“That was Elvis!”
“Useful,” she said again.
I walked off on my own as Annie B checked the mechanism that opened the higher sarcophagi with Eresha watching her every move. I purposely stayed away from the handmaidens. Me offending anyone’s honor wouldn’t help . . . they were probably so brainwashed they’d commit seppuku if they sneezed without asking first.
I studied the ceiling, the floor, and the vault door for geo-anima, but found none. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my monocle artifact. It had six different lenses that could be turned into place, the combination allowing me to see every anima type in existence. If you’re curious about why six, I had coated each lens half and half with the appropriate anima. That made twelve types. I was already a geomancer, so why bother with that one?
Paine’s glasses could be used in combat, the monocle couldn’t. What it could do, is scour a crime scene for anima residue and narrow potential suspects down. Normally, my ass would have spent hours searching every spot of the vault for signs with each lens, but on the sixth one, I hit paydirt.
“Holy fuckballs,” I whispered. Necro-anima was everywhere.
“What?” Annie B asked from the other side of the vault, craning her neck to look for me. She knew me well enough to know that tone of voice. “What did you find?”
“I think . . . the bodies walked off on their own.”
Crazy just got kicked up to eleven.
Session 44
Fuck Kansas.
I don’t trust a state with nothing but white people in it. What they eat, mayonnaise on mayonnaise? I ate lunch in a Mexican place that had never heard of pre-meal salsa and chips. That’s sacrilegious.
And it’s too flat. Fresno’s just as flat, but when brothers Fog and Smog ain’t in attendance you have these beautiful mountains off in the distance, snow-capped and gleaming, cupping you safely in the Earth’s sure palm.
The ground in Kansas feels worse than flat, it feels thin. Like looking at some Hollywood starlet who went too crazy with the dieting, magazines telling her she’s hot stuff but every real man that sees a picture of her is trying not to throw up. Flat . . . too flat. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment some Mongol would ride in and steal my womenfolk.
One in every two-hundred people are descended from Genghis Khan. You don’t achieve that ratio without some womenfolk thievery.
Also explains why the Mongols didn’t invade beyond Eastern Europe. Cuz once you got yourself some of them big-tittied, yet magically slim Hungarian women in your harem, you really don’t got a whole lot of time in your day for doing any conquesting, do you?
Kansas.
Didn’t like Kansas.
Boonies Kansas too. Not Wichita or anything.
Farm Kansas. More hogs and cattle than people Kansas.
Had six boys in overalls watching me from behind a nearby fence, ages five to sixteen. Don’t believe in salsa or contraception in Kansas. The boys studied me like I was an alien. Guess I was. A supernatural aberration as Doctor Hunting would call it.
Denver had proved enlightening.
More enlightening than Kansas.
Ceinwyn scored more points that night than she did any other day with me. More than by fighting the Guild for me. More than being there for Mom’s funeral. She let Hunting dig his own grave. Made me realize that the so-called elite weren’t interested in fixing the problem as Ceinwyn saw it or as I’d come to see it. They weren’t interested in a healthy, wide-reaching community of mancers. They only wanted the same elite few to be stronger. Ultras couldn’t be missed, but fuck Intras.
If the students at the Asylum had seen that room, had heard them talk . . . there would be riots on the campus. They’d be lynching Ultras from every tree on the Mound.
If the Huntings and Welfs had their way—even with their grand work, their fix to the problem of the Ratio of Anima Dispersion makes for an overpopulated planet—Mom still died.
It would be worse and you know it. Way things happened, it was a mistake. They just missed her. Things go Hunting’s way and they’d find her and discard her.
I’d been thinking about Denver all day.
It was more interesting than deflecting questions from farmboys in overalls.
[CLICK]
Boris Hunting tapped me on the shoulder.
“Cutting in?” I asked, almost pleading.
I’d been dancing with Vicky for the better part of an hour and I could barely feel my legs. The girl was insatiable when it came to escaping her parent’s disapproving eyes. I don’t have an attraction to her, but she was fun to be around.
She reminded me of JoJo before JoJo went JoJo.
My playful sister, pulling one prank after another and laughing whether they went right or wrong. My playful sister, sharing one big dream after another with me, of being a movie star, of singing on Broadway, of stealing a boat to sail from one ocean port to the next. My playful sister, forcing her five-year-old little brother to attend tea parties by duct-taping him to the chair.
“Little Victoria, I’m very sorry,” Boris explained the situation like you would to a child who couldn’t grasp complex concepts, “but Ceinwyn wants her toy back before you break him.”
“Oh . . .” Vicky mouthed. She threw her arms around me in another hug, not showing a bit of annoyance that someone was treating her like she was five. “Be good, stay safe, see you in a month?”
“I’ll try, Vick,” I mumbled into her shoulder, overloaded from all the happiness.
Still not releasing me from the hug, she whispered into my ear at such a low volume even I could barely hear it, “Don’t trust Doctor Hunting, he’s more of a schemer than he looks.”
Finally escaping Sunshine Fairy Sparkles, I walked off at said schemer’s side. “Ceinwyn really want me or you about to take me in the back and have some goons beat the shit out of me?”
Boris’ change of expression gave away his emotions. No, Boris wouldn’t have me beat on, but he did relish that I’d thought he might do it. Vicky was right. Boris Hunting looked like a tubby little scientist, but tubby little scientists can just as easily build the atomic bomb as discovering penicillin. “King Henry Price, what for should I beat you?”
He think he’s fucking Yoda or something?
“Well . . . I’ve called your daughter a ‘frozen twat’ a few times in my life,” I said, for some insane reason trying honesty.
“Please desist from doing so; Hope is very important to me.” He kept walking, away from the entire party in fact.
I followed.
Curiosity again.
Not, dear to my heart. Not, I love my daughter. Not, now I really will pound your face in for saying that about my little girl, you fucktard. She was important to him. Like she was an integral part to some plan and hurting her feelings might interfere with said plan. “I’ll try, I guess.”
“It’s understandable you would feel that way about her, she wasn’t created to be likable and with her being a cryomancer the ice queen motif is regrettably apt,” Boris explained. “She was also created to uphold her social standing and to protect those closest to her above all else. You agitate on both fronts, do you not?”
Created. I couldn’t help myself. I said the word aloud, “Created?”
We walked through a hallway and to an elevator. Boris clicked the button to go up. “Yes. Genetic manipulation of a zygote with hydro-anima injections before implantation.” He glanced at me, judged my reaction. Apparently I was less horrified by the idea than the common man. “Most call me a mad scientist playing with God’s creation at this point.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons . . . and rules are made to be tested.”
He smiled. It was predictably frigid. “King Henry Price, I think I like you. If you ever tire of the Guild, come to me and you’ll have a job in my laboratories.” He didn’t give me a chance to accept or to turn him down; instead he continued by telling me more about Hope than I ever wanted to know. “I
love my wife, but she’s horribly infertile. In a normal human, the process would not have been required; instead, a proper surrogate womb would have been procured for our children. We, however, are not normal humans.”
“Mancy ain’t genetic,” I quoted the long standing truth.
“No . . . but an elemental mother birthing a child increases the chance of an elemental offspring by more than four-hundred percent. It isn’t genetic, you’re correct, my father proved this, did you know?” Boris puffed his family.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he did. Still . . . all three children from my wife are mancers, while the two I had with mundane mistresses are not.”
“Uh . . .”
“You’ll keep my secrets, I’m sure. One scientist to another.”
“Sure. Why the fuck not, right?”
Remember, kiddies, it’s a secret.
Don’t tell anyone.
“It is a chancy process my wife went through, each time was difficult on her and even then every male embryo perished before the third trimester. It took five tries for Wilson to be born and years of testing to refine the process. Even then he was born a month premature.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I finally asked. “I don’t like your daughter much, your daughter don’t like me much. This ain’t gonna help anything.”
Boris laughed—slow and dark, like moonrise over an iced-up lake. “That is good for me, good for you, and good for her. So we call it a success! Besides, if you tried to steal her from Heinrich then I would have you beaten and I would hire a specialist to see it was done correctly.”
“Created,” I thought aloud again. Threat was no big deal, got them all the time from people a lot scarier than Boris. He ain’t got nothing on the Three Queens. They sacrifice babies, not make ‘em.
“Yes, now you see.”
“Created for Heinrich Welf?”
“I’ve wanted our families to combine since I became friends with Frederick at school. When he told me the news that Moira was pregnant, I made sure that my wife soon joined her. In this way, our children would be the same age and attend the Institution together.”
“I’m both disgusted by all this and really fucking impressed.”
Boris enjoyed my awe more than anything I’d given so far. “Hope has . . . whined . . . I am fond of her but there’s no other way to say it, is there? She has whined about you on occasion.”
“Again, I have no interest in your daughter’s frozen twat.”
Finally a point scored. Boris’ cheek twitched. “She has also whined about a girl called Valentine Ward.”
I stayed silent on the subject, but my hands curled into fists.
Boris continued, “Heinrich is attracted to her and so are you, yes?”
“Something like that,” I growled out.
“King Henry Price, this is my point: as long as you keep Heinrich von Welf away from Valentine Ward and with my daughter, then I will be in your debt.”
He extended a hand for me to shake.
“You got a deal, Doctor Boris,” I lied, shaking it.
That’s the night I decided I would make it my mission to break up Hope and Welf before we graduated as Ultras.
[CLICK]
Ceinwyn was waiting as the elevator doors opened.
She wasn’t alone, Frederick von Welf had joined her. There was no sign of the ladies or of the children. Which was good, Heinrich Welf and King Henry Price inevitably would be throwing down if we kept too much company with each other.
Ceinwyn had on a thick, head-to-toe lab-coat. Boris offered me one as well, but I shook my head. I was flushed from all the dancing and my suit had too many layers as it was.
“It’s quite frigid in the server room,” Boris warned me.
“You ain’t wearing one.”
“We are cryomancers,” Boris reminded.
Papa Welf shook his head. “Has the curriculum fallen off so badly that you’re not even teaching discipline traits at the Institution?”
Yup, he’s a douchebag Welf alright. “Curriculum fallen off or not, I beat your boy, didn’t I?” I verbally punched the man in the face, showing him my teeth in warning.
“You’re about to start a fight with an eighteen-year-old, Frederick,” Ceinwyn warned before Papa Welf could respond in kind.
Papa Welf closed his mouth. “If he wants to freeze, he may freeze,” he said instead, voice even more clipped and precise than his son’s.
Ceinwyn winked when Papa Welf’s back was turned, sliding up next to me. “Was dancing with Victoria fun?”
“Better than the trip up the elevator,” I whispered back.
Ceinwyn smiled knowingly. “Did Boris agree to conquer the world with you?”
“And I thought you were weird.”
Her smile twitched. “Keep your mind sharp. I want your opinion on this project.”
Boris and Papa Welf led us down a hallway to the left, around a corner and to a security checkpoint. A trio of security guards checked us over, even Boris and Papa Welf. Everyone’s cell-phone was taken away from them—not from me, since as Ceinwyn’s slave I didn’t rate one—and placed in a safe among a row of safes that ran along the wall. The key to the safe was handed over to Boris, who pocketed it.
“All data in and out is secured, as you see,” Boris said. “The gate through which we just passed would make the TSA jealous.”
“Good thing I trust you with pictures of me in my underwear, Boris,” I deadpanned.
Boris actually flushed despite the chill of the hallway. “All privacy concerns are accounted for with these scans, I assure you,” he said to Ceinwyn.
“Don’t worry, Doctor Hunting, I trust you with pictures of me in my underwear as well,” Ceinwyn piled on. “I’m sure Frederick does too.”
“I’ve trusted him with half my fortune, why not my dignity?” Papa Welf said stiffly.
I got the feeling no one but Momma Welf had ever seen those tighty-whiteys. And the butler, can’t forget the butler. Serving the Welfs for life . . . that’s hell, that is.
“Half your fortune, Frederick, and ten percent of my budget and ESLED’s budget for the next decade,” Ceinwyn reminded him of the more important things.
“It will be worth every penny,” Boris assured again, “you shall see.”
“I will see, Boris, and if I don’t report favorably then the Lady will nix the entire thing.”
“We’re too far into the project for such talk,” Papa Welf complained heatedly. “Especially in front of a student.”
“Oh, I trust King Henry to remain silent on this little trip.”
Well . . . I did until she wanted me to spill my guts to you, kiddies. Part of me hopes that if I put enough secrets into these damn tapes she won’t have the gonads to show them to anyone.
Guess that means I might be talking to the void right now. Lonely man shouting into the wilderness. Or maybe they’ll be an important record . . . maybe I really will change the world. Maybe historians will listen to these things to understand why I did what I did.
Mom.
Ceinwyn.
Plutarch.
Isabel.
Three Queens.
Hope and Welf.
Val.
Them’s some important names and that room in Denver is right on up there with them. I’ve kept my promise pretty well. Try to forget about it. Some of the hints Raj has dropped to me since graduation makes me pretty sure he’s working on the project. But I’ve never asked him. They’re the competition after all.
Project Cassandra.
Papa Welf and Boris both brought out old-fashioned keys, pulling the ol’ synchronized key routine on a panel. That opened a palm scanner, which Boris used. It flashed green and inside we went.
Steel stairs led down the outside wall of a massive room, so massive that no floor was in sight when you stepped inside it. Instead, you saw stack after stack of computer servers, all connected, one on top of another, like a bunch of humming and bli
nking skyscrapers turned miniature.
It was as cold as advertised.
Pillars of pure cryo-anima bracketed each server tower. I’d never seen anima like that before. Pure anima driven to function by a mancer and left contained instead of expended. Soon enough I’d become used to it, of teaching friends how to give to an anima vial so I could use the juice later like some blood bank nurse stealing a life here or there, wherever I could.
Each pillar in the server room would take a lifetime for a single cryomancer to fill. It’s no wonder Hunting Cyotech poaches every cryomancer graduate it can get its hands on, no wonder why the cryo-anima market price is ten times that of any other anima-type, even hydro-anima better used for Slush than artifacts.
Boris Hunting and Frederick von Welf have a dream.
A dream called Project Cassandra.
A dream not of engineering or artificing or of going out in the field to find recruits, but of cold numbers, in a cold room, cruelly deciding who lives and who dies.
A cryomancer’s dream.
Boris expounded upon it, proud of his accomplishment. “The latest in electro-anima manipulated computing, this room defeats the computational output of that monstrosity the NSA is building in Utah. The cryo-anima allows for pure conduction of electricity without any worry of liquid replacement or metal fatigue or condensation. When the go is given, the servers will alight and no one need enter this room until the code is cracked. No direct access will be allowed; storage input will take place in floors above and below and transferred only one way.
“Your worries are understandable, Ceinwyn, but as you can see, we have thought of them as well,” he finished.
Ceinwyn walked down the stairs, heels clicking on steel all the way to the ground floor. I followed behind, staring up at the monoliths of black and glowing cyan blue, thinking maybe I’m just an especially smart ape after all.
“Only you and Frederick have the keys?” Ceinwyn asked.
“That must be used together,” Boris confirmed.
Sounds like he watches too many movies. Guess that’s what happens when you really believe world domination is possible. Hey, man, if you have to create a kid or three then you have to create a kid or three.
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 17