from there!"
"We are trying to," Liz said. "Robbie is employing an astonishing amount of psychic energy."
"What? I thought she couldn't do anything if she wasn't here."
"Somehow they're using a kind of remote control," Boo-Boo said, regarding the security man with reproachful eyes.
"Man!" Lloyd said, crushing his huge hands together. "If I'd known that foolish little bird was capable of causing trouble like this... !"
"She's not to blame, Lloyd." Liz took a chance using his first name, since he'd never given them permission. "She's being used. Ken Lewis is behind this."
That put an entirely different complexion on the situation. Lloyd's face darkened with angry blood.
"I'd strangle that bloke if I had him here. Have you called the cops?"
"And tell them what?" Liz asked, reasonably.
"Dammit," Lloyd raged. "Do something! Fee's afraid of heights!"
He stormed off to his post and began to talk into his cell phone. Liz understood his frustration. She felt it herself.
"Try something else to get Fionna down," she asked Boo. "In the meantime, I'll try to put a lid on this outburst."
Everyone was getting too excited. The protection spell would have to look after itself for the moment.
Calm, she thought, opening her arms wide and leaning back with her eyes closed. Summoning the first lessons she'd learned in the use of power, she called upon the element of Earth to spread out among the crowd. Calm. Serenity. Pleasure. She felt herself floating above all the people, settling down like a hen on the world's largest nestful of eggs. Everyone must calm down. This kind of outburst was unseemly even for a rock concert. Everyone had to get hold of their emotions and calm down. We are not barbarians here. We are adults at a public entertainment.
It was no easy thing soothing 80,000 people. She tapped all the way down into the bottom of her reservoir of magic to touch the outermost rows of the audience. It was a technique she'd learned from her old grandmother, to scotch negativism at its source by appealing to the need for order within, something within each hum
an being. She urged her mood of calm on the thousands of people, chivvying them to release their harmful emotions in a positive way. For just a moment, everybody's shoulders heaved up, then relaxed as they let out a huge, collective sigh.
As if to field-test her enchantment, a new laser-born monster, more horrible than before, with glowing red eyes and huge tusks rose up out of the steam pipes, its claws reaching for fans in the first sixteen rows. Liz was rewarded when, instead of screaming in fear, the audience erupted with glee at the exquisite complexity of the special effects, applauded appreciatively, then settled down into a quieter enjoyment of the music.
"Good God," said Boo-Boo. "Some of 'em are even foldin' their hands."
"I had some good training," Liz said, with satisfaction, "as a room monitor at a girl's school."
"That's mighty impressive," Boo admitted. "But they're tied to your emotional state now. If you get frightened or excited, sure enough, the crowd will do the same. We'd have a bloodbath."
Liz shook her head. "I am capable of retaining my cool," she said. "I am an Englishwoman."
She viewed the scene with deliberate detachment. The visions in the laser works had ceased to be bloodthirsty monsters with scales and huge fangs. Instead, green-edged horses, rabbits and other natural animals sprang about on the misty gray wall, as though the programmer had tapped into a benevolent nature show. Dragons appeared, too, but they were friendly dragons, with softer muzzles and not so many spines on their tails. The crowd reacted with polite applause and shouts of "Hurray!"
"Ain't that a little bit of overkill?" Boo-Boo asked, beginning to ready his next incantation.
Liz shook her head. "I've only grabbed hold of the edge of this blanket of energy. It could still explode into..."
"Explode" was the operative word for what came next. From the frameworks on either side of the stage that held the Roman candles, huge cylinders launched toward the ceiling. Popping in time with the music, they burst overhead into stars of color that filled the whole room. The crowd burst out in cheers of delight. Clouds of gold spangles expanded under the light plastic ceiling like dandelions opening on time-lapse photography. Fionna dodged this way and that, trying to avoid the onslaught. Liz stopped meditating on peace to renew her protection spell around her old school friend. The sparks might scare her now, but they couldn't hurt her.
License Invoked ts-5 Page 21