License Invoked ts-5

by Robert Robert

  Boo-Boo stabbed the auto-dial button on his phone. "Liz!" he cried. "I've found 'em!"

  * * *

  Ken Lewis rolled back on one elbow, watching Robbie operate her invisible equipment. Now and again in his earphone he heard the crackle of confusion coming from the Superdome. He might have had a hard time in the beginning getting the sabotage under way, but now it was going so easy he was sorry he couldn't do it all over again.

  He could cause anything to happen that he could get Robbie to visualize. That opened up the range of possibilities for mayhem to well... everything. But there wasn't much time left. Once the power had been converted the way Mr. Kingston wanted it, he needed to cause a massive reaction to make it go back into the transmission line and sent off to SATN-TV. A devastating disaster would cause the appropriate reaction.

  How best to end the concert? Ken wondered dreamily as tantalizing possibilities danced before his eyes. Should he set fire to the roof and let it cascade down on the thousands of fans in the audience? Blow up the stage and launch goody-goody Fionna into space? Collapse the walls into a black hole? As long as Fionna Kenmare bit the big one, Ken could do what he liked. That had been the only non-negotiable stipulation Kingston had thrown into the contract. A mega-superstar knocked into eternity at the height of her powers and popularity ought to launch boatloads of fear and terror back through the link. And the publicity! Ken could just see the headlines. Every newspaper and television service would carry the story tomorrow. It'd be a blow against good magic all over the world. That ought to be good for another bonus. Plenty of extra hate and fear to feed the Greed Machine. Maybe Robbie ought to set off a ton of fireworks right on the stage itself, and blow them all to pieces.

  Wait, he knew the perfect conclusion: the Jumbotron! What if Robbie dropped that on the band at the end of the concert? Everyone would be squashed flat, bang!

  "Honey," he said, very casually, leaning forward over Robbie's shoulder, "you know that big box hanging over the stage? It's in the way. Gary wants you to take it down, right onto the stage."

  "Won't it fall on people?" Robbie asked.

  "Well, maybe a few," Ken said, picturing the headlines on the paper the next day: Rock Star Crushed to Death in Freak Accident. "Fionna, for one. C'mon, do it, baby. Just one big tug, and it'll all be over."

  "No, I don't like that idea," Robbie said. "It's dangerous."

  "Robbie, it's in your instructions," Ken said. "You have to."

  "No, the fire marshall will never go along with it."

  She was growing more agitated.

  "Shake it, baby!" he ordered, into a sudden silence on the riverfront in between jazz numbers coming over the loudspeakers. People turned around to look at him. He gave them a sheepish smile. They went back to watching, and he turned to glare at Robbie. She shrank away from him.

  "All right," she said, in a very small voice. Ken heard the gratifying crackle of confusion in his earphone. She might not like it, but she was doing it.

  * * *

  "Oooh," the crowd breathed.

  "What's going on out there?" Liz asked, from inside her cocoon. She sensed a frisson of excitement tinged with fear breaking out from inside the mass enchantment. The building began to rumble underfoot.

  Lloyd leaned back and peered out between the huge speakers.

  "More of the usual monsters," he said, as though he was telling her the weather. "Michael just stomped a red rocket underfoot. The punters loved it. Hmm."

  "What?"

  "That 'ere box is moving around."

  "Which box?" Liz asked. She experienced a moment of alarm, which was quickly mirrored by her support group. Deliberately squashing her feelings, she let her gaze follow Lloyd's pointing finger straight up. The Jumbotron! It swayed and moved backwards and forwards on its moorings. Fionna, still in midair, had noticed its movement, too, and was waving frantically at Liz.

  Liz stood frozen in the midst of her support group. She had always had a horrible feeling that the Jumbotron might fall down. Her worst nightmare seemed on the verge of coming true. If the power continued to rise, not only the band, but hundreds of concertgoers near the stage, could also be crushed by it.

  "Boo-Boo," she whispered, "hurry!"

  * * *

  "I don't want to make trouble for anyone," Robbie said, her fingers twisting in knots. She had gotten to the weepy stage. Time for a little more liquid courage. Ken poured another splash of tequila in her glass and added a double dose of drugs. "This has been the best job of my life, working for Green Fire."

  "Come on, honey," he said, holding out the liquor, "they're no good to you." She drank it without paying attention. She was numb.

  "Oh, yes, they are!" she insisted, muzzily. "Lloyd is always wonderful. Nigel is great. I really love Nigel. He called in those secret agents."

  "Those spies are there to get you, baby," Ken said, looking into her eyes seriously. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot.

  "They can't be," Robbie said, shaking her head. The action was grossly exaggerated. Ken caught her just before she fell over. "They're too nice."

  "They're here to take you away," Ken insisted, whispering in her ear. "The government thinks you're a freak. They're evil. They'd lock you up in a little lab if they could. Run tests on you."

  "Oh, no!" Robbie protested. "That's what you told me about the nice man in Dublin. He wasn't a spy. What happened to him, Kenny?"

  "You told him to go away," Ken said, with major satisfaction. The guy had been a basket case the last time he'd seen him, slumped outside St. Stephen's Green shopping center off Grafton Street. No more sticking his nose into the Council's affairs for him. Robbie, annoyingly, picked up on his triumph, and started crying.

  "I did something to him, didn't I?"

  Hastily, Ken offered her more tequila. "Here, baby. Here's something to make you forget all about it."

  "Don't wanna forget..." Robbie said, fighting him. She shoved away, put her hands on the ground unsteadily, trying to get to her feet. He'd pushed her too far. Let her relax a little, and work her back to where she could create the big effect he was hoping for.

  "Come on, baby," Ken urged her, pulling her down beside him. She slumped into a boneless heap, staring at the sky. "You can't leave. The show's not over yet. You know what I want. Do it. Do it!"

  Robbie's voice was almost completely indistinct. He lowered his head to hear her. "The Jumbotron belongs to the Superdome. They'll get upset if we move it."

  The fireworks changed tenor as the music shifted from the jazz piece to a martial march. Ken took her face between his hands and turned it toward the show.

  "Never mind the Jumbotron. Look at all those pretty flowers!" he said. "Picture ones just like that happening in the Superdome. Big, fiery flowers, with petals that burn the people they fall on. Burning your enemies to cinders. Picture them falling, falling, right on Fionna. Look at them!"

  A tongue of light sizzled up into the sky and burst right over their heads into a purple star twice the size of a football field. Robbie screamed and hid her head in her arms.

  "They're coming too close. Too close!"

  Bad move, Ken thought. He'd given her too much. He held the squirming woman in his arms, trying to keep her from burrowing into the grass.

  Some of the passersby had turned around at the frantic scream.

  Ken looked at the crowd apologetically.

  "Sorry," he said. "She just accepted my proposal. We're engaged!" Indulgent smiles all round, left them alone. Decent people, giving decent privacy. They wouldn't be so nice if he told them what they were engaged in.

  But he'd miscalculated how much Robbie's system could hold. Her body lay limp on the ground, but her hands were frantically picking at the grass.

  "No no no no no no..." she murmured.

  "Hey, baby." Ken turned her over. She drew her knees up to her chest and screwed her eyes shut.

  Ken heard activity nearby, the sound of hurrying footsteps, and looked up to see the agent dr
essed like a bum heading his way. He shook Robbie by the shoulder.

  "Robbie, you've got to finish off the concert hall right now!"

  "No no no no no no!" She started kicking and lashing out with her arms. Agent Boudreau was getting closer. He mustn't get Robbie. Ken tried to gather her up, intending to carry her away from the Moon Walk.

  She smacked him in the face with a wild swing.

  All right, so Ken had created a monster—but she was his monster! He couldn't let the agent take her away. Ken wasn't a natural practitioner. His superiors had equipped him with a few easy spells in case of emergency. The disappearance charms were all used up. No way to vanish handily into the crowd. Instead, he had to rely on offense.

  He sprang to his feet and assumed a martial arts stance.

  * * *

  Boo-Boo saw him assume a bent-knee crouch with his hands out at right angles. He'd been waiting for something like that. Ken had little magical ability of his own, or he wouldn't have needed Ms. Robbie in the first place. In a moment the agent had taken his opponent's measure. Ken Lewis had wrestled, most likely in high school, and had maybe a little storefront karate. He was no match for Boo-Boo in any way that the American agent could think of.

  From his pocket Ken whipped out a white envelope and flung it down on the ground between them. It burst with a puff of white smoke.

  "Spirits dark, hear me call you, hold my foe still like a statue!"

  Boo-Boo almost scoffed out loud. Standard immobilization spell, only you were supposed to hit the one you wanted to freeze with the powder to make it work. Ken had wasted it on maybe an ant hill or a passing caterpillar. Boo-Boo wasn't impressed. The guy was so jumpy he was making stupid mistakes.

  But Ken was a dirty fighter. Under the cover of the white cloud, he rushed to close with Boo-Boo, pounding him over the kidneys with his fists. Luckily for Boo-Boo, his old friend of an army jacket, padded with years' accumulation of odds and ends, absorbed most of the force. Boo-Boo twisted out of his hold just in time to keep his ear from being bitten in half. Ken Lewis must have gone out of his mind. Boo-Boo grabbed his wrist and flipped it up behind the other man's back.

  "Now, you just hold still," he said. He turned his head to look for Ms. Robbie.

  The poor young woman was lying on the ground, mumbling and writhing, her hands waving in the air. Her eyes were fixed on the fireworks, the effect of which she must still be transmitting to the Superdome. Drugged or bespelled, it was hard to say which.

  "What did you give her?" Boo-Boo demanded, shaking Ken's wrist. The other gasped but didn't speak. "What have you done to her?"

  An urgent beeping sounded nearby.

  "Beauray," Liz's voice, much muffled, came from the depths of his pocket, "what is happening out there?"

  Ken took advantage of Boo-Boo's momentary distraction to kick out viciously. Boo-Boo took a healthy blow to the shin, but let his weight drop forward. He ended up sitting on Ken.

  "Now, what you're doin' is wrong. Y'all want to make it stop before anyone gets killed." Boo looked down at Ken, who was gnashing his teeth. "Or is that just exactly what you want?" He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his hip pocket and snapped them on Ken's wrists.

  The everchanging crowd had by now noticed that a fight had been going on in its midst. A few men jumped forward to pull Boo-Boo off his quarry, no doubt thinking he was an insane vagrant. With regret, he stood up over his prisoner and produced his billfold with his Department credentials. The men stood back, surprised.

  "Folks, this fellah's in possession of an illegal shipment of pixie dust," Boo-Boo said amiably but with fire in his eyes that showed he meant business. "Y'all want to move along now. Everythin's under control." To back up his statement, he made a few quick mystic passes of the "These aren't the droids you're looking for" variety. Distracted, the crowd went back about its business. Boo-Boo was relieved.

  He had let his guard down too soon.

  In the darkness he missed the foot sweeping out from underneath that caught him across the shins. Boo-Boo went flying onto the grass. The cuffs were now around his wrists. Pretty slick, he thought.

  Ken sprang up. Pausing only to kick Boo-Boo once in the ribs, he fled into the crowd.

  Boo gasped, catching his breath around the pain in his midsection. Lewis was gone, but he was not the real problem. Boo-Boo crawled over to Robbie, who was lying on her back with her hands and knees in the air, kicking like a dying fly. Her hair was tangled into a rat's nest, and her clothes were stained and torn. She looked as though she'd been assaulted, but it was all from flinging herself around on the ground.

  "Ms. Robbie, can you hear me?"

  "Beauray!" his pocket screamed.

  Uh-oh. Couldn't let Liz get hot under the collar. The lives of thousands depended on it. Awkwardly with his pinioned hands, he fumbled for the cell phone.

  "I'm here," he said. "I've got Ms. Robbie. She's freakin' out somethin' awful."

  "And Lewis?" Liz's voice was already calmed down again. The lady was a real pro.

  "He's gone."

  "Things are still going on here, Beauray," Liz said. "Whatever he has done is running on its own now."

  "You still getting the full fireworks treatment?" he asked. He whispered one of the Words of Unbinding, and the cuffs leaped free. His shoes untied and his pants button popped open at the same time, but that was pretty much normal for the course. He refastened them.

  "And laser monsters," Liz said, enumerating a list for him. "And fireballs with attitude. And carnivorous rainbows. One of them just bit Mr. Lockney on the arm. But what is troubling me the most is that the Jumbotron is moving. It looks as though it could come down at any moment. You must persuade her to stop before she tears it off its moorings."

  Boo-Boo looked at Robbie. She didn't see him. That girl was one powerful channel, but she wasn't in control at all. He had to try and guide her back to reality.

  Robbie reeked of liquor. Boo-Boo crouched down beside her and sniffed her breath speculatively. Tequila. Yes, here was the bottle beside her on the grass. But that wasn't enough to cause her to twitch like that. Lewis had to have been feeding her drugs. In spite of those mental obstructions, Boo-Boo had to get through to her. He didn't have much time.

  "Ms. Robbie?" he asked. "D'you know me? Beauray. You know me. We got along real well back at the Superdome. Can y'all hear me?"

  The girl looked at him without seeing him and rolled over, her legs spasming. He picked her up under the arms. Her hands flailed out and hit him in the face.

  "Hey, there," Boo-Boo said, trying to catch her arms.

  Some well-meaning citizens in the milling crowd on the pavement saw him do that.

  "Hey, you!" a large black man said, jumping up the three concrete steps to the grass. "Get your hands off that girl!"

  He attracted the attention of other people who must have decided that Boo-Boo didn't have any business trying to talk to Robbie. He'd better scare 'em off quickly.

  "Any of y'all know CPR?" he asked, putting a healthy measure of panic into his voice. "'Course she's foamin' at the mouth. Dunno if she's got somethin' catchin' or not. Anyone want to help?"

  That did it. The ones that hadn't melted away when he mentioned CPR vanished like genies when he suggested Robbie might be diseased. Even the first man to speak was suddenly nowhere in sight. The Good Samaritan wasn't dead these days, but he was worried about incurable illnesses. In a moment Boo had the area near the gazebo all to himself.

  "Now, Ms. Robbie, listen to me. You're causin' all kinds o' trouble back along at the Superdome. Y'all got to stop that. Can you hear me? Nod your head if you understand."

  Instead, she flung herself at him, pointing at the sudden explosion of pink and gold stars over the river. Boo-Boo grabbed her and started probing her mind gently, using a mind-touch technique he'd gotten the idea for from Star Trek. He thought he felt a spark of recognition. Her eyes suddenly met his.

  "Ms. Robbie, do you know me? I'm Beauray."

 
She nodded.

  "Good. D'you know where you are? Good," he said when, after a brief hesitation she nodded again. "Can y'all shut down the fireworks at the Superdome?" She nodded. "Good. Can y'all do that right now?" She nodded. Her bleary eyes drifted away from him and focused on the fireworks display. Boo picked up his cell phone.

  "That do anything?" he asked Liz.

  There was a pause. "No change. That horrid box is still moving."

  Boo-Boo helped the girl to sit up. She stared at him wildly. Spittle flecked her lips and she mumbled nonsense. Her hands moved of their own volition, performing a bizarre dance in midair.

  "Look, Ms. Robbie," he said reasonably, "if you don't cut off what you're doin', thousands of people are goin' to get hurt. Some of 'em could die. It'll all be your fault."

  He could almost see the words bounce off her ear. He had to break the connection between Robbie and the Superdome.

  "Nothin' personal, ma'am," he said. He cocked back an arm and caught her under the jaw with a solid right. Robbie dropped to the grass in a boneless heap. Boo crouched over her, keeping passing couples from walking on her. He clapped the cell phone to his ear.

  "I just knocked her out. Did that help?"

  "No, it made it worse," Liz said, briskly. Boo could tell just from her voice how difficult her task was. "If she is the only one in control, that just set off everything she was thinking of. We have monsters, rockets, musicians in flight and the Jumbotron. How is she doing all of that?"

  Boo looked down at the unconscious woman sprawled at his feet. "Well, I can't ask her just now."

  "But what can we do to turn her off?" Liz asked, and he could tell how she was straining to keep her cool. "The building itself won't take much more. There is only so much power any one structure can contain. This one is more flexible than most, but, oh, Boo-Boo!"

  "I know, darlin'," he said, slumping beside Robbie with his head in his hands. He could try force-feeding the girl a Mickey Finn, but if a stiff uppercut didn't work, a knockout drug wouldn't have much more effect. Besides, she was dosed to the eyeballs with something strong. He was afraid to try mixing more chemicals into her system. Who knew what kind of subconscious horrors would swim up from delta-wave sleep? What about a lobotomy? Could cutting off the prefrontal lobe squelch the violent emissions of her brain? An operation, or even a spell to the same effect, would take too long. Time was running out. The quickest solution might be a bullet to the head. He hated to take a life, but he had to balance one girl against the thousands and thousands of others trapped in the Superdome. If someone popped that bubble of power now there'd be a massacre. He glanced out over the river. Maybe sinking the barge with the fireworks would do it.